Consciousness is inherently individual. It is not simply experiencing – there is always a ‘me’ at the center doing the feeling, responding, and interpreting. But locating this self has proved surprisingly difficult. Towards the end of the 19th century, pioneering psychologist William James began an exhaustive labor of introspection – a search for the core of his consciousness. But no matter how hard he tried and no matter how complex his mental gymnastics were, James could find no center – no thinker thinking. His thoughts seemed to flicker and play their own accord, so he was temporarily illuminated by the spotlight of attention, others dancing on the fringes. And even to observe his thoughts, James realized, was only to have thoughts about thoughts. His mind was a never-changing play of mental events, and, it appeared, his notion of a self was an illusion.
James found a resolution to this existential crisis by likening consciousness to a tumbling stream. The waters of a stream are always in flux, never in precisely the same state twice. For every big eddy – for every distinct thought or clear impression – there are many more background ripples and swirls. But the stream itself has a history, a continuous identity behind the superficial play of the current. Gradually, the waters etch out their banks, creating a landscape that, in turn, shapes the flows of the water.
The self can be seen in the same way. It is not an inner observer that is a target for mental experiences. Instead, it is the vessel that gives shape to these experiences. From birth, the brain accumulates memories and habits, which in turn shape its circuitry and processing paths and so guide its response to each subsequent moment. This is what makes every person’s consciousness unique and individual. Each brain becomes the product of its singular history.
Shaping The Mind
For a long time, James’s insight was lost to science. In the middle decades of the 20th century, consciousness · was viewed as a software program running on a generalized machine, so the sense of self was merely the sum of many processing events. Memories, for example, were called up by processing – they did not do the processing. But more recent and realistic models of the brain fit well with James’s analogy. Today, many scientists view the brain as a neural network, where webs of connections develop through experience and where the nature of our consciousness arises from our specific history of interactions with the world. A new generation of computers can also be shaped by their ‘life story, with their unique patterns of processing formed during a ‘training’ phase.
A sense of self
So, is our sense of self simply the feeling of being the sum of our histories? James realized that our self-sense is not quite this passive. Aspects of our identity are actively constructed. For a start, there is our bodily self, the feeling of what it is like to inhabit our skins. One of the main tasks of the brain is to draw up the mental boundaries that main task of the brain is to draw up the mental boundaries that feat of being able to chew food in the cramped confines of your mouth. Tongue and dinner move in all directions, and yet we manage to keep ourselves separate from our meals and avoid biting ourselves while chewing. The brain’s construction of such boundaries is precise yet also elastic. A racing car driver will feel his tires gripping on tight corners as if they were an extension of his body, and hammers, pens, and paintbrushes can come to feel like part of the hand if used for long periods.
Social Consciousness
Another aspect of our sense of self derives from the fact that we are social creatures. We must take into account other consciousness – the people around us. The more we are aware of the mental existence of others, the more aware we are of our mental existence. So, while the self requires a brain, it has no actual anatomical location. It is noted in our relationships with our physical space, our social space, and our personal histories.
Cognitive Dissonance
Consciousness is full of conflicting knowledge and urges, and we often act without fully understanding the reasons why. However, we like to see ourselves as consistent and in control. Psychologists have a term to describe the urge to paper over the cracks in the facade of cognitive dissonance. If you bought an expensive car and then found that it is uncomfortable on long drives, would you decide to get rid of the car or console yourself by appreciating its firm, race-bred handling? Or perhaps you are a smoker and see the latest lung cancer statistics. Do you give up smoking or tell yourself that as you are only a relatively light smoker, you are probably not going to be susceptible to cancer anyway? Because of the need to see ourselves as unified in mind, most of us become quite skilled at justifying whatever it is that we find ourselves deciding to do.
