do selves even exist?

DO SELVES EVEN EXIST?John Ostrowick

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ABSTRACTWe always talk as if there is such a thing as individual persons, who are distinguishable from other persons, and who have an inner private conscious life in which they are aware of their own existence and can reflect on their own personhood. Descartes’ Cogito argument is typical of this sort of position. This paper claims that whilst we have these experiences, there’s no such thing as a self, per se. In particular, the paper rejects the notion of a causally efficacious self that can be held morally accountable. The paper provides a number of arguments against the reality, or at least causal efficacy or moral responsibility of selves: arguments from philosophy, neuroscience, and traditional concerns about persistence of identity over time.

WHAT IS A SELF?

• Following Dennett (1992), let's call this the Cartesian model:

• that which has our personality traits and memories, aware of what our senses take in from the environment (my characterisation). “conscious agency plus conscious rationality” (Searle, 2001a, p511).

• Our inner life, accessible to us, unified, qualitative, irreducible and phenomenological - Searle (1999). A unified, multi-modal display in our “mind’s eye”. Some kind of inner observer.

• A unified “arena” (Velleman, 2000, p123) where our decisions and thoughts and visions are played out. The cause of our actions (McDermott, 1992, pp217-8).

WHAT IS A SELF?• The Cartesian model of the self (above) is not the same

as Cartesianism, which has dualism as an additional premise. (Discourse on Method — Part 4 para 2).

• You may think of “Cartesianism with respect to the self ” as meaning what Descartes meant except the self could be but doesn’t have to be a free-floating soul — it could be something else, e.g., a brain event, or particular circuit, or a Searlian Field (Searle, 2001a, 2001b)

MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

• If something is an antecedent and necessary cause of a future event, then in identifying something as a cause, we are in some sense identifying that cause as one thing. E.g. a self.

• We would not, for example, attribute causation to a range of potential causes without saying why they each or severally were causally involved.

• Searle’s 2001 argument follows

MORAL RESPONSIBILITY• In order to be involved in an action, a person has to choose the action.

• A person must have a reason for that action. There is a gap between our reasons and our actions; they’re not sufficient. What makes our reasons sufficient, then, is apparently our will (Searle, 2001, p493).

• Antecedent causes don’t seem sufficient for our actions (Searle, 2001, p495).

• The reasons that we have would have to be the reasons of our particular selves. So, to be free, a person has to act on the reasons that she has, rather than, say, arbitrarily.

MORAL RESPONSIBILITY• But this is not enough; we want our reasons to be causally efficacious

(Searle, 2001a, p495, p499). The difference between a mere motion and an action is that a self wills the action (Searle, 2001a, p492, cf. Davidson, p685 et seq., Velleman, 2000, p125, p127).

• What makes us agents, says Velleman, is that we can “interpose ourselves” into a causal sequence (Velleman, 2000, p128).

• The most important ingredient in a free action, as opposed to a mere motion, is the self (you). Therefore we need an “irreducible self” (sic., Searle, 2001a, p502). Perdurantism, more later.

• That’s the end of the characterisation or model of the traditional notion of the self and how it enables moral responsibility. Now we go onto criticisms of the model.

CRITICISMS OF CARTESIAN SELVES

• 1. The fallacy of division. This fallacy occurs when one assumes that the properties of the whole are the properties of the parts. A relevant example would be consciousness: that individual neurons, for example, were conscious, or contained mental states.

• Just because we act as if we have selves, or crowds act as if they’re coordinated, does not mean that the mechanics involve a coordinator or self.


• 2. Theseus’ Ship. This well-known example (to what extent the ship is still the same ship over time as its planks get replaced), demonstrates that there’s no clear threshold for identity or when we can say a thing is “the same” over time. I.E. the self is not one continuous persistent thing. This in fact solves Parfit’s splitting problems, because we deny that there’s something to save in the first place, apart from say memories or character traits.

• But even character traits are epiphenomenal on behaviour. (Behaviorism). OR we can talk about dispositional character traits.


• 3. Perdurantism. This is the view that objects are four-dimensional; that is, they don’t just exist in space, but they exist in time and persist through time. Perdurantists might argue that we are continuous selves in that we have a fourth dimension; persisting through time. This position, however, at most will give us that mental states or neurons persist through time; it will not, for example, demonstrate that there is such a thing as a self that persists through time.


• 4. Hume on the self. Hume supplied us with what I believe is the first argument against the Cartesian self; specifically:

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are remov’d for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.” (Hume, Book I, Sect. 4, para 3).


• 4. Hume on the self.

“[We] are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” (Hume, Book I, Sect. 4, para 4).



“The relation facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continu’d object... In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together... Thus we feign the continu’d existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption: and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation. ... As a memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, ‘tis to be considered, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity.” (Hume, Book I, Sect. 4, para 6.).



“I cannot compare the soul more properly to any thing than to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are united... And as the same individual republic may ... change its members... in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity.” (Hume, Book I, Sect. 4, para 20).


• 5. Ryle’s Category Mistake. Ryle provides us with the analogy of a university. (Ryle, 1949, p17).

• A university is more than just buildings; it’s an institution, which comprises persons, behaviours, history, buildings, etc., not just buildings.

• So, to extend the analogy to the “self ”, it is a mistake to ask what the self is, where it is, what it can do, or even worse: attribute it with causal powers, when, correctly understood, we can see clearly that the self cannot possibly be a thing, or a thing with causal powers qua self.


• 6. Dennett’s Multiple Drafts. According to Dennett (1993, pp52-3), what he calls “Cartesian materialism” involves an infinite regress. The homunculus (Latin: little man) who is looking at the screen or stage “where it all comes together” (Dennett et al., 1992, p184) would need his own screen or stage — Cartesian Theatre — if he is to be conscious. And his homunculus also has to have a Cartesian Theatre, etc. Dennett’s move, therefore, is to deny the existence of the very first homunculus (1993, pp52-3) — and with that goes the Cartesian self. By way of dismissing this concern, however, one can simply deny that a conscious self is anything like a homunculus.


• 6. Dennett’s Multiple Drafts. Let’s do a thought experiment. Take the example of a simultaneous tap on the forehead and toe. The toe-brain distance is longer than the forehead-brain distance, so one may imagine, that in order to perceive two taps (one on the foot and one on the head) as simultaneous (which they really are, and which one can introspectively tell that they are), one would need a “delay circuit” to keep the tap on the forehead out of consciousness until the tap on the foot “arrived”. But, Dennett asks, why should sensory input be delayed just in case something else relevant comes along later in time? (1992, p188). (cf. Gazzaniga, 2012, pp127-8).


• 6. Dennett’s Multiple Drafts. Dennett et al. say, (1992, p235): Asking about when “I” (my self) became aware of something is like asking when the British Empire became aware of the Truce of the War of 1812 — because “I”, like the Empire, is an organisation of many things spread out in space and time. Dennett concludes that the self, if anything, is a system of mental states. If selves are systems spread out in space and time, Dennett suggests, then there is no guarantee that the system as a whole is ever apprised of anything at the same time as its parts (1992, p236). And more importantly, it doesn’t need to be; that wouldn’t make good survival sense.


• 6. Dennett’s Multiple Drafts. “The pineal gland is not only not the fax machine to the Soul, it is also not the Oval Office of the brain, and neither are any other portions of the brain.” (1993, p106).

“...[T]here really is no proper-self: none of the fictive selves — including one’s own firsthand version — corresponds to anything that actually exists in one’s head . . . complex systems can in fact function in what seems to be a thoroughly ‘purposeful and integrated’ way simply by having lots of subsystems doing their own thing without any central supervision. ...The behavior of a termite colony provides a wonderful example of it... but quite uninfluenced by any master-plan.” (Dennett & Humphrey, pp39–40).


• 7. Consciousness takes time. An aware self is too slow (p78). Gazzaniga comments: “Actions are over, done, kaput, before your brain is conscious of them.” (Gazzaniga, 2012, p112). Our nonconscious brain processes that let us recognise threats. Ruminate and we’d not survive. Even if we occasionally get a false positive — like the sound of rustling grass — that makes us jump, it’s better than not getting a postitive when it’s the rustling sound of a rattlesnake’s tail (Gazzaniga, 2012, p76). “I did not make a conscious decision to jump”. My decision to jump is justified post-hoc that I saw a snake (Gazzaniga, 2012, p77).


• 8. Parfit and Survival.

• Identity proper cannot persist over time, only ‘survival’.

• The simplest and most familiar example would be the teleporter in Star Trek. It disintegrates the crew on the Enterprise and then reassembles them on the surface of the planet, reconstituting the crew with atoms on the surface (or with the disintegrated atoms fired by the teleporter). The question that arises, of course, is whether the teleporter kills the crew.


• 8. Parfit and Survival.

• Suppose it malfunctions and our originals do not get disintegrated, but remain on the ship and copies are made on the surface. The original crew stays on the ship.

• Yet, if they were mere copies, then when the teleporter does not malfunction, and the crew are disintegrated on the ship, we have no reason to say that the teleporter did not kill the crew.

• For the only difference in the two scenarios are whether originals survive

• So what matters is closeness of survival, not identity


• 8. Parfit and Survival. Thus, since we can’t identify one person, physically or psychology, as identical or more than just continuous, questions can be raised about the unity of experiences, memories, etc.:

“…we need not explain this unity by ascribing these experiences to the same person, or subject of experiences” (Parfit, 1984, p251).


• 9. Ethological evidence. Ethology deals with animal behaviour.

• Eugene Marais: The Soul of the Ape and The Soul of the White Ant.

• The hive mind: argues that a termite hill is in fact the animal, and the termites are merely agents within it, like our blood cells or neurons.

• The termite queen does not control the hive, but the ants in the hive never theless act in a coordinated and goal-oriented, cooperative way. There is no soul in a termite nest (cf. Gazzaniga, 2012, pp135-6).


• 10. Neuropsychological evidence.

• Northoff et al. locate the self in the cortical midline structures (CMS), specifically “the orbitofrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.” (p103). So the explanation for the actions of the self would ultimately just be neurological, too, and would have to make reference to whichever parts of the CMS generated them (2004, p104).



• Gazzaniga, in his book “Who is in charge?”, argues that instead of a “self ”, there is an ‘interpreter’ unit in the brain which just makes up stories about what the brain is doing (2012, p95, p105).

• The ‘interpreter’ does not control anything. There is no controller (Gazzaniga, 2012, p8).



• Experiments with commissurotomy patients. The patients would be fed information to one cerebral hemisphere, and that hemisphere would be asked to draw what it saw. The other hemisphere would be given no information.

• When the uninformed hemisphere was asked why its hand drew something, it just made up a post-hoc / ad-hoc justification.

• The left hand side, in particular, “makes up” justifications nonconsciously; he calls it “the Interpreter”. (2012, p82-83).



“The ... interpreter ... has created the illusion of self and, with it, the sense we humans have agency and ‘freely’ make decisions about actions” (Gazzaniga, 2012, p105).

• Now we go onto criticisms of the skeptical position

OBJECTIONS TO THE SKEPTICAL POSITION

• a) Why we nonetheless seem to be conscious of our goal-directed decisions?

• b) How to identify who is morally responsible for an action?

• c) Why it should not be the case that an emergent property (selfhood) might not emerge anyway and have causal efficacy e.g. traffic?

• d) Plausible arguments might be made against the commissurotomy cases,

• e) Action choices reflect the self, or evince a deliberate single purpose,

• f) Ismael’s refinements for Dennett’s multiple drafts.


• a. What’s the point of a self? Why should we have conscious goal-directed decision states if they’re not causally efficacious and not informed by our other states? From an evolutionary point of view, it doesn’t seem to make sense to suggest that selves might exist and have no purpose.

• The same applies to consciousness generally: why would we persist in having it, despite millions of years of evolution, if it did not serve some sort of purpose?

• Consider burning your hand on a stove. Libet’s “neuronal adequacy”


• a. What’s the point of a self? Response: Just because we have a feature, does not mean it evolutionarily beneficial. It might just be an atavism. Something being present in our evolutionary makeup does not entail that it is useful.

• If the self (or consciousness generally), is epiphenomenal, then there seems to be no need to explain its purpose; it’s understood that epiphenomena have no purpose.

• Of course, one can object that only higher animals seem to have self-consciousness (the “mirror test”: only great apes and elephants seem to pass it). And if that’s the case, then it seems to be true that a “self ” is a late evolutionary addition to our makeup.


• b. The moral responsibility objection: If we are not one self, one particular causal agent, and, if as a consequence we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions, it seems that our natural reactive attitudes and moral practices become nonsense.

• This seems to pose a threat to our very way of interacting and reacting to each other, not to mention our social order.

• Kane’s Ultimate Responsibility requires a target, we need to settle on an answer as to ultimate causation.


• b. The moral responsibility objection: Response: Our having reactive attitudes goes no way to establishing that morality is either a real thing, in some metaphysical sense. It just shows that we react to people.

• Indeed, our moral instincts are also just about circuitry. Koenigs et al (2007) in Gazzaniga (2012, p170) discovered that social emotions lie in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (VMPC). Persons with damage to this cortex could report on what the “right” thing to do would be, however, in tests, such persons chose between moral dilemmas based on purely pragmatic rather than emotional reasons.


• c. The rolling rock objection: emergence and the fallacy of division. Let’s take the famous case of wheel rolling down a hill (or a rock). We do think that the wheel or rock only rolls down the hill in virtue of being one thing (and round, hence able to roll).

• Hence, if a self is composite it doesn’t entail it’s not causally efficacious.


• c. The rolling rock objection: emergence and the fallacy of division. Response: Dennett’s arguments against centralisation suggests that even though we seem to be acting as a unit, it’s more of an internal competition. So, the analogy to a rock rolling down a hill is mistaken. (Dennett, 1993, p250).

• Secondly, consider crowd behaviour, or termites or flocking. Group behaviours of creatures do look orchestrated, but they’re not. Think of a football match where the crowd charges onto the field to attack the other team’s players. The fact that the crowd runs onto the field (as opposed to just one of them) does not entail that they were all told to do so by a dictator of some kind. Regularity of behaviour does not entail the existence of a central controlling self or a single self. (Amaral & Ottino in Gazzaniga, 2012, p72).


• d. Marks’ objections to commissurotomy examples. Marks (1981). Splitting a person’s brain like this does not entail lack of psychological unity prior to the split, or even after it. He claims that the singularity of selfhood postoperatively (Marks, p32).

• Only through carefully selected experiments that we can detect disruptions in personhood of split-brain cases (Marks, p41). He seems to think that as long as both halves of the brain (a) retain some communication—which they do through the lower brain, and (b) as long as they both retain sufficiently similar characteristics, behaviours, goals, etc., that the self is not really split.


• d. Marks’ objections to commissurotomy examples. Marks (1981).

• Response: It begs the question of the unity of the self in the first place.

• We might easily have two good friends, or identical twins, who mostly agree, who mostly share the same attitudes, who generally behave the same, and who communicate often. This does not entail that they are the same.

• What makes a person “the same” is, as Parfit has demonstrated, has nothing to do with their occupying one body or having one brain, rather, it is about survival and causal continuity.


• d. Marks’ objections to commissurotomy examples. Marks (1981).

• Response: “Surgery... induced a double state of consciousness” (Gazzaniga, 2012, p59).

• Phenomenal consciousness occurs only in localised brain areas which are responsible for processing that kind of information; although it appears unified, it’s not. (cf. Gazzaniga, 2012, p64).

• There’s a kind of “bubbling up” to consciousness, and a competition between states re which achieves focus of attention (Gazzaniga, 2012, p66).


• e. “Actions reflect a self”. As long as a “self is in an action”, then it is an action of a self.

• The question is whether choice is reducible to causal event descriptions (Velleman, 2000, p130). Velleman suggests that this might be achieved if the agent has mental states which are “functionally equivalent to a self” (Velleman, 2000, p137). The role of a “self ”, he says, is to “adjudicate conflicts of motives”. The agent is thus responsible for what she does, because through her own weight, as a self (Velleman, 2000, p139, pp142-3).

• As long as we can characterise when a self is in an action or not, or reflects some desire, value or reason of the agent’s, we can decide whether the agent was responsible or not because her action reflected her desire, value or reason. (Leon, 2002b).


• e. “Actions reflect a self”.

• Response: question-begging. You can’t attribute a self as a cause if you’ve not established that selves exist.

• Functional equivalence of a self does not resurrect a self; it replaces it.


• A Joycean Machine is Dennett’s term for nonconscious babbling that ultimately forms into speech acts which are “deliberate”.

• f. Ismael argues that it would not make sense for the internal monologue or self-concept to be merely epiphenomenal; this is an “expensive piece of equipment” (Ismael, 2006, p351) to deploy if it has no function. It would make more sense, he argues, (p352) that the Joycean Machine was a late evolutionary addition to an original System 1 (termite colony) design.

• Ismael argues that the Joycean Machine is like a committee. But committees can make decisions.


• f. Response to Ismael: If we have a Joycean Machine, and a termite colony doesn’t, suggests that it is a late feature of a more evolved animal. But features of animals do not have to have purposes even if they’re late evolutionary additions.

• If we are to explain consciousness at all, at some stage it has to be reduced to non–conscious components to avoid regress (Dennett, 1984). So the self has to be explained by non-selfy components which in themselves do not contain “us” in miniature.


• f. Response to Ismael: A Joycean Machine is not a committee with a unified voice. That unified voice is the result of the non-conscious computations and babbling, not the cause of them or the guide or map (cf. Ismael, 2006, pp356–7).

“Man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens.” — R. L. Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde

• Last consideration: why do we believe we have selves?

WHY DO WE BELIEVE IN A SELF?

• 1. Introspective evidence

• 2. Induction. Identity is inductive recognition. The reason we recognise this red, or this apple, or this “me”, as the same type of thing as another red apple, or “me yesterday”, is because that is how our memory systems work. “I” or “me” is a type, not a token, just like “apple” is a type, not a token.

• This might not only explain how we recognise ourselves, but how we recognise objects, other persons, groups, races, etc. And indeed this is how AI is currently implemented.

WHY DO WE BELIEVE IN A SELF?

• 3. Willingness to blame/The Intentional Stance. Everything has souls. Primitive, e.g. lightning strikes as punishment.

“Why do we want so much to hold others responsible? Could it be a streak of sheer vindictiveness or vengefulness in us, rationalised and made presentable in civilized company by a gloss of moral doctrine?” (Dennett, 1984, in Double, p81).

DO SELVES EVEN EXIST?

• Thank you!

do selves even exist?

Science

action searle

efficacious self

actions searle

self wills

efficacious searle

reasons sufficient

phenomenological searle

conscious rationality