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In press, 2001, NY:Columbia University
Press MEETING AT THE ROOTS: Essays on Tibetan Buddhism and the Natural Sciences Edited by B. Alan Wallace This book, suggested by H. H. the Dalai Lama, consists of a collection of essays examining points of contact between Tibetan Buddhism and the physical and cognitive sciences. The contributors examine the fruits of inquiry from the East and the West, and also shed light on the underlying assumptions of these disparate world views. Hence, the encounter is "at the roots," where each field may bring fresh understanding and insightful challenges to the assumptions and methodologies of the other. THE CONCEPT “SELF” AND “PERSON” IN BUDDHISM AND IN WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY DAVID GALIN
Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute |
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1) The goal of this collection of essays is to deepen the dialogue between Buddhism and Western science, two very different systems of thought, by focussing on areas where their core concerns intersect.[1] The concept of self is certainly at their core, pervading daily life and theoretical writings for millennia. Yet for both systems, self remains problematic; there is much confusion over exactly what self means, for ordinary folk and for the academics and professionals who are supposed to be experts on it. Thus, self is a promising meeting area to explore. 2) I am writing as a neuropsychologist, without formal credentials in philosophy or religious studies. Caveat lector! But these three disciplines are entwined from the roots to the distal twigs, and a serious student must venture into the thicket; it is difficult to stay within disciplinary boundaries. Also, I acknowledge the limitations of conceptual efforts to treat what many believe to be beyond concepts, beyond self/object and self/other; this essay is for those who want to explore whatever may be possible within these limits. 3) My purpose here is to map the relations and disjunctions between Western psychology and what I understand of the Buddhist concept of self, or more properly, of “no-self” (anatta). The idea of “no self” is counter-intuitive to most Westerners. I believe there is a key point at which we can make contact and begin mapping. Buddhist tradition holds that the root cause of suffering is the Ordinary Man’s erroneous view of self as an unchanging essence. Futhermore, the tradition holds that this error is inevitable in the natural course of life because it is based on inborn patterns, pre-theoretic and unreasoned (e.g.,Garfield, 1995, p. 88). It is this “erroneous” view of self that is the focus of this essay. I propose that the Western perspectives of cognitive neuropsychology and adaptive evolution may add to Buddhist understanding of the inborn view of self, and of how the “correct” view is attained. 4) I will introduce the idea that person, self, and “I” are not synonymous, but are quite different things, with person including more than self, and self including more than “I”. Because I am proposing extensive changes to Western concepts and terms, I will present at length some of the current confusions and controversies that illustrate how the old concepts are inadequate. Then I will highlight two cognitive perspectives that reveal mechanisms by which the natural, pre-theoretic, view of person and self operates. The first concerns the recognition that metaphor plays an enormous role in abstract thought, and in particular, in our thinking about person, self, and “I”. The second concerns the human tendency to seek and find, or project, a simplifying pattern to approximate every complex field. We simplify in two nonconscious automatic ways: by lumping (ignoring some distinctions as negligible), and by splitting (ignoring some relations as negligible). Splitting into discrete entities is useful for manipulating, predicting, and controlling at the sensori-motor level, and at abstract levels too. Unfortunately, splitting can lead to serious errors when it imposes ad hoc boundaries on what are actually densely interconnected systems, and then grants autonomous existence to the segments it has created. This occurs in our experience of our own “inner life”, and in our concepts of the structure of “the person”. Thus we come to see the self as a bounded persisting entity, rather than as a dynamic open network of relations. I will argue that the view of self as entity or essence is maintained so strongly because it is rooted in these basic nonconscious cognitive approximations. However, the other side of our pattern seeking, which simplifies by lumping (unifying, finding more relatedness), can be corrective to the creating of isolated entities by splitting. I will suggest that this second type of approximation may be the seed of the Buddhist “correct” view that all things are interdependent. Perhaps these Western ideas could add to Buddhist understanding of the difficulty of transforming the inborn view of self and person. 1. THE BUDDHIST CONCEPT OF NO-SELF (“ANATTA”) 5) I will sketch my understanding of the generic Buddhist view for those with little familiarity with Buddhism, drawing heavily on Collins (1982), Garfield (1995), Hopkins (1983; 1987), and Wallace (1989; 1998). In the Buddhist “correct view”, the Self is seen, not as an entity, or as substance, or as essence, but as a dynamic process, a shifting web of relations among evanescent aspects of the person, such as perceptions, ideas, and desires. The Self is only misperceived as a fixed entity because of the distortions of the human point of view. Ultimately, no separation is to be found between these dynamic processes and the universal frame of reference or ground of being; all is interdependent and changing. Thus, in this sense, there is no Self separable from a Non-self. This Buddhist declaration is misunderstood in the West because “anatta” meaning self-is-not-an-essence-or-entity, is taken as self-does-not-exist-at-all by people who have not imagined any other scheme of existence than entities or essences[2]. 6) The Buddhist tradition holds that Ordinary Man’s inborn erroneous view of self as an enduring entity is the cause of his suffering because he tries to hold on to that which is in constant flux and has no existence outside of shifting contexts. Therefore, a new corrective experience of self is needed. Buddhism takes a great interest in how people experience their self, rather than just their abstract concept of it, because Buddhist practices are designed to lead to a new (correct) experience of self. It takes arduous training to modify or overcome the natural state of experiencing the self as persisting and unchanging. There is a great literature on the theory and practice of the three main paths leading to a changed experience of self. One path is via meditation trainings (changing mind processes or mind controls, e.g., attention, awareness, arousal). Another is via theoretical argument (changing structure of concepts, the contents of mind). The third path is social-behavioral, the life of active service (Deikman, 1996; 1997; 2000). The three paths of meditation, scholarly study, and service in the monkhood or wider community, are usually intertwined in practice. 7) My limited understanding of this enormous tradition has been very much shaped by Garfield’s exposition of Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika (1995), and by Collins’ book, Selfless Persons (1982). Collins seeks to explicate the doctrine of “No-self”(anatta) in social and historical contexts, as well as its usual religious (soteriological) and philosophical roles. Although he draws mainly on Theravada illustrations, his broader conceptual framework enables him to bring out the features of the “No-self” view that apply to any Buddhist culture, despite the differences among Theravada, Mahayana, and many other schools that formed through theoretical development, schisms, and assimilation into diverse cultures over 2500 years. To stress the centrality of this doctrine he quotes three quite different contemporary scholars: 8) Rahula (1967): What in general is suggested by Soul, Self, Ego, or to use the Sanskrit expression Atman, is that in man there is a permanent, everlasting and absolute entity, which is the unchanging substance behind the phenomenal changing world. ... This soul or self in man is the thinker of thoughts, feeler of sensations, and receiver of rewards and punishments for all its actions good or bad. Such a conception is called the idea of self. ... Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of such a Soul, Self, or Atman. ... to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world. 9) Malalasekera (1957): ...in its denial of any real permanent Soul or Self, Buddhism stands alone. This teaching presents the utmost difficulty to many people and often provokes even violent antagonism towards the whole religion. .... yet it is the bedrock of Buddhism. 10) Nyanatiloka (1964): There are three teachers... the first teaches the existence of an eternal ego-identity outlasting death (the Eternalist). The second teaches temporary ego-entity... annihilated at death (the Annihilationist, Materialist). The third is Buddha, teaching... there is only to be found ... changing from moment to moment, ... egolessness of existence. ... Thus with this doctrine of egolessness, or anatta, stands or falls the entire Buddhist structure. 11) This doctrine of No-self has major theoretical implications for two other central components of Buddhist doctrine; Karma, and Rebirth. With not even a temporary self, how can we understand the apparent continuity and coherence of personality in the present life? Without a permanent self, just what is reborn in another life? If there is no self, to whom or to what does Karmic ethical responsibility belong, and to whom or to what is it transferred in a later life? These issues are beyond the scope of this essay (see Garfield 1995; Collins 1982). But anatta raises other issues, more pragmatic than theoretical or doctrinal: how can the seeker go about developing “right views” of self and person, particularly since the erroneous view is held to be inborn and pretheoretic, particularly resistant to rational discourse or scholarly philosophical argument. Buddhist schools differ in their beliefs as to the effectiveness of simply quieting the mind and introspecting, vs. developing intense and continuous attention, vs. non-rational dialogue and interaction, vs. directing introspection with rational analysis and conceptual framing (e.g., Japanese Soto and Rinzai Zen, Indo-Tibetan Vaibhasika and Prasangika). My examination of the inborn views from the Western cognitive neuropsychology point of view may suggest new ways to look at Buddhist practices. 2. IN WESTERN PSYCHOLOGY: MULTIPLE CONCEPTIONS OF SELF. 12) To the Ordinary Man in Western cultures, as in Buddhist cultures, the question, “What is a self?” may seem trivial; it is casually believed that every person has one, or is one, and that it is the self which acts or experiences. “Normal” folks have a vivid sense of themselves as distinct from not-self, from objects, or other selves, and most importantly, as single, unitary. Two elegant statements of this sense of unity in the Ordinary view are quoted (in order to refute them) by Joseph Bogen, the neurosurgeon-scholar most knowledgeable about separating the two hemispheres of the human brain, in his papers on the unrecognized disunity in normal people (Bogen, 1986; 1990): 13) Sherrington (1947): “This self is a unity ... it regards itself as one, others treat it as one. It is addressed as one, by a name to which it answers. The Law and the State schedule it as one. It and they identify it with a body which is considered by it and them to belong to it integrally. In short, unchallenged and unargued conviction assumes it to be one. The logic of grammar endorses this by a pronoun in the singular. All its diversity is merged in oneness.” 14) Descartes (cited in Bogen 1986): “There is a great difference between the mind and the body, in that the body is, by its nature, always divisible, and the mind wholly indivisible. For in fact, when I contemplate it - that is, when I contemplate my own self - and consider myself as a thing that thinks, I cannot discover in myself any parts, but I clearly know that I am a thing absolutely one and complete.” 15) Consider the possessives, me and mine. “Me” seems to refer to self, and “mine” seems to refer to objects: my car, my hair, my hand, my thoughts, my intentions, my mind. But the boundary is not clear. While “my car”, “my hair,” and “my hand” are all treated equivalently in syntax as "mine", most people feel that their hair is a more substantive part of "me" than their car, and their hand or mind more so than their hair. Furthermore, they believe that if they were to lose their hand their self would remain, that their essential nature as an entity would not be diminished. William James referred to this as “the self of all selves” (p. 297 James, 1950 (Originally published1890).). 16) Thus the question arises, “Are there degrees of self?” When we speak of self-development do we mean that there was a little self before and now there is more self? Or that there was qualitative change? If self varies in amount or quality, how do we measure these dimensions? Indeed, what sort of losses do we have to sustain to experience a diminishment of self, or for others to recognize it? And what do we mean when we say "I just don't feel myself today"? If there is a difference between how you usually feel and how you feel today, does that mean that there is a qualitative difference in selves? Is the difference substantive or just a trivial difference in appendages to the self, like a coat or a hairdo? When a psychiatric patient says "I do not feel like it is me" or hears his own thoughts but perceives them as external voices, is that qualitatively different? Apparently, the concept is not clear. The idea of self is elusive; lay people are surprised that they cannot easily articulate it. But their conception of self as an entity, and as unchanging for life or even beyond, is not really shaken. 17) Professionals in psychology and its neighbor disciplines (cognitive science, philosophy of mind, psychiatry, behavioral neurology) are no more coherent about self than lay people. When I have asked psychologist friends for their definition, many of them narrowed their eyes as if suspecting a trick question. Although there seems to be a general implicit endorsement that a person is in some sense “a whole”, just what makes up this wholeness is rarely addressed, and the self is not explicitly studied in relation to wholeness. Sometimes the professionals use the term self synonymously with self-concept, with self-awareness, with consciousness itself, and with volition. Sometimes it is used in the sense of personality, or social roles. Different disciplines have focused on different aspects of self; the literature is voluminous. To mention just a few exemplars whose models of self have little in common--- in psychiatry: Janet (1907), Freud and followers (1953), Jung and followers (1966), Mahler (1975), Kohut (1978), Deikman (1982); ….. It is the same in personality theory: Allport (1968), Lewin (1936), Maslow (1971); ….. and in social psychology: G. H. Mead (1962), Goffman (1959), Markus (1991). In “Western” philosophy, of course, there are too many to cite; to illustrate this overabundance, I will only mention that over the last year and a half the Journal of Consciousness Studies, the currently most popular journal bridging philosophy of mind and other humanities and sciences, has published a series on “The Self”, featuring a lead article by Strawson of Oxford, and four special issues of discussion and rebuttal to his keynote paper (Strawson, 1997). At the end of this series Strawson (1999) sums up, and attempts to clarify; “The result was a festival of misunderstanding... Large differences in methodological and terminological habits gave rise to many occasions on which commentators thought they had disagreed with me although they had in fact changed the subject.” See Parfit (1984) for a review of the past centuries’ Western philosophical literature on person and self. 18) In contrast to this plethora, the technical literatures of neurology, cognitive psychology, or neuropsychology show only sporadic concern with self, or with the wholeness of a person: e.g., Wm. James (1890/1950), Kurt Goldstein (1939), R. W. Sperry and his colleagues Bogen, Gazzaniga, and Zaidel (1969), E. Hilgard (1977), O. Sacks (1973), J. Kihlstrom (1993; 1997), and too few others. A few exceptions do stand out in neurology. In the last generation, Kurt Goldstein insisted on the importance of the organization of the whole person in determining the symptom picture (1939). In the present generation, Oliver Sacks has called for a less mechanical neurology which pays attention to "the center, the living self, of the patients", in his books Awakenings (1973), and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985). In A Leg to Stand On (1984), Sacks has movingly described how a neurologist can be oblivious to a patient's complaint about disturbance of self or wholeness (following an accident, Sacks as the patient could not recognize his own leg as his). Even if a neurologist does take such a symptom seriously, he is likely to refer the patient to a psychiatrist unless he believes that neurological knowledge has something to contribute to the understanding or the care of such patients. 19) Some dramatic examples from pathology have become well known to the public. From psychopathology there have been popular movies and books about multiple personalities such as Three Faces of Eve, and Sybil, who had 17 distinct "selves." From neuropathology there has been much publicity about the "split-brain" patients whose cerebral hemispheres have been surgically disconnected. After the surgery, each hemisphere is separately conscious, and can perceive, learn, and remember, without knowing what the other hemisphere is experiencing. Nevertheless, both the patient and the patient's family report that they seem to be as much "themselves" as ever (Sperry, 1968) (Sperry et al., 1969) (Sperry, Zaidel, & Zaidel, 1979). 20) The studies of the split-brain patients by Sperry, Bogen, and their colleagues demonstrate how interconnections at the neurological level contribute to the wholeness at the psychological level . To understand these observations it must be remembered that each hemisphere controls feeling and movement only on the opposite side of the body, and sees only the opposite half of visual space. Only the left can talk. One of their dramatic films records a patient trying to match a colored design with a set of painted blocks. The film shows the left hand quickly carrying out the task; the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere which is good at spatial relations. Then the experimenter disarranges the blocks and the right hand (left hemisphere, poorer at spatial relations) is given the same task. Slowly and with great apparent indecision it arranges the pieces. In trying to match a corner of the design, the right hand corrects one of the blocks, and then shifts it again, apparently not realizing that it was correct: the viewer sees the left hand dart out, grab the block and restore it to the correct position... and then the arm of the experimenter is seen, reaching over to pull the intruding left hand off-camera. The left hand repeatedly tries to intrude and the experimenter finally makes the patient sit on the left hand while the right hand continues trying to arrange the blocks. 21) In another experiment, a picture is shown to one hemisphere and the patient is asked to point to a matching object in a row of objects before him. Both hemispheres can see the objects; only one was shown the picture. In one case when the picture was shown to the right hemisphere and it pointed to the correct object, the left (speech) hemisphere said, "I know it wasn't me that did that!" 22) In these incidents, just who are the "persons" involved? What has become of the apparently unified self that existed before the surgery? Is it now two, or was it always two, but now the duality has been made obvious? Until now the language of Western psychology has been too fuzzy even to formulate these questions clearly, and there has been no consensus on a model which will describe the "I" who knows that "me" did not do it, and who did do it. Furthermore, we need to account for the testimonies of the patients that their experience of Self has not changed. We also need to account for such phenomena as they occur in "normal" people (Bogen, 1986; 1990) (1974; Galin, 1977) (Galin, Johnstone, Nakell, & Herron, 1979). Our present theories of self do not address such phenomena. 23) Now I will turn to another window on the panorama of confusion and apparent paradox that pervades Western thinking about self and person. This is a large body of research and theory by cognitive linguists on our largely nonconscious intuitions of the structure of our “inner life” 3. Cognitive Linguistics Theory of Metaphor, and the Folk-Model of Person, Self, and “I” 24) Over the last twenty years, cognitive psychologists and linguists have carried out paradigm-busting work with powerful implications for all of psychology. They show that metaphor is fundamental to nearly all of abstract thinking. Many contributors could be cited; even a partial list would include Mark Turner, L. Talmy, E. Sweetser, E. Rosch, T. Regier, A. Ortony, G. Nunez, S. Narayanan, G. Lakoff, A. Lakoff, Mark Johnson, D.Gentner, J. Grady, R. Gibbs, G. Fauconnier, C. Brugman, D. Bailey. Representative citations for these authors can be found in two influential books, Fire, Women, and Dangerous things, (Lakoff, 1987) and Philosophy in the Flesh, (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), which summarize much of this research and theory. What concerns us here is their conclusions about the underlying cognitive structure of ordinary people’s concepts of person, self, and “I”. Understanding how metaphor normally works in thought explains much that seems incoherent in common and professional talk and thinking about person and self. Lakoff and Johnson’s analysis of common speech uncovers a nonconscious complex system of a dozen metaphors, many incompatible with the others, and quite different from the consciously reported notion of self as unitary, unchanging, and essential, like a soul. 3a. How metaphor works 25) We are not aware of how much of our thinking is based on metaphor, even in science (e.g., in the concepts of number, time, force, and category). Metaphor is the basis of reasoning by analogy. It gives our thinking enormous power, because we can extend our knowledge of the complex relations in a concrete domain to an abstract domain (e.g., thinking of a love relationship as like a journey, thinking of numbers as like positions on a line). For example, consider our commonly repeated physical life experiences with moving on a path from start to end. We learn certain “logical entailments” that are true of paths, such as that going from start to end entails passing through all the other points on the path. Thus if love is a journey, we will have to pass through a series of stages on the way to the destination. But analogies fit only partially; love is not only like a journey, but also like a rose, and like an invincible conqueror; numbers are not only like positions on a line, but also like collections of objects, and like containers that hold collections. Therefore our metaphors break down if stretched too far from the original context, and must be replaced (usually unconsciously) by new ones, more apt for the new context. Because we are not aware of how much of our thinking is based on metaphor, we are peculiarly prone to take our metaphors literally. Taking metaphors literally can have very serious effects, as when we take teaching stories and fables as historical. Lakoff and Johnson assert that many conflicts among the various schools of Western philosophy from the Greeks onward can be understood by mapping the metaphors which underlay their reasoning, and grasping that each philosopher unconsciously reified his metaphor and then insisted it was the “true reality”, i.e., always apt, independent of context (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). 3b. LAKOFF AND JOHNSON ON PERSON, SELF, AND “I” 26) Limitations on space allow only a too condensed overview of this complex body of data and theory. The material in this section is almost all quoted or paraphrased from Philosophy in the Flesh (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). 27) Our “inner life” includes a variety of experiences that we want to refer to: · conflicts between our conscious values and the values implicit in our behavior. · inner dialog and inner monitoring. · disparities between what we know or believe about ourselves and what other people know or believe about us. · controlling our bodies, and ways in which they "get out of control." · taking an external viewpoint, imitating someone, or trying to see the world as they do. 28) It is quite surprising that, although these types of experience are so commonplace that they may be universal, we do not have any single way of conceptualizing inner life that covers all these cases. But what is most surprising is that we have a system of inconsistent metaphorical conceptions of our internal structure, drawn from different experiential domains: space, possession, force, and social relationships. The same system of metaphors occurs in at least one case of a very different non-Western language and culture: Japanese. Furthermore, when we examine these metaphors, we find that several terms for ourselves as persons with “inner lives” which we thought were synonymous (self, “I”, me, myself) are not synonymous at all. Nevertheless, people seem to have no difficulty intuitively understanding these metaphor systems and switching among them. 3c. THE GENERAL “DIVIDED PERSON” METAPHOR 29) “It is not a trivial fact that every metaphor we have for our inner life is a special case of a single general schema. This schema reveals not only something deep about our conceptual systems, but also something deep about our inner experience, mainly that we experience ourselves as split” (Lakoff and Johnson 1999 p. 269)[3]. 30) According to this unconscious schema, a person is divided into an “I” and one or more Selves. The “I” is that aspect of a person that is the experiencing consciousness (the subject) and by its nature, exists only in the present. It is always conceptualized as a human-like being and is usually but not always the locus of reason, values, and from which will is exercised (the agent), although acts must be carried out by one of the selves. 31) A Self includes those parts of a person not picked out by the “I”, such as the body, social roles, past and future states, and actions in the world. There can be more than one Self. Unlike the “I”, each self can be conceptualized metaphorically as an object, or a location, as well as a human-like being. 32) The general schema, then, contains a human-like being (the conscious “I”), one or more entities (one or more Selves), and a specification of who is in control and who judges whom. There are many specific varieties of the general metaphor, grounded in types of everyday experience such as: (1) manipulating objects, (2) being located in space, (3) entering into social relations, and (4) empathic projection (taking other points of view). There is another important variety derived from the Folk Theory of Essence: Each person is seen as having an “essence” that is part of the “I”. The person may have more than one Self, but only one of those Selves is compatible with their essence. This is called the “real” or “true” Self. All these variations give rise to the extraordinary richness of our metaphoric conceptions of our “inner life”. 33) I will give illustrative examples of only a sample of the various metaphoric types. Please note that in spite of their apparent ambiguity, these sentences are all immediately understood in common speech. 34) Me And Myself Are Not Always Synonyms: notice the difference in meaning of these two sentences: a.) If I were you I’d hate me. b.) If I were you I’d hate myself. In a.), me refers to the Subject(“I”) of the speaker; in b.), myself refers to a self of “you”, the person addressed. 35) Judgment: sometimes the locus of judgment is the “I” and sometimes it is the self. Compare these: a) I was disappointed in myself. b) I disappointed myself. 36) Self-Control Expressed As Control Of Objects : Holding onto and manipulating physical objects is one of the things we learn earliest and do the most. It should not be surprising that object control is the basis one of the most fundamental metaphors for our inner life. When the self is seen as a physical object, control means possessing it, or moving it: Control as forced movement: I held myself back; I dropped my voice; You’re pushing yourself too hard; I’ve got to get myself moving on this project. Control as Possession of an Object: Losing control can be positive as in b), or negative, as in c) : a.) I got a grip on myself. I didn’t let myself wiggle out of that. b.) I let myself go, and lost myself in dancing. c.) I was seized by anxiety, carried away by fear. I was possessed by Demon Rum. 37) Self-Control and Location: When self is seen as a location in space, self-control can be expressed as the “I” and the self being together at the same usual place, or inside the usual contained space, such as the body, home, or on earth. Loss of self-control is expressed as the “I” or the self being out of the usual place, or separated: · I did not get high; I kept centered: I feel well-grounded. · I was beside myself; ecstasy; out of my head: out to lunch: off in space: · I was scattered: I must get myself together: He is all over the place. 38) Other Relationships of “I” and Selves: When the self is seen as another human-like being, many other relationships than control can be entered. This permits a remarkable metaphoric richness, mapping our knowledge about specific social relationships onto our inner lives. For example: master-servant, parent-child, friends, lovers, adversaries, interlocutors, advisors, caretakers.
39) The “I” and Self As Adversaries: I am at war with myself over who to marry. I am struggling with myself. He's conflicted. He’s giving himself a hard time. Why do you torture yourself; being so mean to yourself; just making yourself suffer. He’s his own worst enemy. 40) “I” As Parent; Self As Child: I weaned myself from whiskey. She pampers herself a bit too much; You've earned the right to baby yourself. We all need to nurture ourselves. I'll reward myself with an ice cream. Everyone needs to mother himself now and then. 41) “I” and Self As Friends: I'll just hang out with myself tonight. I like being with myself. I need to be a better friend to myself. 42) “I” and Self as Interlocutors: I debate things with myself all the time. I talk things over with myself before I do anything important.. I convinced myself to stay home. 43) “I” As Caretaker of Self: You need to be kind to yourself. I promised myself a vacation. He nursed himself back to health. 44) “I” as Master; Self As Servant: I have to get myself to do the laundry. I told myself to prepare. I bawled myself out for being impolite. I'm disappointed in myself. 45) The “I” Is Obligated To Meet The Standards Of The Self: I have a responsibility to myself to exercise. Don't betray yourself. Be true to yourself. I let myself down. I disappointed myself. 3d. The Essential Self 46) Lakoff and Johnson find another important set of metaphors based not on near-universal perceptual-motor experiences, but rather on a near-universally held belief system (what they call a Folk Theory; whether such theories are embedded in the culture or are inborn “Kantian categories” is not relevant to the present issues). According to the Folk Theory of Essence, every object has an Essence that makes it the kind of thing it is and that is the causal source of its natural behavior. This applies to human beings: each has an essence that makes him unique, that makes him him. It is the essence that makes one behave like himself and not like somebody else. (It was this same Folk Theory that was formalized by Plato, and others. Lakoff and Johnson expose the metaphoric foundations of the idea of essence itself in Philosophy in the Flesh). 47) “We have in our conceptual systems a very general metaphor in which your Essence is part of your Subject (the “I” ) —the locus of your consciousness, thought, judgment, and will. ...it is your Essence that, ideally, should determine your natural behavior. However, our concept of who we essentially are is often incompatible with what we actually do. This incompatibility {is dealt with in} the Essential Self metaphor. There are two of these Selves. One Self (the “real” or “true” Self) is compatible with one’s Essence and is always conceptualized as a person. The second Self (not the “real” or “true” Self) is incompatible with one’s Essence and is conceptualized as either a person or a container that the first Self hides inside of.” (p. 282) 48) Here are examples of three versions of the Essential Self Metaphor system:The Inner Self: In this case, Self 1 (the Real Self), is Hidden inside Self 2 (The Outer Self), because, as in a.), it is fragile and shy, or because as in b.), it is awful and doesn’t want anyone to know it is there, or both. a.) He won't reveal himself to strangers. She rarely shows her real self. Whenever anyone challenges him, he retreats into his shell to protect himself. b.) Her sophistication is a facade. He is embarrassed to reveal his inner self. She's sweet on the outside and mean on the inside. The iron hand in the velvet glove. His petty self came out. The Real Me: In this case, Self 1, the Real Self, who is quite nice, is outside and public, and Self 2, who is awful in some way, is hidden inside. But when The Real Self lets its guard down the awful Self comes out: · I'm not myself today. · That wasn't the real me yesterday. · That wasn't my real self talking. The True Self: In this case, throughout life, the “I” has been inhabiting Self 2 which is incompatible with The “I” ’s Essence. Self 1, which is compatible with the “I” ’s Essence is somewhere unknown and the “I” is trying to find his “true” Self, the one compatible with his Essence, with who he really is. 49) Very little research has been done on the metaphoric systems of inner life in other languages and cultures towards establishing whether there are universal experiences of inner life. Lakoff and Johnson originally believed that this metaphor system for the inner structure of the person was a peculiarity of either English or the Western mind. But a Japanese linguist pointed out Japanese examples that both look like, and are understood in the same way as the English (see Lakoff and Johnson pp. 284-287). Anthropologists and social psychologists have written extensively on the differences between the Western and Japanese conceptions of Self, but what seems to be radically different is the Japanese conception of the proper relationship between self and other. Japanese conception of the architecture of inner life appears remarkably like the American one, according to the clues we do have from their metaphor systems and the way they reason and act using those metaphor systems. However, much work remains to be done to justify generalizing from the English or Western to “universal”. 50) In Summary: Can this analysis of metaphoric concepts tell us anything about what our inner lives are really like? I emphasize that it does not mean that we are literally divided up at a neurological or microcognitive level into a “I” and one or more selves, or into essences. But these metaphors do seem to capture much of the qualitative feel of inner life. When we use them to make statements like, “I’m struggling with myself over whom to marry,” or “I lost myself in dancing,” or “I wasn’t myself yesterday”, these statements ring true to us. These metaphoric structures seem apt because they conform in a significant way to the phenomenological structure of our inner lives, and capture its logic and how we reason about it. 51) Lakoff and Johnson conclude:
“What is philosophically important is that
there is no single, unified notion of our inner lives, not one “I”-Self
distinction, but many.... all metaphorical, {that} cannot be reduced to
any consistent literal conception... Far from being arbitrary, {they}
express apparently universal experiences of an “inner life” ... in
metaphors grounded in other apparently universal experiences. These
metaphors appear to be unavoidable, arising naturally from common
experience.” ... (p. 268). 4. SOME PROPOSED CLARIFICATIONS: PERSON, SELF, “I”, SELF-MONITOR, SELF-AWARENESS, SELF-CONCEPT. 52) I have presented this review of confusion and controversy in Western notions of the self in order to justify my call for some radical changes in the way professionals talk and think about these matters. It is necessary for professionals to go beyond the unconscious metaphors of common speech, and the parochial formalizations of the metaphors by particular philosophical or psychological schools. This is not just scholastic word-play; terms are tools. A relatively easy first step is to sharpen our terms, taking care to preserve the insights into structure and function that these metaphors and intuitions are built on. The concept person can be distinguished from the concept self, and self can be separated from hyphenated derivatives with which it is often conflated or confused: self-monitoring, self-concept, and self-awareness. The concept “I” can be distinguished from self and from person. 53) I propose these definitions heuristically, without any pretension to rigor for the time being. The purpose here is to arrive at a set of terms consonant with the broad “scientific” frame of reference, and in particular, commensurable with the dimensions of the cognitive sciences and contemporary philosophy of mind. Rather than inventing totally new terms or definitions for the tangled old concepts, I am trying to select and highlight the most important meanings already present. Thus I believe that what I am proposing is not only internally consistent, but consistent with the intent of the most common usages. Well-wishers have advised me that my plan is hopeless, because people are extraordinarly resistent to changing their terms. Nevertheless, the need makes the gamble worth while. I ask the reader to read this section through, inhibiting the “Yes, but...” reflex, and perhaps she will find her objections handled a bit further on. 4a. Person and self A person is a complex system, made up of component subsystems. Person is, in principle, the entire self-organizing[4], multilevel, causal thicket[5], including bodily, mental, and social aspects, and representations of past and future organizations (selves). This list is meant to be open-ended, and other dimensions can be added as needed. Person, of course, is embedded in a larger complex environment (the universe). My new incudes all of these, always. It contrasts with common usage, in which just how much is included by person and personal always depends on the speakers’ conventions and on their purposes. Thus, under the common definitions, sometimes person refers to the body (“touched his person), sometimes to intimate feelings (“religion is too personal”), and sometimes to social relations (“separate personal and professional life”). Since this is not made explicit in ordinary discourse, it contributes to the confusion. 54) Our common speech sometimes distinguishes between person and self, but with multiple, context-dependent senses, as illustrated by Lakoff and Johnson’s observations presented above. I propose that we formally designate that person is extended over time, and self is the current organization of the person. That is, self is the way all of the subsystems of the person are related to each other. I emphasize that self is a characteristic of the person as a whole, rather than just another subsystem or constituent as some psychological models would have it. In discussing the complex we call person it is very useful to be able to refer to its organization (self) in contrast to its instantiation (embodiment). Organization is simply the set of all the relations among the constituents of the system. This can include such relations as membership, connection, and control. 55) It is readily apparent that a person, like any complex system, might be capable of several different patterns of organization (selves). For example, it may be tightly organized, with all subsystems integrated, so that the activity of each part is always affected by the state of all of the parts. Another system may be more loosely integrated so that some subsystems may function semiautonomously, within broad limits. A third pattern of organization might have some subsystems tightly integrated, acting like clusters, but only loosely coupled to other subsystems or clusters. This sort of description applies, no matter what sort of subsystems one is concerned with. A cognitive psychologist for example, might be concerned with the connections and control relations between the memory subsystem and the emotion subsystem; under some organizations memory may function largely independent of mood, and under other organizations might be greatly affected. To take an example from social personality theory, occupational behaviors may or may not be affected by drastic changes in family life (marriage, divorce). Defining the self as the pattern of organization emphasizes that it changes over time; over a period of years, as in the maturation of adolescence, or over minutes, as in multiple personality disorders. By defining self as the organization of subsystems rather than as just another subsystem, we get a clear referent for common phrases such as "a more integrated self," or "a development of the self," or "a loss of self." The concept of self as organization, varying dynamically in degree and quality, works at the neurological level of description as well as at the psychological level, and across levels. 4b. HYPHENATED DERIVATIVES OF SELF 56) Self-monitor: Many complex self-regulating systems that adapt to their environment use a regularly up-dated map of their own state and the adaptations made. The processes that keep track of the current state of the self in its environment are likely to be hierarchically organized and distributed over many levels, but for simplicity I use the term self-monitor in the singular to refer to all of them collectively. 57) We infer the existence of a self-monitor because we know a lot about our present "mode" of organization, including such things as the level and quality of our awareness and our cognition, and our status as agent. For example, we know how aroused we are (drowsy or alert or drunk); we can distinguish imagining from remembering, we can even sometimes realize that we are dreaming and not awake. We have information about our goals and actions; when the doctor taps our knee and elicits a reflex knee-jerk, we can say "I didn't do that," or "I don't feel like myself today." 58) However, this monitoring subsystem is not the self; it is a subsystem among many others. Like any other map, it can be incomplete, or wrong. It remains to be learned what its inputs are, what aspects of organization it can monitor and what it cannot, what sort of errors it can make, how it can be turned on and off, how its functioning varies from time to time or from person to person. The idea of self-monitor as distinct from self and self-concept is useful in thinking about phenomena such as hypnosis and hallucinations, and how the left and right cerebral hemispheres relate to each other. In previous papers I have discussed self and self-monitoring in the context of unawareness of deficits following certain brain injuries (Galin, 1992), and how one of the types of information present in awareness can serve a self-monitoring role (Galin 1994). 59) Self-awareness: Please note than until this point, awareness (consciousness) has not had to be mentioned in any of the definitions. It must be considered here, and in discussing the experience of “I”, but beyond that I intend to finesse, by referring to previous essays which discuss in detail the structure of awareness, and what kind of a thing awareness may be ( Galin 1994, 1999) 60) Self is often treated as synonymous with awareness, or even with just self-awareness alone. Logically, self-awareness means simply awareness of some information about the self (Galin, 1992). Since I have defined self as the organization of the person, it follows that self-awareness means awareness of some aspect of that organization. Only a small part of the results of self-monitoring or self-concept ever enters awareness. This should not be surprising; numerous experiments have demonstrated that even very complex information processing can go on without our being aware of it (Kihlstrom, 1987) (Velmans, 1991). Specialized modules of our sensory-perceptual systems continuously acquire knowledge of the world, and elaborate, evaluate, and incorporate it into plans and actions, and only the final product appears in consciousness. At present, cognitive neuroscience has only the most general hypotheses as to what sort of additional process or factor is required to bring any content into consciousness. We will return to self-awareness below when we consider what “I” means. 61) Self-concept: The self-concept can be thought of as a body of information consisting of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, etc. about "who or what one is" as an entity in the world. The self-concept refers to the self, but is just a subsystem. It is similar in form to our concepts of any other objects, e.g., our next-door neighbor or the Washington Monument. Like any other concept we have, it can be incomplete and in some respects incorrect. Some of it must come from the self-monitor, but much of it comes from other sources, such as the opinions of our relatives. As we shall see below, we can have many, even contradictory self-concepts. Like any other concept, it can be brought into consciousness from time to time, but it is clearly distinguishable from self, from self-awareness in general, and from self-monitoring of current states as defined above. 4c. THE “I”: ENTITY, KNOWLEGE, AND POINT OF VIEW 62) The new idea here is in answer to the question, “what kind of a thing is the ‘I’?” To develop this account, it is first necessary to define three other common but uncommonly difficult terms: entity, knowledge, and point of view. The first-person point of view in particular is a surprisingly subtle concept. In a recent paper (Galin 1999) I have discussed at length how first-personness has two senses, point of view and consciousness, which are confused in Western philosophy and psychology. For our present purpose, however, I will just set these three definitions as a foundation, and then go on to propose that “I” is a kind of perspective, or point of view. It is the perspective or point of view of the system person, given by its present organization (self). 63) Entity: This is the key concept, whose meaning is almost always mistakenly assumed to be naturally given and intuitively obvious. An entity (a unit, a wholeness) is a group of bits or elements distinguished from those in its environment by “belonging to each other” in some sense. It is the relationships between the elements that make it an entity, not an edge, shell, skin, or border that separates them from their neighbors. The pattern of relationships among the elements creates an implicit or virtual border. According to the analyses of Simon (1969 p. 209 ff.), and of Wimsatt (1974, and 1976 pp. 242, 261), we call a set of parts an entity if there is sufficient inter-relatedness among them[6]. “Sufficient” is decided by some criterion chosen for our purpose. Functional relations, spatial and temporal relations, social relations, are examples of aspects by which we commonly decide that some distribution is an entity or not. For example, a group of people is an entity we call “family” if the people have sufficiently close relations; whether or not we set the criterion to include second cousins, adoptees, steps, and pets, or only parents and their natural children depends on our purposes. Thus, entiticity is a matter of convention as well as a matter of degree. In general an entity does not have a sharp boundary. It depends on the relative amount of inter-relatedness of its components (nothing in a universe has no relation to anything else). I believe this greatly softens, but does not quite extinguish, the usual hard self/object boundary, which has been such a contentious point in Western and Buddhist metaphysics and psychology. 64) I stress the rather surprising conditionality of entities because properties such as point of view, or knowledge, or consciousness belong to a specific entity, and to understand the property we must be clear about just what we think constitutes the entity which hosts it. According to our usual view, an interaction occurs between two entities, and the conditionality I am highlighting, may make it difficult to specify or justify what we think are the entities involved. Problems arise when we forget that what we are treating as an entity is only more or less an entity, of limited duration, and only by agreement for the present purposes (e.g., a marriage, a corporation, the Republic of Congo). Many confusions about “person” and “self” arise here. Humans have a great passion for entifying; we frequently turn verbs and adjectives into nouns, and turn processes and relations into things. 65) Knowledge, To Know: The definition of this conceptual cluster has a very long history in philosophy and is currently used in many senses: to perceive directly[7], to be capable of, to be fixed in memory, to be acquainted or familiar with, to be able to distinguish (Webster’s dictionary). Note that none of these usages specifies consciousness; they all make sense for instances of nonconscious as well as for conscious knowings. The sense that best captures the phenomena that concern us here is one of the most general; to know is to be able to distinguish. 66) Know implies a knowing entity, and that which is known. For an entity to know something XYZ (to know how to XYZ, or to know that XYZ), is for it to distinguish XYZ from at least some not-XYZ, to act discriminatively toward XYZ. No consciousness is implied. The minimum discrimination is detection; something happened, or didn’t; something is, or isn’t. Knowledge is the capacity to discriminate, a potential to use information[8]. It is a functional property, and it does not imply time-coded and source-labeled memories or stand-alone representations in their common senses. 67) Point of view: The terms “point of view” and “perspective” are metaphors taken from the domain of visual-spatial perception and applied to the more general domain of knowing. These metaphors express the intuition that people operate within a frame of reference or coordinate system (analogous with a spatial coordinate system) made up from their repertoire of concepts. Much of the conceptual repertoire is quite abstract and not visual-spatial or sensory-perceptual at all. For example, we can speak of having a particular political, ethical, or pragmatic point of view. Thus point of view applies to domains such as values as well as to domains of spatial perception and action; an event or object is good or beautiful or moral from my point of view just as an object is above or below, or on the right or the left from my point of view. Note that as with the previous concepts, awareness (consciousness) is not required for a point of view (Galin 1999a). 68) Like knowledge, a point of view belongs to a specific entity. A point of view is the total set of possible discriminations that an entity can make in its present state, or over some period of time specified for our purpose. We are generally interested in dynamic systems (i.e., systems that change), and at any one time some of the knowledge that the entity has may not be available for use. For example, in an enzyme molecule the critical receptor region may be temporarily folded inside, unable to interact. Similarly, different capacities for discrimination may be available to you in the context of a street mob than in the context of your private study. Thus the point of view will vary as the properties of the entity are affected by the time, place, and other contexts of the entity. 4d. DEFINING The “I”, The SUBJECT, AND THE AGENT 69) With these definitions in hand, I propose that the “I” is a kind of point of view. It is the point of view of the entity person, given by the person’s present organization (its self). Thus, “I“ is not equivalent to self. “I” includes both the subject and agent. “Subject” is the input point of view, that is, the set of currently available discriminations from which perceptions are selected. “Agent” is the output point of view, the set of currently available discriminations from which actions are selected. [9] The psychological construct we call “the present” is a reference point in “real time” or “clock time” (time that changes in one direction, at a constant rate, for all entities). The self’s “I” must be in the present because the self’s perception and action machinery must use the same synchronizing reference point as the entities they perceive or act upon. For example, speech is severely disrupted if you hear your own voice through earphones with even a slight delay. I hypothesize that the process of adopting the “real time” point of view is the basis for what we call Subject and Agent. Subject and Agent can be lumped as a single entity named “I” because they both share the “real time” point of view. 70) Selves other than the current one are reference models (representations of possible states of self). They are either not in the present (like the past or future states of “I”), or not in real time at all, like the ideal self (what you should be like, but are not), the shadow self (what you should not be like, but are), the longed-for self (desired), the inner self (hidden from “I” or others), and the real or true selves (many meanings, contextual). These are best thought of as multiple self-concepts, named so that we can refer to the richness and contradictions of our physical, mental, and social life that cannot be denoted by the “I” anchored in clock time and action. 71) This multiplicity would confuse Aristotelian rationalists, but ordinary people do not notice any difficulty in the course of daily life. As Lakoff and Johnson have shown, in common speech the multiplicity is managed nonconsciously through the Divided Person metaphor, discussed above in Section 3c. Beware that my definitions, arrived at by analysis and for analytic purposes, are different from the nonconscious heuristics observed by Lakoff and Johnson. In that schema, the “I” is separate from the “Self or Selves”. Note that what the metaphor names as “I” includes much more than my subject-and-agent point of view. And what the metaphor names as “other selves” is what I have identified as “self-concepts”(see Sections 3c and 4b above). In what follows, I will stick to my terminology, developed for internal consistency. 72) It is critical to note that the “I” point of view includes only those discriminations made by the entity as such, not by one of its parts acting for the time autonomously and without relation to the entity as a whole. Consider for example, the knee-jerk reflex response that the doctor elicits by putting the knee joint in a relaxed posture and tapping on the knee-cap tendon. A person generally does not have a sense of agency about the leg movement, does not feel that “I did that”, and claims that the “leg” did that. In this posture the leg is less related to the rest of the person and thus is interpreted as acting as an entity on its own. In contrast, when the person is standing, the leg is integrated into the rest of the superordinate entity, and cannot be allowed to act autonomously; the reflex is much more difficult to elicit in this position. Thus we see that the feeling of agency claimed by “I” is associated with the superordinate entity person. 73) “I”-Awareness: The definitions developed thus far reveal a previously hidden conflation. “I” itself is not in awareness; it is a point of view, not a content. The point of view “I” is the total set of discriminations that could be brought to bear in the person’s interactions, not only the ones actually in operation at the moment, and certainly not only the few which the person may be aware of at the moment. Because of the limited channel capacity of awareness, rather little of the person’s total point of view could be in awareness at any moment. The part that does get into awareness can be called experience of “I”, or “I”-awareness.[10] Note that the term self-awareness must include more than just “I”-awareness; it should cover any of the experiences related to the self, such as feeling alert or sleepy, lonely or in love, healthy or sick, which do not refer to the point of view per se. Self, defined as the organization of all the subsystems of the person, includes much more than the person’s point of view. 74) The “I”(the point of view of the person) may be changed as the total organization (self) changes in response to the environment (e.g., if you see a police car in your rear-view mirror), or to changes within the person system itself (e.g., a high blood alcohol level). Notice that any particular changes in self may produce large or small changes in the set of discriminations that are available. Therefore, the “I” may change from moment to moment, or may stay relatively “the same” for some time. Perhaps this is an aspect of the “stabilization of mind” that is sought in the Buddhist meditative practice of shamata (Wallace, 1998; 1999). 4 e. MISIDENTIFICATION OF THE RELEVANT ENTITIES 75) &nbs |