Self Comes to Mind

collection of integrated neural processes, centered on the representation of the living body, that finds expression in a dynamic collection of integrated mental processes .
    The self-as-subject, as knower, as the “I,” is a more elusive presence, far less collected in mental or biological terms than the me , more dispersed, often dissolved in the stream of consciousness, at times so annoyingly subtle that it is there but almost not there. The self-as-knower is more difficult to capture than the plain me, unquestionably. But that does not diminish its significance for consciousness. The self-as-subject-and-knower is not only a very real presence but a turning point in biological evolution. We can imagine that the self-as-subject-and-knower is stacked, so to speak, on top of the self-as-object, as a new layer of neural processes giving rise to yet another layer of mental processing. There is no dichotomy between self-as-object and self-as-knower; there is, rather, a continuity and progression. The self-as-knower is grounded on the self-as-object.
    Consciousness is not merely about images in the mind. It is, in the very least, about an organization of mind contents centered on the organism that produces and motivates those contents . But consciousness, in the sense that reader and author can experience anytime they wish, is more than a mind organized under the influence of a living, acting organism. It is also a mind capable of knowing that such a living, acting organism exists. To be sure, the fact that the brain succeeds in creating neural patterns that map things experienced as images is an important part of the process of being conscious. Orienting the images in the perspective of the organism is also a part of the process. But that is not the same as automatically and explicitly knowing that images exist within me and are mine and, in current lingo, actionable. The mere presence of organized images flowing in a mental stream produces a mind, but unless some supplementary process is added on, the mind remains unconscious . What is missing from that unconscious mind is a self . What the brain needs in order to become conscious is to acquire a new property —subjectivity— and a defining trait of subjectivity is the feeling that pervades the images we experience subjectively. For a contemporary treatment of the importance of subjectivity from the perspective of philosophy, read John Searle’s The Mystery of Consciousness . 9
    In keeping with this idea, the decisive step in the making of consciousness is not the making of images and creating the basics of a mind. The decisive step is making the images ours , making them belong to their rightful owners, the singular, perfectly bounded organisms in which they emerge. In the perspective of evolution and in the perspective of one’s life history, the knower came in steps: the protoself and its primordial feelings; the action-driven core self; and finally the autobiographical self, which incorporates social and spiritual dimensions. But these are dynamic processes, not rigid things, and on any day their level fluctuates (simple, complex, somewhere in between) and can be readily adjusted as the circumstances dictate. A knower, by whatever name one may want to call it—self, experiencer, protagonist—needs to be generated in the brain if the mind is to become conscious. When the brain manages to introduce a knower in the mind, subjectivity follows.
    Should the reader wonder if this defense of the self is necessary, let me say that it is quite justified. At this very moment, those of us in neuroscience whose work aims at elucidating consciousness subscribe to very different attitudes toward the self. The attitudes range from considering the self as an indispensable topic of the research agenda to thinking that the time has not come to deal with the subject (literally!). 10 Given that the work associated with either attitude continues to produce useful ideas, there is no need, as yet, to decide which approach will turn out to be more satisfactory. But we need to acknowledge that the resulting accounts are different.
    In the meantime, it is noteworthy that these two attitudes perpetuate a difference of interpretation that separated William James from David Hume, one that is generally overlooked in such discussions. James wanted to make certain that his conceptions of self had a firm biological grounding: his “self” would not be mistaken for a metaphysical knowing