Self Comes to Mind

agency. But that did not prevent him from recognizing a knowing function for the self, even when the function was subtle rather than exuberant. David Hume, on the other hand, pulverized the self to the point of doing away with it. The following passages illustrate Hume’s views: “I never can catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe anything but the perception.” And further on: “I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perceptual flux and movement.”
    Commenting on Hume’s dismissal of the self, James was moved to issue a memorable rebuke and affirm the existence of the self, emphasizing the odd mixture of “unity and diversity” within it and calling attention to the “core of sameness” running through the ingredients of the self. 11
    The foundation discussed here has been modified and expanded upon by philosophers and neuroscientists to include different aspects of self. 12 But the significance of the self for the construction of the conscious mind has not been diminished. I doubt that the neural basis for the conscious mind can be comprehensively elucidated without first accounting for the self-as-object—the material me—and for the self-as-knower.
    Contemporary work on philosophy of mind and psychology has extended the conceptual legacy, while the extraordinary development of general biology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience has capitalized on the neural legacy, produced a wide array of techniques to investigate the brain, and amassed a colossal amount of facts. The evidence, conjectures, and hypotheses presented in this book are grounded on all these developments.
The Self as Witness
     
    Countless creatures for millions of years have had active minds, but only in those who developed a self capable of operating as a witness to the mind was its existence acknowledged, and only after minds developed language and lived to tell did it become widely known that minds did exist. The self as witness is the something extra that reveals the presence, in each of us, of events we call mental. We need to understand how that something extra is created.
    The notions of witness and protagonist are not meant as mere literary metaphors. I hope they help illustrate the range of roles that the self assumes in the mind. For one thing, the metaphors can help us see the situation we face when we attempt to understand mental processes. A mind unwitnessed by a self protagonist is still a mind. However, given that the self is our only natural means to know the mind, we are entirely dependent on the self’s presence, capabilities, and limits. And given this systematic dependence, it is extremely difficult to imagine the nature of the mind process independently of the self, although from an evolutionary perspective, it is apparent that plain mind processes preceded self processes. The self permits a view of the mind, but the view is clouded. The aspects of the self that permit us to formulate interpretations about our existence and about the world are still evolving, certainly at the cultural level and, in all likelihood, at the biological level as well. For instance, the upper reaches of self are still being modified by all manner of social and cultural interactions and by the accrual of scientific knowledge about the very workings of mind and brain. One entire century of movie viewing has certainly had an impact on the human self, as has the spectacle of globalized societies now instantly broadcast by electronic media. As for the impact of the digital revolution, it is just beginning to be appreciated. In brief, our only direct view of the mind depends on a part of that very mind, a self process that we have good reason to believe cannot provide a comprehensive and reliable account of what is going on.
    At first glance, after acknowledging the self as our entry into knowledge, it may appear paradoxical, not to mention ungrateful, to question its reliability. And yet that is the situation. Except for the direct window that the self opens into our pains and pleasures, the information it provides must be questioned, most certainly when the information pertains to its very nature. The good news, however, is that the self also has made reason and scientific observation possible, and reason and science, in turn, have been gradually correcting