the stream of thought accompanies the stream of cerebral activity, nor why, as
he puts it, ‘such finite human streams of thought are called into existence in such
functional dependence upon brains’ (p. 401). In other words, the great chasm
still yawns.
NEUROSCIENTIFIC MODELS
OF SELF
Many neuroscientists deliberately avoid talking about the self and self-conscious-
ness (e.g. Crick, 1994). Others discuss self-awareness as a sub-category of aware-
ness in general, and some consider how the self-concept develops and how it can
go wrong (as in amnesia or blindsight). Only a few attempt to explain why the self
seems to be a continuous agent and a subject of experience. Their most common
strategy is to equate the self with one particular brain process or functional area
of the brain.
Ramachandran suggests that his experiments on filling-in (Chapter 6) mean ‘we
can begin to approach the greatest scientific and philosophical riddle of all – the
nature of the self ’ (Ramachandran and Blakeslee, 1998, p. 255). Part of the motiva-
tion for these experiments was Dennett’s insistence that filling-in would have to
be done for someone (for some viewer or homunculus), and that since homunculi
cannot exist, filling-in does not occur. As we saw, some kinds of filling-in do occur.
But the argument is not entirely false, says Ramachandran. Filling-in occurs for
something rather than someone, and that something is another brain process – an
executive process (Ramachandran and Hirstein, 1997).
Ramachandran considers MacKay’s executive process (Chapter 6), and control
processes located in frontal or prefrontal areas, but argues instead for the limbic
system. The processes that best match what the self is traditionally supposed to
do are those that connect motivation and emotion to action selection, based on
an incoming set of qualia. Filling-in can then be seen as a way of preparing qualia
for interaction with limbic executive structures. So our conscious experiences are
the input to this executive system.
Rama concludes that a single unified self ‘inhabiting’ the brain is an illusion, but
also that ‘It is not difficult to see how such processes could give rise to the mythol-
ogy of a self as an active presence in the brain – a “ghost in the machine” ’ (Ram-
achandran and Hirstein, 1997, p. 455). Yet his theory seems to try to account for a
real rather than a mythical self, and does so with the unexplained idea that qualia
are inputs to specific brain processes.
Antonio Damasio draws on his studies of brain damage and psychopathology to
distinguish the proto-self, the core self, and the autobiographical self. The sense
of self, he argues, has a preconscious biological precedent in the simplest organ-
isms. This proto-self is a set of neural patterns which map the state of an organism
moment by moment. More complex organisms have ‘core consciousness’, which
is not dependent upon memory, reasoning, or language, and is associated with
the core self, ‘a transient entity, ceaselessly re-created for each and every object
with which the brain interacts’ (1999, p. 17).
Extended consciousness entails more complex levels of organisation. Possibly
present in other species, it develops fully over our lifetimes, building on working
‘The worst a psychology
can do is so to interpret
[. . .] selves as to rob
them of their worth’(James, 1890, i, p. 226)Consciousness is ‘the self
in the act of knowing’(Damasio, 1999, pp. 9, 168,
et al.)