Self-consciousness

The consciousness of Self involves a stream of thought, each part of which as ‘I’ can 1) remember those which went before, and know the things they knew; and 2) emphasize and care paramountly for certain ones among them as ‘me‘ and appropriate to these the rest. The nucleus of the ‘me‘ is always the bodily existence felt to be present at the time.
-William James, Principles of Psychology

Before, I have discussed the self, but in this post I want to ruminate on the consciousness of the self. What does it mean to be conscious of your own self? Doesn’t this concept first need to define the self in order for it to be coherent? Since we started with William James, we might as well use his phenomenal analysis of what the Self is and run with it:

In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account.

I really like this broad definition of the self, because it reflects the increasingly influential work of Andy Clark and his concept of the extended mind. Under this conception, the mind is can be said to not just be the internal processes going on in the brain, but also, the external processes useful for cognition. Thus, the writing pad that you furiously scribble your thoughts on would rightfully be considered as part of your mind. This concept isn’t supposed to reflect any fancy metaphysical notions, but rather, it just views the mind as being coupled to the environment. When you are driving your car, your self diffuses into the various driving apparatuses and your mind becomes coupled with the environment in a very real way. You feel in tune with the car as you subtlety perceive the vibrations of the road through the steering wheel. Your mind is extended into the environment.

Going back to the James, the self can be divided into three parts:
1. Its constituents, which include the material, social, and spiritual aspects of the self. The material and social aspects of the self are mostly self-explanatory and explained by the above quote. By spiritual, James merely means the “inner or subjective being”.
2. The feelings and emotions the constituents arouse (Self-feelings)
3. The actions to which the constituients prompt(Self-seeking and self-preserving behaviors)

Furthermore, these constituents aggregate into an “empirical self”, which consists of all things objectively known to be “yours”(Your house, your loved ones, your body, etc). The “I” which knowns these objective aggregations can be considered as a Thought, which is different from moment to moment, with the present moment including or appropriating the previous moments. James concludes that if this stream-of-thought can be said to exist, which most psychologists wouldn’t deny, then the Thought itself is the thinker. By this, he means that it is not necessary to formulate some transcendental or spiritual soul to be the possessor of the various thoughts, because the momentary Thought by itself, by virtue of it appropriating the previous moments, can be said to be the “I”, or thinker.

This is but a brief summary of James ideas on the self and consciousness, hopefully giving you an abbreviated picture of the depth of his thinking. Because of such piercing insights into the structure of the mind, William James was a pioneer philosopher and psychologist in his time and to this day remains relevant and influential to many modern schools of thought, including the extended mind philosophy of Clark that was mentioned. James’ insights into how the self bleeds into the external environment is a philosophical precursor to the most current movements going on in philosophy today,  a testament of to the clarity of his insights.

Thoughts on the Soul

The soul-theory of the mind as long been popular amongst both armchair philosophers and also serious scholars. In this post I would like to explore some implications and problems of this theory and also, how it effects our day-to-day lives, even for those of us who don’t take it seriously.

First of all, why would men have come up with a soul-theory to explain the inner workings of our minds? I think one the most obvious answers is of course, immortality. As William James said,

Unquestionably, this is the stronghold of the spiritualistic belief,-as indeed the popular touchstone for all philosophies is the question, “What is their bearing on a future life?”
-James, Principles of Psychology, 1890

However, James is apt to point out some immediate problems with the soul-theory. One of which is that the kind of immortality offered up with the theory is not the sort that we care for. What he means by this is that the only things we are cognizant of, and thus care about, are the things in our stream-of-thought. But surely, our stream-of-thought ends when we die, so why would we, meaning our personal selves, care one way or another about something beyond what we are conscious of? In other words, the conscious stream-of-thought that soul-theorists use to substantiate their ideas on immortality gives no such guarantee merely because it is there on a phenomenal level.

James gives several more answers to the question of why scholars have utilized the soul-theory for ages. One reason is that it might give an account for the “closed individuality of each personal consciousness”, that is, the fact that our Thoughts are “insulated” from the thoughts of others. There are immediate problems with such accounts, as James notes, in pathological cases such. As he says, “the definitively closed nature of our personal consciousness is probably an average statistical resultant of many conditions, but not an elementary force or fact.”

Furthermore, the soul-theory does not have any explanatory power above and beyond non-soul theories. One can give a full phenomenological account of the subjective facts of consciousness without ever referring to a soul, and furthermore:

[If we] take the two formulations, first of a brain to whose processes pulse of thought simply correspond, and second, of one two whose processes pulse of thought in a Soul correspond, and compare them together, we see that at bottom the second formulation is only a more roundabout way than the first, of expressing the same bald fact. That bald fact is that when the brain acts, a thought occurs.
-James, ibid

James final conclusion is that “the substantial Soul…explains nothing and guarantees nothing.”

So, if the soul-theory does not give us an edge in our subjective descriptions of the mind nor in our scientific ones, why is it so pervasive? Perhaps, as Douglas Hofstadter said, we see the “’soul’ emerge as a function not of any clearly defined inner state, but as a function of our own ability to project.” By this he is referring to the fact that as humans, we have a tendency to project “souls” into inanimate objects such as cars and toys. We “animate” our pets and teddy bears with mini-souls. However, as he notes, we also have the ability to be highly selective in our “attribution of soul”. For example, one might not be capable of killing an animal in cold blood, but still eat meat on a daily basis. An extreme example is the Nazis being capable of viewing Jews as mere animals. Some emotions then, such as patriotism, can act as a “valve, controlling the emotions that allow us to identify, to project,-to see our victim as as (a reflection of) ourselves.”

We all have a storehouse of empathy that is variously hard or easy to tap into, depending on our moods and on the stimulus. Sometimes, mere words or fleeting expressions hit the bull’s-eye and we soften. Other times we remain callous and ice, unmovable