An eye for an I
It took no more than 0.33 days to conclude that my 13.67 days of quarantine, looming ahead, were not going to be the idyll in the company of a super-interesting person (me) that I had imagined. Desperate for distraction, I decided to try out that meditation app I had always been meaning to but had never found the time for. Soon I was getting through whole milliseconds without thinking about lunch. Progress.
Amidst the app’s hypnotic mumblings, a phrase hit me with the symphonic power of a leaf blower at dawn- “the self is an illusion”. What could this mean?
I, personally, am best described as (fairly) material rather than illusory, and a quick glance self-wards confirmed that this was still the case. Surely, something else was meant. What followed was a series of dives into a series of inter-connected rabbit holes. I do not know whether I emerged significantly wiser, but the fourteen days were eventually over. Here is what I learnt, offered in the hope that it may be useful, if only as a phantom atlas of errors to avoid.
As with many single-syllable words that carry vast burdens of meaning, there are several attributes associated with the concept of a “self”. Some of these are illusions only in the sense that they are approximations.
For instance, a basic aspect of selfhood is the perception of being an entity distinct from our environment- there is a self-other boundary that seems to coincide with our skin, and we have a perception (usually) of existing only within that boundary (embodiment). These perceptions of being a distinct entity are very likely an evolutionary adaptation to maximize our individual reproductive fitness. Even tiny little male cicadas must tell their own chirping sounds apart from those of answering females and rival males. The cicada who thinks he is indistinguishably one with the cosmos goes to bed alone.
“Different from” is of course not the same as “unconnected”. If we are all part of the cosmic clockwork of causal determinism, the notion of somehow standing apart from the rest of what exists is indeed an illusion. It will remain an illusion regardless of whether the locus of our cognitions is restricted to our skull, involves our entire body, or is one day discovered to extend several miles into space around us (as is the case, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tells us, of that lady of dubious repute, Eccentrica Gallumbits). That may not be too far-fetched; till not very long ago, people thought their sense of self resided in their heart (and before that, the liver). But wherever it resides, the separability of ourselves from the rest of the world is an approximation, and cultures seem to vary in their willingness to accept it (e.g., in collectivist vs. individualist cultures).
Another aspect of the self is narrative continuity- we think we are in some sense continuous with our past selves. We are, through a thread of imperfect memory. Of course, this continuity is also an illusion if we imagine that memory is perfect. We forget and revise, and often in self-serving ways, so there may be a connection but no continuity between our present and past selves.
Both these illusions depart from reality in a matter of degree. Something that we think is true in absolute terms (e.g., we are a completely distinct and autonomous entity, or that we are smoothly continuous with our past selves) turns out to be only partially true. But a more radical illusion is one that may be qualitatively different from what we now think is true.
The sense of self is perhaps most strongly associated with the perception of agency — our awareness of how our actions are the consequences of our own intentions. I think it’s time for a break and I take one, I think I should keep writing and I do. Where’s the illusion here? Potentially, in three different places.
To begin with, we are not necessarily aware of the impulse behind every action we take. Vast chunks of processing in our minds, as well as resulting behaviors, take place without our becoming aware of them. So, what do we become aware of (and what do we remain unaware of)?
The best models of consciousness that we have today still differ significantly on details but also agree on some broad features [1]. The mind has many distinct “mechanisms” (they used to be called “modules” before people figured out they weren’t very modular) each of which can take in sensory input and produce behavior, without us necessarily becoming conscious of this. These mechanisms are like miniature, specialized brains. They may have evolved somewhat independently and may work in competition with each other. For instance, there may be distinct mechanisms to focus on the pursuit of the 3S’s of human needs- security, sex, and status.
In terms of information processing (not actual physical layout), these mechanisms can be thought of as “spokes” with some connections among them, connected to a “hub” that contains short-term memory. The spokes attempt to send things to the hub, in competition with each other and with different intensities. Whatever wins and enters the hub is then broadcast to all spokes; this broadcast event is possibly what we experience as the contents of consciousness. Its signature seems to be a high degree of synchronization of activity across different parts of the brain that is observable in brain scans [2]. Its function is speculated to be the promotion of an integrated response from all mechanisms- i.e., the mind as a whole.
A useful analogy may be to a multi-national corporation — with subsidiaries (the mechanisms) in different parts of the world, each doing its own thing and responding to the local environment, but also trying to lobby HQ (the short-term memory) with proposals to make some system-wide decisions. The proposals that win and get broadcast throughout the system are what the corporation is “conscious” of. Amazingly, the process through which some mechanisms come to win these contests seems to bear some resemblance to the process through which subsidiaries in a real multinational might become more influential- both mechanisms and subsidiaries are more likely to win based on their past lobbying success and the favorable performance consequences of adopting their past proposals.
An important implication of this model of consciousness is that the unitary self is an illusion. Another is that we become aware of only some of what is occurring in our minds (as a precursor to what we end up doing). However, after we become aware of what we have done, other mechanisms (i.e., portions of our non-unitary self) can often kick in to give plausible but false accounts rationalizing what we have done- like the Public Relations department desperately covering up for some misdemeanor by a subsidiary that they weren’t aware of until it happened [3]. So, the idea that all our actions are the consequences of our conscious intentions as a single integrated actor is also an illusion. The corporate analogy again seems fruitful: Google may be treated as a single legal entity, but it is an illusion since it is not a unitary actor.
But what about those actions that are the consequences of intentions we are conscious of (I decide to get a cup of coffee etc.)? The problem here is that it’s hard to argue that we freely chose these intentions. If there are no uncaused causes, then our intentions must have arisen from a long chain of prior causes, and the notion that these are our intentions is an illusion. True, the impulse to do something may have arisen without a proximate trigger from the external environment and we might even be conscious of this intent (hooray! it made it into short-term memory!), but in what sense are we the originators or owners of this intention? None that seems plausible. Think of an auto-defrost cycle in a fridge- it may require no immediate external trigger- it seems “voluntary”- but is still determined by its design features. To complete the analogy, it could even be programmed to print out a frosty message saying “Do not disturb! I am defrosting”.
In sum, the sense of self that is rooted in the conception of ourselves as the single conscious uncaused causes of our actions (agency) is illusory in a radical sense because i) not all our actions are the consequences of impulses we are conscious of ii) no impulses, conscious or unconscious really originate with us as their uncaused causes and iii) there is no single entity to which we can even apply the label “us” that produced or became conscious of these impulses.
To arrive at this conclusion, no mystical, meditative, or medicinal experience is necessary- fun and interesting as those might be in their own rights. (Though perhaps being shut up in a room for 14 days helps). But knowing at a cognitive level is certainly different from a deep internalization, and I do not doubt the possible value of the esoterica in accomplishing that.
I wish I could say that realizing that (an important aspect of) my sense of self is indeed a radical illusion helped cure my “I disease”. As the number of personal pronouns in the previous sentence illustrates, it did no such thing. (It didn’t even spur me on to founding a new religion). Instead, this illusion simply joins the ranks of the many other useful and comfortable ones this primate habitually carries around, including the one that deems any of these ramblings to be entertaining to anyone.
The ideas in this essay draw on
[1] Bernard Baar’s Global Workspace Theory (as outlined in his textbook with Nicole Gage, 2013- https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Brain-Consciousness-Introduction-Neuroscience/dp/0123750709). For those who prefer to read math and code, see the brilliant computational implementation by Blum and Blum (2020). https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.09850;
[2] Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44
[3] Robert Kurzban’s account of universal hypocrisy (https://www.amazon.sg/Why-Everyone-Else-Hypocrite-Evolution/dp/0691154392)- also see https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/KurzbanAktipis2007.pdf.
And of course, Woody Allen (https://www.amazon.sg/Without-Feathers-Woody-Allen/dp/0345336976).
