Jef's web files - Self identity

Self identity

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 09:53:29 -0500

For many, a sense of self is most precious, strongly defended, what if only an illusion?

Jealously guarded by the evolved ego, but suprisingly, more free if not guarded. Into the void and out the other side.

"...Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion..."

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:38:42 -0400

"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

Milinda's question

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 18:40:53 -0400

A good example of the teaching of Anatta is to be found in the Milindapana which purports to be an account of the meeting between a Bactrian king `Menander' who ruled from about 166 to 150 BCE and the monk, Nagasena.

The first meeting is concerned with the chariot simile. The king politely enquires about Nagasena's name and Nagasena replies to Milinda's question by saying: "I am known as Nagasena and it is by that name that my brethren in the faith address me. But although parents give such a name as Nagasena, this is only a designation used, for there is no permanent individuality involved." The king is unable to accept this denial of individuality and retorted with a practical counter-argument.

A Career Spent Learning How the Mind Emerges From the Brain

Tue, 10 May 2005 17:11:01 -0400

If you walk into the office of a scientist, chances are you'll see a white board hanging on the wall covered in scrawls. A molecular biologist's white board might be covered by hideous tangles of protein chains. A geophysicist might doodle India crashing into southern Asia.

The scribbles of Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth, are more metaphysical. Arrows travel from a pair of eyes into a cartoon brain, finally ending at the word "Apple." Another picture bluntly sums up the modern debate over free will, with a stick figure's head labeled "Brain," and two bubbles point toward it - one labeled "Judge" and the other "Neu" - short for neuroscience. Floating uncertainly off to one side is a third bubble that asks, "Mind?"

Big questions are Dr. Gazzaniga's stock in trade. In the 1980's he helped found cognitive neuroscience, a discipline designed to find out how the mind emerges from the brain. Today, at age 65, he continues to oversee a busy lab where brain scans offer clues to how we unconsciously create theories to explain the outer world and our inner lives.

There should be a one to one correspondence between brain events and conscious events

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 10:25:21 -0500

"There should be a one to one correspondence between brain events and conscious events and brain scientists will someday find the proper correlations."

Becoming Nobody

Sat, 02 Oct 2004 18:03:16 -0400

Mark Medweth
Department of Psychology
Simon Fraser University
medweth@sfu.ca

Whether we experience confusion, frustration, or enjoyment, such experiences take place through the mind. Thus, whether our interests are psychological, scientific, or religious in nature, it would seem important for us to understand the workings of the brain. If the ego or "self" (interchangeable words in Buddhist philosophy) plays a role in these experiences as well as abnormal development, as some psychologies would propose, we should more carefully examine what part they play in our psychological well being. An examination of some basic tenets concerning the ego, "self," or "I" from a Buddhist perspective reveals a very different view from traditional Western personality theories.
The Western Self

The importance of the ego or "self" which emanates from Western psychology is explicitly extensive. Ego Psychology, typified by Freud, emphasizes the development of the capabilities of the ego (Muzika, 1990). Cognitive-behavioural therapy deals, in part, with inappropriate self-ideas and fosters changes in attitudes we hold about the "self" (Muzika, 1990). Allport lists a strong ego identity as a descriptor of maturity while Erikson adds ego-integrity to his psychosocial stages of the life cycle (Goleman, 1981). Generally speaking, a wide-spread Western assumption suggests that the ego, "self," or "I" is thought of as a separate system, apart from such aspects as the body, spirit, or even matter in some cases (Welwood, 1976).

While Eastern perspectives of psychology may agree with some Western views of development and treatment (De Silva, 1985), there is a fundamental disagreement as to whether the ego is necessary for normal psychological functioning (Nitis, 1989). In fact, in regarding the conception of "self" as the main source of all suffering, putting an end to the "self" is a key focus of Buddhist psychology. While there are more than 200 varieties of psychotherapy, few of these would suggest that the "self" is an illusion (Muzika, 1990). Most would, in fact, attempt to strengthen such aspects of the person, making them more capable of bearing the pain of one's experience. Since Western traditions would highlight the disappearance of self-other boundaries in major psychoses and borderline cases, it is understandable that the idea of transcending the "self" or ego might be dismissed as regressive psychopathology (Walsh, 1988). However, some of the greatest Buddhist scholars maintain that Western science has yet to learn enough about the brain to appreciate the Eastern understanding of the mind and its implications (Komito, 1983). An examination of general Buddhist views of the "self" leaves the West with much to think about.

The Unwritten Self

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 18:52:55 -0400

"A world without memory is a world of the present," Alan Lightman wrote in Einstein's Dreams. "The past exists only in books, in documents. In order to know himself, each person carries his own Book of Life, which is filled with the history of his life...Without his Book of Life, a person is a snapshot, a two-dimensional image, a ghost."

Most people would probably agree with Lightman. Most people think that our self-knowledge exists only through the memories we have amassed of our selves. Am I a kind person? Am I gloomy? To answer these sorts of questions, most people would think you have to open up some internal Book of Life. And most people, according to new research, are wrong.

Neuroscientists would call Lightman's Book of Life episodic memory. The human brain has a widespread system of neurons that store away explicit memories of events, which we can recall and describe to others. Some forms of amnesia destroy episodic memories, and sometimes even destroy the capacity to form new ones. In 2002, Stan B. Klein of the University of California at Santa Barbara and his colleagues reported a study they made of an amnesiac known as D.B. D.B. was 75 years old when he had a heart attack and lost his pulse. His heart began to beat after a few minutes, and he left the hospital after a few weeks. But he had suffered brain damage that left him unable to bring to mind anything had done or experienced before the heart attack. Klein then tested D.B.'s self-knowledge. He gave D.B. a list of 60 traits and asked him whether they applied to him not at all, somewhat, quite a bit, or definitely. Then he gave the same questionnaire to D.B.'s daughter, and asked her to use it to describe her fater. D.B.'s choices significantly correlated with his daughter's. D.B.'s Book of Life was locked shut, and yet he still knew himself.

A few other amnesiacs have shown a similar level of self-knowledge, but it's hard to draw too many lessons from them about how normal brains work. So recently Matthew Lieberman of UCLA and his colleagues carried out a brain-scanning study. They wanted to see if they could find different networks in the brain that make self-knowledge possible. They also wanted to see if these networks functioned under different circumstances--for example, when thinking about ourselves in very familiar contexts and unfamiliar ones.

The screen-age: Our brains in our laptops

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:51:23 -0400

When I taught at a university, I worked with the wireless laptop programs that are replacing computer labs on campuses.

Once students began carrying laptops everywhere and using them in class, an interesting dependency developed. There were times in class when I asked a question and students would glance helplessly at the machines, as if to say, "The answer isn't in my carbon-based brain, but I know I got it right here, on silicon."

Or, if the answer wasn't stored in their notes on the hard drive, it became a contest in which students would search the Net madly to compete for extra credit points.

It was always a sad day for the ones who showed up with a dead battery and no power cord, a busted keyboard or loose wireless card. They watched the rest of the class in a flurry of activity, frustrated and feeling like half of their brains -- more than half for some students -- was missing.

Marshall McLuhan -- the prophet

Amazingly, the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan saw this coming in the 1960s. Many things he predicted about television did not appear until the appearance of the Internet and portable computers: so-called "ubiquitous computing."

McLuhan believed our senses become extended outside of our bodies. He suggested that a book was an extension of your eye and a car, an extension of your foot. He would say the Internet is an extension of our central nervous systems.

That's not my hand! How the brain can be fooled into feeling a fake limb

Sat, 03 Jul 2004 15:03:31 -0400

Scientists have made the first recordings of the human brain's awareness of its own body, using the illusion of a strategically-placed rubber hand to trick the brain. Their findings shed light on disorders of self-perception such as schizophrenia, stroke and phantom limb syndrome, where sufferers may no longer recognize their own limbs or may experience pain from missing ones.
In the study published today in Science Express online, University College London's (UCL) Dr Henrik Ehrsson, working with Oxford University psychologists, manipulated volunteers' perceptions of their own body via three different senses - vision, touch and proprioception (position sense).

The Networked Individual

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:40:11 -0400

The cell phone may be bringing us into a new renaissance, but it may end up differently than what we're expecting. Instead of becoming more empowered as individuals, we may give up on the notion of individuality altogether.

The Renaissance -- the great big one they taught us about in school -- is known for a lot of great inventions: perspective painting, the printing press, ships that could circumnavigate the earth, modern banking and even the sonnet. What we tend to forget about the 15th and 16th centuries, though, is that this was also when we invented the "individual."

Sure, we knew that people existed in their individual bodies for a long time. Even cavemen knew that hitting the guy over there meant hitting someone else. But people were so highly identified with their tribes, clans or fiefdoms, that they didn't really think of themselves as individuals. Anyone who was a true individual was pretty much an outcast -- either banished, mutant, a leper or, at best, a shaman, whose individuality was as much a curse as a blessing.

No, the real individual, as he or she is known today, was born as a 'he' during the renaissance. The mad genius Dr. Faustus is often cited as the first full-fledged individual character in drama; he's the scientist who has reached the height of knowledge and capability and must make a deal with the devil in order to reach to even higher levels of power.

Mind Time: The temporal factor in consciousness

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 17:24:28 -0400

Can neuroscientists say anything interesting about consciousness? Judging by the stream of books and conferences on the topic, you can safely assume they believe they can. What makes Benjamin Libet different from all the others writing on the subject, though, is that he has actually spent the past 40 years experimenting on the topic. His findings have played a central role in others' speculations. Now he has put his life's work into a single short book.

The core of Libet's findings can be simply summarised. If I sit on the edge of my bed and decide to wiggle my toes, the brain processes necessary for the wiggling to occur begin about half a second before I am aware that I have made the decision. Libet finds this troubling; if the brain processes precede my sense of having made a decision, what part does my conscious decision making play? Who indeed is the "me" that does the "deciding"?

Daniel Dennett publications list

Sat, 01 May 2004 16:52:23 -0400

Publications List AVAILABLE REPRINTS BY DANIEL DENNETT

Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science

Sat, 01 May 2004 16:47:51 -0400

Non-Cartesian Cognitive Science Traditional Cognitive Science is Cartesian in the sense that it takes as fundamental the distinction between the mental and the physical, the mind and the world, the subject and the object. It is this Cartesianism which leads to such claims as that cognition must be representational and that what sets cognizers apart is the fact that they exhibit "aboutness".

"But who I was, or where, or from what cause, Knew not;"

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:12:34 -0400

My self I then perused, and limb by limb Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran With supple joints, and lively vigour led:
But who I was, or where, or from what cause, Knew not; to speak I tried, and forthwith spake, My tongue obeyed and readily could name What e'er I saw.
- Milton

International Society for Self and Identity

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:02:56 -0400

"The International Society for Self and Identity (ISSI) is a scholarly association dedicated to promoting the scientific study of the human self. The Society has over 600 members from five continents, representing many different academic and professional disciplines. ISSI sponsors preconferences on the Self and Identity at the annual meetings of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). The members of ISSI share an interest in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes related to the self-system. These include the ability for humans (and other animals, to varying degrees) to think consciously about themselves, to form images and concepts of what they are like, to evaluate their characteristics and capabilities, to plan deliberately for the future, to worry about how they are being perceived by others, and to direct their own behavior in line with personal standards. Because this ability to self-reflect has important implications for understanding behavior, the self has emerged as a central focus of theory and research in many domains of social and behavioral science."