The Inner Self Misconception

In this philosophical post, Eric Stockhausen argues that the concept of a soul or inner self is misleading to the most comprehensible understanding of experience and offers an alternative. Enjoy!

Some believe the self is the personality part of brain. Some believe the self is an experiencer who exists within the brain, watching what the brain shows it. Some believe the self is just conscious thought and everything else is more or less no one self. More believe in a soul which incorporates some of ones personality, experience, and thought.

Each one of these beliefs sets up a compartment with walls. These walls represent a barrier between phenomena outside the self and inside the self. When sense data comes into this compartment whether it is the soul or some metaphorical place in the brain, it can be experienced. The self exists in this compartment and is completely unaware of anything outside. From this conception of the inner self, Descartes made his famous Demon argument which suggested that all that information entering ones compartment could be a carefully crafted narrative created by a Demon with unlimited power.

This inner self argument seems tempting in its current form for many people; however it presents many problems of its own. First it implies that there is this clear and distinct “I”; however, under the current argument that would imply that the “I” inside the compartment would be independent from his compartment and also experiencing the experiences as they are being put inside the room. This creates an ontological problem because it implies that there is an infinite set of inner selves. (For more on this subject read Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett.)

Now that the inner self independent of the brain is ruled out, it is important to present an alternative. The “I” people experience is part of their mental actions. During sleep, there is a phase when this “I” turns off and people are no longer experiencing self-consciousness. These experiences are part of ones mental processes and are not delivered to any inner agency that is independent of the whole. Any part of the mental functions can be tampered with in order to produce a different experience. Humans have not evolved to look at their brains and notice that is where the thoughts are occurring. It would be best to imagine an experiment where one with their very own hands could use an electrode to activate certain parts of the brain and notice its cause and effect within their experience. Once one overcomes the instinctive misconception that thoughts hover over matter (and physical processes) as if matter could not logically be them, one will understand the more comprehensive theory of consciousness.

If one is wondering how a physical process produces a thought, there is an explanation. The way matter produces a living thing is by being self-organizing and self-reproducing. The processes that constitute thought are the same way. The matter is organized in such a way that once the process begins, the right reactions occur for the thinking to work continuously.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought's editors.