What is the Self ?

Questioning the Self

The Self or the sense of having a self has always been a question of interest & debate for philosophers and many scientists. Many philosophers do point out that the self we do experience is not even near of what we really are. Our senses delude us and Our identities have been nothing more than a social construct reality.

Now modern science have couple of researches to contribute more in our understanding in this area, and answering our questions such as -

What exactly our brains are doing to us ?

So many opinions, and perspectives including the religious ones, materialists and poetic naturalists describe it differently.

But personally I believe NEUROSCIENTISTS have more interesting and more credible answers to these subjects. I know its tempting to just listen to any of the Next GUY sitting on the internet just because he sounds more SPOOKY and mysterious.

I believe neuroscience makes more sense than philosophy does in today's world. Simply because philosophy has way too much to say about it (or anything ) and most theories sound very different from each other and many times they contradict each other. Although some philosophical theories sound more attractive and reasonable but they don't have any method or any "anything" to prove that their theories are better than others. They just PLAY with words and magically even the most counter intuitive ideas sound very familiar and a significant number of people start believing it without thinking too much. BUT different beliefs about such mysterious questions make those questions more interesting and worth asking. In a poetic way they become more valuable. Just like other ultimate questions of Humanity.

Neuroscientific Perspective

Most of us share a strong intuition that our own self is an irreducible whole, that there must be some place in our brains where our perceptions and thoughts all come together and where our future actions are decided. Yet this view is now known to be incorrect—different mental processes are mediated by different brain regions, and there is nothing to suggest the existence of any central controller. The study of split-brain patients reinforces the point, by showing that perception and action can be mediated independently by the two hemispheres; if for example two different visual stimuli are presented to the two hemispheres, the right hemisphere will direct an appropriate behavioural response to the stimulus it sees, while the left hemisphere, which controls language but has no access to the stimulus seen by the right hemisphere, will confabulate a plausible alternative explanation for the behaviour, based on the unrelated stimulus to which it does have access. Clearly, the idea of a single locus of perception and decision-making is untenable.

If there is no single brain structure that embodies the self, how can the field progress, and indeed what questions should it be asking? Although there is no consensus yet, some critical issues are emerging, including the neural basis of perception and decision-making, the origin of our sense of free will, the storage and retrieval of autobiographical memories, the origin of ethical precepts, and the basis of self-awareness, including the ability to explain one's own actions.

It would not be fine to say that scientific understanding is complete and the self is an illusion. End of conversation. In fact the neuroscience is still in its infancy, so it would need certain amount of time and some terrifying future technologies that would perhaps mould our experiences.

To Learn more about the neurology and Psychology of the self Read -

1. Psychology Today

2. The Illusion of the Self - Bruce Hood interview

3. The Consciousness and the self - Making sense podcast

Neuroscientist Sam Harris explains why the self we experience is neurologically an illusion, without making any claims about the consciousness to be "beyond physical world". To search for further neurological studies and research material you need to read different journals. If you don't read publications a lot, check out the book mentiond above by Bruce Hood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0

A Video on this topic will soon be released on Our YouTube Channel