The Brain’s Role in Shaping Our Identity

In challenging what is the self, what most people think is that the self must first be considered. If you were to ask the average person in the street about their self, they would most likely describe the individual who inhabits their body. They believe they are more than just their bodies. Their bodies are something themselves controls. When we look in the mirror, we regard the body as a vessel we occupy. This sense that we are individuals inside bodies is sometimes called the ‘ego theory’, although the philosopher Galen Strawson captures it poetically in what he calls the ‘pearl view of the self.* This pearl view is the common notion that our self is an essential entity at the core of our existence that holds steady throughout our life.

This ego experiences life as a conscious, thinking person with a unique historical background that defines who he or she is. This is the T’ that looks back in the bathroom mirror and reflects upon who is the ‘me’.

If the self is the sum of our thoughts and actions, then the first inescapable fact is that these depend on brains. Thoughts and actions are not exclusively the brain because we are always thinking about and acting upon things in the world with our bodies, but the brain is primarily responsible for coordinating these activities. In effect, we are our brains or at least, the brain is the most critical body part when it comes to who we are. We can transplant or replace many parts of the body but most people would regard the patient to be essentially the same person after the operation. However, if a brain transplant were ever possible, then even though the patient may look the same as they come out of the anesthetic, most of us believe that they would be someone different – more like the person who donated their brain in the first place.

The brain has many distributed jobs. It processes incoming information from the external world into meaningful patterns that are interpreted and stored for future reference. It generates different levels and types of motivations that are the human drives, emotions and feelings. It produces all sorts of behaviours – some of them automatic while others are acquired through skill, practice and sheer effort. And then there is mental life. Somehow, this 1.5 kg lump of tissue inside our skull can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space, appreciate Van Gogh and enjoy Beethoven. It does this through the guise of a self. But the sense of self that most of us experience is not to be found in any one area. Rather it emerges out of the orchestra of different brain processes like a symphony of the self, just as Buddha and Hume said.

Our brain constructs models of the external world. It can weave experiences into a coherent story that enables us to interpret and predict what we should do next. Our brain simulates the world in order to survive in it. This simulation is remarkable because much of the data that needs processing are corrupted. And yet, our brain fills in missing information, interprets noisy signals and has to rely on only a sample of everything that is going on around us. We don’t have sufficient information, time or resources to work it all out accurately so we make educated guesses to build our models of reality. That working-out includes not only what’s out there in the external world but also what is going on in the internal, mostly unconscious workings of our mind.

Even as adults we are continually developing and elaborating our self illusion. We learn to adapt to different situations. Sometimes we even describe our self illusion as multifaceted as if we have the work self, the home self, the parent self, the political self, the bigoted self, the emotional self, the sexual self, the creative self and even the violent self. They seem to be almost different individuals but clearly there is just one body. We seem to switch effortlessly between these different selves but we would be wrong to think that there is an individual doing the switching. That’s part of the illusion. There is not one self or multiple selves in the first place. Rather, it is the external world that switches us from one character to another. This idea that we are a reflection of the situations is sometimes called the looking-glass self® – we exist as the reflection of those around us.

That process of constructing the self does not end with childhood. Even as adults we are continually developing and elaborating our sel illusion. We learn to adapt to different situations. Sometimes we even describe our self illusion as multifaceted as if we have the work self, the home self, the parent self, the political self, the bigoted self, the emotional self, the sexual self, the creative self and even the violent self. They seem to be almost different individuals but clearly there is just one body. We seem to switch effortlessly between these different selves but we would be wrong to think that there is an individual doing the switching. That’s part of the illusion. There is not one self or multiple selves in the first place. Rather, it is the external world that switches us from one character to another. This idea that we are a reflection of the situations is sometimes called the looking-glass self’ – we exist as the reflection of those around us.

Initially as infants, we are bundles of self-interested activity but evolution has pre-programmed our self to emerge and attend to others. Our greatest influence during childhood moves from the immediate family that looks after our needs to the competitive world of young children. We learn to interpret, predict, anticipate and negotiate in the playground. Gradually over late childhood and adolescence we increasingly elaborate the narrative of who we are and eventually strike out to become a character differentiated from those who shaped us. For many adults, adolescence marks the turning point at which we ‘discover’ our true self. We use groups, possessions, tastes, politics and preferences to create the self – an individual that is different. At least, that is the story of self-formation in the West; other cultures provide a different framework that shapes a different type of self. Even hermits and outcasts from society are defined by their rejection of the principles that the rest of us accept. But whether we are distancing our self from the herd, of ingratiating our self as part of the herd, it is the existence of others that defines who we are.

Source : The Self Illusion: Why There is No ‘You’ Inside Your Head by Bruce M. Hood

Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13384559-the-self-illusion