Imagine being anesthetized for an operation, and then afterwards taking credit for being totally calm while you were unconscious. Ridiculous, and yet we human beings have a habit of claiming responsibility for thoughts and behavior that result from brain processes that are equally unconscious. None of us has conscious access to the interactions of the billions of neurons that produce our perceptions, thoughts, and actions.
Admittedly, it would be awkward to say things like, “The brain I live in did an excellent job of analyzing the situation,” although it would be more accurate than saying, “I did an excellent job of analyzing the situation,” since “I,” as the conscious self, is the outcome rather than the initiator of brain activity. Still, it’s possible to use conventional language while being aware that it is shorthand, and this awareness can affect how we relate to the behavior of ourselves and others.
The result is that we don’t blame anyone for their behavior, we don’t take pride in our own actions, and we don’t respect other people for actions over which they have no control.
All this is old hat to anyone to anyone who is familiar with the tenets of naturalism, and if you’re not, Tom Clark does a fabulous job presenting them at naturalism.org. If everything I’ve said so far is unfamiliar to you, Tom’s site will fill in the details, and then some.
Our conscious experience is a tiny fraction of what the brain does, and there is evidence that the brain can negotiate the physical world perfectly well without the conscious experience of sight, for example. There’s even a recent video that shows a man who has no conscious visual experience, and yet he can navigate an obstacle course.
If the brain can function without conscious experience, what is consciousness for? I think it’s a product of social life, a way for brains to communicate with each other. This man, who has what is called “blindsight,” can negotiate the maze, but he can’t tell you what he’s trying to avoid; he can’t communicate.
As a result of consciousness and communication, brains produce images of themselves and the results of their interior processes, and that is what we experience as our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. As a further result of these processes, we experience thoughts about ourselves, and these thoughts are for the most part erroneous, based on antiquated concepts that don’t take brain function into account. Brains don’t inherently understand how they work, and it has taken neuroscience to explain brains to themselves.
Thanks to science, I now have a much more accurate conceptualization of who I am, but no amount of scientific understanding is likely to alter my conscious perception of being myself. MRI’s and cat-scans only externalize brain function—they give me new ways of thinking and talking about myself—but otherwise they don’t alter my internal experience.
I am no better at experiencing the full complexity of myself than I was before science told me just how complex I am. I still feel like the same old me, and somehow that bothers me. My inability to incorporate understanding into experience leaves me feeling like a shadow of my “real” self. It’s an unpleasant perception, and I have been trying to find a way to deal with it for years.
Awareness of the limitations of our self-conceptions have been around for millennia among esoteric groups of human beings—long before science—and some have developed alternative ways of thinking about and experiencing themselves. The experiential side has consisted primarily of depressing the linguistic processes of the brain so that other areas of perception become dominant. How this alternative perception is described varies with the cultural millieu, ranging from “oneness with God” to “the true nature of mind,” etc.—none of which is very scientific.
These non-linguistic modes of perception are all very interesting, and in some sense evade the boundaries imposed by conceptual (linguistic) thought, but it is impossible for any of them to completely encompass “things as they are.” The brain did not evolve with the capacity for such an experience. Brains that gave a more useful chart of the world had an evolutionary advantage, but total accuracy was not required. Whatever we might imagine an accurate perception of reality to be, there is one thing we can be sure of: our ordinary, everyday experience of ourselves and the world is not it.
While I don’t give awareness without language any special significance as “truth,” or your “true nature,” I do think it is worth pursuing. I have an analogy:
Imagine linguistically-constrained reality as the house you live in: it protects you from the elements, and aids your survival in a hostile world.
But there is a world outside this house. Stepping outside won’t give you any greater perceptual abilities than you had when you were inside—color, touch, sound, etc., are still the same—but you’re in a much bigger space. You’re still incapable of perceiving reality in its incredible depth and complexity, but at least you’re outside the box.
The closest we can come to seeing things as they are is to stop seeing them the way they are not. Which is not to say that you should give up your house, only that it might be worthwhile to step outside once in a while.
My Self Behind Bars
