“Sometimes it seems like the self – the sense of the self – is actually the collection of all this: body and mind and consciousness, et cetera. Sometimes in different ways it can seem completely independent of it.”
Rob Burbea, 2010; ‘The Experience Of Self (Personality and Beyond)’ [45:57]
Epistemic status: poetry
What is self? For most of my philosophical career this was not a question I knew or cared much about: self was that thing that we assume exists to navigate the world as social animals (given our evolved life history strategy). Moreover, since the locus of personal identity is constantly shifting (depending on one’s preconceptions), the utility of analysing this concept independently from such contexts was nonobvious to me. In other words, I was an eliminativist about the existence of personal identity, even though I was capable of playing language games that meaningfully referenced self.
But then I realized that, rather than viewing self as a derivable essential property or set of observable states of affairs, it is a recognizable quality of phenomenal consciousness: certain phenomena feel like myself (e.g., body map, thought processes), while others (e.g., stone pillar, monstera leaf) do not. Indeed, the feeling of having an identity is such rudimentary emotion that updating one’s self-facing priors can produce remarkable shifts in phenomenology. This was, and remains, sufficient to ground this entity within my world model, so that now when I play language games I am actively co-creating self-facing semantics (rather than passively referencing them).
This post contains my attempt at developing a phenomenological theory of selfhood which has been simmering away within my subconscious for the past few years, though I make no claim to its discovery.1 While it is not restricted to a particular ontological position on personal identity, I view it as being most compatible with physicalism + open individualism. I consider it to be a useful contribution to discourse about self because my epistemic standards differ from most: I hold that the strength of our reasons to accept a given theory scales in proportion to its expected capacity to optimize for the aggregated well-being of all sentient beings in the world.2 Still, I am not attempting to poke at ‘ground truth’ in this post, and I expect that different formulations of selfhood might resonate more or less with different nervous systems. Call this the ‘trinity of selfhood’:3
Body
Self is body. What is body? Body is a sophisticated organic pattern that has persisted for billions of years since the first forms of multicellular life. Natural evolutionary processes have sculpted body to continue transmitting this pattern, granting it biochemical powers such as metabolism, locomotion, and sensory representation of internal and external environment. Body can also adapt to a wide variety of conditions present within different environments.4 Not all bodies are so fortunate; most perish within days or hours of coming into existence (depending on progeny size this does not compromise fitness). My body was looked after when it was most vulnerable, and feels the same impulse toward other beings. I love my body.
I trust my body. While it will (probably) one day succumb to free energy minimizing processes, I nonetheless consider it ‘cream of the phylogenetic crop’. Precious few organisms in the history of our planet have such advanced capacities as great apes – how wonderful it feels to interface with reality from my own perspective. Body is a structure that supports self’s existence over time; it is a scaffold for adaptation. When I feel into my sense of body, I feel cradled and supported. I moreover respect the raw computational power of body: send the correct signal and it will solve the problem.5 Body is the ground for self.
Mind
Self is mind. What is mind? Mind is a nested set of assumptions and inferences that make up the world. When I look at the world superficially, mind sculpts my perception of the phenomena to fit into abstract categories, allowing me to intuitively navigate complex physical environments. When I look at the world closely, mind reasons about their origins, functions, and relations to other entities in the world, supporting higher-order causal inferences that maximize my effects. Mind is a lens through which reality is made sensible; mind is an engine that drives creation.
Mind can be kind but also cruel. Like an octopus, an untrained mind instinctively extends its tentacles to grasp at phenomena without care or consideration for external conditions. Like a snake, a hungry mind will continue to consume without becoming satiated, eventually devouring self in this process. While a sharp mind can function as a weapon, a calm mind can function as a shield to protect vulnerable parts of self. A humble and inquisitive mind can provide a source of nourishment for self, allowing it to grow ever more beautifully. Mind is also a vehicle for communion with other sentient beings: through mind we can grasp a sense of inhabiting a shared reality. Mind is the compass for self.
Subject
Self is subject. What is subject? Subject is awareness, an integrated soup of all the raw phenomenal properties that make up our subjective experience. Subject can be here, subject can be there, and with sufficient practice, subject can be anywhere. But subject is not infinite, due to the existence of nontrivial boundaries segmenting the phenomenology of different sentient beings. In this respect subject is ontologically privileged, for there are precious few entities whose existence does not wholly depend upon accepting (arbitrary) frames of conceptual reference. Subject is the connective tissue between body (embodiment) and mind (realisation), and its causes and conditions are universal.6
Subject feels, and through feeling subject discloses the universe’s value function to self. A mind without a subject is like a ship without a north star to guide its course. A body without a subject is like a replicating pattern without purpose. Without subject, there could exist no thing, and without thing there could exist no world. Subject finds freedom within moments of stillness, but oft is this desire overlooked by self. Indeed, many selves are blind to the very existence of subject. Give subject love and self will receive love in return. Subject is the heart of self.
- Tripartite conceptions of self referencing body, mind, and consciousness, have probably been independently formulated and discussed for many thousands of years. What I present here is a specific formulation in these terms that resonates most with how I conceive of self. ↩︎
- In other words, I think it is more important to consider whether a given theory is phenomenologically functional rather than (or in addition to) its analytical strength. ↩︎
- Note that I was raised approximately atheist (my family values were derived non-theistically from lived experience), so I apologize if this name triggers anybody with latent religious programming. ↩︎
- Natural ecosystems are dynamic systems containing few perpetually stable states, so adaptation is essential for fitness. ↩︎
- Most humans don’t seem to grok this insight, and many humans even send the wrong signal to body (e.g., neurotic thoughts) actively worsening their biological state. ↩︎
- In ‘Seeing that Frees’, Burbea (2014, p.36) claims that awareness itself and its most basic properties (e.g., valence) are ultimately empty of inherent existence, which would invalidate this claim. To the extent of my experiences in the world and philosophical musings I am so far unconvinced, but open to changing my mind in the future. ↩︎