This book is a thorough and very scholarly examination of what
we mean when we say, "myself." It is not an easy read
at times, but the essays presented offer such a diversity of interrelated
research data and informed opinion that anyone interested in the
topic of ‘the self’ should definitely have it as a reference book
on the shelf. The first chapter by Galen Strawson, originally
published in 1997, is the keynote or ‘target’ piece to which the
other essays respond either directly or obliquely. The final chapter
is Strawson’s response to those critiques. The intervening 26
chapters span a wide range of fields including philosophy, mysticism,
child development, physics, psychology, psychopathology, and neuroscience.
The contents consist of discussions-some very technical-about
an adequate description of self-consciousness (phenomenology)
and the question of whether a ‘self’ even exists (ontology). It
is not at all a self-help sort of book for discovering oneself,
nor is it a sociological or psychological discussion of people
and their personalities.

In the opening chapter Strawson presents eight responses to what
he calls "the local phenomenological question" (What
is the human sense of the self?) and "the general phenomenological
question" (What senses of the self are possible?). He offers
some of these as preliminary to answering the factual question
‘Does the self exist?’ and as an aid to any future metaphysical
discussions of the topic. Among his eight answers, perhaps the
most contentious are his suggestions that the self is a typically
mental thing (with the word ‘thing’ denoting a kind of object),
and that there are many ontically distinct selves in one
person due to the transitory and intermittent nature of self-awareness
(his ‘string of pearls’ view). Of course, the self defined as
a mental thing clearly flies in the face of feminist and postmodern
conceptions which hold the self to be not only a mental phenomenon
but also interrelated (social), corporeal (physical) and affective
(emotional).

In the second essay K. V. Wilkes challenges Strawson’s conception
of a person being multiple selves over time. Wilkes and, in the
next chapter, John Pickering also refute Strawson’s notion of
an isolable self essentially removed from social influences and
interactions. Pickering then argues that the self is not only
a social thing but something more like an organic process.
Wilkes’s and Pickering’s essays are part of the fist section which
offers primarily philosophical points of view and includes Andrew
Brook’s support and enhancements of Strawson’s arguments, and
Eric T. Olson’s dismissive proposition that the word ‘self’ is
in fact empty and should simply be avoided in philosophical and
scientific discussions.

The second section is a collection of five essays on the cognitive
and neuroscientific models of the self. Their authors discuss
everything from exactly where the awareness of various bodily
sensations are located in the brain and how injury or illness
affect this, to the relationship between the emotions and neural
mechanisms, how computational mechanisms make self-consciousness
functionally adaptive, how the observation of robotic behavior
has shed light on the perceptive and predictive functions of consciousness,
and the role of inner speech in consciousness. The first four
of these chapters are meticulously empirical, while the last one
does a wonderful job of appreciating the value and meaning of
talking to oneself.

The third section contains two chapters offering research findings
in child development which suggest an early physical and ecological
foundation for a sense of self that is quite different from Strawson’s
cognitivism, and two chapters which first criticize directly Strawson’s
narrowly applied phenomenological methodology and then suggest
improved alternatives.

The fourth section deals with pathologies, and begins with a discussion
of the limitations inherent in any conclusion about a ‘self’ that
is abstracted from normal experience or contextualized activity.
The second chapter, titled "On Being Faceless," is a
fascinating exploration of individuals who suffer from various
facial problems, illustrating the importance of an embodied (within
the face) and socially interactive conception of the ‘self.’ A
chapter on what can be learned about the ‘location’ of the self
from individuals diagnosed as schizophrenic is followed by a chapter
which points out that an examination of the unusual experiences
of brain damaged individuals suggests that the unitary sense of
‘my-self’ is physically locatable within the normal organic structure
of the brain and can be lost through injury or surgery. But the
essays in this section give a rather narrow perspective on the
self since they intentionally advance a neurobiological model
of the adult mind. For example, Louis Sass’s detailed symptomatic description of
schizophrenia suggested to me that a strong causal factor of this
condition may be social interference in early self development, but
Sass discusses only a neurobiological explanation.”Conspicuously absent
also are accounts of individuals with severely abnormal brains
who live quite normal lives, such as, for example (my favorite)
the young British man discovered to have a brain the size of a
walnut while he was an Honor student at university. This sort
of case raises serious questions about claims that the sense of
self may be mapped onto particular organic structures of the brain,
and that therefore these structures are always necessary for a
‘normal’ sense of self.

The fifth section is a good counterbalance to the previous one
since its contents are perhaps the most antithetical to neurobiological
explanations and the materialist (phenomenological) views of Strawson’s
axis chapter. Five authors discuss mystical and meditative approaches
to the discovery of, and definition of, the self. They deal with
themes such as the sense of ‘self’ as a ‘field’ which extends
beyond a single human body, the Buddhist conception of egoless
self-consciousness that is not unlike Strawson’s ‘string of pearls’
and yet very different, the ‘self’ being like a mirror’s reflecting
nature rather than like the mirror itself, how Eastern philosophical
conceptions of the self as "absolutely devoid of phenomenal
content" can resolve the seemingly unresolvable problems
pointed out by Descartes, Hume, and Kant, and the difference between-and
the duality inherent in-the ‘I’ of core subjective awareness and
the ‘self’ which is observed. These essays offer enlightening
alternatives to Strawson’s "impoverished worldview of reductionist
materialism."

The sixth section, with the general title "Further Methodological
Questions," begins with a discussion of the problems inherent
in attempts to define the self without resorting to reductive
psychophysical descriptions. It continues with a short chapter
which explains why the self as subject is not an analyzable object
and consciousness is not a property that ‘belongs’ to anything.
This is followed by a thought-provoking chapter which demonstrates
how philosophical ‘thought experiments’ that are meant to illustrate
aspects of the self (in which the ‘person’ in a story is not at
all like a real person) may allow students to make sense of far-fetched
cases but often fail to lead to any sort of reliable judgments.
Finally there is a chapter which points out the problems inherent
in a natural science approach to an understanding of ourselves
(to which phenomenology aspires) in which the attempt to explain
typically degenerates into mere description.

The last section consists of Strawson’s reply to the other authors.
In a style so characteristic of Western academic philosophers,
his first observation is that the responses to his initial essay
are simply "a festival of misunderstanding." He then
proceeds to re-explain his particular perspective on the self
which he presented in the first chapter-the self understood as
an internal mental presence-in light of the criticism received
from the other authors. Strawson’s general conclusion is that
his model of the self still holds despite the criticisms since
the authors of those other chapters were simply presenting alternative,
not eliminative, models. This final chapter therefor adds little
new material, but it is an instructive example of a complex rebuttal.

The writing in this book is first class. The essays are collectively
a deep well of information and insights that will be a lasting
and valuable source to anyone interested in the physical or metaphysical
nature and experience of the ‘self’ (despite a rather minimal
index). While Strawson’s opening essay is central to many of the
discussions, a comprehension of the contents of most chapters
does not require the reader’s familiarity with Strawson’s point
of view. In other words, while each chapter is a response to Strawson,
most chapters easily stand on their own. But please note that
this is not a casual read; the technical nature of some passages
will make it a struggle for those who are not comfortable with
the level of concentration required in dealing with academic material.

© 2001 Peter B. Raabe

Categories: Philosophical

Tags: Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Psychiatry