Together with consciousness, the nature of Self is about one of
the last surviving mysteries of our times. The question “What
is the self?” has a long history in philosophy, and for the
past decade or so has increasingly attracted the interest of scientists.
In his book Altered Egos (2000), Todd Feinberg proposes
to look at this age-old question from the perspective of how the
brain creates the subjective experience of a unified Self. Drawing
on his experience as both a neurologist and a psychiatrist, Feinberg
puts forward a new theory of the neurobiological basis of the
Self that presents it as a “nested hierarchy of meaning
and purpose” (p. 7; italics in the original).

It might be expected that a book on the Self written by a neurologist/psychiatrist
would not provide easy reading for a lay audience. Feinberg, however,
has managed to write a book that is both clear and accessible
to a non-specialist audience, while maintaining a level of scholarship
and discussion that will appeal to experts. To be sure, the book
also deserves the attention of any one interested in the problems
of personal identity, consciousness, intentionality, or simply
in the mysteries of the mind. As a further note, it is a remarkable
feature of this book that the introduction of each and every technical
term is immediately followed by an explanation, and there is a
glossary at the end to further guide the reader through more complex
material.

The book is roughly divided in two parts. Chapters 2 to 6 introduce
the reader to a number of patients with brain damage that has
in some way or another resulted in perturbations of the Self.
Capgras Syndrome, Mirror-misidentification, Confabulation, and
Asomatagnosia are among the many intriguing disorders that the
author carefully explores to document what he calls “altered
egos”, or brain traumas that transform the relation of the
Self to the world, others, and to itself. According to Feinberg,
cases such as these do more than show how damage to the brain
transforms the boundaries of the Self: they highlight the fact
that the Self is not located in this or that region of the brain,
but arises out of the contribution of the brain’s many component
parts. Part two of the book – roughly chapters 7 to 9 – present
Feinberg’s own view on the neurobiological basis of the Self.
Starting with the question of how the experience of a unitary
Self can arise out of the diversity of the component parts of
the brain, the author begins by dismissing theories that attempt
to portray the Self as some sort of ‘general’ sitting at the top
of the brain’s hierarchy commanding its many parts. As Feinberg
eloquently puts it when discussing voluntary action: “There
are no ‘commander-in-chief’ neurons that I can identify as your
‘I’ that ordered the action. There is no single locus or top of
the motor system, no ‘ghost in the machine’ as the philosopher
Gilbert Ryle famously put it, which can serve as the source of
our unified ‘will'”(p. 118). So what is the Self? Feinberg’s
view is the subjective experience of a unitary Self is the result
of the hierarchical nesting of meaning and purpose
created by the brain. Put more clearly, the many levels of the
neural hierarchy work interdependently to create the subjective
experience of an integrated Self, with meaning and purpose
serving as the top-most constraints the bring together the diversity
of the brain into the unity of consciousness.

Is this the ‘end of the Self’? Has Feinberg reduced the Self to
a mere firing pattern in the brain? Chapters 9 and 10, the final
ones in the book, reject any such reading of the author’s position.
According to Feinberg, the reason why the mind – and, thus, the
Self – cannot be identified with the brain is due to the fact
that meaning, purpose, and being are entirely and irreducibly
personal features of the mind. That is, the mind and the
Self are an entirely first-person phenomena, they have meaning
only to the being they belong to and, accordingly, cannot be reduced
to an objective fact accessible to third-person analysis. Although
these are no doubt the most controversial chapters in the whole
book and, as I see it, the least compelling in terms of philosophical
argument, Feinberg presents an interesting case for the view that
mind and Self, albeit intimately linked with the brain, cannot
be identified with it.

© 2001 Isabel Gois.

Isabel Gois is a PhD
student at King’s College London working on Consciousness. Her
research interest include Philosophy of Mind, Neuropsychology
and Mental Disorder. She has articles published on emotions, computationalism,
and consciousness.

Categories: Philosophical, General

Tags: Psychology, Science (General)