Is there no one home in our brain?

Is no one home in our brain?

An essay review of Professor Thomas Metzinger's book: The Ego Tunnel: The science of the mind and the myth of the self

The author begins this book making a provocative claim: that we will never solve the hard problem of consciousness (the problem of how consciousness can arise from a purely physical object like the brain) unless we first come to grips with the simple proposition that there is no such thing as a self, no indivisible entity that is us, neither in the brain nor in some metaphysical realm beyond this world.

He makes this claim despite being aware that one of the most fundamental characteristics of life is the ability to distinguish between self and non-self. Therefore, if there is no self, what exactly is there?

Part I of this book provides the author's answer.

Instead of a self, he proposes that what we actually have is a phenomenal self-model (PSM), an internal representational framework constructed by brain mechanics.

PThis framework enables us to consciously perceive ourselves as complete individuals and facilitates intelligent and holistic interactions with both our internal and external environments. This arrangement, occurring in phenomenological real-time, is perhaps one of nature's best kept secrets and certainly one of its finest inventions.

The self-model that is unique to human brains, transparently produces a framework that represents the very act of representation itself.

When this framework is loaded with our perceptions -- the body's internal and external sensory inputs -- the author uses the word "ego" to refer to this entire assembly. It is so transparent to us that we rarely catch ourselves in the act of representation. Which is to say, we rarely catch ourselves in the act of knowing and understanding.

The human brain has literally learned to represent us as a representational system and then hides the fact from us that it has done so.

Indeed, as the author aptly notes, it is this ego-centered representational ability that transforms us into thinkers of thoughts, readers of minds, and, when viewed on the grandest scale, into the very architects of cultural evolution.

But there's more to the author's proposal.

Since what we can extract from the world is always only a small subset of what exists, our entire field of perception can be seen as existing within an information tunnel, an ego tunnel, if you will, delimited by the images our brains extract through perception from an infinitely larger world that it is in fact, a proper subset of.

And here's the upshot: this extraordinary construction project, meticulously crafted by the neurons firing in our brains, is what we refer to as our subjectivity!

The author arbitrarily labels the container that holds our images, thoughts and perceptions as "the ego" and uses the metaphor "the ego tunnel" to describe the relationship between it and the larger world that surrounds it.

The ego, defined by our sensory capabilities, is situated at the heart of this tunnel, offering a sense of unity to our existence and thereby increasing our chances of survival.

However, the author's metaphor offers yet another crucial takeaway: when viewed as a whole, it conceptualizes a solution to the most pressing question in consciousness studies: it explains how subjective experiences may have arisen from purely self-organized mechanical brain processes.

Arguably, this dissolves the hard problem of consciousness. As what we once saw as our subjectivity -- our feelings, our mental images and thoughts -- can now be seen as the contents of a representational framework generated by brain mechanics. QED.

Now that the author has dissolved the hard problem of how we get subjectivity into the world from a self-organized 3-pound gelatinous object, it leaves one additional question unresolved:

Who are these mechanically-produced images of our inner and outer worlds made for? Who is the author or agent thinking our thoughts? Who is this feeler of our feelings? Why is there always someone having these experiences? Indeed, why exactly is my conscious reality my conscious reality?

Part II of the book does not try to solve this problem directly, as the author thinks that in order to do so, we might need a larger ontological boat, a more general framework that we can work within, one that includes the fine-grained and more careful descriptions of our inner experiences.

He believes we need to probe our inner nature, propose new theories about emotions, empathy, dreaming, rationality, free will and the conscious control of our actions, even probe further into the effects of meditation and psycho-active drugs and even into machine consciousness.

He sees these as necessary building blocks to a much bigger theoretical picture that will lead to a deeper understanding of our cognitive selves.

He dares us to be brave enough to take consciousness seriously in all of its subtler aspects. Only then will we be able to discover the conceptual insights needed to fill-in the big picture.

Perhaps the most creative thinker in consciousness theory, Thomas Metzinger's books all leave the reader stunned with a mind full of new insights.

They are all easily five-star productions. But please read this one and then "Being No One."