ABSTRACT
The idea that we are unified conscious selves experiencing a stream of consciousness is natural but problematic. For example, cases of multiple personality show that one body can sometimes support more than one self, although theories differ on the nature of those selves. Two categories of theory are contrasted: ego theories posit a continuing self, whether supernatural or brain-based; bundle theories reject the existence of any continuing self. Thought experiments can help elucidate their implications, from Martians swapping people’s brains to the ‘teletransporter’ which destroys and reconstructs a person’s body and brain in the process: is the replica still the same person? Theories of self include James’s claim that ‘thought is itself the thinker’, and neuroscientific theories that seek the brain basis of self. Damasio distinguishes between a proto-self, core self, and autobiographical self, while others invoke an interpreter or observing self. Other theories include GWTs, Hofstadter’s ‘strange loops’, Strawson’s ‘pearls on a string’, and Metzinger’s ‘self-model theory of subjectivity’. The importance of embodiment and language are considered, along with the idea of self as a social construction or ‘centre of narrative gravity’. As technology develops, we consider the prospects for downloaded and enhanced selves and selves in cyberspace.
