Transcript: The Three Illusions of Self

When I tell you that your Self is an illusion, what do I mean? That you don’t exist? That you’re a hallucination?

Not exactly. By illusion, I mean you have a misperception of what you are.

Yes, there is an organism watching this video. But that organism has false beliefs about itself – provably false.

Now, don’t feel bad. I have them too, most of the time. Evolution has wired us to fool ourselves this way. It’s in our nature.

There are three important illusions you have about your Self. I will describe each one, and by the end of this video you will agree with me that your Self, as you understand it in your everyday life, does not exist. You will agree with me because scientific evidence, simple experiment, and common sense will let you know.

TITLE: What Is Mind?

Illusion of Will

There is a famous experiment in neuroscience. John Dylan-Haynes and his colleagues at the Max Planck institute put a number of subjects into an fMRI machine. This is a scanner that can track blood flow to the brain, so it can tell you where the brain activity is happening. The subjects had a choice of pressing a button with their right hand, or their left hand. They were asked to make a choice at random. At the same time, letters were flashing in front of them, so they could report what letter they saw right when they made this random choice.

The amazing result was this: the researchers, by looking at the brain activity on their scanners, could predict which button would be pushed, fairly consistently, on average about 7 seconds before the subject thought they were making their decision.

This experiment has been replicated many times – in fact, it was in itself a more careful replication of an earlier experiment with a similar design and a similar result. And, other experimental designs have also discovered decision-making happening before we are aware of it.

So… how can that be?

Pretty much all neuroscientists believe there is some degree of modularity in the mind – meaning, there are specialized neuron networks that work on certain tasks. This experiment, in itself, could be seen as evidence of modularity. You can watch my video on modularity if you want to learn a little bit more about the evidence for it and the debates about it.

But… what is happening here? It seems like we have a part of the brain that is making the decision, and after it makes the decision, it passes it on to the part of the brain that is aware of the decision. The scanner can see the decision being made, and then the decision gets passed to awareness which thinks it is deciding.

There are many choices we make that do seem to happen in our consciousness, right? Which kind of granola should I buy? Well, this one is cheaper, let me get this one.

But there is a lot of decision-making that happens under the hood, that we aren’t aware of. If you’ve played a musical instrument, or even speak a language – you know there are some decisions that you come to – what key on the keyboard your finger will fall on, how you will conjugate a verb – that are really very complex decisions, yet we make them without really puzzling them out. This kind of decision-making, too, lies beneath our consciousness.

Even before Freud, we had figured out that there is a lot happening in our minds that we are not aware of.

If we take this idea of modularity seriously, then our minds are like a Parliament of the Self.

The modules in your mind are like members of the Parliament.

There are unruly back-benchers in your Parliament: louts yelling for sex, food, power. Fearful representatives screeching about possible peril at every instance.

There are specialist technicians: a language specialist is over there scribing by the well of the Parliament; a visual perception specialist working on an image; a memory specialist is filing things away in a card catalog in the corner.

Now obviously, this Parliament doesn’t take an actual vote in your brain, it’s not that simple. The winner on any question of choice probably depends on a combination of who is yelling the loudest, which coalitions are joining strengths, and what hierarchies have the upper hand. But however it happens, the Parliament of the Self issues a decision.

In this case, the decision might be: yes, let’s accept Jeff’s invitation to lunch.

And out onto the well of the Parliament steps our King. One of his aides places a piece of paper in the King’s pocket without him noticing – it is the Parliament’s decision. His retinue leads him to the Royal Balcony, where the curtains are drawn back so that he may step outside, to make an announcement to the world. With noble haughtiness, he takes out the message from his pocket, which he distinctly remembers having written himself:

“I have decided that I shall accept Jeff Rosenwall’s invitation to lunch.”

Why have a Deluded Monarch? Consider the counter-factual. If we didn’t have a Deluded Monarch, what would our experience be like? We would be exposed to the chaotic din of the Parliament of Mind, sure. It might feel a little like a schizophrenic breakdown.

But more to the point of social fitness, how could we present ourselves to others as reliable social partners if we didn’t speak with a single, persisting voice? Just as how a Secretary of State has to ignore the competing and often conflicting interests of her country’s constituencies, and speak to foreign diplomats with a unitary view and a unitary policy, so our Deluded Monarch is there to represent us in a consistent way. Survival in our ancestral environment – and even more so in the complex social world we inhabit now – depends on our ability to form pacts and alliances.

There may also be some self-regulatory benefits to having a Deluded Monarch. By having the marker of a Deluded Monarch’s balcony address, we can regulate our impulses so that they serve our organism’s interests. Hearing ourselves make the royal announcement that we intend to do or seek something may help us to commit to that action. It may let the modules know that the matter is closed for the moment.

Now, it could be that knowing that your Monarch is deluded, and he or she is not really running the show could lead you to a dark place – of fatalism, or nihilism. But I don’t think it needs to.

Celebrating the fact that you contain multitudes, to echo Walt Whitman’s phrase, can actually be liberating. It can make you more, not less. And knowing that we are acted upon by these inner forces can let us be a bit gentler on ourselves, too, and more compassionate to others.

The Point-of-Consciousness Illusion

Have you ever played peekaboo with a baby? They love to have their view blocked, and then the obstruction removed – it brings them delight.

The standard formulation that we get from the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget and others, is that they are learning about object permanence. The child is learning that things remain in existence even when they don’t see them.

But there is another lesson from the peekaboo game, isn’t there? What if you reverse the chain of causation. What if instead of discovering that the thing out in the world is not dependent on the thing in your mind – object permanence – you discover that the thing in your mind IS dependent on the thing out in the world?

Well, it’s clear, isn’t it?  The object in the baby’s mind disappears when the input is stopped. Daddy. No Daddy.

The object in the world is different and distinct from the sensing of this object in their mind. I say this is a lesson, but do I think the baby learns it? No, I do not. It’s a very simple experiment, with a very simple outcome, but the baby does not reach this conclusion.

Why do I say that? Why am I so confident of that?

Because it’s difficult even for us as adults to achieve that sort of meta-cognition, isn’t it? So it’s a bit far-fetched to think that a baby would. When you see a red ball in front of you, do you think… hmmm, there is a symbolic representation of a ball in my mind? No, you just think, there’s a ball. Mind object is identified completely with physical object.

You might say… well, it’s pretty much the same thing, that’s why I don’t need to make the distinction. But is it?

Imagine there is a red ball in front of you. Is it really red? Well, what is red? Red is the property of reflecting light of a certain wavelength – specifically, a wavelength of between 620 and 750 nanometers.

Really, the property of red is the way the brain encodes that particular wavelength. Color is a property of mind, rather than a property of the world. The representation we have of the world of is just a symbolic representation.

To take it further: there are many dimensions and representations of that ball that are absent from your consciousness.

Imagine you were a bat. You might be able, with your echolocation system, to sense the contour of the ball. Maybe bats sense the material of things, because rubber balls definitely reflect sound differently than say, glass. So if a bat could talk, it might be able to tell you more about the ball than you could.

Imagine you were a dog. With your ultra-sensitive olfactory sense, you might be able to deduce who owns that ball – that it really belongs to that dastardly cat down the road.

But… you don’t have any of that information. You do have a pretty decent, but still incomplete register of data about the ball though.

It’s almost like we go through life with a virtual reality headset on. We can see a lo-fi representation of reality, and we can interact with it… but we don’t fully know the true world.

Saying consciousness is like a VR headset is not an original metaphor. It’s been used many times before as a metaphor for consciousness. But there’s something wrong with the metaphor.

The thing wrong with it is why this section is called the Point-of-consciousness Illusion, rather than just the consciousness illusion. Yes, our perception of reality is an illusion, but it goes further than that.

In video games, there is somebody inside the Virtual Reality headset. There is no little person inside us. We are not the person in the VR headset; we are the headset. Now this headset has other wonderful features, other than just reproducing reality – like reasoning, emotions, memory, etc. – but we are the headset. Why is that distinction important?

Imagine you are looking at a ball. Listen to the language we use… I… am looking… at the ball.

But really the ball is in your mind, isn’t it? So let’s bring the ball into your mind. With color added.

I… am looking… at the ball in my mind.

What is the I? Why is it distinct from the ball?

Well, the ball is just a sensorial representation, you say. So that information doesn’t count as you?

Okay. But if our sight doesn’t count as us, we should probably lose the other senses too, right? So no smell, taste, touch, hearing. Those things aren’t us.

Memory? Well, memory is made up of sensorial inputs, so no memory either.

Imagine we were born with none of that. Hellen Keller was deaf and blind, but at least she had touch. We have nothing, and no memory of anything either, no access to culture or learning.

Sure, there is some hard-wiring in our heads – like the hard-wiring that we use to learn language –  but with no input, it’s no good to us. With no sensorial inputs, there’s no thought. What would we think?

What is left? Is that our self? Nothing?

Or maybe… just maybe… we are those sensorial inputs. Maybe we are the secondary products of those inputs too: emotions, thoughts, learnings, our body processes. They are all downstream of our senses.

But if that is so… if our sensorial inputs are us… then we are the ball. There is no I inside us, no point of consciousness from which you survey everything.

Subject and object are one. They are just different neurons firing in the same astonishing complex of our mind.

This face you are seeing on the screen right now? I am you. I AM LITERALLY YOU.

The chair you’re sitting on. The air you’re breathing in. The world you’re in. It is you too.

Maybe there is a you and that you is everything around you. Or maybe there is no you at all.

Frankly, it’s just a semantic distinction. I’ll leave it up to you to decide on that, whoever or whatever You is.

The Narrative Illusion

We’ve talked about how we have the illusion of will – that there is a deluded monarch inside our heads that thinks he’s the boss of everything – but really, he’s not.

And we’ve also talked about how that Monarch thinks he’s the center of the world, but really, there is no center. Every fly, every doorknob, every speck of dust has as much claim to a royal centrality as our Monarch.

Our illusion of Self goes one step further. We spend most of our waking life creating stories about this Monarch. If you have ever tried to meditate, you know that your mind is very, very difficult to quiet. Neuroscientists tell us that when our mind has nothing else to do, our Default Mode Network kicks in. What do we think about when we’re thinking about nothing in particular? Oh, plenty of things.

We run social simulations, where we are essentially rehearsing for social situations in the future.

We are thinking about our biography and integrating it into a story about ourselves.

We are making short-terms plans – I’ve got to buy milk on my way home tonight – and long-term plans too – maybe I should change careers or buy a house.

We are evaluating our social circle, nursing grievances, celebrating friendships, refining strategies.

When we have nothing else to do, we create a set of narratives that acts as a bridge to society.

On one side of the bridge, these stories help regulate our behavior. Having imagined an ideal self, and also an ought self, which is a bit different – helps us be a little more like how we want to be. We know who we’re aiming to be – and we will probably feel bad if we don’t live up to that image. So the story disciplines us and shapes us.

On the other side of this social bridge, our narrative self helps us find a niche in society – a place where we can fit in. It lets us advertise to others what we have to offer. This is who I am, wouldn’t it be great to have me as a friend or lover or employee or member or whatever?

Is there an evolutionary value to having a narrative self? Yes, absolutely. Scientists tell us that around 20% of our bodies’ calories are burned by the brain, and the vast majority of those calories are consumed by the Default Mode Network. That would not happen if there wasn’t some adaptive value to this system.

But! That doesn’t mean the system runs perfectly all the time. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have trade-offs.

The downsides are states like depression, anxiety attacks, guilt loops, pits of shame. When we don’t live up to our ideal self, we get these emotions – and sometimes, the emotions don’t help us fix the problem, they make it worse. They don’t discipline us, they sink us down further.

And we also get that everyday feeling that life isn’t quite satisfactory – that there’s something missing. This is what the Gautama Buddha called Dukkha, or dissatisfaction.

Do you think you could take just a ten-second holiday from your Default Mode Network? For ten seconds, just pay attention to what is happening in you and around you. What are you hearing? What are you feeling? What are you thinking right now? Try it. I’ll wait.

Did the commentator shut up for ten seconds?

Now answer me this… and there’s no right answer to this question. What is more real to you? Your presence in the life in you and around you… or the chatter in your mind?

Look – we are wired to delude ourselves. These three illusions of Self  – of will, of point-of-consciousness, of narrative – they are how we experience life and you know what? Self is not a useless illusion. But it is a trade-off adaptation. What does that mean? It means evolution gave it to us because it made us fitter to survive, but… it also introduces real vulnerabilities to our organism. Things that not only make us unhappy, but also less effective.

If we can see through the illusions of our Self, we can tame those vulnerabilities, and come out steadier, stronger, more connected and more content.

How do you do it? Well, I can tell you how I try to do it. That’s with an everyday practice of meditation, of trying to be present with others, with myself. I do not try to get rid of the stories – I’m not sure I’d be able to do that, frankly – but I do make a practice of reminding myself that they are stories.

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