Who do you think you are? Why your sense of self is an illusion

Humans

Most of us are convinced that we're coherent individuals who are continuous in time. There's just one problem with this sense of self 鈥� it can鈥檛 exist

By Catherine de Lange

11 December 2019

Invisible reflection

LET鈥橲 be honest, it is what we think about the most: ourselves. What we want to eat or do, how we feel and whom we love. It is the essence of being.

This selfhood generally feels like a continuous 鈥渕e鈥� sitting somewhere in our heads: a me that is the same today as yesterday. 鈥淢ost people feel that they are a coherent, integrated individual. They have free will, they are making their choices and they鈥檙e looking out through their eyes at the world around them,鈥� says at the University of Bristol, UK, author of The Self Illusion.

And that is just what selfhood seems to be 鈥� an illusion. 鈥淵ou are actually a collection of conflicting messages and signals and thought processes,鈥� says Hood. 鈥淎nd these are somehow brought together to experience as unified self.鈥� Fine, so your self is just the 鈥測ou鈥� experiencing that, right? That becomes a Russian doll problem, says Hood. 鈥淭here鈥檚 someone inside the head who鈥檚 having these experiences taking place inside their head and so on,鈥� he says.

Neuroscience tells us that our subjective sense of self must be a distributed experience, involving various bits of the brain. Although experiments have taught us much about the brain areas involved in creating it, how exactly it is conjured up still eludes us.

We do know that a sophisticated sense of self and others only comes on us gradually. 鈥淯nderstanding that your thoughts are different from someone else鈥檚 and being able to reflect on your own thinking, that鈥檚 a higher order skill and it doesn鈥檛 emerge until you are 3 or 4,鈥� says at Oregon State University. Even then, the brain areas involved in our experience of the self don鈥檛 fully mature until we become adults.

The continuity of our sense of self seems to have something to do with autobiographical memory. Very young children have little sense of self and also very limited autobiographical memory, while the experience of people with amnesia lays bare the role of memory in selfhood. 鈥淚f we suffer amnesia, the self becomes frozen in time because it can鈥檛 form new memories,鈥� says .

鈥淚ronically, the self鈥檚 main advantage might not be for ourselves鈥�

The unreliability of memory might help explain why even our illusory self isn鈥檛 very, well, self-aware. 鈥淢ost of us have distorted self-images,鈥� says Hood. 鈥淢ost people think that people are more interested in us than they really are. Most people think they have an above average sense of humour, above average intelligence. We can鈥檛 all be above average.鈥�

So why have a self at all? Because it is the interface between a complex outer world and a complex inner world, says Hood. Without it, we would be bombarded with conflicting information.

Ironically, the self鈥檚 main advantage might not be directly for ourselves. 鈥淗aving your 鈥榮elf鈥� means you can behave as an individual and be part of a group,鈥� says Conway. 鈥淏ut not just a mindless part of a group like an ant is, rather an individual who is in a group and can make their own individual contributions or walk away.鈥� That ultimately allows us to form our complex human societies 鈥� making the self, if it is an illusion, an extremely useful one indeed.

Cutting-edge science throws up all sorts of controversial, nebulous and mind-bending concepts. Here鈥檚 your guide to how to think about some of the fiddliest of them:

Topics: Consciousness / Mind / Neuroscience / Psychology

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