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Tim Urban recently published a fascinating piece in WaitButWhy.com titled "You are not your brain or your body," exploring the various ways we attempt to define what "me" means. He goes through several prevailing theories that make for interesting thought experiments.
The first is the body theory, in which the physical body is equated with the sense of me. In short, I am my body. However, this theory falls apart fairly quickly when you bring up the fact that most human cells are replaced regularly as we age. Sure, there are some specialized cells that are never replaced, but, by and large, the cells that you are born with are not the cells that you have today. And if we are made up of cells, and they are replaced, does it follow that I am no longer fully me when I shed my skin cells?
The second is the brain theory, in which the brain is equated with the sense of me. Since all cognitive processing and memories that give rise to my personality, quirks and habits are housed in the brain, then my brain must be me. Sounds reasonable until Urban brings up a thought experiment in which I have to donate one hemisphere of my brain to my twin brother because he has some type of inoperable brain tumor. This is actually possible since a person can almost fully function on one hemisphere as the brain is plastic and will rewire itself to compensate for the lost mass.
In this situation, my brain now resides in two different bodies. If it is true that my brain is me, then I should be in two identical bodies. In other words, there are two of me now. However, there still exists the duality in which the donor is the real me and the recipient is another person, even if the latter looks exactly like me and has my brain. Hmm, perhaps my brain is not me after all.
The third is the data theory of self, in which the data inside my brain is the real me. This theory sounds plausible until Urban brings up a thought experiment that I am going to retell using the transporter in "Star Trek."
When Scotty beams Captain Kirk up to the Starship Enterprise from the surface of some planet, he is scanning the exact atomic makeup of Kirk, disintegrating the planet-bound Kirk, and then recreating Kirk on the Enterprise. In the TV show, it is taken for granted that the reintegrated Kirk is the real Kirk. However, as Urban posits, the disintegration of planet Kirk fails and you are left with Kirk on the planet as well as Kirk on the Starship. Who is the real Kirk? They have the exact same data sets.
Or, even worse, the transporter goes berserk and misaims its beam at Sulu, replacing Sulu's data with Kirk's data so that Sulu thinks he is Kirk. Or is he really Kirk in Sulu's body? Then the transporter begins printing out a new Kirk every 30 seconds until someone pulls the plug. Now we have 50 identical Kirks with the same memory, personality, face, body, etc. Who is the real Kirk now? Does the planet Kirk have more of a claim to the authentic Kirkness than other Kirks? After all, they have identical sets of data.
Urban does not know either. So, he proposes the concept of narrative continuity as the defining element of self. He moves away from a thing-based definition of self and into a story-based definition of self in which the self is an ongoing narrative with you as the central "theme" of the story.
He does conclude his article with a quote from Parfit: "The early Buddhist view is that much or most of the misery of human life resulted from the false view of self."
Which is true, but he should have taken it further. What Buddha actually taught was that the concept of self was a construct that was created through a relational process. In other words, my sense of self is a mental story that I constructed as a result of my relationships and connections with other people, things and experiences. Self is a relational construct that is being constantly recreated as a result of the various connections that exist in your life, with the earliest and biggest one being your primary caregiver, who is usually the mom. Newborns do not have a sense of self. As they age, they begin to become aware of themselves through their everyday interactions with their caregivers. Similarly, the sense of self is a story that is built up as we go through life.
The Buddhist concept of the false view of self is when we believe that the self exists as an independent, eternal, self-sufficient entity when it is really something that we constructed. This is antithetical to the Christian concept of the soul, but it is not as scary as it sounds. In fact, it is very empowering because it means that we can also deconstruct and reconstruct the self by purposefully making different decisions and connections.
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook.com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.
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