Harry G. Segal
Cornell University & Weill Cornell Medical School, USA
Title: The Search for the self in the age of the brain
Biography
Biography: Harry G. Segal
Abstract
Although the assertion that we all have “self” may seem indisputable, ideas about what the self is have actually evolved and changed radically since the middle ages when the words self and spirit were interchangeable. In this paper, I track the various versions of the self since Descartes’ attempt to bridge the anatonomical and the religious, touching on psychoanalytic approaches and more recent cognitive models. All of these, as useful as they are, are shorthand explanations for self experience; and yet there is no part of the brain where you can find the “self.” Instead, there are neurological pathways connecting perception, memory and imagination. Consciousness is whatever we’re associating to at the moment, and self experience is just one class of those associations. The experience of having a self is actually the continuity of a brain associating to experience and relating those new experiences to memory. Considered in this light, it’s not I think therefore I am, it’s I associate therefore I am. This associative model of consciousness can be used to explain social-constructivist and interpersonal models of the self, as well as new ways of understanding identity, psychopathology, and creativity.