Alan Leshner - What is the Self?

Personal identity seems so strong. We have the same sense of ourselves throughout our lives, even though everything about our physical bodies and brains is changing constantly. What then causes the continuity of personal identity? Some say personal identity is an illusion, but that seems like cheating. Others credit a nonphysical soul. That seems as though it’s cheating too.

Alan Leshner is an American psychologist who served as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Mental Health, has held senior positions at the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves on the National Science Board.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[piruz]

That huge tie distracted me; I had to watch this twice.

[danmc]

The biggest joke on mankind is that everyone is walking around thinking they are a real separate self.

[abdelchemami]

Great conversation. I feel it relevant.

[JustAThought]

Which is more important: understanding how reality works or why reality exists? I think we can all agree that reality exists. How reality works is currently beyond our ability. So, let’s focus on the why to inform human goals and priorities. Philosophy provides these answers for those that seek truth. PS: we do not need to study those that came before us to discover truth. The information is available to all that demand proof of assertions.

[keithwalmsley]

Wow how old is this video? Robert looks a dapper young dude!!! 😎

[mickeybrumfield]

What seems amazing is that the evolutionary processes can create such a complicated structure as the human mind in such a relatively short time. What a powerfully functional thing is the evolutionary process.

[halcyon]

" It is interesting, an interesting question..." 😁

[trystanjames]

My own self-interest automatically went to "surely there has to be for 'other' or uniqueness of the self to make life meaningful and diverse?".

However, thinking on it further... doesn't the prospect that this could all be purely biological make the existence and richness of humanity all the more incredible?

We are just pure biology, like every other organism on this wonderfully special rock, and everything we've ever done, felt and experienced is entirely down to biology?

[TravelerBrad]

What he touches on but never gets passed or doesn’t take chance to extrapolate further is the quantum question. We still do not understand how we go from quantum mechanics to classical mechanics. What the mechanism involved are or how they flow. There is research going on that shows that we, are consciousness, that part that is us is organized quantum information. It works in conjunction with the rest of the fields that become molecules which become human.

[williamburts]

What am I? Answer: Since to ask or answer that question I would have to be conscious that I exist I am an individual conscious knower, and it is this knowing that " you be" or "am" that is the self since to be conscious is to be self-conscious. Can we equate the body as the being the self? Answer: No, since the body and its sense's purpose are to provide the self the means to enjoy material sense gratification its value and purpose is in relation to the self and not unto itself. By the self being the enjoyer of the senses, the subjective self and objective body are distinct from each other.

[RyanMacWee]

I say that the self is all the immaterial aspects of the subjective experience.

The redness of red has no material aspect to it. Yes different frequencies of light signal the brain “red”, but then the experience of red, that is, what makes red experientially different from blue, is part of the self. When you add up all of these immaterial processes, they sum up to the self.

[infinitygame]

SELF HA HA I LOVE SELF, SELF IS THE TURNING POINT OF YOUR MINDS FACE AND THE POINT WHERE MEMORY IS READ OR WRITTEN IN EXISTANCE, wITHOUT SELF TGHERE IS NO MEMORY OF YOU IN YOURSELF OR MYSELF, WHILE PRACTICAL UNDERSTANDING IS THE SUBJECT OF MEETING AND LEARNING

[kallianpublico]

Why is it that emotions can “seem” to overcome the self? For all the power of the rational will to control what we say or do in front of others, is there another “force” governing what we are? A force detached from conscious reason? If so then how are we a self?
Can we “integrate” this other force into our rational will? Could we? Should we?

[glidingforward]

In set theory, every set (collection) is something in its own right, not identical to any of its members (which are generally sets too) but something additional to them. On the one hand, composition seems trivial but there also seems something mysterious about how the substances of parts are subsumed in the substance of the whole. By the way, set theory is regarded as a foundation of mathematics because all abstract mathematical objects can be instantiated in sets.

[tomazflegar]

"I'm not so well versed in philosophy to tell what's real and what's not real...." So what the heck they're doing?

[jamesruscheinski]

consciousness when physical interaction of neurons recohere into quantum waves that have thoughts and feelings relating to sense of self in subjective brain?

[mothercrazy]

This guest utters something that lots of top minds of his generation have stated before, and now it’s beginning to trouble me whenever I hear it: that we’re ‘only in the beginning stages of understanding cognitive science.’ To me this seems untrue. I think we are at the absolute crescendo of opportunity for human knowledge, and it seems more and more like the window for infinite discovery is fast closing. Access to information and the IQs to ask these questions are ever diminishing. These episodes may instead serve as a showcase to God of how close we got to figuring it all out before we were wiped away by some cosmic pie to the face.

[SillyHumons]

You could pin a tag on yourself and label it, but that won't cut it. You could say that you're awareness, but what are you aware of? Or you could think about these words: " As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is" - Jesus

[Arunava_Gupta]

Why the resistance to an immaterial soul ? Tell me, oh why!

[callmeishmael]

Amnesia, Alzheimer’s—consciousness and a sense of self remains, but not the same self? The self is a foundation for the construction of an identity, but the self can exist and operate without a sense of identity?Babies are conscious, but do they have a sense of self? It doesn’t seem so. Consciousness comes first and the sense of self is a generic latent arrangement of open receptors in the brain that fill and develop an identity which creates a sense of self over the first years.