Self and consciousness : multiple perspectives PDF
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Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives Edited by FRANK S. KESSEL University of Houston PAMELA M. COLE National Institutes of Health and DALE L JOHNSON University of Houston l.J' ��r.����?G�ZP Press NEW YORK AND LONDON First published 1992 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Inc. Published 2014 by Psychology Press 711 Third Avenue. New York. NY 10017. USA and by Psychology Press 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Psychology Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an irlforma business Copyright © 1992 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording. or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congrt'SS CataJoging-in-Publication Data Self and consciousness : multiple perspectives I edited by Frank S. Kessel, Pamela M. Cole, and Dale L Johnson. p. em. Papers presented at the sixth Houston Symposium, organized by the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston, held in the spring of 1983. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. [SBN 0-80SS-OS32·X 1. Consciousness• • Congresses. 2. Self •• Congresses. I. Kessel, Frank S. II. Cole, Pamela M. Ill. Johnson, Dale L., 1929- lV. University of Houston. Psychology Dept. v. Houston Symposium (6th: 1983 : University of Houston) Bf311.S394 1991 [S3··dc20 9[·12733 CIP ISBN·13, 978·1·315·80765·2 (ebk) Contents Foreword Bernard J. Baars v Preface vii 1. The Development of Consciousness and the Acquisition of Self Ulric Neisser 1 2. The Role of the Self in Social Behavior Michael Lewis 19 3. Being Conscious is Being-in-the-World Ernest Keen 45 4. Culture and Consciousness: A Problem in the Anthropology of Knowledge Catherine Lutz 64 5. Brain Modules and Belief Formation Michael S. Gazzaniga 88 6. The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity Daniel C. Dennett 103 Author Index 116 Subject Index 119 iii Page Intentionally Left Blank Foreword The human sciences are back to the ineluctable fundamentals, including the foundation issues of consciousness and self. That is the most significant good news to come out of this anthology. No longer is it possible to maintain, as behaviorists did for much of this century, that humans can be understood in grossly simplistic terms. No longer can we say that the brain is nothing but a remarkably clever biological information processor, without addressing two basic puzzles that take us beyond that useful metaphor, namely the question of conscious experience and the many levels of self. Finally, we can no longer reject as utterly "unscientific" the great treasury of ideas about human experience amassed in two millenia of systematic thought in the Asian, Middle Eastern, and European traditions. We are now seeing a renewed and properly cautious exploration of consciousness, self, and the consciousness of self. This anthology presents a half dozen small masterpieces of exploratory cognitive science, including several by some of the brightest lights in the field. Provocative ideas are balanced by a respect for evidence, so that we learn what kinds of observations count for or against each hypothesis. We are not yet in the domain of fixed and well-established theory, but we are entering perhaps an even more intriguing borderland of thoughtful exploration and observation. This mix of interesting ideas and responsible empiricism is critical. It provides hope that today's ideas will not be purged from serious science as were the classic contributions of William James, Wilhelm Wundt, and Pierre Janet for so many years. This is important in a larger sense. When higher education in much of the world teaches that human consciousness (or unconsciousness) and the many aspects of self are mere fictions, to be disdained and rejected, something precious is lost for generations of students -- for what we believe about humanity inevitably shapes how we feel about ourselves. Ideas have consequences, and self alienating ideas have dehumanizing consequences. The human sciences occupy a position somewhere between history, philosophy, and literature on the one hand, and the physical sciences on the other. If psychology looks only to physics and chemistry for models, the connection between science and human experience is lost. The much-discussued dichotomy between the "two cultures" of science and the humanities is a false dichotomy, nurtured by an impoverished view of the v human sciences. By enriching science with the specifically human aspects of self and consciousness, works like this one offer hope that we can heal the artificial split between science and the humanities. That is why the significance of this book goes far beyond the cognitive sciences alone. Bernard J. Baars The Wright Institute Berkeley, California vi PREFACE This collection of essays had its beginnings at the sixth Houston Symposium, organized by the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston in the spring of 1983. As in the case of other volumes in this series (listed below) the overall goal of the gathering was to foster scholarly conversations across institutionalized boundaries, not only between different 'areas' of psychology but also between psychology and allied disciplines. Here then are contributions from a cognitive psychologist (Neisser), a developmental psychologist (Lewis), and a personality psychologist (Keen) in the company of a neuroscientist (Gazzaniga), an anthropologist (Lutz) and a philosopher (Dennett) who acted as the overall moderator/commentator for the Symposium. (Humberto Maturana, a neurobiologist/philosopher, also participated but was unable to contnbute to this volume.) AJso as in the case of the previous Houston Symposia, the basic means of structuring the conversations was the choice of a broad substantive umbrella judged to be both current and appropriately provocative. Here "Self and Consciousness" served as the organizing topic, primarily because "after an absence of over half a century, there has been a growing revival of interest in consciousness among psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, social scientists, and clinicians in North America and Western Europe. Of course it has never been entirely absent, being part of the theoretical vocabulary of the psychoanalytic tradition, part of the approach of Vygotsky and Luria, and a focus on interest for philosophers and social scientists outside the natural science framework. It is however only within the last fifteen years or so that mainstream students in the disciplines mentioned above have had increasing recourse to the term" (Marcel and Bisiach, 1988, p. 2). And such has been the case, with equal and corollary force, for "self." These, then, are six primarily conceptual perspectives on varied issues surrounding self, consciousness, and their inter-relations--how consciousness and different forms of self-relevant experience develop and are related to the acquisition of skill; the role of the self in social development; the phenomenology of being conscious, and in-the-world, and its metapsychological implications; the cultural foundations of conceptualizations of consciousness; how brain modulation, conscious and non-conscious cognition, and the formation of beliefs might be related; the self as the center of gravity in the human narrative that is vii autobiography. As the stream of schoJarly discusison of self and consciousness gained momentum through the 1980s such issues rightly remained of central concern. The process of preparing this volume for publication, also, unfortunately, ran through the 1980s for reasons now as irrelevant as -- they are irredeemable, but assuredly not to do with the contnbutors themselves. To them, and especially the publishers, we offer our appreciation for forbearance well beyond the call. DeJays notwithstanding, we offer the original creative perspectives of the Houston Symposiasts -- supplemented, in a few instances, by a "Retrospective Preface" -- partly because of the perennial quality of the issues involved and partly because the insightful and important qualities of the essays remain essentially intact As a consequence they will, we believe, yet enrich efforts -- in the 1990s and beyond to systematically - illuminate the defining qualities of human experience and conduct Bernard J. Baars' graciously provided foreword serves to suggest how these contributions can be constructively pJaced in the context of contemporary scholarship. F.S.K. P.M.C. D.W. KaSIChau, R A, & C.Ofer, C. N. (Eds.) (1981). Psycllolog:. second century: Enduring issues. (Houston Symposium 2). New York: Praeger. Kasschau, R A, & Kessel, F. S. (Eds.) (1980). Psycllolog and society: Ia sure.la of symbiosis. (Houston Symposium 1). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Kasschau, R A, Lachman, R, & Laughery, K. R (Eds.) (1982). Iaformation tec.lanolog and psycllolog: Prospects for t.lae future. (Houston Symposium 3). New York: Praeger. Kasschau, R A, Rehm, L P., & Ullmann, L (Eds.) (1985). Psycllolog researc.la, public policy and practice: Toward a productive partners.laip. (Houston Symposium 5). New York: Praeger. Kessel, F. S., & Siegel, A W. (Eds.) (1983). Ile clUld and ot.laer cultural Um:ntions. (Houston Symposium 4). New York: Praeger. Marcel, A J., & Bisiach, E. (1984). A cautious welcome: An introduction and guide to the book. In A J. Marcel & E. Bisiach (Eds.), Consciousness in contemporary science. New York: Oxford University Press. viii The Development of 1 Consciousness and the Skill Acquisition of Ulric Neisser Emory University Author's Retrospective Preface This chapter presents an early version of a theory that has more recently undergone changes of both substance and emphasis. Because the focus of the Houston Symposium was explicitly on consciousness, it provided a unique opportunity to determine whether my own ecological approach to cognition could be reconciled with something like a phenomenological analysis of conscious experience. As will appear below, the result of this attempt was the discovery that self-relevant experience falls rather naturally into three distinct categories. In the present chapter, they are called the "ecological self," the "extended self," and the "evaluated self' respectively. Each "self' has its own characteristic course of development, and the argument as a whole has a strongly developmental flavor. Partly for that reason, these three categories also fit certain aspects of the acquisition of skill -a topic in which I have long been interested (Neisser, 1983, 1985). Three years later, I returned to the same set of problems from a slightly difef rent point of view. Further reflection had suggested that conscious experience per se may not be the most effective way to approach the problem of the self; the concept of available information provides a more appropriate starting point for development and ecological analysis. A preliminary theory based on this insight appears in a recent paper called "Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge" (Neisser, 1988). In that paper, categories of the self are explicitly defined by the kinds of information on which they are based. Despite this dffference, the two theories still have a great deal in common. The 1988 version, like the one described here, begins with the notion of a directly perceived
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