Is your sense of self in your heart or in your
head—or some other part of your body? Is your sense of self within your body at
all, or is it a nebulous feeling and not really part of you? An article in
Discover asked this very question (December 2014, www.discovermagazine.com),
seeking to find the answer in children.
When Emma Harris, science writer, asked her
four-year-old daughter where her “self” was, the child immediately pointed to
her heart. This surprised Harris because she identified her “self” as “sitting
behind my eyes.” When she asked her friends to ask their children, the answers
ranged from the side of the head, inside the eyes, or their heart. So who is
right?
In 2008 Italian researchers asked 59 participants,
through structured interviews, to point on a human model “the
I-that-perceives.” It resulted in 83% of them pointing between and behind their
eyes.
In 2011 two German researchers showed 87 online
participants a silhouette of a human form and asked them to indicate a spot
where they believed their “self” was. Most indicated a point near their brain,
while others indicated a point near their heart.
Two Danish researchers from the University of
Copenhagen used physical pointers to locate the position of “self” with their
participants. The sliding pointer travelled over their body and participants
were asked to call out when the pointer hit a spot believed to be the “self.”
However, they found that if the researchers began the movement of the pointer
from the top of the body, most participants stopped at the upper face. When the
researchers started the movement of the pointer from the feet, the same
participants stopped the pointer at the upper torso (body). When questioned
about the discrepancy, they said, “both felt right.”
How can
researchers answer the abstract question without bias? And what does a sense of
“self” mean anyway? Is it the same notion as consciousness as defined by
philosophers studying consciousness and the self? The early philosophers, such
as Rene Descartes believed that our conscious selves (our minds) are separate
from our physical bodies, but recent philosophers don’t necessarily agree with
this dualist view. Neurologists, the brain scientists, indicate that “self” is
a result of all activities from the brain and body of a person. Philosopher
Daniel Dennett calls it the multiple draft model because the sense of “self”
changes constantly.
We are no
clearer—is a sense of self the place where we think, or the place where we
feel, or is it where we act, or hear, or see, or touch, or know …
So, where is your
sense of “self” – the point where you say this my “I-ness”—this is me: the
heart or the head or a multiple model or a separation schema? Try asking your
children.
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