I’ve written about this quite often over the years, but I always forget it. I am my brain. Whenever I remember this I feel as if I’ve been hit by ton of bricks. This thought simultaneously fills me with horror and wonder, while also raising all sorts of ethical questions as to how I should live my life. Why should this be? After all, I’ve become accustomed to the proposition our selves are housed in our brains. I take it for granted, as an immediate and obvious truth about the world. Yet somehow that truth never quite sinks in. While I can mouth the words– or think them –the implications and truth of this statement quickly seem to withdraw. I understand it abstractly, but not concretely.
Like so many of us, I don’t think of myself as being my brain, but rather as being a self. In day to day life, my spontaneous sense of my being is that of a self rather than a brain. Of course, it’s true that if I am my brain, then my self is a brain. However, the point is that if it’s true that the self is the brain, I have to thoroughly revise my understanding of what my self is. What, then, do I take my self to be in my spontaneous consciousness of existence? I guess I take my self to be an abiding identity that is independent of its thoughts, experiences, sensations, and the world. My self is something that abides as invariant and the same throughout all my thoughts, sensations, experiences, and encounters with other persons and the world.
I think, for example, this thought. Perhaps it’s a thought of a purple elephant dancing in an otherworldly circle. There is me, this self, and then there is this thought. No matter about this thought. I might find the thought disturbing like a frightening clown in a bad dream. No matter. The thought will soon pass and I, this self that I am, will remain. Likewise, I have this harrowing experience of being trapped in an elevator. There is me, this self, and the experience. No worries. My self will abide, while the experience will pass.