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Self-knowledge: the view from inside
By: J. Lichter

The problem of consciousness and the self has been brought to the forefront of current science and philosophy thanks in part to exciting advances in brain imaging. Several books and articles are dedicated to it: Pinker (2002), Koch (2004), Zimmer (2005) are only a few of many examples.

While opening a new area of research with significant potential, neuroscience research has also demonstrated that science has certain inherent limitations that force it to approach the problem of the self with all the subtlety of an anatomist. Indeed dissection, or the breaking down of a problem into small units that can be isolated and controlled, is the key to obtaining repeatable and hence scientifically valid data. However, the approach of treating the self as an external object that can be dissected, when it is primarily an internal reality based on subjective experience, promises to teach us as much about the self as anatomy teaches us about what it means to possess a live body – necessary and valuable insights perhaps, but by no means the whole or even most of the story.

If neuroscience is groping, psychology, the obvious choice for a science of the self, is faring no better. The problem of selfhood is only just dawning on the horizon of current psychological thought. As Wilson and Dunn (2004) noted, “…self-knowledge has not been a mainstream topic in psychology”, the main reason being the reluctance of psychologists to struggle with the limits of consciousness and the untidy world of the unconscious.

It seems therefore unlikely that a scientifically supported understanding of the self will be achieved within our lifetime; but in any case, recalling the difference between anatomical knowledge and the experience of possessing a live body, we see that from the individual’s viewpoint an alternative route is necessary. Internal knowledge, the knowledge that results from our experience of ourselves, must be assessed on its own terms within each individual consciousness, if it is to be assessed while still alive. Science can perform the autopsy.

The problem of self-knowledge is of immediate concern. In practice, and within the legal system of every society, we bear full responsibility for our actions, philosophical protestations about lack of free will notwithstanding. Personal responsibility is even inherent in simply deciding on the truth of the simplest proposition and before any action is taken. It does not matter whether one thinks that the decision is supported by the data since, as even a little observation can confirm, different people readily draw different conclusions from the same data. Even if the decision seems to be supported by the data, the individual must give the final assent. It is not possible to shirk this final act of individual responsibility or to pretend that it can be transferred to some external agent, whether that is some mythical impeccable logic or an omnipotent God. Stated differently, we are personally responsible for our philosophy as expressed in the set of values and beliefs that guide our actions.

However, philosophy is vacuous if it does not start from knowledge of the knower. We need first to understand how we perceive facts and what drives our judgments before we pass judgment on anything. For if indeed, as we know it to be the case, our perception is often faulty and our judgment biased, then we are in no position to conclude anything until we correct our perception and understand our biases. This means that before we have reached a certain level of self-knowledge, we cannot form a valid judgment; it is our unexamined beliefs and prejudices that are doing the judging, not any rational faculty proceeding according to transparent rules. If our judgment happens to be correct, it is mostly by accident. Thus meaningful personal philosophy starts with internal or self-knowledge.

Assessing internal knowledge on its own terms does not mean entering an arbitrary domain with no rules. In what follows, I propose a route that seeks to set appropriate rules of evidence and validation that are applicable within the domain of an individual consciousness, yet are informed by the scientific attitude (a definition of the scientific attitude is found in the second article of this series). This is distinct from, and in some sense complementary to external scientific inquiry which looks at the self from the outside. It is distinct from the traditional religious approach which relies on belief and acceptance of truth from authority. It is finally distinct from the traditional mystical approach which has tended to view peak experiences uncritically as revelations of higher truth without setting any recognizable criteria for accepting such truth.

This view of the problem is similar to what was meant by A. S. Eddington when he spoke of the possibility of a “mystical religion based not on science but … on a self-known experience accepted as fundamental” (Eddington 1948). However, Eddington did not propose a solution, justifiably declaring the problem to be beyond the reach of the physicist.

This is the first of two articles concerned with self-knowledge. This first article sets the stage for understanding the difference between internal and external knowledge, and shows what self-knowledge looks like when seen from the internal viewpoint. The second article, titled “Self-knowledge: A science-inspired approach and validation” will propose a methodical approach to self-knowledge and how it may be validated.

Types of knowledge

It will be necessary to (re)define some terms before proceeding further. The term ‘external knowledge’ is meant to encompass the experts’ consensus in any given field of endeavour, as documented in learned journals, textbooks, etc. All library holdings, if they can be called knowledge, represent external knowledge. Even esoteric or Theosophical treatises, to the extent that they are knowledge at all, are external knowledge. It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the exact scope or limits of external knowledge. The descriptive definition given here is only meant to contrast it with internal knowledge, the starting point of which is personal experience or “intimate knowledge” (Eddington 1948).

Eddington distinguished between symbolic and intimate knowledge by giving examples rather than strict definitions. From the present viewpoint, it may be said that all external knowledge is symbolic though the reverse does not hold. Intimate knowledge is the type of non-verbal, direct knowledge acquired from personal experience – it is the essence of experience that does not require explanation. The distinctive smell of a rose is intimate knowledge; the reason we laugh at a joke (Eddington’s example) is intimate knowledge, to be distinguished from the type of (symbolic) knowledge that would result from an analysis of the elements of the joke. Likewise, the smell of the rose, when subjected to analysis of its elements and mechanisms, becomes symbolic; and if it remains pleasant at all, it does so on a completely different basis.

Internal knowledge has its beginning in intimate or experiential knowledge, but it must continue beyond that point to draw inferences and conclusions, becoming in the process partly symbolic. This is necessary because intimate knowledge ends where it begins – there is nothing further to be said about pure experience, since the moment one begins to analyze it one passes immediately into the symbolic domain.

Internal knowledge is gathered through one’s personal experiences, which may include such external acts as the reading of a book, but only as a stimulus to internal understanding. Internal knowledge is not rote accumulation of facts about the self; it rests on the personal effort to extract the essence of life’s experiences and understand one’s response to life’s circumstances. Internal knowledge is also distinct from what has been called ‘inner’ or ‘esoteric’ knowledge by mystical traditions, for at least three reasons: it cannot be taught by one to another, it is available to anyone who seeks it, and it is not hidden in monasteries or esoteric schools.

Self-knowledge encompasses what we know about ourselves as individuals, with our personal experience as basis. Self-knowledge may derive from all possible internal and external sources; nonetheless, it must ultimately be validated internally. While science and psychology deal in statistical averages and trends, any one individual may be the exception. Thus the individual must ultimately decide whether the pronouncements of psychologists or neuroscientists are applicable to the case at hand. This of course does not imply that one is free to dismiss external evidence on a whim. Rather, it means that insofar as generic external evidence purports to reflect individual internal truth, it must also stand the tests by which such truth is validated. In that sense, self-knowledge, even if it is prompted externally must ultimately become internal knowledge; and it is for this reason that the terms ‘internal’ and ‘self’ knowledge may be used interchangeably.

Self-knowledge in science, philosophy and psychology

A brief review of the problem as has been addressed by science, philosophy, and psychology will serve to contrast the external approach with the internal view of self-knowledge. For a clarification of terms, we must first look to philosophy. There are two aspects of self-knowledge identified clearly by Gertler (2003): 1) self-knowledge as knowledge of one’s mental states, beliefs, desires, etc., and 2) knowledge of the self as an entity, to include its special nature and characteristics.

To the author’s knowledge, no coherent definition of the self has been ventured by the neuroscientists who are attempting to study it. Thus it is not always easy to pinpoint what exactly is being studied. “The most obvious thing about yourself is your self”, begins a recent Scientific American article (Zimmer 2005). However, this breathtaking assertion is not an obvious fact, except in a trivial manner; and it certainly does not remove the need of defining the self at least to the point where we can agree on what is being studied. Actually, an indirect definition is offered in the same article: the self is indirectly identified with “the unified feeling we each have of being a single entity”. However, this cannot be adequate since in that case there would be no distinction between the self and the feeling of being or having a self. If the only self that exists is the idea of having one, ‘I think I am, therefore I am’ would be the disappointing end of scientific inquiry.

Yet neuroscience has apparently further demonstrated that even this “unified feeling” is an illusion. According to Pinker (2002), “cognitive neuroscientists…have shown that the brain does not even have a part that… [can] review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. Each of us feels that there is a single “I” in control. But that is an illusion that the brain works hard to produce…”.

It should therefore follow that, according to neuroscience, the self as an entity cannot be known because it does not exist. Presumably then, the only type of self-knowledge left to us is knowledge of our mental states, even if the question of just who does the knowing is apparently answerable only in the way Odysseus replied to Polyphemus: “Nobody”.

A related view comes from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, who defined “you” in a descriptive manner as “your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will” (Crick 1994). In this case, too, the self is seen as the sum of mental states and the “sense” of a personal identity or of being a self; the latter being illusory, we are again left with the study of the former as the only possible form of self-knowledge.

Wilson and Dunn (2004) do not define either the self or self-knowledge clearly, but do indirectly identify self-knowledge with “full access to [one’s] mental processes”. The qualifier “full” is significant, as it implies the ability to tell true from false: if only partial access is available, then it may not be possible to know whether the deductions one draws are correct, for there could always be something hidden that would invalidate the presently held view if it could be made known. Wilson and Dunn identify obstacles to self-knowledge, primary among them being “the inaccessibility of much of the mind to consciousness”. They assert that increasing self-knowledge is generally, but not always beneficial, in the sense that some illusions may provide a more positive self-image than cold reality. An increase in self-knowledge may come about through “looking at ourselves through the eyes of others and observing our own behavior”. They also do not see much use for introspection except as an aid for occasionally constructing “beneficial personal narratives”, although the distinction between introspection and observing one’s own behavior would seem to be rather too fine.

Mischel (2004) seeks to determine the fundamentals of “an integrative science of the person”. While the terms ‘self’ or ‘self-knowledge’ are not encountered in Mischel’s essay, it would be fair to assume that the “person” is fundamentally the social side of the self. And if indeed there is no other, inherent self, then the social side is all there is; the self can be defined through its external interactions. This idea fits with the thrust of his review, which seeks to identify what makes a person invariant through time; what aspects of one’s personality persist so as to make one identifiable from another, even as both personalities exhibit substantial variability in response to circumstances. Such invariant features would then be the self in the deepest sense, if no other inherent sense were available. Mischel emphasizes the need for developing a proper typology in order to classify the various personality types in a way that accounts for the influence of the specific situation and one’s response to it. From this point of view, self-knowledge turns into an understanding of the personality type(s) that one may belong to, which in effect permits a (probabilistic at best) prediction of one’s behaviour in a given set of circumstances.

A related viewpoint is provided by Dennett (1991), who ventured a definition of the self, thought to be compatible with the findings of neuroscientists. The self is seen to arise from the interactions related to a particular body as a means of maintaining a cohesive life-story narrative. “A self…is…an abstraction defined by the myriads of attributions and interpretations (including self-attributions and self-interpretations) that have composed the biography of the living body whose Center of Narrative Gravity it is.” Thus the self would appear to arise in a somewhat cyclic fashion from the fact that one makes attributions and references to the self; the narrative relating to the history of a particular body requires a point of reference for coherence, and that point becomes the self. In some way then, ‘I talk about myself, therefore I am’.

Dennett’s arguments cannot be fully engaged as part of this review. We may simply point out that seeing the self as an abstraction is a potentially valuable insight in internal knowledge, although the abstraction may be far more significant and powerful than one can imagine. However, it is also important to realize that from the internal viewpoint, any similar definition of the self, considered to be logically complete and final, would tend to have the effect of closing down further personal inquiry into the nature of the self. A sufficient definition of the self, if one were possible, would represent not the beginning but the culmination of self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge as internal knowledge

The brief review above does not do justice to philosophy, psychology, or neuroscience, nor to the numerous individuals and researchers who have attacked the problem. However, the aim of this article is not to provide an exhaustive review but only to contrast the approach of external knowledge with that of internal knowledge. Let us then proceed with the comparison.

Consider first Wilson and Dunn’s idea of “full access” to our mental processes. Full access implies that all the processes involved in a particular action can be slowed down to the point where they may be observed serially so as to become individually transparent and repeatable at will. That this is not necessary or particularly useful, however, may be demonstrated with a simple example. In a functional sense, we do not really need to know what computations our brain engages into when trying to figure out how to return a fast moving ball with a racket. It is doubtful that knowledge of those computations would make one a better tennis player (certainly, by the time one tried to perform them consciously, the game would be lost). There is a very different way of learning tennis, which involves training not only the brain but the entire nervous system in an associative way that integrates several processes at once and utilizes the brain’s parallel processing capacity, as opposed to the serial intellectual/logical process. Thus from a practical viewpoint, full access to one’s mental processes is not crucial. What is more important is an intuitive understanding of the way they operate. Self-knowledge, from the internal viewpoint, is more akin to developing the intimate knowledge of movement and perception that would make one a better tennis player than acquiring a physiologist’s view of how the body goes about executing the necessary tasks. The latter rests more in the domain of external rather than internal knowledge.

This idea of internal knowledge begins to show how self-knowledge may be validated and why full access is not necessary to ensure that the knowledge is true. In the case of learning tennis, one acquires valid and true (of at least one aspect of) self-knowledge to the extent one improves one’s skills, irrespective of the transparency of the mental processes involved. The proof of the knowledge is in its effect (more complete discussion on validation is in the second article of this series).

Consider next the idea of the unconscious, which certainly occupies a very important place in self-knowledge. Wilson and Dunn explain how the idea of the unconscious must be extended beyond Freud’s conception of a repository of repressed or forgotten experiences to include “processing modules” that “may have existed before consciousness evolved” (my italics). While decrying the artful dodging of the concept of the unconscious by their psychologist colleagues, Wilson and Dunn manage to omit all mention of C. G. Jung, who, as even his casual readers would know, was the first to point out the limitations of Freud’s view and how it ought to be extended. For example, “Consciousness grows out of an unconscious psyche which is older than it, and which goes on functioning together with it or even in spite of it.” (Jung 1939/1968).

It should be clearly understood, however, that in internal knowledge theories of the unconscious are not of fundamental importance. Knowledge must be acquired from first-hand experience, not by reading about theories, even if those theories were correct in most particulars. Nevertheless Jung’s attitude towards the unconscious is far more valuable than the belated and half-hearted recognition afforded to it by present academic psychology as it slowly doffs the behaviourist straitjacket. We do not have to hedge our bets regarding the existence of processes that pre-date consciousness – how else did human consciousness emerge, if not from an unconscious, animal-like substratum? Did it indeed appear fully formed, granted to Adam and Eve by the Creator some seven thousand years ago? And if it rests on an animal-like substratum, what reason could we have to assume that all that has disappeared and been fully assimilated into every individual’s ego-consciousness? Evidently, psychology can still be in denial of the obvious. Yet the prejudices of academics cannot be allowed to limit one’s personal investigation and self-knowledge. Learning about oneself involves getting to experience the contents of one’s unconscious by allowing the unconscious an expression while using reason to guard against excess: “Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too – as much of it as we can stand” (Jung, 1939/1968).

Consider, finally, this conclusion by Wilson and Dunn: that a successful strategy to increasing self-knowledge is “[m]aking conscious attempts to observe our behavior more carefully, and determine whether it is a reflection of parts of ourselves of which we are unaware”. From the viewpoint of internal knowledge, one may wholeheartedly agree. It may, however, also seem baffling that scientific investigation should be needed in order to arrive at such a commonsense, obvious statement, which amounts to no more than mere recognition that the unconscious exists and has an effect on behavior. Such statements serve to illustrate that academic psychology is only just beginning to awaken to the possibility of self-knowledge.

Mischel’s view of an “integrative science of the person” is more ambitious and in tune with internal self-knowledge, at least as far as its goals are concerned. He recognizes his field as intending to ask “the deepest questions about human nature”, and even feeding the hope that “people do not have to be the victims of either their predispositions or their biographies” (Mischel, 2004). However, both the current arsenal of social psychology and the resulting contribution it may make to self-knowledge are severely limited. Personality traits may be useful in predicting social behaviour and movements. The person, however, may not be simply identified with the sum of those traits – to do so would be to abandon the hope that one may transcend one’s predispositions or biography. Thus one may be classified as “aggressive”, “passive”, or “rejection-sensitive”, the last one being an example of type that Mischel approves of as having a firm scientific basis. From the point of view of self-knowledge, however, identifying a character trait within oneself is only one among the first few steps. Personality types are not the basis of self-knowledge but merely one relatively small aspect of it. Of far more value than the knowledge that one may be rejection-sensitive is the knowledge that allows one to overcome such sensitivity; so that a mere accidental character trait need not become the author of a predictable life story.

Thus it should be clear that self-knowledge is useless unless it is transformative. The most important question of self-knowledge is not ‘what am I?’ but rather ‘is that all I am?’ This is an inherently transformative question, and it is what distinguishes internal knowledge from the knowledge that arises through studying the self in the laboratory or through population researches and questionnaires. A listing of the parts that comprise a particular body-mind is not fundamentally different from the listing of the contents of one’s wardrobe. It is only when seeking to move beyond whatever one currently identifies oneself with, that self-knowledge acquires significance beyond the purely anatomical. For these reasons, a logically complete definition of the self in internal knowledge will remain elusive; but that elusiveness is constructive as it forever spurs one on to further investigation.

Consider now the previously cited review by Gertler (2003) as typical of the contribution of contemporary philosophy to the problem of self-knowledge. It is an excellent review that surveys a lot of philosophical thought in a clear manner. However, at the end of the essay one discovers that it is possible to read an entire philosophical treatise on self-knowledge and yet not learn a single thing about oneself. This is not a criticism of the article, the aims of which are to delineate the limits of and describe approaches to self-knowledge rather than teach facts about the self; but it highlights the fact that all the philosophical distinctions, classifications, and approaches, all the arguments about the extent and meaning of self-knowledge are as nothing to the individual seeking it when compared with the potential transformative power of a single, personal, experientially gathered insight into one’s own behaviour.

From the external viewpoint, self-knowledge is little more than a parlour game, to be debated in polite company with interesting arguments and points to be scored. From the internal viewpoint, self-knowledge is dangerous – it immediately brings into the light of consciousness cherished beliefs and attitudes, shows them to be illusory or counterproductive, and demands that they be abandoned. There is certainly no room for Wilson and Dunn’s beneficial but illusory narratives that are best not disturbed by excessive self-knowledge. There can be no such thing as excessive self-knowledge.

From the internal viewpoint, self-knowledge is hard work; and therefore, available only to those who put in the requisite effort. It is for this reason that when philosophers, scientists or psychologists speak of self-knowledge as something that is more or less equally shared by all, they are not speaking of internal knowledge. From the internal viewpoint, the assumption that all people are approximately equal in self-knowledge is as true as the assertion that everyone speaks Latin. Thus the external study of the average individual’s self-knowledge promises to be about as fruitful as the study of their knowledge of Latin.

Finally we come to the neuroscientists, who trace mental activity to specific areas of the brain through magnetic resonance imaging or related techniques. The fact that no single area of the brain lights up consistently when one attempts to survey a situation and make a decision apparently means that nobody is in charge; that there is no “you” except as an illusion or a fiction. This is a case where good science turns into bad philosophy, by implicitly accepting an arbitrary and utterly simplistic premise that “you” must reside in a specific region of the brain. Yet interestingly, internal knowledge came to a similar conclusion several centuries ago. This is how the mystic and poet Jelaluddin Rumi put it (Barks 1995):

“Your intellect is in fragments, like bits of gold
scattered over many matters. You must scrape them
together, so the royal stamp can be pressed into you.
…Grain by grain, collect the parts…
...Manyness is having sixty different emotions.
Unity is peace, and silence.”

Thus Rumi expressed the fact that in our ordinary state we are not best represented as a coherent personality with a single “I” in charge, but as a collection of individual, non-communicating or conflicting pieces. (It should of course be noted that such a deduction, if it is to be internal knowledge, must be re-discovered and affirmed anew by the individual concerned.) However, in addition to the observation of a scattered self, Rumi also raises the possibility that one can become unified (implying also that there is ‘someone’ who can “collect the parts” and must therefore be of a different nature from those parts). This is a possibility that would appear to be beyond the present horizons of neuroscience, and yet, as Rumi implies, it is also one of the most important transformative aspects of self-knowledge.

To summarize then, self-knowledge is the type of knowledge that is gathered through one’s internal experience and the attempt to understand external and internal events and one’s response to them. This is distinct from the concept of self-knowledge of academic psychology or neuroscience. The question of external science is: “what is the self?” Seen from the inside, this question becomes “who (or what) am I?”. However, internal self-knowledge is more like a continuous process than possession of a set of facts. Hence it seeks to question any static conclusion about the self and probe any perceived limits. “Is that all I am?” is the true core question of self-knowledge.

References

Barks, C. 1995: The Essential Rumi, New York: HarperCollins
Crick, F. 1994: The Astonishing Hypothesis (The scientific search for the soul), New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
Dennett, D. C. 1991: Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little, Brown &Co.
Eddington, A. S. 1948: The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge University Press
Gertler, B. 2003: “Self-Knowledge”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Spring 2003 Edition), E. N. Zalta (ed.),
Jung, C, G. 1939/1968: “Conscious, Unconscious and Individuation”, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9 part I, p. 281, 2nd ed., Princeton University Press.
Koch, C. 2004: The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, Englewood, CO: Roberts & Co.
Mischel, W. 2004: “Toward an integrative science of the person”, Annu. Rev. Psychol. 55:1-22
Pinker, S. 2002: The Blank Slate, Viking Press.
Wilson, T. D. and E. W. Dunn 2004: “Self-knowledge: Its limits, value, and potential for improvement” Annu. Rev. Psychol. 55:493–518
Zimmer, C. 2005: “The Neurobiology of the Self”, Scientific American, Nov. 2005, p. 93

Article Source: http://journal.ilovephilosophy.com

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