Self, myself , non-self and a soutien-gorge of boobies

Whence comes the sense of 'I'; where is the wellspring of my consciousness; what is the seat of both my Self and that knowledge of myself; what drives the certainties of my beliefs about the tangible world around me and my beliefs about the intangible world within; why would I possibly entertain the notion that a God exists or that Quantum Mechanics says something fundamentally correct about the world or that I should base my ability to remain alive upon a largely empirical but nonetheless instinctive knowledge of Newtonian Physics.*

The Penguin and I have spent a great deal of time thinking about these issues in line with those other time-wasting good-for-nothings, professional philosophers, and, although we may not be as smart, cultured or knowledgeable as they, we see no reason to refrain from a joint effort today. This is in keeping with our new-found aim, since the Penguin came back on line to me yesterday, of developing a philosophy by which both man and penguin can live in true harmony.

So where does this idea of Self come from? (We do not propose to become embroiled in speculations about the soul, spirit, djinn or whatever and so will consider only the strictly biological in our deliberations; we totally reject the 'Cartesian hypothesis of duality' as being unworthy of our consideration and a pile of dingos' do-dos to boot.)

The first question to answer therefore is: 'what is the brain for?' Quite obviously, it is not a pre-condition for life as many species of the biosphere have no brains but are considered alive, bacteria and plants to take the two most obvious examples. In fact, the Sea Squirt, a sister member of the subphylum Vertebrata, to which we also belong, at the end of its free-swimming larval stage settles down on a rock and promptly eats its own brain and nervous system! Daniel Wolpert et al make a good case for defining a brain's purpose as a means to control movement and, as a result, allow the organism to interact in a more pro-active, and therefore successful, way with its environment than a 'passive' plant or bacteria could do.

If Wolpert is right, and even worms have a nervous system and a rudimentary brain, then, by extension, the brain of any moving 'animal' must not only have the ability to differentiate self from non-self, otherwise it cannot move in its environment and there would be no environment if this distinction is not made, just an extension of self, but also the brain must be able to differentiate between the brain from the rest of the body; your brain does not move, only your arms, legs, heart etc do.

Therefore it can be relatively safe to assume that any creature possessing a brain is, to some lesser or greater extent, self-aware. The hindbrain (the part of the brain that sits directly above the spinal column) is responsible for many of the autonomic responses and activities such as breathing, heartbeat and also to mediate the signals coming into and exiting the brain via the central nervous system. However damage in one distinct section of the hindbrain (the Reticular Formation), as a result of a stroke for example, results in coma, no motor control and no self-awareness. If any of the rest of hindbrain is damaged, conscious, but not autonomic, control is lost but all other basic functionality remains intact; the so-called 'locked-in syndrome'.

Lying atop the hindbrain, roughly bang in the middle of your entire brain, is the midbrain which is largely responsible for mediating such basic functions as vision, hearing, motor control, sleep/wake, arousal (alertness), and temperature regulation and can be seen, in conjunction with the hindbrain, as a part of a basic 'brainstem' having no higher functions. On a basic level, this 'brainstem' forms the fundamental notion you have of 'yourself'; self as opposed to non-self. Unfortunately, this brainstem is almost completely closed off to access from the higher functions of the brain contained in the cerebral cortex; the convoluted blancmange which makes up most of the contents of your skull. We have no more internal and conscious idea of exactly how our brains mediate temperature control, our breathing, endocrine production or heartbeat than a sea squirt has.

Layered on top of this basic, primeval concept we have of ourselves as distinct entities, surely the part that allows us each morning to wake up from 'unconsciousness' and into the same person you remember from yesterday, we have all the memories of what we did, what we thought, what we learned, what we believed which have come out of the natural process of neuron-firing; the very process of thinking. In one very real sense, you can change what you think or believe but you cannot change who you are.

I may be a philandering, conservative, selfish, violent, egomaniac but I can change into a faithful, liberal, altruistic, benign, self-effacing and modest individual at the drop of a hat merely by changing the outward manifestations of my behaviour; these are all secondary characteristics, subject to rational analyses, subject to choices. However, I cannot hibernate over the winter; I cannot ask my body to produce less or more testosterone; I cannot stop the feeling of overwhelming tiredness after orgasm,***  I cannot prevent fear or a desire for flight, only attempt to master it; I cannot prevent myself from loving (or for that matter, hating) someone.

And so, in the end, who we are is fixed for all time; what we are is subject to change at a moment's notice.



* The chances of you, or I, successfully negotiating walking from one side of the street to the other is severely compromised without a basic knowledge of the fundamentals of physics; you, or I, are apt to be run over by a bus.**
**Although it may not be quite as simple as that. Some research on gannets (boobies*** are of the same family, Sulidae) a few years ago suggested that diving gannets know exactly when to fold their wings prior to entry into the water, by the size of the image of the waves on their retinas, they do not compute the trajectory; we may perform the same 'neat trick' when assessing whether it is safe to cross the road when in the path of an oncoming moving car (or bus).

The extent to which a gannet's wings are folded back on entry is below:

*** The booby's name is probably derived (not from that, dum-dum) from the Spanish 'bobo', meaning 'stupid' due to the bird's fondness for landing on ships where they were easily caught by nineteenth century sailors for food. They are, in fact, probably the least adept at landing of any bird, often cartwheeling head over heels when alighting on the ground;. The most famous of the boobies is the blue-footed booby, which genuinely has bright blue feet, which it uses in a version of the hokey-cokey (Am. Hokey-Pokey) in its courtship dance.

A blue-footed booby doing the Hokey-Cokey - you put your left foot out, 

you put your left foot in, in-out, in-out, shake it all about...

*** Despite our best efforts, we males have simply no way of preventing the flood of endorphins which course through our veins after ejaculation. We'd dearly love to cuddle up and whisper sweet nothing into your ears afterwards but it is impossible except by a massive act of will which our hormones are seldom prepared for; even if you do all the work, cowgirl style!

PS In the spirit of attempting to give names to all groups of birds which do no not currently have silly names like 'a parliament' (of rooks), 'a murder' (of crows), a murmuration (of starlings), an exaltation (of larks) etc, I give you 'a soutien-gorge'^ (of boobies)

^  French for brassière