Ph.D. Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur University
[Article History: Received: 11 Sept 2023. Revised: 26 Sept 2023. Accepted: 30 Sept 2023. Published: 6 Oct 2023]
Abstract
‘Do you even know me?’ We often shout in the middle of an argument. Yes, this is a tricky question. But the trickiest question is “Do we even know ourselves?” It is not easy to define the Self by any single concept. Still, there are surely some facts that make me, Me. In my opinion, nothing is more familiar and unique to an individual than Consciousness, which constitutes the I. The I Consciousness logically requires a self to be conscious of. Moreover, there would not be any notion of Self, if there was no consciousness to postulate it. Consciousness is a widespread phenomenon and almost every reductionist has his/her favourite argument to reduce it to something, that it is not. If we really want to grasp the true nature of the Self, we must take consciousness seriously. An organism has conscious experience means that there is something it is like to be that organism. One could look or behave like a bat without altering the fundamental structure, but his/her conscious experience would not be anything like a bat at all. On the other hand, if I could be transformed into a bat then though my conscious experience would be similar (may not be identical) to those bats, the conscious experience of Self would not remain the same. If the uniqueness of the Self is nothing more than the conscious experience of that individual, then it cannot be analyzed outside the realm of the physical form, that is the Body. Pain is felt in a certain way to me because of this molecular construction or bodily structure. There might be a Martian who sometimes feels pain just like us, but differs in its physical realization. It is undoubtedly an enigma of how self-consciousness could be objectively understood without a particular standpoint. If we really want to understand a particular individual, we need to comprehend his/her point of view exclusively, the way s/he perceives or feels the world. This exclusivity starts with the body in the given realm of an experientially given world. Frankly speaking, without the physical body of a bat, the concept of being a Bat would cease to exist.
Keywords: Self-Consciousness, Bodily self, Subjective/phenomenal consciousness, Embodied Consciousness, extended cognition