Our Essential “I”ness … the Search for Its Address in the Brain
Does “I” — the first person singular — have or need a fixed address in the brain?Neuroscience seems caught between a quest for the exact spot where self-awareness is generated and theorizing that self-awareness is really an illusion. A search for the spot in the brain that corresponds to “I” — as in Descartes’ famous formulation, “I think, therefore I am” begins with an assumption: That there is any such address in the brain. How is the search coming? Historically, we have located our sense of self in our hearts or heads. Both locations make sense, in different ways. Our hearts pound when we have strong feelings. As for our heads, it’s more complicated… When, in as-yet unpublished work, Christina Starmans and her colleagues showed people from the US and India pictures of flies circling around Read More ›
