When I say you, I mean you as a reader.
This is one of the most important problems that I try to solve, but in my opinion, everyone should face this problem squarely! If you don’t understand the importance of this question, please stop reading this article, stare at yourself in the mirror for a few minutes, repeat this question many times, and watch when you feel confused.
Another famous exercise proposed by Douglas Harding (British philosophy writer) is to look at your feet, hands, elbows, fingers, and then your head. At this point, you will notice a screen that presents the world, not where your head should be. This means that the world is where your head should be. This exercise is to tell you that without the help of pictures, mirrors or other reflectors, you can never really see your head. To be honest, you are not the head, but the world presented to you.
Another way of thinking is that when you read this article, the trillions of synapses in your brain have electrochemical reactions, but you don’t realize it. However, if I point to your toes, you know how your toes feel. How do your toes feel at the moment? Is the air around you warm or cool? Now that I have asked you to pay attention to these issues, you have to be aware of these feelings.
Now, most of your thoughts are focused on the sensation of your toes or the air around you. This is the consciousness I want to say, or more precisely, semi-consciousness. If I did not point it out, you would not be aware of it; however, now that I pointed it out, you can’t help but think about it.
Many things happen in a semi-conscious state, for example, breathing. Are you inhaling or exhaling? Once you focus on this, they will stay in the centre of your consciousness. However, you cannot be aware of some things, for example, digestion. Although I have talked with some monks who claim to be able to control heartbeat and digestion and be aware of them, in this discussion, we assume that you have not mastered this ability.
Then there are things you are paying attention to. Recall the examples of toes and breathing; you pay attention to them deliberately. You are paying attention to these words; in fact, I think your experience will change from noticing the ever-changing sensations (from noticing to semi-attention, and vice versa), going through the various stages of wakefulness and sleep, from birth to death.
So far, I have asserted that you are already paying attention to certain things, you can start paying attention to other things, and you will never be able to notice or realize some things. But, at the level of the brain, or at the level of the unconscious, how do things that are not realized happen?
Our brain is divided into two hemispheres, which is indisputable. However, the two hemispheres play different roles in the way the world is presented, which is controversial. But I will follow the view that the two brain hemispheres present the world we experience in different ways. For example, if you read this article in a room, you can understand that you notice that you are in a room as a result of the right hemisphere because the right hemisphere integrates things into a whole. But, on the other hand, due to the role of the left hemisphere, you will notice chairs, sheets, clothes or other specific items in the room.
When I say «right hemisphere do this» or «left hemisphere do that», readers should notice that in any person’s brain, at any given time, both hemispheres are actively participating. Unless one of the hemispheres is damaged or removed, both hemispheres will move at the same time. Almost all thought processes and even all mental states require the participation of both hemispheres: information is constantly being passed between the two hemispheres.
Information can be transmitted in any direction several times within a second. The activity shown by the scan is a function of the threshold set: if the threshold is set low enough, people will always see activity in almost all parts of the brain. However, on the empirical level, the world as we know it is integrated by the work of the two brain hemispheres, and each hemisphere has its own way of understanding the world-its own «view» of the world. This integration is unlikely to be half-and-half.
Another problem is that individuals have differences in the dominant hemisphere and the lateralization of the brain. I will talk about «right hemisphere» and «left hemisphere» throughout, as if these concepts are universally applicable. but it is not the truth. These terms mean general generalizations.
The two hemispheres of the brain are connected by the corpus callosum, which is a «C»-shaped nerve fibre bundle. The corpus callosum contains about 300 million to 800 million fibres, connecting two regions with similar topological structures in the hemispheres. However, only 2% of cerebral cortex neurons are bound by this nerve fibre bundle. More importantly, the main purpose of many connections is actually suppression—in other words, to prevent interference from the other hemisphere.
If you are puzzled, to put it bluntly, it means that the left and right hemispheres are not communicating with each other (if you are a professional cognitive scientist, neuroscientist, surgeon or anyone who has read a lot of literature on this topic, Please note that this is an over-simplified statement and does not carry any defamatory meaning).
The reason for delving into a lateral advantage is to come up with the next point of view, which is related to a person named Phineas Gage. He survived an accident, but a large iron rod penetrated his head completely, damaging most of the left frontal lobe of his brain. According to reports, for the remaining 12 years of his life, this injury had a huge impact on his character and behaviour—enough to make friends think that he (at least for a period of time) «is no longer Gage.»
This shows that when a person can only use part of the hemisphere, their personality will completely change. Phineas Gage’s right frontal lobe will take over the functions of the left frontal lobe, which is not outrageous. However, how these functions are performed will affect the personality of the person concerned.
However, it is difficult for me to clarify this idea: when part of the left frontal lobe of Phineas Gage is damaged, the brain will not create a new personality for him. The right frontal lobe can always participate in the formation of these behaviours or the personality itself. But after the left frontal lobe is completely destroyed, the personality of the right frontal lobe will dominate.
Another point to note is that the brain is divided into four lobes, but damage to only one of the lobes will cause such drastic changes. This is a quasi-Freudian picture of the brain.
But what I want to emphasize is this: injury can change a region of the brain. You may bring into consciousness other personalities that you were not aware of before. The controversial argument I want to make is that your brain helps to bind multiple personalities together, but only one personality is dominant and becomes the centre of consciousness.
We experience this interweaving of multiple personalities every day. Take our thinking as an example. Every one of us (except robots) has a mind. But what is meant by thinking? Well, almost everything you experience is thought. Human activities, from the most constructive-such as finding a cure for the new crown epidemic, to the most destructive-such as the manufacture of biological and chemical weapons, are all products of thinking by people like us. But in our minds, we live under a kind of tyranny.
We usually think that these thoughts are created by us, but to borrow traditional Buddhist sayings, self is also a kind of thought construction. Anyone who has tried meditation will know that the moment you concentrate on breathing, you will «see» your thoughts. It is the most infinite, chaotic, tit-for-tat, rude, and intolerable person you have ever seen. It’s like you have a lunatic roommate in your head who will never shut up, but you can’t control it.
So what is the source of this idea? To bring up my controversial point again, I think that a person/personality in your mind exists in a quasi-Freudian way, and has never completely controlled your consciousness and thoughts. However, these ideas did get attention. This can explain multiple personality disorder, that is, a mental disorder in which a person has multiple personalities. Somehow, those unconscious personalities (forgive me for writing this) also dominate. Therefore, when an unfortunate event like Phineas Gage is encountered, the part of the brain that takes over the work of the damaged area also brings its series of personalities, and these personalities become the centre of our consciousness. Or dominate the way we see the world. Before similar incidents, people could not realize this.
Therefore, in summary, there are many people coexisting in your mind. They all have different characteristics, opinions, ideas, thought processes, personalities, defects, strengths, sexual orientations, beliefs, desires, goals, and so on. However, most of them have never made the stage «C position».