Abstracts Accepted

William Hirstein*

Abstract

Much of our non-routine cognition is accomplished with executive processes housed primarily in the brain’s prefrontal lobes. According to several current theories, executive processes help achieve various mental actions such as remembering, planning, and decision-making, by executing various operations on representations held in consciousness. I plan to argue that these executive processes are partly responsible for our sense of self because of the way they produce the impression of an active, controlling presence in consciousness. If we examine what philosophers have said about the “ego” (Descartes), “the Self” (Locke and Hume), the “self of all selves” (William James), we will find that it fits what is now known about executive processes. Hume, for instance, famously argued that he could not detect the self in consciousness, and this would correspond to the claim (made by Crick and Koch, for instance) that we are not conscious of the executive processes themselves, but rather of their results. Given that there are several executive processes, the question of how and why they function to prevent the appearance of a single, unified self arises. This question in turn raises important questions about how the unity of this sense of self relates to the unity of consciousness—the way that the brain carefully prepares and edits representations so that what appears in consciousness is a coherent whole.  We should concede, I will argue finally, the possibility that consciousness is unified in order to create unity among the executive processes and harmony in their operation.

Key Words: Executive processes; Frontal lobe; Consciousness; Self; Unity of self and consciousness
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*Chair of Philosophy, Elmhurst College, USA.
Email: williamh@elmhurst.edu

Int Seminar MBC, Jan 2010. Accepted