The self, like emotions, is constructed by the brain

I'm continuing to make progress on reading Lisa Feldman Barrett's book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. 

As noted in a previous post about the book, I'm glad that I decided to read it straight through, even though some chapters seemed more appealing than others. Barrett is a good writer. She organized her book well, with interesting topics in every chapter.

Before I get to how she views the self, which is pretty much how I also see it, as something constructed, not a given, I want to briefly mention her wise words about jumping to conclusions about how someone feels.

We're all guilty of this, me certainly included. It's easy to do, but we shouldn't do it. Feelings, or emotions, are private. And Barrett stresses that there aren't universal outward signs of any emotion. For example, a person can smile when happy, smile when anxious, or smile when angry.

So assuming that they are happy because they're smiling isn't justified. Of course, it's way worse when people on social media claim that they know how someone feels just from words appearing on a computer screen.

Barrett writes:

Perceptions of emotion are guesses, and they're "correct" only when they match the other person's experience: that is, both people agree on which [emotion] concept to apply. Anytime you think you know how someone else feels, your confidence has nothing to do with actual knowledge. You're just having a moment of affective realism [tendency of your feelings to affect what you see].

Now, regarding the self, Barrett views it as constructed in much the same way she views emotions as constructed.

Not by a conscious act of will, but via brain processes. This means that just as there is no hard-wired place in the brain where anger or any other emotion resides (an essentialist view), neither do we possess, or are, an essential self, a perspective shared by Buddhism. She writes:

My scientific definition of the self is inspired by the workings of the brain yet is sympathetic to the Buddhist view. The self is part of social reality. It's not exactly a fiction, but neither is it objectively real in nature like a neutron. It depends on other people.

In scientific terms, your predictions in the moment, and your actions that derive from them, depend to some extent on the way that others treat you. You can't be a self by yourself. We can understand why Tom Hanks's character in the movie Cast Away, who was marooned alone on a desert island for four years, needed to create a companion named Wilson out of a volleyball.

Certain behaviors and preferences are consistent with your self and some are not. There are foods you enjoy and others you'd prefer not to eat. You might call yourself a "dog person" or a "cat person." These behaviors and preferences vary quite a bit: your favorite food might be French fries, but not at every meal.

The most enthusiastic dog lovers know a couple of dogs that they can't stand and are secretly fond of a few cats. Overall, your self is like a collection of dos and don'ts that summarizes your likes, dislikes, and habits in the moment.

We've seen something like this before. These dos and don'ts are like the features of a concept. So in my view, the self is a plain, ordinary concept just like "Tree," "Things That Protect You from Stinging Insects," and "Fear."

I am quite sure you don't go around thinking of yourself as a concept, but just go with me for a bit on this.

If the self is a concept, then you construct instances of your self by simulation. Each instance fits your goals in the moment. Sometimes you categorize yourself by your career. Sometimes you're a parent, or a child, or a lover. Sometimes you're just a body.

Social psychologists say that we have multiple selves, but you can think of this repertoire as instances of a single, goal-based concept called "The Self" in which the goal shifts based on context. 

How does your brain keep track of all the varied instances of your "Self" as an infant, a young child, an adolescent, a middle-aged adult, and an older adult? Because one part has remained constant: you've always had a body. 

Every concept you have ever learned includes the state of your body (as interoceptive predictions) at the time of learning. Some concepts involve a lot of interoception, such as "Sadness," and others have less, such as "Plastic Wrap," but they're always in relation to the same body.

So every category you construct -- about objects in the world, other people, purely mental concepts like "Justice," and so on -- contains a little bit of you. This is the rudimentary mental basis of your sense of self. 

The fiction of the self, paralleling the Buddhist idea, is that you have some enduring essence that makes you who you are. You do not. 

I speculate that your self is constructed anew in every moment by the same predictive, core systems that construct emotions, including our familiar pair of networks (interoceptive and control), among others, as they categorize the continuous stream of sensation from your body and the world.

As a matter of fact, a portion of the interoceptive network, called the default mode network, has been called the "self system." It consistently increases in activity during self-reflection. If you have atrophy in your default mode network, as happens in Alzheimer's disease, you eventually lose your sense of self.

Deconstructing the self offers a new inspiration for how to become the master of your emotions. By tweaking your conceptual system and changing your predictions, you not only change your future experiences; you can actually change your "Self."

...Western culture has some common wisdom associated with these [Buddhist] ideas. Don't be materialistic. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Sticks and stones [may break my bones but words shall never hurt me]. But I am asking you to take this one step further.

When you are suffering from some ill or insult that has befallen you, ask yourself: Are you really in jeopardy here? Or is this so-called injury merely threatening the social reality of your self?

The answer will help you recategorize your pounding heartbeat, the knot in the pit of your stomach, and your sweaty brow as purely physical sensations, leaving your worry, anger, and dejection to dissolve like an antacid tablet in water.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

"You can't be a self by yourself."

Is it that --- in Barrett's opinion --- our sense of self depends on other CONSCIOUS beings, other selves, in other to be a self ourselves (so that Tom Hank's character needed to construct one, given his memory of such in the past, over in that island of his)? That's a very interesting proposition, and great food for thought if true.

Although if that is indeed what she means, then one would need to know whether that's science, or merely her personal opinion, merely her philsophizing. And if she claims it as science, then it would be interesting to know how exactly one might have scientifically arrived at such a conclusion.

Or is it merely that one needs other objects other than oneself, not necessarily other consciousnesses? In which case it's all kind of moot, isn't it, because its obverse could only apply to a solipsisitic universe consisting of nothing other than just oneself.

Be great to have some clarification on this, in case Barrett's touched on this, spelled it out, elsewhere in the book.

[Ron E.]

It's interesting and enlightening to see that science is beginning to embrace the chief causes of human conflict and suffering. Barrett is one of many over the past few decades who identify the little understood 'self' as being a major cause of conflict for ourselves and in the world.

The idea that we (or rather our brains, minds if you like) construct our realities has been obvious to many who have made a study of themselves. They realised that the self – that is the identities we build – do not comprise of some mysterious essence but arise from moment to moment in our interactions with our environments.

I quite like the idea that we construct our emotions according to the (given) situation and it is quite feasible that we construct our sense of self in a similar way. As I mentioned on a previous blog, our human experiences, wired into the brain's network, have the survival ability to predict situations in our environment as they arise. Although the physical surroundings exist separately from the observer, the mind (or brain) determines the nature of the situation and acts according to its established experiences.

Individual minds are many and varied depending on the environment and the culture one is brought up in – its a matter of survival, physically and psychologically. Its not that we 'need' each other in a dependence way, its the fact that in developing a balanced sense of who I am (a self) we incorporate much of what society is, how our parents and peers think and behave etc. In Romania, many children ended up in awful orphanages with little stimulation or social interaction. Their minds and sense of self were severely impaired.

The idea of deconstructing emotions and aspects of the self is also part of the understanding that Buddhists and others engage with. They incorporate such undertakings through various meditation techniques. Modern research calls such enquiries mindfulness.

[um]

Do the legs also walk??

[Generation77]

Our self is just a construct? It's just a bromide that, at best, is only half true.
If it were actually true, then those who actually believe in it would live their lives as if it's true, including suicide.
But they don't opt for suicide, for they know they have a soul. They know their existence and their self has inherent worth and meaning, and that not everything is just a dream or a mental construct.
That kind of belief is common to sociopaths.
Yes, it's probably useless to point all this out, as the author never considers the shallowness of his arguments and keeps spitting out these half-baked pseudo-Buddhist missives.
The full answer is that we can refine our minds.
That's what true Buddhism is about.
It's also what Sant Mat is about, not that this would ever be admitted in a million years.

PS: Still waiting for that bombshell ev on Shabnam.

[Appreciative Reader]

Hi, um. 👋 Long time!

[Appreciative Reader]

Not sure why you think mind-and-self-as-construct would translate to suicide, G77.

It might, sure. Equally, it might equal soaring joy, and freedom, and also blase acceptance. Anything at all, depending.

..........I can see, though, how someone brought up mired in theistic soul ideas might find this sort of thing nihilistic, and unsettling. Is that what you mean? If so, I can empathize, to an extent. Except, of course, reality is what it is, whether one likes it or not.

[Ron E.]

To me, the self as a construct seems obvious and sensible, and allows one to understand the workings of the human mind. From birth, the brains absorbs experiences and forms a self structure based on experiences. Barrett's' research shows that emotions can also be understood as a construct formed from experiences.

The cognitive aspects of being human are all likely to be mental constructs – thoughts, emotions, memory, perception, reasoning and so on. As the brain is mostly geared toward survival, creating constructs from basic experiencers in order to instantaneously asses (mostly unconscious) would be a great survival attribute.

In a recent Psychology Today article entitled: - “Understanding why we have a multiplicity of self-states” relates - “If you have ever been surprised by how you acted or felt confused, conflicted, or uncertain about who you truly are, or realized how dramatically different you feel in different situations or in different moods, then you know that this thing we call the "self" can have many different and often competing facets and states—and if you haven’t had this experience, then you probably have not been paying too much”!

It is generally accepted in psychology that we have a number of selves that arise for different situations, it is not difficult to extend the multiple selves theory, to understand that selves, as with emotions (and perhaps all cognitive states) can be realised as constructs.

[Appreciative Reader]

“If you have ever been surprised by how you acted or felt confused, conflicted, or uncertain about who you truly are, or realized how dramatically different you feel in different situations or in different moods, then you know that this thing we call the "self" can have many different and often competing facets and states—and if you haven’t had this experience, then you probably have not been paying too much”

Interesting, that. I've heard of the different selves thing, but as cases in psychiatry, as instances of mental illness. Apparently, basis what you quote, this is a universal condition. That's ...very interesting.

Can't say I've experienced that, though, no. Sure, I've acted enough times in ways that I've regretted subsequently, without a doubt there've been many times that I've wished subsequently that I'd acted differently back then: but I don't remember ever having acted in ways that actually *surprised* me, acted in ways that that I found inexplicable even on reflection and analysis, no.

Sure, could be I haven't paid enough attention. That is, while meditating I'm often amazed how I sometimes catch my attention drifitng off into all kinds of thoughts, and oftentimes they drift off very far indeed before I finally get around to "catching" them; and it could be the same kind of "not paying attention" may have kept me from observing what you discuss --- that is, what you quote them discussing --- about different selves.

[Kranvir]

Emotions can easily be manipulated, just think how marketing influence our buying behaviour by appealing to our emotions, like the emotions of love or making us feel inadequate to create a connection or define a need. Isn't this what RSSB institution and Gurinder singh dhillon, the clown, practice to gain a massive sangat following. Look at his calculated white image , sitting high on a stage all signaling a god like figure and that we, the minions, are unworthy and unclean in front of him. In this information age, we are able to see the truth behind this sniddy person, the image he constructs as a God like figure in satsangs, and the contrasting real hidden personality of a greedy, angry, overbearing, narcissist, and now a murderer of baba of beas, that cares for no one but him self and his sons Gary and kirat. They are all guilty of living a lavish lifestyle from siphoned money. You are all exposed as an evil, satanic, cult. GSD is in etherical form of a sex demon. He actually has all his sexual pleasures with sangat souls on inner realms and ensures they are eternally in a cycle of suffering, subservience, and are made to be totally tolerant to his abuse of our mind body and soul. You are exposed , the truth about your cult is coming out you pervert baba of beas.