Table Of ContentSelf and Consciousness:
Multiple Perspectives
Edited by
FRANK S. KESSEL
University of Houston
PAMELA M. COLE
National Institutes of Health
and
DALE L JOHNSON
University of Houston
l.J' ��r.����?G�ZP Press
NEW YORK AND LONDON
First published 1992 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Inc.
Published 2014 by Psychology Press
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Library of Congrt'SS CataJoging-in-Publication Data
Self and consciousness : multiple perspectives I edited by Frank S.
Kessel, Pamela M. Cole, and Dale L Johnson.
p. em.
Papers presented at the sixth Houston Symposium, organized by the
Department of Psychology at the University of Houston, held in the
spring of 1983.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
[SBN 0-80SS-OS32·X
1. Consciousness• • Congresses. 2. Self •• Congresses. I. Kessel,
Frank S. II. Cole, Pamela M. Ill. Johnson, Dale L., 1929-
lV. University of Houston. Psychology Dept. v. Houston Symposium
(6th: 1983 : University of Houston)
Bf311.S394 1991
[S3··dc20 9[·12733
CIP
ISBN·13, 978·1·315·80765·2 (ebk)
Contents
Foreword
Bernard J. Baars v
Preface vii
1. The Development of Consciousness and the
Acquisition of Self
Ulric Neisser 1
2. The Role of the Self in Social Behavior
Michael Lewis 19
3. Being Conscious is Being-in-the-World
Ernest Keen 45
4. Culture and Consciousness: A Problem in
the Anthropology of Knowledge
Catherine Lutz 64
5. Brain Modules and Belief Formation
Michael S. Gazzaniga 88
6. The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity
Daniel C. Dennett 103
Author Index 116
Subject Index 119
iii
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Foreword
The human sciences are back to the ineluctable fundamentals,
including the foundation issues of consciousness and self. That is the
most significant good news to come out of this anthology. No longer is it
possible to maintain, as behaviorists did for much of this century, that
humans can be understood in grossly simplistic terms. No longer can we
say that the brain is nothing but a remarkably clever biological
information processor, without addressing two basic puzzles that take us
beyond that useful metaphor, namely the question of conscious
experience and the many levels of self. Finally, we can no longer reject
as utterly "unscientific" the great treasury of ideas about human
experience amassed in two millenia of systematic thought in the Asian,
Middle Eastern, and European traditions.
We are now seeing a renewed and properly cautious exploration of
consciousness, self, and the consciousness of self. This anthology
presents a half dozen small masterpieces of exploratory cognitive science,
including several by some of the brightest lights in the field. Provocative
ideas are balanced by a respect for evidence, so that we learn what kinds
of observations count for or against each hypothesis. We are not yet in
the domain of fixed and well-established theory, but we are entering
perhaps an even more intriguing borderland of thoughtful exploration
and observation.
This mix of interesting ideas and responsible empiricism is critical. It
provides hope that today's ideas will not be purged from serious science
as were the classic contributions of William James, Wilhelm Wundt, and
Pierre Janet for so many years. This is important in a larger sense.
When higher education in much of the world teaches that human
consciousness (or unconsciousness) and the many aspects of self are
mere fictions, to be disdained and rejected, something precious is lost for
generations of students -- for what we believe about humanity inevitably
shapes how we feel about ourselves. Ideas have consequences, and self
alienating ideas have dehumanizing consequences.
The human sciences occupy a position somewhere between history,
philosophy, and literature on the one hand, and the physical sciences on
the other. If psychology looks only to physics and chemistry for models,
the connection between science and human experience is lost. The
much-discussued dichotomy between the "two cultures" of science and the
humanities is a false dichotomy, nurtured by an impoverished view of the
v
human sciences. By enriching science with the specifically human aspects
of self and consciousness, works like this one offer hope that we can heal
the artificial split between science and the humanities. That is why the
significance of this book goes far beyond the cognitive sciences alone.
Bernard J. Baars
The Wright Institute
Berkeley, California
vi
PREFACE
This collection of essays had its beginnings at the sixth Houston
Symposium, organized by the Department of Psychology at the University
of Houston in the spring of 1983. As in the case of other volumes in
this series (listed below) the overall goal of the gathering was to foster
scholarly conversations across institutionalized boundaries, not only
between different 'areas' of psychology but also between psychology and
allied disciplines. Here then are contributions from a cognitive
psychologist (Neisser), a developmental psychologist (Lewis), and a
personality psychologist (Keen) in the company of a neuroscientist
(Gazzaniga), an anthropologist (Lutz) and a philosopher (Dennett) who
acted as the overall moderator/commentator for the Symposium.
(Humberto Maturana, a neurobiologist/philosopher, also participated but
was unable to contnbute to this volume.)
AJso as in the case of the previous Houston Symposia, the basic
means of structuring the conversations was the choice of a broad
substantive umbrella judged to be both current and appropriately
provocative. Here "Self and Consciousness" served as the organizing
topic, primarily because "after an absence of over half a century, there
has been a growing revival of interest in consciousness among
psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, social scientists, and clinicians
in North America and Western Europe. Of course it has never been
entirely absent, being part of the theoretical vocabulary of the
psychoanalytic tradition, part of the approach of Vygotsky and Luria, and
a focus on interest for philosophers and social scientists outside the
natural science framework. It is however only within the last fifteen
years or so that mainstream students in the disciplines mentioned above
have had increasing recourse to the term" (Marcel and Bisiach, 1988, p.
2). And such has been the case, with equal and corollary force, for
"self."
These, then, are six primarily conceptual perspectives on varied
issues surrounding self, consciousness, and their inter-relations--how
consciousness and different forms of self-relevant experience develop and
are related to the acquisition of skill; the role of the self in social
development; the phenomenology of being conscious, and in-the-world,
and its metapsychological implications; the cultural foundations of
conceptualizations of consciousness; how brain modulation, conscious
and non-conscious cognition, and the formation of beliefs might be
related; the self as the center of gravity in the human narrative that is
vii
autobiography. As the stream of schoJarly discusison of self and
consciousness gained momentum through the 1980s such issues rightly
remained of central concern.
The process of preparing this volume for publication, also,
unfortunately, ran through the 1980s for reasons now as irrelevant as
--
they are irredeemable, but assuredly not to do with the contnbutors
themselves. To them, and especially the publishers, we offer our
appreciation for forbearance well beyond the call. DeJays
notwithstanding, we offer the original creative perspectives of the
Houston Symposiasts -- supplemented, in a few instances, by a
"Retrospective Preface" -- partly because of the perennial quality of the
issues involved and partly because the insightful and important qualities
of the essays remain essentially intact As a consequence they will, we
believe, yet enrich efforts -- in the 1990s and beyond to systematically
-
illuminate the defining qualities of human experience and conduct
Bernard J. Baars' graciously provided foreword serves to suggest how
these contributions can be constructively pJaced in the context of
contemporary scholarship.
F.S.K.
P.M.C.
D.W.
KaSIChau, R A, & C.Ofer, C. N. (Eds.) (1981). Psycllolog:. second century: Enduring issues.
(Houston Symposium 2). New York: Praeger.
Kasschau, R A, & Kessel, F. S. (Eds.) (1980). Psycllolog and society: Ia sure.la of symbiosis.
(Houston Symposium 1). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Kasschau, R A, Lachman, R, & Laughery, K. R (Eds.) (1982). Iaformation tec.lanolog and
psycllolog: Prospects for t.lae future. (Houston Symposium 3). New York: Praeger.
Kasschau, R A, Rehm, L P., & Ullmann, L (Eds.) (1985). Psycllolog researc.la, public policy and
practice: Toward a productive partners.laip. (Houston Symposium 5). New York: Praeger.
Kessel, F. S., & Siegel, A W. (Eds.) (1983). Ile clUld and ot.laer cultural Um:ntions. (Houston
Symposium 4). New York: Praeger.
Marcel, A J., & Bisiach, E. (1984). A cautious welcome: An introduction and guide to the book. In
A J. Marcel & E. Bisiach (Eds.), Consciousness in contemporary science. New York: Oxford
University Press.
viii
The Development of
1
Consciousness and the
Skill
Acquisition of
Ulric Neisser
Emory University
Author's Retrospective Preface
This chapter presents an early version of a theory that has more
recently undergone changes of both substance and emphasis.
Because the focus of the Houston Symposium was explicitly on
consciousness, it provided a unique opportunity to determine whether
my own ecological approach to cognition could be reconciled with
something like a phenomenological analysis of conscious experience.
As will appear below, the result of this attempt was the discovery that
self-relevant experience falls rather naturally into three distinct
categories. In the present chapter, they are called the "ecological self,"
the "extended self," and the "evaluated self' respectively. Each "self' has
its own characteristic course of development, and the argument as a
whole has a strongly developmental flavor. Partly for that reason, these
three categories also fit certain aspects of the acquisition of skill -a topic
in which I have long been interested (Neisser, 1983, 1985).
Three years later, I returned to the same set of problems from a
slightly difef rent point of view. Further reflection had suggested that
conscious experience per se may not be the most effective way to
approach the problem of the self; the concept of available information
provides a more appropriate starting point for development and
ecological analysis. A preliminary theory based on this insight appears
in a recent paper called "Five Kinds of Self-Knowledge" (Neisser, 1988).
In that paper, categories of the self are explicitly defined by the kinds of
information on which they are based. Despite this dffference, the two
theories still have a great deal in common. The 1988 version, like the
one described here, begins with the notion of a directly perceived
