For uncounted millions of us, an elemental, intuitive awareness of ourselves—consciousness of oneself as a discrete organism (individuation)—becomes an indubitable fact, touching much of human action, thinking and experience. Self-awareness is a foundational experience. This point of view mirrors my 4-10-17 post “The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Human Meaning,” where human life is pictured as a process of self-expression and affirmation, a flow of actions following our interests and desires, an evolving process of learning and adaptation.

Each of us grasps the idea of our individuality as we reflect on the experience of self-awareness, mindful of our uniqueness with respect to life experiences, memories, innate genetic antecedents and random life events. And this process of individuation implies genuine uniqueness, even if that quality is sometimes masked by the depth of commonalities we share with all humans. We might even accept that in the grand scheme of things a person’s uniqueness seems overwhelmed by the mass of humanity. But even granting this does not negate our elemental self-awareness as an individually defined, contingent organism, a singular specimen of our species. Self-awareness of our ontological singularity is not illusory. And as each of us visualizes an end to our life in the not-so-distant future, the inevitability of our vanishing can become an existential moment of angst—my precious and wondrous individuality will disappear. But however uncomfortable knowledge of our brevity might seem, the result is a reinforcement of the “momentary” reality and authenticity of our short-lived individuality and self-consciousness. The eventual extinguishing of ourselves is simply a brute fact.

Acknowledging the authenticity of self-awareness points toward an irony in how we perceive ourselves within the larger human community. Assuming a rejection of solipsism, we can reasonably conclude that billions of humans living now, as well as those who preceded us, have experienced an equivalent, immediate sense of self-awareness. That nearly identical or interchangeable sense of self—the immediacy of “I”—cannot be an experience known only to you or me. We are not unique in that sense. The self-awareness that is so intuitive and elemental to me is not singular to me, although I clearly and justifiably see myself as singular and unique in the circumscribed sense described earlier—our constrained quality of uniqueness emerging from contingent personal histories.

Recognizing the irony of self-awareness refines one’s perspective —each of us in experiencing self-awareness can appreciate our unique individuality, yet from a broader perspective we can acknowledge others having a nearly identical experience of “I”. Our differing individual histories do not preclude equivalence in that elemental experience. While a person can stand apart momentarily as a singular “I”, we share with others the raw process of self-awareness—self-consciousness. This parity between members of our species—a fundamental sameness—can support a growing sense of compassion toward others, a cosmopolitanism with ethical elements and a powerful antidote to insular and illiberal tribalism.

Beyond reflecting on the immediacy of self-consciousness, the demanding task of more fully understanding consciousness has challenged current conceptual frameworks and intellectual skills. How does consciousness occur and what are its neuronal correlates? What is it about the brain that makes possible the experience of consciousness? But our present inability to fully answer these questions does not warrant the use of quasi-mystical language. In its place we can accept, with honesty and genuine humility, the indispensable role of approximations in understanding the nature of things, as we move along the path to more complete knowledge. In place of injecting counter-empirical language fundamentally inconsistent with well-established scientific theories, a more helpful approach is re-thinking how we picture the human psyche.

We can begin with the reasonable and very general assumption that consciousness occurs in our species as the result of complex chemical and electrical processes; the complexity and character of the brain creates consciousness. Just how those processes give us the immediacy of consciousness remains only partly understood, but a helpful beginning point is resisting picturing consciousness as a thing or object. Rather, part of an organism, the brain, creates the experience of consciousness. Our choice of language used in describing these topics—"consciousness”, “experience”, the brain or our “mind” (brain processes)—is crucial. My choice, expressed above, is naturalistic in the broadest sense, and may permit novel ways of understanding consciousness, perhaps through unconventional analogies. The goal is developing unique conceptual frameworks that are insightful and consistent with well-supported scientific theories.

Postscript:

The Buddhist philosophical tradition stands in contrast to the themes of this essay, challenging the very idea of the intellectual legitimacy of “I” or self-awareness language. An example especially accessible for those in the secular-humanist tradition is Edward Conze’s Buddism: Its Essence and Development. Although published decades ago, its argument and assumptions make interesting reading. And while it’s rationale for negating the concept of individuation is not persuasive to me, the process in which the serious reader engages—Buddhism’s challenge to accustomed European philosophical thinking—can clarify and make more robust our principal conceptual underpinnings.