The Emotion Machine

a dozen subjects, such as Neuropsychology, Neuroanatomy, Personality, Perception, Physiology, Pharmacology, Social Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Mental Health, Child Development, Learning Theories, Language and Speech, etc. Each of those subjects uses different models to describe different aspects of the human mind.

Similarly, to learn Physics, you would need subjects with names like these: Classical Mechanics; Thermodynamics; Vector, Matrix and Tensor Calculus; Electromagnetic Waves and Fields; Quantum Mechanics; Physical Optics; Solid State Physics; Fluid Mechanics; Theory of Groups, and Relativity. Each of those subjects has its own ways to describe the events that occur in the physical world.

Student: I thought that physicists seek to find a single model or “grand unified theory” to explain all phenomena in terms of some very small number of general laws.

Those ‘unified theories of physics’ are grand indeed—but to apply them to any particular case, we usually need to use some specialized representation to deal with each particular aspect of what all the scientists of the past have discovered. Thus, whenever we deal with complex subjects like Physics or Psychology—we find ourselves forced to split such fields into ‘specialties’ that use different representations to answer different kinds of questions. Indeed, a major part of education is involved with learning when and how to switch among different representations.

Returning to Charles’ ideas about Joan, these will also include some models of Joan’s own views about herself. For example, Charles might suspect that Joan is displeased with her own appearance (because she is constantly trying to change this) and he also makes models of how Joan might think about herself in realms like these.

Joan’s ideas about her own ideals.

Her ideas about her abilities,

Her beliefs about her own ambitions,

Her views about how she behaves,

How she envisions her social roles.

Joan would probably disagree with some of Charles views about her, but this may not make him change his opinion because he knows that the models that people make of their friends are frequently better than the models that people make of themselves. As programmer Kevin Solvay has said, [184]

“Others often better express myself.”

We need Multiple Models of Ourselves

“... But even as these ordinary thoughts and perceptions flowed unimpeded, a new kind of question seemed to spin through the black space behind them all. Who is thinking this? Who is seeing these stars, and citizens? Who is wondering about these thoughts, and these sights? And the reply came back, not just in words, but in the answering hum of the one symbol among the thousands that reached out to claim all the rest: Not to mirror every thought, but to bind them. To hold them together, like skin. Who is thinking this? I am.”

—Greg Egan[185]

We’ve discussed a few models that Charles might use when he thinks about his friend Joan. But what kinds of models might people use when they try to think about themselves? Perhaps our most common self-model begins by representing a person as having two parts—namely, a ‘body’ and a ‘mind’.

That body division soon then grows into a structure that describes more of one’s physical features and parts. Similarly, that model of mind will divide into a host of parts that try to depict one’s various mental abilities.

However, any model one makes of oneself will only serve well in certain situation, so we each end with different views of ourselves to use in different realms, in which each person has different goals and capabilities. This means when we think about ourselves, we’ll needs ways to radiply switch among different models we’ve made of ourselves.

Any single model that tried to represent all this would soon become too complex to use. For, in each of those various realms of life, the models that we make for ourselves will portray us as having had somewhat different autobiographies, in which we pursued somewhat different aims, and ideals, while maintaining various different beliefs and making different interpretations of the same events. This suggests another idea about what one might mean when one tries to talk about one’s self:

Daniel Dennett: “... we are all virtuoso novelists, who find ourselves engaged in all sorts of behaviour, and we always try to put the best “faces” on if we can. We try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional character at the centre of that autobiography is one’s self.”[186]

Multiple Sub-Personalities

“For there is not a single human being ... who is so conveniently simple that his being can be explained as the sum of two or three principal elements... Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves [but] it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. … Even the best of us shares the delusion.”

—Herman Hesse, in Steppenwolf.

When Joan is with a group of her friends, she regards herself as fairly sociable. But when surrounded by strangers she sees herself as anxious, reclusive, and insecure. For, we each make different self-models to use in different kinds of contexts and realms, just as we said in chapter §4: to think of herself.

Joan’s mind abounds with varied self-models—Joans past, Joans present and future Joans; some represent remnants of previous Joans, while others describe what she hopes to become; there are sexual Joans and social Joans, athletic and mathematical Joans, musical and political Joans, and various kinds of professional Joans.