BBC Horizon: Your Self

BBC’s popular science series Horizon is asking the probing psychological question: Who Are You? or, How Do You Know Who You Are? Jeez, man, that’s deep... Well, let’s start at the beginning with the time we first become aware of ourselves... Babies looking at themselves in the mirror seem to posses no sense of self-awareness whatsoever, but somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four months of age, children develop this recognition – and apparently only the great apes reach this level of consciousness. But there’s a price to pay: self-awareness also comes with the understanding of mortality, the awareness of your own death... This one researcher has even proven conscious brain activity (i.e., awareness of the outside world) in a comatose patient! Ultimately, of course, you’ll end up asking questions about the nature (and existence) of the soul, its relation to our body and its possible disembodied state... Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, Plato” and his theory of psychosomatic dualism ... I was for sure, but Horizon is only going back as far as Descartes ... and is crediting him with the separation of mind and matter, the spiritual and material ... cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”). You still with me? We then get talk about anesthesia and brain structure, as well as neuronal activity and trans-cranial magnetic stimulation in order to discover the source or essence of cognitive consciousness. Nor would this show be complete without at least a brief discussion of Free Will... Whether we call it our identity or consciousness, our thought process or free will, even our soul, we probably ought to conclude it is constituted by neurons sending electric shockwaves through your brain. Excellent show, this!