This is a work of fiction.
image by AI; my own prompt
I had been blathering on about our lack of free will, in my usual annoying way, when my friend said to me:
“You keep insisting that we have no free will, and no ‘self’ even to have it. But at the same time you say that we are somehow able to become more ‘self-aware’, enough to recognize our conditioning for what it is, so when we are ‘self-aware’ we aren’t so reactive.”
I nodded. She went on:
“But if there’s no ‘self’, how can there be ‘self-awareness’ — ie awareness of what the ‘self’ is doing? And what is it exactly that is ‘aware’ of the what this illusory ‘self’ is doing?”
Sometimes my friends are just too smart for me. I had no answer. So I decided to think it through, out loud, with my friend’s forbearance, using an example:
“I used to suffer from road rage. Not to the point of being dangerous or hysterical. But enough to fume about these incidents long after they’d passed. And enough to upset my fellow passengers. My wise women friends pointed out the ridiculousness and uselessness of my reactions, and told me they found them distressing. And intellectually I realized that the perpetrators had no free will over their actions, so it was useless to ‘blame’ them. And I remembered David Foster Wallace’s astonishing commencement speech explaining how he’d come to realize how we’re all suffering and distracted and hence he had become more compassionate about things that used to enrage him.”
“OK”, my friend said. “With you so far.”
“So by ‘self-awareness’ I mean catching ‘myself’ unhelpfully overreacting. And since that ‘self-awareness’ has seemingly grown, both the intensity and duration of my conditioned overreactions seem to have lessened. So perhaps instead of calling it ‘self-awareness’ (since there is no real ‘self’) I should say it’s ‘awareness of this body’s unhelpful conditioned responses’.”
“That’s quite a mouthful”, she replied, “but fair enough. But still, who or what is it that is ‘aware’ of these responses?”
I threw up my hands.
“I have no idea. Caught in the loop of ‘me’ here, I think.”
“Let’s try this: Your ‘self’ is just a label for what appears to actually produce that body’s conditioned responses. Right?”
“Yeah, but even more abstractly, the ‘self’ is the label at the centre of the mental model that attempts to explain the body’s conditioned responses. And that mental model only goes to work to rationalize those conditioned responses once they’ve already taken place.”
“So who or what is ‘aware’ of that model?”
“No one. Nothing. OK, so not only is the ‘self’ in ‘self-awareness’ the wrong term, ‘awareness’ is also the wrong term, since no one or nothing is aware.”
“So instead of the ‘self’ we have ‘the mental model that explains post hoc (and as uselessly as the pundits’ post-game analysis) the body’s conditioned responses’. What do we have instead of ‘awareness’?”
“Um… maybe ‘recognition’?”
“Heh… recognition by whom or what?”
“Damn. You’re not going to let me off easy, are you? Maybe recursively it’s a feedback loop in the mental model itself?”
“And how would that dampen your conditioned (over-)reactivity to a scary incident? How does the post-game analysis change the agonized reaction to losing the game?”
“Maybe it provides solace?”
“Yes! I like that word. The ancient word meaning comfort in the face of grief. So generally solace comes from another compassionate person — conditioning you to be calmer and happier (the word ‘solace’ and the word ‘hilarious’ actually have the same root, believe it or not). So, now, where is that solace ‘coming from’?”
“My conditioning. By others telling me in the past that my overreactions were distressing to them, and hence reconditioning me.”
“Mmmm. Not so sure. But let’s go with that for a moment. Does that mean there’s no such thing as ‘self-solacing’? You know, like self-soothing behaviours?”
“The body soothing ‘itself’ is real biologically-conditioned behaviour. If the post-game show analyst is just the personification of the rationalizing mental model, then I suppose that analyst might console itself that the loss wasn’t anyone’s ‘fault’, and hence be less flustered by it.”
“OK. Where does that analyst’s propensity to console ‘itself’ come from?”
“You’re making my head hurt. From its conditioning, I suppose.”
“So this rationalizing mental model, at least in ‘your’ case, has been conditioned by past behaviours to find consolation, and hence some relief, for and from its distress?”
“I hope so. You’ve got me so far down the rabbit hole here I don’t see a way out.”
“So then, what is ‘self-awareness’?”
“The rationalizing mental model’s conditioned, ‘learned’ capacity to find consolation in, and maybe clarity about, the body’s conditioned behaviours.”
“Even though the game’s over and that doesn’t actually change anything?”
“It changes how I feel about it.”
“Can you state that in terms that don’t require invoking the ‘I’ as a surrogate for the ‘self’?”
“It changes the body’s conditioned emotional chemical reactions.”
“You’re saying that the post hoc rationalization of the body’s behaviours affects your emotional state, what that body feels. If the effect of your intellectually consoling yourself that you were overreacting to road incidents is to calm your emotions, and if you accept that your calmed compassionate feelings reduce your subsequent overreactive behaviour, then that seems to contradict what your longstanding claim that our behaviours can condition our beliefs, but not the other way around.”
“Nope. I disagree. The acts of the people whose behaviour conditioned this body not to overreact were what produced a calming effect on my subsequent behaviour. And those acts by others also conditioned the rationalizing mental model that attempted to ‘make sense’ of that calmed behaviour. The model did not affect my behaviour, as much as the parallel changes in my behaviour and in the model’s sense-making about it, might lead erroneously to a perception of causality.”
“Then these calmed, compassionate, consoled feelings — what caused them?”
“Conditioning by other people’s acts, leading to re-conditioning of the rationalizing mental model to make ‘better’ sense of those behaviours, leading in turn to more calm, compassionate, consoled feelings.”
“And your subsequent, calmer, more compassionate behaviours — what caused them?”
“Simply the repeated conditioning by other people’s acts. The fact that we label those behaviours as ‘calm’ and ‘compassionate’ is just the rationalizing mental model’s post hoc sense-making. They’re just different behaviours, completely determined by others’ conditioning actions and the circumstances of the moment.”
“So you’re still asserting that our feelings and thoughts don’t affect our behaviours?”
“Correct, as counterintuitive as that seems. Others’ behaviours affect our behaviours, and others’ behaviours also affect the rationalizing mental model that gives rise to our feelings and thoughts and beliefs. Then the muddled rationalizing mental model misinterprets its feelings and thoughts and beliefs as having affected our body’s behaviours. Incorrect understanding of the causality.”
“If you say so. I’m still not sure. More than just a little counterintuitive. So then, this mysterious ‘rationalizing mental model’ — if it’s not ‘me’, and not a ‘self’, what exactly is it?”
“Just a label created to try to make sense of the seemingly plausible story we’ve just pieced together. Just as these bodies are just arbitrary labels, created for the same purpose.”
“Wait a minute now. Label created by who or what, and who’s the ‘we’ who pieced this story together?”
“The rationalizing mental model. It invented the concepts — labels — of ‘self’ and ‘us’ to try to make sense of everything.”
“It invented it’s ‘self’?”
“Nope. There is no self, that’s just a label, a concept, shit brains make up.”
“So this ‘rationalizing mental model’ doesn’t really exist either?”
“Oh, now we’re getting into what’s ‘real’ and what ‘exists’. Do ideas exist? Values and beliefs? Souls? Thoughts? Feelings?”
“OK, OK. Then let me put it another way: Did the ‘rationalizing mental model’ invent itself?”
“No idea. I don’t think the question really makes sense. Things somehow seem to self-organize. Where do thoughts and ideas ‘come from’? What ‘we’ label as ‘brains’ seem to conjure them up. (And I’m not going to get into what I mean by ‘we’ again.) But these are all stories. Stories are how the rationalizing mental model makes sense of things. They’re not real. They’re just stories.”
We laughed. So rare, so treasured, these friends who will follow you down a rabbit hole, just to explore, to exercise shared curiosity.
“Next time you talk to someone about how ‘self-awareness’ can make life easier and more bearable, if you’re lucky enough to be conditioned to have it, what are you going to tell them?”
“I can’t tell you. I have no free will, remember. Maybe I’ll just tell them I hope they’re lucky enough to have a rationalizing mental model with a conditioned capacity to find consolation in, and maybe clarity about, the body’s conditioned behaviours… Or then again, maybe I’ll just stop talking about the subject entirely. Not that it matters.”
“Oh but it so matters to you! Otherwise you wouldn’t want to talk about it so much.”
“That’s just my conditioning. It’s the same as with free will. We can know almost beyond all doubt that we don’t have free will, but that doesn’t stop us from acting, almost every moment, as if we do.”
“Now that’s an interesting subject. What’s your explanation for that?”
“I have an explanation, but it’s just a story. What would your explanation be?”
(to be continued, maybe… not that I have any choice in the matter)
