Free Who Am I and If So How Many? by Richard David Precht

perspectivist self with the right inferior temporal lobe. The self as an object of experience is also linked to the right inferior temporal lobe, to the amygdala, and to other centers of the limbic system.
    In this scheme of things, there are several selves, but there are other ways of sizing up the self. After all, the taste of individualingredients tells us nothing about the meal as a whole. No matter how neatly these states of the self are distinguished here, they blend within the brain; sometimes we notice one ingredient, sometimes another, and they mingle within our consciousness so as to become virtually indistinguishable. Some hover at the brink of our consciousness, while others remain front and center. And they seem to originate in very different ways; some are only felt, while others are simply known. I have little say about my perspectivist self, which is normally a fixed entity. The same applies to the corporal self. But my autobiographical self is clearly something that I create for myself, by speaking. I talk about myself, and in doing so I tell myself and others about my self, embellishing it in the process. The same is true of my self-reflexive self and perhaps of my moral self as well (if that really exists; we will come back to this issue in detail later).
    The various facets of the self as seen by neuroscience are useful classifications, but these kinds of constructs cannot always be cleanly divided, nor do they necessarily add up to an overall state of mind that can be called a stream of consciousness, as some neuroscientists argue. So why not just call it the ‘self,’ pure and simple?
    One of the oddities in the field of brain research is that many neuroscientists dispute the existence of the self, all the while examining its origins. The self is frequently the bête noire in the laboratory that has to be postulated in order to be combated, so that brain researchers can provide a detailed picture of how a personality – and hence the self – is formed. The limbic system arises in the early embryonic stage. After birth, the brain establishes contact with the outside world and is revolutionized all over again. The brain structures adapt, reducing the number of neurons and coating the paths. At the age of eighteen to twenty-four months, a sense of self develops, and toddlers are able to recognize themselves in photographs. Only later does a ‘person’ in the social and legal sense of a responsible member of society take shape. Some of these abilities and characteristics do not develop in the brainuntil puberty and beyond. All these descriptions explain the growth of the personality and are at the same time inextricably linked to the sense of self, because people say ‘I’ when referring to themselves. Approximately one-half of this personality development , it is generally assumed, is closely linked to innate abilities. About 30 to 40 percent depends on impressions and experiences before the age of five. And only 20 to 30 percent of this development is significantly influenced by later influences in the home, at school, and so forth.
    Demystifying the self is a problematic undertaking. When Copernicus demonstrated that the Earth revolved around the sun, he discovered a hitherto unknown fact, and the old notion of the Earth as the center of the universe was refuted once and for all. When Darwin showed that all living creatures developed from primitive ancestors and that man was no exception, he was quite obviously describing a fact, and the assumption that man is God’s unique creation was clearly false. But if neuroscientists today seek to do away with the self, they are not necessarily establishing a new fact. The old notion that man is held together mentally by a supervisor named Self is not refuted. This self is a complex matter; even if it can be broken down into various selves, it is still a perceived reality that science cannot simply dispense with. Isn’t the fact that we feel we have a self