The Meme Machine

222 THE MEME MACHINE
on the neurons (just as the computation depends completely on the chips in the
computer) but to understand them we must work at an appropriate level of
explanation. But what is the appropriate level of explanation for the self’? The
behaviour of neurons seems to miss it.
Another approach is to identify the self with memory or personality.
Victorian spiritualists believed that ‘human personality’ was the essence of the
self and could survive physical death (Myers 1903). However, personality is
nowadays understood not as a separate entity but as a fairly consistent way of
behaving that makes one person identifiably different from another. This way of
behaving reflects the kind of brain we were born with and our lifetime’s
experiences. It cannot be separated from our brain and body any more than our
memories can. The more we learn about personality and memory the more
obvious it is that they are functions of a living brain and inseparable from it. In
an important sense you are your memories and personality – at least, you would
not be the same person without them – but they are not things, or properties of a
separate self. They are complex functions of neural organisation.
A final way of looking at the self is as a social construction. If I asked you
who you are, you might answer with your name, your job, your relationship to
other people (I’m Sally’s mum or Daniel’s daughter), or your reason for being
where you are (I’m the cleaner, Adam invited me). All of these self-descriptions
come out of your mastery of language, your interactions with other people, and
the world of discourse in which you live. They are all useful in certain
circumstances, but they do not describe the sort of ‘inner self’ we free looking
for. They describe no persistent conscious entity. They are just labels for an
ever-changing social creature. They depend on where you are and who you are
with. We can find out a lot about how such constructions are created – indeed
social psychologists do just that – but we do not find a conscious self this way.
The inner ‘me’ seems to be mighty elusive.
Where am I?
You probably feel as though ‘you’ are located somewhere behind your eyes,
looking out. This seems to be the most commonly imagined perspective, though
others include the top of the head, the heart, or even in the neck, and there are
apparently cultural differences in this imagined position. The location may
change with what you are doing, and you may even be able to move it around at
will. Blind people report feeling themselves in their fingertips when reading