In my opening I will simply outline the modern scientific consensus that there is no-self, and in doing so it will make all of his arguments obsolete.
The Modern Consensus
To quote neuroscientist and meditation master Dr. John Yates, “modern philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and physics have all validated the no-self view”. I can already hear my dear reader grumbling.
Skeptical reader: No self, are you kidding me? Are you telling me I don’t exist? That you don’t exist? Who am I talking to then?
With so much confusion about what the self is, and what the self isn’t, it is extremely important to be very clear as to what is meant by no-self. So for an explanation, let me turn the world’s most well known cognitive psychologist -- Harvard’s Steven Pinker:
“Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.”
How this works:
We can separate the “mind” into two parts, the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. The unconscious mind has dozens of separate subminds that process different types of information. These different subminds include the different senses - visual, hearing, etc, but also emotional, thinking, discriminatory, memory, and the narrative submind, which sort of sums up what the other subminds are doing and concocts the impression after the fact that all of these disparate subminds are one single unified whole. The role of consciousness is to integrate this subconscious neural processing that would otherwise be independent. These different subminds are located in different areas of the brain, and they use consciousness as a way to talk to each other.
Think of consciousness as a screen, and each of the different subminds have the capability of projecting their conclusions on to this screen, a sort of community bulletin board, for the other subminds to see and then use that information. Let’s give a concrete example of looking at a cat.
The visual submind will intake sense data from the eyes, and project that data into consciousness, where the memory part of the brain might quickly try and figure if we have seen that before, so that we can know what it is, and then another submind will highlight the relevant information to focus on - the cat - instead of something in the background, and project the image of the cat into consciousness, where the emotional submind will see that image and produce a feeling based on that image - say cuteness - and then the narrative mind will sum up what’s going on “looking at a cute cat picture”.
Intentions and decision making follow a similar process. The intentions and decisions are produced subconsciously, with the results projected into consciousness. Gordon gave the example of setting an alarm clock. The decision to set the alarm at certain time could go as follows:
Rational Submind: It takes 20 minutes to get to work, I should set the alarm for 730. *Projects that idea into consciousness*
Memory Submind: *Sees the idea of 730 in consciousness*, but the memory submind remembers that tomorrow is friday and on fridays there is more traffic. *Projects that thought and that alarm should go off at 7 in consciousness*
Anxiety Submind: *Sees 7 in consciousness* But if I wake up at 7, I won’t get a good night’s sleep and I’ll be drowsy all day!
Eventually the different subminds will reach a decision after arguing back and forth. This process takes place a bit democratically. When a majority of subminds “Vote” for a certain decision, that decision gets made, which then appears in consciousness “Setting it for 7:15”. And if Gordon is paying close attention he may even notice that his hand started moving towards the buttons before the thought “7:15 is good” enters his consciousness!
At no point in this decision making process did the conscious mind make a decision. The decision was made unconsciously, and the results were simply shown on the screen of consciousness. Countless scientific experiments have shown this to be true, decisions are made by the subconscious mind, long before they enter into consciousness. Experiment with this yourself throughout the day to see if you find it true. See if you can notice that your body often moves before the thought enters your mind of what decision you have made. Notice how you start to get up before you think “I’m going go to the bathroom”, or how your hand begins reaching for the milk instead of the eggs just before you think “I’m going to have cereal”.
The idea of the self is that of a “conscious agent”, who makes decisions, who knows things, who remembers..etc. But this is simply not how the brain and mind work. Consciousness doesn’t have memories, instead memories are stored in the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind projects that memory into consciousness. When you ask “Where are my keys?” You are doing so, because one part of the brain needs the memory part of the brain to flash that answer into consciousness so that the part of the brain that controls movement can tell the body to walk to where the keys are. All of these decision and memory processes take place subconsciously. As John Yates put it “consciousness doesn’t do anything.” And since consciousness doesn’t do anything, there can be no conscious agent doing stuff. There can be no self.
P.S Just to address your ad hominem..Dennett has authored more than a few peer reviewed papers on no-self, and his conclusion that the self is just a story the brain tells of what is going on. Here are two.
“The Origin of Selves” in the journal Cogito
http://cogprints.org/257/1/originss.htm
“The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity” in the journal philosophia
http://cogprints.org/266/1/selfctr.htm