Сергей Гладков – The Human Being as a Multilevel System (страница 7)

"If there is no observer, why can I notice my thoughts?"

The answer is not that noticing does not exist. Noticing exists. But it may be not the action of a separate observer, but a new state of experience itself. A thought can be lived through as complete content, or it can be singled out, named, and connected with other contents. In the second case, distance appears. But distance does not yet prove a separate entity located outside everything that is happening.

The second objection:

"If there is no center, why do I feel responsibility?"

This is an especially important question. It seems that without an inner center there disappears the one who answers for actions. But responsibility does not necessarily require a hidden manager. It can rest on continuity of memory, the ability to recognize an action as one's own, participation in relationships, the language of promises, the consequences of actions, and the possibility of reconfiguring behavior. Responsibility may belong not to an entity, but to a system that preserves coherence over time.

The third objection:

"If the center is only an effect, does that mean I am not real?"

No. This is too quick and too painful a conclusion. An effect is not the same as deception. A smile is an effect of muscles, emotions, situation, and social meaning, but it does not become unreal because of that. A house is an organization of materials, but we do not say that there is no house because it cannot be found separately from walls, roof, space, purpose, and life inside. In the same way, the experience of "I" may be real as a form of organization of experience, even if it is not a separate hidden entity.

These objections help clarify the model. It must not destroy subjectivity, responsibility, or the reality of experiencing oneself. It must only avoid adding an extra inner owner if what is happening can be described more exactly without one.

The Error of Intuition

The error of intuition is not that it feels the center.

It really feels it.

The error begins where the feeling of a center is taken as proof of a separate center.

A person feels unity and concludes: therefore, inside there is one entity.

A person notices thoughts and concludes: therefore, there is a hidden observer of thoughts.

A person makes a decision and concludes: therefore, there is an inner manager who chooses.

A person remembers himself yesterday and concludes: therefore, there is an unchanging self passing through time.

Each of these conclusions is understandable. But each adds more than is immediately given.

What is immediately given is the feeling of unity.

But a separate entity is not given.

What is immediately given is the noticing of a thought.

But a hidden observer is not given as an object.

What is immediately given is the experience of choice.

But an inner manager is not given as a separate center.

What is immediately given is the coherence of memory.

But an unchanging self is not given.

At this point, the book's critical rule begins to work: if an entity can be removed and the model continues to work, it should be removed.

But removing an entity does not mean impoverishing experience.

On the contrary, sometimes it allows us to see more. As long as we believe that there is a center inside, we tend to explain everything through it. A person loses control: the center failed to cope. A person changes: the center decided to change. A person contradicts himself: the center is weak or confused. But such explanations often close the question too early.

If we do not introduce the center as a ready-made entity, we have to look more carefully: which processes took part? What held the reaction? What memory was activated? How was attention distributed? What meaning was under threat? Which external expectations supported the habitual action? Why did coherence gather exactly this way?

What was previously explained by the single word "I" begins to open as a multilevel organization.

And here it is important to keep a limitation.

We are not yet proving that the human being is a system of stabilization of experience. That will be the next step. In the second chapter, only one overly strong assumption is dismantled: the assumption that the feeling of a center necessarily points to a separate inner center.

Perhaps the center is not the source.

Perhaps the center is an effect.

This is exactly why the word "illusion" in the chapter title must be understood carefully.

The illusion of the center does not mean that a person is simply mistaken and experiences something nonexistent. Rather, it means that the experience is interpreted too strongly. We feel a center and draw from this a conclusion about an entity. We feel observation and draw a conclusion about an observer. We feel continuity and draw a conclusion about an unchanging self.

The error is not in the experience.

The error is in the added explanation.

A Counterexample and a Limitation

There are cases that do not allow us to speak too confidently.

For example, the experience of attentive presence may be so clear that it seems impossible to call it simply an effect. In meditation, prayer, deep concentration, creative work, the experience of danger, or the experience of strong beauty, a feeling of pure presence may arise: thoughts change, emotions pass, but something remains open, clear, observing.

If the model says too quickly, "this is only an effect of assembly," it will lose subtlety.

The word "only" is dangerous here. It sounds as if an effect is less real than an entity. But this is not necessarily so. A rainbow is also an effect of conditions of perception, light, and water, but that does not mean that it is "not there" in the experienced world. Music arises from relations of sounds in time, but it is not an illusion only because it cannot be found as a separate object between the notes.

The feeling of the observer may be a real phenomenon of experience.

The limitation of the model is that it must not deny this phenomenon. It must only carefully refuse the extra step: turning the phenomenon into a separate entity.

What could weaken this hypothesis?

If the inner observer were found as a stable separate object of experience, independent of memory, attention, language, bodily perspective, and changing states, the model of the effect of assembly would be insufficient. But this is precisely what ordinary checking does not find. We find experiences of presence, forms of attention, the feeling "I am here", but we do not find a separate hidden center.

Therefore the conclusion remains cautious:

the feeling of the observer requires explanation,

but it does not require the immediate introduction of the observer as an entity.

A New Question

Now we can return to the night scene.

A person lies in the dark and notices the inner monologue. Thoughts move, change, return, argue with one another. He tries to find the one who observes all this. But each time he finds only new elements of experience: a thought about himself, a feeling of presence, attention, a bodily point of view, memory, inner speech.

The feeling of the center does not disappear.

But its status changes.

Earlier it seemed to be proof: if I feel a center, then it exists as a separate inner entity.

Now it becomes a question: which processes create this feeling of a center?

This shift can be disorienting. If the center is not found as a separate object, an anxious question appears: who then lives, chooses, remembers, answers, loves, makes mistakes? Does the human being fall apart into a set of processes?

The answer cannot be given too quickly. If we hurry, we will only replace the old center with a new word. So the next step must be careful.

If the center is not the source of coherence, then what holds coherence?

How does experience avoid falling apart every second?

Why does a human being still experience himself as continuing?

Why do thoughts, memory, body, language, relationships, and actions gather into a relatively stable form?

This is the question that opens the next chapter.