Is it really true, as people such as Gnu Atheist Alex Rosenberg and a person on Twitter claim, that there is no such thing as an I?

I think not.

I've long believed that Dan Dennett was on the right track, if not necessarily fully right, on subserves and consciousness "bubbling up." I have believed with Daniel Wegner that this means (without supporting determinism) that free will as classically defined by a Cartesian free willer doesn't exist any more than a Cartesian self-meaner. I've accepted any selfhood we have is changing, as well as fleeting to Grasp. And, I've long held fast to the validity of David Hume's "whenever I try to grasp myself" idea.

But, the degree to which nailing down an "I" is a hard problem doesn't mean that an I is nonexistent, and contra Rosenberg, it sure as hell doesn't mean that Kandal and other neuroscientists have proven it doesn't exist.

Reality?

It's more subtle than that. No surprise.

It starts with consciousness as embodied cognition. Contra Rosenberg, consciousness doesn't exist in brains but in bodies. Per Dennett's heterophenomenology, I grasp the "I" that is you by seeing you in action. I impute agency by seeing you in action, even if I also accept that the creator of that agency is fluid. The existence of agency is different from the staticness of it. 

Ditto, you grasp the "I" that is me in just the same way. And, we accept the reality of these heterophenomenological determinations through social interactions.

For people who claim no "I" exists, like this guy?

If you knew me yesterday, you no longer know me anymore. I grow daily.#Changehttps://t.co/X7WWBqjwyC

— Psychology ۞ Pнιℓσѕσρнυѕ ۩ (@PsychologyDoc) November 28, 2018

 

Wrong.

If this were literally true, the following corrolaries: 

1. There would be no "I." (Arguably, there isn't a unitary I, but ... )

2. "You" couldn't know "yourself"

3. We'd arguably be living in a world of mass solipsism

4. None of this is new. See Heraclitus, Hume & Nelson Goodman.

Ultimately, this, like some things, may not be provable by science, but even before this point, Rosenberg is into the waters of scientism. 

And, we don't live in a world of mass solipsism, because we are social animals.

This is another thing that modern neuroscience also misses. After all, you can’t put a family, a Friday night poker game, a Tuesday morning kaffeeklatch or other social groups all in one ginormous MRI machine.

In turn, this is why philosophy of science, or even more, philosophies of individual sciences are needed. That’s why good (better than Dennett) cognitive philosophy or philosophy of mind is needed for cognitive science and neuroscience.

But, Alex Roseberg is like a self-discipline hating philosopher. (He’s not the only one; they do exist.)

The reality, as I see it, is what I was hinting at above. Selves do exist. They exist as individual, embodied-cognition Consciousnesses Interact with and define each other, and as subselves within those consciousnesses interact with each other.

Not a glitzy definition, but it’s as simple and as straightforward as I can make it.