Brain and self: A neurophilosophical account

Abstract

You read these lines. You find them boring and your experience is marked by boredom. Who experiences this boredom? You. You are the subject of the experience of boredom. Without you as subject of this experience, you could not experience anything at all, not even boredom. This subject of experience has been described as the ‘self’. Your ‘self’ makes it possible for you to experience things. In other words, it is a necessary condition for experience and thus also consciousness. It is clear, therefore, that there is much at stake when it comes to the self. We thus need to discuss how to characterize and define the concept of self.