What Is Self-Awareness and the Development of It
Before beginning to explore the self-awareness, we must first create a distinctive difference between what “I” and “self” are. Starting from the “I”, we find that it cannot be what it is expressed as to be, since the expressions we use from the “I” are representations of it, not the actual “I”. Why? When we consider that we observe a feather, the representation we have of it in our mind cannot be the actual feather. If it were, that would mean that when we perceive the world around us, the world would be as if teleported into our minds rather than that the sub-conscious has generated a visual representation we observe as the environment. It is the same with “I” and the descriptions we use of it. Entity A (“I”) cannot be entity B (representation) however we would want to believe this fact to be otherwise.
Self is our physiological being. And although it is the same in the case of the self, that it cannot be the description of it, the self is founded on neurology, and what the self actively exists as, is defined by what is actively present in the neurological level in combination. We know this for example when we consider how we experience ourselves as and act as is different when we are seducing someone, when we are in a fight-or-flight situation, when we are acting in a leadership position and so forth, as what they need in the physiological level of human neurology to exist are different in active combination. If we for example considered that all the characteristics mentioned above were actively present all the time, they would without a doubt reduce each other from existence as they are distinctively different characteristics, just as we cannot walk, run and sit down at the same time.
We know how experiences shape the self. “I” remains as it is, undefinable, but the timely self as it emerges from the neurological foundations of the sub-conscious becomes natured through repetition and is alterable because of neuroplasticity (since without neuroplasticity, an individual would be unable to learn or adapt to fit the circumstances). Thus, as the self is founded on the neurophysiology of an individual, our self-awareness is founded on the representations of our self, wherein we can consider the authentic self as if being what one is like the night follows the day. Hence as self-awareness is the awareness of one’s own existence in the form of experiences and representations, reflections, self can be thought as problematic, but can also be clarified by thinking it less problematically or by perceiving the reflections of self as less problematic, i.e. as the reflections are. Because of neuroplasticity we also know that our own self is dynamic in both ways, we can begin to think against ourselves or we can think constructively for our own good, thus increasing the self-awareness in the contrast of our own choice. And from parallel perception, that how different brain interpret the phenomena in the environment differently, thus producing different semantic content to phenomena than the other, we know that none observes us the same way as the other, giving you the question of how do you perceive yourself as?
Copyright © 2010 Henry M. Piironen
Henry M. Piironen is a contemporary European author and philosopher of consciousness, cultures, religions and reality. To purchase his latest books, visit amazon.com now.