Doktorarbeit: Das Ich als Konstrukt und Illusion

Das Ich als Konstrukt und Illusion

Reduktion und Elimination in Hirnforschung und Neurophilosophie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des neurobiologischen Konstruktivismus Gerhard Roths und der Selbstmodell-Theorie Thomas Metzingers

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BOETHIANA – Forschungsergebnisse zur Philosophie, volume 147

Hamburg , 194 pages

ISBN 978-3-339-10456-4 (print) |ISBN 978-3-339-10457-1 (eBook)

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Do you feel like a cognitive, acting person who can plan and organise life in a self-conscious way? Or does your brain act and decide on your behalf because it only conveys the illusion you were master or mistress of your own life? Those are the questions dealt with in this book.

This doctoral thesis is based on claims of leading neuroscientists, expressed in their "Manifesto" of 2004, to be able to explain the human being in a naturalistic way and to create a new concept of man in the near future.

The critical investigation focusses on the attempt of Gerhard Roth and Thomas Metzinger to replace the human being as a subject thinking and acting in a self-conscious way by the brain, using reduction and elimination.

Regarding Gerhard Roth's neurobiological constructivism, especially the thesis that the "real" self and the "real" world are only an illusion and a construct of the “physical” self, which is inaccessible to us as well as "physical" reality, is rejected as untenable. His extensive denial of the free will is also critically considered - according to Roth the brain or the limbic system decides on our actions.

The fundamental principle of Thomas Metzinger's self-model theory of subjectivity, that there is no self but only a self-model, for which we constantly mistake ourselves, is rejected as unjustified. His concept of naturalization and his assertion that we are only information-processing systems similar to computers are critically analysed as well. The intellect cannot be reduced to neuronal operations of the brain. There are no mental states or meanings inside the brain but only neuronal processes which, however, are an essential requirement for a person as a whole to have sage experiences.

The main point of this doctoral thesis is that, following Kant, one cannot eliminate the ego at all, because the transcendental ego is the prerequisite for the constitution of our world of experience and thus allows the neuroscientists and all other individual scientists to proceed. This also applies to Gerhard Roth and Thomas Metzinger who, to conduct their research and formulate their theses, have to claim just the same exceptional position for themselves which they in general deny the human being as a subject.

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