French neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz is worth reading on the theme of the double and its role in the origin and functioning of consciousness. He bows to the literature of the doppelganger, while acknowledging that neurobiology offers no adequate theory. Our ability to project a double, he says, is central to our ability to plan and the way we dream:
"I see in our ability to construct a virtual body, a double of ourselves the basis for our capacity to deliberate, that is to create virtual scenarios that involve first us, then perhaps others. This mechanism is probably at the root of our ability to change our point of view, to look at the world and especially ourselves from a variety of perspectives. …
"We have two bodies, the physical body and the virtual body. The virtual body ...is the one we perceive when dreaming. It, too, has a phenomenal reality.
"The duality is part of the foundation of consciousness. I think that consciousness appeared in humans at the same time as the two bodies. Consciousness is the act of the 'second me' watching the first one."
- Alain Berthoz. Emotion and reason: the cognitive science of decision making. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006 pp.207-8
Drawing: "Autoscopy" by Robert Moss
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