Selves as Centers of Narrative Gravity

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Edidin, Aron

Keywords

Personal Identity, Dennett, Daniel, Biographical Patterns

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

According to Daniel Dennett, "selves" are "centers of narrative gravity." Narrative is how Dennett sees that humans recognize patterns in the world. The Intentional Stance, a perspective from which we observe people to possess beliefs and desires, enables us to recognize real patterns of people which are beyond our physical observational capacities. Dennett claims that the entities calculated from such patterns are real in the same way that centers of gravity are considered to be real. Selves can thus be understood as the real entities calculated from patterns of narratives about them. These ideas, considered together, form a grounded theory of personal identity that resolves many of the problems faced by classic personal identity theories. It explains how people maintain the same identity over time and how their mental, physical, and social properties are joined together through patterns and narrative into one being. It illuminates the way that we identify problematic cases such as infants, split-brain patients and multiple personality cases. Instead of presuming a transcendental ego or an essential consciousness or body, Dennett's notion of selves offers a useful way to understand how we identify people as complex beings that vary in various contexts.

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