Dennett: "The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity"

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Dennett: "The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity"

• Center of Gravity: this is a physical concept -- or, at least, a concept used in physical theory. And yet, a center of gravity has "has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. "
• Center of Gravity is an abstraction.
• "A self is also an abstract object, a theorist's fiction."
• For many properties of fictional objects, the principle of the bivalence does not hold (this is the principle that a proposition P must be either true or false, not both, not neither).
• Dennett is claiming that this is true of our selves, just as it is true of fictional selves.
• What about the following objection: Melville used his real self as the model for the fictional selves he describes.
• Dennett argues that there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a dumb machine that writes a novel (using some formula) which we then interpret and discuss in the same way in which we discuss other novels.
• Now make the novel writing machine a robot that acts in the world, and let the novel it writes seem to be true of its own activities (in particular, the physical events described in this "novel" are the physical events that happen to the robot).
• We interpret the story as the expression of a self. And, Dennett claims, we are also like the robot, interpreting our own autobiographical narrations as expressions of a self (our own).
• The analogy might seem to fail: novels are done, the characters complete.
• But imagine the novelist writes a short period of time, we write to her some questions, and then she writes some more, and so on. This would be like a conversation with someone about herself.
• Split brain patients: Dennett endorses the view that split-brain patients reveal a truth about all of us. We all have competing brain functions, Gazzaniga and he argue, and the uneasily settle upon a seemingly unified integration. "According to Gazzaniga, the normal mind is not beautifully unified, but rather a problematically yoked-together bundle of partly autonomous systems."
• Dennett also endorses a version of Julian Jaynes's theory. Our ancestors "talked" with no planning or reflection, eventually including so asking questions; they also sometimes answered questions, again without planning or reflection; but then somewhere along the way someone answered his own question. This was the mutant link between the asking-question brain module and the answering-question brain module, in which in one person they began to interact. (By the way: Jaynes saw this as a theory of consciousness. This would be perhaps a theory of access consciousness, I think it's fair to say; not one of phenomenal experience.)
• This theory makes an evolutionary benefit of talking to yourself.
• Ryle similarly argued that thought was talking to yourself, something akin to self-instruction.
• All of us, on this theory, are disunited, and we roughly manage to concoct a story of a unified intent -- much of the story just guessed at and perhaps completely wrong in verifiable ways.
• Some questions: can this account for consistency of behavior over time? That is, can it account for character? Also: I believe there may be a normative dimension to the self -- that we may tell a story in part based on what we want to be. In such a case, many features of the mind may be shaped by the story you tell -- it will influence you in the decisions you make. Can Dennett's account allow for this?