[Wittrs] The Narrative Center of Gravity
- From: Joseph Polanik <jpolanik@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:59:46 -0500
SWM wrote:
>Joseph Polanik wrote:
>>you seem to be ocillating between two positions.
>>the first is that, even after Dennett's brain is removed from von
>>Neumann's Division III, there is still something left that is causally
>>effective. however, the only thing left after removing Dennett's brain
>>would be the self; but, in Dennett's view that is a ficticious entity
>>that serves as the narrative center of gravity in a story the absent
>>brain tells the physicist: I collapse wave functions.
>Your insistence on attending only to the "fictitious" idea of a self
>misconstrues Dennett's notion of "fictitious" in this context since he
>is not saying we don't have a self but that our "self" is really just
>the outcome of a lot of complex processes that are, in their
>constituent parts, entirely unself-like.
what Dennett said is "Our fundamental tactic of self-protection,
self-control, and self-definition is ... telling stories, and more
particularly concocting and controlling the story we tell others --- and
--- ourselves about who we are. ... we (unlike professional human
storytellers) do not consciously and deliberately figure out what
narratives to tell and how to tell them. Our tales are spun; but for the
most part we don't spin them; they spin us. Our human consciousness, and
our narrative selfhood, is their product, not their source."
[Consciousness Explained. 418]
in view of this it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dennett's
view is that the self is a fictitious entity, the narrative center of
gravity, about which is told a story that in actuality is about the
brain.
similarly, an individual might take an inkblot test and report seeing a
bat in the inkblot. the counselor might ask the patient to tell a story
about the bat. this might be helpful in treating the patient; but, the
story is not really about the bat. it reveals the psychological
condition of the patient.
the bat in the inkblot does not exist except as an object of thought, a
projected image that serves as a narrative center of gravity for the
story the patient is invited to tell about herself.
does the narrative center of gravity in Dennett's thinking have any
greater reality than the projected image seen in the inkblot?
Joe
--
Nothing Unreal is Self-Aware
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http://what-am-i.net
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