--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
<snip>

> 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]
>

Okay. So?

> 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.
>

Note the latter part of that excerpt:

"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."

By focusing on the fiction part of his claim you are confusing his meanings. He uses the storytelling analogy to put the idea of self into perspective but he does not claim by "fictitious" that it is made up by us in a conscious way, the way fictions are produced in the course of our lives. Rather this "fiction" is an outcome of the activity of the brain and, as such, it's real to us even if there is no underlying entity that is the self. Moreover, recall his point that there are multiple stories and multiple selves, all of which we typically ellide together in the course of our daily living. Dennett's point is to unpack these ideas and the confusions that arise from them.

> 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.
>

And that's true but so what? How does that challenge Dennett's point that the self is a complex of spun phenomena which are not spun by any conscious self but are the outcome of the activity of a complex system of various processes running in brains?

> 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
>

The consciousness, the mind, is a complex process-based system on this view and, as such, it has many deep components not accessible to the conscious part(s) of the mind. It is often useful to tease out underlying thought processes or inclinations not otherwise accessible to the conscious (aware) mind but the very fact that such things can often be teased out suggests that the mind is, indeed, complex in this way. Is the sense of self more real than the idea of a bat suggested to a subject undergoing a Rorshach test with an inkblot? Yes, in this sense: the sense of self we have is constituted by many more dimensions than the idea of the bat, seen in isolation, though the idea of the bat may be indicative to the tester, or even to the subject, of some particular dimension or dimensions of that more complex system that makes up the self in the subject.

SWM

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