This was it for this class. I sez: “outside narrative is mad harmful, yo.” Again, self-explanatory.
In the barest and most obvious sense, human beings value their self-conceptions. These self-conceptions are difficult things to pinpoint in a material or descriptive sense, and yet we take it as a given that our self-image is of paramount importance to us. How does one develop a self-image however? It may be the case that simply existing inherently forges a sort-of narrative to tie the events of one’s life together. Most of what we do in our lives is perceived or intended to correspond with some greater over-arching narrative structure. Indeed, human beings are only considered to be humans in the first place if they do so—if they structure their lives around some narrative function. This is a portion of the assertion that Marya Schectman makes in The Constitution of Selves, her attempt to prove the irreplaceable importance of narrative in human-to-human life. Her assertion, however, is patently false.
In proving this falsity, it is of paramount importance to first define her conception the “self,” as the self is the independent subject of importance in this topic—owing to the self’s structuring (or lack thereof) of life events in to narrative structure. In Schectman’s work, the “self” is never discretely defined, but comes about through the process of a single human being constructing a narrative from the minutae of its life. Of course, there are further nuances to this somewhat sweeping pronouncement; she asserts that we care about our personal identity—the “self” at a given point—with regard to four practical concerns: moral responsibility (relating to punishment), self-interest, compensation, and survival. The final dimension to Schectman’s theory of worth noting is her conditions for the cases under which a person can be mistaken about their own personal identity. Calling these conditions “constraints” due to their nature as boundaries around intelligible self-narratives, Schechman identifies degrees of coherence, the articulation constraint, and the reality constraint. According to these constraints, one is operating under a maladjusted narrative heuristic if one’s narrative is structured outside of their boundaries.
Having stated Schectman’s essential definition of the self-as-emerging-through-narrative, the converse argument—and, therefore, definition—must be introduced. An excellent representative of the non-narrativist camp would be Galen Strawson and his seminal paper “Against Narrativity.” In “Against Narrativity,” Strawson obviously attacks the idea that narrative structure is central to the human experience. The structure of the argument is an attack against a dual-conclusion that Strawson believes that many modern philosophers are mistaken in accepting: the ethical and psychological Narrativity theses. The psychological thesis states that we, as humans, are wont to structure our lives around some kind of overarching story or narrative structure as a condition of our human-ness. The ethical thesis states that humans are not only correct in structuring their lives like this, but that full personhood cannot be achieved without doing so. Strawson objects to this thesis (one that he variably attributes to a number of philosophers, including Schectman, herself), but doesn’t necessarily provide a concrete definition of “self” in the sense that Schectman did. One can reasonably assume the “self” to be a useful heuristic for self-knowledge in Strawson, but one that is unnecessary.
This idea, that the “self” isn’t even necessary but is possible, is supported by Strawson’s preferred distinction to narrativist/non-narrativist; the disctinction between diachronic and episodic organization is the divide that he aims at. Diachronic thinking orders the episodes of a life in a structure that acknowledges that there was a past “self” and that there shall be a future “self” that has continuity with the present “self.” The episodic holds that the opposite is true; events aren’t connected by a grand schema. This is an obvious divide, but Strawson’s genius lies in asserting that the two modes aren’t mutually exclusive, and that a single human can be totally diachronic, totally episodic, and all shades in-between depending on the specific situation. This allowance for moving between the tow modeling heuristics shall be important later on when linking Strawson’s schematic to the argument at hand.
Now having two defined, competing conceptions of a self, two outside sources shall be added in order to advance and develop the argument—and hopefully support Strawson’s thesis.
The first datum for support for Strawson comes with regard to the current scientific understanding of the mind/brain problem. Without delving in to far too much detail, the classical mind/brain problem of philosophy is far less controversial in the scientific community; the majority of neurobiologists accept the so-called “functionalist” thesis, or one of its deterministic relatives. This functionalist thesis, again being described in a breezy and summarized manner, asserts that all functions of “mind” (memory, choice, emotion, etc etc) are merely interacting bits of brain “software” that are called up and mixed with other “softwares” by the “hardware” of the physical brain. The functionalist thesis holds that there is no real “mind” in a metaphysical sense, and rather that the concept of mind is a semantic trick ignoring the source (and therefore identity) of our so-called human mind: the brain. It can be best understood as stating that all subjective mental states are inherently the result of material stimuli within the brain, and that the co-subjective nature of these states allows for the multiple realizability and creativity that humans display in their thought.
Applying this functionalist thesis of mind—and therefore “self”—to the divide between Strawson and Schectman’s selves, it becomes clear that Strawson’s idea of the self has a better correspondence with the current scholarship on the matter. Recalling the idea that one can structure one’s life in diachronic and episodic modes in Strawson, this is a clear analogue to the mental state’s multiple realizability in functionalism. Essentially, the episodic and diachronic heuristics interact to create a single memory bank—one that is individually determined to be a mix of diachronic and episodic on a human to human basis. If Schectman is to be accepted, the idea that competing mental states can co-exist and interact—at this point a scientific fact—becomes more tenuous. Additionally, Schectman’s notion that one is not a person unless one structures narratively brushes up against this scientific notion, becoming a completely unscientific and absurd statement if you do not accept the internal logic of her definition of “person.” Simply put, one good reason to discount Schectman’s thesis and support Strawson’s can be derived from current neurophysiology and mind/brain theory.
Moving away now from scientific justifications, an excellent example of the reasoning behind Strawson’s aversion to narrativity can be found in the tragedy of Madame Bovary. Indeed, Flaubert’s novel helps Strawson’s point go further; besides being false as an existential thesis, the narrativity thesis can actually damage human self-conception. Emma, as a character, is said by Flaubert to have an unhealthy fixation on the writing of the romantic period. This unhealthy fixation leads her to a point wherein she believes her life to be a romantic narrative, itself. Her craving of a more and more interesting narrative leads her to initiate affairs with two men—Rodolphe and Leon—despite being married. Her reason for doing so is completely mysterious, unless you understand that, due to her fixation on narrative, she craved drama and romance of all kinds. This craving, predicably, ends in her own demise, as her eventual financial ruin at the hands of Lheureux drives her to suicide. In this case, as it seems as though Strawson is speaking directly about the events in Madame Bovary, it is instructive to quote him in toto:
“The aspiration to explicit Narrative self-articulation is natural for some – for some, perhaps, it may even be helpful – but in others it is highly unnatural and ruinous. My guess is that it almost always does more harm than good – that the Narrative tendency to look for story or narrative coherence in one’s life is, in general, a gross hindrance to self-understanding: to a just, general, practically real sense, implicit or explicit, of one’s nature.” (Strawson p.447)
As well, Strawson comments on those with the story-telling tendency (i.e. those who place a greater premium on narrative value) by stating that “On this view, one must be disposed to appre- hend or think of oneself and one’s life as fitting the form of some recognized narrative genre” (Strawson p.442). In a clear and vacuous way, Emma’s great downfall was due to her tendency to view her life in the lens of great drama, forcing her to crave more and more until it literally kills her. Madame Bovary provides the literary example that, in addition to being an incorrect thesis, narrativity actually can damage human self-conception.