Narrative Centers of Gravity, Fictions, and Consciousness

From Danel Dennet’s, Consciousness Explained, p. 428.

Okay, what is this process, and what is he talking about? From the title of the book, it should be easy to surmise that he is talking about consciousness but not consciousness as something inside your brain, or something spiritual, or something that can be pointed to. Consciousness then is the continual ‘story’, constantly revised, that we tell ourselves in our continual interaction with the environment. The center, the protagonist if you will, is not exactly there but the result of the process of the story-telling itself, it is as Dennet says, “a narrative center of gravity,” the result of embodiment in the same way that a center of gravity is the result of the mass surrounding it.

The objection, in the form of a fictional character named Otto is this:

. . .and I would add a host of other contingent, minor experiences that makes up the incredible narrative called you or me.

Is it right? I think it is. What does it mean? Well, I think it has tremendous consequences for certain areas of thinking and specifically philosophy but zero consequences in our day to day lives. A description of the self, or the ‘I’, does not replace the ‘I’'s importance, it only redescribes it. Since most of the time we happily use ‘I’ in the same way that we use a car; we don’t really need a description of the engine to drive a car (We do when it breaks down of course), our day to day interactions with other people and things will go on much as it always has. On the other hand, one issue that might shift significantly is the importance of literature in people’s lives, of narrative. There’s a strong tendency to downplay literature in our lives, to focus and emphasize practical, hard-edged science and truth (analytical philosophy versus historical narrative) against mere fiction. If this is correct, our natural tendency to tell stories is not trivial, it is essential to interacting with the ‘real’ environment, to real situations. I think that renewed attention would be a good thing (as long as we don’t consequently de-emphasize science, but I’m not worried about that).

I have a personal irony here, I remember when I first read Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” and thought, "Well, it’s a great way to read texts, but I don’t see its value in understanding me. I’m not a text.

Well, if this is right . . .

Call me Brad.

Oh, I forgot to add. Some people might have a problem with this description because they tend to run together two distinctions:

1. Reality and fiction

2. Truth and falsity

I suggest that we at least try to keep these separate (though no doubt I’ve been guilty of doing it as well). Instead of saying, fiction isn’t true, let’s say it’s not real. 2+2=5 is false but it is not synonymous with fiction.

So something like 'It is true that Frodo is a character in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings but that doesn’t make him real," or conversely, “To say Spiderman is Peter Parker is a fiction doesn’t make it false.”

This may feel counter-intuitive at first, but think about for a while and it makes a lot of sense.

Hey Brad, i’m very glad that you’ve started this thread because dennett is one of my fave contemporary philosophers. i have read an older book of his, the mind’s i, and he basically argues along the same lines.

while i accept dennet’s theory of identity, it is interesting that the conclusion you reach is different from the one that he later reaches. dennett’s enthusaism for science and its importance is only stressed using this theory. although you do not reject this, you are asking for a return to literature:

it can be argued that with further scientific breakthroughs, the ‘fiction’ of our identities can be cracked. i am this way because i have these genes. if i want to change a trait, alter a behaviour or become a different identity, i just need to change these genes this way. the narrative approach to human identity, dennett suggests, will be replaced by scientific evidence. whereas before, i am me because it is all that i am given, with science i will have the power to better identity who i am and how to change. dennett believes this is a good thing. do you?
i would have to agree with dennett on this one also.

I don’t see the two as incompatible if that’s what you mean, but I am not sure how changing one’s genes can change one’s memory. I don’t mean to say that there’s no connection at all, only that we’re talking about two different vocabularies and that both are valuable. Because of his rock hard commitment to science, Dennet, I think, often shies away from his own conclusions for fear of the dreaded ‘postmodern’ label.

That’s probably not a bad thing. But I’ll try to make the stakes clearer when I, if I ever, post a comment on Rorty’s interpretation of 1984. It blew me away and centers around the importance of keeping that narrative intact.