Centre of narrative gravity
Explanation
Complementarily to his multiple drafts theory, Daniel Dennett proposed that the self — that character we refer to when we say "I" — is a "narrative centre of gravity". Just as the centre of gravity of an object is a useful fiction (it is not an atom of the object, but a virtual point that allows physical predictions to be made), the self is a useful fiction that the brain produces to organize conduct and communication.
The narrative self is the protagonist of a story the brain constantly tells. It integrates memories into a coherent biography, projects plans into the future, attributes decisions to a responsible agent, sustains an inner voice that dialogues with itself. But that protagonist does not exist as such; it is an emergent effect of multiple narrative processes that converge.
The metaphor is powerful because it dissolves the homunculus problem. There is no inner self that interprets experience: neural processes generate small narratives (the memory of this morning, the expectation of lunch, the deliberation about this decision), and the self is the virtual convergence point of all those narratives, not an additional element.
Dennett connects this idea with the cultural evolution of language. Human beings are narrative animals: we constantly tell stories (to others and to ourselves), and the capacity to weave a coherent story about oneself is a communicative and social adaptation. The self is, in part, an internalized communicative tool.
Interesting implications appear in pathologies: multiple personalities would have several narrative centres; schizophrenia would disorganize narrative coherence; Alzheimer's would erode the autobiographical memories that sustain the protagonist's continuity. All these alterations are intelligible if the self is narrative and not substance.
This theory resonates with Buddhism (anātman: there is no substantial self), with Hume (the self is a bundle of perceptions), with Ricoeur's philosophy of narrative identity and with neuroscientific studies on the Default Mode Network, which is activated when the mind generates narratives about itself. The narrative self is probably the most influential theory of self in contemporary cognitive science.
Strengths
- Naturalizes the self without eliminating it altogether.
- Coherent with discoveries about confabulation and reconstructive memory.
- Natural dialogue with no-self traditions (anatta).
- Model articulable with psychological research.
Main critiques
- Insufficient to account for the pre-narrative self (infants, animals).
- The narrative centre presupposes a narrating substrate: who narrates?
- Does not explain qualia.
- Phenomenological critique: presence to oneself is prior to narrative.