QuestionsWho am I, really?The self as a center of narrative gravity
Who am I, really?No fixed self

The self as a center of narrative gravity

The center of narrative gravity (Dennett)

Daniel Dennett 1942 · 2024There is nothing magic about consciousness: it is the brain at work, which science can explain.
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What it claims

The self is also an abstraction and not a thing one could find in the brain: there is no fixed, separate self, only the center of narrative gravity of our stories. Looking for it in the brain is a category mistake.

Why

As a center of gravity organizes an object without being an extra thing, the self organizes our stories without being a thing in the brain.

The same idea through history
David Hume1739Hume looks inside himself for a "self" and finds only perceptions. Dennett quotes this passage and draws the lesson: nobody has ever seen a self, any more than a center of gravity.
Daniel Dennett1992Dennett develops the idea in an article of 1986 (published in 1992) and then in Consciousness Explained (1991, ch. 13): the self is a useful abstraction, formed by the stories we tell about ourselves.
In short

"The self as a center of narrative gravity" is an argument by Daniel Dennett ("The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity", 1992, 1992) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: no fixed self). Its claim: The self is also an abstraction and not a thing one could find in the brain: there is no fixed, separate self, only the center of narrative gravity of our stories. Looking for it in the brain is a category mistake. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity", 1992
Valid with an implicit premise

Where is your "self"? Not in your foot, not in your hand. In the brain? No neuron is "you". Dennett suggests thinking of the self as the center of gravity of an object: a point you cannot touch, made of no particular atom, but which predicts very well how the object behaves. The self would be of the same kind, and it forms the way a spider's web does: without a plan, through constant work. Dennett says we constantly weave stories about ourselves, as the spider weaves its web (Consciousness Explained, 1991, ch. 13), and that the self is the "center of narrative gravity" of those stories.

P1A center of gravity is not a thing in addition to an object's atoms: it is an abstract object, a "theorist's fiction". Yet it is a very solid fiction, which has a real place in physics and lets us predict the object.
P2We spend our lives telling and retelling the story of our life, without much care for its truth. Our brain produces these stories ceaselessly, as the spider produces its web, without an overall plan.
P3The self plays for these stories the role a center of gravity plays for an object: it is the point around which they are organised, it gives them a "narrator" and a hero. Like a center of gravity, it has only an approximate position, and it is not a part of the brain.
P4 · implicit premiseIf something plays, for a whole, the role of a center of gravity (a point of organisation) and if centers of gravity are abstractions, then that thing is also an abstraction. The analogy holds on this point.
Therefore the self is also an abstraction and not a thing one could find in the brain: there is no fixed, separate self, only the center of narrative gravity of our stories. Looking for it in the brain is a category mistake.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where the self plays the role of a center of gravity, centers of gravity are abstract, and yet the self is not abstract: it would be a real thing in the brain.
The argument is valid with P4. Without it, nothing says that the self must be abstract: one could accept that the self plays the role of a center of gravity while being a perfectly real thing (a small entity in the brain, for example). P4 is the heart of Dennett's analogy, and it is what his critics attack.
Analogy. A flock of starlings draws a moving shape in the sky that looks as if it had a leader. There is no leader: each bird follows its neighbours. The shape is nonetheless real for us, we can describe and predict it. For Dennett, the self is like that shape: real as a pattern, but not as one more bird among the others.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Galen Strawson 1999 · attacks the conclusion

Summary: Strawson defends a real "thin" self. There is a subject of experience, which may last only a moment, and which is neither a story nor a fiction. Many people, moreover, have no tendency to tell themselves their life. The story therefore cannot be what makes the self.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Dennett in the texts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: we found no widely accepted reply. The basic disagreement is about what to call a "self": for Dennett, the self is what the story builds; for Strawson, it is the subject of experience, which exists before any story and even without one (our summary).
John Searle 1992 · attacks the conclusion

Summary: for Searle, Dennett's self amounts to treating consciousness as an illusion. But where consciousness is concerned, appearance is reality: if I seem to be in pain, I am in pain. One cannot file conscious life among useful fictions.

no reply
Dennett did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
Where the debate stands (our summary)The basic disagreement concerns the status of appearance. Dennett does not deny that we have experiences: he holds that what we say about them is an interpretation, which can be wrong. Searle answers that this distinction does not exist for consciousness itself (our summary).
P
Paul Ricœur 1990 · attacks premise 3

Summary: for Ricœur, narrative does not dissolve identity, it constitutes it. When I tell my life, I do not find an unchanging self (sameness), but I still keep my word and remain the same "someone" for others (selfhood). Narrative identity is what links the two, and it is real.

no reply
see the argument
Dennett did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Dennett and Ricœur start from the same observation: narrative is central to the self. They differ on its scope: for Dennett, what it builds is a convenient abstraction; for Ricœur, it is a genuine identity, with commitments and responsibility (our summary).
What today's voices say
Defend it
Daniel DennettThe self is like a center of gravity: a useful fiction of the theorist, with no physical parts of its own.