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Narrative Identity and Diachronic Self-Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2016

KEVIN J. HARRELSON
KEVIN J. HARRELSON*
Affiliation:
BALL STATE UNIVERSITYkjharrelson@bsu.edu
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Abstract:

Our ability to tell stories about ourselves has captivated many theorists, and some have taken these developments for an opportunity to answer long-standing questions about the nature of personhood. In this essay I employ two skeptical arguments to show that this move was a mistake. The first argument rests on the observation that storytelling is revisionary. The second implies that our stories about ourselves are biased in regard to our existing self-image. These arguments undercut narrative theories of identity, but they leave room for a theory of narrative self-knowledge. The theory accommodates the first skeptical argument because there are event descriptions with retrospective assertibility conditions, and it accommodates the second argument by denying us epistemic privilege in regard to our own past. The result is that we do know our past through storytelling, but that it is a contingent feature of some of our stories that they are about ourselves.

Keywords

personal identitynarrative identityself-knowledgememoryretrospective description
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Spring 2016 , pp. 164 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2016 

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