Abstract

Some philosophers take personal identity to be a matter of self-narrative. I argue, to the contrary, that self-narrative views cannot stand alone as views of personal identity. First, I consider Dennett’s self-narrative view, according to which selves are fictional characters—abstractions, like centers of gravity—generated by brains. Neural activity is to be interpreted from the intentional stance as producing a story. I argue that this is implausible. The inadequacy is masked by Dennett’s ambiguous use of ‘us’: sometimes ‘us’ refers to real human beings, and sometimes ‘us’ refers to selves or fictional characters. Second, I consider Schechtmann’s view that self-narratives create persons in order for there to be a self-narrative. Finally, I offer my own account of persons