We enter life equipped, neurologically, with all the tools we need to conceive of ourselves as distinctive human selves, and this conception takes a narrative form. —William Randall, St. Thomas University
Most of us identify so closely with the story our brain generates about us that we believe ourselves to be the character that story is about. Nothing less—and nothing more.
It’s a functional solution for getting along satisfactorily in the world. But this close identification prevents us from seeing that the current story is but one possible story and who we perceive ourselves to be is but one possible or potential self.
The “self,” created by the brain, the protagonist “me,” “I,” is neither learned nor taught but is universal to human experience. —David Williams, The Trickster Brain
While having a sense of self is universal among humans, as well as essential and preferably stable, the contents of the self are, of course, mutable. We have a sense that our self is continuous (the Dude abides). But while the sense of self is continuous, the self that is sensed is a heavily edited work in progress pretty much from birth to death.
The sense of who we are and what we are or are not capable of doing is maintained by the voice of our Inner Narrator (a function of unconscious processes in the Default Mode Network) via the self-talk, impulses, suggestions, and even directives it communicates to the conscious part of the brain.
So the Inner Narrator is telling us who we are and what we ought to do (or not do) based on who we have been and what we have done (or not done). That is the autobiographical self: based on the past and consisting of both a conscious component and an unconscious component.
Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity
Daniel Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, who has written extensively about consciousness, proposed we think of the self as a center of narrative gravity.
I really like the idea because, for one thing, it isn’t hard to understand what a center of gravity is, and for another thing, it’s relatively easy to understand that the center of gravity of something can be modified.
Consider a chair. Like all other physical objects, it has a center of gravity. If you start tipping it, you can tell more or less accurately whether it would start to fall over or fall back in place if you let go of it. …We can manipulate centers of gravity. For instance, I change the center of gravity of a water pitcher easily, by pouring some of the water out. So, although a center of gravity is a purely abstract object, it has a spatio-temporal career, which I can affect by my actions. —Daniel Dennett
So far I think the concept of a center of narrative gravity most accurately represents the sense of self we have at any given moment in time. There are several contributors to this center of narrative gravity, including the past, in terms of our autobiographical self (both the conscious and the unconscious components); our current experiencing self; and our prospective (aspirational) self.
The center of narrative gravity can shift without our self-aware, intentional action or attention. But the current, conscious, experiencing self can act intentionally to determine future aspirations and direction—and to reconsider and even reconfigure the past.
We cannot undo those parts of our pasts that are determinate, but our selves are constantly being made more determinate as we go along in response to the way the world impinges on us. Of course it is also possible for a person to engage in auto-hermeneutics, interpretation of one’s self, and in particular to go back and think about one’s past, and one’s memories, and to rethink them and rewrite them. This process does change the “fictional” character, the character that you are. —Daniel Dennett