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Is narrative identity four-dimensionalist?

journal contribution
posted on 2012-06-01, 00:00 authored by Patrick StokesPatrick Stokes
The claim that selves are narratively constituted has attained considerable currency in both analytic and continental philosophy. However, a set of increasingly standard objections to narrative identity are also emerging. In this paper, I focus on metaphysically realist versions of narrative identity theory, showing how they both build on and differ from their neo-Lockean counterparts. But I also argue that narrative realism is implicitly committed to a four-dimensionalist, temporal-parts ontology of persons. That exposes narrative realism to the charge that the narratively constituted self, on the one hand, and the self that is the object of much of our everyday self-reference and self-experience, on the other, can’t be the same thing. This conclusion may well force narrativists to abandon metaphysical realism about narrative selves — which, in turn, may leave the invocation of ‘narrativity’ as identity-constituting somewhat under-motivated.

History

Journal

European journal of philosophy

Volume

20

Issue

Supplement 1

Publisher

Wiley - Blackwell Publishing

Location

Chichester, England

ISSN

0966-8373

eISSN

1468-0378

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal; C Journal article

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