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IDENTITY, 11.1.NESS, AND THE NORMATIVITY OF STORIES

By

Anna Gotlib

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Philosophy

2007

ABSTRACT
IDENTITY, ILLNESS, AND THE NORMATIVITY OF STORIES
By
Anna Gotlib

In this dissertation, I argue that the telling and hearing of stories has everything to do
with how identities are constructed, damaged, and possibly repaired. I suggest that this is
especially the case when one’s identity is threatened by serious, or deep, illness. My
argument is motivated in part by the seemingly common sense suspicion that we are 58/2'6’5
with enduring, unique identities. This persistent intuition has been both attacked and
defended in a variety of debates within analytic philosophy. Yet these debates often seem to
fail to address the quotidian-sounding worry about what 1 call the idol/fig ofind/z'z'd/m/J — the
question of“who am I” (or “who was I,” or “who will 1 be”). we might pose it casually
while regarding ourselves in the mirror, when trying to find some ground upon which to
make a difficult decision, or—crucially for my project—when coming to terms with a
medical diagnosis that alters not only what one is capable of doing, but also what one is
capable of conceiving. Indeed, what drives this dissertation is the claim that it is erpecia/b' in
facing our own physical and psychological fragility that accompanies deep illness that we are
reminded that personal identities are not merely epistemic categories or metaphysical
placeholders, but that they tell .rton'er about us and do things to us, and are therefore of the
utmost normative importance. Because our identities tell constitutive stories about us, I take
it to be both theoretically and practically necessary to reassess the standard worries about
them in order to find a place for the notion of the identity of individuals which, I suggest,
gives voice to our concerns about who we are as unique persons. I argue that it is a narrative

account of identity that grants us the theoretical flexibility and particularist discernment to

properly recast and address the question of the identity of individuals as a worry about our
place in the world as moral actors. I say “recast” because this task involves a bridging of two
complementary traditions of identity discourse that take themselves to be largely, and I
believe mistakenly, at odds with each other: the generally theoretical analytical approach,
and the broadly practical method of the narrativist and bioethical traditions. As an attempt
to bridge the two traditions, the contributions that my dissertation makes to the literature on
narrative, personal identity, and bioethics include (1) a narratively-grounded amendment and
revision of the (largely) analytic definitions of personal identity, warranted by their failure to
account for the individual identities of the deeply ill, and (2) a proposal of several constraints
on the narrative accounts of identity in response to charges of relativism and theoretical
vagueness. I take my arguments to establish a set of approaches that will enable bioethicists
(as well as others) to address the numerous worries surrounding personal identity without at
the same time being unnecessarily constrained by either the theoretical strictures of the

standard accounts, or by the often philosophically opaque narrative practice.

For H.L., LR, and J.G.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To say that this dissertation is the product of relationships first and research, writing,
and revisions second would be to overstate the issue — but only by a little bit. The project,
including its conception, development, and finally its completion, would not have been
possible without my brilliant, incredibly patient, and yes, at times even heroic, chairwoman,
Hilde Lindemann. To her, I owe not only t/Jefaa‘ that I was able to complete this
dissertation, but, perhaps most importantly, the belief that doing so was within my grasp. I
cannot count the number of times that she would put everything else aside to read yet
another sloppy draft or chapter, or to write yet another letter of reference that would make
the next step of not just this dissertation, but of my life as an academic, possible. During my
time as a graduate student at Michigan State University, Hilde was alternately a stern teacher,
a wise and kind mentor, an academic Miss Manners, a shoulder to cry on, a wedding guest, a
funny and witty dinner companion, and most importantly, and always, afh'erzd. And even
though she has taught me about the power and potential of words, they really cannot, and
do not, do justice to the gifts that Hilde has given me, both personally and professionally. I
only hope to be able to pass on at least a small part of these gifts to my own current and
future students.

I am also very grateful to my wonderful dissertation committee at Michigan State
University —]ames Nelson, Howard Brody, and Judy Andre — who, despite my initial
reluctance and inability to adequately focus my work, have guided me with questions and
comments that helped me greatly in developing what I hope is a coherent trajectory for this

dissertation. They, too, have gone above and beyond the call of duty in supporting me in my

forays into the murky waters of the philosophical academic job market — even when my
requests for help came with a very short deadline.

Furthermore, I owe a large debt of gratitude to the entire Department of Philosophy
at Michigan State University, who were welcoming, kind, and incredibly generous with not
only time and advice, but, among other things, with fellowship support which funded me for
a signification portion of my studies. I especially wish to thank Marilyn Frye, Fred Gifford,
Scot Yoder, Leonard Fleck, Debra Nails, Tom Tomlinson, and Richard Peterson for not
only being great teachers, but also wonderful sources of intellectual and psychological
strength when I needed it most.

I also want to thank the fearless, talented, and absolutely dedicated staff that the
Department of Philosophy is fortunate to count among its own. 1 especially want to say
thank you to the amazingjulianne Fent, who always seemed to have time and patience for
whatever panicked or must-be-done-yesterday requests that Came her way from me, and
Linda Hansen (who unfortunately has since moved on to a different job) whose smiles and
kind words of encouragement have meant so much over the years.

I am very grateful to Michigan State University for being so generous with financial
and research support and for making the task of being a graduate student a little bit less
arduous and perplexing.

No list of acknowledgements would be complete without a thank you from the
bottom of my heart to all of my friends and colleagues — especially Soraya G-ollop for being
the best friend anyone could ever hope for, Pat Lewtas for always being there with a joke,
even if it is at my expense, David Dick for being my favorite bearded lady, William Copeland
for the talks,]ohn Zillmer for still thinking that there is such a thing as a unified self, Chet

McLeskey for his never-ending enthusiasm about all things philosophical, and last, but

vi

certainly not least, Larry Palmer, for being a constant reminder that kindness, intelligence,
decency, rigor and friendship are the things that really count in the end.

Finally, I want to thank my husband,]eff Guevin — my one-man support system,
cheerleader, critic, cook, reader of drafts, psychologist, best friend, musician, and computer
guru. Without you, none of this would have ever been possible. Nothing that I could write

here can adequately express my love or my gratitude.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1
CHAPTER I: SETTING THE STAGE ....................................................................... 6
I. Disclaimers, Distinctions, and Motivations ........................................................................ 6

a. Disclaimers .......................................................................................................................... 7

b. Distinctions ......................................................................................................................... 9

c. What This Is and Why It Matters .................................................................................. 19
CHAPTER II: STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF IDENTITY ..................................... 38
1. Why Standard Accounts Matter ......................................................................................... 38

a. Background: The Emergence of the Psychological continuity criterion: ................ 40

i. Locke’s personal identity: some emerging problems ............................................ 49

b. Dennett and our peculiar “selves” ................................................................................. 58

i. Criteria for Personhood: Dennett and the Chimera of Moral Personhood ...... 59

ii. The Return of the Psychological Criterion .............................................................. 72

c. Parfit’s “impersonal” person .......................................................................................... 81

i. Some Initial Concerns ................................................................................................. 87

CHAPTER III: PARFIT, HIS CRITICS, AND THE TURN TOWARD A

NARRATIVE CONCEPTION OF IDENTITY ........................................................ 92
I. Parfit and Identity: Some Initial Worries ......................................................................... 92
11. Why Identity Matters: Four Possibilities .......................................................................... 98

a. The Objection from Embodiment: Individuated Identities Matter Because
Individuated Bodies Matter .................................................................................................. 101
i. Why Bodies Matter in Identity Creation ............................................................... 103
ii. Bodily Disintegration As Disintegration of Identity ........................................... 109
iii. The Embodied Identity ........................................................................................... 113
b. The Objection from Agency: Individuated Identities Matter Because Agency
Matters ..................................................................................................................................... 1 16
i. The Objection from Agency ................................................................................... 124
c. The Objection from Narrative .................................................................................... 128

CHAPTER IV: NARRATIVE AND NARRATIVE IDENTITY: PART ONE 138

I. Narrativity and Ethics ....................................................................................................... 139
11. Stories and Moral Deliberation ........................................................................................ 140
a. The Theoretical-Juridical Methodology in Ethics and Bioethics ........................... 140
b. Morality as Moral Competence: .................................................................................. 147

c. The Turn toward Narrative: Stories, Storytelling, and Moral Work ..................... 151

i. Narrative and Moral Epistemology ........................................................................ 157

ii. Narrative and Moraljustiflcation ........................................................................... 166

II. Narrative and Identity ....................................................................................................... 168
a. Narrative Accounts of Identity ................................................................................... 171

b. Narrative Identity and Its Critics ................................................................................ 174

viii

c. Identity, Illness, and Narrative .................................................................................... 180
d. Conclusion: Narrative Practice .................................................................................. 187

CHAPTER V: NARRATIVE AND NARRATIVE IDENTITY PART TWO:

CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY AND DEEP ILLNESS .................................. 192

I. Schechtrnan and the Incomplete Narrative ................................................................... 193

a. Personal Identity as the “Characterization Question” ............................................. 193

II. Beyond the “Characterization Question” ...................................................................... 197

a. The Story of B: Identity and Normative Competence ........................................... 210

III. Narrative Identity and the Deeply Ill .............................................................................. 214
CHAPTER VI: WHICH STORIES MATTER, AND WHY: SOME TENTATIVE

CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................... 222

I. Arthur Frank and the Uncontested Illness Narrative ................................................... 224

11. Stories of Illness as Meaning-Making: The Possibility of Constrained Illness

Narratives ..................................................................................................................................... 237

a. The Uniqueness of the Illness Narrative: A Few Clarifications ............................ 237

b. Illness Narratives Reconsidered .................................................................................. 242

c. Which Illness Narratives? A Tentative Sketch ........................................................ 247

i. Whether to Constrain Narratives ........................................................................... 247

ii. How to (Possibly) Constrain Narratives ............................................................... 253

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 264

ix

‘Philosophy can no more show a man what he should attach importance to

than geometg can show a man where he should stand. ”
—Peter Winch, 7 968

“Conceptual clarification is the most distinctively philosophical

of enterprises. ”
—]oel Feinlrerg, 7984

INTRODUCTION

There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of
what we call our .S'el/f that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are
certain, heyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and

simplicigr... U nlackibt all these positive assertions are contragr to that very e.\ erience, which
is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea ofse/j, after the manner it is here explained For

from what impression con/d this idea he derived? (Han/e)

In A Treatise oanman Nature, Hume famously argues that, in fact, there is no such
thing as a self — nothing like a fixed identity that we can embrace, reject, or study. What
there is instead is consciousness, which provides us with sensory experiences. If, however,
we insist on clinging to the notion of a self, we are left with the less than satisfying option of
identifying with a consciousness which is neither permanent nor reliably stable. We are, in
the end, mere bundles of perception — and not enduring experiencers — somewhat clumsily
moving through time.

This rather jarring (and for many, unsettling) view was, to a large extent, a salvo

against Locke and others who have defended the psychological continuity criteria of

personhood, which allowed for a continuing existence of a self through one’s identified
consciousness and memories. Since then, much has been said about personal identity, most
of it focusing on the persistence question -— the worry about the necessary and sufficient
conditions for the possibility of our survival as we move through time. Some defend a
version of Locke’s psychological states criterion, arguing that the continuity of memories and
conscious awareness constitute personal identity‘, although famously Parfit has offered a
rather controversial version of this view, claiming (unlike Hume) that there might be, if

certain conditions are met, an enduring self, while insisting (unlike Locke) that there is in fact

9

n

no such thing as an identity. Others have adopted the body criterion, suggesting that it is
the continuity of our uniquely human bodies is what matters, and what makes possible a
continuing personal identity through time.3 Too many have dismissed personal identity as a

philosophically uninteresting — or nonviable — notion altogether, focusing instead on the

metaphysical and epistemic confusion that the concept seems to engender. All this — and

 

'Some notable supporters of the psychological approach include:
Johnston, M., “Human Beings,” journal of Philosophy 84 (1987): 59-83.
Garrett, B., Personal Identity and .S'e/f-Consciousness (London: Routledge, 1998).
Lewis, D., “Survival and Identity,” The Identities of Persons, ed. A. Rorty (Berkeley: California, 1976), reprinted in
Philosophical Papers vol. 1, (Oxford University Press, 1983).
Nagel, T., The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
Noonan, H., Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 1989).
Nozick, R., Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Perry,]., 1972, “Can the Self Divide?” journal of Philosophy 69 (1972): 463-488.
Shoemaker, 5., “Persons and Their Pasts,” American Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1970): 269-285.
Shoemaker, S., and Swinburne, R., “Personal Identity: A Materialist's Account,” Personal Identity (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1984).
Shoemaker, S. “Self and Substance,” Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997): 283-319
Shoemaker, S. “Self, Body, and Coincidence,” Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian .S‘ociegr, Supplementary Volume 73
(1999): 287-306.
Unger, P., Identig', Consciousness, and Value (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Unger, P. “The Survival of the Sentient,” Philosophical Perspectives 11, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000).

2 See Parfit, Derek Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
3 See Thomson,]._]., “People and Their Bodies,” Reading Partit, ed. ]. Dancy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

.Also see Ayer, A. j.., I anguage, Truth, and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1936), and Schechtman, Marya, The
Constitution of Selves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

the implications for moral theory if we were to get .identity “wrong” — marked it as a
candidate for either the highly abstract (and practically removed) theories of those engaged
in the philosophy of mind, or else for the overly case-specific (and theoretically ineffectual)
“applied” phiIOSOphy.

In this dissertation, I argue that the philosophically dominant views of human
identity simply do not get human identity — in fact, that they get it precisely wrong. I suggeSt
that by missing the distinctions between the various meanings of the term identity, these
views and their proponents treat it as a singular, unitary notion, depriving it not only of its
moral depth, but also of its philosophical significance. Specifically, I claim that these
approaches fail both theoretically and practically when we consider that identity might be a
(personal, not merely philosophical) worry for all kinds of human beings, including those
who might be made particularly vulnerable as a result of serious illness or injury. The way to
resolve this apparent weakness of identity theory, I suggest, is to turn away from its more
traditional conceptions, and toward a more narrative (perhaps particularist) account of
identity.

Of course, no single philosophical treatment could possibly do justice to a question
as broad and with as many implications for our lives (and not merely our theories) as one of
identity and morality. With this in mind, the specific matter that I will address here has to do
with what happens to individuals who are deeply, critically, and sometimes even terminally,
ill — what happens to their identity during and after the illness (if there is an “after”), and
what specifically moral role does this identity play? Yet, as might be suggested by my earlier
comments, I do not believe that philosophers addressing issues of identity, broadly

construed, currently possess either the proper theoretical tools, nor the experience of

encounters with patients and their stories that any reasonable view of identity of the
seriously ill might demand. More precisely, the traditional theories of identity fail us here.
My task, as I envision it, is therefore to take on what I consider to be rather mistaken views
of (or attitudes toward) human identity, quite prevalent in philosophy and perhaps
elsewhere: First, I wish to challenge the definition of identity as a matter of satisfying pre—
determined conditions (I call this the “rigid identity conception”), and second, I wish to
offer an argument for a thick notion of identity, which is not only contextually rich, but also
morally efficacious in cases that involve serious, or deep, illness. Specifically, I argue that
personal identity has a moral function — that it matters morally how we express, form, and
interpret this identity. In short, the story (I am using the term story deliberately) of how
selves are constituted must also necessarily be the story of how and why selves are valuing
and valued — it must be a story of how selves are not passive placeholders, but morally
compelling verbs. In this attempt to unite the descriptive and the normative aspects of
identity, I will argue for a particularist conception of morality, and specifically, for a narrative
approach to identity-construction of the deeply ill which might, in the end, offer us a way to
analyze the formation of human identity as necessarily a moral question. How I propose to
accomplish this is outlined below.

In Chapter I, I begin by motivating my project, and suggest several reasons why we
ought to care both about the questions posed and the answers offered. In Chapter II, I
engage with several standard theories of identity of persons and of personal identity, and
suggest that they are less than satisfactory, given the consequences of applying them to
actual people, and especially to those individuals who are seriously ill. Chapter III focuses
specifically on Derek Parfit’s particularly influential and troubling conception of identity and

begins to examine the turn toward a narrative understanding of identity. In Chapter IV, I

first offer an overview of the debate among those who support and oppose the notion of
narrative itself and provide a defense of narrative as a legitimate method of moral discourse,
and second, I endorse a narrative approach to identity by answering one of its more
powerful critics. Chapter V addresses the question of what it means to turn to narrative in
addressing the normativity of identity, and specifically how and why such a turn is both
appropriate and fruitful in cases of deep illness. Finally, in Chapter VI, I propose a tentative
positive view of what kinds of identity—constituting stories ought to be told, heard, and

accepted -— and why.

What am I getting at? That there is a great variety of criteria for personal ‘identigr. ”
— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

CHAPTER I: SETTING THE STAGE

1. Disclaimers, Distinctions, and Motivations

Before proceeding any further, we might ask: Why another worry about personal
identity, given the rather extensive body of literature that already exists, and the number of
illuminating analyses that have been offered? And why suggest yet another method,
narrative, as a solution to the perceived shortcomings of the more standard methodologies?
My reason is twofold: First, I take the fairly recent turn toward the metaphysics of personal
identity (notably, from Parfit and Dennett) to be overly reducrionist to the point of either
deflating, or removing entirely, the moral component of both identity formation and identity
maintenance. Second, some prominent views of personal identity either do not necessarily
coincide with moral identity (such as Frankfurt’s view of reflective identification) or else
coincide with it in limiting — and limited — ways (Frankfurt again, as well as some neo-
Kantians, such as Korsgaard). And, as I noted earlier, since I will focus on the claim that
personal identity is intimately tied to normativityfneither of these types of claims seems to
be explanatorily satisfactory (or indeed practically promising). But these are rather (theory)-
specific worries, strictly speaking, which will be addressed later in the dissertation. In this

section, I attempt to motivate the whole of my inquiry by appealing to a pretheoretical

 

4A3 a concept that seems to have much to offer to identity theory, as well as to the search for the
grounding of normativity, both theoretically and practically.

intuition: that personal identity ought to be considered normatively efficacious, and that a
narrative approach is better suited to address the normative aspect of the creation and
maintenance of this identity. I suggest that these intuitions are not mine alone, although
they are too often relegated to the back of the list of “philosophical” worries about identity.

However, given the variety of ways in which one could talk about identity —
metaphysically, epistemically, ontologically, ethically — it seems we ought to take some
account of how it will be addressed here. I begin with a brief disclaimer, where I first note
some ways of inquiring into identity that I will not address here, and then I turn to the kinds
of distinctions that I will be making between four rather different emphases in identity-talk,
one of which I adopt, and three of which will become subjects of critique in the later

chapters of this work.

a. Disclaimers

My interest lies not in the idea of identity per se, but in personal identity. Although,
given my earlier comments, this might seem clear, I still take it to be useful to note the
several kinds of current identity debates in which I will (generally) not be participating here,
and which ought not be viewed as arguments either for or against my claims.

First, I will not be considering synchronical numerical identity, as my goal is not to
determine whether two coexistent objects are parts of the same object of a particular kind,
although I will address diachronic identity (that is identity over time) critically, with the
intent of refocusing the worries that surround our continued existence as both physical and
psychological beings. Second, rather than dealing with any sort of numerical identity, my

claims will focus on qualitative identity: my discussion will center on how we are constituted

as persons — as individuals. In other words, I am interested in the question of who we are
rather than in worries about what constitutes sameness among entities over time,
exemplified by the longstanding wrangling over the Ship of Theseus paradox, where,

according to Greek legend as told by Plutarch,

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete]
had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time
of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed,
putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship
became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question
of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and

the other contending that it was not the same.5

That is, the query is this: if the entire ship were replaced, piece by piece, would it
indeed remain the same ship, or would it be partially, or entirely, a different object? Applied
to issues of identity, the Ship of Theseus paradox introduces similar questions of consistency
over time — questions that, while important generally speaking, I nevertheless take to be
secondary to my project here. Similarly, I will not address the question of whether entities
might be said to have bodies that are different at different times. Finally, I also intend to

sideste the meta h sical worries about “absolute” versus “relative” identi -' as well as the
P P Y ,

 

5 .S'ee Plutarch, "Theseus ." The Internet Classics Archive_. 2000. MIT. 3qu 2007
<http: / /classics.mit.edu/ Plutarch /theseus.html>.

Also see Deutsch, Harry. "Relative Identity", The Stanford Encyclopedia o/‘Phi/osophy (Spring 2006 Edition),
Ed. Edward N. Zalta (URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2006/entries/identity-relative/ >.

view that there are no philosophical problems about identity at all (that is, arguments that

identity is an unproblematic notion, at least for philosophical claims and discourse)"

b. Distinctions

It seems that even if we filter out some of the aforementioned concerns about
identity, we are still facing a serious possibility of conceptual confusion, for to rule out
certain approaches to identity is not the same thing as to rule others in. With this in mind, I
now turn from what I will not address to a tripartite distinction in the way we might think
about personal identity. While at first such a move might appear as if I am begging the
question — as ifI am assuming precisely the kinds of claims that it is incumbent upon me to
prove — I suggest that I am doing nothing of the sort. Instead, my aim here is to preview
and clarify exactly what kinds of question about identity I am after, and to suggest how they
differ from other (what I call more “standard” worries.

The “standard” worries about personal identity tend to be either psychological or
somatic. The psychological view holds that some psychological relation is necessary,
sufficient, or both for an individual to persist through time and inherit the memories,
personality, beliefs, and so on from his predecessor. The somatic View, sometimes called

“animalism” or “the bodily criterion of personal identity,” tends to argue that our identity is

 

6 See Geach, Peter. “Ontological relativity and relative identity,” I ogic and Ontology, ed. M .K. Munitz
(New York: New York University Press, 1973).

- Also see Lewis, David. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
The claim about absolute identity is famously put forth by Peter Geach, who noted that the notion

itself is a serious error, and that only relative identity can be considered as a possibility. The claim that identity
is unimportant to philosophy is offered by David Lewis.

largely (or sometimes wholly) contingent on our bodily identity. These tvm views further

break down into

a. the (metaphysical and epistemic) persistence question (that is, to
what extent and under what conditions is a person at time tI is
identical with an entity that exists at time t2?). Specifically, in
asking the persistence question, we wish to find out what might
be the necessary and sufficient conditions for whatever being
preceded me or whatever being will succeed me if I am to
remain me. In other words, what is at stake is my numerical
identity — the question of whether I am one entity rather than

7
two, three, four, and so on, and

b. the (metaphysical) “what is a person” question (that is, what sort
of thing is a person that tends to exist from time tI to time t3‘ and

how does it differ from other sorts of entities?).8

 

7 The numerical (or quantitative) claim is different from the qualitative claim. For example, if I
manage to perfectly replicate a snowflake, there will be two snowflakes which are qualitatively identical, but
quantitively different. The same applies to twins, human or otherwise — no matter how much they are alike, we
cannot get away from the brute fact that there are two of them. However, someone who is my successor is not
necessarily like me, as I am now, in all respects — she might be interested in different things, she might have a
different hairstyle, she might be a different size, have different abilities (or disabilities), and so on. Thus, in
asking the persistence question, we are wondering whether when we refer to an individual in front of us, and
then to individuals who existed before and will exist after the one presently here, we are pointing to the same
entity three times, or to three different entities once.

3 .i‘ee Derek Parfit “The Psychological View,” Selfand Identipr, Contemporary Philosophical Issues, ed. Daniel
Kolak and Raymond Martin (New York: Macmillan, 1991) 229.

10

Interestingly, while question ([2) has been the subject of some vigorous philosophical
debates, it is worry (a) about persistence that has attracted the most commentary, and is
indeed still the most widely endorsed means by which to address issues of identity.

The persistence question (a) has, traditionally, been approached from two different
perspectives: The first, known as the “memory criterion” (often attributed to Locke, whose
claims I discuss in the next chapter), suggests, for example, that a patient in a persistent
vegetative state is no longer the same person as the pre-PVS individual because she no
longer possesses the memories of that pre-PVS person. In short, the memories, this view
claims, make the person. A potential worry about this view — and one whose complex
metaphysical implications 1 will not discuss here — is that it places too much emphasis on the
continuation of persons, while neglecting the continuation of entities other than persons. That is,
it is quite reasonable to claim that a PVS patient perhaps ceases to be the person she was,
but that something or someone nevertheless continues to exist, regardless of whether this
new entity answers to the normative conditions of personhood. Indeed, to suggest that
persistence is necessarily a worry about the persistence of persons is to neglect the question
of persistence without such limiting conditions. It suggests a kind of an essentialism about
persons, as if nothing about our existence as entities matters, other than our status as
“persons.”

After all, our aim might be to offer an examination of persistence through a variety
of forms of life — not just the one with which we are most familiar. However, here, my
intent is to examine the connection between identity and normativity, and while the
metaphysical worries are certainly a part of the discussion, they are limited to their
intersection with issues of morality and personhood. I will leave these very important and

philosophically interesting worries about persistence in general for another time.

11

The second perspective on the persistence question, most notably attributed to
Parfit, is the “psychological continuity criterion.” It takes a wider view than the memory
criterion of what is dispositive in our persistence as persons. Specifically, one persists if a
person X at time tI is identical with Y at time tzif and only if X’s mental features are related
to Y’s mental features through a series of psychological conceptions, such as personality
type, desires, beliefs, memories, likes and dislikes, and so on." I address this view in detail in
the following two chapters.

Finally, as I noted earlier, the somatic view holds, among other things, that (a) our
identity is just our animal body, and that (b) our identity through time is contingent on a
consistent physical relation — that is, one persists through time if one maintains the same (or
very similar) animal body (this is also called “the bodily criterion of personal identity.”)m
Generally, the somatic criterion does not imply that all animals are persons, or, indeed, that
all person-like creatures (like PVS patients, embryos, or even, on some accounts, babies) are
persons. Interestingly, it also holds that not all people are necessarily animals, and thus is
“consistent with the existence of wholly inorganic people: angels or rational robots. It does
not say that being an animal is part of what it is to be a person.”ll

These claims have some rather curious implications for both the persistence question

and the “what is a person” question — implications that have placed the somatic view in a

 

9Thomson,J.J, "People and Their Bodies." Reading Parjit, ed. J. Dancy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
“-’A.J. Ayer, language, Truth, and Logic (London: Gollancz, 1936) 194.

Also see Olson , Eric T.. "Personal Identity." Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhi/osophy. 2007. The Metaphysics
Research Lab. 3 Jul 2007 <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/ #7>.

“ Also see David Wiggins, .fameness and .S'uhstance (Oxford: Blackwell , 1980) 171; and Richard
Wollheim, The Thread cfljfe (Cambridge University Press, 1984) Ch. 1.

12

position of disfavor among a number of identity theorists.12 On the level of intuition, it
seems rather strange to assert that if we were to transplant X’s brain into Y’s head and vice
versa, X and Y would remain the same individuals just hecause their animal selves would
continue to house the new brains. Quite the contrary, our intuitions might suggest that
identities tend to follow the brain (or, the mind, as some would say), rather than be
contingent on the legs, arms, or torso. The question of persistence, therefore, seems to be,
at least intuitively, connected with our memories, beliefs, and desires. Moreover, the worry
about “what is a person” seems to require more than a cataloguing of her bodily parts and
animal instincts. Or so we like to think.

Yet, the somatic theorist might indeed have something to say about our intuitions, at
least as far as what we often take to be the case when it comes to issues of identity. It would
be very difficult and indeed strange, for instance, if I were to deny that, as I am sitting in my
chair typing these words, it is only psychological criteria that matter in defining my identity.
In other words, if we assume for a moment that my identity has some relation to my
endeavors, it seems rather important that I am in possession of these bands that translate my
thoughts into written words, and that I have eyes that allow me to scrutinize my actions.
And I have legs that can move me from the chair to the world outside my home, thereby
allowing me some much-needed rest that might, in the end, be beneficial to my work. In the
end, when I have completed this writing, it will be appraised as something that has come
from me, where “me” will be identified as the human animal who has gone through the acts
of writing and submitting the finished product.

Perhaps this belief that our status as human animals has a very important relation to

our identity is what moves those who continue to insist that a PVS patient is not really

 

”See Unger, P. 2000, The Survival of the Sentient, Philosophical Perspectives 11 (2000): 325—348.

13

“gone.” That is, while the psychological continuity theorist might claim that what matters to
the identity of a given individual has indeed disappeared, both the somatic criteria theorist, as
well as the friends and relatives of the PVS patient, might be less inclined to do so, given that
the body is still fairly intact and breathing, even if sometimes through mechanical means.
The human form, it seems, is very difficult to dismiss as the unifying agent, the focus, and
the symbol of human identity.

Outside of the psychological and the somatic worries about identity, we might
wonder what is left. The answer to this question is the subject matter of the rest of this
dissertation, for what is left, I believe, is the most common, and perhaps most human,
question about who we are — the kind that we all ask, especially after a life-changing event
such as a serious accident, illness, or what is sometimes rather flippantly called an “identity
crisis.” The kind that we ask in the middle of the night, or while staring into the mirror,
when we think that nobody is looking. The kind that we do not have to be professional
philosophers to ask. I suggest that “who am I?” unlike the psychological or the somatic
questions about identity, is fundamentally an ethical one, connecting identity with the issue
of normativity — indeed, perhaps even grounding and constraining our account of
normativity, of what is good, or unwarranted, or expected, or right. While I will not offer a
defense of identity as necessarily prior to ethics, I will suggest that how we shape and frame
each other’s identities is a fundamental element in our formation of ethical justifications and
moral claims. The distinctions between various worries about identity that I introduced
earlier in this section will, I suspect, be helpful in framing the discourse.

However, although I introduce these distinctions now, I will not immediately defend
them, apart from suggesting that one - the worry about “who I am” — is preferable to

others. By calling it “preferable,” I am intimating that some ways of inquiring (and talking)

14

about identity are indeed better than certain alternatives. Specifically, I claim that there are
elements of human identity that can only be sensibly analyzed using a certain mode of
expression and embracing a particular set of concerns that allows us to ask the kinds of
questions that potentially move us closer to something like a truth about who we are. Here,
therefore, I merely offer a sketch of more fruitful inquiries about identity, namely those
which have more to do with the identity of individual human beings rather than with those
concerning the nature of personhood (although not necessarily excluding the latter).

The reasons for this boundary-drawing are not merely pragmatic: apart from serving
as a map of my project, it also offers us a way to talk about identity that clarifies what we
might be after by focusing specifically on the kinds of questions we ask. My suggestion,
then, is that how one forms the question about human identity might be a reliable indicator
of: (a) what one might find out about identity, and, more to the point, (b) what one takes to
be important about identity. What I offer now is a map of the primary category
distinctions in identity—talk which will serve as guides in untangling some of the theoretical
and semantic confusion behind the concept of identity. While I make no claims that the
discrepancies that I note here are the only ones, or are the only ones that matter, I do suggest
that what follows is at least a helpful way to engage with questions of identity in a manner
that does not succumb to many of the usual cases of miscategorization and common

conceptual confusion.

1. A standard (synchronic) account of the criteria for personhood, which has
to do with the question of what kinds of attributes make a person —
my person — different from all other kinds of creatures. What

matters here is how we are different from cats, tables, and trees.

15

What (normally) does not matter is how we, as human beings, differ
from each other, or how we are perceived (and perceiving) as
individuals. The question, taken at its most general, is about the nature
ofpersonhood— what it is, and how it is different from other ways of
being in the world. As noted earlier, this worry about identity can
(and has been) addressed by both psychological continuity criterion
and somatic criterion theorists. Here, I use the term ” m'tm‘afor
personhood” in order to distinguish it from worries about ‘personal
identity” (nored below), since the two are much too often confiated
and (wrongly) taken to denote the same, or at least very similar, kinds
of concerns about persons. In this sense, my reasons for using the
language of “personhood” are mostly clarificatory ones, emphasizing the
too often glossed—over distinction between “personhood” and ‘personal

identi/y. ”

A standard (agential) account of the criteria for moral agency (both
synchronic and diachronic) which has to do with the question of
what makes an entity (perhaps even a human being) not merely a
person metaphysically, but an agent — a moral being who has very
particular sorts of characteristics that others that may resemble him
physically (and even psychologically) do not possess. In this sort of
account, most notably offered by Kant, and later, by Korsgaard and
Frankfurt, among others, “personhood” and “agency” are sometimes

conflated in a way that attributes the status of “person” only to those

16

beings who fulfill all (or most) of the requirements for agency. The
goal here, it seems, is not to merely distinguish persons from non-
persons such as chairs, rocks and cats, but also from those whose
physical appearance, linguistic abilities, as well as many other
characteristics are such that personhood (and thus agency) might
mistakenly be attributed to them, even though, morally speaking,

there is no warrant for doing so.

A standard (diachronic) account of personal identify, which has to do
with the identity (or the reidentification) of particular individuals at
any given time, through time, and so on. The focus here is mainly
persistence through time, involving issues of memory, psychological
states, and sometimes, physical attributes from time tI to t2 to. . .tn.
How do we know, these accounts wonder, that we remain the same
(numerical, psychological) persons with the passage of time in cases
of very significant psychological and physical changes? What
normally matters less in determining the status of our identities are
first-person accounts of what it is to be a particular self, and third-
person accounts of what it seems this particular self is like. Personal
identity, therefore, is something of a shorthand way of saying “a
bundle of physical and/ or psychological characteristics moving
through time.” This account, therefore, is most often supported by

those who take the psychological continuity criterion to be the most

accurate — and complete — account of identity.

17

4. My nonstandard account, identities ofindividuals, which is the much
more quotidian (that is, not born solely of philosophical speculation)
question of who I am, how I see myself, how others see me, and
what kinds of (social and moral) expectations this “seeing” sets up
for me as a moral agent. The synchronic and diachronic accounts
may play a role in this account of identity, but they are not outcome
determinative, by which I mean that whatever their claims might be,
individual identity requires a deeper, and less juridical, investigation
into how we come to answer (and perhaps how we ought to answer)
the question of who we are. If we do indeed desire an outcome from
our analysis of identity — that is, if we want to move toward
conclusions that are both theoretically and practically efficacious —-
then we might consider approaching identity as a thick concept. And
what allows for this “thickness” to be explored most fully is the
identities of individuals approach that I suggest here. In other words,
how we come to define identity and how we perceive it in others and
in ourselves is not merely descriptive but normative, carrying with it
serious and deep consequences for how we act, and are acted upon,

in the world.

All four accounts of identity and personhood are, at their core, inquiries into who

we might be. That all four are after some element of what it means to be creatures such as

18

ourselves is not what is in question. \X’hat is at issue, rather, is which account of the ones
just outlined provides us with the potentially richest answer. Of course, as I noted earlier,
certain presuppositions govern each approach to identity: some presuppose a thick view of
identity, while others do not, and while I suggest that identity is a thick, substantive concept,
I also realize that this is something yet to be demonstrated. Suffice it to say that this
preliminary stage-setting will be useful in later chapters, when I approach the questions of
our identities in some detail. I conclude with some thoughts about why this investigation

into identity strikes me as worthy of careful philosophical attention.

c. What This Is and Why It Matters

Thus far, I have offered certain disclaimers and introduced several distinctions with
the intent of narrowing — and deepening — the discourse. \that is left before turning to my
central concerns are a few words about the philosophical importance of the question of
identity, as well as some introductory (and explanatory) thoughts about the kinds of claims
that I intend to make.

A number of theorists are beginning to give voice to the intuition that how we
perceive ourselves, and how we are perceived, matters for our role as moral actors.'3 I begin
with the tentative claim that the worry about personal identity is vital to us as moral beings -—
as entities who are not merely social, but self-aware, and able to inquire into, and wonder

about, who we are. In order to be able to do this with some success, I suggest we attempt to

 

‘3 See, e.g., Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative anir (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2001); Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics (New York: Routledge,
1997); Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller,Jr., andJeffrey Paul, eds, Personal Identig'. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).

Also see Amelie O. Rorty, ed., 7 he Identities ofPersons. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976);
John Perry, Identity, Personal Identity. and the .S'el/I (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002).

19

draw a connection between normativity and personal identity. Put another way, we ought to
begin to view normativity through the lens of moral and social situatedness of individual
selves making their way through the world. This approach is at least partly due to what we
are asking when inquiring about who we are: We want to know, among other things, what is
reasonable for us to do, how it is reasonable for us to View ourselves in the world, what are
the reasonable expectations others have of us, and how to reconcile our view of ourselves
with the outside world of people and their perceptions and expectations of us. In short, in
asking who we are, we are inquiring into how we are constituted — we are seeking a warrant
for telling particular stories about ourselves, for hearing (and accepting) particular stories
about who we are from second and third-person perspectives, and for subsequently acting in
a way that is normatively regulated by these first, second, and third-person stories. But are
we to make of this intuition?

I suggest that we would be correct to grant it some serious consideration. As might
be recalled, my argument in this dissertation attempts to do precisely that. As I noted in the
Introduction, I allege that many philosophically dominant views of identity get human identigy
precisely wrong by conflating the distinctions between the various meanings of the term
identig' and treating it as a singular notion, thereby depriving it of its moral depth as well as of
its philosophical significance. More specifically, I suggest that this failure to distinguish
between the sorts of questions that could be asked about identity can lead to claims that are
deaf to the import of how we come to define and understand our identities. This
“deafness,” I suggest, is particularly destructive and dangerous when we take into account
the potentially damaged and fragile identities of those who are deeply ill. I claim that one
fruitful way to address both the need to draw finer distinctions in our analysis of ‘identity’ as

well as the importance of those distinctions (especially in cases of deep illness) lies in a

20

narrative account of identity. Moreover, I claim that there are particular ways of addressing
the narrative process itself that avoids some of its more significant failings.

Yet one might still wonder: why ought we, both as philosophers and as human
beings, care about the concept of identity being too narrowly and indistinctly interpreted,
and what does narrative have to do with any of it? The answer to this question — and thus
my motivation for taking on this project — is both simpler and more complex then it would
at first appear. I suspect (and will follow this intuition throughout this dissertation), that the
key to the answer is normativity. Specifically, the normativity ofidentigr in the sense that what is
normative for us (and for others) is partly determined by the stories that contain these
norms, in turn influencing the moral status of the representations of those stories that are
our identities.

So the simpler answer to why we ought to give some serious consideration to the
relationship between how identity is framed philosophically and its function as a concept in
the world seems to be that it is potentially a deeply moral notion. I say “moral” because the
consequences of how we are represented in the world and to the world (as well as to
ourselves) are nothing less than who we take ourselves to be, and who others take us to be.
That is, my claim is that what we take to be morally acceptable (or unacceptable), to be
desired (or to be avoided), valid (or invalid), and appropriate (or inappropriate) among
creatures such as ourselves depends very much on the narrative, the story behind the norm,
the norm within the story. Specifically, the normative expectations of the world for us, and
our expectations of ourselves and the world, in a very direct sense, communicated by these
stories. The norms, in other words, are embedded in the stories in the sense that
responsibilities, commitments, and so on are assigned to us by us and by others based on the

stories (from the first, second, and third-person perspective) that constitute our identities.

21

)9

They are there when we are told that “girls do not say such things,” that “boys do not cry,
that “the doctor knows best.” They are also there when we tell ourselves to be quiet
(because it is not our place to speak), when we choose to accept authority simply because we
do not view ourselves as authoritative in any way, when we defer because we take it to be
our place to defer — or when we almost never defer, regardless of circumstances, or readily
offer our view, or take ourselves to be deserving or respect, of love, of recognition, and so
on. In the cases of deep illness, when we are most physically and psychologically dependent,
these stories take on special import, for it is then that we are more vulnerable to certain
representations of ourselves (say, as weak, ineffectual, sub-human, and so on), and less likely
to be able to construct the sorts of counterstories to find (or recreate) the sorts of identities
that would represent us as morally efficacious.14 It seems to be right (or at least plausible),
therefore, to suggest that identities might very well mark our places in the world (and
everything that goes with this “place”). It is these identities, it seems to me, which serve as
the ground of the moral and social normative expectations which we accept or, as I will
argue later, possibly reject.

An outright denial of this view seems rather troubling. If one were to discount the
notion of identity as a significant constitutive element of normativity, one might also run the
risk of failing to address what appears to be an essential, fundamental question in moral
psychology, normative ethics, and, perhaps most importantly, in everyday experience: why
certain reasons and explanations (of thoughts, actions, and desires) count as authoritative
and motivational, and others are not efficacious at all. We value ourselves and others,
therefore, under certain self-conceptions (and third-party conceptions that have received

uptake), and these conceptions become standard-setting and reason-giving. The deepest,

 

'4 .i‘ee Hilde Lindemann Damaged Identities, Narran've Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

22

most difficult issue — and one which I will take up at the end of this paper — is what warrant
there might be, what grounds are possible, for endorsing certain self—conceptions (and third-
party stories about the self) in the first place.IS This might go a long way toward explaining
why some reasons count for us in an authoritative and motivationally efficacious way, while
others fail (or ought to fail) to move us.

Yet, why ought any of these intuitions about the cluster of topics that have
traditionally fallen under the “personal identity” rubric merit further investigation? I suspecr
that the answer lies, at least to some extent, somewhere in the kind of attention that has

already been given to the rubric’s constituent parts: identity and personhood. That is, there

 

'5 What seems to be presupposed in this discussion is a view of moral motivation that is grounded, at
least to some extent, in the internalism/externalism distinction. In moral philosophy, internalist claims center
on the assertion that moral beliefs function as a motivating factor. That is, there is an internal connection
between X’s belief that “Y ought to be done” and X’s motivation to do Y. An externalist, on the other band,
would argue that there is no necessary internal connection between moral beliefs and motives — in other words,
there is no necessary reason that the belief“Y is wrong” translates into a desire not to do Y. in her paper,
"Skepticism about Practical Reasoning" Korsgaard notes that:

An internalist theory is a theory according to which the knowledge (or the truth or the acceptance) of
a moral judgment implies the existence of a motive (not necessarily overriding) for acting on that
judgment. Ifl judge that some action is right, it is implied that l have, and acknowledge, some motive
or reason for performing that action. It is part of the sense of the judgment that a motive is present: if
someone agrees that an action is right, but cannot see any motive or reason for doing it, we must
suppose, according to these views, that she does not quite know what she means when she agrees that
the action is right. On an externalist theory, by contrast, such a conjunction of moral comprehension
and total unmotivatedness is perfectly possible: knowledge is one thing and motivation is another.

Christine M. Korsgaard, “Skepticism about Practical Reasoning,” journal oj'l’ln'losophy 83.1 (1986): 8-9.

I will not be offering any explicit arguments for either an internalist or an externalist conception of
motivation, although I do suggest that intemalism might very well be true. In fact, I suspect that my claims
require some sort of intemalism, for they are predicated on the thought that we are moved by our stories, and
that our relationship with the world as moral beings is norm-creating for us because we come to accept
(internally) the moral force of these stories.

For more on the intemalism—externalism debate, see Putnam, Hilary, ”The Meaning of ‘Meaning,”
Mind, language and Rea/int. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975): 215-271;
Burge,Tyler, “Individualism and Self-Knowledge,” The journal ofPhi/osophy 85 (1988): 649—665; Williams,
Bernard, “Internal and External Reasons,” Moral l .uck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) 101-1131
Williams, Bematd, “Internalism and the Obscurity of Blame,” A‘laking .S'ense ofHumanigy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995) 35-451; Williams, Bernard, “Postscript: Some Further Notes on Internal and External
Reasons,” Varieties of Practical Reasoning, ed. Elijah Millgram (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001) 91-97; Hooker,
Brad, “Williams’ Argument Against External Reasons,” Varieties of Practical Reasoning, ed, Elijah Millgram
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001) 98-101.

23

seems to be something compelling in trying to find out what is at the core of our puzzlement
about ourselves as self-aware persons. However, my motivation is not based solely on the
fact that these questions are intriguing -— it is also the result of my belief that many of them
are misguided and misapplied. Despite their many efforts to define and make sense of
persons’ identities, philosophers have, for the most part, paid scant attention to the crucial
relationship between identity and moral agency. Nor, I would argue, have they offered a
satisfactory account of personhood. Indeed, what makes the “personal” half of “personal
identity” so intriguing is also that the current views are anything but satisfactory in either
their methodology or scope.

Let us begin with a deceptively simple assertion: we — you, 1, your brother, my
friend, the woman walking home through the streets of New Delhi — are not only persons,
but particular persons with particular identities. And we care about the fact that we are persons
and particular persons — there seems to be something special, something unique about
person-status, and about a certain instantiation of this human person-status in particular.

But substantial disagreements have taken place about what it mean to be a person, how
person-status is to be defined, whether what is unique about individuals really matters, and
to whom it is to be attributed. To wit, some have argued that only human beings are worthy

of the title of “person,”“’

while others claim that being human has very little, if anything, to
do with being a person (in terms of the kind of respect persons are to be afforded).'7 Still

others have held that even among human beings, the status of personhood presents a very

crucial divide between and among entities, and is one that has to be “earned,” either by the

 

'6 .l'ee, e.g., Norman Ford, The Prenatal Person (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), Ch. 1.

‘7 See, e.g., Peter Singer, Animal l jlreration (New York: Harper Perennial, 2001).

24

acquisition of certain characteristics and abilities, or else by having the potential for those
characteristics and abilities.‘8

Among the various approaches to personhood, too many seem to be over— or under-
determined. P.F. Strawson tells us that a person is someone who has certain bodily and
mental characteristics.” But this seems a bit too broad — some animals, whom we do not
take to be persons, do appear to have both the physical and mental characterisrics that
Strawson uses to define personhood.!” More recent accounts of personhood have centered
on concerns about autonomy and self-determination, with the will signaling its presence, or
at least the promise thereof. 2'

Finally, (as a preview to the next chapter),John Locke tells us that

 

'1‘ See, e.g., Harry Frankfurt, The Importance o/that We Care Ahout (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988).

"’ Peter Frederick Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Desmptir'e i‘lletaphysics (London: Methuen, 1959)
104.

3" Although an objection might be made that I am glossing over several very large philosophical
debates about how we are to define the human and the animal (and what presuppositions are at work in those
definitions), my goal here is neither to address these worries, not to take sides by offering a defense of a
particular conception of the animal-human distinctions. Thus, I am not going to take up the issue of
speciesism that Peter Singer, among others, takes to be central to the divide we tend to draw between animals
and beings, such as ourselves. I am merely suggesting that Strawson might have been a bit over-inclusive in his
characterization of personhood as a concept that sufficiently clarifies the distinctions that it is attempting to
draw.

2‘Amon the many works on autonomy some of the more notable are:
J J ,

Dworkin, Gerald, The Theogy and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Dworkin introduces the notion of autonomy as a central idea on contemporary philosophy (especially in
contemporary moral and political philosophy), and assesses the value of autonomy in a variety of practical
moral issues.

See also Taylor, James Stacey, ed., Personal Autonomy : New Essays on Personal Autonomy and its Role in
Contemporag' Moral Philosophy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Schneewind,Jerome B., The
Invention ofAutonongr :A History ofModern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1997). Schneewind
addresses Kant’s ethics, and analyzes them in a historical context.

Korsgaard, Christine M., The Sources ofNormativigy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Frankfurt,
Harry G., The Importance of What We Care Alrout: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988)

25

This being premised to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must
consider what Person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent
Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the
same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that
consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me

- - 22
essential to it.

Boethius, too, noted that a

person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is
material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not
person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings
person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material

beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights23

Both claims seem similarly overbroad: Are we to understand and interpret such
vague and complex concepts as “rationality” and “self-awareness” as simples, as terms that
. 24 .
define and clarify, rather than further obscure? I would suggest that, if we were to do so,

we would indeed be deluding ourselves, for what might be meant by “rationality” or “self-

 

22John Locke, An Essay Conceming Human Understanding, Essay II xxvii 9.

3 See Boethius, The Consolation ofPhi/osophy, trans., P. G. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000).

2"Of course, similar problems are present in Kant’s moral principles, which take rationality (in the
form of understanding, and acting upon, duties) to be not merely an essential feature of personhood, but the
sole feature which gives us our value as moral beings. This worry will be addressed later, when I consider the
various standard approaches to identity.

26

awareness” is perhaps just as unclear and as conceptually opaque as what we might mean by
“person” or “personhood.” Is rationality something that has a set number (and kind) of
expressions — that is, is it right to say that I am acting rationally in ordering a meal in a
restaurant when I am hungry, and, at the same time, my dog is acting rationally when he
whines until I fill his bow] with food? Or are there distinctions to be drawn between these
behaviors? The worry is that the story that needs to be told about the presence, function,
and meaning of rationality in all ofits guises seems to be much too complex, leaving us
unsatisfied with the explanatory efficacy of the notion of rationality.

The same, or very similar, concerns exist about the self-awareness of personhood.
What might we mean by “self- awareness?” It might be that I am self-aware because: (a) I
am aware of my body as separate from all the other entities and objects in the world; (b) I
am capable of distinguishing my thoughts, desires, memories, and so on from those of
others (even if] am not entirely sure about what those others desire or think); or (c) I am
capable of recognizing my place in a given social structure. But cats are able to pick
themselves out from other cats (at least in the minimal sense of seeking out their own food,
comfort, and so on). Moreover, I might be confused, on drugs, or have my consciousness
otherwise impaired to the point that I cannot distinguish my memories as my own — and yet
it would be very difficult indeed to argue that because of this, I cease being a person.
Finally, some (nonhuman) primates are very socially aware, seemingly able to act on an idea
of how and where they fit in among others of their kind. What might be meant by self-
awareness (or what kind of self-awareness it is) is therefore not at all clear.

It appears, therefore, that neither component of “personal identity” — identity or
personhood — is well understood or sufficiently defined. It might then follow that the

inquiry into personal identity has been unsatisfactory at least in part as a result of this of

27

conceptual confusion. And yet, so much seems to be at stake in how we pursue the
questions that have been thrown together under that rubric. Note that regardless of the
different conceptions of “persons” and “personhood,” in the preceding claims, it seems that
most ascriptions of personhood have some moral weight, and are, at least to some extent,
normative and not merely descriptive. Note too that I have used the morally loaded term
“worthy” in describing certain attitudes about the attribution of personhood. This is quite
deliberate, for what is implicit in the variety of views about personhood and identity and
their descriptive efficacy is the question of the moral status of those who are said to be
persons, and the lack of this status of those who do not.25 What I mean is that the
permissibility of our actions and attitudes toward others, as well as toward ourselves, may
depend on the identities — on the perceptions of who we are. And given this possibility, our
concern about identity ought not be something that is dismissed simply as a pseudo-concern,
or else treated as an issue that is not deeply moral at its core.

This potential identity—normativity connection is even in evidence in the work of
Locke, whose View I earlier noted as an example of some conceptual confusion regarding
identity. Indeed, he has claimed that personhood is a concept that is deeper than any sort of

diachronic account, and is necessarily a moral one.

In this personal identity is founded the right and justice of reward and
punishment. . .. [I]f the consciousness went along with the little finger when
it was cut off, that would be the same self which was concerned for the
whole body yesterday, as making part of itself, whose actions then it cannot

but admit as its own now. . .. For as far as any intelligent Being can repeat the

 

25 David DeGrazia, Human Identity and Bioethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 3-7.

28

Idea of any past Action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and
with the same consciousness it has of any present Action; so far it is the same
personal seé’. For it is by the consciousness it has of its present Thoughts and
Actions, that it is self to .it sefl now, and so will. be the same sel/‘as far as the

. . 26
same conscsousness can extend to ActIons past or to come.

Locke’s claim is that the essential features of personhood and identity are not our
material selves — not our bodies, or some continuations of those bodies, but an awareness of
ourselves as selves through time. In other words, what makes us selves —— what creates our
identities as persons — is our consciousness, which makes intelligible our existence in the
world. The focus here is, interestingly, both on intelligibility to others and to the self: it is
not sufficient, it seems, to know what the self is from a third-person point of view, which
might only have a legalistic interest in another’s self for the purposes of reward or
punishment.

I note Locke’s views now partly as a preview of a more extensive discussion of his
claims about identity (which are to follow in the next chapter), and partly as a way to
motivate the project as a whole. The project depends, I take it, at least partly on the sorts of
intuitions I mentioned earlier about the role and value of identity in people’s lives, and
especially of identity of those individuals who are deeply ill. The simple fact of the matter
seems to be that, while we impart identity-talk with great importance (for, after all, it has to

do with who we take ourselves to be!), we are too often sloppy and less than clear about the

 

26john Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2: Chapters 10, 27.
July 2 <httpz//www.gutenberg.org/etext/ 10615>.

See Beauchamp, Tom L., “The Failure of Theories of Personhood,” Kennedy Institute oj'lit/n'es journal,
9.4 (1999): 309-324

29

subject matter. We assume too much, explain too little, and generally pigeonhole the
concept of identity into pre-existing slots (Parfit — a matter of psychological continuity,
Dennett - a necessary fantasy, a number of feminist theorists — an oppressive label, and so
on) that suit our other views about the world and what matters.

And yet there still remains this nagging sense that the picture of what identity and its
role are is neither complete not accurate, and that more, much more, work remains to be
done. Indeed, how do we respond to someone who has been given a terminal diagnosis
when she asks us: “who am I now that 1 can no longer, work, care for my family, dress
myself, or make plans for the future?” Do we respond in terms of agency, and tell her that
although her own agency is impaired, she is still owed respect by other agents, and is thus
now the recipient of their concern? What do we say to someone who, having been a runner
his whole life, can no longer walk — or even move? Do we take an inventory of his
remaining body parts, thoughts, memories, and so on and tell him that in general, he is still
“himself,” plus some “disabilities”? Not only would both replies be disingenuous, but they
would be uninformative and non-responsive to the deeper question of“who am I now that 1
no longer recognize who I took myself to be” that the ill individual is asking. Indeed, when
a world, including one’s sense of identity, has collapsed, as it often does in cases of deep
illness, we need better, more precise, and more case-sensitive tools before we make any
attempts to put it back together for ourselves or for another.

It is this intuition that drives this project. That said, I know that I am not alone in
addressing these worries about identity, and especially identity of the deeply ill. I suspect
that generally (and despite our all-too-frequent discounting of them) we, as philosophers and
as human beings, are moved — or ought to be moved — by questions about identity that

simply refuse to go away. Namely, (1) why, quite often, the persons we take ourselves to be

30

do not cohere with the persons that others take us to be, (2) why we sometimes View our
past “selves” as either more or less a part of who we might be now, (3) why changes in our
circumstances — physical, psychological, and so on — can dramatically alter the view of
ourselves that we and other hold, (4) why certain versions of who we are receive greater
uptake from us and from others, depending on who a given narrative’s author happens to
be, and (5) why so much emotional, psychological, and social meaning seems to be
connected with the question of “who we are.” All of these worries about identity are deeply
normative — and none of them are resolved by purely metaphysical, psychological, or other
formulaic approaches to identity.

It is for these reasons (among others) that 1 take seriously Locke’s proto-normative
argument that one’s identity might very well be the locus of “the right and justice of reward
and punishment,” and that memory can meaningfully connect one’s present identity with its
past and future versions, thereby making one morally accountable for the acrions that one
recalls performing. He allows us (at least initially) to draw the following three conclusions:
First, we are the sorts of being who are not limited nor are fully defined by our physicality in
the sense of not drawing the moral significance of our existence solely from the fact of our
physical bodies. Second, we are the sorts of beings who undergo great change in our
lifetimes, and it is these changes and their effects on who we might become that are
important to our understanding of who we are as beings living in space and time. Third, we
are the sorts of beings who are interested in understanding our identities not merely as being
apart from other beings (say, apart from cats, tables, and apes), but in relation to other
beings, such as ourselves (and, in Locke’s case, in relation to God and His judgment). All
three conclusions are indicative of a moral component to identity, for they address issues of

responsibility, commitments, beliefs, and so on, and are thus responsive to the enumerated

31

concerns listed above. The definition and understanding of who we are is much more than a
static physical description of our characteristics, and is more an understanding of a process
of the relationship between identity and change —- ofour specific, individual e/Janges — through
time. This process, then, is necessarily a normative one, uniting identity formation and
moral accountability, for once one is aware of oneself as a self that chooses and acts in the
world of other selves (in time), of other actors and choosers, one’s actions and choices
become a part of a shared moral universe, with its norms, its oughts, and ought-nots.27

However, Locke’s View (at least in its rather sketchy presentation here) also serves as
an admonition of where we could go (and have gone) wrong in addressing the question of
identity. As will become evident in the next chapter, his reliance on memory as the
necessary glue that holds identities together as morally-evaluable time-slices significantly
weakens his position. For now, however, there does seem to be something very right about
his suggestion that identity and normativity are, if nor intimately linked, then at least
connected to a degree that is sufficient to warrant further investigation. In short, Locke
helps us along with our intuitions about identity, normativity, and “our place” in the world.
In this way, his claims go a long way in driving this project.

But why all this talk about normativity? After all, the focus of this dissertation is on
identity, its meaning and definition, as well as its effect on our lives. Perhaps the answer is
already quite clear: normativity, at least as I am using the term here, is a shorthand way of
saying “warrant for actions, beliefs, and practices” — what, as Parfit points out, “we are
rationally required to do.”28 But any question as to the meaning of normativity is also, at the

same time, looking for an answer as to its source, and as Korsgaard has famously argued,

 

27 Mattern, Ruth, “Moral Science and the Concept of Persons in Locke.” 'l'be Philosophical Rep/en! 89.1
(1980): 24-45.

3“ Parfit, Derek, “Normativity, ’ unpublished manuscript.

32

normativity is just what I require of myself, after reflective endorsement — I, in other words,
am the source of my own moral “ought,” my decisions and actions warranted by the sort of
(rational) creature that I am. Here, however, I am not strictly adhering to either Parfit’s
conception of normativity, nor to Korsgaard’s more specifically Kantian version. Instead, I
am more generally referring to “normative guidance,” in the sense that it ought to be
possible for us, as human beings, to be guided by norms. \Vhile I will not offer an
exhaustive discussion of the recent debates” on the definition and sources of the norms that
might guide us, I do suggest, with Peter Railton, that norms call on us and compel us to
follow, and yet our freedom (and thus subsequent responsibility for our actions) is not at the
same time threatened by our being thus compelled. When we follow a norm, therefore, we,
adhere to some standard (of thought, of behavior, of treatment, and so on) that we take to
be, in some way, acceptable, desirable, or at least necessary or unavoidable.” Of course,
these rather diverse motivations for norm-following raise a number of problems, most of
which I will not address here. For instance, we might wonder if “following a norm” just
means manifesting a disposition that one has developed though acculturation, education, or
some other process of “normalization” that produces in us a sense of what is to be valued
(and what is not). Or perhaps it is a much more calculated, conscious process of
deliberation — and perhaps requires an even higher-order process of reflection on our part.
My goal here, however, is not to take a position on how we come to hold the norms
that we do as norms, as worthy of our adherence — this is a task for another day. The reason I

take normativity—talk to be useful is that it frames our attitudes and practices regarding

 

29Broome,]ohn, “Normative Requirements,” Ratio 12, (1999): 398—419; Korsgaard, Christine, '1 'lie
.S'oun'es of Normatiuity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Railton, Peter, Farts, Values, and Norms:
Essays Toward a Morality of Consequence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Wedgwood, Ralph,
“The Aim of Belief,” P/Jilosop/Jieal Perspectives 16 (2002): 267—97.

3"See Wedgwood, Ralph, “Railton on Normativity,” ,I’lu'losop/Jieal .S'tudies 126.3 (2005): 463-479.

33

identity and identity-formation in a way that clarifies what happens when identities are
created (or assigned), interpreted, or changed. Put quite simply, I suggest that we relate to
each other through norms, which are a kind of medium of expression and intelligibility that
allows us to make sense of ourselves and one another. And it is this complex medium that
tends to determine the roles that each of us assumes: Within the value-laden, norm-driven
environment of our existing social structures, I claim that our identities themselves become
normative in that they indicate how we are to be treated, what we must do (and not do), as
well as how we see our responsibilities to others and others’ duties to ourselves. Given the
overall project of this dissertation — especially its goal of addressing the identity of those
whose identities have (potentially) undergone radical change due to serious illness — this
connection between identity and normativity becomes vital.

Thus, somewhat stripped of its philosophical connection, normativity, too, has its
place in what is at its core a critique of the philosophically dominant views of human
identity. Although I will dedicate a later chapter to a detailed argument for the necessary
relationship between normativity and identity, as a preliminary argument-motivating move, I

take the connection between normativity and identity to be the following:

Even though
(1) there are norms that are represented by my identity that govern my
actions, for they tell me who I am, what I ought to expect from
myself and others, and so on,
and
(2) there are norms to which others hold me on the basis of my identity,

34

(3) there are better, more desirable norms that tell us which identity
s/souldproperb/ be attributed to me. In other words, there are norms (and

thus identities) for which there is more warrant than there is for (1)

and (2).

Perhaps this kind of identity-normativity relationship has something in common with
Charles Taylor’s suggestion that coming to know who we are has something to do with
coming to know what is important to us, thereby connecting identity and value, such that
“my identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or
horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or
what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose.”"l Thus, the question of the
constitution of one’s identity does not only answer the descriptive inquiries of “what” or
“who” one is — it also is fundamental to addressing the normative question of why one’s
identity is constituted one way, and not another, especially when this identity has been
rendered more vulnerable by illness. It is both this potential normative power of identity,
and the failure of so much of synchronic and diachronic accounts of identity to take this
power seriously, that motivate me.

Apart from these more theoretically motivated reasons to address identity and
normativity, there seem to be other, more intuitive, quotidian, and perhaps less scholarly
ones. That is, in asking what it might be like (and, correlatively, what it might not be like) to

be ourselves, to be embodied in our specific identities often not of our own choosing, we

 

3' Charles Taylor, .S’ourres of the Self." the Making oft/1e ll/lodern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1989) 27.

Also see Kitchen, Gary, “Charles Taylor: The malaises of modernity and the moral sources of the
self,” P/n'losoplgy «’7 Social Criticism 25.3 (1999): 29—55.

35

might wish to find out what part of us is “truly our own” — what part of us is authentic, and
what shapes our self into what it is. We might want to know, quite simply, who it is that we
find in the mirror in the morning, and what significance this identification has for how we
are to conduct our lives. And again, the worry about who I am and how I came to view
myself as such grows both in intensity and urgency when the “I” that stares back at me todcg
is somehow damaged, either by serious illness or accident, and in some ways no longer
resembles the “I” of yesterday.

In this dissertation, then, I am moved both by this concern about who we, as well as
by the apparent fact that it has not been taken up in the right way by the philosophical
community, and especially not by those engaged in what is loosely called analytic philosophy.
It seems to me that not only what happens to us in our lives, but also how we interpret our
life’s story depends very much on who we and others believe ourselves to be. Far from an
appeal for some sort of an idealist conception of identity, this claim’s purpose is to convey
why it matters that we pay very close attention to how identity is construed and constituted,
especially in the case of the seriously ill individual: simply, if we, as theorists, do not take
care and if we are not both rigorous and sensitive to how normative categories work and
what they (can) do, the consequences might be devastating. One does not have to search far
to recall the very telling example of the “gaslighted” Paula Alquist Anton "’2 or recall the
struggle of the desperately ill Vivian Bearing in Wit to be reminded of the costs that certain
sorts of identities extract.

In the end, by forgoing what some theorists view as “mere laymen’s concerns,” we,
as theorists, miss an opportunity to bring together a fundamental human worry about who

we are and how we come to be that way and the rigor of philosophical methodology. In an

 

32 Benson, Paul, “Free Agency and Self-W'orth,” journal o_/'P/Jiloso/)/gy 91.12 (1994): 650—668.

36

attempt to counteract this trend, this dissertation approaches identity in a way that will give
voice to our more conventional, and shared, concerns, while at the same time employing the
structure and discipline of philosophical inquiry. What I wish to address, in the end, are the
lives of actual persons, both in health and in illness, in all of their ordinariness and all of their
wonder. In the next section, I take on the standard approaches to identity, assessing both
the questions of why they matter, as well as the reasons for which they ought to be

challenged.

37

M )1 self I then perused, and limb bi limli
.S'uroeyed, and sometimes Went, and sometimes ran
Wit/J supple joints, and lively vigour led:
But who I was, or tubere, or from moat cause,
Knew not; to speak I tried, and fort/Junta spa/6e,
M } tongue obeyed and readibi could name
W/Jat e'er I saw.

—Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 253-73

CHAPTER II: STANDARD ACCOUNTS OF IDENTITY

1. Why Standard Accounts Matter

Having outlined the four-part division between the kinds of questions about human
identity that tend to be posed by philosophers and identity theorists, it seems that I ought to
say a few words about why I choose to begin with an overview ofwhat 1 call the more
traditional accounts of identity, and how these accounts motivate my general project.

In the following section, I suggest that the traditional theorists restrict, and thus
arguably weaken, their answers to what identity might be by limiting the kinds of questions
they ask. Specifically, some wonder what it is like to be the same person through time, while
others (mainly free-will theorists and moral psychologists) worry about what it means to be a
person in the first place. While these are valid inquiries into particular metaphysical or
epistemic issues related to identity, they are problematic as questions about identities of
individuals — problematic partly due to the dispositive manner in which they are presented.
Specifically, even though they are represented as worries about human identity, broadly

speaking, they are not worries about identity of the kind that seems to matter to human

38

beings in general. Moreover, they are worries that even plri/osopliically appear to miss the
mark, in the sense of glossing over the actual social positions of large segments of the
population.

Thus, what I am most concerned with is relevance and inclusiveness. Given their
arguably serious flaws, the question still remains as to why address these more traditional
views at all. The answer is, first, that they are standard, and thus influential in framing the
debate. That is, the standard views are likely to be taken as definitive, or at least as
overriding, in the ongoing deliberations about identity, and thus any appeal for an
amendment must offer an explanation and evaluation of their constitutive claims in order to
create a frame of reference within which an alternative may present a viable option.
Moreover, there is, I suspect, a philosophical preference for parsimony, neutrality (among
other things, with regard to how a given theory applies to different sorts of agents), and
universality that is central to the dominance of these theories. It is this preference that ought
to be questioned not only because of its consequences for identity t/Jeory, but also on the basis
of the possibility of far-reaching practical consequences of such theory (implicating, therefore,
my relevance and inclusiveness worries). Thus, I now turn to (some) of the foundations of
the debate.

I begin Chapter II chronologically, by consideringjohn Locke’s empiricism about
identity, and suggest that, in several important and problematic ways, his claims served to
form the discourse about identity for several hundred years after they were first presented. I
then consider Daniel Dennett’s worry about personhood. Third, I address what is perhaps
one of the more influential (yet, I suggest, nevertheless largely unsatisfying) views of identity
— that of Derek Parfit. In Chapter III, I continue by considering several responses to Parfit:

a concern about his negation of the role of the body in identity, a worry about identity and

39

agency of Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard, and finally, a critique by Marya
Schechtrnan of Parfit’s narrow definition of identity. Finally, I suggest at the conclusion of
Chapter III that, although Schechtman’s views offer certain improvements over Parfit’s,
what they take to be definitive of identity nevertheless leaves us with an emaciated notion of

the identities ofindiw'duals.

a. Background: The Emergence of the Psychological continuity criterion:
Locke, Memory, and the Conscious Self

Questions of personhood and of personal identity both have their roots in, among
other places, John Locke’s theory of the person. Indeed, his project — if his rather large
body of work might be said to constitute a single project — can be viewed as a move away
from the puzzling and often unfounded metaphysical assumptions about what kinds of
things there are in the world, and toward a reliance on something that we could trust,
namely, our senses. In several respects, Locke is a precursor to modern accounts of identity,
but not because he is empirical in his methodology (for, in fact, not all modern theories were
or are). Instead, it is in his focus on both what I call the “time—slice” approach to individual
identity, as well as on the more general issue of human identity (versus the identity of other
entities), that he foreshadows modern accounts. Moreover, he introduces the notion of
identity as necessarily related to questions of morality and responsibility, thereby connecting
metaphysical concerns about individuation and continuation through time with worries
about normativity. Yet, like many of those who follow him, he fails to distinguish the
notions of personal identity and personhood from the equally important question of the
identity of individuals. In fact, the worry about the identity of individuals, at least as I frame

it here, appears to be quite absent from his arguments about identity (but I will not speculate

4O

here why this might be the case). I now turn to some specifics of Locke’s account of
identity as a means of introducing the modern debate and framing the issues that have come
to dominate the discourse.

In assessing Locke’s views, one must keep in mind his philosophical foundations,
specifically, his empirical account of the origin of ideas (which I do not address here), as well
as his subsequent skepticism regarding metaphysical knowledge, broadly construed.” As
human beings, he claims, we are not possessed of any capacities which would allow us a clear
idea of subStance — either material (ideas of body) or immaterial (ideas of spirit)” This
skepticism can, and often is, read as an outright denial of the (perhaps overly) optimistic
Cartesian view that human beings have the ability to know the indivisibility of the soul — or,
in fact, that we have any kind of a deep understanding of something like a soul at all. And
yet it is here, amid Locke’s seemingly intractable skepticism, that we find the foundations of
the formulation of the problem of personal identity, for if weknow nothing of the soul’s
nature, how do we also know that it persists through time?” And if any certainty that it does
persist through time is gone, then Locke’s project of offering a viable alternative to Cartesian

rationalism (in which the problem of personal identity was never a serious concern in the

 

33John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, xxiii, ed. J. Carl Mickelsen, University of
Idaho, 1 1 July 2007 http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/ToC/ Locke%20Essay‘VuZOToChtm>.

.l'ee also Henry E. Allison, “Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity: A Re—examination,” journal oft/2e
Histogy ofIdeas 27.1 (1966): 41-58.

3“Locke, Essay, 1, xxiii.

“But be that as it will, I think, we have as many and as clear ideas belonging to spirit as we have
belonging to body, the substance of each being equally unknown to us; and the idea of thinking in
spirit, as clear as of extension in body; and the communication of motion by thought, which we
attribute to spirit, is as evident as that by impulse, which we ascribe to body.”

35 .l'ee Tipton, I.C., I ncke on Human Understanding: .l'elected Essays (Oxford, Oxford University Press,

1977).

41

first place) seems to be in jeopardy.36 Indeed, without some sense of what our “souls” might
be, how can we view a person as remaining the same from day to day, from year to year, or,
indeed, from sleep to wakefulness? If we cannot track any kind of a physical or non-physical
continuation, we cannot seem to make sense of facing the same individual each time we see
him. Locke’s response to this dilemma is both important and curious — important because it
succeeds in framing the debate about personal identity for several centuries, and curious
because of what it leaves out or chooses to ignore. Let us now briefly consider his claims
about personal identity, and then turn to some of their apparent weaknesses.

Recognizing that the importance of the concept of personal identity is both moral
and religious,37 Locke added a chapter entitled “Of Identity and Diversity” to the second
edition of the Essen/.38 Without engaging in a detailed examination of his metaphysics and
epistemology, we can note with some certainty that his claims about personal identity are

most likely based on his more general views about sortal identity, broadly construed}9

 

.S'ee also Woolhouse, R.S., T/Je Empin'cists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
3" Allison 41-58.
3-7 Locke, Essay, I, I, 5.

Indeed, perhaps the most central and fundamental theme of the Essay is humility and moderation in
our goals as knowledge-seekers: Locke tells us that we need to know what is necessary and useful for living our
lives, thus delimiting the sorts of questions that we, as human beings, ought to ask if our goal is indeed
knowledge, and not mere speculation. As he notes,

“How short soever their Knowledge may come of an universal, or perfect Comprehension
of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great Concernments, that they have Light enough to
lead them to the Knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own Duties. Men may
find Matter sufficient to busy their Heads, and employ their Hands with Variety, Delight,
and Satisfaction; if they will not boldly quarrel with their own Constitution, and throw away
the Blessings their Hands are fill'd with, because they are not big enough to grasp every
thing.”

In pursuing our happiness, therefore, our questions (and demands) of morality, religion, and science
are to be practical in nature, and ought to aspire to no greater ends than to assist us in pursuing this happiness.

3" Uzgalis, William, “John Locke,” 'l'lJe Stanford Errgsc/opedi'a ofPlri/osoplgy, 2005, ed. Edward N. Zalta,
11J uly 2007 <http:/ / plato.stanford.edu/ archives / fal12005 / entries / locke / >.

42

Locke’s account of identity goes to some length to separate the identities of atoms, masses
of those atoms, and living things. Importantly, it includes the claim that just as each
individual atom is unchanging over time (thus presenting no special problems regarding its
identity), so the masses of atoms are distinguished by their constituent atoms, regardless of
their organization of structure. It is a different story entirely, however, with living things, for
unlike atoms and masses of atoms, their functional organization matters, and in fact
differentiates one living thing from another. This organized mass of atoms persist through
certain changes in its constituent particles (that is, though those changes that do not destroy
its original capacity to funcrion). And, as Locke notes, what matters in the case of living
things is their continuous “life’”“ — the organization of its constituent parts in a manner
that is most suitable to its functioning in the world, whether it is a tree, an animal or man
(where “man” is an animal, which is physically individuated just like any other living thing) f”
Thus, the sortal identity of man is nothing but life as a particular kind of species — it is, in
fact, animal identigr, which persists through time, from our infancy onward.42

Here, we find Locke at a crossroads: having come full circle from skepticism about
Cartesian certainty, we seem to be in an epistemic limbo, lacking in any sort of intuitive or
certain knowledge about both our corporeal and incorporeal selves. Recall that earlier, 1
suggested that Locke dispenses with any possibility of either broadening or deepening this

knowledge, given our limited capacities. But note also that I said “full circle,” suggesting

 

3" .l'ee Allison 41-58.

Also see Uzgalis, “John Locke.”
”Locke, Essg, II, xxvii, 3-5.

4' Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 6-8.

‘2 Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 6-8.

43

that while denying us access to this knowledge, even as a skeptic, he remains rather worried
about the consequences of this ignorance, especially in the case of the persistence of souls —
of our immaterial selves. The reasons for Locke’s concerns appear to be born of his worries
about morality, and specifically, about the difficulties of just punishment and reward, given
the lack of certitude of our knowledge about both the natural and the supernatural realms.43
His solution to this apparent skeptical conundrum about our material and immaterial
identities is to draw two distinctions: The first, between the physical “man” and the

. - 44
“person,” a corporeal rational being,”

or a soul that is intelligent and can have knowledge of
itself continuing as itself through time.45 The second, between the soul (the thinking thing) and
consciousness. Importantly, Locke is careful to draw the distinction between “man” and
“person.” Some of his reasons (which I will not address here) are the result of his faith, but
some seem to be much more secular: In offering an account of personal identity that is not
reliant on any sort of physical substratum, Locke defiates many metaphysical debates about
human nature. That is, because the persistence of the same (material or immaterial)

substance through time is not required for moral agents to exist, “persons” become less

problematic entities, their reality only dependent on the proper relationship between

 

‘3 Locke, Essey, “Epistle To The Reader.”

“What I had there written concerning Liberty and the Will, I thought deserved as accurate a view as I
am capable of; those subjects having in all ages exercised the learned part of the world with questions
and difficulties, that have not a little perplexed morality and divinity, those parts of knowledge that
men are most concerned to be clear in.”

‘4 Locke, Essay, III, xi, 16.

‘5 Locke, Essegl, III, xi, 16.

Here, I will not address the specific of Locke’s reasoning, for they are outside the scope and the focus
of this dissertation.

44

 

 

 

.J-

st

 

 

".

 

 

memory, consciousness, and deliberation.46 Let us turn then, to the distinction between soul
and consciousness.

While the distinction between the physical “man” and the “person” sets up the
difference between the corporeal and the incorporeal, it is the one between the soul and
consciousness which is at the core of Locke’s claims about personal identity. Specifically,
Locke maintains that it is consciousness, and not the soul, that tracks identity, and can be
transferred from soul to soul. That is, he takes a psychological rather than a somatic
approach to what matters about identity: In “Of Identity and Diversity,” he suggests that
consciousness (of pleasure and pain, among other things) can be transferred from one
thinking substance (soul) to another, and thus while a soul is changed based on what
consciousness enters it, personal identity (constituted by the consciousness) is preserved
through whatever changes affect the thinking substance.47 Conversely, one might have the
very same soul but be a different person if consciousness leaves the thinking substance
(through an accident, through some event that the thinking substance may control, and so
on).

It seems, therefore, that in order for us to make the claim that an individual has had
the same identity over time, it is neither sufficient nor necessary to also claim that one
remains the same soul, or thinking substance. Thus, while at any given time a certain soul,

or thinking substance, exists, it is nevertheless not necessary that a body possess the same

 

4" Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 24-25.

Locke’s example of the prince and the cobbler is a telling example of his desire to remove the physical
body from any considerations of personal identity: W’ hen a prince and a cobbler switch bodies, he tells us, the
prince will take himself to be a prince even though he is in the cobbler’s body, and vice versa. What matters is
that each gets the appropriate judgment in the end, regardless of what body the particle consciousness
happened to inhabit. The sameness of the body, therefore, has very little to do with personal identity.

See Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 15.

"Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 23, 26.

45

soul for personal identity to be preserved.” The body, in fact, is not central to the question
of identity at all.

While at first this might appear to be an impenetrable jumble of poorly defined
categories, I take Locke’s claims to have some merit both philosophically and socially, if we
take into account his goals. Concerned about the laws of men and God, Locke considered
the fact that we are sometimes asleep, or unconscious, or in many other ways unaware of our
bodies (and souls) to be a potential threat to the veracity of our praiseworthiness and
blameworthiness. How do we know, Locke wondered, that our souls have not been
switched with those of another while we are asleep? And, given his skepticism about what
we can know with any certitude, simply investigating the issue would offer no respite from
doubt — doubt which was, at least to Locke, unacceptable if what was at issue was desert.
Thus, his distinction between our human souls and the consciousness that inhabits them
serves to close those opaque gaps between periods of awareness. Since our “personality
extends itself beyond present existence to what is past only by consciousness, whereby it

49 .
” this

becomes concerned and accountable, owns and imputes to itself past action,
consciousness is the source of our concern for our welfare, and our resultant accountability.

Anything less would be an unjust punishment (or reward) of one who is ignorant of his

actions:

[T]o receive pleasure or pain, i.e., reward or punishment, on account of any

such action is all one as to be made happy or miserable in its first being,

 

4“ Locke, Essay, Il, xxvii, 10-12.
Also see Uzgalis, “John Locke.”

4" Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 26.

46

without any demerit at all. For supposing a man punished now for what. . ..he
could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there

between that punishment and being created miserable.”

Bridging these gaps, therefore, allows us to be justly accountalrle for our actions,
thereby becoming moral actors — and for morality to be the purview of persons, rather than
simply of any lizrirg being. And it is a soul with a “consciousness” -— understood as the
working of memory, connecting the various “me’s” into a single accountable entity — rather
than just “humanity” or “a man with a soul” that is the necessary, as well as the sufficient,
condition for the possibility of a morally-grounded notion of personal identity: necessary
because consciousness is the only connection between our past, present, and future through
which we (as souls) can truly own our actions, and thus be held responsible for them,SI and
sufficient because consciousness has the potential to bring together my past, present, and
future actions in a way that makes me interested in my future self, allows me to deliberate
about the actions that I perform given this concern, lets me be motivated by this worry to
act, and subsequently, makes it possible for me to be judged for those actions. In other
words, the whole, reidentified (through memory), morally liable individual emerges out of a

lifetime of changes.52 Indeed, E. J. Lowe has argued that it was Locke who introduced the

 

5“ Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 26.

5‘ Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 18-20.

57- Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 15-18.

In fact, Locke claims that:

“For as far as any intelligent Being can repeat the Idea of any past Action with the same
consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present Action; so far
it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness it has of its present Thoughts and Actions,

that it is self to it self now, and so will be the same self as far as the same consciousness can extend to
Actions past or to come.”

47

terms of the modern debate about personal identity, asking the “question to which previous
philosophers had been oblivious.”'” Roger Scruton, moreover, attributes the current

distinction between “being human” and “being a person” to Locke:

Man, he argued, is not the same concept as person. The first describes a part
of the natural world; the second is a ‘forensic concept’: it features in our

. . . . . . . . . f4
inquiries into responssbilities and rights.’

The result, then, of all of these carefully (and not so carefully) drawn distinctions is
this: the emergence of personal identity, [be self,"55 as dependent on the psychological criterion

of memory that is not merely categorically distinct, but morally robust.

 

Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 10.
53 E.J. Lowe. Locke (London, New York: Routledge, 2005) 102.
5“ .S'ee Roger Scruton, Modern Plrilosoplry (New York: Penguin, 1996) 304.

55 Locke, Essay, II, XXVii, 26-

48

1. Locke’s personal identity: some emerging problems56

However, this new psychologically based account of personal identity did not arrive
without its share of concerns and puzzlements. In this section, I note several problematic
conclusions to which Locke’s claims about personal identity potentially lead. I will first say a
few words about what I take to be Locke’s profound and groundbreaking contributions to
the discourse on personal identity, and then suggest some of the more worrisome directions
in which they point. It is my hope that this scene—setting will provide the rest of this chapter
(and indeed, the rest of this dissertation) with both structure and context. I take Locke’s

claims to fundamentally frame the debate about personal identity as both a debate about a

 

5" Here, I will only address the kinds of potential problems with Locke’s views that are relevant to my
worries about personal identity, and will not engage with other critics of Locke who noted certain surprising
consequences of his arguments. Perhaps one of the better known of these critics is Thomas Reid, who argued
that, by virtue of his views on consciousness and the role of memory in identity, Locke is committed to the
absurdity that one might and might be, at the same time, the actor who performed a given act:

“Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have
taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced
life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was
conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that when made a general be was conscious of his
taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging.

These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr LOCKE’S doctrine, that he who was flogged at
school is the same person who took the standard, and that he who took the standard is the same
person who was made a general. Whence it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the general is
the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the general’s consciousness does not reach
so far back as his flogging, therefore, according to Mr LOCKE’S doctrine, he is not the person who
was flogged. There- fore the general is, and at the same time is not the same person with him who was

flogged at a school.”

Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers oj’Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1969) 333—334.

Reid suggests that Locke’s error is the result of having confused consciousness (that is, how we know
the present) with memory (that is how we know the past). Locke, according to Reid, also conflates the
constitution of personal identity with those things that allow us to recognize it as such — even if memory
allows us to recognize something like personal identity, it is not, at the same time, become the cause of its
ex15tence.

Reid 107-116.

See also I .ocke Studies 27, ed. Roland Hall, 1996, Loyola University Chicago, 11 July 2007
<http://www.luc.edu/philosophy/LockeStudies/listings.htm#no271996>.

49

concept that deserves recognition as a unique and serious worry in philosophy, and a debate
about a concept that is fundamentally moral, or, at the very least, that deserves attention as a
potentially moral concern. However, I also suggest that Locke presents us with a very
problematic and flawed definition of personal identity. I now turn to a brief summary of his
clams about personal identity, and my criticisms of them.

As I noted earlier, Locke’s view that consciousness is constitutive of personal
identity (a). separates the personhood from the identity of other beings (including human
beings, if those human beings do not happen to be persons), thus beginning the discourse
on what I call person/900d, (1)). offers a (flawed) account of how identity remains intact, given
the passage of time and the various physical changes that an embodied soul encounters, thus
offering a view of personal identiy, and (c). as a result of individuating and defining the
personhood in terms of motivation and desert that placed it squarely into the moral realm,
focused the discussion on the normative, rather than on just the metaphysical, aspects of
identity. But even given this useful inauguration of the debate, we see the seeds of what I
take to be serious theoretical and practical problems.

The first criticism is related to the question of accessibility and third-person
judgments: If consciousness (or, awareness of what one wants to do or what one is doing) is
constitutive of personal identity, then, it would seem, only the individual who possesses the
particular consciousness has access to it and its motives. If this is the case, are we to
conclude that no individual is able to assess morally (or, indeed, in any other way) the
identity of any other? That is, if I am trying to decide whether Smith intentionally broke my
window with a rock, am I to resign myself to the thought that Smith’s motivational structure
is permanently opaque to me? This, however, does not seem to present a problem for

Locke for the following two reasons: First, while observers who are mere mortals may not

50

be sensitive to the workings of our consciousnesses, eternal justice is dispensed by a divine
ruler who knows "the secrets of all Hearts” and who, unlike human courts of justice, makes
no mistakes.57 Second, Locke’s account of personal identity is viewed (almost) exclusively
through a first-person lens, whereby my motive and obligation are connected by virtue of my
deliberations which tell me that I will, in fact, be punished later for my present bad actions.58
In other words, if I take the threat of this punishment seriously, I will necessarily be less
inclined to engage in the bad action.

But, of course, tbere are problems — serious problems for Locke’s views that leave many
who do not share his optimism about the rightness of eventual judgment, and who might
insist that we nevertheless require some kind of access to first-person deliberations that
would provide us with moral bases on which to both evaluate and judge the identities of
individuals. Such third-person access might also be required for moral and epistemic
reasons - as way to more reliably fill in the gaps between events that are opaque, and that,
for this reason, make for morally opaque judgments. In other words, when the first-person
access is blocked from the memory of her past selves (and thus from the possibility of
deliberating about those past selves) for reasons of amnesia, mistaken memories, or illness,
she might require the help of third parties to reconstruct her moral identity. Locke’s
assumptions about judgrnent-motivated deliberations aside, her remaining options are to
forever remain disconnected from her past actions (and thus cease being a moral actor as far
as those actions are concerned), or to be satisfied with concluding that she is now truly a
“different person” from the one whose actions can no longer be recalled. But if we think

seriously for a moment about the number of times that our memory is affected, it becomes

 

57 Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 26.

5“ Locke, Essay, II, xxvii, 25-26.

51

more than a little unsettling to think that the only way we have of remaining persons with a
stable identity that is subject to moral evaluation is through first—person memories or first—
person deliberations. That is, even if one is sympathetic to the notion that first-person
deliberations are fundamental to personal identity (which they very well might be), this still
does not suggest that they are the only element of identity formation, or that third-person
deliberations about the actions and possible motivations of another (other than the final
judgment that Locke took to be imminent and dispositive) are not a part of the process.
Moreover, even if we take the question of personal identity to be mainly a matter of the
correct balance among (first-person) deliberation, action, and judgment, something appears
to be puzzling, because for Locke, the story of personal identity seems to be only a worry
about accountability, and this personal identity is third-person opaque. So, something looks
to be missing. But what?

This brings me to the second criticism— perhaps a more general one, but one which I
hope will shed some light on some of my suspicions about Locke’s claims about personal
identity. Put simply, it is a concern about Locke’s apparent silence about certain quite
powerful intuitions about wbo I am. This is a worry about Locke’s apparent (and odd, given
his empiricism) lack of concern with people, with how we actually are, or might be. This
lack of concern is exhibited in at least two ways: First, while his definition of personal
identity as a consciousness that possesses memories, deliberates, and is judged might serve as
the groundwork for the discourse on human identity, its focus is on the abstract person (from
which the later, but equally abstract, notions of person/mod and personal identigr eventually
developed). Therefore, it seems to lack a concern for a substantive view of personal identity, or
identities of individuals, which, I will argue later, offer us a way to talk about ourselves that is at

once conceptually sound and normatively formative. Second (and perhaps this is just a

52

subset of the first part of the criticism), Locke discounts the importance of the body in his
consideration of human identity. ’9 I will now turn to consider both of these issues.

Pace Wittgenstein, and cum grano salis, when I take myself to be introspecting about
my identity — when I look in the mirror and wonder who it is that stares back — I find
good reasons to believe that there is, quite simply, sometbing tbere, intertwined with my
physical presence or body."0 I consider myself to be the same person in the past as I am
today, at least in the moral sense that my actions three, seven, twenty years ago, whether or
not I recall them with the same clarity as I remember what I did ten minutes ago, are still
mine, and not those of some entity to whom all deliberative and normative routes are closed.
What is more, my identification with the “old me” is not merely that of a consciousness
recalling itself being somewhere else at a different time — there are also memories of the
body, physical memories that are intricately and inextricably connected with whatever
memories I might have. I might remember, for instance, that it was I who badly skinned my
knee when I was seven years old, and the reason that I know, aside from my memory of the
event, is the light scar that is still visible there. In other words, my body constantly reminds
me of its crucial, identity-forming participation in my life, and it also has its own ways of
remembering.

However, even in cases where physical scarring or other physical manifestations of
whatever took place are not present, I still experience myself as the experiencing subject as
well as the volitional agent guiding my will, deliberating about choices, and ultimately

responsible for them. And that this has gone on since I was aware of my own existence, and

 

5" Locke, Essgr, II, xxvii, 9-10.

6“ Although much has been said on the topic of both the possibility and the efficacy of such
introspection by Wittgenstein and a number of others, I will not here offer any arguments for or against our
ability to engage in such introspection. I am presenting it solely as a way into my argument about the role of
the body in claims about identity.

53

maybe even before that. In fact, I might say that I have evidence — empirical evidence — that my
self is not something that appears and disappears with the wane and wax of memory. I
know this, for instance, because people recognize me when I sometimes do not recognize
them - they clearly remember me at a time that I do not; they have witnessed me, even if I
have forgotten this witnessing. Some far-away tune, or smell, or taste will remind me of
something, and yet I might not be able to say exactly what, while still being moved and
perhaps even morally motivated by these sensations. My current position in life (education,
employment, even marriage or lack thereof) might be results of actions that I performed or
failed to perform in my distant past. I am therefore connected to myself as an actor in a way
that a simple lack of clear, conscious memory cannot erase: two morally distinct actors are
not suddenly created in place of a single absent-minded one.

Is this, then, the definitive kind of proof that a strict empiricist might require? Of
course not. Yet my point is that the demand for such evidence, as well as the emphasis on
moral accountability of abstract, disembodied identities, is simply not a very fruitful pursuit
if what we seek is the connection between normativity and identity. I suspect that there is
simply more to our individual identity — to the identities ofindioiduals — than Locke allows.
Our identities, it seems to me, are much more than the question of accountability, guilt, or
innocence — indeed, as I have suggested earlier, they are so much more than the
psychological process of the conscious flow of memories, or the subsequent process of
moral deliberation.

Perhaps a bit of a cautionary disclaimer would be useful here. I am not, of course,
making the case for the kind of notion of personal identity that Hume found so
unconvincing: Hume noted that some philosophers have a curious tendency to refer to

,9 ‘6

something called a “self,” which is “simple, identical” through time, and which remains

54

unchanged, unlike my thoughts and feelings which are a fleeting part of this “self.” These
philosophers, as Hume saw it, were making a catcgogy mistake, for in a world where knowledge
was separated into matters of fact and relations of ideas,"1 there could be no such fixed
mental substance that fit into neither category.“2 Since there is not a separate impression of
the self which can be experienced by us (given that experience is essential to epistemological
questions which are not matters of relations of ideas), there is no good reason to believe that
there is something called a “self" that endures over time, since the most we can identify is a

. . . . - - 63
forever-changing consc1ousness. Therefore, there 18 also no such thing as personal identity.

 

6' “All objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds , to wit, Relations
of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in
short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse
is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That
three times five is the half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are
discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the
universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for
ever retain their certainty and evidence.

Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same
manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of
every matter of fact is still possible; because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind
with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow
is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise. We
should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a
contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind.”

L.A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., David Hume, An Enquigy Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1902) 25-26, Sect. IV, Part 1, Par. 20-21.

(’2 “There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we
call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are the evidence of a
demonstration, certain, beyond both of its perfect identity & simplicity. . .."Unluckily....[we do not have] any
idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd.”

Instead, Hume offers what has come to be known “Bundle Theory of Mind,” which takes every
instance of awareness (and every object of that instance) to be an individual perception and "what we call a
mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations...”

Selby-Bigge 251-263.

63 “For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call mysef I always stumble on some
particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch
nysefl at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.... If anyone, upon
serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of bimsef I must confess I can reason no
longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially

55

My point is that in putting into question Locke’s view of personal identity, I am not
at the same time subscribing to the kind of identity-essentialism that Hume critiqued. On
the other hand, neither am I suggesting that Hume’s alternative to Locke is somehow more
satisfying. Indeed, when surveying my mind in a way that Hume supposes we can, I neither
“find” ”0/ seat; nor ought I reasonably expect to do so. What I “find” is a complex structure
of beliefs, desires, memories, loves, hates, pains, and pleasures. I also find a body that is
intricately involved with these beliefs, memories, loves, and hates — a body that is just as
much their author as their recipient, as much a creator of memories as their repository.
What I find, then, is my identigr as an individual —- my sense of who I am, which is distinct from
both Locke’s moral honorific of “personhood” and Hume’s metaphysically solid and
unchanging self.

Yet, as I noted earlier, Locke did open up the discourse on personal identity in a way
that has not been done previously, specifically by bridging personal identity with issues of
normativity and ethics. Given that it is not important what substance, either material or
immaterial, happens to correspond with my identity, what does become important, and
dispositive of my identity, are my actions (based on memories and deliberations). And it is
this connection between actions and identity that results in the introduction of normativity:
I am responsible — that is, I will be judged for — the actions which I explicitly remember
performing as a particular entity with an identity. Identity, Locke tells us, is thus separate

. . . 64
from metaphysms as well as from somatic necess1ty.

 

different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls bin/self,
though I am certain there is no such principle in me.”

Selby-Bigge 251-263.
6“ Interestingly,Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid presented some rather powerful objections to

Locke’s memory-based psychological conception of identity. Butler, for example, claimed that Locke was
engaged in a bit of a “wonderful mistake,” not realizing that consciousness “presupposes identity, and thus

56

Still, as I noted previously, Locke’s focus on the psychological memory criterion of
identity does neglect entirely the body’s role in identity formation (and thus in normativity)
and forces an all-too-stringent account of how memory affects identity. That is, I might
recall something that I have done twenty years ago much more faintly than I remember what
I did yesterday, but this does not mean that my memories that are unclear or less clear ought
not be involved in deliberations and decisions that would be constitutive of my identity —
and thus of the moral status of my actions. Locke, however, offers no such nuanced
account of conscience and memory.

That said, Locke has been followed by a number of more modern philosophers who
expanded on his ideas, both directly and indirectly. Some have rejected his psychological

criterion of identity in favor of a definition that does not incorporate morality into the

 

cannot constitute it.” I remember that I went to the store yesterday because the memory is already mine to
remember - my memory of it does not make it mine. Thus, “while memory can reveal my identity with some
past experiencer, it does not make that experiencer me. What I am remembering, then, insists Butler, are the
experiences of a substance, namely, the same substance that constitutes me now.”

Shoemaker, David, "Personal Identity and Ethics", 'I 'be .S'tarr/ord Enqclopedia afPlr/losoplry, 2005, ed.
Edward N. Zalta, “July 2007 <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2005/entries/identity-ethics/>.

See alsoJoseph Butler, “Of Personal Identity,” Personal Identity, ed. John Perry (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1975) 100.

Reid, agreeing with Butler, adds that among other worries, Locke's claims about identity imply a
contradiction, where one “could both be and not be identical to some past stage,” violating the transitivity of
identity. The absurd result is that one could be identical to one stage in one’s life (because one remembers it)
but not another, even if the later stage occurred later than the former.

Shoemaker.

See also Thomas Reid, “Of Mr. Locke's Account of Our Personal Identity,” Personal Identity, ed. John
Perry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975) 114-1 15.

However, both Butler and Reid do agree that identity is indeed a moral issue. The disagreement, then,
centers on wbat identity, in fact, is.

Shoemaker.

57

notion of our selves at all. Some have taken up the psychological criterion, albeit with very
different results. And some have offered starkly different ways of connecting identity and
morality. Importantly, however, in the discourse about identity and normativity, Locke’s
account of personal identigi serves as a useful and challenging opening salvo, even though
many of those who followed him offered arguments that, in the end, fail to address what I
take to be most important about human identity. It is to these (more recent) theories that l

DOW turn.

b. Dennett and our peculiar “selves”

I turn directly from Locke to Dennett for several reasons: First, Dennett happens to
be one of the more influential theorists of the latter halfof the twentieth century (and,
indeed, today) of person/mod. Dennett, perhaps more than anyone else noted in the
dissertation, addresses the question of what distinguishes a person from a non-person. In
this regard, his primary focus seems to echo that of Locke: what kinds of attributes make a
person different — different due to the capacity for morality — from all other kinds of
creatures? I argue that Dennett’s very rigidly and seemingly arbitrarily constructed concept
of the “moral agent” precludes any meaningful definition of person/road, and certainly does
not address the question of identities of individuals, which I take to be the more (practically and
philosophically) pressing worry about human identity.

Second, and more importantly, he presents a curious mix of Locke and, to some
extent, Hume, as well as serving as a precursor to my later arguments for the necessity of a
narrative approach to identity. Like Locke, he begins with the claim that there must be

something important about criteria for personhood, since so much time and energy is

58

devoted to worries about what makes persons so (morally) different and distinct from non-
persons. Unlike Locke, however, he dispenses with the psychological criterion of identity as
a means to moral personhood, in the end taking the view that the project is at best
misguided and at worst, a category mistake. In a sense, his claims are both something to
push against and toward which to move. I divide Dennett’s arguments into two parts: The
first will address those of his claims that I take to obscure the identity debate, and the second
will consider his views on the self as a “center of narrative gravity,” which offer several

crucial observations about the self and the process of identity formation.

i. Criteria for Personhood: Dennett and the Chimera of Moral
Personhood

Daniel Dennett begins with the assertion that it is most likely the case that we are all
persons."5 However, unlike Locke, he suggests that “personhood” as a concept is rather

()(1 '
” 1n the

confused. Although the terms “human” and “person” are potentially “coextensive
sense that, while we, perhaps optimistically, take ourselves to be human persons, not all
humans are necessarily persons, nor are all persons necessarily human. Re-introducing the
metaphysical concerns about personhood that Locke so desperately sought to put to rest,

Dennett suggests that the difficulties that seems to haunt us in trying to define personhood

lies in the dichotomy between the metaply'sica/ concept of a person, which is “roughly, the

 

“5 We are persons to the extent that we are selves. And selves, as Dennett notes, can ostensibly be
viewed as “what you control and care for.”

See also Daniel Dennett, “The Origins of Selves,” Cogito 3 (1989): 163-73, reprinted in Daniel Kolak
and R. Martin, eds., Sefle’? Identig': Contemporag' Pbilosopbica/ Issues. (New York: Macmillan, 1991).

6" Daniel Dennett, “Conditions of Personhood,” 'I'be Identities o/Persons, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976) 175.

59

notion of an intelligent, conscious, feeling agent,” and the moral one, which is “roughly, the
notion of an agent who is accountable, who has both rights and responsibilities?"7 While
Locke asserts that one’s conscious memories, and thus accountability for deliberations based
on those memories, is what separates persons from mere “humans,” Dennett makes no such
claims, and only asks: is the metaphysical sense of an agent sufficient evidence of the moral
one? That is, is metaphysical existence of human beings sufficient for their existence as
moral persons? His suspicion, he tells us, is that even if the two notions seem to be distinct,
they are not disconnected, for “there seems every reason to believe that metaphysical
personhood is a necessary condition of moral personhooc 3””
In order to test this “specialness” of moral personhood, Dennett sets out six
conditions with the intent to find out: (1) how these conditions are dependent on each
other; (2) why they are necessary for moral personhood; and (3) whether they are jointly
sufficient for moral personhood."0 In considering Dennett’s six-part criteria, we ought to
keep in mind that they are necessarily hierarchical, where an entity must be an intentional
system before it could even become eligible for moral personhood. For example, an entity

cannot simply be self-conscious or capable of communication without intentionality.’”

The six necessary conditions are as follows:

I . persons are rational

 

"7 Dennett 176.
63 Dennett 177.
"9 Dennett 177.

7" Dennett 180.

60

2. persons are beings who are intentional (or, to whom intentional state
are ascribed)

3. other beings take a personal stance toward persons (that is, the stance
adopted toward an individual ascribes the status of “person” to that
. . . 7]
1nd1v1dual)

4. persons are capable of taking a reciprocal personal stance (or having

“higher order intentions”) toward other beings

5. persons are able to communicate verbally
6. persons are capable of a “special” self-consciousness not found in other
beings.

If the first three conditions are satisfied, what we have is an “intentional system,”
whose behavior might sometimes be predicted and explained by ascribing to it (presumably,
in a reliable manner) beliefs, desires, and so on.‘72 Yet, even though intentional systems
presuppose rationality and are thus necessary for personhood, they do not get us to the
sufficient condition for personhood.?" This is so in part because intentional systems include
too many entities to whom we would not readily apply the label of ‘person’ — the class is

simply too large, and its members too diverse.74

 

7‘ “ it is not the case that once we have established the objective fact that something is a person, we
treat him or her or it in a certain way, but that our treating him or her or it in this certain way is somehow and
to some extent constitutive of its being a person.”

See Dennett 270.

72 Dennett 179.

73 Dennett 180.

7“ Dennett 180.

61

The final three requirements are crucial: although the fourth is possessed by most
intelligent beings (and not just persons), the fundamental test of moral personhood rests on
the fifth and sixth conditions. By the ability to communicate, Dennett means that a speaker
intends to be understood by the listener. By self-consciousness, Dennett means that one is
capable of reflective self-evaluation, “adopting toward oneselfthe stance not simply of
communicator but of. . .reason-asker and persuader.”75 Theoretically, only if these last two
conditions are met are we persons in tbe moral sense.

Yet Dennett remains unconvinced; he does not take the six necessary conditions to
also be sufficient for moral personhood. The reason for this, he tells us, is twofold. First,
insofar as the moral concept of a person is (putatively a normative one (and Dennett takes it
to be such), we cannot fix a set standard or draw a line in the sand beyond which beings
become “persons.” Second, returning for a moment to Locke’s worries about accountability
and judgment, we seem to be faced with the paradox of culpability: whenever we claim that a
being is truly culpable (that he intentionally did something that he knew to be wrong), we
cannot help but “doubt that it is a person we are dealing with at all.”“’ If this were truly a
person in the moral sense, with all of the six conditions satisfied, we have to wonder how he
could have been capable of the immoral act. And nothing, Dennett concludes, could ever
alleviate our doubts.

At the root of this apparent dismissal of moral personhood as a unique epistemic
category worthy of serious philosophical attention lies Dennett’s conflation of moral
personhood and moral agency. That is, he combines the sorts of characteristics that we

might take to be sufficient for moral personhood — for instance, one being the subject of a

 

75 Dennett 193.

7" Dennett 194.

62

personal stance toward oneself by others — with the sorts of intentional stances and rational
behaviors we might require of moral agents, or those sorts of beings who are not just the
subjects, but also particular kinds of actors. He seems to ignore the possibility that, given
certain physical facts, such as the presence of my friend’s living, breathing, and perhaps
minimally conscious human body, I, as her caretaker, can nevertheless hold her in
personhood, even though she can no longer do so for herself. For example, take someone
who is in the throes oflate-stage Alzheimer’s, and, as a result, has lost not merely her
memories and the ability to take reciprocal (and rational) personal stances toward others, but
arguably also the “special” self-consciousness of which only human beings (indeed, not even
all human beings) are capable. It would seem that since Dennett does not grant moral
personhood to even a perfectly healthy individual who meets all six of his criteria, he would
clearly discount someone whose ability to merely recognize not only others but herself as a
person has become unreliable.

But moral personhood is not so simple, nor is it so quickly undermined as a concept
by one’s apparent lack of agency. I will argue in later chapters that the implications of views
of identity such as Dennett’s lead us to the rather untenable (and indeed unwarranted)
conclusions that (1) once one’s rationality, the ability communicate, and so on are gone,
one’s moral personhood is also no longer present, and (2) this does not matter. But in his
eagerness to dispel the chimera of “moral personhood” in favor of the metaphysical model,
Dennett combines several (and at times seemingly arbitrary) requirements for what he takes

to be moral personhood, thus failing to distinguish

(a). the possibility of a moral personhood outside of one’s own moral

agency, and thus

63

(b). the possibility of a moral personhood in addition to — not

absorbed by — metaphysical personhood.

I suggest (and will do so in greater detail later in this dissertation) that evidence does
not support either conclusion (1) or conclusion (2) as it is indeed possible to maintain the
personhood of another — to “ hold” someone “in personhood,” according to Hilde
Lindemann — when they are unable to do so for themselves. It is also quite reasonable to
argue that this act and its consequences for both the actor and the subject of the actions
matter mom/bi in a way that a mere metaphysical account of personhood fails to capture.77
Indeed, in the end, it will become quite apparent that the impaired individual’s agency is not
required in order for her to be a moral person, or to be viewed as one who is a part of the
moral universe, deserving of its normative rules and expectations.

The consequences of Dennett’s views are thus quite startling: because no creature
seems to answer to the title of “moral person,” Dennett concludes that “the moral notion of
a person and the metaphysical notion of a person are not separate and distinct concepts. . 3’78
And if we are to take Dennett seriously, we would then agree that the category of moral
personhood is at best inconclusive, and at worst a category mistake, and most probably just

an honorific, therefore disconnecting the worries about person/road from worries about

morality.79 Just as we are unable to prove with any degree of certainty that any entity actually

 

77 See Au, Derrick K. 5., “Brain Injury, Brain Degeneration, and Loss of Personhood,” The
Moral Status of Persons, ed. Gerhold K. Becker (Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000).

See also Brison, Susan J., “Outliving Oneself: Trauma, Memory, and Personal Identity,” Feminists
Retbink tbe Sefl ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers (Oxford: W estview Press, 1997); Brett, Nathan, “Dementia, Critical
Interests and Euthanasia,” Moral Issues in Global Perspective, ed. C. Koggel ed. (Peterborough: Broadview Press,

1999); Nelson, Hilde Lindemann, “What Child Is This?” Hastings Center Report 32.6 (2002): 29-38.

7“ Dennett 193.

64

has a given belief structure, so we are also unable to offer any sufficient conditions that
would entitle us to draw a link between identity and normativity, and thereby grant persons
tbe moral status, apart from mere metaphysics, that they might merit.

This view strikes me as compelling yet somehow unsatisfying. On the one hand, it
seems to set up an unnecessarily (perhaps artificially) stringent test for personhood, while on
the other, it calls the notion of moral personhood into question altogether, explaining it as
the result of unwarranted assumptions about human actions. Even if we grant Dennett the
six conditions of personhood as he has conceives of them, his skepticism about the
impossibility of satisfying them does not seem altogether justified. Although it might be
difficult — indeed, veg) difficult — to tell when one truly intends to do x, or when one is really
taking a reciprocal stance toward another, it does not necessarily follow that the satisfaction
of these conditions is either arbitrary or impossible. It seems to me that we could engage in
a long, imperfect process, involving equal parts empirical research and philosophical
theorizing, and while our conclusions might not be fully unimpeachable, they might at least
point us in the right direction. The claim that since we cannot know for sure whether S
really has the belief that )1 says less about the existence of persons as uniquely moral entities,
and more about the methodology and standards that Dennett employs.

Moreover, Dennett’s final claim regarding the difficulty that the notion of
personhood encounters when faced with bad behavior brings into focus his puzzling take on
what moral personhood, if it were possible, would be like. It seems unconvincing at best to

say that if Jones commits a crime, we are less sure that he is a person. If Jones has indeed

 

7" In fact, Dennett notes that
“It might turn out, for instance, that the concept of a person is only a free-floating honorific that
we are all happy to apply to ourselves, and to others as the spirit moves us, guided by our

emotions, aesthetic sensibilities, considerations of policy and the like.”

See Dennett, Brainstorms. 268.

65

committed a crime, a number of things could be true: He might have done so intentionally,
and thus fully exercised his agency in planning and carrying out the crime. He might have
been criminally negligent, and simply not cared about either the law or moral norms. In
either or both cases, he might have acted with glee, with regret, with fear, with awareness
that he was committing a crime, or out of sheer (willful or accidental) ignorance or the law
and mores of his surroundings. He might have acted because he (rightly or wrongly)
thought that his actions would avert a greater crime, thus sacrificing himself (and his
subsequent freedom) for what he took to be a higher cause.

In other words, the number of stories that we could tell in explaining the course of a
particular crime and the motivations of a particular criminal are many, implicating his intent,
his motivations, his choices — indeed, his agengy. But none of them goes as far as putting his
personbood on trial, or at least not in the zero-sum way that Dennett suggests -— especially not
if, as I suggest here, personhood is a much more complex notion than Dennett’s binary
analysis implies. We might say, for instance, thatJones is fully responsible for his choices (or
not responsible for them at all due to circumstances or incapacity, or only responsible for
some and not others), but what is on trial are his cboices and actions in a given situation or case —
not his being in toto, not his status as someone who is a part of our normative universe. Put
more simply, if Jones stole a car, in judging him, the judge and the jury are not deciding
whetherJones is a person in the moral sense - the fact that he is in a court, facing his peers,
making his case, receiving uptake and giving uptake to the words of others is sufficient proof
of that. They are deciding whether he, as a morally responsible agent, is deserving of a given
punishment for a particular act. (Indeed, even were Jones declared incapacitated, it would

not be his personhood but his agency that would be viewed as impaired).

66

 

 

 

 

 

‘Lr

Thus, does the fact thatJones was being bad — that he engaged in an activity that he
knows to be immoral, forbidden, or both — necessarily negate his moral personhood, as
Dennett suggests? This does not seem to be the case. If Dennett can be interpreted as
saying that beings are persons (in the moral sense) only given certain actions, then
personhood acts as an “on/off" switch -— “on” for those of us who do not perform certain
actions, and “off” for those who do. Ostensibly, personhood then (1) is the thinnest of
concepts, not being applicable to anything other than particular sorts of behaviors, (2)
requires a curious sort of moral perfection on the part of persons, or (3) as per Dennett, is a
mere honorific — a laudatory title, awarded for good behavior that is within the norms of a
given individual’s society. Possibilities (1) and (2), I suggest, are less than satisfactory, and
carry with them the disturbing implication that a large proportion of person—like entities are
currently walking the Earth who are not persons at all (or, at least not persons in the moral
sense), but who nevertheless cleverly fool us into thinking otherwise. Possibility (3) is
puzzling because, if it really is the case that personhood as a moral concept has no
independent substantive existence, it is not clear at all why Dennett would engage in this
kind of rigorous analysis of its necessary and sufficient conditions, unless his intent all along
was to require the sorts of standards that he already knew (or at least reasonably suspected)
no single human being could meet at all times. In this case, Dennett’s criticism of
personhood as a moral concept seems to be an exercise in straw-man toppling, and is neither
very informative nor an especially convincing View of human identity in general or individual
identity in particular.

Moreover, his conclusions, somewhat like Locke’s, problematize what we might
mean by “persons”: We might challenge Locke by arguing that one is a person in the moral

sense (or, tbe same person in tbe moral sense) even if one’s memory of one’s past actions is failing

67

or inexact. We might similarly challenge Dennett by suggesting that if it is possible to judge
someone to be a person at all, it might very well be possible judge her to be agood person, a
bad person, or aryit/Jing in between. That is, just as Locke’s necessitarianism about memory in
cases of moral identity is unnecessarily stringent and limiting, so is Dennett’s list of requisite
characteristics, unless by “person” or “personhood” we are merely bestowing an honorific
or have in mind a very narrow range of possibilities of what moral personhood implies.

Of course, the problematization of “personhood” as a special moral designation is
precisely Dennett’s project, but here is where it falls short. In trying to define personhood as

a matter of satisfying six necessary conditions, Dennett

a. Offers criteria that perhaps begin to define a paradigmatic human
being (that is, they might sketch out the general conception about a
creature called a “human being”) but attribute nothing that is
especially and uniquely characteristic of human beings. Indeed, it is
possible to imagine other life forms (Martians, other advanced
primates, laboratory-altered animals, and so on) fitting into all six of
these criteria without also requiring us to concoct improbable,

fantastical hypotheticals (even more fantastical than Martiansl),

and

b. Offers criteria that are arbitrary. As some have noted, why not

include tool use, or the ability to empathize, or write books, or,

68

. . 8“ . . . - .
indeed, form theories? These criteria, in turn, seem to function as a

sort of a theoretical straw man.

and

Like Locke, includes the notion of self-consciousness as necessary.
However, do we not feel compelled to attribute self-consciousness to
those who fulfill the other five criteria — sometimes as a prerequisite for

the other “requirements” that Dennett proposes?8|

and

Potentially makes an error in parallel construction, or perhaps even a
category mistake. Willingness to adopt an intentional stance toward
other people and being the sort of creature who is the recipient of the
intentional stances of others are qualitatively different criteria from
rationality, linguistic ability, and perhaps even conscience.82 Yet,
Dennett includes them in his list as if they are all similarly evaluable,

among other things conflating moral personhood and moral agency.

 

3" Kathleen V. Wilkes, Real People: Personal Identity un'tlrout ’I bong/1t Expen’ments (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993) 25. See alsoJerry Goodenough, “The Achievement of Personhood,” Ratio 2 (1997):

3' Goodenough 146.

”2 Goodenough 146-147.

69

Although a-d all represent serious concerns about Dennett’s overall structure and
conclusions, it is a and d that worry me most, for they appear to be symptomatic of
Dennett’s refusal to qualitatively distinguish properties. Dennett’s argument is based on the
assumption that capacities for language, rationality, intentional stances (toward someone and
to oneself), and so on, can be correctly attributed (or not) to an abstract individual in the
same way. But this may not be the case. That is, I might be able to utter words while alone,
or be conscious of my surroundings or memories while in isolation,”" yet, be unable to be the
giver, or especially the receiver, of intentional states. \Vhat this sugrests is that linguistic
abilities, rationality, and so on might be viewed more as intrinsic capacities, while intentional
Stances involving receivers and recipients appear to be more relational. Intentional states,

then, might only be properly evaluated while one is “partaking in a form of life.’”’4 As

\X/ilfrid Sellars tells us,

To think of a featherless biped as a person is to think of it as a being with
which one is bound up in a network of rights and duties. . ..[It isjto construe
its behaviour in terms of actual or potential membership in an embracing
group each member of which thinks of itself as a member of the

group. . ..The most embracing community to which he belongs consists of

those with whom he can enter into meaningful discourse. . ..Thus to

 

”3 I am not here addressing the process of language formation or the development of rationality,
strictly speaking. I am quite sympathetic with the views that language can only appear through a web of uses
and relations, as can the understanding of what we might mean by “rational.” What I am suggesting here is
that it is possible, having learned a language or the concept of the “rational” to be a practitioner in isolation,
say, on a deserted island, while the same might not be possible in cases of taking intentional stances, or being
the recipient of intentional stances, on such an island.

3“ Goodenough 147.

70

recognize a featherless biped or dolphin or Martian as a person is to think of

oneself and it as belonging to a community.”5

In other words, intentional stances create moral universes in which various selves
come to offer mutual recognition to each other through the establishment of moral norms.
I suspect (although I have yet to argue) that this norm-making might have something to do
with the creation of the identities of those who participate in these norm-making
communities (and those who are kept out), perhaps granting this process a kind of a moral
privilege that Dennett seems to deny. What clearly does seem to be the case is that the task
of moral personhood-making is one that is easily evaluated by neither a checklist of
necessary conditions to be satisfied, nor by examining each individual in isolation from her
relations in the world. In trying — and apparently failing — to connect the notions of
‘personhood’ and ‘morality,’ and by subsequently concluding that “the moral notion of a
person and the metaphysical notion of a person are not separate and distinct concepts,”
Dennett not only gives up on the idea that the definition of personbood can have a moral
element, but also precludes any further evaluation of identity, however framed, as a
normatively efficacious — thus, negating the potential moral import of anything like the
identities of individuals. His analysis leaves us with either no distinctions between the
metaphysical person and the moral one, or else grants the moral distinctions only the

dubious status of an honorific. And this, in my view, sells the enterprise short.

 

85 Wilfrid Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” Science, Pemption and Reality, (London:
Routledge Kegan Paul, 1963) 39. See also Goodenough 147.

71

ii. The Return of the Psychological Criterion
(Dennett and the Role of Narrative)

While I take issue with Dennett’s apparent dismissal of the possibility of moral
personhood, and by extension, of a morally grounded identity ofindiw'duals, I do believe it is
important to note his views on identity formation and the self, which very usefully introduce
the concept of narrative into identity-talk. Moreover, his use of the psychological criterion of
identity — albeit with rather startling results — is also worth noting, if only as an example of
how it can be misused. My reasons for noting his contributions are thus a combination of
agreement and puzzlement: while I agree with his overall notion of the importance of
narrative in identity formation, I take his eventual position on the irreality of the ‘self’ to be
troubling.86 I begin with a brief discussion about his irrealism about the self.

Dennett begins with a few intuitions. Although “our vision of ourselves as
responsible, free, rational agents, and our vision of ourselves as complex parts of the

- - s7
physmal world of sc1ence”

might seem to conflict, he offers what he takes to be a middle
position, at least as it concerns our selves. Take something like the concept of the “center of
gravity.” It is after all, a “theorist’s fiction” - an abstract object to which we can appeal

when looking for causal explanations. Centers of gravity play a crucial role in physics, and

can be identified in space and time, included or excluded from considerations, and so on —

 

3" Daniel Dennett,” The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity,” Sel/‘and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives
ed. Pamela M. Cole, Dale L. Johnson, and Frank S. Kessel (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1992)
103.

See also Nicholas Humphrey and Daniel C. Dennett, “Speaking for our selves: an assessment of
multiple personality disorder,” Raritan, 9.1 (1989): 68-98.

See also Daniel Dennett, “The Origins of Selves,” Cogito 3 (1989): 163-73, reprinted in Daniel Kolak
and R. Martin, eds., Se/fe’?’ Identity: Contemporagy Pbi/osopbical Issues. (New York: Macmillan, 1991).

37 Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms: Pbilosop/rical Essays on Mind and Psyrcbo/agy' (Cambridge, M A: MIT Press,
1996) x.

72

and yet, they can never be observed.” Moreover, they are entirely circumscribed by the
theory which has created them. That is, they have a “nicely defined, well delineated and well
behaved role within physics” — no more and no less.89 But just because centers of gravity are

fictitious, they are not unimportant:

But when I say it's a fictional object, I do not mean to disparage it; it's a
wonderful fictional object, and it has a perfectly legitimate place within

. . . () j
serious, sober, ecbt physscal sc1ence. '

Dennett then makes an interesting move: could the entity we call “the self” be just

such a “center of gravity?” he wonders. Yes and no. On the one hand, ‘the self,’ unlike a

 

3" “Let me remind you how robust and familiar the idea ofa center of gravity is. Consider a chair. Like
all other physical objects, it has a center of gravity. If you start ripping 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're all quite
good at making predictions involving centers of gravity and devising explanations about when and
why things fall over. Place a book on the chair. It, too, has a center of gravity. If you start to push it
over the edge, we know that at some point will fall. It will fall when its center of gravity is no longer
directly over a point of its supporting base (the chair seat). Notice that that statement is itself virtually
tautological. The key terms in it are all interdefinable. And yet it can also figure in explanations that
appear to be causal explanations of some sort. We ask "Why doesn't that lamp tip over?" We reply
"Because its center of gravity is so low." Is this a causal explanation? It can compete with explanations
that are clearly causal, such as: "Because it's nailed to the table," and "Because it's supported by wires."

“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. It has a history, but its history can
include some rather strange episodes. Although it moves around in space and time, its motion can be
discontinuous. For instance, if I were to take a piece of bubble gum and suddenly stick it on the
pitcher's handle, that would shift the pitcher's center of gravity from point A to point B. But the
center of gravity would not have to move through all the intervening positions. As an abstractum, it is
not bound by all the constraints of physical travel.”

Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
< http: / / ase.tufts.edu / cogstud/ papers / selfctr.htm>.

3" Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http: / / ase.tufts.edu/ cogstud/ papers / selfctr.htm>.

9" Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http:/ / ase.tufts.edu/ cogstud/ papers / sel fctr.htm>.

73

center of gravity, “whose sole property is their spatio-temporal position,” has “a spatio-

temporal position that is only grossly defined.”"' That is,

Brain research may permit us to make some more fine-grained localizations,
but the capacity to achieve some fine-grained localization does not give one
grounds for supposing that the process oflocalization can continue
indefinitely and that the day will finally come when we can say, “That cell

there, right in the middle of hippocampus (or WhCTCVCI')-—tliat's the selfl’m

On the other hand, answering in the affirmative, Dennett claims that, like ‘the center
of gravity,’ ‘the self’ is both fictional (as a character in a book), and constituted by the
hermeneutics and phenomenology akin to a folk explanatory theory. Just as we posit centers
of gravity for our purposes in the physical sciences, so we posit selves because we have a
need (much more than an academic one) to both understand and interpret human
behavior.” In short, as human beings, we are fiction-writers and storytellers — we are the
starring actors in our own first-person dramas and comedies, with the “center of gravity”

tantamount to what we are in the habit of calling our “selves.”

 

9' Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm>.

92 Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm>.

93 Dennett notes that,

“In fact we have to posit selves for ourselves as well. The theoretical problem of self-interpretation is at
least as difficult and important as the problem of other-interpretation.”

Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm>.

74

A distinction needs to be drawn here -— a distinction that Dennett himself does not
offer, or at least not very clearly. He tells us that “the chief fictional character at the center
of. . ..autobiography is one’s sefl And if you still want to know what the self realb' is, you're
making a category mistake?”4 So far as good. However, at this point, we might wonder if
Dennett is suggesting that selves are stories, or that they are represented by stories. He seems
to want to claim both: On the one hand, selves areful/ , represented by stories: they are
convenient fictions, and are nothing over and above the stories in which they appear, and
which constitute them. On the other hand, they are these odd, fictional entities which are
“in the center” of our self-stories. And even though there is no reality to them outside of
these stories, they exist to the extent that ficrional characters can be said to exist — they
function as the organizing principles of events and narratives around which the vast number
of stories circulate. It seems that this distinction, which I take to be a crucial one when
addressing issues of identity and selfhood (as various issues, such as who is telling the story
and who is the ‘subject’ of the story, are implicated) is secondary for Dennett, whose primary
aim appears to be the argument for the irreality, or the un-reification, of the self. After all,
our intuition might tell us that if selves are the sorts of things about which more or less
accurate stories can be told, then there must be somet/ring real about them, something that can
be discussed, examined, analyzed, and so on. And it is this reality that Dennett does not

allow. Instead he offers the following:

We sometimes encounter psychological disorders, or surgically created

disunities, where the only way to interpret or make sense of them is to posit

 

9“Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http: / / ase.tufts.edu/ cogstud/ papers / selfctr.htm>.

75

in effect two centers of gravity, two selves. One isn't creating or discovering a
little bit ofghost stuff in doing that. One is simply creating another
abstraction. It is an abstraction one uses as part ofa theoretical apparatus to
understand, and predict, and make sense of, the behavior of some very
complicated things. The fact that these abstract selves seem so robust and
real is not surprising. They are much more complicated theoretical entities
than a center ofgravity. And remember that even a center ofgravity has a
fairly robust presence, once we start playing around with it. But no one has
ever seen or ever will see a center ofgravity. As David Hume noted, no one

. (J:
has ever seen a self, either. ’

Dennett’s selves, then, just are autobiographical stories, or the “centers” around
which these stories circulate, which are sometimes coherent, sometimes not — stories that we
tell to ourselves and to others about what we remember, believe, fear. And about what we
think we are doing, thinking, or saying, or what we want others to think we are doing,
thinking, or saying. And, as such, they are useful fictions.

There are a few qualifications: the sorts of fictions that we are — or the stories that
our selves are — do not resemble the flat accomp/i fiCtions such as Don Quixote, Crime and
Punisbment, or Tbelma and Louise because while we are alive, our stories remain incomplete.
That is, unlike a work of fiction that already has a first and a last page, while we live, we are
still capable of narrating in some way, of adding new chapters to the stories of our lives.

Thus, in our narratives the car might, while the credits have not yet rolled, make it to the

 

95 Dennett, ”The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity”
<http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm>.

76

other side of the Grand Canyon. And even if some chapters have already been “written,”
nothing in these autobiographies is every truly finished, but, as result of interactions with the
world and other beings, is always subject to refinement, change, and revision in an attempt
to make our stories cohere with both what we take to be the case, and what we experience in
the world.90

Moreover (and rather controversially), Dennett suggests that even the narrative
centers of gravity that we call our “selves” are not necessarily singular. For whatever

reasons, including Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and certain surgical procedures, if

a human being's behavioral control system becomes seriously impaired, it can
turn out that the best hermeneutical story we can tell about that individual
says that there is more than one character "inhabiting" that body. . This is
quite possible on the view of the self that I have been presenting; it does not
require any fancy metaphysical miracles. One can discover multiple selves in
a person just as unproblematically as one could find Early Young Rabbit and
Late Young Rabbit in the imagined Updike novels: all that has to be the case
is that the story doesn't cohere around one self, one imaginary point, but

coheres (coheres much better, in any case) around two different imaginary

 

9" In fact, Dennett suggests that we do not merely have different narrator-selves by which we tend to
“identify our “selves” — in fact, the picture is even more complex, whereby we “have our various personae in the
various roles we play day to day.”

See Daniel Dennett, “The Origins of Selves,” Cogito 3 (1989): 163-73, reprinted in Daniel Kolak and
R. Martin, eds., Seb’c’?‘ Identity: Contemporagr Plrilosop/Jica/ Issues. (New York: Macmillan, 1991).

77

points. . ..where the only way to interpret or make sense of them is to posit in

effect two centers of gravity, two selves.”

However, by allowing these new “selves,” we are not admitting to “finding” them in
the psyche — or anywhere else, for that matter. Instead, we are “simply creating another
abstraction. . ..one uses as part of a theoretical apparatus to understand, and predict, and
make sense of, the behavior of some very complicated things?”8 For whatever reasons we
might have, we are multiplying fictions, writing new biographies that might or might not
have anything in common with other biographies similarly constructed. We are creating our
“selves,” our notions of who we are, out of our conscious psychological (or, in the case of
mental illness, perhaps less conscious) desire to make sense of the world. \V e thus
narratively posit this “self” as our definitive moral “core” which ostensibly differentiates us
not only from non-humans, but from other human selves. And yet, Dennett reminds us,
this “core” is not actually there.

I must admit that I am sympathetic to Dennett’s introduction of narrative into his
discussion of self-formation. On the face of it, the processes of shaping the self by telling
stories at times do sound a bit like possible accounts of the identities ofindic-iduals — that is,
they sound like the narrative approach that I intend to defend later in the dissertation. At
first, it seems that unlike Locke’s somewhat limiting notion of identity, Dennett’s view of
‘self’ -creation seems to allow for a narrative fluidity which is not bound by exacting

specifications and necessary categories. But then we notice something rather odd.

 

97 Daniel C. Dennett, “The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity,” Center for ngnitive Studies, 2004,
Tufts University, 11 July 2007 <http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/selfctr.htm>.

See also F. Kessel, P. Cole and D. Johnson, eds., Selfand Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives (Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum, 1992).

9“ Dennett, “The Selfas a Center of Narrative Gravity.”

78

First, there seems to be a problem with the motivational efficacy of Dennett’s
theory. Recall that Dennett begins with the premise that each human being weaves a ‘self’-
identity through storytelling out of the threads of psychological motivations and experiences
in the world. Indeed, he claims that this is just something that we, as human beings, do. Yet
if we take him to be (at least provisionally) correct in asserting that the self is a mere
theorists’ fiction, ought we not also demand that he provide us with an explanatory account
ofw/J} we engage in t/Jis narrative, fiction-creating activity in tbe first place? And ought not this account
be non-question-begging in that it must not appeal to ‘selves’ in order to explain our ‘self-
creating tendencies? In other words, it does not seem to be sufficient for identity theorists,
including Dennett, to explain away the self as a theoretical, narrative fiction by merely
insisting that in creating ‘selves,’ “we all do it” as part and parcel of being the sorts of
creatures that we happen to be. An explanation is owed as to win! we seem to do it — and a
cursory nod at the metaphor of fiction writing, along with an unexamined assumption that
we appear to engage in this behavior in our daily lives, simply do not do the complex notion
of self-narration justice. Locke, for instance, motivated his theory of why we would want to
be moral selves — why we would want to participate in identity-constituting moral
deliberations and actions — by appealing to our concerns about judgment, and especially
about the sort of ultimate judgment that nobody could avoid. However, no such motivating
account is provided by Dennett, leaving his theory speechless as to wby we engage in this
activity that is seemingly so fundamental to our sense of who we are.

This worry about Dennett’s lack of a motivational account, however, might be
grounded in something that is even more troubling. His claim that “out of its brain [the

human being] spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn’t have

79

”99 -

to know what it is doing; it just does it IS instructive, and brings me to the second
problem: Because this making of the self through stories is taken by him to be an activity
more akin to eating than to meaning-making, we might sensibly conclude that Dennett’s
views are based on an apparent conflation of the descriptive and normative aspects of
identity and identity formation, a dismissal of any possible normative aspect of identity and
identity formation, or both. It seems to me that “both” is a reasonable answer, especially if
we recall his earlier claims that there is no distinct moral sense of “person,” or indeed, of tbe
criteria for person/mod.

Specifically, if there is no possibility of a connection between identity and morality
(that is, if there is no sense of identity’s being a source of normativity or having some
substantial relation to normativity), then Dennett’s account of how “selves” are created
through fiction-like narratives is not at all surprising. After all, if there is no apparent
normative baggage that identity formation brings (or, it seems, that it is even capable of
bringing, given that it is something that we, reflexively, “just do”), we might as well take the
stories of individuals’ lives as we happen to find them — assuming, perhaps, that they are
merely following their desires, beliefs, observations, and so on. And little else. \We do not
have to worry very much, therefore, about the morally thorny issue of constraints on story-
telling and uptake of stories (and thus identity-building) —- say, silencing through
discrimination due to gender, race, illness, or disability. If the self is really what Dennett
takes it to be —- an abstraction, a fiction created by our bodies in response to our need to
represent ourselves to the world and to draw boundaries between “us” and “not us” — then
it seems that how this is done is merely a matter of aesthetic preference, of taste. Some will

prefer romance novels, some mysteries, and some adventure stories.

 

9" Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms: Pbilosop/u'cal Essays on Mind and Pnrc/Jolagy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
1996) 409.

80

Moreover, even if “self”-stories are exactly what Dennett considers them to be, we
might still ask why he takes them to be told and shaped only (or primarily) from a first-
person perspective. In other words, can works of fiction not be co-written — and can not
editorial input (that is, input from sources other than the “writer”) be quite often outcome-
determinative in terms of what is included and what is kept out of the narrative? And if self-
creation is not a matter of moral concern for Dennett, we might still wonder why he had not
taken into account, at least descriptively, the multi—level, complex structures of story-making.

In the end, it seems that very few of Dennett’s conclusions about the self and
identity are either philosophically or intuitively satisfying. Perhaps this is another reason that
we ought to re-consider the strengths of his claims that the only difference between our
identities and the identities of fictional characters is that we might still have chapters left to
write. Indeed, this odd distinction, like so much of Dennett’s theory of“self”-making, may,
after all, not be very germane or informative for the complex, and potentially normatively

vital, process ofidentity formation.

c. Parfit’s “impersonal” person

While Locke initiated the (modern) discourse on identity and identity formation and
Dennett reduced the project to an exercise of creative fiction that is at best morally suspect,
Derek Parfit offers a diachronic account of ersona/ identi that is dee l ' rooted in the

P )
psychological persistence criterion - specifically, in the question of the extent and conditions
in which a erson at time t is identical with an enti ' that exists at time t,. In short Parfit
l ,_ 9
wants to know how we “survive” with the passage of time, who this “we” might be, and

what matters in “our” survival. In answering these questions, I claim he (a) neglects the role

81

of our physical bodies (that is, the somatic part of our worries about persistence), and (b)
leaves large explanatory gaps in the relationship between our identities and what matters to
us morally about those identities, even though he seems to want to draw such a connection.
\Vhile in the next chapter (Chapter III) I will address what is perhaps the most serious
criticism of Parfit’s views of identity: his failure to contend with the issue of the identities of
individuals. Here I will offer a brief outline of his views and then examine the various
criticisms to which they appear to be vulnerable.

Parfit begins with the premise that we are confused — confused when we say that we
care about personal identity as a special kind of notion, both because we mistakenly take the
“self” or a “person” to be a special entity that is somehow different from the sum total of
one’s thoughts and one’s body. In order to avoid such confusion, Parfit proposes a
particular kind of “impersonal” reductionism which can, ostensibly, clarify what we mean by,

and what really matters in, “personal identity”:

The fact of personal identity through time consists only in taking
account of certain particular facts which can be described without
presupposing personal identity and without explicitly supposing that
the experiences in the life of this person are possessed by them or
without even explicitly supposing that this person exists. One can

. - - l Kl
describe these facts in an impersonal manner. '

 

“1’ Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) 210.

Also see Atkins, Kim, “Personal Identity and the Importance of ()ne’s Own Body:
A Response to Derek Parfit,” International journal a/P/Jilosop/Jical Studies 8.3 (2000): 329—349.

82

Thus, he suggests that we cannot sensibly argue for a unified picture of identity by
insisting that there exists an “underlying” entity called a “person” to whom we can ascribe all
the elements of a conscious life. Instead, (a) persons are collections of experiences and
mental states over time, which are (b) connected by a serious of causal relations, the most
important of which is memory (however, it is not necessary for every time-slice entity to
recall all the memories of the preceding ones). In other words, persons are bundles of
psychological states moving through time, and as such, have no independent existence.

This reductionism about identity involves four specific claims:

1. Numerical identity of one’s body is not essential to identity

2. Personal identity can be satisfactorily described in wholly impersonal
terms (that is, the Relation R— a kind of a psychological
connectedness or continuity.)

3. An account of the existence of persons is not essential for a complete
description of reality.

4. The only alternative to this sort of reductionism is the “further fact
view.” (This is Parfit’s argument that anything other than the Relation
R is an absurd positing of a ”further fact” about identity, such as

notions about souls or other sorts of metaphysical chimeras)."'l

Parfit dispenses with any pretense about “anything further” about us other than the
continuation of memories, desires, thoughts, likes and dislikes, and so on, through time. We

therefore do not have to worry about anything like criteria for personhood, personal identity,

 

'0‘ Parfit.

83

or identities of individuals — or, frankly, about anything special about us that would separate
us from other kinds of beings. The only way we “go on,” and the only way in which it
matters, Parfit suggests, is if some psychological traits survive through a “Relation R” —
nothing more, nothing less.

Parfit, therefore, redefines the possibility of continuous selves, challenging the
intuition that there is a deep, significant definition of “my identity” that needs to be
sharpened and clarified. The wrong questions are being asked, he suggests, and the wrong

criteria ma ed out in t rin to ca ture the notion of “identi r.” He tells us that
P 1'} g P

Personal identity is not what matters. I claim: What matters is Relation R:
psychological connectedness and / or continuity with the right kind of

1112
cause.

Thus, what matters in the debate about personhood and identity is not some
mysterious thing called ”personal identity,” but psychological continuity and connectedness.
My “former self” and my “later self” might have various levels of continuity: in some cases,
my continuation through time seems to be fairly assured (because I seem to have very similar
psychological and physical characteristics), and in other cases, my “future self” is quite
different from my “former self.” Psychological continuity is dependent on my desires, belief
structures, my personality, my loves and hates. Similarly, my physical continuity is
dependent upon the physical similarities between my temporally separated selves, but
matters much less than psychological continuity (or, in fact, not at all). What should matter

in terms of my survival, in other words, is not that there is someone alive in the future who

 

“’2 Parfit 215.

84

is identical to me, but that there merely be one person who is psychologically continuous witb
me. If we continue insisting that personal identity, as we nonreductionists tend to
understand it, necessarily involves the survival of both a body and a mind (even if we define
this “mind” as a set of psychological states), we fail to see what is really important to
survival. What gives judgments about identity any (moral) importance is that they
demonstrate a psychological continuity between what we like to call our “selves” and future
instantiations of these selves,” even if they do not resemble us in any obvious way.

How does any of this work — and why does it seem so counterintuitive? Let us begin

with Parfit’s “Teletrans orter” thou rht ex eriment:
8 P

I enter the Teletransporter [that] will send me [to Mars] at the speed of light.
When I press the button I shall lose consciousness, and then wake up at what
seems a moment later. In fact I shall have been unconscious for about an
hour. The Scanner here on Earth will destroy my brain and body, while
recording the exact events of all my cells. It will then transmit this
information by radio. Travelling at the speed of light, the message will take
three minutes to reach the Replicator on Mars. This will then create, our of
new matter, a brain and a body exactly like mine. It will be in this body that I

103

shall wake up.

After some time, a new Teletransporter is built that works without destroying my

brain, and instead, harmlessly records and sends a perfect blueprint of it to Mars, where a

 

"’3 Parfit 199.

See also Atkins 329—349.

85

new body is reassembled. Yet, while I am being scanned, the scanning process manages to
destroy my vital organs (on Earth), and while my prognosis here is quite poor, my twin on
Mars has suffered no such damage. Parfit then tells us that, given that my replica on Mars
(complete with my brain scan) thinks that it is indeed me and remembers my life up to the

point of the scanning fiasco, the replica can subsequently continue my 4724“”

Since my Replica knows I am about to die, he tries to console me
with the same thoughts with which I recently tried to console a dying
friend. It is sad to learn, on the receiving end, how unconsoling these
thoughts are. My Replica assures me that he will take up my life
where I leave off. He loves my wife, and together they will care for

‘ l I.-
my children. "

Here, Parfit is trying to uncover our intuitions by motivating us to ask which one of
these identities is really “me” — which identity is truly mine? But this is exactly the wrong
question to ask — there is nothing, no “further fact,” that is a “self” or “person” who exists
over and above the various traits imported from one entity to the next. And this is not an
altogether bad thing, even ethically speaking, for one consequence of this view is that we
ought to pay as much attention to our quasi-survivors (who inherit only a part of our
psychological baggage) as to ourselves. It is, therefore, an equally worthwhile endeavor to
worry about surviving and quasi-surviving: for example, I ought to be concerned about

potential future continuations of myself, whoever they might be, and whether or not they are

 

"’4 See Atkins 329—349.

"’SParfit. 201.

86

“actually me.” Ethically, this opens us up to the possibility of caring about not harming
others, if only for the reason that in the future, they might be our psychological successors.
Moreover, it makes us less self-centered identity-seekers: if there is nothing to seek that is
uniquely mine, then perhaps the alternative is to maintain a level of concern for all who
might potentially be my successors. And this could encompass quite a number of people or
potential people. Nevertheless, Parfit’s reductionism seems to raise more worries than it

settles, and I now turn to a preliminary discussion of the ones I find most significant.

i. Some Initial Concerns

I begin by offering a few more reasons to charitably read Parfit’s argument. Indeed,
he rescues the notion of “identity” from an all-or-nothing analysis. Since identity, on his
view, is constituted over time in degrees of continuity between later and former selves, we
need never speak of identity as being “there” or being “missing.” In a sense, by reducing
identity to this fluctuating stream of psychological states, Parfit is telling us not to worry
about any “further facts” about what we mean when we speak of human identity — and
especially identity through time. The psychological spectrum might range from total
continuity (where nothing changes either physically or psychologically), to a more tenuous
connection (where some physical and psychological characteristics may be altered), to total
breakdown of continuity in some important aspect of either or both spectra (for instance,
where one’s desires drastically change, or when one undergoes a serious physical transplant,
such as the brain, or, more realistically, when someone might acquire a “new face” in the

case of serious burns, and so on).

87

Why does Parfit think that we must accept his view? Perhaps the strongest reason
he might suggest is that anything else is simply a category mistake. He offers the following
hypothetical: If we were to split the two hemispheres of the brain and transplant each into
different bodies, we are faced with the question of which body can be viewed as the
continuation of the original, before the “splitting” experiment. He rejects the conclusions
that “both,” “one,” or “neither” could possibly be the answer. The line, the point where the
“deep further fact” of identity starts, Parfit tells us, is not present, as our “identities” can
always said to be in flux, with no discernable “beginning “or “end” to separate where they
change, when we are clearly someone else, or when we can say that “person x” no longer
exists. Indeed, defining what personal identity might be — or how it might be manifested at any
given time - is purely arbitrary, and is more a cultural habit rather than a philosophical,
scientific, or, indeed a common-sensical designation.

Parfit’s analysis can lead to some rather significant conclusions. First, this view of
identity focuses us on what (presumably) really matters to human beings — psychological
continuity, instead of some abstraction called “identity.” \Y/hen I worry about whether I will
survive, perhaps it is my thoughts, beliefs, worries, and so on that I most want to persist
through time. Second, as I noted earlier, Parfit’s approach might be significant both
psychologically and practically: it might move us to act in ways that promote the welfare of
these future continuations of ourselves. If we continue beyond what we normally conceive
of as our personal identity, the notion of “us” is expanded, while at the same time, the idea
of a definable, locatable “identity” is given less weight. As long as some deep, psychological
part of us goes on, we go on. And that is all that matters.

But there is a less charitable reading (with which I am more sympathetic), and some

deep, potentially serious problems with Parfit’s reductionism. In the rest of this section, I

88

introduce, and briefly sketch, several of these problems, and will then address them in detail
in the following chapter (Chapter 111).

First, recall that Parfit argues for an impersonal approach to identity, whereby reality
can exist without the claim that persons also exist. But this seems odd, for it denies a
connection between personal identity and thoughts, experiences, desires, and so on. If these
thoughts, experiences and desires do not belong to anyone because there is not anyone to
“own” them, then either (a) we have a case of a bizarre metaphysics of free-floating
psychological states, or (b) Parfit makes a serious error in failing to grant these psychological
states owners, thereby grounding them in the bodies and minds of these owners. Both (a)
and (b) potentially betray not only a very strong preference for a psychological criterion of
personal identity (over the somatic criterion), but also a strange approach to the
psychological criterion itself, not only failing to anchor it to a body, but also to any particular
entity’s psychological composition. Thus, if we are to follow Parfit, whatever connections
we desire to draw between personal identity and ethical worries ought to be based, it seems,
on something other than the fact of embodied selves — of embodied identities. 1 suggest
(and will argue in the next chapter) that such an impersonal View represents a misreading of
the relationship of one’s psychological states and one’s body, and subsequently, of one’s
identity and ethical concerns.""’

Second, Parfit’s disembodied view of identity might leave one with the impression
that we are nothing but our experiences, drifting through time. But this, perhaps quite
deliberately, leaves out any concept of agency in his definition of identity. Following

Christine Korsgaard, I will address the implications of his view for the relationship of

 

"’6 See Atkins 329—349.

See also Simon \X/oods, “Persons and personal identity,” Nursing Philosophy 1 (2000): I69.

89

personal identity and morality."" While my goals are different from those of Korsgaard (my
project is not the defense of a Kantian concept of identity) I nevertheless take her critique
of Parfit to be well grounded in a legitimate concern about the role of agency in worries
about identity, broadly construed.

Finally, there appears to be a difficulty with Parfit’s “no further fact” argument that
directly bears on my concern about the relative philosophical silence about identities of
individuals. We might remember that Parfit tells us in the Teletransporter case that it really
matters very little whether we appeal to a psychological or the physical. criterion of identity in
determining if the replica will be “me.” For either of these criteria to be applicable, there
must be a “further fact” about my existence —— and there simply is not. Thus, the question of
which criterion will determine the continued existence of my identity is a metaphysically,
epistemically, and, indeed, ethically, empty question.

Yet this conclusion does not seem to hold if we consider an example not taken into
account by Parfit. That is, there is no “further fact” about sisterhood over and above
gender, ancestry (or adoption), the presence of others with whom to have a ”sister-like”
relationship, and so on. And there is also no “further fact” about the status of “bachelor”
over and above questions of gender, marital status, and so on. Even if we seem to be
convinced that this is indeed the case — that these are just tautologous definitions with
notbingfurtber to define — it does not mean that there is no reason at all to analyze both
“sisterhood” and “bachelorhood.” We can certainly attempt to meaningfully expand or limit
these definitions, or try to understand them, for example, in terms of social relations (and
not just tautological ones), and so on. We can, in other words, look for other criteria — for a

better, deeper, more rigorous definition of whatever it is that we seek to define.

g

“’7 See Korsgaard, Christine M., Creating the Kingdom o/Ends (Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1996).

90

Thus, just as it is not an empty gesture to seek another View of “sisterhood” and
“bachelorhood,” it is similarly not useless to seek an alternative to Parfit’s reductionist
psychological criterion of identity. Specifically, it is not a futile pursuit to define identity in
terms other than experiences moving through time. In other words, it is not necessarily
unwise to consider identity from the point of view of identities of individiails.

Given this less charitable reading, Parfit seems to be mistaken in (at least) two ways:
First, he discounts the importance of a coherent self-conception (that is, a fuller story about
oneself versus merely listing the conditions for the continuity of self in the future). Second
(and perhaps more importantly), he does not distinguish what Geoffrey Madell""’ and Marya
Schechtman'"9 argue is the role of first-person intuitions that we all have of our continued
substantial identity over time — of the question of “who am I?” that I have characterized as
identigr of individuals.

At least for the time being, it seems that Parfit’s reductionism about identity is much
too rigid on the one hand and much too unrigorous on the other, neglecting the very
important subjective experience that we have of our own identity. The fundamental
question of what it might mean to ask the question of who we are is neither addressed, nor
satisfactorily explained away — it is merely dismissed as a non-issue. Yet these initial
criticisms require further explication, and in the next chapter, I will address Parfit’s silence
about identities of individuals, along with worries about embodiment and agency. I will offer,
partially following Marya Schechtman, a more informative, and more conceptually vivid,

picture of how identity and morality intersect. I now turn to this task.

 

“’3 Geoffrey Madell, “Derek Parfit and Greta Garbo,” Analysis 45 (1985): 105-109.

“’9 See Schechtman, Marya, 'I'be Constitution ofSe/ves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

91

Tbe real meditation is. . .tbe meditation on one ’s identibi. Ab, voila une cbosel’ You In it. You [0’
finding out wbyyou ’reyou and not somebody else. And wbo in tbe blazes are you anybow.2 Ab,
voila‘ une cbose!
-— Ezra Pound, Letter, April 27, 7973, to Pound ’s fiancee {later wife) Doro/[pr
Sbakespear.

CHAPTER III: PARFIT, HIS CRITICS, AND THE TURN TOWARD A
NARRATIVE CONCEPTION OF IDENTITY

I. Parfit and Identity: Some Initial Worries

Derek Parfit, it seems, has left us in a quandary: On the one hand, we are troubled
by his dismissive approach to the role of a coherent self-conception (that is, a fuller story
about oneself versus merely listing the conditions for the continuity of selfin the future).
On the other hand, the psychological criterion of personal identity that is at the core of his
diachronic account does seem to be somewhat of an improvement over Locke’s memory-
driven views of identity (and personhood), or Dennett’s somewhat dismissive approach to
the criteria for moral personhood. Perhaps one of the reasons that Parfit’s claims do hold
some attraction over those of Locke and Dennett is that he simplifies and de-personalizes
both the role and the nature of identity. He does not seem to be worried about the identity-
personhood connection, nor does he take his task to be the creation of obstruction to any
reification of personhood as a moral concept. Instead, he tells us that we are merely
conceptually confused because (1) we are mistaken when we say that we care about personal
identity as special notion, and (2) we are mistaken when we take the “self” or the “person”
to be a special entity that is different from the sum total of our physical and psychological

states. Thus, Parfit offers us an “impersonal” reductionism which precludes any unified

92

picture of identity of any metaphysical or moral entity called a “person,” or an “I.” Any

stories of ourselves as persons — and the representations of those stories that are our

identities — seem to be loosely held together psychological states, moving through time.
In fairness, the picture, at least as Parfit tells us, is not quite so simple. Indeed, in

Reasons and Persons, he claims that:

I am not a series of experiences, but the person who has these experiences. A
Reductionist can admit that, in this sense, a person is what has experiences,
or the subject of experiences. This is true because of the way in which we
talk. What a Reductionist denies is that the subject of experiences is a
separately existing entity, distinct from a brain and body, and a series of

physical and mental events.""

Thus, it seems that Parfit is working quite hard to take on — and defeat — not merely
Cartesian dualism, but the idea of a Lockean thinking substance which has a separate (and
morally significant) existence.' "

So far, so good: Indeed, I take issue with a number of conclusions to which

Cartesian dualism might lead (which I will not address here). Moreover, Locke’s claims,

although helpful in framing the debate about identity, are, for reasons noted in an earlier

 

""See Goodenough, Jerry, “Is There a Circularity Involved In Parfit’s Reductionist View Of Personal
Identity?”, Parfit, Identity and 'I'bougbt Experiments (Norwich: UEA Papers In Philosophy, 1995)
<www1.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/ 1 .6304lis"/020there"/o20a"/o20circularity%20involved%2(_)in%20
parfit.doc>.

See also Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984) 223.
”' John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Ch. XXVII, Sections 8—1 1, ILT

Digital Classics, 1995, 5 July 2007
<http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/locke/understanding/chapter0227.html>.

93

chapter, far too conceptually problematic. But Parfit’s project is a bit more ambiguous and
subversive. The ambiguity becomes apparent if we consider his thought experiments (the
Teletransporter story, among others). In them, we can find no de minimis physical or
psychological requirements — no epistemic or ontological minimums, so to speak — that
would assure the continued existence of personal identity. We also fail to find any
suggestions that Parfit thinks that these considerations about requirements warrant any
further analysis. We are, in fact, thrown back on the realization that, on his view, all that
matters is a continuation of a series of some number of mental events, unconnected to any
sort of bodily reality or psychological structure.

If this is indeed the case, then it is rather difficult to reconcile the distinction that
Parfit draws between a person having the experiences and the set of experiences itself (that
is, the sort of distinction he makes in the previous quotation), as his hypotheticals tend to
push us toward the insignificance of anything other than the psychological experiences or

mental events. In fact, Parfit even tells us that

different experiences are had by the same person....And we can refer to these
experiences, and fully describe the relations between them, without claiming

that these experiences are had by a person."2

 

”3Parfit 217.

See alsoJohn Perry, “Introduction,” Personal Identity, ed. John Perry (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1976) 11.

Perry suggests that identity could be properly understood as a set of “unity relations
between. . ..nonsimultaneous person-stages.”

See also Marya Schechtman, 'I’be Constitution of Selves (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1996) 7.

94

This seems oddly contradictory and more than a bit ambiguous: At first, it seemed
as if Parfit was indeed making the claim that the person and the experience were somehow
different. Here, however, he seems to have taken the view that the existence of persons is
not even necessary for the grounding of experience. This raises three worries: (1) Does
Parfit take it that we could rigorously address our thoughts without also referring to the
thinkers who have those thoughts? (2) If so, would this then not raise the thorny issue of
individuation — that is, the question ofwhat separates any mental particular of a given set of
thoughts from another such set? After all, it does not seem altogether improbable that set
membership would most likely be difficult to determine without some indication of an
owner of such a set. (3) Finally, even if we could determine what a set of psychological
phenomena comprises, how do we account for false and misleading memories,
misrememberings, brainwashing, and so on?"" Could the psychological phenomena that
Parfit has in mind comprise something other than the kind that has actually been
experienced? Could not the experiences that Parfit takes to be the only determining factors
in Relation R be false, and not therefore a consistent representation of whoever or whatever
it is that is “continuing” to persist in time? If there are indeed some criteria that make set B
of experiences a continuation of set A, and set C not a continuation of set A, then there has
to be some way, it seems to me, to be able to classify and distinguish A and B from C, but
given that Parfit gives us no way of determining with any precision either the criteria of
which experiences can be included or excluded from bundles to which they ostensibly

belong, we are left in the position of making guesses — some less informed that others.

 

”3 Goodenough.
<www1.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/ 1 .6304lis"/ss2(,lthere°/«12()a”/(12()circularity"/o2(linvolved°/«120in%20
parfit.doc>.

95

Indeed, it seems that in order to make a reasonable determination of why a particular
experience belongs in one set (or bundle) rather than another and to avoid a seeming
random assignment among them, we need something — or someone — in which (or in
whom) these experience bundles could inhere. That is, we need a warrant, in the form ofa
thinker of thoughts, say, to be able to properly attribute a particular set of thoughts to

thinker A and not thinker B. However, while

it is, of course, open to Parfit to claim that individuating sets of mental
particulars and providing membership conditions for mental individuals
ought not to be part ofa full description of mental particulars. . ..such a
position must inevitably weaken the attractiveness of Parfit's analysis in
comparison with those philosophical psychologies which claim to be able to

provide such conditions'”

Parfit, however, appears unconcerned. In fact, he takes himself to have

accomplished his goal. He tells us that

because we ascribe thoughts to thinkers, we can truly claim that thinkers
exist. But we cannot deduce, from the content of our experiences, that a
thinker is a separately existing entity. And, as Lichtenberg suggests, because
we are not separately existing entities, we could fully describe our thoughts

without claiming that they have thinkers. \We could fully describe our

 

'” Goodenough.
<www1.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/ 1 .6304!is“/s120there"/«120a"/1120circularity“/«.2( )involved‘l/uZUin" 020
parfit.doc>.

96

experiences, and the connections between them, without claiming that they
are had by a subject of experiences. We could give what I call an impersonal

. a 1 :
description. "

Parfit’s argument for this sort of “impersonal description” of identity allows us to
see where he moves from the sort of ambiguity I noted earlier toward saying something
subversive: If our experiences -— and thus, given his views, our identities — ought to be
understood impersonally, then the notion of personal identity as a means to draw
distinctions among human beings (and human and nonhuman entities) is not merely
challenged, but collapsed. The somewhat obfuscated purpose of this collapse, it seems, is
nothing short of setting up a view of identity such that it would support, and indeed
encourage, an impersonal, utilitarian approach to ethics, where the question of who has a
given experience matters much less that the sum total of the experiences being considered.
Thus, an impersonal understanding of identity leads to an impersonal ethic: we ought not
concern ourselves too much with a particular someone who actually suffers the most pain
(pleasure, receives the most attention, resources, etc), as long as the net sum of happiness
over suffering is maximized in general — even if that someone is an entity that we take to be
ourselves."" Therefore, it seems that we should read Parfit as making two (related) moves:

First, he is proposing new ways to look at personal identity as diachronic — as a matter of

 

”5 Parfit 225.

See also Goodenough.
<wwwl .uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/ 1 .6304lis%20there“/020a“/1120circularity‘VuZUinvolved‘VnZOi n%20
parfit.doc>.

"6 Although I will not offer an argument for or against such a theory, I do think that it is important to
note that considerations of distributive justice that it engenders — that is, any thought of what might be a fair
scheme of distribution of goods, of pain, or of anything else of (any sort) of value among individuals, societies,
nations, and so on — are important considerations in any consideration of normativity.

97

reidentification only. Second, as a result of his initial claims that personal identity is merely a
matter of reidentification, he finds a new way to dismiss it as a valid concern of either
metaphysical or ethical inquiry (with the added project of trying to justify an ethical theory
that does not, at least in its strongest form, rely on the concept of personal identity-um) This,
of course, neither leaves room to consider the question of identities ofindividuals in any
meaningful manner — in fact, it takes any worry about it to be beside the point. And it is

this that I take to be most troubling.

II. Why Identity Matters: Four Possibilities

It seems that Parfit leaves us with an odd sense that identity is closer to an
unnecessary vestige of bad metaphysics than to a conceptually solid object of concern.
Identity, in Parfit’s hands, becomes much less mysterious and certainly less normatively
efficacious. On the one hand, Parfit makes the descriptive claim that any sense of an “1”,
any notion of an identity that is separate from the brain and the bundles of experiences, is
simply a conceptual confusion about which there is no “further fact.” On the other, he also
seems to be making a normative claim that such a view of identity is desirable for a more
utilitarian (and, on his view, just) conception of morality: if nothing is truly “mine” in the
individualistic, and perhaps somewhat selfish, sense, then what matters is the quality of
experiences in general — perhaps, the quality of experiences for all, even if the “all” is an

' ll8
impersonal one.

 

“7 See Garrett, Brian, Personal Identity and .S'el/1C0r1.sa'orisrress (London and New York: Routledge, 1998)
83-94.

”3 In fact, Parfit argues that “it becomes more plausible to be more concerned about the quality of
experiences, and less concerned about whose experiences they are. Parfit adds that “it becomes more plausible,

98

Yet both of his claims seem to have a singular effect: along with expanding the
notion of what it means to “own” experiences, Parfit also does away with identity as a
concept that is separate from a mere account of experiences and their interaction with a
given brain. As a result, two important things are potentially destroyed. First, we lose the
philosophical notion that the concept of identity unifies, in a very powerful way, a number
of philosophical — metaphysical, epistemic, moral — concerns in a way that very few concepts
do. Second, we can make no sense of the folk-psychological (or, more quotidian) worry
about who we are. Instead, on Parfit’s view, identity fades into the formulations of
reidentification criteria. And while I take this fading to be neither necessary nor accurate, it
remains the case that much of literature surrounding personal identity, and especially the
psychological continuity literature that follows the tradition of Locke and Parfit, focuses
precisely on this — the reidentification question that I define as the diachronic account of
personal identity. This leaves us to wonder if indeed there is anything left to talk about — if
my original concern about the identities of individuals has been subsumed, and indeed
dismissed, by Parfit’s solution.

Before offering any kind of a response, we must be very careful to make sure that we
are clear as to what is being defended. While several different conceptions of identity could
be the focus, here, I intend to argue for the folk-psychological intuition that there is indeed
something to the question of “who am 1?” Specifically, my claim is not merely that there is
“something” to identity in the sense that we might have some emotional or psychological

need to conceive of it as something real — even Parfit might agree that indeed, although such

 

when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person....(and) to claim that. ...we are right to ignore whether
experiences come within the same or different lives.”

Parfit 341, 346.

See also Gruzalski, Bart, “Parfit’s Impact on Utilitarianism,” Etbics 96.4 (1986): 760-783.

99

a need might exist, it is nevertheless philosophically unjustified. My argument is stronger
than that: I suggest that the worry about the identity of individuals'” is grounded in the fact
that identities are neither mere metaphysical ephemera nor useful semantic placeholders —
they are real in the sense that they do things in the world. They are the representations of
who we are to the world and to ourselves, and these representations serve as signals and
symbols and signs as to how we are situated among others with respect to duties, rights,
respect, love, visibility, opportunity, status, voice, responsibilities, and so on. Why this is the
case — and why it is especially the case when we are deeply ill — I will begin to argue here, and
then in greater detail in a later chapter. For now, I start with the proposition that this is a
possibility we have to take seriously.

There are four initial arguments, which can be viewed as four objections to Parfit
(and Parfit-like views): (1) the objection from embodiment (that is, the argument that
identities are real because bodies are real — and ill bodies serve as particularly powerful
reminders of this reality), (2) the objection from agency (that is, the argument that identities
are real because we do not merely experience, but deliberate and decide, and therefore there
must be a locus in which decisions are grounded), (3) the objection from narrative (that is,
the view that identities are real if one asks the right sorts of questions and adopts a
constitutive view of identity), and (4) the objection from third-person perspective (that is,
the view that identities are not merely a matter of the success or failure of first-person
agency, but are real because they give rise to normative expectations - we rely on them to

understand how we may treat others who bear them, as well as how we ourselves may be

 

"9 My nonstandard account, identities of individuals, which is the question of who I am, how I see
myself, how others see me, and what kinds of (social and moral) expectations this “seeing” sets up for me as a
moral agent. The synchronic and diachronic accounts may play a role in this account of identity, but they are
not outcome determinative, by which I mean that whatever their claims might be, individual identity requires a
deeper, and less juridical, investigation into how we come to answer (and perhaps how we ought to answer) the
question of who we are.

100

treated, as bearers of particular identities, by others). By “real” in objection (3) what I mean
is not just that identities are more than shorthand for “experience bundles,” but that they are
normatively efficacious representation to ourselves and to the world of our subjective,
embodied experiences. Even though I mention it here in order to establish the scope of the
possible objections to some standard views of identity, objection (4) will actually be
discussed more fully in Chapters IV and V, although I do note it briefly in my discussion of
the objection from agency. W’hile I (for different reasons) take all four to be steps in the
right direction, (1) and (3), and (4) tend to offer the sorts of arguments that I. find to be
much closer to the mark, although, as I will argue later, still requiring some theoretical

refinement. I begin with the objection from embodiment.

a. The Objection from Embodiment: Individuated Identities Matter
Because Individuated Bodies Matter

Recall Parfit’s central argument: we can sensibly take account of certain facts about
psychological experiences without also requiring that anyone possess these experiences. It is,

in other words, an “impersonality thesis”:

The fact of personal identity through time consists only in taking account of
certain particular facts which can be described without presupposing
personal identity and without explicitly supposing that the experiences in the

life of this person are possessed by them or without even explicitly supposing

101

that this person exists. One can describe these facts in an impersonal

l211
manner.

A complete description of reality, therefore, can be had without persons — and
certainly without anything like personal identity. One reason for this is the insubstantiality
of what a “person” is: Parfit takes a “person” to be nothing over and above the many
bundles of mental and physical states that change through time.

But, what are the implications of this move? As Kim Atkins argues, “Parfit is
denying any essential relation between one’s experiences being one’s own and personal
identity....[He] claims that thoughts don’t essentially belong to someone because thoughts
simply don’t have owners.”'2' Indeed, Parfit’s sense of any experience being “mine” begins
and ends with sets of related bodily and psychological events (and really, mainly
psychological), which are rather vulnerable to all sorts of disruptions and discontinuities

(thus rendering them no longer continuous). His many thought experiments are all offered

with the intent of proving that there is no “further fact” about our identities, as they can,
under appropriate conditions, be replicated in another body.

Specifically, Parfit’s distinction between a body and personal identity is a rather
curious one, where the body is viewed as a sort of a vessel —- or a storage container —- in
which the various “1’s” (or identities) can be inserted, from which they can be removed, and

through which they can pass. The experiences which constitute these identities are just the

information that the body processes, but, at least according to Parfit, the body itself adds

 

‘2“ Parfit 210.

'2' Kim Atkins, “Personal Identity and the Importance of One’s Own Body: A Response to Derek
Parfit,” International journal obei/osopbical Studies 8.3 (2000): 331.

102

nothing to the status of something as an experience, or to the meaning and characteristics of
that experience.’22

In response to this stance of Parfit’s I argue first, that the fact of our specific bodies
matters in how our specific identities are constituted, therefore suggesting that there is
indeed something to the notion of the identity of individuals in and through time; and
second, following Atkins, '23 that this embodied perspective offers us a more complete, more

complex picture of identity.

i. Why Bodies Matter in Identity Creation

I begin with the idea (for which I have argued earlier in this dissertation) that
identities are in part constituted by first, second, and third-person interpretations and
normalizations of those experiences. It therefore seems to me to be neither radical nor
altogether difficult to imagine that our bodies — these flesh-and-bone entities that Parfit takes
to be merely vessels of experience — are neither passive vessels nor, indeed, uninvolved in its
creation, interpretation, and psychological meaning. One of the reasons for this, as Maurice
Merleau-Ponty'z’, among others, has argued, is that perception and consciousness (as well as

other aspects of experiencing) are not abstract, theoretical construCts, but are

 

'23 We might recall Parfit’s claims that it is possible to offer a complete description of reality without
at all referring to persons — and, I take him to be implying, especially to embodied persons.

'1‘ See Kim Atkins, “Personal Identity and the Importance of ()ne’s Own Body: A Response to
Derek Parfit,” International journal of Pbi/osopbical Studies 8.3 (2000): 329-349.

'24 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'I'be Pbenomeno/ngy o/‘Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London and New

Jersey: Routledge, 1992).

103

an expression of a world articulated through one’s body; the expression of a
lived world. Here, the apparatus of perception is not a supersensible
intellect, but one’s body itself; consciousness is expressive of one’s bodily

participation in the world, in the broadest sense.'25

Our bodies are neither somehow detached from experience, nor secondary to it (as
Parfit would suggest). Simply, they are a part of the world in which we find ourselves, and
what is more, they are our bridges into that world. And it is the ways in which they are
bridges that serves to demonstrate how the existence of bodies necessitates the reality of
identities in the sense that I noted above. These “bridges,” I suggest, help to shape our
identities as individuals by providing access to two vital senses in which we experience the
world: first, the sense in which I exist as a unique and (semi-)coherent whole at any given
point in time, and second, the sense in which I continue to exist as a unique and (semi-
)coherent whole through time. I begin by examining the way in which I exist at any point in
time.

First, it is through my body and it sense that I can learn hot, cold, touch, light, dark,
sweet, up, down, and so on. To the extent that I am able, I situate myself in the world
through physical, bodily experiences that, although shared by many, are my own. Second, it
is also my body that teaches me about my abilities and limitations: It shows me that I cannot
fly or see things that are out of my line of sight, but that I can run if scared and be very still,
and peek around corners to see what might be there. It teaches me that I am probably no
match for marathon runners or weightlifters, and most definitely not for speeding cars, or,

on occasion, the angry honeybee. It shows me that I am not capable of solving many

 

'35 Atkins 335.

104

intellectual puzzles and that there are others who are far more able than I in so doing.
Moreover, the body clarifies that it is not one of a kind in many respects when I catch and
spread common illnesses, such as cold viruses, but that it is indeed singular when it is
threatened by deep illness, isolating me in an anguish that, while shared in some ways among
the afflicted, is in many important respects uniquely mine. It reminds me that I might not be
able to walk fast, or at all, or that I am to use my ears, my hands, my skin, my sense of smell
in place of my eyes. It may, someday, refuse to obey my desires, and through this refusal,
tell me that my desires are no longer (or not for the moment) within my grasp. It might tell
me to slow down. To be still. And as it both instructs me as to my possibilities and
limitations, I begin to understand the sort of creature that I am in relation to all the other
creatures, as well as the sort of creature that I am uniquely. In these ways, it helps to write
the story of my identity as an individual. My perceptions, conceptions of, and actions in the
world are in this sense both bound and made possible by my corporeal existence — by the
reality of my particular embodiment (even though the facts or the qualities of my
embodiment may change throughout my lifetime).'26 Thus, it seems that, quite contrary to
Parfit’s assertions, it is not only a fact that my body is something of which my identity needs
to make sense, but perhaps the body is also necessary for the formation of the sort of

experiences that Parfit claims count in psychological continuity.

 

'26 “To say that something exists is to say that I maintain relations with it that are of the same type as
those I maintain with my body; in other words, “to say that a thing exists is not only to say that it belongs to
the same system as my body (that it is connected to my body by certain rationally determinable relations); it is
to say that thing is in some fashion united to me as my body is united to me.”’

Richard Zaner, “The Mystery of the Body-Qua-Mine,” 'I be Pbilosopby afCabriel Martel, 'I'be I jbrary of
I jving Pbilosopbers, volume xviii, ed. Paul Arthur Schipp and Lewis Edwin Hahn (La Salle: Open Court, 1984).

See also Atkins 336.

105

But my body is not merely the way through which I experience the world — it is the
mirror through which the outside world views me. That is, the body which perceives is also
perceived. I suggest that this perception happens in the following two ways: (1) My body
perceives itself as itselfm, and (2) My body is perceived as me by others.

In the first case, I sense a bitter taste in my mouth, a headache, the touch of silk
against my cheek, and so on. All of these experiences are definitely mine — unquestionably
mine, in fact. If I were to question that these appendages moving before my eyes are
actually my fingers, all I have to do, it seems, is to touch them to a hot stove to immediately
realize that whatever “mine” means, they definitely have something to do with how the
experience of touching the stove feels to men" Indeed, it seems that I have no other way of
seeing — of perceiving — the world and my body if not through the body itself. And not just
through a body — it is through my body that 1 have the sorts of experiences that make me

both aware of myself as a self that is distinct from other beings, and aware of the world as

 

'27 Here, I am not entering the debate of whether we are just equivalent to our bodies, such as has
been argued by those who endorse the somatic approach to identity, whether the bodily criterion of personal
identity is correct (See Thomson,J. J., “People and Their Bodies,” Reading Parfit, ed. J. Dancy (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997) and Ayer, A.J., I anglinge, limb, and I .ogic (London: Gollancz, 1936)) or what it might mean for
my body to actually be my body. (See van Inwagen, P., “Philosophers and the Words ‘Human Body,”’ 'Iime and
Cause: Essays Presented to Ricbard Taylor, ed. Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1980) 283-299; and Olson,
E. 1997, 'I'be Human Animal' Personal Identity W'itbout Prycbolqu, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 144-
149). I am simply making the claim that my body plays a significant role in how the theoretically abstract
notion of identity becomes personalized and individualized.

'23 At least for my purposes here, this seems to me to be a fairly uncontroversial claim, although there
are those who would (perhaps reasonably) object. I will not here offer any arguments for or against the various
theories of perception, or consider the possibility that senses can be deceptive, which, of course, they can be.
My point is that we can, at the very least, take it as a reasonably defensible claim that the sorts of experiences
my body has in the world make me aware that it is mine in some important sense, and that there is at least
some reason to rely on this perception. This argument, of course, gets a bit more complex if we include
accounts of those who may not have access to all (or many) of their senses, or whose bodies are partially or
fully paralyzed, amputated, or no longer sensitive to external stimuli. I will address this latter concern about
how a lack of (or a change in) access to one’s body and how it responds to its environment impacts one’s
identity later in the dissertation when I discuss the relationship between identity and deep illness.

106

the environment with which this self interacts“) Simply, from the data that my body
provides, I begin to build a story of who I am and how I fit into the world.

In the second case, I am viewed by the outside world as a body with long, dark hair,
or in a bright dress, or one who is short, tall, fat, thin, with blue eyes, with brown eyes. Or
sometimes, more significantly, one who is brown, black, white. Male or female or neither or
both. A body that can walk or cannot. A body that is relatively intact — or not. That is, 1
am perceived through my body first — before anything else happens, I am seen, felt, heard as
a physical presence. And these stories of my body — about how it is perceived by the outside
world — enter, and become, a part of my identity. I begin to see myself as short, tall, male,
female not only descriptively, but normatively, with all of the social, psychological, and moral
baggage that these physical labels impose. That is, I am shaped by this seeing, feeling,
hearing, touching. The result of this “shaping” is that the portrait, the story that emerges, is
of a body that is mine — uniquely mine. And at the same time, out of this knowledge of a
body whose presence and effects are unavoidable, its story becomes my story as not only an
entity that is separate from other entities, but as one to whom all kinds of normative
judgments, rules, rights, and affections (or a lack thereof) are attached as a result of being in
this particular body and not another. The idea that there are such things as de-personalized
bodies— that there are vessel-like “bodies in general” (or, on Parfit’s view, vessel—like brains)
— that for reasons of their fungibility they do not really matter in a view of identity, seems
rather puzzling.

But my body also expresses my continued sense of self through time — and, it seems

to me, necessarily so. Indeed, it is unclear how I would be able to claim any sort of a

 

'29 See Gabriel Marcel, Being and Hazing: An Existentialist Diary (New York: Harper and Row, 1965).

107

continuous identity without the bodily perspective from which this identity is articulated and
expressed: the fact that I felt pain yesterday when placing my hand on a hot stove, and that
today, recalling yesterday’s pain, I stopped myself from so doing, suggests to me a kind of a
coherence of experiences (and of my interpretation of those experiences) that is made
possible through the body. I am not at all certain how, and according to what kind of logic,
Parfit’s “experience bundles,” unanchored in the physical reality of bodies, become
“bundled,” and move through time thus connected (even if for a little while). In fact, it is
unclear how Parfit’s disconnection of experiences and the bodies that have them makes
sense, given certain empirical findings about the relationship between muscle and neuron
development, brain pathways, and the retention of psychological characteristics like
memories, knowledge of how to perform certain tasks through time, and so on.”” The
bodily perspective, therefore, seems essential in even raising the question ofidentity, for in
asking the question of “who I am,” which I take to be what we do when we wonder about

our identities as individuals, I already presuppose

 

'3“ “There is also good reason to think that Parfit’s thought experiments mistake the implications of
bodily continuity for identity on another front. Dispositional models of the mind presuppose an important
interplay between the body’s forms of sensibility — for example, things like the distribution of development
across muscle groups in various limbs, depth and acuity of vision and hearing, skin integrity and peripheral
nervous function, etc. — and the neural networks that correspond to perceptions received via those habitually
formed sensory structures. Because of the integrated nature of human intelligence, things like brain transplants
start to look incompatible with the survival of memories and capacities and their corresponding practical
intelligence. For example, its arguable whether a bricklayer’s brain in a ballet
dancer’s body would result in the retention of capacities for simple sensory-motor functions such as running or
dressing, let alone either bricklaying or ballet dancing since the sensory pathways through which perceptions
are entrained in order to activate neural nets would provide sensory-motor ‘data’ for which there may not even

be pathways. . ..”
Atkins 348.
.I'ee also Dreyfus, Hubert and Stuart, “Making a Mind Versus Modelling the Brain: Artificial

Intelligence Back at a Branchpoint,” '1 lie Artificial Intel/{genre Debate, ed. 5. R. Graubard (h'lassachusetts: MIT
Press, 1988).

108

my embodiment, and my answer — the considered self-understanding that I
arrive at - can transform my lived body, my sense of who I am. If I didn’t
already enjoy this integrated kind of bodily continuity, the pain of losing a
sense of my body as my own could never arise, as it does for people who

' 131
have suffered torture and Violence.

ii. Bodily Disintegration As Disintegration of Identity

Here, I introduce the example of torture and violence in order to address the notion
of bodily disintegration. In this dissertation, I address not only the meaning and
development of personal identity, but also its consequences for those who are at the greatest
risk ofits disintegration or loss: the deeply ill. My definition of “deep illness” is borrowed
from Arthur W. Frank’s work, in which he described “illness that you believe will change

31132

forever who you are and how you understand the world you live in. An individual who is
deeply ill is not suffering a temporary setback or an illness that, while unpleasant and
inconvenient, is also transitory. Instead, a deeply ill person is faced with permanent, life-
changing, remitting-recurring conditions like cancer, diabetes, schizophrenia (although I do
not address mental illness as such due to its obvious and deeply problematic implications for

identity that I will take up at a later time), partial or full paralysis or amputation (although,

again, I do not address the very important debate that distinguishes illness from disability),

 

'3' Atkins 339.

'32 Arthur W. Frank, “Stories and Healing: Observations on the Progress of My Thoughts,” Ijt.1'ite
Alaska, 2006, 10 July 2007 <http://litsite.alaska.edu/healing/ frank.html#bio>.

See also Frank, Arthur W., “Just Listening: Narrative and Deep Illness,” Families. .i'ysten/s (7 Heal/l) 16.3
(1998): 197—212; Frank, Arthur W., The Wounded .S'toryteller: Body. Illness, and Etbirs. (Chicago: University Of
Chicago Press, 1997); and Frank, Arthur W., At the Will oft/1e Bot/y: Reflections on Illness (New York: Mariner
Books, 2002).

109

HIV/ AIDS, ALS, MS, all sorts of debilitating arthritis and musculoskeletal diseases, and so
on. Whatever their specific difference, most of these conditions are life-threatening,
permanent (or the results of such conditions, as in the case of amputation), and, at least at
this point in the development of medical science, incurable. And in many cases, the process
of diagnosis, treatment, and enduring these conditions is, at least at some point in the
process, somewhat akin to the invasive violence that victims of torture and other forms of
brutality have endured. Such violence — especially, for my purposes here, such violence on
the body — dramatically disrupts one’s identity. I suggest that it is here, when the body
speaks most emphatically, that disembodied views of identity, such as Parfit’s, fail.

By way of argument, I offer two examples — one borrowed from Susan J. Brison’s
excellent and illuminating article “Outliving Oneself: Trauma, Memory, and Personal
Identity,”"” and another from my own experience with a patient on an oncology ward in a
midwestern hospital.I ‘”

Case one: In her essay, Brison argues that traumas has the potential to “undo the
self,” where by a “traumatic event” she means an event where “a person feels utterly helpless
in the face of a force that is perceived to be life-threatening?”35 Although her focus is on the
sorts of traumas human beings inflict on each other — concentration camps, torture, rape,
and so on — the effect, it seems to me, is that of a loss, or severe damage, to one’s identity,
whereby one is at the same time physically, and thus psychologically, obliterated. And in the

maelstrom of this obliteration, one has a choice: accept the fact of the event, or dissociate.

 

'33.?” Diana Tietjens Meyers, ed., Feminists Ref/sink tlJe I‘d/(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997).
‘34 In this story, the facts are loosely based on several interviews with a real patient on the oncology
ward in a midwestern hospital. Needless to say, all identities, conditions, and statements have been altered and

disguised to protect the patients, their families, and the medical staff.

'35 Susan J. Brison, “Outliving Oneself: Trauma, Memory, and Personal Identity,” Feminists Ret/Jink
tbe .S'ef ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers and Alison Jaggar (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001) 13.

110

Yet in both cases, the connection to one’s brutalized body produce remarkably similar
effects on one’s identity. If one accepts the reality of what has taken place, as Brison herself
had done after being raped, beaten and left to die, then one feels, and continues to feel
“more tied to (one’s) body than before, or, at any rate, more vulnerable to self—annihilation
because of (one’s) body.”"” If one dissociates, as some survivors of the Holocaust have
done, then one “may feel that an essential part of (oneself) was untouched by the trauma,”
but even then, “the physical intrusions of visceral traumatic memories” seem unavoidable."”

Importantly, Brison remarks that

these responses to trauma - whether dissociation from one’s body or
separation from the self that one was either before of during the trauma —
have in common the attempt to distance one’s (real) self from the bodily self
that is being degraded. . ..But such an attempt is never wholly successful, and
the survivor’s bodily sense of self is permanently altered by an encounter
with death that leaves one feeling “marked” for life. The intense awareness
of embodiment experienced by trauma survivors. . .is more akin to the pain
of Kafka’s (1948) “harrow,” cutting the condemned man’s “sentence” deeper
and deeper into his body until it destroys him. . ..Not only are one’s
memories of an earlier life lost, along with the ability to envision a future, but
one’s basic cognitive and emotional capacities are gone, or radically altered,

138
as well.

 

'36 Brison 20.
'37 Brison 20.

'33 Brison 20-21.

111

Case two: Ms. B. is bedridden and suffering from the lethal combination of
leukemia, other forms of cancer, and a number of conditions that make it difficult, if not
impossible, to treat one without aggravating the others. In the uncertain half-light of a late
Midwestern afternoon, in the greenish, “semi-private” room of the hospital’s oncology ward,
I am trying to scribble down bits and pieces of Ms. B.’s life that come tumbling out of her
haphazardly, disjointedly, like something she no longer recognizes as her own.

But it was not always like this. An imposing African-American woman in her late
sixties, Ms. B. has been the primary breadwinner in her household of four children ever
since her husband walked out when the oldest was eight. She has held a number of jobs
over the years, but has always prided herself on not requiring “handouts,” and in fact has at
times taken in several children of distant relatives who could no longer care for them. She
managed, over the years, to go from the sort of job that required a uniform and nametag to
an office with her name on the door for which tailored suits were the more appropriate
attire.

But then Ms. B. fell ill — seriously ill. With her children all grown up, she tried to
manage on her own, until she could no longer do so. Eventually, she found herself at the
local hospital, where she found out that her insurance would only cover a part of her
treatment, and that generally speaking, her prognosis was poor. And something happened:
the usually independent, confident, and assertive (according to those who knew her before)
Ms. B., who had successfully raised not only her own but other people’s children, and whose
ire was dreaded both at home and at work, became somebody else. W'hen I met her, first in
the earlier part of her treatment, she was shy, frightened, extremely soft-spoken, and
cooperative to a fault. She was also quite concerned that she do exactly what the doctor has

told her - and do it “right.” If this meant following the sometimes confusing directions of a

112

number of doctors, well, then she tried to do the best she can. After all, they knew best —
they were the experts. She explained several times that she considered it “rude” and
“disrespectful” to ask the doctors (or even the nurses) their names and what exactly they
were doing — there were just so many of them it was hard to keep track. She never corrected
the older, important—looking doctor who came in every other day and persisted in calling her
“Barbara.” Barbara was not even Ms. B's first name.

And in the months and weeks before she died, although clinically of sound mind, her
behavior was marked by her reluctance to engage in even the sorts of tasks that she still
could do. It was as if her every movement was marked by a new suspicion and distrust of
her body, of her decision-making ability, and a growing understanding, and terror, of her

fragility.

iii. The Embodied Identity

Before continuing, I want to forestall a potential objection. W’hy, the objection
might go, treat these two cases as examples of identity destruction? Is this not just a way to
use the traumatization of the body in order to essentialize one particular instantiation of a
person’s identity, mistakenly treating bodily annihilation as the destruction of identity in
toto? Why nor simply take the Parfitian route and just admit to the fact of successive selves,
some of which might indeed be destroyed along with a given body?

The answer, I think, lies in Samuel Beckett’s infamous summation of the human
condition: “I can’t go on, I must go on.’”39 Specifically, the response is grounded in the fact

that, whether one is a survivor of trauma or is permanently, and deeply, ill, unless one does

 

'39 Samuel Beckett, 'l'lsree None/s (New York: Grove Press Black Cat, 1965) 414.

113

not “go on” — either through suicide or through the kind of personal disintegration that
perhaps can best be understood as mental illness — one indeed does “go on,” both because
one must continue living in a world that requires a certain amount of identity integration,
and also because we, as human beings, tend toward a certain level of integration as well. The
way in which we proceed may differ: we might dissociate, and thus push away from the
identities that we view as irredeemably damaged as a result of our tortured bodies, or we
might proceed to pick up the pieces of what is left of our past selves, and try and reconstruct
something that is part pre-trauma self and part post-trauma: Brison chose to pick up the
pieces, as did Ms. B., albeit Brison succeeded in her process of self-reconstruction while Ms.
B. wholly became her illness, with her bodily trauma completely overriding her pre-illness
self. The point, however, is that we cannot simply accede to Parfit’s view of disembodied,
successive selves because (1) as I have already argued, our bodies have a direct and
immediate effect on our identities, and (2) even when our identities are threatened or
possibly destroyed as a result of bodily annihilation, we do not — we cannot — move forward
unscathed by the “self” that has suffered or is suffering. Even if we dissociate from our past
identities, which I suspect might be the closest counterpart to Parfit’s successive selves, we
are nevertheless doing so because of these damaged past identities — we are reacting to them,
even if away from them. Or, like Charlotte Delbo, a Holocaust survivor, we “split,” living
with an awareness of our past self, but “next to it,” as if next to a stranger in a parallel
universe, whose presence we know, but whose reality we choose not to acknowledged”

All of this suggests that Parfit’s criteria for psychological continuity simply do not
hold: given that, on his View, the continuation of any given self through time is dependent

on the continuation of its desires and belief structures, he cannot account for the fact that

 

'4“ Brison 19.

114

regardless of how we address our predicament, and largely due to our embodiment, we never
simply transform into unrelated successive selves. Moreover, even if we seem to completely
dissociate from our past self (and thus ostensibly no longer have any psychological
continuity with it), we are still connected to it, even if reactively. Thus, unless we are in a
fugue state, we are, like Delbo, aware of the presence of our past identity, and this awareness
cannot but affect the construction of our present one. I take this to mean that Parfit is
mistaken about both how identities form and how they are destroyed (with and through the
body). Similarly, I am puzzled by his apparent argument for an identity that, even if
tenuously linked for a while to its predecessors, might, after certain psychological changes,
not be connected to them at all.

Most importantly, Parfit does not seem to want to acknowledge that this
predicament of being connected to the whole of our lives, no matter how difficult or
traumatic, deeply matters to us as human beings — that we care about a continuing sense of
our identities as they move through time for a very good reason: Our lives are not simply
neutral collections of actions, thoughts, and events, or, as Parfit puts it, “the existence of our
brains and bodies, and the doing of our deeds, and the thinking of our thoughts, and the
occurrence of certain other physical and mental events.””' The phenomenon of being
human and possessing an identity necessarily includes the unique and individuating physical
and psychological experiences that separate us from mere objects and imbue our existence
not just with meaning, but with personal meaning. In other words, we are, in the course of
weaving together our identities, meaning-makers, and not merely bundles of psychological
and physical activity that now and then just happen to coincide in space and time. In the

end, it seems that just as there are no supersensible entities of the kind Parfit took

 

'4' Parfit 216.

115

“identities” to be, there are also no impersonal selves and interchangeable bodies that are
inessential for identity formation. Indeed, arguing for either possibility seems to be an odd
misconception of what it might mean to lead a human life. And even if we take seriously
Parfit’s (eventual) normative goal of supporting utilitarianism as a possible way to care about
future selves, his reductionist view of identities and bodies does not seem to add up to a

viable alternative to the positions that he seems too ready to reject.‘42

b. The Objection from Agency: Individuated Identities Matter Because
Agency Matters

It appears that 1 am deliberately ignoring Parfit’s observation that “we are not series
of events. . ..we are not thoughts and actions, but thinkers and agents.” But what Parfit gives
with one hand, he takes back with the other. He goes on to say, “but this is true only
because we describe our lives by ascribing thoughts and actions to people. . .We could give a

complete description of our lives that was impersonal: that did not claim that persons

 

l43Judith Jarvis Thomson, in “People and their Bodies” in Reading Paifit, ed. Jonathan Dancy (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997), argues that Parfit’s rejection of the physical body’s role in assessing personal identity (and
then of the importance of personal identity itself) is a serious error. Specifically, she challenges his view that
the indeterminacy regarding the role of the body in the definition ofidentity that is the result of his brain
transplantation and other thought experiments:

the thought that there cannot be either kind of indeterminacy is intimately
connected with the thought that a person must really be a

mental substance — a mental monad in fact. For if there cannot be

either kind of indeterminacy, then doesn’t that mean that people

have to be indivisible? (If people have parts, as bodies do, then indeterminacy
in respect of them would be possible).

.S'eeJudith Jarvis Thomson, “People and their Bodies,” Reading Pagfit, ed. Jonathan Dancy (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997) 225.

Also, in Reading Padit, Simon Blackburn argues in his essay “Has Kant Refuted Patfit?” that Parfit
misinterprets what is meant by “I”, and John McDowell’s essay, “Reductionism and the First Person,” argues
that “reductionism is wrong, not because personal identity is a further fact, but because there is no conceptually

simpler substratum for personal identity to be further to.”

Dancy 180, 245.

116

exist ”’4"

In this section, 1 further my argument against Parfit by focusing on agency -—
specifically, agency as proposed by Christine Korsgaard and Harry Frankfurt. However,
since the agency-based approach to identity is not central to my claims in this chapter other
than as a lens through which to view Parfit’s argument, I will only briefly sketch the outlines
of what it is and why it matters. I return to the agency-based approach in the last chapter
(Chapter VI) of the dissertation, when I consider several. methods of determining the criteria
of what constitutes the sort of illness narrative that is good in a specifically moral sense. I
now turn to a critique of Parfit from the point of view of (human) agency.

In order to place Korsgaard’s (and Frankfurt’s, to a large extent) criticism in context,
we might remind ourselves of the Kantian perspective from which Korsgaard addresses
Parfit’s claims. Roughly, Kant held that, as rational persons, we can regard ourselves either
from (1) a theoretical standpoint, where I am an experiencing entity which exists in various
states through time, and whose behaviors, determined by natural phenomena, can be
understood, explained, and predicted), or from (2) a practical standpoint, where I take myself
to be an entity that acts freely, and that has the potential to deliberate, choose, and act.

From the theoretical standpoint, we are viewed as somewhat passive experiencing objects of
theoretical study, and from the practical standpoint, we view ourselves as active agents who

4 While Parfit’s claims are rooted in

both author, and are responsible for, our own actions.”
the theoretical standpoint, if we assume the practical standpoint, Korsgaard tells us, we will

see that persons have a kind of a unity over time. And since we are agents, we have to adopt

 

”3 Parfit 341.

M4David W. Shoemaker, “Theoretical Persons and Practical Agents,” Pln'losop/{y and Public x’lflairs 25.4
(1996): 318.

Christine M. Korsgaard, “Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit,”
Pljilosoplsj 2"} Public Affairs 18.2 (1989): 119-120.

117

the practical standpoint. Indeed, we might even grant Parfit’s metaphysical claims (which are
grounded in the theoretical standpoint) while still taking persons to be unified in a significant
way, practically speaking. Therefore, Parfit’s ethical conclusions fail to follow from his
metaphysics. But we neither have to prove his metaphysics wrong, nor to force his
argument to address identity from a practical standpoint in order to propose a
counterargument to his reductionism about identity. Indeed, Parfit might be making an
argument about something, but it is not about identity, or even about persons (in any
recognizable sense of the term).MS

Specifically, Korsgaard argues that what Parfit refers to as the unity of consciousness
or the unity ofidentity is simply the unity of agency, and that in asking the consciousness
question, Parfit is simply missing the point.‘“’ W'hat we cannot ignore, Korsgaard tells us, is
that we have to view ourselves from the practical standpoint, especially when considering
ourselves as authors of our own actions. In other words,iwe must always regard ourselves as

° 147
necessarily agents.

Parfit, however, takes agency as merely another experience, rather than
as the condition of possibility for experience. This rejection of the significance of personal
identity, of course, supports his utilitarian claims that, in the absence of metaphysical
commitments to an identity, we have an ethical commitment to care equally for the future
selves of “others” as well as for what we take to be our own “selves.” But what this

metaphysical approach misses is the role of our practical identity as agents that unifies us

both in time and through time.

 

”5 Korsgaard 101-132.
”6 Korsgaard 109.

'47 Korsgaard 1 1 1.

118

We can see, therefore, the direction of Korsgaard’s response to Parfit quite clearly:
First, she denies that metaphysics are the key to questions about personal identity, and
second, she inserts the relationship between personal identity and normativity back into
identity-talk. Being fundamentally grounded in the fact of having to make deliberative
choices, we are driven to identify with a unifying principle that would direct the reasons for
which we make these choices, thereby uniting concerns about identity with those about
normativity. ”8

However, as Korsgaard herself notes, she also needs to offer is an account of

personal identity as story ofa unity moving through time.’”

She begins by considering the
possibility that our bodies might be viewed as a series of agents, unified at any given
moment, but consisting ofa number of such unities over a period of time. And yet this
account is not tenable. First, most things that we do in life — and indeed, most things that
are worth doing in life — take time. Not only that, but some things that we do only make
sense in the context of time. Therefore, there has to be some sort of a unity that moves
someone from laying one brick to the other while, for instance, building a wall. Or writing a
song. Or pursing better health. Or seeking a degree, and so on. And what is more, our
individual projects are themselves interconnected — they are a part of a life plan that we
might take ourselves to be pursuing: I am building a home, say, because later, I intend to
raise a family there, retire there, and so on. Interestingly, Korsgaard notes that although it is

normally thought that we live one continuous life due to being a single, unified person, the

truth just the reverse: It seems that I have a unified identity precisely because I have but a

 

”3 Korsgaard 111.

See also David W. Shoemaker, “Theoretical Persons and Practical Agents,” Phi/amply! and Public 4122a,:
25.4 (1996): 318-332

”9 Korsgaard 114.

119

single life to live — and because I tend to make long-term plans, and attempt to carry them
out. And “the unit of action” in so doing is a human body."”

It is both helpful to her argument and, it seems to me, a generally fruitful move in
itself that Korsgaard focuses on embodiment as one of the arguments against Parfit. It helps
her because it serves as a response to what Korsgaard takes to be Parfit’s possible claim
about her views on identity and normativity: if all one needs to argue for a unity of agency
that brings together the notions of identity and normativity is the fact that we need to, and
do, make plans and carry them out, then personal identity is neither important nor of any
“deep” significance. After all, if the reason we require the notion of personal identity is to
coordinate and carry out the plans that we make in simply living our lives, then it does not
seem so necessary for the unitary “us” to actually possess anything like a personal identity
through time. Indeed, as Korsgaard takes Parfit to be stiggesting, we might instead act in
groups, whereby we proceed as a corporation or a nation’would — communally, sharing a
“territory,” with all the power of a legal or ficrional identity, but without the unifying singular
one."”

But here is where Korsgaard reintroduces the notion of embodiment and thus
dispenses with Parfit’s potential objections. A state or a nation, she notes, is not merely a
group of individuals sharing a plot of land; a state can be said to occur when “citizens have

constituted themselves into a single agent. . .They have. . .adopted a way of resolving

conflicts, making decisions, interacting with other states, and planning together for an

 

'5“ Korsgaard 111-114.
'5' Korsgaard 111-114.

.S'ee also Shoemaker 331.

120

”152

ongoing future. They, in other words, make a choice, through their legislative bodies, to
deliberate, to speak, and then to act as a unitary whole. In short, they choose an identity — in
this case, a national identity. Similarly, “when a group of psychological functions occupy the
same human body, they have an even more imperative need to become a unified person.
This is why the human body must be conceived as a unified agent. . .It is the basic kind of
agent.’”‘” This focus on agency, Korsgaard suggests, is a much more useful way to address
personal identity that Parfit’s emphasis on fleeting experience. The result is that we are
justified in viewing personal identity as something practical, unified and deliberative — and
thus in the realm of the moral. And none of this requires Parfit’s reductivist metaphysical
theorizing.

If Korsgaard’s critique of Parfit might be viewed as a defense of why personal
identity, both in particular time and through time, is normatively important, then Harry
Frankfurt’s seminal paper, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person” (as well as his
equally influential The Importance of WlJat We Care A lionl) redefines personal identity in terms
of an identification with certain core desires, and personhood in terms of the capacity to
reflect on one’s “first-order” desires, and to formulate one’s will in response to those
reflections. This move challenges, albeit indirectly, both Dennett’s dismissal of moral
personhood as well as Parfit’s reductivist treatment of personal identity. According to
Frankfurt, it is not merely important to identify with one’s “true” desires, and thus have a
unified, coherent identity — it is vital to respond to these desires as a person.

In the first few lines of “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,”

Frankfurt expresses his dissatisfaction with how the concept of personhood has been treated

 

'57- Korsgaard 1 14.

'53 Korsgaard 1 15.

121

by philosophers. It is not that he finds something objectionable in the specifics of any
particular treatment of personhood — he objects to the whole enterprise that, on his view,
does little to meaningfully distinguish human beings from other entities, and suggests that
such careless use of language does actual “harm” to the otherwise meaningful pursuit of

”154

what it mi ht mean to be a “ erson. What ri 'rhtfull -' distin ruishes ersons is not their
8 P E: I l: P

biology, Frankfurt proposes, but the capacity to care about the structure of their will."”
Specifically, Frankfurt offers the following account. Being free, we have often been
told, means doing what one wants to do. But an agent who acts freely is not necessarily the
same agent whose will is free — freedom of action and freedom of the will are not the same.
Frankfurt suggests that this both comports with our intuitions that we are unique (with
unique identities), and makes the freedom of the will, the crucial element of personhood, not
only possible, but infinitely worth pursuing. For Frankfurt, “persons” are not merely
“actors” or “wantons” who are free to act on their desires, but agents whose wills are
normatively guided, and who are, as a result, free.'50
The claim here is very powerful, and has everything to do with Frankfurt’s earlier
assertion that there is a deep, necessary connection between human freedom and human
will. As persons, we are creatures to whom the contents of our will matter, for we are
capable of experiencing the terrible pain of the unwilling addict when our will fails us. At
the same time, we are potentially able to be free to have the will that we want to have — our

freedom is such that, through reflective self-evaluation, we are able to endorse those desires

that we want to be effective in defining our lives, in defining who we are. This suggests that

 

'54 Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” journal ofP/u'losop/gy 68.1
(1971): 5-6.

'55 Frankfurt 6.

'56 Frankfurt 14-16.

122

the person actually has something at stake in identifying with and withdrawing from certain
desires, for only she is able to experience both the agony of a will that is battling forces
external to it, as well as the triumph of a will that wins that struggle. Such an action-centered
view tends to undermine Parfit’s experience-bundles, and asserts that there is indeed a
“further fact” about our identities: it is an inescapable fact of life that we must make
choices, and, in the end, we must act.157 This reality is quite different from the passive
process of having experiences that is at the core of Parfit’s psychological continuity thesis.
Indeed, it seems that our actions, if they are to be the actions of agents, must be grounded in
the purposeful activity of meaning-making through which our identities — the
representations of who we are to ourselves and to the world — are created. What this
suggests, in turn, is that my identity — the question ofwho I am — is at least in large part my
own project. It is something which I experience, but it is also something that I create. This
leads me to conclude that impersonal approaches to identity, such as Parfit’s, miss the

. . iss . .
fundamental importance of moral authorship , or ownership, of our lives.

 

'57 .S'ee Christine Korsgaard, Creating tlje Kingdom o/‘Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996).

I will argue later that Korsgaard’s agent-centered critique responds quite powerfully to Parfit’s
argument for an agent-less (and thus identity-less) view of persons. Moreover, in her essay “Self-interest and
Interest in Selves,” Etbirs, 96 (July 1986), Susan \X’olf argues that metaphysical claims, such as those of Parfit
do not in any way do away with our robust interest in selves. I would also suggest that this interest in selves
necessarily includes interest in the bodies which are instrumental in making us the persons that we take
ourselves to be. And it seems to me that unless we are completely ignorant (or irredeemably wrong) as to the
truth of the matter regarding our selves and our identities — that is, unless claims such as Parfit’s get it right —
the strength of that interest alone speaks quite clearly in support of my earlier claim that our physicality is an

integral part of our identity.

1

'53 Korsgaard, “Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit,” 123.

123

i. The Objection from Agency
(Some Initial Worries About Unitary Identity)

But the concern with agential authorship and control can present us with a number
of difficulties. Although in the dissertation I offer a more complete treatment of this issue,
here, I only gesture toward several potential problems that are indicative of why the
Korsgaard—Frankfurt position on identity, although an improvement on Parfit’s, is
problematic. I begin this section by proposing that both Korsgaard and Frankfurt are after
something that marks them as philosophical cousins (if indeed not siblings). This similarity,
I believe, will help me to address their views in a way that will later be helpful in drawing the
necessary distinctions between what identity looks like on their view, and the sort of picture
that 1 will propose.

So, what is it that they share? The short answer is that the sort of view of
personhood and personal identity they espouse is of the agential type, championing
volitional unity and the sort of willful self-control that distinguishes mere existence from
living one’s life as one (morally) ought. For them, to be a truly human self— to possess a
truly human identity— is not merely a description, but an achievement. Being a person and
having an identity is for both of them a nonarbitrary, deliberate process of acting based on
rational, thought—through choices, and if we fail to unify ourselves as agents, we are indeed
threatened with a very real, very dangerous sort of personal disintegration.“” As Korsgaard
reminds us, “You must have a sense of yourself as a unified chooser with reasons in order to

act,” and this unity must, in order for us to remain coherent agents, exist at any given point

 

'59 Schechtman, Marya, “Experience, Agency, and Personal Identity,” Personal Identity. ed. Ellen
Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller,Jr., andJeffrey Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 1-24.

124

as well as stretch over time.“’" Similarly, as Frankfurt notes, “There is, I believe, a quite
primitive human need to establish and to maintain volitional unity. Any threat to that unity
- that is, any threat to the cohesion of the self — tends to alarm a person, and to mobilize

”$161

him for an attempt at ‘self—preservation. By “self-preservation,” Frankfurt here means

6‘

not merely the sense of sustaining. ..the life of the organism but the persistence of the

self.”162 In fact,

For someone who is unlikely to have any stable preferences or goals. . .the
benefits of freedom are, at the very least, severely diminished. The
opportunity to act in accordance with his own inclinations is a doubtful asset
for an individual whose will is so divided that he is moved both to decide for
a certain alternative and to decide against it. Neither of the alternatives can
satisfy him, since each entails the frustration of the other. The fact that he is
free to choose between them is likely only to make this anguish more

' ' 1(3
pOignant and more intense.” ’

 

"’“ Marya Schechtman, 'I'lie Constitution o/IS'e/res (lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) 15.

See also Christine Korsgaard, I .oe/ee Izetures, “Self-Constitution: Action, Identity and Integrity,” May-
June 2002, Oxford University, lOJuly 2007
<http:/ /www.people.fas.harvard.edu/ ~korsgaar/ KorsgaardLLl .pdf>.

"" Harry Frankfurt, “Autonomy, Necessity, and Love,” Neressity, V olition, and I one (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999) 139.

.i'ee also Schechtman, Marya, “Experience, Agency, and Personal Identity,” Personal Identity, ed. Ellen
Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller,Jr., and Jeffrey Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 1-24.

”'3 Harry Frankfurt, “On the Usefulness of Final Ends,” 89.
.S'ee also Schechtman, Marya, “Experience, Agency, and Personal Identity,” 1-24.
"’3 Harry Frankfurt, “The Faintest Passion,” 102.

.S‘ee alto Schechtman, Marya, “Experience, Agency, and Personal Identity,” 1-24.

125

Unity, therefore, is essential of we are to live our lives at all. Likewise, Korsgaard
adds that this need to regard ourselves as unified, reasoning agents suggests that we must
identify with these reasons, for they will “automatically carry us into the
future. . ..implementing something like a particular plan of life, you need to identify with your
future in order to be what you are even now.”“’4 \Vhat unifies us over time is the fact of our
living our lives in a particular time and place — right now. And it is not a matter of
convoluted metaphysics or puzzling ontology. However, I am troubled by several
implications of this emphasis on the unity of agency. My first worry is centered around the
relationship between unity and the passage of time, and my second concern addresses the
Frankfurt-Korsgaard (henceforth KF) conflation of the desire to continue to exist at all and
the desire to continue to exist in a particular way.“"’ Specifically, I believe that if we intend to
theorize about personal identity in an way that is relevant to human beings living in time, we
ought to worry about the central component of what I call the KF thesis: that the most
important factor in one’s status as a moral agent in time and through time — and thus the
most important component of an identity that such an agent ought to possess — is a unitary
will that is reflectively regulated. I begin with the KF claims about unity and time.

If the unity of agency is nothing short of a necessity for the very existence of our
lives as human beings, then this unity ought to hold not merely in the short term, but over
the entire span of our lives. Although this is not necessarily indisputable, it is, at least on its

face, defensible. After all, if I have a reason to care about who I am and what I do today, I

 

"’4 Christine M. Korsgaard, “Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to
Parfit,” P/Jilosoplp' a? Pub/ir/ljfairs 18.2 (1989): 113-114.

"’5 Schechtman 18.

126

seem to have a reason to care about who I am and what 1 do next week, next year, and so
on. This possibility also serves as a potential source of worry for claims such as Korsgaard’s
or Frankfurt’s.

Why this is the case becomes clearer if we recall Korsgaard’s claim that the unity of
agency is essential for being able to perform any sort of action, such as deciding to go to the
library instead of to the theater, to eat an apple rather than a piece of cake, and so on. And
even though Frankfurt differs with Korsgaard on a number of details regarding how we talk
about our commitments as agents, he agrees with her in that these commitments must
necessarily be stable for us to lead a life that is both consequential and coherent. W'hat
becomes somewhat confused — or, perhaps more precisely, fused — is whether integration
and unity are sufficient to have a life or whether they are required to have a (morally)
meaningful life. Thus the KF claim that an account of identity (persisting through time and
at a given time) must also be an account of the criteria for moral agency (persisting through
time and at a given time) seems to suggest that the two issues have themselves become
hopelessly intertwined and unified.“

This is precisely the problem. After all, if it is the same thing for me to persist — that
is, to continue having an identity — as to persist well (say, to remain an agent, as the KF
thesis would suggest) then it would seem that it would be impossible for me, as an agent
with a unitary (moral) identity, to live a life that is meaningless, without direction, or only
intermittently meaningful or directed.”7 As a corollary, it would seem that as a non—agent,
my chances for a meaningful life are not good at all. In fact, on KF’s account, it would be

impossible for me to lead a human life of any kind if it had no moral, unifying compass — or

 

"’6 Schechtman 12-18.

127

at least so it would seem. For instance, what if I, for some reason (medical, psychological, or
for no reason at all) became unable to focus my energies and desires? \Vhat if I could never
come to a stable conclusion about my actions and instead acted on instinct, or reactively, or
irrationally — would this mean that my life not only as an agent, but as a person with a

decipherable, coherent identity, is over?

c. The Objection from Narrative
(Individuated Identities as Narrated Identities)

This question brings me to the final section of this chapter, and one in which I begin
to develop a positive picture of how we ought to construe identity as the identity of
individuals, as well as the significance of this approach. I begin, following Marya
Schechtman, by offering an answer. I then turn to a third, narrative-based criticism of Parfit,
which at the same time serves as the foundation of my own views, which I will develop in
later chapters. My goal here is to argue that (1) the KF thesis’s requirements of a unitary will
do not present a threat to identity formation, and that (2) a narrative approach to identity
formation and maintenance is a viable alternative not only to the KF thesis, but to Parfit’s
reductionism. I conclude by suggesting several ways in which the particular narrative
approach I address here (Schechtman’s) ought to be revised, and why.

In addressing the worry about identity in the face ofa failure of agential unity,
Schechtman begins by reminding us of TlJe ll/Ijtls oflisyplms, where Camus asks the one

question that he takes to be worth asking’”:

 

"’3 Schechtman 17-19.

128

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the
fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world
has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—
comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.“”

Regardless of whether we take Camus’s point to be as fundamental as he suggests (or
whether we agree with him at all) we nevertheless are confronted by the possibility that his
claim presents a direct challenge to the KF unified identity thesis. But not for the obvious
reasons.

Schechtman suggests that Camus might at first be viewed as challenging the KF
position on the grounds that “if we are worried about having to live in the future despite the
fact that life has no overarching significance, it would seem that no such significance is

. . . . - ~ 171)
required to continue liVing a life.”

But she (correctly, in my opinion), takes this to be the
wrong concern, born of a misunderstanding of the KF position. The KF position faces a
challenge from Camus for quite a different reason. Camus is not, after all, suggesting that
without any apparent overarching meaning — or unity or direction — one ought to simply end
one’s suffering for good. He is, however, claiming that life does not require such unity or

meaning.'” Life goes on despite it, and is, in fact, better for it. It is in this world, free from

ready-made superstructures of meaning, unity, and rationality that human beings can

 

“'9 Albert Camus, “Absurdity and Suicide,” '1 'lie lily/l1 o/'.S'1s}yilms.'/1nd Other Essays (New York: Vintage,
1991) 3.

'7” Schechtman 19.

'7' Schechtman 20.

129

construct their own identities — and their own lives — in ways that are unique to them.172
Indeed, Camus has famously noted that if we are looking for ways to assure ourselves of
concrete meaning in our lives, we deeply misunderstand the enterprise of living, for
“integrity has no need of rules.”173
We can see an interesting relationship develop here between the KF thesis and
Camus’s existentialist views - interesting not only because of the contrasts, but also because
of the opportunity to see what is at the heart of Korsgaard’s and Frankfurt’s claims. Camus
addresses the seeming meaninglessness of existence by dismissing the pieties of a
transcendent purpose, form and structure. But, interestingly enough, the KF thesis does
something quite similar, albeit in a different way: the sorts of reasons that we live by, so the
thesis (roughly) goes, are not transcendental, or somehow “outside” of us, or “given” to us
by someone else — we provide our own reasons and values not just for living, but for living
in a particular waym This is the only way to be an agent or indeed to be a person. We have
not only to know ourselves, but to trust that knowledge enough to let it guide our actions in
what can be viewed as self-authorship.’7" Thus, in the most general of ways, perhaps Camus
would indeed grant the formal trajectory of the KF thesis. However, what he would not
endorse is the substance of its argument. And while I am defending neither the general

existentialist concept of identity, nor Camus’s particular conceptualization of it, this potential

objection of Camus brings me to what I take to be a serious worry about the KF thesis.

 

'72 Schechtman 20.
'73 Camus 66.

'74 Korsgaard, 'I 'be .S'ourees ofNom/atinity, 160-164.
See also Schechtman 20.

'75 Schechtman 20.

130

The worry is centered around the KF thesis’s emphasis on doing over being. That is,
Camus rejects meaning-making as a project, and instead values the fact of our capacity to
have experiences. Our unifying, self-authoring principles abandoned, we, as human beings,
can develop and maintain our identities by simply being — by persisting through time. Yet
the KF thesis insists that the key to our existence as persons lies precisely in taking the
reasons that we author as agents seriously — seriously enough, in fact, that ignoring them
leads to a possible disintegration of the self, an annihilation of any meaningful identityl”
And here we notice something quite significant: while the KF position does not discount
the value of experience altogether, it does appear to miss something fundamental about
human beings — specifically, that we care about moving through time as an experiencing
subject who perhaps wants to engage in meaning-making, but who also, in Schechtman’s

words,

just plain wants to be there in the future, with or without purpose. Two
more months, even if there are no loose ends to tie up or projects to
complete, are two more months. This does not mean that pain and
depression cannot make the negative value of continuation so great that it is
no longer deemed worthwhile — this is when we see suicide as an
understandable response. But the significance of being there, just to be
there, just to keep having experiences, just to have a life and not necessarily a

meaningful life.I77

 

'7" Schechtman 20.

'77 Schechtman 21.

Here, it is important to note what I do not mean by this: I do not mean that
purposeful identity-creation and identity-maintenance are unimportant. I do, however,
disagree with the suggestion that, in considering the nature and purpose of our identities, we
ought only, and primarily, be concerned with ourselves as unified agents — as entities who are
defined solely by the fact that they are unified. As on point as Korsgaard’s and Frankfurt’s
arguments might be against Parfit’s reductionism, when viewed against the background of
other concerns that we might have about how to live in the world as subjects of experience,
they are not sufficient. And it seems to me that any consideration of identity (at any given
time, but especially through time), should include some deliberation about what happens to
us as well as what we might do, plan, or will. However, while the KF thesis does allow, and
from an agential perspective even encourages, the idea that identities set up normative
expectations, its concerns about identity seem to lie solely with what I, as an agent, do rather
than what others may do or must not do to me. In other words, what is missing from the
KF account is the third-person use of identities as markers for moral status, treatment, and
agential efficacy. 1 take up this issue more fully in the next chapter.

For now, the following question remains: Does this mean that Parfit was indeed
correCt in his assessment of our survival through time? That is, was he correct in denying
any importance, or indeed, coherence, to our worries about any kind of a unity of
consciousness, which, in turn, gave rise to such illusory ideas as personal identity or
personhood? ”8

The answer to this is, of course, an emphatic no — for two reasons. First, if we grant
even the slightest credence to the KF thesis, for all of its flaws, it quite possibly provides us

with “something more like our na'i've conception of psychological continuation. . .our

 

'73 Schechtman 21.

132

conception of ourselves as unified agents can have a profound impact on the quality of our
conscious experience, and on our experience of ourselves as persisting subjects as well as
agents.”79 At minimum, this calls Parfit’s reductionism about identity into question.

The second reason brings me to my second point — that Parfit’s irrealism about
identity can be successfully challenged by a narrative approach to identity. I suggest that it is
this narrative turn that can both powerfully question Parfit’s presuppositions about what
identities are and what they do, as well as more fully address the especially difficult question
that Parfit cannot handle - how to theorize the identities of the deeply ill. While 1 set aside
the specific worry about the identities of the deeply ill (and why Parfit’s view fails to
satisfactorily speak to this issue) until the next chapter, I will here, again partially following
Schechtman, begin to question Parfit’s view of identity. I will conclude by offering an initial
critique of Schechtman’s approach, suggesting a complementary, but separate, perspective
on a narrative treatment of identity.

The story goes something like this. As beings in the world, we are concerned about
our future identities, both qualitatively and qualitatively. Most of the time, we want to make
sure that we survive into the future, and that when we get there, we are reasonably
recognizable to ourselves (and to others) as ourselves. The question then becomes what
matters in our survival — what do we care about, and why.

In 7726 Constitution of .S'elz'es,”’" Schechtman takes on this worry, distinguishing between

two questions of personal identity: the Parfitian “reidentification question,” which asks only

 

'79 Schechtman 21.

For example, Schechtman reminds us that Korsgaard has claimed that the fact that we have reasons
for action as agents “carries” us “into the future.” Frankfurt has similarly argued for the importance of having
ends and “stable commitments” in order to render our lives meaningful. In both cases, in planning what to do
and thinking about future experiences, reactions, and so on, we “project ourselves” into the future as agents
and subjects.

'8“ Schechtman, Marya, 'I'lie Constitution o/‘.1'elnes(lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

133

whether an entity persists through time, and the “characterization question,” which concerns
what I call the identity of individuals, or, as Schechtman puts it, “the kind of identity that is
at issue in an identity crisis” when we are most likely to ask “who am I” or “who will I be

tomorrow?”"”

She argues that it is only by addressing the characterization question that we
can motivate a reason for any future concern about the survival of our identities and
ourselves.

The way in which Schechtman addresses the characterization question is through
what she takes to be the four features of our existence: moral responsibility, self-interested
concern, compensation, and survival. For all of us, these questions come in various shades
of importance, marked by our personal preferences, interests, situations, contexts, abilities,
and goals. She notes that “all of the characteristics that are part of a person’s history are
presumed to contribute to making up of her identity. Some, however, play a more central

”182

role than others and are more truly expressive of who she is. For instance, for the sort of
person who values being able to run, swim, play soccer, and otherwise be active and
independent, a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis redefines “survival.” While not precluding
physical survival as such, MS limits the range of possible physical activity (and perhaps

mental competence), as well as independence: although this individual may be able to feed

his dog, make his breakfast, and even remain employed, he might no longer be able to

 

'3' Schechtman 74.
”‘3 Schechtman 77.

.S‘ee also Hilde Lindemann, I )amaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001)
72—75.

I will not address these features in any detail here, but will do so in the next several chapters. 1 only
note them in order to introduce Schechtman’s characterization question, and to make clear her more nuanced,
more contextualized approach to identity. These four elements, I believe, clarify what she means when she
argues that in order to care about our survival, we have to care about specific elements of ourselves as
surviving, and not merely about the formal sense of survival, in which some entity endures through space and
time.

134

engage in the sorts of activities that provided him with the most personal meaning and sense
of well being. And so when the MS patient asks “who am I?” he is asking three questions:
“who was I?” “who am I now?” and “who will I be tomorrow (and in the foreseeable
future)?” \While the answer to the first question might be clearer, the second, and especially
the third, are intimately connected to the valuation calculus of the patient himself: whether
the MS patient survived as “himself,” what his sense of responsibility for his life might be,
what his concern for the future is, and what sort of compensation he envisions for putting
up with his present pain are all matters of a web of “actions, experiences, and

a o o . '83
characteristics” that are uniquely his own.

And in weaving this web, the patient builds his
new, postdiagnosis identity -— and potentially begins to care about his survival.

The process of identity formation — what Schechtman calls the “narrative self-
constitution view” — is a process of implicitly creating one’s “identity by forming an
autobiographical narrative—a story of (one’s) life” by “coming to think of themselves as
persisting subjects who have had experience in the past and will continue to have experience
in the future.”””

Through her narrative self-constitution view, Schechtman, it seems to me,

accomplishes two things that are theoretically significant and practically illuminating: First,

she achieves something that neither somatic theorists about identity, nor the KF thesis, nor

 

"‘3 Schechtman 77.

.S'ee also Lindemann 74.

“*4 Schechtman 93-94.

Schechtman places limitations on what kinds of narratives may constitute the process of identity
formation. They must cohere with objective reality, they cannot be egregiously in error of publicly available
facts and the evaluations of such facts, and they must be intelligible. I examine the potential problems that are

inherent in these constraints, as well as some of the advantages of having such constraints, in the next chapter.

Schechtman 95-130.

135

Parfit could: in advancing a narrative approach to identity formation and maintenance, she
unites the elements of embodiment, experience, and agency, and organizes them into
individual-centered, yet theoretically constrained, criteria of identity formation. She does not
exclude the bodily criterion in favor of concerns about agency, nor does she exclude any
considerations of agency in favor of subjective experience -— they are all a part of
Schechtman’s four features of existence, stitched together according to the particular value
that we, as individuals, attribute to them.’85 And we do this stitching because, despite Parfit’s
insistence to the contrary, it matters to us who we were, who we are, and who we might
become physically, psychologically, intellectually, and socially. This brings me to
Schechtman’s second accomplishment: she makes it clear that our survival as individual
persons with individual identities matters to us because we are already individual persons
with individual identities — identities, I might add, that are subject to annihilation by deep
illness, among other things. And with perhaps a few exceptions, we care about our future
selves in ways that are both more fundamental and unambiguous than our concern for
others — even if these others are quite similar to us in many respects. \X/hile views such as
Parfit’s argue that we ought not care whether it is “us” or someone sufficiently similar to us
that continues in the future (given a certain level of psychological continuity), they seem to
be a misreading of the psychological reality of what it means to be creatures such as
ourselves. Interestingly, Parfit also seems to be engaged in an apparent conflation of the
descriptive with the normative. In his desire to advance a form of utilitarianism, he appears
to have misinterpreted the actual so as to defend the desirable. It seems, therefore, that
Schechtman goes a long way toward clarifying what sorts of considerations matter in identity

formation, and why.

 

“‘5 I take a narrative approach to identity to be a kind of moral particularism. What this means and its
implications for identity formation is something that I address in the next chapter.

136

I conclude by making a few forward-looking remarks, both by way of a transition to
the next chapter and also as a reminder that, despite her insightful critique, Schechtman’s
claims do leave us with a few rather significant worries. Recall her claim that we create our
identities “implicitly” in the sense that we do not have to be “self-conscious”
autobiographers."’° As Schechtman would have it, 1 filter my experiences, thoughts, feelings,
and so on through the “lens” of the narrative process, constructing a story, both passively
and actively, that has personal significance for me, even if it is selective at best in its
incorporation of events, other stories, and so on.‘87 Moreover, Schechtman takes the
plotline of such a narrative to be necessarily “linear,” with stories having a definite
beginning, middle, and end. Otherwise, she worries, beings such as ourselves might not be
able to make sense of non-linear stories — might indeed not even recognize the storytellers as
persons.“ Both of these claims are at least a little troubling, especially in that they seem to
reveal Schechtman’s presuppositions about what narratives and identities are, and how they
are structured. I suggest, and will argue in the next few chapters, that neither stories nor the
identities that are constructed through them are solely implicit or linear. Indeed, if identities
do have the kind of normative power to regulate one’s moral agency that I suspect they do,
then the story about them would have to be considerably more complex. It is with this in

mind that I turn to Chapter IV.

 

'36 Lindemann 74.
“‘7 Lindemann 74-75.

'33 Lindemann 75.

137

N an‘atiiie identigi talees part in the stogy's movement, in tlie dialer/7e between order and disorder.

— Paul Rieoeur

CHAPTER IV: NARRATIVE AND NARRATIVE IDENTITY: PART ONE

In taking Schechtman’s views as indicative of the direction in which this
consideration of identity is tending, I am brought to one of my central claims — that the role
of the narrative in identity is both descriptive and normative. The narrative approach to
identity is both more descriptively accurate of the process through which identities are
formed and maintained, and it is more normatively efficacious in maintaining or re-creating
the fragile, vulnerable identities of the deeply ill. While the previous chapter outlined some
of the challenges that a narrative conception ofidentity presents for more traditional views,
this chapter begins to examine the role of narrative itself in moral work, both within and
outside of the question of identity. My goals here are twofold: First, to offer an overview of
the debate among those who support and oppose the notion of narrative itself and provide a
(tentative) defense of narrative as a legitimate method of moral discourse, and second, to
endorse a narrative approach to identity by answering one of its more powerful critics. I will
first offer a brief discussion of a narrative approach to ethics, broadly construed. Second, I
will consider two recent critiques of narrative as a method and as an approach to
normativity, and offer responses to them. Third, I will address a critique of narrative
approaches to identig, and suggest that it is largely without merit. This process of making a
stronger case for a narrative view of ethics generally and of identity specifically will enable

me, in the next chapter (Chapter V), to focus on a critical assessment of Schechtman’s

138

narrative views, and argue that although they offer us a good place to start theorizing about
identity in the narrative context, they do not go far enough (and perhaps not in the right

direction) — especially in the case of the identities of those who are deeply ill.

I. Narrativity and Ethics

Although my focus in this dissertation is centered around a narrative approach to
identity, it is of course also a fact that the narrative practice that I defend is a part ofa much
larger conversation about the use of stories in moral discourse. And while the precise

,

definition of“narrative ’ is not my primary focus here, I do believe that it would be useful to
offer a sketch of what narrative is for the following two reasons: First, doing so places a
narrative approach to identity in the larger context of narrative, and second, doing so
presents an opportunity to evaluate several powerful criticisms of narrative as a whole before
turning to the specific critiques of narrative and identity.

Specifically, I focus on three distinct objections: two to narrative as ethical
methodology and one to narrative as a substantive view of identity. I argue that, in the end,
all three leave us without a clear picture of why narrative (and thus a narrative approach to
identity) is either less desirable than its alternatives, or is vulnerable (at least decidedly so) to
the sorts of criticisms that are levied against it. I begin with a general overview of principlist

and narrative approaches to morality and the two arguments that challenge narrative as

method.

139

11. Stories and Moral Deliberation

a. The Theoretical-Juddical Methodology in Ethics and Bioethics

Most seven-year olds, including, if we are honest about it, our own past seven-year-
old selves, do not take kindly to justifications for aetion (or abstention from action) that rely
on variations of “because it is right for all young people to obey their elders”— and for good
reason. Even to seven—year-old ears, the reason-giving power of doing without questioning
— of doing based solely on the command of universalist principles — seems to be, in the end,
insufficient. And so the child acts out of fear of retribution, or in order to receive a reward.
Or not at all.

Not altogether unlike our seven-year-old who is unmoved by inflexible justification,
Socrates, in the Eat/ammo, is amazed (and perhaps horrified) that a young man would
prosecute his own father — even if the father’s crime is murder. The blunt, coarse logic of
“murder is murder” held for Socrates the same sort of intellectual and moral appeal that
“because I told you so” held for the child: The logically deduced, categorical, and (especially
in the case of .Eutlypljro) impartial nature of the commands is also deeply and problematically
morally unclear and practically unmotivating precisely because of its rigid universalismdl”

Specifically, both cases raise a number of worries about what has come to be called
the theoretical-juridical view of morality —— an approach to moral theory that takes its job to
be divided among unyielding principles, the judges who, equipped with the knowledge of

these principles and what it means to obey them, make sure that they are uniformly

 

”‘9 Here, I address the kind of principlism that does not take into account individuals moral contexts,
and thus does not change the valence of its laws. I will consider a less inflexible version of principlism when I
address the theoretical-juridical approach and bioethics later in this section.

140

followed, and those whose moral duty it is to do the principles’ biddingw”: What are we to

do about the lack of normative warrant of impersonal moral commands, what of personal
relationships, of one’s sense of oneself as a moral actor, the context of a given moment,
specific demands and valences of facts in situations, and so on?

These worries can be divided into roughly three questions'”: First, the question of
morality as detached impartiality. It seems to be trivially true that personal relationships,
friendships, loves, preferences, and the like are powerful forces in our lives. On the other
hand, the laws of Kantian imperatives, utilitarian calculus and insistent rights-based
arguments all call on us to assess moral claims in ways that prefer the principles, that
maximize the good for all, that defer to disembodied rights — in other words, that detach us
from any partial concerns that we might have for our lives as we live them. In fact, the work
of morality, given the theoretical-juridical view, seems to be precisely to guard against such
context-specific (and person-specific) approaches to moral claims.

But what an odd world this would be if we were required to donate blood (or organs,
or medical care) first to those who are “most useful” to the majority rather than to those
who need them most immediately or those whose care concerns us the most. How strange
it would be to view morality as a duty to “never lie,” even in cases where withholding some
facts might be the humane gesture. And indeed how puzzling to be confronted with law-like
principles which tell us to prosecute our fathers with no regard to the roles the play in our
lives. The requisite detachment in all three cases, it seems to me, has less to do with sharing

moral space with other moral beings, and more with deductive rule—following, with the rules

 

'9” See Walker, Margaret Urban, Moral Understandings: /~1 Feminist .S'tudy in Ethics (New York: Routledge,
1998)

'9' .l'ee Lawrence C. Becker, “Impartiality and Ethical Theory,” Etlu'es 101.4 (1991): 698-700.

141

applying in the same way regardless of the circumstances of one’s life or the particularities of
a given moral dilemma.

Second, the question of morality as substituted impartiality. What I mean here is
something like this: If I am trying to decide what to do in a difficult moral situation, my
reasoning is limited, at least to some extent, by my own point of view, my interest, my
situatedness, and so on. And I think that this is uncontroversially so — my self-interest, the
things that matter to me, and my subjective perspective are all a part of who I am, and thus a
part of how I approach moral decisions and moral decision-making. But making decisions
from merely my own narrow point of view is not an adequate way of approaching moral
work — in order to be engaged in moral deliberation (rather than in the gratification of
personal needs and inclinations), I must take the interests of others into consideration,
sometimes including those “others” with whom I have no direct relationship. There needs
to be some way to compensate for my moral failings as a flawed human being.

One solution, offered by the proponents of the theoretical-juridical model,”2 asks us
to do one of two things: either place ourselves as perspectival substitutes in the position of
another person and then, from a disinterested, judicial perspective, balance the conflicting
interests, or else forgo the step of perspective-switching entirely, and assume what Thomas

Nagel has called a vantage point from “nowhere in particular.”'°"

This second perspective
calls on us to be the perfectly unbiased spectator whose position is external to everyone’s

interests — a position of ultimate impartiality and ultimate detachment.

 

'97- Here, I am not drawing a distinction among deontology, consequentialism, rights-based theories,
contractualism, and other kinds of theoretical-juridical approaches to morality. My point here is that most of
them, in one way or another, require a detached, third-person view-from-nowhere as a way to get around the
problem of myopic self—interest and limited moral perspective.

"’3 See Nagel, Thomas, The V iew From Now/Jere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

142

However, here, again, it appears that the insistence on abstract rule-following above
all else leads us to neither a fair assessment of another’s point of view, nor to the ideal of
unbiased spectatorship. Instead, it drains any semblance of moral significance from moral
work. For example, in attempting to determine how to communicate to an elderly patient
(who also happens to be from a culture quite unlike one’s own, as well as the mother of
one’s good friend) that her diagnosis is not at all promising, the juridical approach offers us
the options of either (1) placing ourselves on the patient’s shoes, and then, in a disintereSted,
legalistic way, reasoning from a position that is distinct from either one’s own or the
patient’s, or (2) placing oneself outside the situation altogether, and deciding from “a view
from nowhere.” But this approach misses precisely what is morally significant about a
decision such as this. It seems that what is morally important in this case is not merely what
an} similarly-situatedp/Jysieian would do for any similarbi—situated patient, but what this particular
plgysia'an might decide, given this particular patient. The moral goodness of the decision is
largely defined, and motivated by, the friendship, love, and other non-universalizable, non-
impartial facts which the detached and disinterested observer cannot access. Such access
requires precisely the kind of enmeshment with others that the theoretical-juridical model
forbids. But by separating the value of moral decision—making from the subjectivity of the
moral actors, we seem to lose both the motivation to act morally, as well as the significance
of so doing.I94

Finally, the question of morality as constituted entirely of impersonal duties and
requirements. Recall’s Kant famous claim that only a categorical imperative, free from any

and all empirical or otherwise contextual influences, can properly be called a moral principle.

 

'94 .S‘ee Stocker, Michael “How Emotions Reveal Value and Help Cure the Schizophrenia of Modern
Ethical Theories,” How Should One I .ioe? - Essays on Me Virtues, ed. Roger Crisp (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998).

143

And thus it is the person who acts from duty — rather than from inclination, love, desire, or
other motivations not grounded in the demands of the categorical imperative — that is the
meritorious, rational, moral agent. Only this agent, possessed of an autonomous will, is also
possessed of a perfectly good will. ”5

\X/hat is problematic here is also something that at first seems to be beside the point:
what good is a good will? As Lawrence C. Becker notes, there is in the theoretical-juridical

view of morality a problem of

reconciling impartiality with close personal relationships, as well as with
eudaimonistic conceptions of human good, moral virtue, and the good life. It
looks as though "partiality" is a constitutive feature of intimate relationships,
friendships, familial ties, and our behavior in social groups from

. . ]()
neighborhoods to nations. 6

What is missing, in other words, is the warrant for nilgy we, as moral actors, would
desire something like a good will (or a utilitarian-based outcome, or a rights-based
justification) to be a part of the life that most of us would like to lead — a life that is (morally)
good for many individual, unique reasons which are quite distinct from universalizable moral
oughts. Given the requirements of juridical moral thought, we are left wondering what there
is to admire about such a life, why such a life is worth having, and why disinterested
detachment from everything and everything one cares about — that is, detachment from all

that makes the moral life not just worthwhile but possible — is the sole path to robust moral

 

'95 See Mary Gregor, ed., Immanuel Kant, Groundwork ry‘tlie llIetap/gysies ofMora/s (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998).

"’6 Becker 699.

144

agency. Thus, although duties and laws might very well be part of moral work, the “ought”
of morality cannot be grounded entirely in bare, unyielding principles.

Bioethicists, too, have for some time embraced principlism in its various guises.
While some (especially in the earlier years of the discipline) have opted for the sort of
inflexible principlism more akin to Kant’s categorical imperative,W7 others have found a
middle ground, recognizing that the valence of principles changes given the specifics of
particular moral situations. A particularly well-know example of the less juridical (yet still
principlist) view was developed by Beauchamp and Childress in Prineiples of Biomedical
Ethical” Edited and refined since its original 1979 publication, this particular model for
moral decision-making makes three claims (that ostensibly are the logical product of a
“common morality” that “all morally serious persons share”) which attempt to unite
principles and contextualist thinking into a process that would avoid the difficulties endemic

to the more unyielding principlist views:'”

1. Basic principles and the specific action guiding rules that are derived
from them are central to the ethical decision making process in health
care situations. (Specifically, the principles of autonomy, non-

maleficence, beneficence, and justice).

 

'97 .S'ee National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research, Belmont report (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1979); Beauchamp T., ChildressJ.,
Principles Of Biomedical Etlu'rs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Veatch R., A 'I'lieogy Of Medical Etln'rs
(New York: Basic Books, 1981); Engelhardt, H.T., ’I'lse Foundations OfBioet/sies (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986).

'93 .S'ee Beauchamp T., Childress J., Pn'neiples Of Biomedical Etlu'es, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001).

'9" T. Beauchamp,J. Childress 3.

145

2. In any given health care situation, any decision or course of action
is morally justified if it is consistent with relevant principles, rules,

background theoretical commitments, and particular judgments.

3. The success of the task ofjustification in 2 can be measured by the
degree to which it achieves an overall cohesion of all of the

- - ' 2110
elements of the deCiSion making process.

The way in which this principlist methodology differs from the more rigid ones
discussed earlier is that no law or principle is ever a priori privileged — the valence of all
principles is subject to the context to which they are applied. Although prima facie
controlling, principles are informed, through the process ofa Rawlsian “reflective
equilibrium,” by the particular situations in which they are applied. Sometimes they control
as principles. Sometimes they are altered, overridden, or modified. And sometimes, a
particular situation calls for some principles to be selected (or ranked higher) over others.

Thus, this less rigid principlist approach does require more skill from moral actors in
determining l/Jc’ tlsing to do than do the unbending principles of (for example) Kantian ethics:
Not only the principles in question have to be considered, but also the cultural, contextual,
economic, and personal considerations in which the moral actors find themselves. However,
in the end, once the proper combination of principles and non—principlist considerations

have been balanced by the decision-makers, “context is of no further interest. The

 

20”J. McCarthy, “Principlism or narrative ethics: must we choose between them?”, Allediral
Humanities 29.2 (2003): 65-67; .l'ee also Beauchamp T, Childress J., Principles Of Biomedical lit/sits, 5th ed. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001).

146

commentator can now judge impartially what ought to be done in any similar set of

n 201

circumstances.

b. Morality as Moral Competence:
(The Expressive-Collaborative Methodology)

Thus far, we have considered two versions of a principlist methodology: one
explicitly unyielding, and one less so. But, it seems to me, something is missing, even in the
revised principlist methodology: ”)6 lmoader context within which a moral decision is reached.
In other words, while Beauchamp and Childress (and others who subscribe to the modified
principlist view) allow for the complexities of a given situation to influence the selection and
the ordering of the principles that might apply, the view of what “context” means remains
much too narrow. What I mean might become clearer ifI address my objection in terms of
stories and storytelling.

At first, it might seem that stories have very little to do with juridical decision-making
— in fact, a narrative might strike us as precisely the wrong way to think about categorical
imperatives, utilitarian prerogatives, or rights-based deliberations. However, even if we
consider Kant’s well-known example of the shopkeeper, we realize that the principles that
are demonstrated through it emerge precisely because it is a story, structured in a way to
make the principles clear. Similarly, if we tell a story of why saving a future surgeon is better
than saving a future murderer, it is the story that makes the moral claim, and thus the

principle, unambiguous. The point is that the use of stories is perfectly compatible with all

 

2‘” Hilde Lindemann Nelson, “Context: Backward, Sideways, and Forward,” .S'tories ll/Iatter: 'I'lie Role of
Narrative in Medical Etlsics, ed. Rita Charon, Martha Montello (New York: Routledge, 2002) 39.

147

variety of the theoretical-juridical model of moral decision—making — up to a point. And that
point is the scope of the context of these stories.
What do I mean by this? Consider the following (simplified here) example that

Hilde Lindemann Nelson offers:

The patient, Carlos R., was a twenty-one-year-old Hispanic male who had
suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen in gang violence. He was

uninsured. . ..he was HIV-positive.

At discharge the attending physician recommended a daily home nursing visit
for wound care. However, Medicaid would not fund this nursing visit
because a caregiver lived at home who could provide this care, namely, the
patient’s twenty-two-year-old sister Consuela, who in fact was willing to
accept this burden. . ..Carlos had no objection to Consuela’s providing this
care, but he insisted absolutely that she was not to know his HIV status. He
had always been on good terms with Consuela, but she did not know he was
actively homosexual. His greatest fear, though, was that his father would
lean of his homosexual orientation, which is generally looked upon with great

disdain by Hispanics.

Would Carlos’s physician be morally justified in breaching patient

confidentiality on the grounds that he had a “duty to warn?”202

 

2‘” Nelson 40.

148

Nelson notes that Leonard Fleck, as one relying on (presumably) a modified
theoretical-juridical approach with an emphasis on the absence or presence of “excusing
conditions,” concludes that the physician ought to respect patient confidentiality, while
Marcia Angell, relying on largely deontological principles, concludes that the physician ought
to “encourage” Carlos to tell his sister about his HIV status or do so on his behalf?”

Regardless of the different outcomes, however, what unites both Fleck’s and Angell’s
conclusion is their (1) emphasis on principles over context, and (2) their atemporal, narrow
view of context. It is as if their attention to the present context exhausts the notion of
context altogether — it is as if the moral actors within the story just happened to appear there
for the purpose of being judged. Fleck’s and Angell’s discussions of the case display a
marked lack of attention to the temporal context, both how the individuals in the story came
to be in this particular story and how a present judgment will affect the moral actors after it
is rendered. What they are after is how any similarly-placed moral actor oug/Jt to act in a
particular situation, all things considered. And thus what matters here, they seem to say, is
the now, the present just resolution of a moral conflict, isolated both epistemically and
metaphysically from its predecessors and successors.“ Isolated also, as we will shortly see,
from the ways and reasons we tell, hear, and use stories in moral work.

Perhaps as a way of challenging the theoretical-juridical model theoretically and
practically, the expressive-collaborative approach to morality, put forth by Margaret Urban
Walker (among others), turns on its head both its priorities and its presuppositions. As a

priority, the expressive-collaborative approach tends to view the importance of moral work

 

2“" Nelson 40.

3‘” Or, as Hilde Lindemann Nelson has argued, “juridical approaches tend to move only sideways,
considering context as if fleshes out the here and now.”

Nelson 40.

149

not as necessarily the juridical determination of “right” and wrong” based on a set of
deduced unyielding norms, laws (and even stories), but more as a way to negotiate our way
in the complex and imperfect social, physical, and psychological realities of being human:
The “expressive-collaborative model’ms encourages us to view “an investigation of morality
as a socially embodied medium of mutual understanding and negotiation between people
over their responsibility for things open to human care and response.” The distinction
between this approach and the juridical one is that while the juridical model emphasizes the
uniformity of what is required, forbidden, or permitted in a given situation for all similarly-
placed agents,” the expressive—collaborative model prioritizes moral competence, or, as
Walker has argued, “the ability of morally developed persons to install and observe
precedents for themselves which are both distinctive of them and binding upon them
morally.”207
Moreover, the presuppositions of the theoretical-juridical model about we ought to
expect from moral deliberations also change: Howard Brody suggests that “the expressive-
collaborative model views the heart of morality as our efforts to make our moral behavior
mutually intelligible and to negotiate the inevitable differences and disagreements as we try

. . . . . . 2118
among ourselves to determine where our moral respon51bilities lie.” And at the heart of

the expressive-collaborative model is the story — the narrative that is so helpful in moral

 

3’5 Margaret Urban \Xr’alker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist .S‘tudy in Etliics (New York: Routledge,
1997) 173.

3”“ Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (lthaca: Cornell University Press, 2001)
16.

2'" Walker, Margaret Urban, "Moral Particularity,” Moral Contexts (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2003).

3"“ Howard Brod ', Stones 0 Il'iciéness ew York: Oxford University Press, 2002 175-177.
I .

150

deliberation, pedagogy, and all the numerous activities that are a part of our moral work.
Except now, what is understood by “story” — both, how it is constituted and how it is used
— is quite different.

What I mean is this: The use of first, second, and third-person stories, as I have
noted above, is perfectly compatible with theoretical-juridical model of morality. Stories can
tell us which principles to use, and why. After all, the story of Carlos R. seems to have
offered two different principle-based theorists justification for the kind of juridical reasoning
that satisfied them both. In fact, stories can embody principles by virtue of being narratives
about the pitfalls of certain types of beliefs or conduct — they tell us not to steal, lie, or
destroy innocent human life, and so on. Or they may teach us about generosity, the
importance of self-determination, the meaning of duty. In so doing, they provide the
necessary moral motivation for us to take these principles as principles. Thus, the primary
distinction between the theoretical-juridical model of moral reasoning and the expressive-
collaborative approachz'” is not the fact that one uses stories in its moral work while the
other rejects them. They both take stories to be useful — but in different ways and for

different purposes.

c. The Turn toward Narrative: Stories, Storytelling, and Moral Work

Let me now offer a different, narratively-grounded, interpretation of what stories do

and what to do with stories. The purpose is twofold: first, to consider what we might mean

 

3”” .S'ee Walker, Margaret Urban il'loral Understandings: /1 Feminist .S'tudy in Etliics (New York: Rou tledge,
1998).

151

when we talk about a narrative turn in ethics, and second, to set up my defense of a narrative
approach to both ethics and identity which follows.

I have suggested earlier in this dissertation that the use of stories in moral decision-
making is not entirely unknown to those who support the theoretical-juridical approach to
morality — in fact, stories are quite often used to probe our intuitions about laws, principles
and imperatives. Through these stories, principles can be illustrated, learned, defended, or
rejected. It might seem odd, therefore — indeed superfluous — that I introduce Walker’s
expressive-collaborative approach as a counterpoint to juridical rule-following. But it ought
not be, for the expressive-collaborative methodology is much more compatible with a
narrative approach to doing ethics in that its view of morality requires narratives in ways that
mere juridical principle-justification does not?”

The reasons supporting this claim have a lot to do with the methods of narrative
ethics as well as with the stated goals of the expressive-collaborative approach to morality.
Although narrative methodology is not one thing, one approach, or one set of views about
what stories do - in fact, it includes a number of claims about the role and function of
stories which I will only briefly mention here — it can be understood as “the variety of
recent approaches that accord a central role to stories, not merely employing them to
illustrate moral concepts such as justice or neighborly love, or to test our moral intuitions,
but regarding them as necessary means to some moral end.”2” In addressing a narrative

approach to ethics, Hilde Lindemann offers the following summary of what various

narrative theorists have proposed to be the role of stories in moral reasoning:

 

2'" Although I do not address these methodologies in any detail in this dissertation, the use of stories
is also compatible with moral anti-theory, virtue theory, and particularist approaches to ethics. My point here is
that while the use of stories is not limited to one way of doing ethics, certain approaches have made a better,
more fruitful use of them than the supporters of the theoretical-juridical model.

2" Hilde Lindemann Nelson, “7 Things to Do with Stories,” unpu/ilisln'd manuscript, p. 2.

152

Narrativists have claimed, among other things, that stories of one kind or
another are required: (1) to teach us our duties, (2) to guide morally good
action, (3) to motivate morally good action, (4) to justify action on moral
grounds, (5) to cultivate our moral sensibilities, (6) to enhance our moral
perception, (7) to make actions of persons morally intelligible, and (8) to

' 212
l’lelVCnt OUI’SCIVCS 215 thtCl’ pCI'SOIIS.

Thus, narratives can differ teleologically: They can be good and bad — instead of
providing the sort of insight into ourselves that might be constructive and action-guiding,
they can encourage dishonesty, cowardice, or can serve to indulge our fantasies in generally
unhealthy, or even destructive, ways. Narratives can be “master narratives” that tell us
where and how we are socially situated with respect to our duties, claims, and expectations.
One can also resist harmful master narratives through a counterstory, whose purpose it is to
“root out the master narratives in the tissue of stories that constitute an oppressive identity

,i213

and replace them with stories that depict the person as morally worthy. Moreover, one
can resist a master narrative through a humorous re-casting of that narrative — a king with no

clothes (power), Victor/ Victoria (sexuality), and so on — that serves to expose the “master

 

212

2001 ) 3o.

Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

Lindemann notes that

For (1) see MacIntyre 1984; Nussbaum 1990; Murray 1997. For (2) see MacIntyre 1984; Nussbaum
1990; Rorty 1990. For (3) see Nussbaum 1990; Hunter 1991. For (4) see MacIntyre 1984. For (5) see
Nussbaum 1990; Rorty 1989; Charon 1997; Hawkins 1997. For (6) see Nussbaum 1990; Hunter 1991;
DePaul 1993; Rorty 1989. For (7) see MacIntyre 1990; Taylor 1989; Frank 1995; Brody 1987. For (8)
see Frank 1995; Rorty 1989.

2'3 Nelson, Damaged I dentities, Narrative Repair 150.

153

narrative” as unreliable, or at least of doubtful validity. And, of course, the master narratives
themselves can be good or bad — while they can oppress, they can also inform, (re)align, and
guide. Counterstories, too, can be destructive as well as reparative. \Vhat matters is the
ability (and desire) to listen or read closely enough, with sufficient attention and discernment,
to tell the difference.

Furthermore, narratives come in a number of forms, differing in what they do: They
can be read, heard or viewed through the mediums of film, literature, or through the oral
tradition of storytelling, thus expanding one’s emotional, social, and intellectual vocabulary
and perception. In this way, we become not merely better informed about being otherwise,
but better equipped. in addressing morally complex and difficult situations in the real
world.214 They can be invoked“ by substituting a “master” model of moral reasoning (say,
the Enlightenment model of detached objectivity and rationality) with the kind of
normativity that is action—guiding to a particular narrative community that wishes to find
justification for, and thus make moral sense of, its way of life.” They can also serve as
methods of clarification of confusing or contradictory moral reasoning when compared to
each other. In trying to work through some particularly difficult moral dilemmas, narratives
can help us to see where seemingly divergent viewpoints can possibly move closer together,
when they cannot, and why, without resorting to ill-fated attempts to (re)order principles and

(re)interpret laws.

 

2” Nelson 37-46; see also Martha C. Nussbaum, Love's Know/edge: Essays on Plu’losoplgy and I jterature (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

3'5 .S'ee Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Identities, Narrative Repair, Cornell University Press, 2001; see also
Hilde Lindemann Nelson “7 Things to Do with Stories,” unpulr/islred manuscript; see also Alasdair MacIntyre, x'l/ter
Virtue, second edition (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

2'6 There are, of course, many difficulties with these approaches, but I will not address them here.
Suffice it to say that issues of inclusiveness of these narratives, as well as questions of how the narratives of one
community relate to the narratives of another are only two examples of how invoking narratives can leave us
on some rather shaky moral grounds.

154

In short, a narrative approach to doing ethics takes its cues from the stories
themselves, as they are told, heard, and (mis)understood, and although there are a number of
approaches and methodologies, they tend to center around questions of who the teller is,
what he teller might mean, who the intended (and unintended) audience might be, what is
the effect of the story, and (perhaps less frequently) what constitutes a good story — and
what might be meant, in this case, by “good.”

This brief discussion of what is meant by a narrative approach to doing ethics — the
use of stories in moral contexts — allows me now to suggest why an expressive-
collaborative model is more compatible with the use of stories than the juridical one. Recall
that the expressive-collaborative model takes its name from the presupposition that morality
is be expressive of who we are (or who we would want to be), and takes collaboration

. . . . . 217
among all of us to be necessary in pursuing life in a moral community.

Morality, in short,
is not solely within the purview of a judge who possesses the necessary moral epistemology

and pronounces on a given act as “warranted” or “unwarranted,” but is something that

we do together: it is a socially embodied medium of understanding and
adjustment in which people engage in practices of allotting, assuming, or
deflecting responsibilities of various kinds. These practices create a
vocabulary, as it were, that lets us understand who must or may do

something for or to someone, and they contain resources for moral

 

2'7 Hilde Lindemann Nelson, “7 Things to Do with Stories,” unpulrlislsed manusmpt, p. 22; Margaret
Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: /1 Feminist .S'tndy in Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1998).

155

deliberation that give us recognized and socially shared ways of deciding

what is good or right to do.213

Thus, the reason that stories simply fit better within this way of doing moral work is
that they provide the sort of flexibility and embodied and embedded understandings that this
process of constantly revising social moral norms requires. They make possible a way to
engage in these moral “negotiations” by reminding us to take into account how we got to the
present point, what the present circumstances are, as well what we ought to do in the future,
given our past and present. They allow us to hear — and indeed insist that we do — voices
that are differently situated, possessing quite radically divergent views of where they fit
within the moral fabric of this ongoing conversation. They remind us that different
participants carry the burdens of different histories, epistemologies, and moralities. In the
end, the expressive-collaborative methodology sees stories as not merely a way to decide
among competing principles, but as self—contained, and context-rich, reasons to revise moral
understandings, to negotiate solutions, and to continue seeking the ever-elusive common
ground. Narratives of all kinds have the capacity to traverse the whole spectrum of human
moral experience, and it is precisely this scope and flexibility that engages the expressive—
collaborative model in its assessment of, and search for, communal moral competence.
Importantly, by engaging with the process of understanding, shaping, and defining our
individual and shared responsibilities and practices, the expressivetollaborative model, by
employing narrativist methodology, can help us in addressing the question which is the

subject of this dissertation — the question of the identity of individuals, or, “who am I?”

 

2'” Nelson 22.

156

But the use of narrative in moral work has not gone unchallenged. Thus, before
returning to the question of identity, the next two sections will (1) address several worries
about narrative-as-method, and (2) address a specific concern about narrative-as-method in

discourse about identity. I now turn to these criticisms.

i. Narrative and Moral Epistemology

Tom Tomlinson, in “Perplexed about Narrative Ethics,” suggests that even though
narrative might be methodologically important to the development of ethical reasoning, it
does not offer “a mode of ethical justification that is independent from or superior to
appeals to moral principles.”mOn his view, narrative does not serve the sort of “central

epistemic function in the discovery, justification, or application of ethical knowledge” that its

‘7‘)”

__

supporters take it to be serving.

221

W’hy does Tomlinson take this to be the case? First, he argues that stories do not
go far enough — or, indeed, any distance at all — toward enriching our moral epistemology. If
narrative sets itself against the overstructured and sterile methodology of juridical thinking,
as Tomlinson takes it to be doing, then we ought, he argues, expect to find something
morally valuable that is unavailable to us through principles alone. However, this does not

seem to be the case: First, he claims, if one takes the kind of narrative approach that Martha

Nussbaum has proposed and reads a novel in order to broaden one’s moral imagination, one

 

2"’Tom Tomlinson, “Perplexed about Narrative Ethics,” .S'Iories and 'l heir I .imits: Narrative Approaches to
Bioethics, ed. Hilde Lindemann Nelson (New York: Routledge, 1997) 132.

32" Tomlinson 124.
32' Although Tomlinson uses the term “narrative ethics,” ostensibly to name or describe the
methodology of using stories in moral contexts, I prefer to use “narrative approach to morality” or “stories.”

It is unclear what might be meant by “narrative ethics” as “narrative ethics” is not a distinctive claim about
anything, but a method for approaching ethical issues or a tool of moral reflection.

157

is missing the actual encounter with a living person, and is thereby epistemically — and thus
morally —limited by the four corners of the text. Whatever moral “truth” is made available
to us by the story, it seems limited situationally to the characters within that story, and does
very little to speak to those who do not also share the world in which a particular moral
lesson unfolds. Even if we were to set aside literary narrative and enter into a conversation
with other people, we still find that the sort of particular knowledge we might derive through
these interactions would not yield any moral knowledge that is generalizeable — that
translates from one story, or one storyteller, to another. At best, Tomlinson tells us, “novels
and stories become. . ..vivid illustrations of knowledge verified through other means.”222
Second, neither does narrative “bridge the gap” between moral principles and actual
cases through an act of “interpretation.” Tomlinson sees no clear way to distinguish
between how a narrative interprets ethical dilemmas from the application of, and
deliberation about, principles. For example, in a case where one is torn between disclosing
to or withholding from the patient a potentially terminal diagnosis, an expressive-
collaborative approach to moral work might, through the use of stories, require us to
consider how much truth to tell, how to tell it, how the patient will hear what is said to him
or her, who is doing the speaking, and so on. However, Tomlinson suggests that aside from

the vagueness of the narrative criteria itself, what it might mean to “interpret” information is

unclear:

Any social system of reasoned reflection involves a ‘communal dialogue’ of
‘give and take,’ including those deliberatively rooted in principles. . ..The

failure to provide any more precise account of the nature and role of

 

222 Tomlinson 125.

158

‘interpretation’ is a symptom of the tendency to wave it and ‘narrative’ as
banners that fly over everything bright and beautiful being ignored by those

221

crude and insensitive principles. ‘

Indeed it seems, according to Tomlinson, that the metaphorical, and even
imaginatively creative, interpretations that a narrative approach would offer are even more
“amorphous and abstract” than the principles they try to replace. In fact, “the richer the
story, the less the resolution offered for the ethical questions raised.”224 Because

,3 (C

interpretations offer different “takes, versions,” and “perspectives,” they might add color
and texture to an ethical issue, but they will not resolve difficult problems by offering
reasons or c oices. n i e i su ’ suc reasons, en ev wou e a ea in o
f h Adfthydd pply h th th, ldb pp 1 g“t
abstractions and generalizations of some magnitude. Before you know it, you’re up to your
neck in that damn principle of universalizability"’. 22"
Finally, Tomlinson rejects what he views as the tendency among proponents of
narrative to conflate the descriptive claim that one’s life is best understood as a narrative
wi e norma 've c aim a one s c oices — an es ecia one’s mora croices — ou o e
thth ti 1 tht ’ h d p lly ll ghtt b
judged according to their coherence with a given life narrative. First, we do not, he claims,
live a life that can be forced into coherence by a storyline — or by anything else: “we don’t
live out a narrative, we create one by living a life.”22" Second, even if we were to take

H (C

seriously the narrative we create by “living a life, the question of how best to live out ‘that’

unity is not answered by the notion of narrative unity. It’s answered by appeal to

 

31‘ Tomlinson 127.
23“ Tomlinson 128.
235 Tomlinson 128.

33" Tomlinson 130.

159

extranarrative ideals that elevate some kinds of narrative over others.”227 And since these
ideals can be whatever I want them to be — I can emphasize compassion and integrity or
selfishness and pettiness, and do so consistently and coherently — the resulting coherence
loses any meaningful normative force. Unless one subscribes to one “extranarrative” ideal —
or, indeed, to one pn'naple — over another, the standard of narrative coherence seems to
neither add anything to principlist analysis, nor offer an epistemically independent criteria of
ethical reasoning, explanation, or justification. Thus, in ethics (and bioethics), and perhaps
in many other things, it seems that the most a narrative approach can accomplish is to
needlessly complicate things further still. And, given the already complex discourse about
our moral choices, we might, in the end, wonder what purpose it serves.

How might a supporter of a narrative approach to ethics respond? After all, does it
not seem that, in the end, we all seek out the warrant — the rule, law, reason, or justification
— for our choices, and for the choices of others? Yes and no. Howard Brody suggests that a
“blind spot” of such a view “has to do with whether we approach any moral task

”2...

prospectively or retrospectively. 7” In the retrospective case, deciding whether someone’s
choice to take a relative off life support was morally defensible might involve looking at the

facts and applying a set of principles or rules — was it defensible because one was concerned
with a Kantian sense of respect, was it a utilitarian move to secure happiness, was it a matter
of protecting the rights of the ill individual in the sense of honoring his or her request for no

heroic measures, and so on? And if we have established the validity of an act through these

principles, is not a narrative approach to ethics exactly what Tomlinson claims it is — either

 

337 Tomlinson 130.

233 Brody 1 84.

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epistemically empty, or necessarily subsumed by whatever principles happen to retroactively
“fit” a given case or a set of facts?

In this case, the answer is a definite no. To say that only the juridical application of
principles can justify our actions is to commit two rather serious errors: First, to understand
epistemic justification in this limiting sense of principle application seems, well, limiting.
\Vhile a principle, or some idea of a principle, might be a reason for why a choice is made —
why the feeding tubes are disconnected, why a patient is sent home rather than confined to a
hospital bed, why family members’ requests are honored (or not) and so on — it is by no
means either outcome—determinative, nor even necessarily a part of the central deliberative
process.

Specifically, for example, the reasons that Ms.B’s family did not honor her requests
to be taken home as often as she wanted (instead following the suggesting of the medical
staff to leave her in their care) might have had to do with utilitarian projections into the
future, and her well being. However, other, more context-dependent, nomuniversalizable
reasons also governed: Gender-based deference granted to the doctors by the members of
the family who came to visit most often (and by Ms. B herself), education-based deference
between the physicians and the patient’s family, and so on. But also, from the family’s point
of view, they did not want to be “the sort of people who make a fuss” in a public place with
fairly distinctly drawn hierarchies. In a sense, by keeping Ms. B under the care of the
medical staff, the family, not feeling at ease without her in their familiar home environment,
nor in this new and terrifying place, were looking for a way to “fit in” and normalize their —
and not just Ms. B’s — hospital experience. They too wanted to be viewed as “good
patients.” But it seems that only by engaging in a narrative discourse with the family would

these other, non-principle-based (and morally significant) explanations become evident. The

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question, therefore, of the moral status of the choices that have been made by Ms. B’s family
is both deepened and clarified through an engagement in a narrative dialogue rather than
simply through the act of trying to match facts with principles. It would seem, therefore, that
Tomlinson’s worries about the epistemic vagueness (and, indeed, uselessness) of narrative
ought to be at the very least questioned, as ought his reductionist view of stories as valuable
elements in the work of norm-creation.

Second, we do not just live our lives retrospectively, in that our task as moral agents
is not merely about justifying ourselves to others as moral agents. The morality of a given act
is not a pronouncement delivered by a judge or a group of judges. It seems that it is
something that we do together —— or, at least, something that we ought to do together —
prospectively as well as retrospectively (and, per Lindemann, “sideways”) with the intent of

working out a moral understanding that allows for a mutual comprehensibility and

7"“)

intelligibility.
Consider the case of Bill and Sandra WP” Bill, a man in his mid to late seventies,
has been diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer and admitted to the oncology
ward for treatment and pain management. His wife Sandra, also in her mid—seventies, has
stayed by his side day and night, only leaving the hospital on occasion for a change of
clothes and a shower. As Bill’s condition began to take a turn for the worse, the attending
physician, the social worker, and a few more staff members begin to turn the conversation
toward hospice and more family involvement (Bill’s and Sandra’s son, Bradley, fully grown

and with children of his own, has not visited Bill, and in fact lives a few states away). After a

 

33" .S'ee Hilde Lindemann Nelson, “Context: Backward, Sideways, and Forward,” Stories Matter: The Role
ofNarrative in Medical Ethics, ed. Rita Charon and Martha Montello (New York: Routledge, 2002) 39-47.

1‘” The facts of this case are loosely based on several interviews with a real patient and his wife on the

oncology ward in a midwestern hospital. Needless to say, all identities, conditions, and statements have been
altered and disguised to protect the patients, their families, and the medical staff.

162

few more days of conversation, it became clear that neither Bill nor Sandra have told Bradley
of Bill’s condition, and in fact, have no intention of telling him “unless it becomes absolutely
necessary.” The initial write-up of the case said (roughly) the following: “78-year old man,
oncology unit, refusing to communicate with family, perhaps exhibiting signs of depression
and withdrawal. Suggested psychological counseling for patient and his wife” Some staff
members have also expressed their disapproval of Sandra’s actions — it seemed “wrong” and
“selfish” to them that she would exclude other family members from what could be a very
healthy and important experience.

Shortly before Bill’s psychological evaluation was to take place, Sandra met with his
physicians, social worker, and other staff, and, through a series of conversations, told the
story ofwhy she and her husband are refusing to share this experience with their immediate
family. She explained that there is nothing wrong with Bill psychologically — it is just that
their son had lost his well-paying job, and was currently in the process of attempting to
secure a new one. With two children of his own about to reach college age (and with his
wife unable to provide the sort of income that this would require), Bradley was under quite a
bit of pressure, and thus “this mess with Bill” might just upset him further, distracting him
from the task of finding employment.

What we find through a narrative engagement with Bill and Sandra’s story, therefore,
are the particulars — the unique, non universalizable, non-abstracted contexts of their lives
in which they make their moral choices — that help the healthcare team avoid a premature
(and potentially damaging) moral judgment. And what is more, narrative does seem to
“bridge the gap” between principles and cases by filling in those details, those particulars,
that both place principles in their proper context — as a part of the overall consideration, but

not necessarily outcome-determinative — and provide the information of the social,

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psychological, physical, and other kind of background against which moral choices are made.
This no mere “interpretation” of the language of principles into the parlance of casuistry: it
is an act of moral anthropology, where appeals to shared values are combined with an
awareness of individual circumstances, with the final goal being a shared understanding of
the moral issues, and indeed, a shared understanding of moral life. The interpretation of
stories, such as that of Bill and Sandra are both a retrospective, prospective, and,
importantly, intersuly'ective, drawing on the past, the now, and the future, on the background
of the tellers and the listeners. The result is not a mere deliberation about principles — it is a
shared, collaborative deliberation about what it means to lead a moral life, to make moral
choices, and be a part of a moral community of choice-makers. If nothing else, this is moral
epistemology at its most complex and, perhaps, at its most challenging.”

We might now recall Tomlinson’s claim that narrative ethics forces a kind of an
artificial coherence on life stories, and thus, once again, either looks to principles (or
“extranarrative ideals”) for its normative force, or else offers no independent criteria for
ethical reasoning. However, this too seems to be a bit too fast: First, a commitment to
coherence does not necessitate a commitment to a principle or to some justificatory rule that
exists outside of the narrative structure of one’s life story. For instance, \X’alker has argued
that the work of morality has to do with accountability and responsibility — and thus moral
reliability, requiring a certain integrity in one’s relationships, sense of identity, and values. To
be accountable is, to some extent, to be viewed as accountable by others, and this means that

our actions have to be coherent at least to the extent that they are reasonably predictable by

 

1“ Nelson 46.

.S'ee also Margaret Urban \Valker, Moral Understandings: A feminist .S'tudy in Ethics (New York: Routledge,
1998) 63.

164

those who are affected by them in the sorts of situations that matter morally.232 But surely
the sort of coherence that is necessitated by a need for moral reliability is not reducible to a
principle (or a set of principles) of, say, duty, utility, or a contractual relationship. I suggest
that instead, it is more akin to a desire to be morally intelligible to others, expressed through
the sorts of commitments one makes and the stories one tells (and hears) about these
commitments. Bill and Sandra’s explanation of the reasons for which they have kept Bill’s
illness a secret from their son makes moral sense in the light of their commitments to his
success, his sanity, his peace of mind at a time in his life that is already fraught with tension,
and might very well be part of a coherent picture of what they, as parents, value. And the
medical staff finally understood this — they responded to Bill and Sandra’s story by both
entering, and in the end, sharing their moral universe. A narrative approach to their case,
therefore, neither requires moral principles to back it up, nor does it leave us with the
“coherence-is—whatever-I-say-it-is” relativism that Tomlinson ascribes to it.

Moreover, in his criticism of narrative, Tomlinson leaves out the possibility that a
deep illness might fundamentally fracture a life story such that concerns about coherence
become more a question about the survival of an identity. That is, one might be so
devastated by a particular diagnosis (and the condition itself) that a fundamental rupture
occurs not only in one’s view of the world, but of one’s view of oneself as a part of that
world. The work of the expressive-collaborative model and its use of narrative in this case is
particularly delicate: in attempting to repair the rupture, both the possibility of a break with
the past as well as the desire to reconnect with it call for our attention as storytellers, as well

as witnesses to the story. No simple call for “coherence” will do.

 

333 Brody 219.

.S'ee also Walker 1 15.

165

ii. Narrative and Moral Justification

While Tomlinson’s arguments center around the claim that narratives do not offer
any epistemically satisfying criteria that we could use in making moral choices, John Arras, in
“Nice Story, But So What?”2‘” takes a somewhat more conciliatory, although still critical,
view. His dissatisfaction with narrative as a method for doing ethics is grounded in his
suspicion of narrative as a means of grounding moral justification — of finding the
relationship “between the telling of a story and the establishment of a warrant for believing
in the moral adequacy or excellence of a particular action, policy or character.” Having
examined what he takes to be three different approaches to narrative — “as an essential
element of any and all ethical analyses,” as an ahistorical rejection of the Enlightenment
project, and as a postmodern attempt to substitute narrative “for the entire enterprise of
moral justification” — he concludes that, while narrative seems to be an important part of
ethical analysis, its ability to completely replace principles and ethical theory seems doubtful
at best if what we seek is moral justification for our actions.“

Arras’s view, therefore, is that narrative seems to be merely supplementary to
principles, and, in the end, is no threat to their moral primacy. However, even if we take his
claim that principles and narrative are indeed two separate ethical projects with different
tasks, this does not also mean that narrative is a poorly-equipped and poorly-skilled
handmaiden in the well-regulated and clear principlist hierarchy. Instead, I take narrative to
have an independent — and independently important — role in helping us do the work of

morality and moral justification. This work, as I have argued earlier, is the questioning,

 

233John Arras, “Nice Story, But So \‘Vhat?”, .S'tories and 'I heir limits: Narrative Approaches to Bioethics, ed.
Hilde Lindemann Nelson (New York: Routledge, 1997) 65—88.

23“ Arras 79-85.

166

doubting, and probing of the juridical assumptions and methodologies by injecting into
juridical decision-making the sorts of stories, analyses, and considerations that serve not only
to problematize overly principlist assumptions about ethical reasoning, but that also help in
creating moral communities of mutual moral accountability.235 Stories, as understood and
addressed by the expressive-collaborative model, instead of playing the silent partner, might
very well be the gadfly. The role of narrative presented in this way is both revolutionary and
democratizing: revolutionary because, rather than serving as a mere “supplement” to
principle, it introduces new, non-principlist considerations that may subvert the principlist

. . 23
View of morality as a set of moves or a “body of knowledge,” "

and democratizing because
of its focus on the importance of our common, shared life in which we, as practitioners of
morality, tell and evaluate stories in a collaborative effort to make sense to each other as
moral agents.

Of course, queStions remain about both the efficacy and the role of narrative in
ethical theory, but it is well beyond the scope of this dissertation to delve any deeper into
this debate. However, by introducing it here, my goal is to locate the discussion of narrative
identity within the larger context of how stories can be used to do moral work, as well as to
offer a glimpse of the complex concerns that center around the juridical-collaborative
discourse.

Given the above, it is perhaps no surprise that the challenges to narrative-as-method
do not stop with the use of narrative in deciding what to do and why to do it. In fact, we find

some quite serious resistance to narrative as a way of thinking about a related, yet distinct,

question of who we are — that is, about personal identity. For the rest of this chapter, I

 

335 Margaret Urban W’alker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist .S'tudy in Ethics (New York: Routledge,
1998).

33" Walker 30.

167

return to this question of identity, and thus to one of the central questions of this
dissertation: why a narrative conception of identity is preferable to other alternatives, and

why this is especially so in the case of deep illness.

II. Narrative and Identity

I suspect that I am not alone in believing that generally we, sometimes as
philosophers and sometimes just as human beings, are moved by questions about personal
identity that simply refuse to go away. Importantly, personal identity is a problem in
bioethics —- especially in cases of serious, deep illness, where identity is compromised by
physical and psychological suffering. Thus, we wonder (1) why, quite often, the person we
take ourselves to be does not cohere with the person that others take us to be, (2) why we
sometimes view our past “selves” as either more or less a part of who we might be now, (3)
why changes in our circumstances — physical, psychological, and so on — can dramatically
alter the view of ourselves that we and others hold, (4) why some versions of who we are
receive greater uptake than others, and (5) why so much emotional, psychological, and social
meaning seems to be connected with the question of “who we are.” I suggest that all of
these worries about identity are deeply normative — normative in the sense that they play a
significant part in determining our roles, expectations, and responsibilities in the world — and
that none of them is resolved by solely metaphysical, agential, psychological, or other
formulaic approaches to identity.

While earlier, I have tried to make the general case for a narrative conception of
morality, here I address the question of a narrative understanding of identity. Specifically, I

propose a challenge to a criticism of narrative-as-philosophical-method made recently by

168

Galen Strawson in “Against Narrativity.” On Strawson’s view, a narrative approach to
identity (or, in fact, to anything else) is not only presumptively false from a folk-
psychological, or common-sense perspective, but is also descriptively vague and normatively
unmoored. I take the opposite view — that by looking at identity formation, maintenance,
destruction, and re-construction as a process of the relationship between first, second, and
third-person stories, we find both descriptive accuracy and normative structure. And yes,
even common sense. What is more, I argue that a lack of such narrative capacity
psychologically unhinges us, resulting in at the very least intense and deep psychological
distress, and at worst, psychiatric dissolution. Moreover, I suggest that a narrative approach
to identity is quite beneficial in helping to develop, deepen, and make more meaningful the
relationship between the deeply ill and their caretakers, including those in the medical
community. My claim is grounded in both theoretical objections to Strawson’s anti-narrative
stance and in empirical evidence, although the sort of empirical evidence I have in mind -
individual accounts of personal experiences — might not register with those who take
Strawson’s position as dispositive. After all, they are just stories.

I am not in sympathy with Strawson; but what is my positive view here? First, a
point of clarification: When I say that I am defending a narrative view of identity, I am
taking what I mean by “narrative” in a non-trivial way. That is, I am generally not talking
about the story of why I am wearing a black skirt today rather than a blue one or the
narrative of how to tie one’s shoes. I say “generally,” because while most of the time such
stories, although common, do not go toward the normative development of our identities, in
some cases they do, or, to be more precise, in some cases, the story of our sudden lack of
ability or freedom to do things like choose our clothes or tie our shoes becomes a morally

significant, and thus identity-constituting, narrative. Thus, here, I tentatively intend the

169

phrase “identity-constituting narratives” to mean the stories that depict the things about us
that matter the most, either to us or to others, while at the same time suggesting that context
can and does change the definition of “what matters.”

Second, and more specifically, I suggest that by understanding personal identities as
nonlinear, cacophonous, and socially complex unfolding stories that have great moral
import, we can begin to restore those identities that have been threatened by the destructive
forces of violence, social upheaval, and, in this case, deep illness. I am particularly interested
in those who are ill, those who are the caretakers of the ill, and those whose actions and
words affect them. Indeed, I take all of us to play one or more of these roles at some time in
our lives. Recall that in this dissertation, I focus on deep (that is, serious chronic or
terminal) illness, and turn to several lived experiences of such illnesses in order to examine
the effect they have had on the identities of the afflicted. I argue that it is by focusing on the
narrative aspect of how we are constituted as moral agents that we can best understand -
and thus practically address — those whose sense of self is made vulnerable by physical and
psychological suffering. Thus, as a challenge to Strawson’s dismissal of narrative as a quirk
of intellectual fashion, or worse, as a serious philosophical folly, I suggest that it is indeed
narrative that in the end helps us to address the very real problem of how illness destroys
one’s identity. I will first offer a brief discussion of what I mean by a “narrative account of
identity.” I then address Strawson’s critique. Finally, I suggest several reasons why a
narrative approach is best suited to addressing threats to personal identity when we are when

confronted by deep illness.

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a. Narrative Accounts of Identity

As I argued earlier, personal identity, rather than simply comprising the necessary
and sufficient conditions of agency (as per Korsgaard or Frankfurt) or posing the
“reidentification question,” (where Parfit wonders only whether an entity persists through
time) is somewhat closer to Marya Schechtman’s “characterization question,” which
concerns what I call the identity ofindividuals, or, as she puts it, “the kind ofidentity that is
at issue in an identity crisis when we are most likely to ask ‘who am I’ or ‘who will I be
tomorrow?”’ I take the process of identity formation to be more akin to what Schechtman
calls the “narrative self-constitution view” — a process of implicitly creating one’s identity
through an autobiographical narrative, or a story of one’s life, by taking oneself to be a
persisting subject who has had experiences in the past and will continue to have them in the
future.” (However, I must note here that I follow Schechtman only as far as her emphasis
on narrative as a way of theorizing identity: 1 part company with her single-minded focus on
autobiographical narratives, for I believe that it is essential to leave room for the stories by
which others identify us. I take up this objection in Chapter V.)

Even if we take the limited Parfitian concern about the survival of our future
identities as the only reason to worry about personal identity at all, it is only through the
characterization question that we can do so with some expectation of success. However, a
narrative view of ethics, and a forteriori a narrative View of identity of individuals, must be
grounded in something other than the weakness of its alternatives. Even if we take the view

that neither Parfit’s nor Kors raard’s nor Frankfurt’s claims about identi ' address the sorts
Ea

 

237 .l'ee Schechtman, Marya, The Constitution (fie/ties (Cornell University Press, 1996).

171

of worries that seem most central to us when we wonder who we are, we ought not simply
accept a View such as Schechtman’s, but see where else we might find some reasons that the
narrative turn is indeed one we ought to make. What are some reasons to take the narrative
approach to identity seriously? I want to emphasize, however, that in addressing personal
identity and narrative, I do not mean to make the following two claims: (1) I am not
suggesting that one’s identity is an ontological (or transcendental) category or entity that a
narrative more accurately picks out, and (2) I am not claiming that a narrative approach to
identity (in the sense of “who am 1?”) is the only mode through which identities are formed,
understood, or restored - simply that is it is an especially powerful and efficacious one.
Specifically, the normative expectations of the world for us, and our expectations of
ourselves and the world, are in a very direct sense embodied in the stories that constitute our
identities. They are there when we are told that “girls don’t say such things,” that “boys
don’t cry,” that “the doctor knows best.” They are also there when we tell ourselves to be
quiet (because it is not our place to speak), when we choose to accept authority simply
because we do not view ourselves as authoritative in any way, when we defer because we
take it to be our place to defer — or when we almost never defer, regardless of circumstances,
or readily offer our view, or take ourselves to be deserving of respect, of love, of recognition,
and so on. In the cases of deep illness, when we are most physically and psychologically
dependent, these stories take on special import, for it is then that we are more vulnerable to
certain representations of ourselves (say, as weak, ineffectual, subhuman, and so on), and less
likely to be able to construct the sorts of counterstories that let us resist these
representations and depict us as morally efficacious.238 It seems to be right (or at least

plausible), therefore, to suggest that identities might very well mark our places in the world.

 

1"“ For an in-depth discussion of counterstories, see Nelson, Hilde Lindemann Damaged Identities,
Narrative Repair (lthaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

172

It is our identities, it seems to me, that serve as the ground of the moral and social
expectations that govern our interactions with others.

I take this normative power of identities (and identity formation) to be of special
significance to those whose identity, and therefore whose physical and psychological welfare,
is threatened by serious, or “deep,” illness. How do we respond to someone who has been
given a terminal diagnosis when she asks us: “\V ho am I now that I can no longer work,
care for my family, dress myself, or make plans for the future?” Do we respond in terms of
agency, telling her that although her own agency is impaired, she is still owed respect by
other agents, and is thus now the recipient of their concern? W’ hat do we say to someone
who, having been a runner his whole life, can no longer walk — or even move? Do we take
an inventory of his remaining body parts, thoughts, memories, and so on and tell him that in
general, he is still “himself,” plus some “disabilities”? Not only would both replies be
disingenuous, but they would fail to address the deeper’question of “Who am I now that I
no longer recognize who I took myself to be?” that the ill individual is asking. When one’s
sense of identity has collapsed, as it often does in cases of deep illness, we need better, more
precise, and more case-sensitive tools before we make any attempts to put these things back
together for ourselves or for another. Because the deeply ill are not paradigmatic agents and
so are often absent from more traditional identity discourse, we ought not be satisfied with
that discourse. The identities of the deeply ill add an important dimension to our
understanding of both the normative and the practical force of identity and identity
formation. And if we accept the claim, however conditionally, that our identities are
constituted by stories by and about us, then it would seem that a narrative analysis of identity
would be most fitting in understanding how identities are created, destroyed, and,

potentially, reconstituted.

173

b. Narrative Identity and Its Critics

The narrative turn, in philosophy as well as in other disciplines, is not without its
critics, and while the criticisms are many (and impassioned), I will focus here on a particular
one by Galen Strawson, who, in “Against Narrativity,” challenges what he takes to be the
overly dominant and experientially false claims of narrative ethics. I address Strawson’s
argument not merely because it is quite recent, but also because it presents the sorts of
objections that I have found to be fairly pervasive among critics of the narrative approach to
ethics — the kind that takes narrative methodology to be overly dominant theoretically
(especially within the humanities) and ineffectual practically. In responding to Strawson, I
address both perceived shortcomings of the narrative approach, and argue that it is especially
in the practical cases that Strawson gets it precisely wrong. One reason, I suggest, is to be
found in the role that narrative can play in the construction and re—construction of the
identities of the deeply ill.

Strawson’s “Against Narrativity” is framed as a response to PaulJohn Eakin, who,
likeJerome Bruner and Alistair MacIntyre, has argued that that the “self is a perpetually
rewritten story,” through the telling of which “we become the autobiographical narratives we
tell about our lives.” Eakin tells us that a narrative approach to ethics — and as a corollary, a
narrative approach to identity — is “the notion that what we are is a story of some kind.”2”

A brief disclaimer: Although I am very sympathetic to Eakin’s views to the extent
that he takes narrative to be a fruitful way to think about identities, I part company with him
(as well as with Brunet, among others) when they conflate (1) the stories that we tell with the

selves that these stories represent, as well as (2) the meaning of “identity” and “self.” That

 

23" Paul John Eakin, “Narrative Identity and Narrative Imperialism: A Response to Galen Strawson
and James Phelan,” Narrative 14.2 (2006): 180.

174

is, while Eakin (above) and Brunet (below) are making a metaphysical point about what we
are — “a story of some kind” — I am making an epistemic claim about how selves come to be
known through stories. On my view, “identities” are not simply synonymous with “selves,”
but are complicated interactions of my sense of self and others’ views of who I am. They
are neither static (or not necessarily static, in any case), nor “things” (at least not in the
metaphysical sense of the term), and serve to “mark certain people as candidates for certain
treatments.”2"" These distinctions will prove crucial to my argument in Chapter VI about
why some narratives ought to be preferred over others, and why.

So, why does Eakin make the claims that he does? He is moved partially by the
insistence of Oliver Sacks that storytelling is an important — indeed, a central — factor in
identity-creation and identity maintenance. It is particularly important, he suggests, in
combination with the work of neurologist Antonio Damasioz”, who argued (especially in The
Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the [Making ofConsa'ousness), that identities are
constituted by narratives that are neither fanciful nor theoretically detached. Strawson, then,

takes on what he views as the “two theses” of this view of a narrative method of

approaching ethical issues:

The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human
experience: “Each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’ . . . this narrative is

us, our identities” (Oliver Sacks); “self is a perpetually rewritten story . . .in

 

24” Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities. ’arrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2001) xi.

241PaulJohn Eakin, “\V hat Are We Reading When We Read Autobiography?”, Narrative 12.2 (2004):
121.

.S'ee also Damasio, Antonio R., The Feeling of IV hat Happens: Body and Emotion in the A'Iaka'ng ofConsciousness
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999).

175

the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we ‘tell about’
our lives” (jerome Brunet); “we are all virtuoso novelists. . . We try to make
all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our
autobiography. The chief fictional character. . . of that autobiography is one’s
self” (Dan Dennett). The second is a normative, ethical claim: we ought to
live our lives narratively, or as a story; a “basic condition of making sense of
ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative’ and have an understanding

I”,

of our lives “as an unfolding story (Charles Taylor). A person “creates his
identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative — a story of his life”,

and must be in possession of a full and “explicit narrative [of his life] to

develop fully as a person” (Marya Schechtman).242

Specifically, these theses can be understood as (1) a “psychological Narrativity
thesis,” which tells us that “human beings typically see or live or experience their lives as a
narrative or story of some sort”; and (2) a more troubling (to Strawson) “ethical Narrativity
thesis”, which tells us that “experiencing or conceiving one’s life as a narrative. . . is essential
to a well-lived life, to true or full personhood.”243 Elsewhere, I argue for a modified version
of (2) but here, I will mostly focus on (1), for I take Strawson, although seeming to be
moved by the perceived errors of the ethical thesis, to be really arguing against the
psychological one, insisting that it simply does not make sense either as an empirical claim

about human beings, or (especially) as a part of his own lived experience.

 

242Galen Strawson, “Against Narrativity,” Ratio (new series) 17.4 (2004): 428.

243 Strawson 428-429.

176

Strawson does not see himself or his life in narrative terms, and he resents the
thought that he should. In response to Taylor’s, Ricoeur’s, and Schechtman’s urging to
engage in an analysis of one’s life through narrative, Strawson wonders, “Why on earth, in
the midst of the beauty of being, it should be thought to be important to do this.”244

Strawson, as Eakin has noted, seems entirely too eager to secure a place for himself
as a “normal person” who does not require a narrative to either understand himself or to
structure his identity. His claim that “there are deeply non—Narrative people and there are
good ways to live that are deeply min-Narrative” sets up what he takes to be a crucial

(although not completely binary) distinction between “Episodic” and “Diachronic” self-

experience, where the Episodic person

does not figure oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in
the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future. One has little or no
sense that the self that one is was there in the (further) past and will be there
in the future, although one is perfectly well aware that one has long-term
continuity considered as a whole human being. Episodics are likely to have

5

. . . . . 7
no particular tendency to see their life in Narrative terms.“4

The Diachronic experiences himself or herself “as something that was there in the
(further) past and will be there in the (further) future — something that has relatively long-

term diachronic continuity, something that persists over a long stretch of time, perhaps for

 

24“ Strawson 436.

245 Eakin, PaulJohn, “Narrative Identity and Narrative Imperialism: A Response to Galen
Strawson andJames Phelan,” Narrative 14. 2 (2006): 180-187.

177

life.” Not surprisingly, Strawson takes himself (and many others) to be mostly Episodic. As

he puts it,

I have a past, like any human being, and know perfectly well that I have a
past. I have a respectable amount of factual knowledge about it, and I also

remember some of my past experiences ‘from the inside’, as philosophers

246

Yet Strawson does not take the “I” that is considering who he is at the present
moment to have any sense of having “been there” in the past, and does not take this not
knowing to be a source of worry. Indeed, as an Episodic, as he is too ready to tell us, “I
have absolutely no sense of my life as a narrative with form, or indeed as a narrative without
form. Absolutely none. Nor do I have any great or special interest in my past. Nor do I have
a great deal of concern for my future.”

But it seems to me that Strawson doth protest too much. His central criticism of a
narrative approach to identity seems to be grounded in two objections, both of which mirror
his initial criticism of narrative as a philosophical method: First, he makes the psychological
claim that human beings simply do not conceive of themselves as storytellers (and story—
listeners), and second, he makes an ethical claim that even if they do think of themselves as
constituted and defined by narratives, they ought not, for to do so would be to be
“motivated by a sense of their own importance or significance that is absent in other human
beings,” while really “just talking about themselves.” In fact, he goes even further,

suggesting that “the best lives almost never involve this kind of self-telling. . ..completely

 

24" Strawson 433.

178

uninterested in the answer to the question” of ‘who am I,’ or ‘what have I made of myself in
this life?’”247 Living life, and thinking about how one lives it, are two different endeavors,
Strawson argues, and insofar as we care about who we are, we care, or ought to care, about
who we are now— and not about the process of coming to this moment, or the possibility of
continuing into any moments that may follow. And as long as we retain our character, our
moral sense, and our view of what matters in our lives, the stories that purport to tell us
how, whether, and why we are one person rather than another matter very little.248
However, for all of his careful distinction-drawing between Episodics and
Diachronics and their “non-narrative” and “narrative” views of identity and self, what seems
to be at the core of his distaste for narrative is oddly personal: he tells us “that those who
are drawn to write on the subject of ‘narrativity’ tend to have strongly Diachronic and
Narrative outlooks or personalities, and generalize from their own case with that special,
fabulously misplaced confidence that people feel when, considering elements of their own

experience that are existentially fundamental for them, they take it that they must also be

7

.—

fundamental for everyone else.” ’9 So, it seems that the argument for a narrative approach to
identity has to do, above all, with “intellectual fashion” and a bad case of solipsism which he,
as an Episodic, simply does not share.

Although I will not address the question of whether narrative is the current
philosophical flavor du jour— partially because this is not within the scope of this

dissertation, and partially because I do not think that proving the relative popularity of any

given theoretical view serves to either uphold its legitimacy or dismiss it as ultimately without

 

347 Strawson 436-438.

243 Here, it seems that Strawson is conflating the issues of the identity ofindividuals and individuation,
but this distinction is outside the scope of this dissertation.

3“" Strawson 439.

179

merit — I will turn to his claim that Diachronics suffer from the psychological desire to
generalize their own sense of the necessity of narrative to a world populated by unsuspecting
Episodics.

My first response is a brief one, and has more to do with the internal consistency of
Strawson’s argument then with the reasons for which it fails when met with evidence. It
seems that Strawson himself is guilty precisely of the same fallacious self-to-world inference
of which he accuses the proponents of narrative. If, after all, the basis for his claims is
simply that neither he nor other “deeply non—Narrative people” have any sense of life as a
narrative, then his argument is on par with his version of the Diachronic assertion which he
accuses of improperly imposing personal preferences and wishful thinking on the larger
world. It seems to me, therefore, that if Strawson is to be challenged on a basis other than
an intuitive disagreement between those he calls Episodics and Diachronics, we must look
elsewhere. This “elsewhere,” I believe, is the very real and critical role narrative plays in the

lives — and identities — of the deeply ill, and it is to this second response that I now turn.

c. Identity, Illness, and Narrative

So what do I mean by “deeply ill,” and why do I take the relationship between illness
and identity to be a challenge to Strawson’s dismissal of narrative as both a descriptive and
normative approach to who we are or take ourselves to be? As I noted earlier, by “deep
illness” I mean the sort of chronic or terminal illness that is life changing in a way most cases
of a broken arm, a cold, or even the less serious cases of pneumonia or flu are not. The way
I draw this distinction is not at all arbitrary, although imperfect and not without exceptions.

The question that I ask in making the distinction is whether a particular condition is of the

180

kind that either tends to be terminal, or of the kind that, although not immediately terminal,
requires one to be always mindful of its presence, either through treatments, or else through
certain serious limitations on normal activity. Moreover, because my emphasis here is on the
threat to identity as a result of the onset of illness, I am not including congenital disabilities
or conditions that have been a part of an individual’s life since infancy or early childhood.

I now turn to my response to Strawson’s objection to what he has called the
“psychological Narrativity thesis,” which holds that “human beings typically see or live or
experience their lives as a narrative or story of some sort.” Recall that he argues that,
personal preference and intellectual fashion of the Diachronic aside, the Episodic stance is
much more reflective of how human beings both understand and define themselves in the
world.

But what would it be like to be a true Episodic? Strawson tells us that what matters
to him is his life, as he is living it today. Yet I wonder what Strawson would say about
Oliver Sacks’s “The Lost Mariner” — Jimmie G., whose memory has been severely
impacted by Korsakov’s syndrome, and who, as Sacks tells us, loses and invents a new

identity, and a new world, every few seconds:

Homing in on his memory, I found an extreme and extraordinary loss of
recent memory — so that whatever was said or shown to him was apt to be
forgotten in a few seconds’ time. Thus I laid out my watch, my tie, and my
glasses on the desk, covered them, and asked him to remember these. Then,

after a minute’s chat, I asked him what I had put under the cover. He

181

remembered none of them - or indeed that I had even asked him to

250
remember.

Indeed,Jimmie, although appearing quite happy and upbeat most of the time, not
only forgets the placement of objects, but also has no capacity to correctly place himself or
others in time, and most importantly, in relation to himself. The psychiatrist with whom he
has spent an afternoon becomes a brand new and unknown entity a few minutes later.
Provided with evidence that time has passed and that his relationship to the world has

changed with it, Jimmie

suddenly turned ashen and gripped the sides of the chair. “Jesus Christ,” he
whispered. “Christ, what’s going on? What’s happened to me? Is this a
nightmare? Am I crazy? Is this a joke?” — and he became frantic,

° 2:1
panicked. ’

In the case of Clive Wearing, a British musicologist, conductor, and keyboardist,
known for living with one of the worst cases of anterograde amnesia in the world, we find a
similar, albeit much more extreme, example of an inability to form new memories, recall old
ones, and generally structure one’s life in any way that is more than moment-to-moment
awareness. W earing’s diary is filled with statements that betray both his profound

disconnection from one moment to another, as well as his desperate attempts to make

 

25" Oliver Sacks, The Man Who 11 Iistook His W'rjefor a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (New York:
Touchstone, 1998) 27.

ZS‘Sacks 25.

182

narrative sense of his surroundings and his experience in them — that is, to make sense of

himself as a being in time. He writes:

8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.

9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.

Although their content remains largely the same, the entries other than the latest one
are crossed out, since he forgets having made them, and thus dismisses them as having been
written without the benefit of the “wakefulness” which he seeks -— of the awareness of
himself as someone who can tell a coherent story about how he got here. 2’2

Recall now Strawson’s enthusiasm for the present-moment experience of an

., . . . i -73
Episodic. He tells us that “what I care about . . . is how I am now,”” and looks to the Earl

of Shaftesbury, who, a fellow Episodic, asks:

[But] what matter for memory? . . . If, whilst I am, I am as I should be, what
do I care more? And thus let me lose self every hour, and be twenty
successive selfs, or new selfs, ‘tis all one to me: so [long as] I lose not my

- - 254
opinion.

 

353 Louise France, “The Death of Yesterday,” The Ohserver A’Ictgazt'rle 23 January 23 2005.

.S'ee also Wearing, Deborah, Forever Today: A True .S'togy of] ast Memory and Never-Ending I are (London:
Corgi, 2006).

35-3 Strawson 438.

35" Strawson 438.

183

The claim is that there is no place for, nor any need of, narrative in an Episodic life.
But, in the experiences of Jimmie G. and Clive Wearing, have we not seen what happens to
those who are Episodics by circumstance? It seems that, even while unable to change the
Episodic nature of their experiences, both men nevertheless are either periodically horrified
by it, or persist in trying to tie together what they sometimes perceive as broken, incoherent,
and otherwise unacceptable ways of being. Even though they physiologically cannot, in the
end, care about who they are for any length of time, they do attempt to grasp at whatever
straws of awareness their conditions allow them, and force together something like a
narrative about who they are, how they fit into the world, and what the relationship between
their last experience and the present moment might be. They, in fact, seem to be driven by a
deep, profound desire to become storytellers.

What Strawson must account for, then, is this desire for narrative, for some
semblance of self that stretches into the past and into the future just long enough not to
strand the individual in the absurdity of the eternal present. He must account for people like
Jimmie G. and Clive Wearing, who have lost the ability to create narratives but nevertheless
dedicate their brief moments of lucidity to it, looking to narrate themselves back into a
storyline in which they, and their world, persist. And he must account for Mr. Thompson,
who, Sacks tells us, is a seemingly happy, “ebullient comic,” but who can also remember
nothing for more than several seconds, constantly busy “creating a world and self, to replace
what was continually being forgotten and lost. . ..[He] must literally make himself (and his
world) up every moment. . ..Deprived of continuity, of a quiet, continuous inner narrative, he
is driven to a sort of narrational frenzy — hence his ceaseless tales, his confabulations, his

mythomania. Unable to maintain a genuine narrative or continuity, unable to maintain a

184

genuine inner world, he is driven to the proliferation of pseudo-narratives, in a pseudo-

$255

continuity, pseudo-worlds peopled by pseudo-people, phantoms.’
There seem to be two possibilities: Either Strawson is not nearly as antinarrative as
he appears to be, and is merely offering a good-humored challenge to what he sees as a
fundamentally flawed way of theorizing the self and identity, or he is indeed convinced that
narrative has nothing to offer either the way we form or the way we assess ourselves as
human beings, and takes his task to be to dethrone narrative from what he perceived to be
its undeserved position. Although I would have supported him in challenging narrativity —
for narrative is not, and ought not be, immune from rigorous questioning — given his claims
and eagerness to dismiss, rather than challenge, I suspect that he is engaged in repudiation.
And if that is his goal, then it would seem that he is not entirely successful. Through his
repudiation, Strawson refuses to connect the capacity for narrative and identity creation.
Instead, he supports an Episodic existence, which he describes as a “truly happy-go-lucky,
see-what-comes-along,” no narrative required kind of life. But consider that narratively
impaired Jimmie G., Clive Wearing, and especially Mr. Thompson were quite often also
happy, enjoying the present moment, or, on better days, even a succession of moments.
Would this, then, make them the true, happy, living-in-the-ptesent moment Episodics that
Strawson takes himself to be, and if so, would this not be, at least to some extent, a troubling

conclusion? As Eakin correctly notes,

Strawson’s brief for the Episodic life. . ..sttikes me as breezy and untested. To
be sure, who is to say that “Mr. Thompson” is not a happy man? Who would

judge him to be diminished as a person? Strawson, I take it, would not. . ..But

 

355 Sacks 109-111.

185

would he——or the Earl of Shaftesbury—really want to be “Mr. Thompson”?
Perhaps, but I’ve never encountered anyone who didn’t hope that his or her
memory and the sense of life story it supports, would survive intact to the
end. In my experience, most people fear memory loss and the death of the
extended self that follows from it—witness the widespread anxiety about
Alzheimer’s Disease and aging in the US. today. It is this fear that Sacks
captures when he wonders whether loss of memory entails loss of identity:

3a $256

“has [Mr. Thompson] been pithed, scooped-out, de-souled, by disease

From this, we can draw two conclusions: First, the ability to actively participate in
the narrative of one’s life is not the useless intellectual luxury that Strawson takes it to be — it
seems to be, at least arguably, if not a requirement, then at least a fundamental, clinically
observed, human drive which appears to exist quite independently of narrative theory and its
proponents. After all, it seems to be no accident that a failure of narrative competence of
the sort we have seen here quite often calls for institutionalization.

Second, to engage in narrative activity is not simply to tell a story. It was not a lack
of creative imagination that troubled the patients discussed above, but an inability to engage
in their own meaning-making performances, as well as with those of others, connecting
yesterday with today and tomorrow, forward, backward, and sideways, and in the end,
creating identities that made moral sense to the performer and the audience. Indeed, it was
this inability that constituted their illnesses. And this performance is not only verbal — it is
physical and social, involving not merely our words, but our bodies and other people. What

is more, it often matters which others participate, and how.

 

25" Eakin, Paul John, “Narrative Identity and Narrative Imperialism: A Response to Galen Strawson
and James Phelan,” Narratire 14.2 (2006): 180-187.

186

d. Conclusion: Narrative Practice

In this section, 1 have attempted to cast some doubt on Galen Strawson’s attack on
the “two theses” of narrativity, paying particular attention to the relationship between actual
clinical. cases of serious illness and the “psychological Narrativity thesis.” I have suggested
that we cannot help but be narrators, and that it is when we are incapable of doing so that
we suffer deeply. I now conclude by offering a tentative sketch of a positive view of how a
narrative approach to identity can be practically applied to the clinical context, and
specifically to the practice of medical staff-patient interaction. (1 take this issue up in more
detail in Chapter VI). I do this partly to counter Strawson’s claim that human beings — at
least those without the agenda of the Diachronics — have no use for narrative in their daily
interactions, and partly to demonstrate what happens when narrative is taken seriously both
epistemically and morally in the very real world of medical practice.

As I noted earlier, illness can perhaps be viewed as the story of a patient’s experience
with disease. It might be a story of how the sick person tried to integrate the disease into an
ongoing narrative of who he or she is. It might be a story of violent confrontation and war
with a given diagnosis. It might also be a tale of profound resignation and defeat. \X/hatever
the case, a diagnosis of serious illness presents us with a significant break in our life story — a
break that has not, until very recently, been addressed by medical practitioners as an issue
quite separate from the diagnosis and treatment of the disease itself. The primary focus of
medical practice, in fact, has usually been on disease treatment, management, and cure -— not
on how a particular patient copes with its reality in his or her life. The traditional medical
model does not begin to answer the question of “who am I?” that very often accompanies

deep illness. The result has often been the further isolation and alienation of an already-

187

traumatized patient who could not find a place for his or her own experience of serious
illness within the abstract and depersonalized medical environment. The kind of identity-
constituting narrative that (as I argued earlier) is a psychological necessity for creatures like

ourselves would often be overtaken by medical master narratives about “being a good

’3 ’9 “

diabetes patient, “following the doctor’s orders after a stroke, controlling the pain,” and
so on.

Recently, however, some medical practitioners have been turning toward the
narrative as a part of their practice, both as a way to more accurately describe, understand,
and socially and psychologically (rather than just clinically) locate their patients and their
relationships to them, and, with the insight that this narrative understanding grants them, to

attempt to help the patients begin to reconstruct their damaged identities. In “Narrative

Medicine: Attention Re resentation Affiliation,” Rita Charon tells us:
a P )

Another new patient came in in a wheelchair, evidently having suffered a
stroke. The referral note he handed to me simply said, “Severely ill 52 yo
man s/ p aortic dissection, s / p CVA, insulin- requiring diabetes.” Initially,
my heart sank—he looked so very grim and despondent, slouched in the
wheelchair, unable to use his left arm or leg. His chart bulged with bad news.
And yet, when I asked him to tell me what I should know about his situation,
he began a most mournful and powerful account of his prior health, his joy
in life, his hard work and hard play, his ruling of his household. Since his
surgery and stroke, his wife is in charge, his sons do not know how to act
around him, he cannot go out alone, he cannot visit his friends, he lost his

job. I wrote down what he told me. . ..The note, in part, readz. . ..Last year,

188

was in good health, worked full-time in the post office, played soccer, met his
friends to play dominoes, enjoyed life. He lived at home with his wife and

two sons—K and N. He was clearly the head of the household. . .. Yet, he

257

feels no longer in charge

Thus, instead of simply examining his chart and treating his symptoms, Charon
addresses both the patient and her encounter with this patient as an ongoing narrative. She
tells us that she read the previously mentioned note to him and gave him a copy so that both
physician and patient knew where they were starting their partnership. It was not just a
matter of Charon having to know which section of his brain infarcted, but also what his
stroke made of him, what it did to him, how he fought back from it, how much he thinks
he’ll recover, whether he will be the person he once was. These storylines about the patient
mattered to him and to the future clinical relationship between him and his caretakers —
that they knew these things, that they have heard his fears and rage and grieving. As Charon
notes, “In that first visit, we created for ourselves a medical transference that will enable him
to follow my recommendations and will deepen my investment in his future, a great and
lasting curiosity about his life.”2'”

As grim as this patient’s situation is, the fact that Charon, as his physician, is
approaching his illness — and his life — as a story that is identity constituting opens up the
possibility that both patient and physician will View each other as individuals with unique

identities that are comprised by particular experiences and interpretations of those

experiences. And this makes all the difference to the patient, for it is this kind ofinteraction

 

35’ Charon, Rita, “Narrative Medicine: Attention, Representation, Affiliation,” ’arrative 13.3 (2005):
261-270.

35" Charon 265.

189

that takes seriously the kinds of nonclinical, and deeply personal aspects of the clinical
experience that otherwise would have been hidden, or simply ignored. Paying attention to
the narrative structure of experience — and thus of identity — potentially alters the structure
of the patient-physician relationship by giving the identity—shattering experience of serious
illness form and meaning: The kind of meaning that can begin to engage both the patient
and the physician in the task of repairing, to the extent possible, the patient’s damaged

identity, or, as Charon notes,

Out of this work emerges the productive hypothesis that the development of
attention increases the skills of representation and that the skills of
representing increase the attention. Together, they spiral toward affiliation—

with individual patients, colleagues, and the institution that houses them

2:9
all. ’

So what of the patient who, having suffered a stroke and requiring, among other
things, insulin for his diabetes, was having difficulty reconciling his previous identity of
having been the head of the household, yet feeling “no longer in charge?” I suggest that to
approach this patient from a narrative perspective opens up the moral space — and thus the
possibility — for him to transvalue his values, to perhaps give up his stake in being “in
charge.” At the same time, with the help of others, he can begin rebuilding an identity that,
although in many ways different from his old conception of himself, nevertheless presents
the possibility of reconnecting him not only with the reality (and limitations) of his

condition, but also with ways of meaningfully living with this condition in the world.

 

35" Charon 268.

190

Approached from a narrative perspective, the patient is not identified, either by himself or
by others, as merely someone who is no longer whole. \Vith the help of others, and taking
account of not only his present situation but also of his connection to the past and to the

possibilities for his future, he can begin the process of narrative self-restoration. And this,

Strawsonian Episodic objections to the contrary, seems not at all insignificant.

191

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next.
People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

-— Paul Auster, American author
There comes a point in many people's lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for

themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play.
— Brian Moore, Irish Novelist

CHAPTER V: NARRATIVE AND NARRATIVE IDENTITY
PART TWO: CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY AND DEEP ILLNESS

Thus far, I have argued that a number of standard approaches to personal identity do
not begin to answer the important question about the identity of individuals, due in large
part to a limited, conceptually constrained, or simply dismissive view of identity and its
epistemic and normative role. I have also defined, and defended, a narrative approach to
morality, as well as a narrative approach to identity. I have suggested that a theoretical-
juridical approach’s incomplete characterization of what matters about morality and personal
identity becomes more worrisome still if we take into account the potentially destructive
effect of deep illness on individuals and their self-conceptions. It is precisely here, in the
case of identities damaged due to deep illness, that standard approaches to identity are silent
in regard to either how or why a given identity was destroyed, or, perhaps more importantly,
what might be required to repair it. However, to turn away from the theoretical-juridical
methodology is not synonymous with embracing narrative. This chapter addresses the
question of what it means to turn to narrative in addressing the normativity of identity, and
specifically how and why such a turn is both appropriate and fruitful in cases of deep illness.

I begin by picking up where Chapter 111 left off — by both addressing and challenging

192

Schechtman’s view of identity as a narrative construct. I then suggest a different approach
to identity that retains, and at the same time redefines, what might be meant by a narrative
methodology, and argue that it is this approach to identity that tends to more fruitfully

address the identities of the deeply ill.

I. Schechtman and the Incomplete Narrative

a. Personal Identity as the “Characterization Question”

Recall Marya Schechtman’s theory of personal identity, which takes the narrative
form of experience as the unifying element in our lives. \What matters when we wonder
about personal identity, she argues, is the “characterization question” — the questions of
what unique qualities, preferences, beliefs, desires, and so on characterize an individual over
time — rather than the “reidentification question” (defended by Derek Parfit, among others)
— the question of how one is reidentified over time — that has been at the center of identity
discourse. In fact, she suggests that it is precisely because we can give a narrative structure
to our experiences that we are different from other sentient creatures: “ Individuals
constitute themselves as persons by coming to think of themselves as persisting subjects
who have had experience in the past and will continue to have experience in the future,

”260

taking certain experiences as theirs. . . . [\X/e] weave stories of [our] lives. This view, of
course, echoes my argument for the necessity of narrative in Chapter IV, and stands in stark

opposition to Strawson’s insistence that narratives are beside the point. Indeed, they are so

 

3"” Marya Schechtman, 'I he Constitution of.1'elves (lthaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) 94.

.S‘ee also Christman,John “Narrative Unity as a Condition of Personhood,” Metaphilosophy 35.5 (2004):
695—713.

193

central —- especially for identity formation, maintenance, and repair — that on Schechtman’s
narrative self-constitution view, a self-conception that is not narrative in form is not
“identity constituting at all, nor those who organize their experience this way as persons.”“”

However, although Schechtman grants that narratives can generally take many forms,
she limits what sorts of things identity-constituting narratives can be if they are to serve their
function of sculpting our selves. First, these narratives are primarily autobiographical and
first-person, consisting of those experiences which both explicitly and implicitly affect us.
What this means is that while some (or perhaps even most) of our narratives are explicitly
told to ourselves or others as stories of some kind, a part remains unarticulated — or at least
unarticulated in this most direct of ways. This unarticulated part, however, is not excluded
from the process of self-constitution. As Schechtman notes, it plays a role in “organizing
experience according to an implicit narrative” that helps to shape our views of how our
experiences fit together, and how this “fitting together” shapes the selves that we are.262

But identity-constituting narratives cannot be “subterranean,” in the sense that they
must “be capable of local articulation. This means that the narrator should be able to explain
why he does what he does, believes what he believes, and feels what he feels.”“’" The
feelings, desires, beliefs, and so on which might be an unconscious influence on one’s story
(that compose, say only one’s implicit, rather than explicit, narrative) are less one’s own than

those which are explicitly articulated in an attempt to make sense of one’s present in light of

one’s past. And this is necessarily the case, Schechtman argues, even though these hidden

 

3‘" Schechtman 194—195.
3""- Schechtman 1 14.

.S'ee also V ollmer, Fred, “The Narrative Self,” journal/or the 'l heogy offl’ocial Behaviour 35.2
(2005): 189—205.

3"3 Schechtman 1 14.

194

mental states have an effect on out conscious experiences, for regardless of the effects they
do produce, they “are mysterious to the narrator. \When a person is unable to explicate part
of her narrative, some set of her actions and experiences are incomprehensible to her and,
hence, not properly under her control,” suggesting that one’s identity is fragmented, and
one’s self “fails to coalesce into a well-defined character . . . impelled by forces he does not
understand rather than behaving as an autonomous subject.”2‘”

Moreover, Schechtman insists that the sorts of narratives that shape identities are
necessarily linear, first-person stories — they have the “form and the logic of a story . . .
where ‘story’ is understood as a conventional, linear narrative.”265 The reasons for this have
to do with comprehensibility and accessibility: In order for a narrative to be recognized by
others as a unified story of a particular self, or to be “identity-defining . . . an individual’s
self-narrative must conform in certain crucial respects to the narrative others tell of his
life.”2"" One must be able to explain, through either paSt or present actions, desires, or
characteristics, her actions, where each event, presented in its proper sequence, both finds its
meaning and significance in reference to other events: First, when a story becomes entirely
too different from the “norm” (for example, from a standard in a given culture), it might not
be recognized as a narrative at all, thereby compromising its teller’s status as a personal —
and social — meaning-maker. Second, life stories which are mere unordered or chaotic

collections of events cannot be constitutive of selves, for “thinking of oneself as persisting

throu h time and of the different tem oral arts of one’s existence as bein r mutuallv
g P P 8 .

 

3‘” Schechtman 118-1 19.

.S‘ee also Vollmer, Fred, “The Narrative Self,” journal/or the 'l heogy ooncial Behaviour 35.2
(2005): 189—205.

36-“ Schechtman 94.

3"" Schechtman 96.

195

. . . . . 2 7 .
influenced is a minimal requirement of the state we call personhood.” " The function of the
narrative, therefore, is to create a whole experience of consciousness “that extends over

. 268 . . . .
time,” as well as to prov1de the narrator With a sense that he or she is an experiencer of such

a temporally-extended consciousness “who is conceptually prior to its experience?”
Finally, the narrative, as an autobiography, “must cohere with what might be called the
‘objective’ account of her life—roughly the story that those around her would tell.”“”’ This
objectivity, however, has more to do with empirical accessibility of stories rather than with
any kind of moral view-from-nowhere. In fact, in a footnote, Schechtman clarifies that even
though “there is no single narrative which is the objective story of a person’s life . . . there are
certain basic constraints on a narrative which come from the publicly accessible facts about

I ”271

the history of an individua

 

367 Schechtman 102.
368 Schechttnan 14-8.
26"Schechtman 145.
27” Schechtman 95.

37‘ Schechtman 95-96

196

II. Beyond the “Characterization Question”

Thus far, we have the following claims before us: (1). The standard views of what
personal identity is and what it does (such as those of Parfit, Korsgaard, and Frankfurt) all
exhibit one version or another of a serious mischaractetization ofwhat we care about when
we talk about personal identity — especially the identity of the deeply ill. (2). As an
alternative, a narrative conception of identity presents a number of challenges for more
traditional views of identity, and appears to embrace precisely those concerns about identity
that they dismiss, ignore, or set aside. (3). Given these challenges, a narrative approach is a
promising method of moral discourse generally, and a fruitful method of discourse about
identity specifically. (4). Thus, the sorts of identity questions that we are after when we
want to know who we are — what I suggest we call the identity of individuals (and which
Schechtman calls the “characterization question”) — can, and ought, be addressed
narratively.

However, we also have to contend with the following questions: (1) Is
Schechtman’s narrative approach to identity the one that seems to most effectively and
directly address what is at stake in questions about personal identity (and especially the
identity of the deeply ill)? and (2) If this is not the case, short of retracing our steps and
embracing the standard views yet again, what is the alternative? In this section, I turn to
these two questions, and suggest that while Schechtman offers a promising (narrative)
alternative to the standard conceptions of personal identity, she misconstrues both what
narratives do, as well as what they are. I argue, however, that we ought not discard the
narrative turn in favor of standard views at all, and of 'er what I take to be a more complete

and rigorous account of the role of narrative in identity construction, as well as in its repair.

197

So where does Schechtman go wrong? The short answer is that she disregards the
imperfect control we, as individuals, have over our narratives, as well as over their identity-
constituting power. The longer answer is a bit more complex. Let us consider the
consequences of her claims. First, identity-constituting stories are necessarily linear and first-
person. Second, these first-person narratives are subject to further constraints: (1). The
transparency constraint: narratives are constrained by the sort of content that is
appropriated by an individual as his or her own in that he or she ought to be able to explain
his or her feelings, beliefs, desires, and actions (thus excluding any experiences which we
might have had, but whose effects on us are somehow “hidden”). (2). The factual
constraints: identity-constituting storytelling is not about artifice, but accuracy (to the
extent possible). For Schechtman, this “reality constraint” requires that third-person
observations count — count in the sense of being intelligible to similar others as narratives, as

well as in the sense of being subject to the requirement of remaining “in synch with the

7")

,._.‘_,

views of one held by others.’ All of these claims leave us with serious and significant
puzzles about what Schechtman means and what kind ofa narratively constituted identity
she might have in mind.

First, the puzzle about what it is that narratives actually do. That she takes
something that she calls “identities” to be shaped by narratives is clear; what is not clear is
what sorts of things she takes these identities to be. \What is it that these narratives

constitute? Sometimes Schechtman uses the term “persons” or “personhood” as a synonym

for “identity.” Sometimes she refers to a “self.” All of these entities are ostensibly created

 

272 Schechtman 95-96.

Also see Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

2001) 90-93.

198

and shaped by our narratives — but how odd that for Schechtman, they are interchangeable!
What Schechtman seems to conflate are the metaphysical notion of “person” as a continuously
existing consciousness or the active subject of experience, the epistemicalhI-grounded “self”
which experiences, the moral honon'jic of “personhood” (as opposed, say, to one being deemed
to be “merely human”), and what is actually constructed by narratives — one’s identigr. The
result is a muddy picture of what narratives do. If what we are after in asking the question
of “who we are” are self-understanding and social intelligibility, then one of the major
reasons that we ought to take narratives seriously is that they offer us a way to think clearly
about identity that makes us intelligible to ourselves and to others. But this intelligibility
requires that we are aware of precisely what we want to know: are we looking for a
metaphysical basis of what it means to be a person, an epistemic justification of what we can
say about our “selves,” a way to understand the point at which one becomes a moral
“person,” or a way to understand our identities — how we see ourselves in the world, how we
are seen by others, and what this “seeing” does to our moral agency? I suggest that
Schechtman is indeed after identities of individuals: after all, the “characterization question”
is centered on self-understanding, and is in opposition to other, metaphysically and
epistemically grounded approaches to identity (specifically, Parfit’s “reidentification
question”). However, by conflating all of the previously noted terms and thereby making
the object of her claims unclear, she further muddies the reasons why a new approach to
identities of individuals is so important. And it is important precisely because, as I have
argued earlier, a narrative approach to identity reveals the interactive, dynamic process of
how identities are shaped, and how this shaping serves to normativehr represent who we are in
the world. It does not, by contrast, establish a metaphysical basis for what a person moving

through time might be, or justify why someone ought (or ought not) receive the honorific of

199

“person.” In fact, it does not take these sorts of inquiries, although useful, to be central to
the question of identity — to the question of who we are.

I suggest that, at least in part, it might very well be this confusion about what she
means by an “identity-constituting narrative” that leads to some of the more problematic
implications of Schechtman’s views. I say “problematic” because if we are to take seriously
her claims that identity-constituting narratives actually move us closer to a kind of a self-
understanding that is not available through other means, we are left without an answer to the
question ofjust what this “self” that is “understood” might be. One could very well imagine
that one’s “self” isjust the autobiographical monologue, and one’s moral status as an agent
just depends on one’s ability to tell a clear, coherent narrative. On this view, a patient’s first-
person narrative is all that is needed to normatively locate him or her. However, as I have
already noted above (and as I will argue later), this is most likely not the case.

Second, it is somewhat unclear why only the experiences which are shaped into an
identity-constituting narrative must be “capable of local articulation,” or a kind of a
transparency?” Schechtman seems to suppose that we are who we know and can explain
to others. But this presumes two things: First, that the parts of ourselves that are unclear
to us (or cannot be “articulated” or woven into a coherent explanatory story of our
motivations, actions, and desires) cannot be identity-constituting in the same way that the
parts of ourselves of which we are aware and can articulate are identity-constituting. Second,
that there can be only one “identity-constituting narrative” per individual, and that whatever
does not make it into this narrative is not really a part of who this individual is. It might be

useful to illustrate what I mean.

 

27" Schechtman 1 14.

200

Take S, who considers herself to be a very independent person. She holds down a
good job at the hospital, she is married, and her children are grown and on their own.
However, repeatedly, as a rule, she avoids being alone. She visits her children more often
than they would like only while her husband is on business trips. She claims that she is “just
bored” alone and that she would rather “have fun with someone else,” but even on a trip to
the grocery store she is always accompanied by a friend, a relative, or really anyone else, no
matter how dull they might be, who would be wiling to come. However, when asked about
her behavior, S claims to just be a “high-maintenance person” who requires a lot of
attention. She does not have any known phobias (such as agoraphobia), nor is she afraid of
being attacked or otherwise threatened when alone. And she is telling the truth — there
really seems to be no reason that she can either understand, recall, or communicate that
would place her actions and fears in some sort of context, or that would offer some kind of
an explanation for her actions.

Such a case presents some difficulties for Schechtman, for we surely cannot say that
the fear of being alone has no part of S’s identity-constituting narrative. Even though she is
not consciously aware of it (or has, for a number of reasons, repressed it), it affects her
thoughts, her desires, and her behavior, and is thus integrated in this any into who she is.
Others notice her tendencies and her avoidance behaviors — and so does she, although she
attributes them to something else entirely. Thus, the pictures that she draws of herself — the
narratives that she weaves about her life — are very directly affected by the emotions, fears,
and feelings that never quite make it to either her conscious mind or her “local articulation.”
That is, just because she acts on motivations that are not clear or evident to her, these
motivations are no less a part of her identity than those of which she is very consciously

aware — and perhaps even more so. The fact that she is afraid of being alone — deeply,

201

pathologically so — makes this hidden fear a very important and active part of her identity.
And thus the difference between this feat’s being clearly articulated and publicly
acknowledged or subterranean and deeply buried is not that in one case it is a part of her and
in the other, it is not. The difference is in S’s epistemic opacity with regard to herself (and
her transparency to others), her lack of clarity about who she is, and why she happens to be
the person that she is — not that some parts of her are “really her own” and some are less so.

Moreover, the case of S puts into question Schechtman’s insistence that we get one
linear narrative pet “self.” And while Schechtman is not alone in claiming that what we are
after is the one true, linear narrative, a single autobiography, of our lives — an “overarching
story” of who we are — I take it that neither she nor those who echo her position have
gotten a narrative approach to identity quite right?”

There are several reasons for this: First, to say that S must construct a single
narrative of her life in order for her life to have a coherent structure conflates living a li/e with
telling an Mendy-constituting stop! ahout that life. The life that S — or, indeed, anyone — lives is
made up of a number of events, experiences, interpersonal relationships, group
memberships, and so on. It is a manifold of colors, sounds, sensations, tastes, and feelings
through which an individual moves with greater or lesser amounts of physical, psychological,
or moral efficacy. In S’s case, she was abandoned as a very young child by her mentally ill
mother, and although she has no conscious recollection of this event, it has, as I noted
above, affected her greatly in her adult life, albeit in ways that do not grant her direct access

to the actual cause of her inability to be alone. But this event of abandonment is just that —

 

37" .S'ee Taylor, Charles, Sources if the .S’efl? 'I'he Making a/‘the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press,1992); MacIntyre, Alasdair Ajter V irtue:A .S‘tudy in Moral Theory (Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press; 2nd edition, 1984).

For an in-depth critique of the linear narrative view, see Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities,
Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

202

an event that took place in her distant past. When S tells stories about her life, it is
something that she leaves out unwittingly, substituting other explanations (such as being
bored easily), or she leaves out instances where she felt uncomfortable with being alone
altogether. While this might not be what some (like Schechtman) would call a “true” version
of her life, to make this objection is to miss the point: in creating an identity-constituting
narrative, we pick and choose among the events and experiences of our lives to create a
structure, a version, of the world in which we find ourselves, and thus a version of ourselves
in that world. And this picking and choosing does not necessarily take place in a linear
fashion — S need not regard her life chronologically or in some other structured manner. In
creating narratives, and, in turn, identities, we pull out and connect the sorts of events that
seem to go together, quite often from different parts of our lives, and quite often without
much regard for a recognizable storyline or the rigors of logic. The point is that we weave
something new and something our own — a representation of what we take our life, and thus
our identity, to be. We attempt to ma/ee sense ofwhat happens to us — not serve as faithful, third-
person documentarians.27S

Second, as Lindemann reminds us, insistence on a single, linear narrative suggests

. . ’77
what some have called a “rational life plan,” or a “career self:”‘“’

The more or less explicit view of Rawls, MacIntyre, and Taylor is not merely
that human beings cannot make sense of themselves outside a narrative in

which each meaningful incident counts as progress in positioning oneself

 

3753'” Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identifies, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2001) 61-62.

27" Nelson 62.

203

properly with respect to some end, but that the meaning of a life consists

precisely in planning for, striving after, and attending that end.277

Although Schechtman does not insist on quite the same level of structure (for she
worries more about being comprehensible to others and about the narrative’s being a
“standard” one for creatures “like us”) she does argue for the necessity of coherence and
linear structure, supposing that the presence of such a structure would be more likely to lead
to a narrative (and thus to a life, since she conflates the two) that would be both explicitly
and implicitly sensible. But such a standard for narratives seems to be grounded in a rather
limited view of the kinds of lives that we lead, where by “we” I mean the vast number of
human beings who are not simply goal-oriented individualists in control not only of what
they choose to do, but of what happens to them. Such a standard leaves out most of us,
who lead messy, nonlinear, non-unified lives, where we are too often not in charge from
either a teleological or procedural perspective. What makes us who we are, therefore, cannot
just be our ability to tell coherent and logically-organized stories - in fact, a preference for
such an ability might be reasonably viewed as an artifice imposed by the sort of theoretical-
juridical worldview that prefers a hierarchy (of meaning, of morality, of individuals) that is
both universal and impersonal. Surely living a life is not simply a matter of setting oneself
down on a set of rails from which one does not deviate until one has reached one’s intended
stopping point. As I noted earlier, we act and we make choices, but things happen to us over
which we might not have any control — serious illness, for example — and as our lives twist
and turn and move in all directions, the identity-constituting stories about those lives have to

be flexible enough so that we can weave together the shreds of some stories with the more

 

27’ Nelson 62.

204

developed sections of others, without our primary concern being about rationality or
conventionality of plot. An identity-constituting narrative, therefore, is not identity-
constituting because it allows us to follow a life-script, whether about a “rational life plan,”
or, as in cases of deep illness, about “getting better,” or “being a good patient.” \Vhy could
not a part of a patient’s narrative be a story of helplessness and despair, and another part of
acceptance, or anger? And why would a particular way of trying to make sense of one’s
illness be preferable over another? And why could not a physician who has become a
patient, as William Hurt’s character did in the film The Doctor; not have a number of
narratives that are contradictory, or confusing, or irreconcilable? Such stories are identity-
constituting precisehr hecause they are acts of individual creation, following no pre-set course or
trajectory. Who I am is not an idea or a story tending toward some defined realization, but a
verb, an activity which can move in a number of directions, or double back on itself, or
never follow a set process toward a pte-determined telos. Perhaps a particularly telling
difference in my conception of identity-constituting narrative and that of Schechttnan (and
others who share her views) is that they speak of a narrative, while I (along with Lindemann)
take myself to be talking about narratives: stories, not a story, and changing, non-linear
identities — not a single, focused, and always intelligible identity.

Third, there is the question of “coherence with reality,” or the factual constraint.
But consider S again: if for S to have a narrative that coheres, or is “in synch with,” the
views of her held by others, then we might wonder what this narrative would need to be if
those others do not see or understand her fear of being alone. If she happens to eventually
see the reasons behind her actions while others do not, ought her narrative to filter out this
new awareness unless and until the others catch up? If so, the reason for coherence seems

to have less to do with a sort of truth the narrator might wish to express, and more to do

205

with the question of whether this truth is also clear to, or accepted by, the majority of her
“audience.” Moreover, by insisting on the factual constraints, are we also not placing a bit
too much power in the hands of those who evaluate our narratives? In other words, if it is
the outside world which has the final say on whether S’s (or anyone else’s) narrative is
sufficiently mistake—free, then we seem to be (problematically) assuming that this outside
world will not be prone to the sorts of weaknesses to which we take the individual narrator
to be prone — such as prejudice, bad judgment, or personal interest — or that those who are a
part of this world could never be simply mistaken. A consensus, it seems to me, ought not
necessarily be the sole (or even the most reliable) indicator of truth, for there has been a
degree of social agreement on narratives about everything from the oppression of women, to
slavery, to genocide. And what if I am a female, or, like S, possibly suffering from a mental
illness, or a minority, or an immigrant? Does not my already-vulnerable status become even
more so if I am to submit to the judgment of others as to who I am?” It seems to me that
we can answer these questions in the affirmative with some confidence, and in so doing,
further cast into doubt Schechtman’s (and others’) insistence on a criterion of external
verifiability of identity-constituting narrative.

I. now take up what I consider to be one of the most fundamental difficulties with
views like Schechtman’s — a view of identity formation, and thus of moral agency, that is
unfinished at best. For the sake of argument, let us grant her and those who share her
views the necessity of a linear, socially coherent narrative that is “capable of local
articulation.” What we must not grant her, however, is her insistence that an identity-

constituting narrative is the product of an individual competence only, completely

 

273 For an in-depth analysis of the “coherence with reality” criterion, see Hilde Lindemann Nelson,
Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001) 91-92.

206

independent of second and third-person stories about the narrator. Instead, I claim that a
truly identity-constituting narrative involves more than one voice, and thus cannot be the
sort of monologue that Schechtman proposes.

The reason that we should not grant her the “autobiographical” claim is the
following. In reftaming our worries about the identity of individuals, she is after the
characterization question — the question of how we understand ourselves through our
actions, ideas, and experiences, and how this self-understanding forms our identities. Recall
that for her, the “who am I?” question is best answered by the manner in which one
arranges these actions, experiences, and characteristics into stories. And these stories do the
moral work of identifying the storyteller to herself and to the outside world.

So far, so good. But notice that personal identity for Schechtman is a monologue:
\Vhat I, as a (linear, coherent) storyteller say my identity is, so it must be, within the limits set
by the transparency and reality constraints . And this seems to be at least a little odd,
considering that (as I have suggested earlier) a narrative methodology belongs more to the
expressive-collaborative approach to moral work with its particularist focus on individual life
stories and circumstances, as well as its emphasis on mutual understanding and negotiation
of one’s place as a moral being. \Vhat Schechtman seems to be saying is that we, as narrators,
get to say definitively who we are. And, given my argument for what identities are and how
they are formed, this simply does not appear to be the case: Identities are not merely
descriptive, or aesthetic, creations. They are always-unfinished, forever in—progress processes
that situate us morally , not only setting up normative expectations for ourselves, but also
shaping the larger, other-dependent moral landscape — the rules, norms, and limits of how
others might treat us and what they might expect from us (and we from them). The identity-

constituting narrative process thus marks us normatively as particular kinds of moral agents

207

in terms of how, and of how much, our agency can be exercised. The social nature of
identities is therefore inseparable from the social nature of morality, and Schechtman’s
reliance on monologues as identity-constituting narratives is at best troubling and at worst
dismissive of what I take to be a necessary link-up between identity and normativity.

What this link-up suggests is that in the case of morality (and identity), neither top-
down rules nor unyielding norms serve as the final arbiters of what is right or true or good.
But note also that similarly to the negotiation-centered expressive—collaborative model of
morality, the narrative process of identity creation requires others as a part of the collaborative
process of becoming, and being seen as, moral agents. If I am correct and our identities are
indeed representations of ourselves to the world — if they are the lenses through which we
see ourselves and through which others see us — then it would seem that we, by ourselves,
cannot be their solitary shapers. It is not sufficient, therefore, to have the capacity to tell a
coherent narrative that is “capable of local articulation” or the capacity to explicitly access
one’s experiences and translate them into a socially acceptable and understandable story. \Ve
also need input, recognition, and uptake from others, who might be out intended or
unintended audience. If we say “I am x,” but the world responds with “well, not really —
you are more of a y, which means that you cannot do math, be in charge, or be owed the
kind of respect that x’s are owed,” it is insufficient to simply carefully repeat one’s
monologue. It is necessarily through this interaction between our narratives and the world’s
uptake of, and reaction to, them that identity emerges as something that is not just
narratively constructed, but as a creation of many narratives, from a number of sources.
And given the social, multi-faceted process of identity-creation, we can also with some

confidence claim this social, multi-faceted nature for morality

208

Specifically, what might be needed in some cases is a counterstory, and, as argued by
Hilde Lindemann, such counterstories can and do repair the damage of oppressive master
narratives that marginalize one’s moral agency by trivializing, stereotyping, or otherwise

’)‘7

silencing one’s identity-constituting narrative?” My goal here, however, is not to address the
need for counterstories (although I certainly agree with Lindemann that they are both useful
and necessary). First, my argument is in a sense more general: in suggesting a revision of
Schechtman’s views, I claim that much depends on second- and third-person recognition of
autobiographical narratives, for in order to be moral agents in a world of more than one —
and to be recognized as such through one’s identity — a well-narrated monologue might be a
necessary, but far from sufficient, component. Second, my argument is also more specific to
the extent that its telos is the identity of the deeply ill (rather than all potentially Oppressed
individuals, groups, and subgroups). I now conclude this section by addressing why identity
construction cannot be simply a matter of autobiographical coherence, and in the next, turn

to my claim that only a revised version of Schechtman’s “characterization"-based

methodology can speak to the kinds of issues that the identities of the deeply ill tend to raise.

 

37" .S'ee Nelson, Hilde Lindemann, Damaged Identities. Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

209

a. The Story of B: Identity and Normative Competence

Although my first claim — that much depends on second- and third-person
recognition of autobiographical narratives —- is rather uncontroversial in those circles that
take Walker’s expressive—collaborative model of morality, as well. as narrative methodology,
to be a viable place to start, it is nevertheless too often viewed as a bit of philosophical
intransigence by those who embrace the theoretical-juridical View of both morality and
identity?”

An example might be of use here: B is a woman in her mid-to-late sixties, an
immigrant, and although not entirely unfamiliar with the language of her adopted country, is
also not altogether comfortable with its nuances, colloquialisms, and specifically, its medical
argot. To compound the problem, she is a little hard of hearing, and her pronunciation
immediately reveals her as a foreigner. In a physician’s office (to which she drove herself,
despite her dislike of highways and traffic), she is waiting for her appointment when a much
younger man walks in, pushing a wheelchair in which a very elderly lady sits, clearly in some
discomfort. The young man attempts to communicate with the receptionist, but with no
luck, as his accent and lack of facility with English render him all but incomprehensible.
However, B can tell from his accent that he is a fellow countryman, as well as the reason he

is there. What he is trying desperately to get across is that his elderly aunt (who lives alone)

has fallen several times in the last week, cannot sleep, and is in a great deal of pain. He was

 

23" For views that take the theoretical-juridical view to be the proper way to examine the issues of autonomy,
agency, and identity, see Korsgaard, Christine, “Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian
Response to Parfit”, Philosophy and Pulrlic Aflairs 18 (1989): 101-132; Korsgaard, Christine, '1 he .S'ourres of
Normativigi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Parfit, Derek, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986); Dworkin, Gerald, The Theory and Practice cfAutononry (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001); Frankfurt, Harry G., The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Neely, Wright, “Freedom and Desire,” Philosophical Rern'ew
83.1 (1974): 32-54; Watson, Gary, Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

210

sent to this particular office by the ER physician who thought that immediate attention was
required. This scene looks very familiar to B who, as an immigrant herself, has frequently
been on the receiving end of the frustration that comes from linguistic and cultural barriers,
as well as of the kindnesses that come from strangers who, on a number of occasions, have
stepped in to help her in what otherwise would have been intolerable, or very difficult,
situations. Now that B feels a little more settled and sure of herself in her still-new
environment, she has made it a priority not to ignore the needs of others when there is
something that she could reasonably do. Thus, B approaches the young man —— who is
overjoyed to have a much-needed translator available — and assures him that she would talk
to the receptionist, and the physician if necessary. How fortunate, she thinks, that she is
there at the same time, for the language and culture that they share is not one commonly
found in this particular neighborhood, or, in fact, this city. However, when she begins
speaking to the receptionist, an odd thing happens: She is asked to take her seat, wait for her
name to be called and to allow “the staff . . . to sort this out.” When she objects, noting that
nobody on “the staff” speaks the young man’s language, she is once again assured that
“everything is under control,” except that now, the receptionist calls her “honey,” takes her
by the arm as if she were disabled, and gently leads her back to her chair. W’hen B asks to
talk to the physician, she is told that he is “very busy” and does not have time for

“chatter . . . even with his favorite Russian.” “Do not worry yourself about these people,
honey,” the receptionist says again. “We will figure out what is wrong with him and his
granny.” W’hen B notes that the elderly woman is in fact his aunt and that she knows that
there is nobody else in the office who could help, at least as far as translation, the assistant
who comes out to see what all the commotion is about smiles, takes B’s hand into her own,

and speaks very slowly and loudly, deliberately enunciating each word: “So good to see you

211

again! I see that you find all kinds of ways to keep yourself busy — good for you! The doctor
will see you shortly — have you been doing those exercises that he told you to do? Do you
understand me, sweetie?” Meanwhile, the young man is desperately trying to locate a friend
or a relative who could serve as a translator on the phone. “Does your granny have
Medicaid or Medicare?” the receptionist continues repeating.

\Vhat we see here is an odd combination of a deliberate, coherent, and definitely
“locally articulated” narrative, both physically and verbally enacted by B: “Here I am,” her
narrative suggests, “an inhabitant of the two cultures that are relevant in this case — and I am
ready to help, because I am the sort of person who desires to help when I can.” (Of course,
I am not suggesting that this is her only narrative strand, for narratives are woven from many
such strands. In this case, however, this is the part of her narrative that was most relevant,
and one which she most desired to be heard.)

And yet it seems that the identity—constituting narrative out of which B acts is not
enough, for the kinds of attitudes that the medical office staff take toward B’s behavior
ultimately determine the efficacy of her moral agency. In short, she is identified as someone
who cannot, perhaps because of her status as an immigrant, her accent, her age, her gender,
the fact that she is a patient, be taken seriously — even when there is clear evidence of her
intention, capacity and desire to help, as well as a dire need of her assistance. The attitudes
taken toward an individual by others, therefore, seem to determine the moral weight that an
autobiographical narrative is granted, and thus the moral shape of the identity of that
individual. If the individual’s narrative about herself is rejected or dismissed (as in B’s case)

then her identity is defined (and limited) in such a way that also limits her moral agency?”

 

3’” Lindemann 26-27.

212

Like B, one could be normatively competent, quite capable of understanding and acting on
moral norms and so expressing oneself as a moral agent, yet fail to receive the sort of

uptake that moral actors are to be granted. As Lindemann puts it:

How we register what someone is doing thus determines whether we will
allow them to exercise their agency freely, on the one hand, or constrain
them. . . . Normative competence is therefore genuinely interpersonal: the
capacity for normative self-disclosure embraces not only the agent’s ability to
appreciate the moral construction that others will place on her actions but
also the recognition by those others that her actions are those of a morally

’7 7
developed person.”

B is quite literally silenced as a narrator, and thus, as a moral agent in two ways:
First, she is very clearly not taken to be a part of the moral community, her identity instead
restructured as that of a “lesser” or an “other.” Second, and perhaps even more crucially,
she (as a patient, an immigrant, a woman, an older person) is taught to silence herself, her
own narrative, in favor of the identity that is constructed for her by others - especially others in
power. Her identity receiving no uptake, she might not speak out the next time, or she
might do so with greater apprehension — after all, oppression and responses to it can be
learned behaviors. What seems fairly certain, however, is that Schechtman’s claims about the

coherent, linear autobiography as the primary identity—constituting narrative are at best

 

.S'ee also Benson, Paul “Feminist Second Thoughts about Free Agency,” ijatia 5 (1990): 47-64; Paul
Benson, “Free Agency and Self-Worth,” journal of Philosophy 91.12 (1994): 650—668.

233 Lindemann 26-27.

213

unclear, and at worst only half-right. And it is the half that she seems to neglect — the
interpersonal, other-centric part of narrative construction — that appears to be especially
important in situations of great power differentials between the narrator and those to whom
she is narrating. This seems to be particularly the case when we consider the identities of the

deeply ill, and it is to this issue that I now turn.

III. Narrative Identity and the Deeply Ill

Hopeful metaphors of the phoenix rising from the ashes aside, to talk about deep
illness, I suggest, is to a large extent to talk about some kind of loss. This loss might be
short-lived or permanent; physical, psychological, or both; devastating or merely
inconvenient or embarrassing. And whatever the specifics of a given case, there is usually a
shift in narrative, and thus moral, efficacy, whereby the ill individual, as a result of illness but
also as a result of the reactions and actions of others in response to the illness, loses some
(or all) of his or her narrative power as a storyteller and identity-shapet. It is here, when
otherwise able narrators are confronted by the brute fact of illness and the subsequent
powerlessness and disruption (sometimes to the point of disintegration) of their identity-
constituting narratives, that we see the holes begin to emerge in Schechtman’s insistence on
a coherent autobiography. Given. her emphasis on the power of individual voices in
identity creation, it is constructive to consider what happens to those voices when they are
faced the possibility of their own destruction. This seems to me to be not at all an
unimportant matter — a matter which has, it turns out, quite a bit to do with the distribution

of social (and thus narrative) power.

214

The questions of power and disempowerment are as legitimate a part of the
conversation about the identity of the deeply ill as treatment effectiveness, access to care,
and palliation. This is due at least in part to the physical, and more often than not
psychological, changes that confront an individual who becomes seriously ill: The disease
itself, as well. as the more personal, individual experience of that disease, take their toll. And
as one’s own capacities to sustain a sense of self weaken, the input of others into one’s
identity increases both procedurally and substantively. Procedurally, because the others may
simply take over the task of identity construction from the ill individual, assuming him or her
to be incapable of finding his or her own way through the numerous physical, psychological,
or moral challenges of deep illness. Thus, a physician may only address the family members
of an ill woman who happens to be sitting right there in the examination room, and who,
although in pain, is perfectly capable of heating and understanding his questions and
instructions. Substantively, because others may introduce a number of master narratives
(say, about what it means to be a “good patient,” to “get better,” to “be brave,” and so on)
into the discourse with the ill individual who, even while finding the master narrative
distasteful, offensive, or just plain oppressive and hurtful, might have neither the energy nor
the desire to challenge it with a counterstory. Thus, a husband might tell his wife that she
“has to be strong and get better for the kids” just when her ideas about who she is and how
she fits in the world collapse around her. What is lost in the case of the ill woman in the
examination room and the wife who “has to be strong for the kids” .is not just the capacity
to narrate their stories — the illness may have taken care of that to some extent — but the
willingness of others to grant both women some semblance of moral agency. And so the

story of B repeats itself, although in circumstances even more precarious for the silenced

215

narrators. In the end, the ill become the acted-upon, rather than the actors — the witnesses
to their own narratives, rather than direct participants and authors.

But might it not be a good thing that others step in when the narrator can no longer
do so himself or herself? That is, might we not view this power shift as a way to address the
loss of moral agency on the part of the ill individual in a manner that carries them through
the experience of illness? Yes and no. In this section, I focus on some of the more
troubling effects of this loss of narrative competence and second and third-person uptake. 1
suggest that, given the sorts of problem posed by what happens to the identities of the
deeply ill, we need a revised narrative approach to identity creation, and especially in the case
of the deeply ill, identigi maintenance.

So what, specifically, takes place when one faces serious illness? Deep illness, at least
how I define it here, is first and foremost a kind of a fundamental disruption of one’s
identity, of one’s narrative, of one’s sense of self — and thus of one’s power and social
efficacy, no matter how little of it one possessed before the onset of illness. Oliver Sacks,
having avoided what I would take to be deep illness but nevertheless suffering from a serious
leg injury as a result of a fall while climbing a mountain in Norway, was afflicted by an odd
and rare neurological condition which alienated him from his leg, where his limb became a
truly foreign object. He took this experience to be not just a split from his leg, but a schism

rs283 cc

in his identity, or, as he put it, “not just a lesion in my muscle, but a lesion in me — a

93284.

hole in reality

 

3’53 Oliver Sacks, A Leg to .S'tand On (London: Picador, 1991) 44.

Also see Rimmon—Kenan, Sholmith, “The story of ‘I’: Illness and narrative identity,” Narrative 10.1 (2002):
9-19.

38“ Sacks 68.

2’16

The leg had vanished, taking its ‘past’ away with it. I could no longer
remember having a leg. I could no longer remember how I had ever walked
and climbed. I felt inconceivably cut off from the person who had walked
and run, and climbed just five days before. There was only a ‘formal’
continuity between us. There was a gap—an absolute gap—between then and

now; and in that gap, into the void, the former ‘I’ had vanishedz‘”.

Similarly, Barbara D. \X/ebster, seriously ill with multiples sclerosis, noted that
“disturbance of body image is very shattering. It disturbs the very experience and root of
self.”‘”" Robert Murphy, an anthropologist at Columbia University, found himself totally
paralyzed and unable to speak as a result of a tumor in his spinal cord which developed over
the course of fourteen years. And as his body gradually became alien to him he felt a kind of

”287

a “radical dissociation from the body, a kind of etherialization of identity. “From the time
my tumour was first diagnosed until my entry into a wheelchair life, I was increasingly afraid
that I had lost much more than the full use of my legs. I had also lost a part of myself. . . . I

had changed in my own mind, in my self-image, and in the basic conditions of my existence.

In middle age, the ground beneath me had convulsed.”“’"

 

3’35 Sacks 58.

3"“ Barbara D Webster, All o/ia Piece: A I ah with llvlultiple Sclerosis (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1989) 124.

Also see Rimmon-Kenan, Sholmith, “The story of ‘I’: Illness and narrative identity,” Narrative 10.1 (2002):
9-19.

3‘57 Robert F. Mu h r, The Bod Silent )ndon: . M. Dent and Sons, 1987 86.
rp l J’

For other stories of deep illness, see Middlebrook, Christina, .S’eeing the Cralr: A ll'lemoir ofDrying (New York:
Basic Books, 1996); Lorde, Audre, The Cancer journals, (San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, 1980).

23" Murphy 73.

217

 

The question comes down to this: I have argued throughout this dissertation that
identities are narratively constructed, and have suggested that views like Schechtman’s are
preferable over those which take questions of identity to be, among other things, worries
about metaphysical continuity through time. I have also suggested that it is specifically a
narrative approach to identity that helps us think about identity as a normative concept
which regulates our moral agency. But it seems to me that not every narrative methodology
will do — especially in cases of deep illness, where our identity and our capacity to be
narrators who receive social uptake are both dramatically limited, if not destroyed. Given
these stories of identity destruction, how ought we proceed narratively? Considering the
problems inherent in Schechtman’s claims, how ought we begin to think about identity
repair that does not at the same time reduce the process to a rigid set of (moral) rules for the
ill individuals to follow, to some universal sense of “getting it right,” or else to the crude
relativism of “whatever story you tell is a good story”?””

We can begin by making the following claims about how some key features of

Schechtman’s narrative methodology fare at the intersection of identity and deep illness:

(1). The claim against nar‘r‘ativer/latness: Deep illness tends to bring about a
marked disruption of any “linear” story of who one takes oneself to
be in the world.

(2). The claim against necessagI coherence with realign As a constraint on

storytelling and identity formation, the demand for coherence with

 

33" I will address the worry about narrative relativism in Chapter VI. Here, I am talking about views such
as Arthur Frank’s, who suggested that “what counts about any story is what those who hear it choose to do
with it.”

.I'ee Frank, Arthur W. “Asking the Right Question about Pain: Narrative and Phronesis,” literature and
AIedicine 23.2 (2004): 209-225.

218

(3).

(4)-

reality in the case of the deeply ill might be rather destructive and
oppressive: Even if others take the ill person to be wrong in his or
her assessment of any future plans or goals, or mistaken about the
threat that a given diagnosis represents, he or she might very well
wish to honor the disruption and upheaval of the illness and resist by
simply “falling apart,” without regard for outside validation of his or
her actions. Moreover, given the power differentials between the ill
and the medical establishment, there seems to be an inherent danger
in allowing the ill person to be entirely defined by medical
practitioners.

The claim against narratioe-as-antohiograp/y: Quite contrary to
Schechtman’s claims about the autobiographical nature of identity-
constituting narratives, the power of others in identity construction
might become even greater in the case of deep illness. Thus,
whatever balance existed among individuals in our practices of
responsibility through which we take on (or refuse) certain social
roles and identities, it is threatened by the relative normative
powerlessness of the ill.

The claim against the requirement for local articulation: Even though the
notion of personal upheaval or disruption is not unique to cases of
deep illness — people’s lives are fundamentally disrupted for all kinds
of reasons, including war, immigration, epiphanies, and so on — the
kinds of changes that tend to accompany deep illness are both

physically and psychologically intimate in ways that some others are

219

not, for they implicate every aspect of who we are or who we take
ourselves to be. This also means that these changes are quite
complex, and thus we cannot demand explicit narrative transparency
from the deeply ill. In their identity construction, they might be
influenced the most by that which they do not yet understand or
cannot yet express or explain - by unconscious fears, a sense of
powerlessness, and so on. Despite this lack of narrative transparency,
such a narrative would not be any less identity-constituting then the

ones “capable of local articulation.”

Where does this leave us? The answer is in a somewhat unsettled place. We
desperately need to address the identities of the deeply ill, and yet we seem to be stuck: On
the one hand, a narrative approach to identity seems to be the direction in which we ought
to proceed, especially in the case of deep illness. On the other hand, identity—constituting
narratives are not without their serious flaws, from Schechtman’s tendency toward
monologue to the potential for a relativistic embracing of every story as equally valid morally
and epistemicallyzw With this dilemma in mind, I conclude the dissertation with Chapter
VI, which proposes several possible approaches to narrative identity construction generally,
and to the problem of the identities of the deeply ill specifically. As a way to address the
worry about relativism, I ask the normative question about what makes one narrative better
than another, and suggest that there is indeed a way to navigate the precarious territory

between the theoretical-juridical view of morality and moral relativism. That is, given my

 

29“ For some well-known arguments that tend to support identity relativism, see I’rank, Arthur W.,
The Wounded .S'togyte/ler? Body Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

220

earlier argument that identity and morality are connected in that identities embody moral
norms and give rise to normative expectations, I now claim that there is a way to link up
narratively-constituted identity creation and maintenance with moral judgments about which
narratives deserve uptake, and which ought possibly be disregarded. I then explore a few
tentative reasons why making such a distincrion ought to be one of our goals in an analysis
of the identities of the deeply ill (and perhaps in any analysis of identities of individuals,
broadly construed). In the end, I suggest thata narrative approach to identity is, after all, an
imperfect but promising way to think about what makes us who we are, how we build and

repair ourselves and each other when broken, and why any of this ought to matter.

221

Testimoryt should he a, philosophical prohlem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it
refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.

— Paul Ricoeur

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the and plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?
— T..S'. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

CHAPTER VI: WHICH STORIES MATTER, AND WHY:
SOME TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS

This dissertation is about our attempts to set our lands in order — especially after the
annihilation as a result of serious illness. I have claimed that these “lands” — our identities,
our representations of who we are, our sense of ourselves — have been inadequately (and
often overly narrowly) construed, leaving out the central normative worry about our identities
as individuals. I have suggested that this theoretical lapse becomes especially clear when we
take into account what happens to identities as a result of deep illness, and argued that since
none of us are immune from either heing the ill individual or from finding ourselves as his or her
caretaker, this conflict between the standard views of identity and what I call the identity of
individuals is neither theoretically marginal nor practically beside the point. I have then
argued that if we do indeed take the notion of identity as a normative matter seriously, we
ought to (generally) reject the universalism of the theoretical-juridical approach to morality in
favor of a more particularist, context-sensitive expressive-collaborative methodology. And
the role that stories play in the expressive—collaborative approach to morality seem to lead us

to a narrative approach to the identity of individuals.

222

So we might tentatively conclude that it is through narratives that we might begin to
see more clearly how identities are shaped, and how they might be reconstituted, especially in
the cases of deep illness. But we have also seen that a narrative approach is not without
some serious problems. Even if we accept my claims that this identity-constituting narrative
has to consist of many kinds of stories and strands of stories, told through first, second, and
third-person perspectives, and that it need not be linear or constrained by a reality as
observed by others, or narratively transparent, we are still not certain about how to
distinguish nonnatiz'el)! among various narratives. I note that my focus in this chapter will be
primarily on illness narratives, and thus my claims ought not be viewed as necessarily
applicable to any and all kinds of narratives (although I do suspect that some of my
arguments might be generalizeable to narratives that are not necessarily grounded in deep
illness). Specifically, I suggest that my argument that a narrative approach to identity is a
deeper and more fruitful method of addressing who we are (especially when we are seriously
ill) is only a part of the story — more needs to be said about the narratives, and narrators,
themselves.

A few words about why. The reasons for this have something to do with the
alternatives: On the one hand, we can insist on the sorts of precise narratives that
Schechtman found to be identity constituting. On the other, we can simply declare that any
narrative — especially any illness narrative — is identity constituting by virtue of being told
through a wounded body, as per Arthur Frank. And while I have already explored some of
the difficulties with Schechtman’s view, I have not yet considered Frank’s epistemically
vague, any-narrative—is-a-good-narrative approach. I now turn to a consideration of his

claims.

223

1. Arthur Frank and the Uncontested Illness Narrative

“Stories,” Arthur Frank tells us in The 11.7’o/iridc'd .S'togrteller? Bod} Illness, and Ethics,
“repair the damage that illness has done to the ill person's sense ofwhere she is in life and
where she is going?” To illustrate, he offers the story of a woman who, although declared
medically “cured” after a cerebral aneurysm, still suffered bouts of double vision and certain
kinds of muscular asymmetries. Significantly, her stroke constituted a large and important
part of her new identity, even after the treatment was deemed successful. And only by
telling her story, whatever sort of story it is — and by having it heard — could her recovery
proceed beyond its clinical boundaries.

Serious illness, as I have noted and as Frank argues, calls for stories. The shock of
the interruption of one’s life, the loss of one’s trajectory (or trajectories), as well as the brute
physical and psychological assault of the illness experience turns us into what Ronald

. . zijz . ._,
Dworkin has called a “narrative wreck.” Or, as l‘rank notes,

judith Zaruches’s metaphor of losing her map and destination suggests
illness as a shipwreck. Almost every illness story I have read carries some
sense of being shipwrecked by the storm ofdisease, and many use this
metaphor explicitly. Extending this metaphor describes storytelling as repair

293
work on the wreck.

 

2”Arthur \‘C’. Frank, The Wounded .S'torj'te/len Body Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995) 53.

292Ronald Dworkin, lift" 's Dominion: /1n Kim/Intent /1 hont Abortion, Euthanasia. and Individual I Treedom,

(New York: Knopf, 1993) 211.

293Frank 54.

224

These “repairs” are constituted by first “taking stock of what survives the storm,”
and then by “forming” the new self through “what is told”2” — through the telling of the

”295

stories about the self, or what Roy Schafer calls “self-stories. Frank takes this act of
telling one’s story to be a dual one: One is first telling the story to others, but also to

oneself: to others, to reaffirm one’s relationships and worth with those who are there to

witness the telling , and to oneself, to reestablish one’s own existence as a seh‘with a story.

Audre Lorde’s expression of her need to write after her surgery for breast
cancer begins, “In order to keep me available to myself. . .” Illness is a crisis
of selfin the specific sense of an uncertainty that one’s self is still there as an

. -- . . . . . 290
audience; the reaffirmation of this self as “available” 15 cruc1al.

According to Frank, this reaffirmation ought to be directed at several goals that he
takes to be central in storytelling: First, he calls for the kind of story that would create a
“sense of coherence” between the past, present, and future, and thus place the illness
experience in the context of time and memory.207 Second, he calls for a “good (illness)
story,” where such a story is just “the act of witness that says, implicitly or explicitly, “1 will
tell you not what you want to heat but what I know to be true because I have lived it. This

truth will trouble you, but in the end, you cannot be free without it because you know it

 

3‘“ Frank 55.
395 Frank 55.
3% Frank 56.

2‘" Frank 61.

225

”2

already; your body knows it already. 98 Third, he calls on us to reclaim “the capacity for

wonder. . ..at all the self can be” from the “bureaucratic rationalizations of institutional

a $299

medicine. In short, an illness narrative can be a way to rescue the act of one’s identity-
creation from the oppressive and alienating environment of the biomedical establishment
and allow one to, once again, begin the process of self-creation. He classifies these illness
narratives into three types as organizing and “listening devices” for the witnesses. This
tripartite division, Frank suggested, serves as a way in to the normative theory and practice

- - 3M
of illness narratives

’. Although I will not address his narrative taxonomy here, I mention it
in order to emphasize a curious comment that Frank makes regarding how we are to

approach all of these narratives. He claims that

If calling stories true requires some category of stories called false, I confess
to being unsure what a “false” personal account would be. I have read
personal accounts 1 considered evasive, but that evasion was their truth. The
more reconstructed the story, the more powerful the truth of the desire for
what is being told, as the corrected version of what was lived. Hearing the
desire in the story takes me back to the need for a different level of attention

. 3m
to StOflCS.

 

3"“ Frank ()3.
2‘”) Frank 68.

3“" These narratives include the restitution narrative, the chaos narrative, and the quest narrative,
although Frank noted that other kinds of narratives can certainly exist, as well.

3‘” Frank 22.

226

Although Frank notes a number of times the role of hearing the story — that is, the
second, and third-person standpoints of those who witness the narrative act — his primary
focus is on the telling of a story as a moral act. The normative force of storytelling, he
suggests, comes from the consequences of “thinking with stories”: He calls on the listener,
whether medical personnel, friend, or family, to “think with stories” — to “join with them;
allowing one’s own thoughts to adopt the story’s immanent logic. . ..The goal is
empathy....“resonance” with the other. . ..What the story teaches is that there is always
another story. . ..Thinking with stories means that narrative ethics cannot offer people clear
guidelines or principles for making decisions. Instead, what is offered is permission to allow
the stop! to lead in certain directions.”“'3 And thus the illness narrative “presents who the ill
person has become and stakes a public claim on this new identity. . ..Just as the experiences
that the narratives tell had to be made public, so the narratives themselves should be
retold.’”‘”

So, what kind of picture of narrative does Frank offer? Although I do not engage

with his claims in great detail in this dissertation, we can still distinguish several central ideas:

1. Any illness story that has as its source the suffering body of the
narrator is a good story, and ought to be given uptake by its
witnesses.

2. There is no such thing as “untrue” illness stories.

 

303 Frank 158-160.

3‘” Arthur W. Frank, “The Rhetoric of Self-Change: Illness Experience as Narrative,” .S'odo/ogica/
Quaint/y, 34.1 (1993): 42-49.

227

3. The role of the listener is somewhat passive: the speaker must be
allowed to speak the “truth” of the ill body.

4. Storytelling teaches us about our connections to each other, and the
responsibilities for our selves and for each other that these
connections engender.

5. By allowing the storyteller to reclaim himself or herself both from the
medical establishment as well as, to the extent possible, from the
identity—destroying power of illness, identity-constituting stories

empower the storyteller.

If we add to this epistemically, conceptually, morally, and in a number of other ways
vague conception of illness narratives the poetic freedom of narrative self-invention — say, of
the kind advocated by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Iroryi, and .S‘o/idarigl - our personal story
choices and descriptions of the truth within an otherwise normatively neutral language-game
are simply that: the stories that we are moved, for our own reasons, to tell as a result of our
specific circumstances.

Such relatively unconstrained storytelling is at the center of Rorty’s theorizing. His
was a call for a personal and social freedom from non—contingent philosophical (as well as
scientific, and other) rules, and a turn toward an understanding of the utter contingency of
our web of beliefs that would at the same time bring with it a respect for justice. He tells us
that the things and ideas that we take to be important are not so a priori, or because they are
the products of a great philosophical insight, or because they are the results of a carefully-
crafted deductive argument: they are so because, given our various contexts, events,

inclinations, and so on, we say the)! are. Thus, our “final vocabularies,” in Rorty’s terms — our

228

sets of beliefs which we tend to hold as more or less fundamental to our views of ourselves
and of the world — ought not be expressed though another’s narratives, and ought always be
open to revision. But revision and contextualization lot the ironist narrator himself or herseh: with
the full understanding of the important difference between being created by one’s own
contingent story and being created by the contingent story of another (which might
mistakenly be viewed as definitive or final).3M And it is only through our acceptance of this
contingency of knowledge — and indeed, of ourselves — that we can take up the liberal,
ironist task of remaking ourselves for ourselves — of constantly perfecting our own stories
without regard to external, universal, (or theoretical-juridical) ideals. Indeed, Rorty tells us

that he intends to create

a single vision [that will] let us hold self-creation and justice, private
perfection and human solidarity. . ..the aim of a just and free society [is]
letting its citizens be as privatistic, irrationalist, and aesthetiscist as they

8

II .
please.‘ "

Perhaps in part following]. S. Mill's “suggestion that governments devote

themselves to optimizing the balance between leaving people's private lives alone and

 

3‘” The ironist holds the following beliefs:

(1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she
has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;
(2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these
doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to
reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.

Richard Rorty, Contingengl, Irony, and .S'o/idan'ty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 73.

3’5 Rorty xiv.

229

. . 3
preventing suffering,” “6

this “vision” is grounded in the possibility of a new type of liberal
society, involving a realization of our personal and social contingency. The “liberal ironists”

who inhabit these historically contingent societies are individuals who

reconcile themselves to a private-public split within their final vocabularies,
to the fact that resolution of doubts about one's final vocabulary has nothing
to do with attempts to save other people from pain and humiliation. . . . We
should stop trying to combine self-creation and politics, especially if we are
liberals. The part of a liberal ironist's final vocabulary which has to do with
public action is never going to get subsumed under, or subsume, the rest of

3 7
her final vocabulary. U

This, then, makes possible a simultaneous process of engaging in private self-
invention as well as in a public search for justice and solidarity. Liberal ironism, therefore, is
grounded in a public-private split , with “ironism” suggesting the “private” aspect of our
self-invention, and “liberal” indicating the “public” task of the elimination, or at least the

minimization of, cruelty. Specifically, the public part of the split is grounded in the idea

that cruelty is the worst thing we do....The vocabulary of justice is necessarily

public and shared, a medium for argumentative exchange.308

 

30" Rorty 63.
3‘” Rorty 120.

3”“ Rorty xiv-xv.

230

The public sphere, therefore, serves as a check on the freedoms of the aesthetic self-
creation that defines the private one: In public — or, more precisely, in cases where
individuals other than myself might be affected by my actions and definitions — the task of
the liberal ironist is to create the kinds of institutions and practices that minimize cruelty and
encourage freedom.

In the private sphere, the ironist self that is created through a narrative, even if
perhaps not “unshared” in the way Rorty envisioned, is nevertheless “private [and] unsuited
to argument,’””° where by “argument” 1 mean a challenge to a given narrative based on its
form, style, or content. Such a self acknowledges that any idea, theory, or identity can be
changed simply by being redescribed and that, in the end, there is no final criteria among our
vocabularies — indeed, the language that we speak is always “up for grabs.” This self is also
aware that it itself is not immune to a constant renaming and re-forming through its own
forever-changing vocabulary. Our ironist identities, therefore, are never finished — and
especially not through a particularly compelling grand narrative — “because there is nothing
to complete, there is only a web of relations to be rewoven, a web which time lengthens
every day.”'”"

What this view of aesthetic storytelling — and thus of meaning-making — suggests is
that no self-definition, regardless of the source, contains within it any a pn'ori (or indeed,
agposterion) epistemic privilege: all methods of self-expression are just aesthetic creations that

serve to remind of the “final victory of poetry in its ancient quarrel with philosophy—the

final victory of metaphors of self-creation over metaphors of discovery.”‘”' Truth, therefore,

 

3”” Rorty xiv.
3'“ Rorty 43.

3" Rorty 40.

231

is what we ma/ee — not what we find — through our various descriptions and redescriptions of
the world (the possibilities for which are enriched and enlarged through the different
vocabularies we learn from reading works that serve as aesthetic and moral advisors) and is,
at its core, wholly dependent on the contingency of our language. In a Wittgenstinian move,
Rorty suggests that how we experience this truth is, importantly, a function of our words,
our vocabulary — of our stories. What we claim to know, therefore, is mediated by how we
talk about it.

At first glance, this any-story—is-a—good-story approach sounds plausible, and in, fact,
quite attractive. Indeed, if we take Frank’s optimism about the efficacy of stories and
storytellers, and combine it with Rorty’s argument about the private self-invention of the
ironist, we have the sort of narrator-witness relationship that requires not only tolerance for
any sort of identity-constituting illness story, but also blocks the objection that it does not
track anything external to itself. Identity, therefore, becomes an act of “self creation. The
process of coming to know oneself, confronting one’s contingency, tracking one’s causes

9,312

home. . ..thinking up some new metaphors. Every story counts no more and no less than
another based on an external (to the teller) criterion of verification.

But this picture should worry us quite a bit. On the one hand, the Frank-Rorty view
seems to rightly reject Schechtman’s constraints on the sorts of narratives that are identity-

constituting. On the other, its emphasis on self—invention begins to sound just a little

suspect when set against the backdrop of physical and psychological havoc that deep illness

 

3'3 Rorty 27.

Here, I do not address in any detail either Rorty’s claims about the difference of the private and public
sphere of stories or that we develop our ironist vocabulary by reading certain works, and then using it as a
guide to refine and restructure our own descriptive narrative abilities.

232

n3l3

can create — anything from an “ontological assault that throws our most basic

”314 that

assumptions about our lives and ourselves into chaos, to “biographical disruption
interrupts the life stories we thought we were living, to a wholesale dissolution of the
“building blocks of the perceived world,”"’5 including such things as language, time, and
space. Specifically, if any illness story is a good story, as per Frank, and if we can indeed
exercise the kind ofcomplete self-invention in the private sphere, as per Rorty, then we, at
least in Frank’s case, have a world where we ought to be not only unable, but unwilling, to
constrain any illness narrative. I will say more about why I take this to be a worry not only
for Frank, but for illness narratives in general in the next section when I address such
narratives in greater detail.

For now, I note that Rorty’s two moves — first, the private-public split, and second,
his emphasis on unconstrained self-invention in the private sphere — leave us in a troubling
place indeed. The public-private schism suggests that, although there are connections

between the two spheres in the sense that one who is an ironist privately is also a liberal

publicly, the two involve fundamentally different pursuits: self-invention and justice through

 

3‘3 Janoff-Bulman, R., .S'hattered assumptions: '1 ’on'ards a new psychology oftrauma (New York: Free Press,
1992); Kleinman, A., 'I he illness narratii'es: .S'uflen’ng. healing and the human condition (New York: Basic Books, 1988);
Taylor, 5., Positive illusions: Creative sel/Ldeception and the health}- mind, New York: Basic Books, 1989).

.S'ee also Crossley, Michele L., “Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/ Identity,” Theory c’y
Psychology 10.4 (2000): 527—546.

3'4 Brody, Howard, .i'ton'es ofsickness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Bury, M., “Chronic
illness: A biographical disruption,” .S'ocio/ogy of Health and Illness, 4.2, (1982): 167—182; Yardley, L., ed., Material
discourses of health and illness. (London: Routledge, 1997).

See also Crossley, Michele l.., “Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/Identity,” Theory C’?’
Psychology 10.4 (2000): 527—546.

3”Byron}. Good, “A body in pain: The making of a world of chronic pain,” Pain as human expen'ence:
An anthmpolqgicalperijrectite, eds., M. Delvecchio-Go<.)d, P. Brodwin, B. Good, and A. Kleinman (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992) 42.

See also Crossley, Michele L., “Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/Identity,” 'I'heog' 6'"
Psychology 10.4 (2000): 527—546.

233

the elimination of cruelty. While it is well beyond the scope of this dissertation to offer
anything like an exhaustive treatment of Rorty’s theories, 1 do nevertheless believe that the
public/ private spilt that he puts forth does not reflect the private and public nature of illness —
and especially deep illness. Indeed, while the experience ofillness — the suffering, grief,
frustration, and myriad other feelings and sensations that such an event usually elicits — can
be quite private, even oppressively so, the larger experience of, say, a patient in a hospital, or
in the family, or even in one’s own home where one requires assistance in one’s daily tasks, is
at least arguably public. Thus, given that deep illness seems to be public and private at the
same time, Rorty’s schism either (1) is designed solely for those who are not ill, and thus are
somehow able to separate their experiences and activities into the private and public, or,
more likely, (2) is, at least to some extent, misguided. I say that (2) is more likely because,
given the prevalence of serious illness (not to mention the illness that comes with age,
poverty, and so on), it would seem odd if Rorty’s concern for self—invention and the
prevention of cruelty only extended to those who were not also burdened by illness. Indeed,
if the tasks that would both liberate us internally and externally were only within the grasp of
the healthiest and most able among us, I would argue that his goal of the prevention of
cruelty would at the very least be threatened as a result of its narrow focus.

Rorty’s second move - his emphasis on self-invention — also gives us a reason to
worry when viewed in the context of deep illness. If there are indeed no definitive “final
vocabularies” and therefore no stories that are “better” than those told by someone else (or
in fact by the narrators at a different time), then it would seem that we might inhabit the sort
of universe where if I chose, 1 could narrate myself into a diminished, perhaps even debased,

existence.

234

I could tell the sort of story about myself that describes me as unworthy of good
treatment, attention, or love. I could invent a self that took private cruel treatment to be the
norm. I could create an identity that is known only to the extent that it is unwanted,
disgusting, weak, or insane. In Rorty’s world of the liberal ironist, I could do all of this, and
more, as long as my self-inventions are private. Yet given the difficulties with the public-
private division that I discuss above, as well as some of the consequences noted here, I take
Rorty’s emphasis on self-invention to be troubling both because of what it makes possible
and of what it proscribes: It makes possible a destruction of one’s identity as a being who is
a part of the moral universe through one’s stories about the self, and it forbids any external
limits on the contents of these narratives. The result, rather than Rorty’s private liberation
of ironist aesthetic freedom, is the possibility of the undoing of the self. And given the
special difficulties presented by deep illness, such conflation of aesthetics and morality can
indeed unmake our identities, and thus, to an important degree, our world.

To wit, when diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer at the age of thirty-one, Anne
Dennison recalled that “suddenly. . ..the axe had fallen. Gone forever....Everything [was]
gone all at once. . . . I was obsessed by the waste of it all . . . I regretted all the effort, all the
sacrifices directed towards a future which wasn’t going to happen. . . ””6 Frank himself
recalled the instant he was told by his physician that his cardiogram indicated the fact of his
heart attack by noting that while the doctor “seemed uncertain of the medical details. . ..I

hardly heard him; I was lost in a sense of sudden and profound change. In the moments of

 

3“’Anne Dennison, Uncertain journey: /1 llf’oman's Experience Of I jning ”Vith Cancer (N ewmill: Patten
Press, 1996) 1—5.

.i'ee also Crossley, Michele L., “Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/ Identity,” 'I'heory CL”
Psychology 10.4 (2000): 527—546.

235

that call I became a different person.”"’7 Similarly, Musa Mayer recalled how her experience
with cancer remade her identity into that of “an émigré to another, darker country, trying to
sort out what my new identity means. . ..[having] entered another world [and] forced to
survive in a hostile new landscape, fraught with dangers [where] the ordinary events of my
life had abruptly become irrelevant. None of the ingredients of my former identity counted
here.”"’8
Uncontroversially, therefore, when deeply ill, we suffer. This suffering is, of course,
not just physical (as if the physical pain of serious illness were not sufficient in itself!) — we
suffer due to what we perceive as the undoing of our identities. And to the extent that
identities are thus damaged, and given the numerous ways in which they are damaged, I
agree with Frank that we ought to be generous in our assessment of identity-reconstituting
narratives (and with Rorty that identity creation is, to some degree, an aesthetic act), and in
fact I take their more expansive view of what narratives “count” to be somewhat preferable
to Schechtman’s limiting emphasis on particular narrative shape, style, and structure. But my

agreement with their views goes only so far. Here is where it ends and where my own (albeit

tentative) view of what illness narratives are and what they ought to do begins.

 

3'7 Arthur Frank, A! The Will ()fThe Body (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991) 9.

See also Crossley, Michele L., “Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/ Identity,” Theory Ci"
Pryclrologyi 10.4 (2000): 527—546.

3‘3 Musa Mayer, Examining A'Iyseh} One Woman 3.87091 0/ ' Breast Cancer 'I'reatment/Ind Recovery (\X’inchester:
Faber & Faber, 1994) 23.

See also Crossley, Michele L., “Narrative Psychology, Trauma and the Study of Self/ Identity,” Theory (5’?
Piychology 10.4 (2000): 527—546.

236

II. Stories of Illness as Meaning-Making: The Possibility of Constrained Illness
Narratives

a. The Uniqueness of the Illness Narrative: A Few Clarifications

As I have argued earlier in this dissertation, our identity-constituting narratives
constitute our identities precisely because they serve as representations of who we are to
ourselves and to the world, and thus designate us as specific kinds of entities, marked for
certain sorts of treatments, freedoms, and roles. I have also noted that this “marking”
becomes that much more important when the narrator is one damaged by serious illness.
What this means is that when we are very sick, what we say about who we think we are, and
how what we say is received, becomes even more a matter of not just situating ourselves
within a wider social fabric of others trying to similarly situate themselves, but of struggling
to be heard while weighed down by the physically limiting and psychologically isolating
burden of illness. This, of course, is not to say that being burdened by illness is the only sort
of difficulty we might have in speaking and being heard: we could be otherwise constrained
by gender, race, disability, age, religion, and so on. However, it is well beyond the scope of
this dissertation to discuss all the ways in which our moral agency can be impaired as a result
of threats to the process of the constitution of our individual identities. I will content myself
with examining the kinds of challenges that serious illness tends to present.

These challenges are on the one hand unique to deep illness, and on the other may
possess a family resemblance to a number of experiences perhaps best described as a “shock

to the system.” I begin with a brief discussion of the potential resemblances.

237

Deep illness — the kind that I address here — can be terminal, chronic, or both.
Unlike an inherited trait or a congenital abnormality, it is not something into which one is
born, but emerges as a fact of one’s life, in the middle of one’s ongoing life narrative. It is
also unlike long-term conditions, such as arthritis, osteoporosis, athlete’s foot, or acne, for
although undoubtedly difficult, painful, and unwelcome, none of them (usually) has the
potential to annihilate and remain an always-present part of one’s identity for the rest of
one’s life. And it also can be distinct from accidental trauma, for illness suggests the sort of
internal betrayal by one’s body not necessarily implied by the externally—caused accident.

But deep illness does indeed share the traits of “othering,” shock, and isolation with
a number of traumatic events in our lives. For example, gender, race, religion, national
origin, or other features might designate us as “other,” and thus perhaps as unwanted. Thus,
an immigrant who does not know the local language and does not understand the culture
feels marked for exclusion, or a woman in an office whose staff consists entirely of men
senses her otherness and subsequent alienation. Similarly, a cancer patient, weakened and
exhausted by chemotherapy and hiding her hair loss under a hat feels like she does not quite
belong in a brightly lit mall, shopping with her non-ill friends for summer clothes -— she is
not the “norm,” she does not “belong.”

Moreover, the suddenness and unexpected pain of (some) divorces can produce a
shock to one’s system that is quite devastating to one’s identity. Indeed, the experience can
be so sharp and so surprisingly painful that .its effects on the stability of one’s identity can
rival the effect of the shock of an initial diagnosis of a devastating disease.

Finally, isolation is not something that is unique to deep illness. We can be isolated,
and thus our identities can be affected by, such events as unemployment, sudden poverty, or

even a lack of medical insurance. Just as an ill person might conceive of himself or herself as

238

being ‘on the outside, looking in,” so might someone who was previously gainfully employed
and is presently excluded not only from the social world that his job provided, but also for
the economic security and personal satisfaction that came with it.

And yet, I suggest that, despite some family resemblance, deep illness is nevertheless
qualitatively different from other sorts of devastating or identity-changing experiences.
Importantly, when I say “different,” I do not mean that serious illness is so distinct from
others kinds of experience as to merit its own experiential universe and vocabulary, but I do
suggest that it is sufficiently unique to call for its own account. The reasons for this are
three identity-altering characteristics that seem to be unique to deep illness.

First, there is the difference in the relationship to time. Unlike other potentially identity-
changing events like divorce, serious illness is not an event — it is a lifelong process. That is,
once a diagnosis has been made, the patient has to live with its consequences (and possibly
worsening symptoms) for the rest of his or her life. This is not to say that divorce cannot
impact one in a way that is lifelong — the difference is that while the divorced person might
be touched by the divorce (and all that led up to it) for the rest of his or her life, it might be
possible to move beyond its identity-changing effects. However, the terminal or chronic
patient has no such option— the illness is there, every day, and even if our mind tries to move
beyond it, the suffering body is there to remind us of the disease’s inevitable, and
inescapable, reality. Given this difference, I suggest that the way in which deep illness can
alter our identity, while sharing some common ground with events like divorce, is unique in
its complete claim on our time, both current and future. It never goes away.

Second, unlike other identity-changing events, deep illness is a kind of an internally-
jorced migration from the world of the relatively healthy to the world of the ill. What I mean is

this: Illness has the potential of quite literally placing me in the shoes of someone I might

239

never have imagined myself to be. We can of course imagine ourselves ill, just as we might
picture ourselves divorced, or poor, or even as an outcast in an unfamiliar world. The
difference, however, is that divorce, poverty, one’s “outcast” status, and even violent events,
such as rape, have their source in an external, potentially oppressive violence toward us by
others or by economic and social systems. Our identities are changed because abusive outside
force has been applied. In the case of serious illness, however, the movement is from the
inside out: it is our very body that seems to attack us, or fail us, or deceive us, and thus the
sort of “migration” that we make from trusting our bodies to a collapse of confidence in
them changes our identity not merely in the ways we relate to the world, but significantly, in
the ways that we relate to our own embodiment, to ourselves. As Howard Brody notes, deep
illness can mean “disconnectedness and disruption, in which the self is cut off from social
meaning and social support and experiences itself as divided from the body.”‘”9
Third (and somewhat related to my second claim), I suggest that serious illness can
be potentially identity—altering due primarily to the forced oulnerahiligr that it produces in the
part of the patient. I say “forced” because the kind of deep illness that I am considering
here makes itself known in the course of one’s life, rather than at birth or as a part of a pre-
existing condition — it forces one out of the semi-independent state in which most of us
exist, and into partial, and sometimes total, dependency (and thus vulnerability), often for the
rest of one’s life. This kind of vulnerability is qualitatively different from either external
oppression, for we can be vulnerable due to causes that have nothing to do with oppression,
or from other kinds of violent upheavals that can disrupt our lives, for these disruptions can

wreak havoc without necessarily making us vulnerable and dependent. For example,

someone with advanced Multiple Sclerosis might require the help of his or her family with

 

3'9 Howard Brody, Stories olii'ickness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 133.

240

certain daily tasks, thus exposing his or her vulnerability while not necessarily at the same
time suggesting oppression (although, unfortunately, oppressive care environments do,
unfortunately, too often exist). Moreover, someone who has experienced the upheaval of
war might indeed experience changes in his or her identity without also becoming more
vulnerable as a result.

Generally, my point is this: although deep illness is not unique in that it can change
our identities, the way that it changes them can sometimes differ from other identity-altering
events. The sort of disorienting, destabilizing shock-to-the-system that the onset of such an
illness presents, I suggest (and have suggested), calls for stories, and for the analysis of these
stories as a special problem for identity-constituting narratives. The differences in a deeply
ill. individual’s relationship to time, his or her internally-forced migration, as well as a forced
vulnerability suggest that the damage serious illness potentially inflicts on identity-
constituting narratives is serious, normatively critical, and worthy of distinct careful and
distinct consideration. Specifically, the kind of consideration that has to do with the question
of narrative constraint, or the worry about which narratives ought to be encouraged and
granted uptake.

But what this consideration means, and how we view illness narratives is quite clearly
not a settled matter. As 1 have noted above, I part company with what I take to be an
uncritical embracing of any and all narratives (as per Rorty) or illness narratives (as per
Frank). The rest of this section will be dedicated to explaining what I take to be a better -

that is, a more theoretically and practically fruitful — direction, and why.

241

b. Illness Narratives Reconsidered

Perhaps the simplest way to begin is to say that illness narratives are just potential
identity-constituting narratives told by us about our world when we are ill. The crucial part
of this definition, however, is “potential”: The dangerous question to ask is why some of
these narratives ought to be accepted as identity-constituting, while some others might be
more properly viewed as expressions and statements of the narrator that might very well
have some other value for the speaker and the witness, but which ought not be considered
central to the narrative that weaves together a picture of who we (and others) take ourselves
to be. I say “dangerous” because with any pronouncement about how things ought to be —
that is, with any claim that is at least on some level normative — comes the unspoken thought
(1). that things ought not remain as they are, and (more controversially) (2). that the speaker
knows hetter. I make no such claim of any epistemic privilege. Instead, I invite the reader to
consider some of the possible goals that might make sense in light of one being confronted
by deep illness, and then follow me in trying to formulate tentative criteria for narrative
uptake. In order to make my point more concretely (and thus less abstractly), I will turn to
the story of the struggles ofa particular elderly woman, in the grip ofa very serious (and
eventually fatal) illnessm For the purposes of this dissertation, I will call her Mrs. P.

Born and having lived most of her life in the Soviet Union, Mrs. P was a fiercely
independent and proud woman. Having lost her husband in the Second World War while
pregnant with his child, she never remarried, and raised a daughter by herself while at the
same time holding down a job and taking care of her ailing parents — a brazen and willful act

that was viewed with suspicion by her more traditional neighbors and friends. After her

 

37-“ I note that despite certain memory and other cognitive problems, she was ill neither with
Alzheimer’s Disease not (until the very last few weeks of her life) with dementia.

242

granddaughter, Sasha, was born, she dedicated every summer to her growrh and
development, teaching her, among other things, that fear can usually be overcome and that
patience has its own virtues, until they both departed for America. When her daughter’s
family fled to the United States in the mid 1908s, Mrs. P., already in her 605, followed them
on her own. Upon arrival in the United States, Mrs. P. wasted very little time adjusting to
her new environment, and, although first living with her daughter’s family before moving
out into her own apartment, once again took charge of Sasha, as well as helping with the care
of her son-in-law’s blind mother. To the best of her ability, she learned English and passed
the citizenship exam. She traveled alone and with friends. Apart from her remaining
brothers, she was often lonely but not overwhelmed by sadness: after all, she always noted,
she had her memories, her friends, her family, her own apartment.

When Mrs. P. became ill, it was not very obvious at first: a few infections, some
minor surgeries, some new medications, some problems remembering names and places.
But later, about a year before her death, although she could still do some things for herself,
she began to require daily care, mostly refused to take care of herself physically (although still
retaining some ability to do so), refused to go for walks, and generally withdrew, often
avoiding even her favorite activities of reading, watching old movies, and talking on the
phone with her granddaughter. She became impatient and easily frustrated, repeating “I
cannot,” “I will not,” “I am afraid,” “It does not matter,” “Leave me alone,” and “I want to
be alone” to most suggestions. And although her memory was often failing her, she gave up
trying to remember even the most basic things, like names of those to whom she was
speaking, but perhaps most devastatingly, she began to dissociate from her memories of her
husband, her daughter’s childhood, her home back in Russia. She withdrew from her clubs,

activities, and friends, frustrating all those who questioned her actions by claiming that “I

243

never cared for anyway,” or, with time, “Why would anyone want to have anything to
do with a stupid old woman like me?” In response to questions about her pre-immigration
life, she would just wave her hand and say “Does not matter now. . ..nothing matters now.”
In the few weeks before she died, she fell almost totally silent, refusing to speak or even to
look at the people in front of her.

First, a few clarificatory words about this story. A part of my motivation for
addressing the question of which narratives ought to receive uptake is rooted in what I
perceive to be fundamental errors made by Mrs. P.’s medical staff and her family during the
course of her illness. But of course I intend that my situation-specific observations here are
much more generalizeable, and suggest that my use of this particular story is only a means,
and not an end, of entering the conversation.

So what went wrong? Mrs. P.’s family, as well as the medical staff, listened to her
narratives — in fact, listened to them quite a bit. They connected with her suffering in the
way Frank suggested they ought, and they let her express her frustration and pain at her
increasing lack of freedom and mobility. She spoke what she took to be her truth through
her wounded body. Her physicians were sensitive to her experience ofillness (rather than
just relying on the clinical language of disease), and treated her gently and kindly, thus
precluding most standard bioethical objections about a removed, unavailable, or emotionally
bankrupt medical establishment.

The problem instead was the publicly-observed (and tacitly approved) destruction of
Mrs. P.’s identity. Until her last days, Mrs. P. was given the freedom to narrate herself into a
corner. Her narrative, and the sort of identity that it created, painted a picture of a self
which was not only unable to engage with others, but was hostile, isolated, but also

(especially in the eyes of those who did not already know her) unworthy of engagement.

244

And those who were responsible for the care — indeed, those who loved her — stood by and
did nothing, thereby allowing her to narrate herself out of existence. By this, I mean that she
convinced herself — and, by their silence, might have taken herself to have convinced most
of those who cared for her — that she was simply no longer the moral agent that she once
was, and that the sort of being she was becoming was physically, psychologically, and thus
morall , defective and not worth anyone’s time, including her own. The tragedy, therefore,
was not just that she died — it was how she died, and what preceded her death. Not only did
her narrative become a reflection of her view of herself as ultimately unworthy and beyond
repair, but those who surrounded her, through their silence — that is, through their lack of
counternarratives or any attempts to constrain her narrative — echoed her stories, even if
unwittingly. .And it is one thing, it seems to me, to deliberately leave — to write, or narrate,
oneself out of existence. An individual might, for a number of reasons, believe that her life
is effectively over, and that what is required is the kind of detachment that not only
physically, but psychologically and narratively, separates her from life as she had known it. It
is quite another for that individual to give in to perceived abandonment. And it makes all
the difference in the world whether we, as witnesses, leave an individual to do what she takes
to be the right thing for her after a careful consideration of her history, her personality, her
life, or whether we abandon her through silence and an inability (or perhaps a reluctance) to
challenge, and to engage with, a narrative that seems to have gone terribly wrong.

The conclusion of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death oroan Ih'ich offers a compelling example

of what I mean by “leaving” versus “abandonment”: As Ivan is about to die,

suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would

not leave his was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides,

245

and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt
them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. “How good and
how simple!” he thought. “And the pain?” he asked himself. “What has
become of it? Where are you, pain?”

He turned his attention to it.

“Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be.”

“And death...where is it?”

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. “Where is
it? What death?” There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.

“So that's what it is!” he suddenly exclaimed aloud. “What joy!”"2’

Thus, after fighting death and holding on to life for as long as he possibly could,

Ivan was ready to lease, he was ready to face whatever it is that awaited him beyond the pain,

beyond the illness. His desire to “free himself from these sufferings” was grounded in a

combination of epiphany and through-through understanding of his circumstances. This

deliberate, conscious leave-taking is markedly different from unmediated Mrs. P.’s drifting

into a narrative of insignificance and uselessness. Ivan Ilyich’s act of leaving becomes her

narrative slide into witnessed abandonment.

Given the number of people in her position (or worse) now and in the future, it

seems to me that we can both support a narrative conception of identity and still do hetter as

theorists and practitioners of all that such an approach implies. I suggest that “doing better”

 

32' Leo Tolstoy, The Death oj’Inan Ilyich, Chapter XII, The Classical Library, 3 .july 2007
<http://www.classicallibrary.org/tolstoy/ivan/index.htm>.

246

requires that we reevaluate how we approach identity-constituting narratives and what we
can reasonably expect of them — that we navigate a middle ground between a theoretical-

juridical approach to understanding identity and Frank’s narrative relativism.

(2. Which Illness Narratives? A Tentative Sketch

That simply taking any narrative to be morally justified simply by virtue of being an
illness narrative seems at best naive and at worst harmful to both the narrator and his or her
witnesses. Thus, the question to which we now must turn seems to have something to do
with justification — normative justification. How do we determine which illness narratives are
to be preferred over others, and what criteria do we turn to in order to support our
conclusions?

Recall that throughout this dissertation, I have argued that identity creation,
maintenance, and re-creation is distinctly moral work because our identities mark us as
particular sorts of moral agents in the world. I now suggest that this moral work extends
from how our .identities are put together to deciding whether and how to constrain the

narratives that constitute these identities.

i. Whether to Constrain Narratives

I take the question of whether they ought to be constrained to be a clearer one, for it
seems that without any sort of constraints, we might passively endorse fantastical, damaging,
misleading, or just plain false narratives as identity—constituting. Take the obvious examples

of someone who is in the later stages of a fatal disease, yet insists that he or she will be

247

“cured” and will be well enough to go to Hawaii with his or her family next year. Or the
patient who is in denial about a diagnosis, claiming that it just cannot be. Or one who is
claiming that “people like me” simply do not get “diseases like this.”

But, as I noted these are the easy cases, unacceptable as identity—constituting
narratives because they violate the most basic criteria for epistemic evaluation: they are not
consistent with the data or are, to some degree, incoherent.322 A more complex case is that
of Mrs. P., who makes no data—denying claims about being ill, or incoherent
pronouncements about the certainty of “getting better.” Indeed, she seemingly embraces
her condition in all of its grim reality and its inevitability. The problem with her narratives is
that they lack what Hilde Lindemann calls strong explanatory force, correlation to action, and heft?”

Although I take Lindemann’s intention to be to spell out some basic constraining
conditions for identity-constituting narratives, I think that her success is grounded in also
setting out some reasons for whether narratives ought to be constrained by means other than
those set out for Schechtman, among others. Because identity-constituting narratives are
very particular kinds of stories, Lindemann correctly tells us, they ought to be constrained in
ways that take account of, but also expand on, the sort of standard epistemic criteria I noted
above. Thus, identity-constituting narratives ought to have a strong explanatory force
because they “don’t just take the evidence into account — they’re the ones that fit the

evidence best.”"24 What this means is that in Mrs. P.’s case, some of the illness stories, both

those she tells about herself and those that others ended up telling about her, have to be

 

33"- I will not consider here the question of whether all fantastical narratives are necessarily harmful, or

even untrue. I will also save for another time the discussion about the possible psychological benefits of some
fantastical or data-contradicting narratives.

31” Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2001) 92-99.

324 Nelson 93.

248

discounted, given her history, her character, and her behavior throughout her pre-illness life:
either her life-long optimism, the people and activities that she cares about, and her general
attitude that it matters what we do with our lives constitute who she is, or her rejection of it
all, as well as others’ view of her as a difficult and bad-tempered old woman does. We can,
of course, suggest that perhaps she is a little of both, but we have to be very careful to make
sure that we assign the proper weight to all of these stories. If, for example, Mrs. P.’s
narrative about caring about her family is consistent and life-long, her current narrative of
detachment might reasonably be granted less credibility, and thus might be taken to be a
lesser component of her identity. People certainly change — and what matters to them
changes, as well — but in cases where stories are contradictory, or at least radically different,
we have to, as Lindemann notes, pay careful attention and try to determine which stories
carry the stronger explanatory force. Thus, the question of whether to constrain narratives is
addressed here in no uncertain terms: Given that narratives will conflict, some of them will
have to be constrained as identity-constituting ones. Otherwise, our identities offer neither
ourselves nor others any sort of coherent explanation as to who we take ourselves to be.
Lindemann’s second criterion, correlation to action, argues that we ought to
constrain narratives because sometimes there is very little relationship between what we say
and what we do. Thus, in Mrs. P.’s case, her statements that she simply did not care whether
she felt better or not — or about the trajectory of her illness — did not seem to correspond
very well with her meticulous following of the physician’s orders, including taking her
medication on time and carefully keeping her appointments with him. Given that her

”325

actions, as Lindemann points out, “speak louder than. . ..words, we should be able to say

that what she says does not explain what she does, or why she does it. Even if the

 

335 Nelson 95.

249

correlation is found lacking in a reverse manner — say, we decide that the words actually
represent the narrator more accurately than her actions for reasons such as duress, a lack of
certain capacities to act, and so on — the correlation to action criterion still provides us with a
reason to examine narratives, whether acted out or spoken, that appear to somehow not fit
or contradict each other. And while it is probably unreasonable to look for a perfect fit
between actions and words in the life story of any human being, when the lack of such fit
becomes egregious, we might very well have a reason to constrain a given narrative by
referring to its correlation to the narrator’s actions.

Finally, Lindemann’s third criterion, heft, proposes that “identity—constituting
narratives are woven around the features of people’s lives that they, or some of the rest of

$3326

us, care about most. W’e ought to constrain some narratives, therefore, because some
stories (either from a first-person or a third-person perspective) may fail to capture what is
central to being me. (Say, I might insist that I would not be really me if, as a vegetarian and
an animal-rights activist, I suddenly began to eat red meat and to support hunting for sport).
Both first and third-person perspectives matter because we ought not necessarily exclude
narrative for the sole reason that a narrator cares very little for its content, just as we ought
not necessarily include it for the reason that third parties take it to be important. Thus, just
because Mrs. P. seems to care very little for her memories of her husband during her illness
is not a reason to take her memory-denying narrative as identity-constituting. After all,
during her whole life, her memories of him were very much a part of who she was. And

merely because the new nurse in the hospital assumes that because Mrs. P.’s paperwork says

“national origin: U.S.S.R.” she is unable to communicate in English and thus does not

 

33" Nelson 96.

250

engage her in any way is not a reason to take that nurse’s narrative about Mrs. P. as identity-
constituting, either. What matters — and why constraining narratives is moral work in

itself — is that we try to form as accurate a picture as we can of who the narrator is for both
her sake as well as for those who encounter her. And this work, Lindemann correctly notes,
is quite different from “art” or “the pursuit of aesthetic or self-serving or political ends.”327
It is quite different, therefore, from the kind of creative self-invention advocated by Rorty or
the liberation-through—narrative relativism of Frank. This difference is not merely
teleological — it is grounded in Lindemann’s insistence that constraining the narratives that
are to be identityuconstituting is part and parcel of the moral work of identity creation and
re-creation. And as Mrs. P.’s case suggests, such careful discernment is especially apropos in
the case of deep illness.

To Lindemann’s criteria for why we ought to constrain narratives, I add two more
reasons that are related, yet distinct. First, we must constrain narratives because contexts both
matter and’change. And this ought not be too surprising — after all, we might very well be
different people when we are in formal work settings then when we are relaxed with our
friends, or when we address large crowds in auditoriums rather than small groups in more
intimate settings. The context of our interactions, the power relations and differentials that a
given context might suggest, and our sense of our own position all play a role in the kinds of
identity-constituting stories that we might find ourselves telling and hearing. This context-
dependency becomes even more pronounced and morally significant in cases of deep illness,
where the context has dramatically shifted for the ill individual: As Mrs. P.’s case has

demonstrated, the deeply ill patient has to be seen and understood in her new context as an ill

patient, and the failure to grasp the significance of this changed context by others — her

 

337 Nelson 98-99.

251

new and potentially threatening surroundings, her depression, the burden of her illness —
can lead to the kind of mute abandonment I described above. The understanding of the
power that context can have, therefore, can very well prevent those who care for the
seriously ill from expecting the kinds of behaviors and narratives that that have witnessed
and heard pervious to the diagnosis. That is, a better attunement to context (and its effects)
might lead to a better attunement to the narratives that are told in these contexts. As a
result, these witnesses might more sensitively listen, and therefore constrain, the sorts of
narratives that might be destructive, or false, or, as in Mrs. P.’s case, indicative of the
growing self- and other-imposed abandonment. If seen, and understood, in her sudden
distress, Mrs. P’.s process of dying might have been quite different indeed.

Second, narratives must be constrained because doing so is both compassionate and just.
What I mean by “compassionate and just” is that it is simply unkind and unfair to take Mrs.
P. at her word that she no longer cares for her husband, her daughter, her granddaughter, or
her friends. Unkind, because to do so is to assume that she is in fact just the angry and
reclusive woman that she appears to be in the current context of her illness, and unfair
because such an assumption is simply not reasonable given the history of her beliefs and
behaviors.

Note that by suggesting the wrongness of such assumptions and actions I am in no
way arguing for a kind of an essentialism about identities — indeed, I am not claiming that in
seeing Mrs. P. in such a negative light, we do not see the “real” Mrs. P. Instead, what I am
suggesting is that seeing her onhl in this light shows a careless disregard for her whole person,
with her history, her beliefs, and her memories, and reduces her to who she might be at one

of the lowest, most difficult points in her life. And by not constraining her narratives that

252

neglect or even disparage this former, fuller, self, we diminish her not only in our eyes, but in
her own.

One way to View my two additions to Lindemann’s reasons for why we ought to
contain narratives is that they build on, and extend, the credibility criteria by arguing that
narratives that ignore context, compassion, or justice lack the necessary explanatory force,
and therefore are good candidates for challenge. These narratives lack this force primarily
because they do not take into account the storyteller as a whole person on the one hand, and
the specific circumstances of his or her experience on the other. If we are serious about the
claim that the narratives that become identity-constituting carry significant moral weight and
therefore deserve careful evaluation, then it seems to me that the notion of credibility has to
include considerations of not only the fact that a story is told by an ill individual, but also how
it is told, and in which circumstances. But so far, we only have a tentative answer as to why
we should constrain narratives. 1 now turn to several’suggestions as to how to instantiate

this “why.”

ii. How to (Possibly) Constrain Narratives

Although it is essential to my task to make a case for why we ought to give uptake to
some narratives and not others, the question of how to do so remains. I conclude this
chapter, and indeed this dissertation, by offering some tentative suggestions that might point
us in the direction of normative justification.

The question, then, is this: how do we know if the illness narratives that we wish to
encourage as identity-constituting — where by “encourage” I mean take seriously, inquire

about, retell, and so on — are the ones that merit such preferential treatment? The answers

253

that I offer have perhaps as much to do with my views on illness and dependency as with a
desire for some measure of epistemological and moral certainty.

Our options seem few: (1). Develop a theoretical-juridical list of principles that each
narrative ought to satisfy in some way in order to be identity-constituting; (2). Following
Frank, among others, accept any and all narratives as potentially identity-constituting;
or (3) Adopt a middle ground in our reasoning about illness narratives -— what Aristotle
called “for the most part” moral generalizations, and what Margaret Olivia Little saw as a
possibility for moral justification in narrative ethics."“’ Having offered critiques of
options (1) and (2) in earlier sections, I extend the possibility of this “middle ground” to
illness narratives and suggest that (3) is a potential starting place for discourse about their
status as moral claims.

As a step toward this middle ground, I begin with Margaret Little’s argument for
defeasible generalizations, which will help guide us in the subsequent analysis of narratives.
The reason for introducing her views is that they create the space for the consideration of
particular narratives, in all of their variety, contexts, and voices, as candidates for moral
evaluation. And given the normative nature of our identities, I take it to be an essential task
to also attempt to normatively ground the process of determining which narratives ought to

be counted as identity—constituting, and why.

 

32" In Nicoruachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that, because ethics is the sort of subject matter that it is, it
can only be stated “roughly and in outline,” with its principles true only “for the most part” (1094b1 1-27).

The Internet Classics Archive, ed. Daniel C. Stevenson, October 2000, MIT, 3]uly 2007
<http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html>.

Also see Howard Brody, .S'tories of.S'ickness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 234;
Brad Hooker and Margaret Olivia Little, Moral Particularism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 276-304;
Little, Margaret Olivia, “On Knowing the ‘W’hy’: Particularism and Moral Theory,” The Hastings Center Report
31.4 (2001): 32-40.

254

 

Thus, Little claims that, rather than just existing as a collection of a cacophony of
stories with shifting valences, moral particularism admits of what Aristotle called “for the
most part generalizations” about moral judgments. Such a claim is neither a statistical one
about the rate of occurrence of certain events, for then it would not be “robustly
explanatory,”320 for “[e]xcept in areas like quantum mechanics, which are ruled by genuinely
statistical laws, statistical generalizations are contingent ones,” nor is it an “’enthymeme’—a
claim containing suppressed premises we could fill in if we just had the time,” where “’for
the most part’ generalizations are indeed explanatory, but they are thought capable of serving
that function only because the exceptions are in principle eliminable.”""U

Instead, “for the most part” generalizations, such as “lying is mostly wrong,” or “it is

usually right to have respect for persons” are both “porous and genuinely explanatory” in

that when we say that a generalization has a certain feature

what we really want to say is not that such a connection always, or even
usually, holds, but that the conditions in which it does hold are particularly
revealing of that item's nature. We might put it by saying that we're asserting
what happens in "normal" conditions, except that the notion of ’normalcy' is
so freighted with misleading connotations. Better put, then, we are taking as
privileged, in one way or another, cases in which the item has the feature
specified. There are various ways in which that privileging move can take

place. . ..3‘”

 

33” Margaret Olivia Little, “On Knowing the ’W’hy’: Particularism and Moral Theory,” The Hastings
Center Report 31.4 (2001): 32.

33” Little 32.

33' Little 32.

255

Specifically, “for the most part” generalizations work something like this:

Suppose. . ..somebody wishes to send a message to your neighbor,]oe. You
come back from work every day on the subway and walk home from the
station, and each day when you walk past,]oe is sitting on his front porch
reading his newspaper. It seems to be joe’s nearly infallible daily ritual. Are
you justified in saying that you can take the message to Joe, having confidence
that you will see him on his front porch today, also, and be able to give him

the message?”2

The answer is most likely “yes.” And our answer might become even more certain if
we know several more facts aboutjoe: “Joe was not on the porch; he was mowing his back
lawn. But you also know that those were days when it had rained incessantly for a week
previously and those were the fist available times thatjoe could get out the lawn mower —
you know thatjoe prizes a neatly mowed lawn as much as he prizes his daily newspaper

- 333
ritual.”

Even if we take into account the possibility of exceptions — say, thatjoe is ill and
has to stay indoors, or on vacation, or whatever else might make us stop and wonder
whether we can take the message tojoe - unless the exception is truly unexpected, we,

through observation of joe over time, can assure ourselves with some (not absolute) certainty

that he will reliably be where we expect him to be. Whether our decision is right, therefore, is

 

333 Howard Brody, .S'tories offi'ickness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 214.

333 Brody 214.

256

not decided in an epistemic vacuum, but depends on a number of other facts about the
situation.

The point is this: while we cannot make an absolute, universal rule aboutjoe’s
porch-sitting behavior as would be necessitated by the theoretical-juridical model, we can
still make a “for the most part” judgment that would apply to cases similar to the ones we
have observed over time. That is, two epistemic shifts take place. First, as a result of
observation over time, we become better at discerning, observing, and interpreting particular
kinds of cases because we are interested in making informed decisions based on reasonable
likelihood of patterns. Second, we begin to better see the weight of conceptual priority of a
given situation. Through repeated practice, we become more precise discerners of what
counts as the more fundamental features in like cases — features that are much more reliable
in guiding our judgment than the exceptions and changes that can take place at the
periphery.

Even though thus far 1 have been discussing the process of coming to reasonable
empirical judgments, I take this “for the most part” approach to be a philosophically robust
way to begin considering moral judgment in general and the process of constraining illness
narratives in particular.

First, generally, defeasible, or “for the most part” generalizations will not grant us a
fixed view of what the moral nature of actions or dispositions. just as we could not discern
with absolute certainty if joe would be sitting on the porch on particular day so we cannot
give a final and fixed answer to the question of, say, when lying is justified or unjustified. As
I noted above, what matters is the practice and skill with which we approach and navigate

moral decisions.

257

“For the most part” generalizations, however, do “preserve a distinction between
actions or dispositions that can, and those that cannot, properly be said to have a moral
nature.’”‘” just as certain behaviors that we have observed in the case of Joe have led us to
make certain defeasible judgments that reasonably predicted his actions, so, through moral
discernment, we can begin to pick out which sorts of considerations tend to hold, what sorts
of considerations are moral concepts, and thus tend to justify our judgments, all things
considered. And this discernment helps us, as Little notes, in “knowing what Aristotle called
the ’why’ rather than the ’that.’ For mastery of moral concepts is mastery of defeasible

- - 33:
generalizations.” ’

The practice of moral work, therefore, will lead us to appreciate the
porous stability of certain concepts so that we can, in the end, say that certain kinds of
stories are morally troubling, and thus might be candidates for rejection. Such a conclusion
will not be grounded in a codifiable principle, but neither will it be a whim of the observer —
it will be grounded in a defeasible reason which fairly reliably tells us which states of affairs
are morally suspect. Thus, as witnesses, we might not merely sense that a particular story
ought not be identity-constituting — we might have a well-grounded judgment as to why
Second, specifically, there are (at least) two perspectives to consider in the case of
constraining illness narratives that rely on “for the most part” generalizations, although 1
think that they are very much related. First, the patient-specryic perspective: I have noted above
that by watchingjoe and his habits, we can develop a reliably well-grounded judgment about

his whereabouts, and thus act on them with some expectation of (imperfect) reliability.

Illness narratives, I suggest, might work in very similar ways: in trying to determine how to

 

33“ Margaret Olivia Little, “On Knowing the ‘Why’: Particularism and Moral Theory,” The Hastings
Center Report 31.4 (2001): 32.

335 Little 32.

258

discard one narrative as non-identity-constituting in favor of another that is, we might take
into account a substantive pattern of narratives in which someone has engaged over time.
Thus, for example, Mrs. P.’s illness narrative about “never having cared” for the sorts of
things that mattered to her over her lifetime might, “for the most part,” be taken to be less
identity-constituting (or perhaps even non-identity—constituting). On the other hand, her
careful attention to her doctor’s orders, including her insistence that she be on time to see
him, might be viewed as quite consistent with her pattern of paying attention to details and
concerning herself with, among other things, her own well-being.

Such observations, however, do not rely on a mere mathematical analysis of the
likelihood or frequency of one pattern of narratives versus another. While a historical
pattern is of course an important part of the witness’s judgment-making process, what is at
issue is the priority of certain concepts, values, or beliefs of the narrator, and how they
intersect with the role of the listener. What this might mean is that while a family member
with a longer, deeper relationship with the patient (but no medical experience) has a different
understanding than a physician of how to interpret a given narrative, they both share the
fundamental goal of helping the patient find her voice and re-create her identity. It is from
this basic concept of the patient re-engaging with herself that the individual conversations
about variations of how to go about it can take place. This analysis by no means suggests
absoluteh/ that Mrs. P’s more “negative” narratives are always to be constrained in favor of her
more “positive” ones — a deeply ill person might very well not wish to attend parties or
even entertain guests in her home, even if doing so has previously given her much joy. The
point is that this context-dependence does not preclude the existence of some genuine

practices, beliefs, and values on the part of the narrator that are in fact more fundamentally

259

identity-constituting than others, and that can be judged by those external to the narrator to
be worthy of serious uptake, and thus of moral justification.

There are, of course a number of objections — most of which I take to require much
more space and time than I have here. I will briefly note only a few.

To begin, it is of course a presupposition of my view that in order to be able to make
decisions about illness narratives, those engaged in the decision-making are able and willing
to take the time to know the patient. Given the structure of the medical establishment (not
to mention the alienation that can be found even within the closest of personal
relationships), this is not always possible. What is possible, I suggest, is at the very least an
awareness on the part of medical staff and others who care for the patient that listening to
patients’ stories, judging what one hears, and acting on that judgment, is a moral act. The
physician especially is in a position to make wellsinformed judgments from the number of
cases — and thus the number of stories — that her she hears thought his or her career. To
learn to actively and critical/i hear what the patient is saying, and when puzzled, to inquire into
how a current narrative compares with the rest of the patient’s pre-illness life story, is itself a
normative act that may go quite far in helping a wounded narrator reconstruct a damaged
identity.

Moreover, the “for the most part” judgment about which narratives ought to be
constrained and which ought to be given uptake seems to be, on the one hand, too relativistic
in regard to context, and on the other, too quickly claiming a certain level of unearned
normative competence in cases where such judgment have an enormous impact on an
already-vulnerable population of seriously ill individuals. To this, I respond by first
acknowledging the very legitimate concerns about the lack of moral rigor and unjustified

confidence. However, I believe that we might begin to address both worries by adopting a

260

more humble stance toward both our ability as narrators and as listeners. What I mean is
that, given that we necessarily inhabit both roles continuously, we should, to the extent
possible, try to remain open to our weaknesses as storytellers — and thus avoid the
indulgence of the relativistic any—story-is-a-good-story position— as well as to our tendency to
become rigid in our judgments as listeners about which stories matter, and why. Attending
to our experience with stories might teach us what tends to matter most across cases and
individuals, while the specific contexts of individual narratives might move us to see a
particular narrative, as told by a particular storyteller, as identity-constituting for reasons that
we might not have yet imagined.

Second, the deeply ill patients-ingeneral perspective. The question, although very similar to
the patient-specific one, becomes a larger, theoretical one of how to understand and thus
normatively constrain an almost limitless number of narratives, such as one encounters in
medical practice. I conclude this chapter, and this dissertation, by suggesting several
organizing ideas that those who are confronted by a cacophony of stories, as well as those of
us addressing individual ones — might consider, and the reasons for considering them.

First, we ought to keep in mind that in a clinical setting — or in any setting where one
is made vulnerable by serious illness — serious, identity-threatening power differentials exist.
As the healthy listeners and caretakers of the narrator, we must therefore be careful not to
grant identity-constituting status to narratives that directly or indirectly support, enforce, or
create an oppressive power structure. This means, as listeners, we have to do the moral
work of challenging narratives that, like Ms. B’s and S’s, diminish and disempower the
patient -— and we must do so even if allowing such narratives might help the medical staff
by depicting the patient as compliant, passive, and “easy to handle.” Moreover, as a matter

of a general (yet defeasible) consideration, we might tentatively support the narratives of

261

possibiligi that emphasize the patient’s “1” which “does” rather than the “I” which is “done
to.” This requires some clarification. What I mean is not that independence and activity
ought to be taken as necessarily identity-constituting when neither of them remains available
to the patient. But what might be maintained — or re—created — is a kind of “staying in one’s
life”, where one is still a moral agent who is capable of a number of actions, even if they no
longer include physical activity or independent living. And “staying in one’s life” seems to
suggest that there is someone to “keep” the patient there.

What this means is that, importantly, deciding which narratives ought to be identity—
constituting is only the beginning — it is only a part of our roles as listeners and as
caretakers to help guide the ill individual through the identity-annihilating experience of
serious illness. The other part of our moral work involves redefining, through our words
and our actions, what it means “to do,” to be a moral agent, to be a part of the moral
community. Specifically, this means helping the deeply ill patient understand that even if
staying in his or her life might no longer include doing so with one’s pre-illness capacities,
such as independence, active participation in work, family life, or even wardrobe decisions, it
still very well includes other views of being, other kinds of moral agency, that are valuable and
important in themselves: thinking; loving; expressing anger, fear, happiness, frustration,
hope, and so on; when possible, sharing decision-making responsibilities — and being
acknowledged, being held, as a member of the moral community in the process. And
perhaps, through the epistemic, moral, and metaphysical darkness that too often descends
with a terminal or serious chronic diagnosis on us as patients and as those who care for the
patient, we can, through storytelling and story—witnessing, come to know each other again,

where

262

 

the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”6

 

33" T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” IiourQuar'tets, ed. Tristan Fccit,]une 2000, 3 July 2007
<httpz//www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/>.

263

 

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264

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