![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
Both Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson appeal to autobiographical memory in developing their accounts of personal identity. Although both scholars share a similar conception of autobiographical memory, they use it to develop theories of personal identity that are radically distinct. Memories that are relevant for personal identity are generally considered to be personal (autobiographical) memories of those events in one’s lifetime to which one can gain first-personal access: memories from-the-inside. Both Schechtman and Strawson base their discussion of personal identity on exactly this type of memory. Empirical evidence shows, however, that personal memory imagery is not only visualised from-the-inside, from a “field” perspective. Personal memories may also involve “observer” perspectives, in which one sees oneself from-the-outside in the remembered scene. Both Schechtman and Strawson appeal to the notion of remembering from-the-inside, but they remain silent on the phenomenon of observer perspectives in personal memory. I suggest that accounts of personal identity that appeal to memory should consider observer perspectives as one aspect of personal memory. I explore the implications that the acknowledgment and inclusion of observer perspectives would have for both Schechtman’s and Strawson’s accounts. Even though autobiographical memory is not their theoretical target, both Schechtman and Strawson base their accounts of personal identity on their understanding of autobiographical memory. Therefore, their depictions of the nature of personal identity are founded upon an incomplete picture of autobiographical memory.
Acknowledgements
A huge thanks to John Sutton for all his invaluable help, advice, and support. I also thank Paloma Muñoz, Richard Menary, Mark Rowlands, John Campbell, Patrick Stokes, and two anonymous reviewers for extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank the participants at the workshop “Point of View in Memory and Imagery: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives on Perspective” at Macquarie University (2013), for enlightening discussion and questions on this topic, especially Lisa Libby, Margherita Arcangeli, Dorothea Debus, Daniela Helbig, Mel Rosen, Talia Morag, Catriona Mackenzie, and Wendy Carlton.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Christopher Jude McCarroll works on philosophy of memory and mental time travel. He has a particular interest in perspective in episodic memory and imagination.
Notes
1 The terms “self”, “person” and “personal identity” are used interchangeably throughout most of this paper. When there is a distinction I make this clear. I also use the terms “autobiographical memory”, “personal memory” and “episodic memory” interchangeably.
2 In fact, Wollheim marks out another form of iconic event memory―acentred event-memory―in which the remembered event will be viewed “from no point of view within that event” (Citation1984, 102). But, as I show in section 4, neither acentred event-memory nor observer perspectives play a role in Schechtman’s theorising about the self. It is centred event-memory—and hence the field perspective—that is of fundamental importance to Schechtman’s account of continuity of identity.
3 By this Schechtman means that one need not maintain the exact emotional response or affective connection to past experiences: one may disapprove of them to a certain extent―they may not all be positive connections to one’s past―but overall, even if one is not fully aligned with one’s past psychological life, one needs to demonstrate an understanding of and a profound sympathy for those past states and experiences. This will be elucidated through several of Schechtman’s own examples.
4 Both psychological continuity theories and narrative theories of self describe, in Schechtman’s view, an important part of the picture of when psychological change will be identity preserving or identity changing. If change is to count as personal development, rather than one that threatens identity, then it is important to show the intelligibility of such change. Both psychological continuity and narrative views emphasise the importance of such transparency of change. Schechtman’s point, however, is that even though this intelligibility of change may be necessary for preservation of identity, it is not sufficient. She believes her notion of empathic access is the missing ingredient in accounts of diachronic identity.
5 Schechtman (Citation2014) has since developed the Person Life View (PLV) of personal identity, which attempts to answer questions of identity in a more literal sense, and moves somewhat away from the notion of empathic access. PLV will be discussed in section 7.
6 Some authors argue that narrative theories conflate the subject of the narrative with the narrative itself: “the subject of the narrative is something different from the narrative itself” (Stokes Citation2012, e95). See also Goldie (Citation2003, 303), and Menary (Citation2008).
7 In a reply to Stokes (Citation2010), Strawson changes the term “Episodic” to “non-Diachronic” (Strawson Citation2011b). Strawson writes that “the term ‘Episodic’ carries potentially misleading associations: there’s no reason to think that a non-Diachronic’s experience is likely to be bitty or fragmented, rather than flowing, in a way that the word ‘Episodic’ may suggest” (Citation2011b, 171, fn. 1).
8 What Strawson is describing here is in tension with a number of psychological accounts of episodic memory. Tulving (Citation1985), for example, introduced a form of consciousness (autonoesis) associated with episodic memory, which is characterised by one’s awareness that one has personally experienced the past event. Autonoesis involves the ability to mentally time travel, not only by “reliving” events from one’s past, but also by imagining events in one’s future, such that one is aware of one’s “protracted existence across subjective time” (Wheeler, Stuss, and Tulving Citation1997, 334; see also Suddendorf and Corballis Citation1997). This notion of autonoetic consciousness jars with Strawson’s claims of discontinuity between past and present selves. Strawson, though, may say that this begs the question against him. See also Butler’s circularity objection to Locke’s memory criterion of the self (in Perry Citation1975, 99–105).
9 Thanks to Patrick Stokes and an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to highlight this.
10 This line is from Rilke whom Strawson quotes (Citation2004, 432). Rowlands appeals to the same passage from Rilke to outline a class of memory he calls Rilkean Memory; even though Rilkean memories no longer have content, they “place you in a concrete relation to your past and the experiences you had in that past” (Rowlands Citation2016, 72).
11 Schechtman argues that such generalised memories pose a problem for psychological continuity theories of personal identity (Citation1994, 8). Schechtman takes her account of the self to be going beyond psychological continuity theories but she too ignores these condensed memories in her discussion of empathic access.
12 Thanks to two anonymous reviewers who suggested this point.
13 It also seems plausible therefore that Schechtman knows about Wollheim’s rejection of observer perspective memory.
14 Mackenzie notes that her notion of an external perspective in imagination draws on Goldie’s work on the external perspective involved in recollection. Mackenzie also notes the field and observer distinction in psychological work on memory (Citation2007, 141, fn. 10). See also Goldie (Citation2012) who emphasises the role of external perspectives in successful narratives.
15 For Strawson all experiential phenomena are mental phenomena. However, not all mental phenomena are experiential phenomena, e.g., beliefs, (Citation2017, 22, fn. 9).
16 See also Stokes (Citation2011, Citation2015), who develops a novel approach for uniting the perspectival subjects (notional and actual subjects) in imagery. Stokes does so by invoking the phenomenal property of Kierkegaard’s “contemporaneity”, a kind of personal responsibility for an event which provides “a phenomenally rich sense of co-identity with representations of one’s past and future selves” (Citation2011, 121).