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Alasdair McIntyre -- "The Story-Telling Animal"

NOTE: This reading is not in the current edition of your text.  It will be handed out in class.

Before looking at MacIntyre, let's sum up what we've got to this point.

A. Perry dialogue -- Focus is on the SOUL theory of identity; that who you are is determined by your individual soul.

PROBLEMS: The immateriality of the soul makes is difficult to explain the connection between the soul and the self. Since all evidence about who you are is tangible and physical (whether it be bodily continuity, continuity of memory, continuity of psychological states, etc.), how is this to provide evidence for an intangible soul?

B. Locke -- Memory theory of identity...who you are depends upon consciousness of your present and past states of consciousness.

PROBLEM: Thomas Reid's "Gallant Officer" objection -- how can the young boy punished for stealing apples be identical with the officer decorated for bravery, and the officer be identical with the general at retirement, but the young boy NOT be identical with the general?  Also, the Lockean circle (that you  must pre-suppose your identity to determine what are genuine and what are apparent memories, which is itself essential to determining who you are, which requires distinguishing genuine from apparent memories, etc.) It is not (as Locke supposes) that identity depends upon memory, but just the reverse; memory (to be verified as genuine) depends upon identity.

C. Michaels -- Bodily theory of identity -- Uses vivid examples to suggest that perhaps who you are is more closely linked to possessing a certain body than you might think. If a certain Dr. Nefarious erases all your memories, replaces them with Ronald Reagan's, and proceeds to torture your body with RR's memories, wouldn't we describe the situation as one in which YOU are undergoing horrible torture all the while BELIEVING you are RR? If this intuition is sound, then since all that is being tortured is the body, perhaps the BODY is the source (or at least a major source) of identity.

PROBLEMS: Depends upon how we cash out the example; if you are given all of RR's memories, "you" would not be thinking "Hey, how come I remember talking to Gorbachev? Why am I attracted to Nancy Reagan?", etc.  What you would be thinking is this: "What am I (Ronald Reagan) doing in this body? Where's Nancy? Where are all my Secret Service bodyguards?" Now, are you still worried about the torture? Isn't this sounding more like the Gorg-the-powerful-and-benevolent-ruler case?

MacIntyre argues that the difficulties of the preceding views stem from a false presupposition each shares; that one's identity is some single identifiable element which can be isolated from the many elements of one's character. This is simply false. Rather, your identity (your being the same person over time) depends upon the unity and coherence you can bring to the many elements that constitute your "story" or "narrative."

Consider the following: suppose that in the middle of my lecture, I pull out a glass bowl, crack six eggs into it, add flour and sugar, etc., all without deviating one whit from my lecture. MacIntyre argues that unless you know about my intentions, my beliefs, the setting within which the actions occurs, etc., you can't even call what I'm doing an action (as opposed to some nonconscious reflexive movement, as when the doctor whacks your knee with a rubber mallet). To try and explain the action without reference to all these is to fail to explain it.

Analogously,  your identity cannot be understood in isolation (just as an action cannot be understood -- even as an action -- in isolation) from everything else. MacIntyre calls this "Parfit's point", after the philosopher Derek Parfit: the criteria of strict identity (A is A and cannot be not-A) makes identity seem to be an all-or-nothing matter. (Either I'm Mark Hebert or I'm not, and that's that...). HOWEVER, the psychological continuities of personality are a matter of more-or-less, and can't fit with the notion of strict identity. MacIntyre writes:

"But what is crucial to human beings is that with only the resources of psychological continuity, we have to respond to the imputation of strict identity. I am forever whatever I have been at any time for others -- and I may at any time be called upon to answer for it -- no matter how changed I may be now." (p.369-70) 

TRANSLATION: we've got a more-or-less type of evidence being offered in response to an all-or-nothing question.

The self , MacIntyre argues, is not a simple, single element. Instead, you are:

1) the subject of a narrative that runs from your birth to your death, which in turn means that

2) accountable for the actions which compose this life. By this MacIntyre means that you can be asked to give an account of what happened at an earlier point in your life. (If you cannot give an adequate account, we either doubt that you are who you claim to be, or that the event is part of your history). This in turn requires that you are

3) responsible for making your account intelligible. It must square with the accounts others may have of a given action of mine, and with the ways in which my narrative intersects with theirs. But this itself presupposes that there is some identity which you possess; that the concept of personal identity is itself meaningful.