title: The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity
creator: Dennett, Daniel C
subject: Logic
subject: Philosophy of Mind
description: What is a self? I will try to answer this question by developing an analogy with something much simpler, something which is nowhere near as puzzling as a self, but has some properties in common with selves. What I have in mind is the center of gravity of an object. This is a well-behaved concept in Newtonian physics. But a center of gravity is not an atom or a subatomic particle or any other physical item in the world. It has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example of what Hans Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract object. It is, if you like , a theorist's fiction. It is not one of the real things in the universe in addition to the atoms. But it is a fiction that has nicely defined, well delineated and well behaved role within physics.
publisher: Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum
contributor: Kessel, F.
contributor: Cole, P.
contributor: Johnson, D.
date: 1992
type: Book Chapter
type: PeerReviewed
format: text/html
identifier: http://cogprints.org/266/1/selfctr.htm
identifier:   Dennett, Daniel C  (1992) The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity.  [Book Chapter]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/266/