Language, Intentionality and Appropriation

In the mid 80s Daniel Dennett has published a series of articles on the problem of the self. His suggested solution to the problem is rather unique and seems to be at odds with some more recent work on the subject. It is my aim to try to square his thoughts with some other approaches that tentatively point to quite different sources of selves. Dennett in all of his papers relies heavily upon a strategy that made it all the way to the title of one of them. He speaks of selves as centers of narrative gravity (Dennett 1992). This strategy uses two crucial components – language and fiction. Let me say few words about each of them. First, in accordance with a general tactics of his postbehaviorism and fully in line with his method of heterophenomenology (see Dennett 1991), he treats mental phenomena in linguistic terms. We only know of a presence of the former via our confrontation with the latter. Psychological self receives the same treatment. Claiming to capture a fundamental building block of the self, Dennett gives elaborate examples of linguistic practices that lead one to become oneself. It is in the game of asking and answering questions on their history, present conditions and future plans or desires that organisms arrive to a coherent, stable and lasting view of their selves. He doesn"t seem to be troubled by questions of subjectivity, i.e. what constitutes subjects and whether in fact some accounts of their selves is needed. At various points where he speaks of subjects, he dismisses philosophical explanations and wants to replace them with biological ones (e.g. Dennett 1989)