The big idea: Right now, someone is reading these words — a bare, in-the-moment 'you'. But you're also a whole life story: born there, grew up like this, hoping for that.
Two things called 'me': Those are two different things we both call 'me' — and it's worth asking which one is really you.
Cognitive science needs to split them because they show up in different places in the brain and in different experiments. So philosophers name them: the minimal self and the narrative self.
Hold onto this: Don't blur them: the minimal self is thin and now (just 'someone is experiencing this'); the narrative self is thick and over time (a whole remembered, planned-for life). Both are real; the question is which is the real you.
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Start with the thinner of the two — the self stripped back to almost nothing.
The minimal self: just this moment's owner: Strip away your name, your memories, your plans. Something is still there: a bare point of view that this experience is happening to. That's the minimal self — the here-and-now owner of the current experience, and nothing more.
What survives memory loss
It's what stays when a person loses their memory yet still clearly feels the pain, sees the light, is someone to whom things are happening. Thin, but unmistakably present.
Checkpoint — minimal self: In one line: the minimal self is the bare, here-and-now owner of your current experience — thin, but real. Hold that — the next idea says the self you actually live is far thicker than this.
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Now the richer self — the one you mean when you tell someone who you are.
The narrative self: a life told as a story: Ask someone 'who are you?' and they tell a story: where they came from, what they've been through, what they're aiming for. The narrative self is that story — the self built by stitching your memories and plans into one ongoing tale with you as the main character.
The story makes the self
On this view you don't just have a life story; the story is what makes you a continuous self at all. Change the story — through memory loss, or a life-changing event — and in a real sense you change.
Minimal self
- Bare here-and-now experiencer
- Captures: the raw fact that experience has an owner
- Misses: everything that makes you a particular person
- Survives total memory loss
Narrative self
- A whole life told as a story
- Captures: the rich, particular person you actually are
- Misses: it may be partly made-up (we edit our own story)
- Can break when the story breaks
Go further — higher-level insight: Spot the sharp objection to the narrative self: if the self is a story, and we quietly edit our own stories to flatter ourselves, then the self might be partly a fiction — a useful one, but not simply 'found'.
Go further — link it to no-self: That links straight back to the no-self view: maybe there's no solid self underneath, only a tale we keep telling. Making that link is a top-band move.
Checkpoint — narrative self: In one line: the narrative self is the rich, particular you built from your life-story — but a story can be edited, so it may be partly made.