Phenom Cogn Sci (2016) 15:2141

DOI 10.1007/s11097-014-9352-4

Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal

Daniel D. Hutto

Published online: 14 February 2014

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract Decoupling a modestly construed Narrative Self Shaping Hypothesis (or

NSSH) from Strong Narrativism this paper attempts to motivate devoting our intellec-
tual energies to the former. Section one briefly introduces the notions of self-shaping
and rehearses reasons for thinking that self-shaping, in a suitably tame form, is, at least
to some extent, simply unavoidable for reflective beings. It is against this background
that the basic commitments of a modest Narrative Self-Shaping Hypothesis (or NSSH)
are articulated. Section two identifies a foundational commitmentthe central tenet
of all Strong Narrativist proposals, those that posit a necessary link between narrative
self-shaping and narrative self-experience. As will be shown, in the hands of Strong
Narrativists the latter notion is unpacked in stronger or weaker ways by appeal to the
notion of implicit Narrativizing. Section three reminds the reader of Strawsons (2004a)
challenge to Strong Narrativism. It is revealed that Strawsons objections are most
effective if they target Strong Narrativisms central tenet construed as a phenomeno-
logical revelation about what is necessary for self-experience and not merely the
psychological Narrativity thesis, construed as an empirical hypothesis about typical
Narrativizing proclivities. Having set the stage, section four critically examines two
different strategies, pursued by Rudd (2012) and Schechtman (2007) respectively, for
escaping the horns Strawsons dilemma poses for Strong Narrativism. In the end both
strategies invoke the notion of implicit Narrativizing at a crucial juncture. Section five
reveals that a substantive proposal about what implicit Narrativizing might be is
lacking, hence we have no reason to believe that it actually occurs. It is concluded
that, as things stand, Strong Narrativism has no way of avoiding the horns of
Strawsons dilemma. Brief concluding remarks in the final section are a reminder
why, despite their modesty, softer versions of the NSSHwhen coupled with a

D. D. Hutto (*)
School of Humanities and Social Enquiry, Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, University of
Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
e-mail: ddhutto@uow.edu.au

D. D. Hutto
e-mail: d.d.hutto@herts.ac.uk

D. D. Hutto
School of Humanities, University of Hertfordshire de Havilland Campus, Hatfield, Hertfordshire AL10
9AB, UK
22 D.D. Hutto

developmental proposal about the narrative basis of our folk psychological compe-
tenceare non-trivial and worthy of further development and investigation.

Keywords Strong narrativism . Psychological narrativity thesis . Reason understanding .

Folk psychology . Mindreading

1 Introduction

All the worlds a stage, And all the men and women merely players. So penned the
Bard, supplying the lines for some actor to speak in As You Like It, Act II Scene VII.
Taking up Shakespeares figurative analogy between human life and theatre, we might
playfully wonder: who writes the scripts of our lives?
Of course, no one seriously thinks that human lives really take the form of enacting
scripts crafted by some playwright. Yet there are those who defend somewhat closely
related ideas: that we somehow author our own lives; that our lives have an essentially
narrative form; that selves are essentially narrative entities; that we live our lives
narratively (for an overview of the claims of narrativist claims from strong to weak
see Schechtman 2011). There are those that take very seriously that there is an indelible
link between living out or experiencing our lives in terms of narratives and the capacity
of individuals to shape who they are. For example, Rudd (2012) claims:

Insofar as I am able to make decisions and to do things for what I take to be good
reasons I am creating the narrative of my life, rather than just performing from
a pre-existing script (p. 178, emphases added).

That there are special links between self-shaping capacities and the exercise of
narrative capacities captures an important truthand such links deserve further expli-
cation.1 Nevertheless, Strong Narrativist formulationsthose foundationally commit-
ted to the idea that the narrativizing in question takes the form of implicit Narrativizing
(with a capital N)embed eminently challengeable and hard-to-defend claims. One
of the most pivotal of these problematic claims, expressed in various ways, is that
coherent self-experience always and everywhere involves implicitly storying episodes
in ones lifewhere this is thought either to involve (a) Narrativizing in which such
episodes are grasped in relative isolation or (b) Narrativizing in which such episodes are
grasped as standing in relation to ones life as a whole.
This paper attempts to bring to light some compelling reasons to be suspicious of Strong
Narrativism. Happily, a weaker version of the Narrative Self Shaping Hypothesis (or
NSSH)one that steers clear of the formers problematic commitmentsis available.
Decoupling a modestly construed NSSH from Strong Naturalism, this paper attempts to
motivate devoting our intellectual energies to the former. Here is how the action unfolds.
Section 1 briefly introduces the notions of self-shaping and rehearses reasons for thinking

1
I follow Rudd in adopting the terminology of self-shaping because I agree with him that it has more
positive connotations than self-control while not necessarily implying anything quite as radical as self-
creation (Rudd 2012, p. 16).
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 23

that self-shaping, in a suitably tame form, is, at least to some extent, simply unavoidable for
reflective beings. It is against this background that basic commitments of a modest
Narrative Self-Shaping Hypothesis (or NSSH) are articulated. Section 2 identifies a
foundational commitment at the core of Strong Narrativist proposals, those that posit a
necessary link between narrative self-shaping and narrative self-experience. As will be
shown, in the hands of Strong Narrativists the latter notion is unpacked in stronger or
weaker ways by appeal to the notion of implicit Narrativizing. Section 3 then reminds the
reader of Strawsons (2004a) challenge to Strong Narrativism. It is revealed that Strawsons
objections are most effective if they target Strong Narrativisms claims about the way we
live or experience our lives narratively where these are construed as a phenomenological
revelation about what is necessary for self-experience and not merely as an empirical
hypothesis about typical narrativizing proclivities. Having set the stage, section 4 critically
examines two different strategies, pursued by Rudd (2012) and Schechtman (2007)
respectively, for escaping the horns which Strawsons dilemma poses for Strong
Narrativism. In the end both strategies invoke the notion of implicit Narrativizing at a
crucial juncture. Section 5 provides reasons for thinking that we lack a substantive account
of what implicit Narrativizing is supposed to be. That being the case, as things stand, we
lack any good reason to believe that it actually occurs. It is concluded that, unless further
explicated, Strong Narrativism has no way of avoiding the horns of Strawsons dilemma.
The brief concluding remarks of the final section are a reminder that softer versions of the
NSSH, that make no commitment to Strong Narrativism, are possible and worthy of further
development. It is also shown that, when coupled with a developmental proposal about the
narrative basis of our folk psychological competence, these softer proposals are not trivial
despite their comparative modesty.

2 Self-shaping and narrative self-shaping: the problem of the normative

A central leitmotif of existential philosophy is that we can play an active part in shaping
who we areindeed, that we simply have no choice but to play an active part in
projects of self-creation. Insisting that we are self-made beings, constantly embroiled in
radically free projects of self-becoming, classic existentialism asks us to denounce a
common interpretation (borrowing from Shakespeare once again) of Poloniuss injunc-
tion: This above all; to thine own self be true (Hamlet, Act I, Scene III). On one
natural interpretation of these lines, Polonius appears to be assuming that there is such a
thing as a true, pre-existing selfa self that is already there within us, a self to which
we must somehow be faithful. Accordingly, the project of self-knowledge would have a
purely descriptive end: to know oneself would really be a matter of getting a clear and
unobscured view of ones underlying attributes. Executed correctly, this would be to
grasp what one truly is, in essence, without distortion or interference.
Over and against this purely revelatory model of self-knowledge stand existentialist
proposals. Existentialism rejects the idea that self-understanding is really about taking a
spectatorial view of our true, pre-given self in favour of the idea that selfhood is best
conceived as a matter of non-self-identity (for example, as becoming or self-
overcoming, or as being what one is not and not being what one is, or as being doubled
or divided) (Mulhall 2013, p. ix). But extreme versions of existentialismthose which
promote the idea that selves are entirely of our own makingencounter a well-known
24 D.D. Hutto

problem: for it is not as if selves are created ex nihilo. Rather if we are responsible for
creating ourselves to any extent then this is so because we possess certain attributes
attributes without which we would not be beings capable of self-creating at all. Not just
any kind of being has what it takes to be a self-shaper. Self-shapers must have special
self-reflective and self-regulating motivations and capacities.
Moreover, there are limits to self-shaping endeavors. Try as one might, no one is free
to remake themselves fully and completely, from the ground up. This is not a banal
observation about the contingently true fact that some of our attributes, habits and
tendencies are stubbornly persistent and resistant to alteration. There is also the deeper
fact that self-shaping will always be necessarily limited by other constraintsfacts of
biology and history, which are beyond our control (Rudd 2012, p. 13). One cannot, for
example, change facts about ones lineage or origins. Self-shaping individuals are never
working with unshaped, property-less raw material from the start. There are always
some features of individuals that are simply beyond anyones capacity to alter.
All of that said, there is a tamer version of the idea that we, as reflective beings, have
no choice but to exercise freedom and responsibility in shaping ourselvesa version of
this idea avoids the excesses of extreme self-creation views. Korsgaard (1996) provides
a particularly transparent articulation of this tamer idea, calling it the problem of the
normative. By her lights, the root situation is this: The reflective mind cannot settle
for perception and desire, not just as such. It needs a reason (p. 93, emphasis original).
She illustrates the predicament faced by reflective minds in the following way:

I perceive, and I find myself with a powerful impulse to believe. But I back up
and bring that impulse into view and then I have a certain distance. Now the
impulse doesnt dominate me and now I have a problem: Shall I believe? Is this
perception really a reason to believe? I desire and I find myself with a powerful
impulse to act. But I back up and bring my impulse into view and then I have a
certain distance. Now the impulse doesnt dominate me and now I have a
problem. Shall I act? Is this desire a reason to act? (Korsgaard 1996, p. 93).2

This is a way of understanding self-shaping that is not as extreme as the wilder

existentialist offerings despite the fact that it holds that, to some extent, self-shaping is
unavoidable for reflective beings. This less radical way of understanding reflective
autonomy still insists on the necessity of our actively shaping, and thus taking
responsibility for, at least certain central aspects of who we are. And to that degree, it
agrees with classical existentialist views that self-reflection cannot be properly under-
stood as a purely static or merely observational business.
If this is true it raises tricky questions about exactly how individuals can best strike a
balance between pursuing projects of shaping themselves while, at the same time,
recognizing and perhaps accepting certain of their traits and attributes as not

2
Rudd provides other examples of how coming to understand ones own state of mind is not merely a matter
of reportage. He suggests that even in cases in which we note certain longstanding attributes of ourselves we
are not entitled, in many cases, to treat them as fixed and unchangeable. Thus while I might reasonably take
account of my dispositions in planning what to do (I know Im nervous, or shy, so I know I will need to work
up slowly to this task, rather than just leaping in), it is Bad Faith to simply take them as givens
(Rudd 2012, p. 15; see also Goldie 2012, p. 76).
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 25

longstanding characteristics but perhaps indelible ones. How such questions are an-
swered is of enormous practical and personal import for individuals.3 However, for our
purposes it is enough to note that the basic idea that self-shaping is to some extent
unavoidable for reflective beings, as laid out in its softer form, is surely sound enough.
It is a significant advance on this understanding of self-shaping to suggest that
narratives are aif not, theprimary means of enabling it. Velleman (2000) defends
this idea. Like Korsgaard, he agrees that:
Purposeful activity is motivated by desire and belief, but it may or may not be
regulated by the subjects grasp of what he is doing. Autonomous action is activity
regulated by that reflective understanding which constitutes the agents rationale, or
reason the reason for which the action is performed (Velleman 2000, pp. 2930).
But Velleman goes further, articulating a specific proposal about what acting autono-
mously for reasons involves, linking it directly to narrative capacities. Thus he tells us
reasons for acting are elements of a possible storyline along which to make up what we
are going to do (Velleman 2000, p. 28). This qualifies as a modestly construed Narrative
Self Shaping Hypothesis (NSSH). In its simplest, unadorned version the NSSH amounts
to the idea that autonomous agents are beings that act for what they take to be reasons
(and who can consider and assess whether they are in fact good reasons); and who
therefore understand themselves in narrative terms (Rudd 2012, p. 184).
The NSSH holds that narratives play a central role in making it possible to evaluate
our reasons for acting by reflecting upon our impulses, dispositions and attitudes.
Narrative capacities make this possible by providing a way for us to think about the
particularities of our characters and situationswhat has gone on in our pasts and what
might occur in our possible futures.
A good first pass formulation of the NSSH takes it to say that narrative capacities
have a very important role to play in shaping who non-pathological individuals are
(for a book-length discussion of a modestly rendered version of the NSSH see Goldie
2012). 4 It should be beyond serious doubt that personal narratives about our lives
provide at least one familiar, natural means for understanding the wider significance of
our past doings and imagining our possible future actions. The narratives we construct
about ourselves can surely provide both a way of reflecting upon and motivation for
adjusting personal habits, dispositions, styles of engagement and attitudes.
These ideas connect with an embryonic version of the narrative proposal that I
advanced some while ago. Its primary claims were that:

The notion I have of myselfthat is as a person exhibiting certain characteristics

and fulfilling certain rolesis parasitic on my understanding of the selves of

3
For a useful discussion of one case study of this type see Rudds (2012, pp. 1516) exploration of the
competing and incompatible demands placed on Schechtmans (2005) imagined Fifties Wife and how these
might be addressed if not resolved.
4
Goldie (2012) adopts the general strategy I recommend. On the one hand, he rejects narrativism
characterized by a set of hyperbolic views about the place of narratives in our lives. On Goldies list of such
views are: Our lives are, in some sense, lived narratives of which we are the authors. Our lives are somehow
only comprehensible through a narrative explanatory structure Our having the right kind of narrative about
our lives is, in some sense, integral to or constitutive of our being the persons we are. Our very survival
depends on our having such a narrative (p. 1). On the other hand, Goldie also resists out and out scepticism
about narratives of the sort which can lead to the idea that narratives, whatever they might be, do not play any
significant part in our understanding of our lives (p. 1).
26 D.D. Hutto

others [Our capacity for this sort of] understanding has been given to me by
the stories and tales I have absorbed over the years. It is the characters I have
encountered, both real and fictional, that serve as models and points of reference
for my own self-understanding. I must learn the art of story-telling before I can
place myself within a narrative framework. If we accept this then self-knowledge
is not gained by looking inward (wherever this is supposed to be) but by being
able to give a story or account of oneself in narrative (Hutto 1997, p. 75).

By providing a window on our actual and possible doings the narratives we fashion
about our lives can help us to decide, for example, if our taking this or that action is
something we want to figure in the story or stories that we would want told about who
we are. It would be hard to deny that, personal narratives are at least one natural
meansand possibly, even the primary or ideal meansfor understanding and shaping
ourselves. Surely, it would be hard to deny that personal narratives are among the main
instruments that individuals regularly use to engage in projects of defining themselves
in important respects. This claim, softly pitched, is all that a modestly construed NSSH
requires.
The NSSH, so formulated, ought not strike anyone as obviously false or otherwise
incredible. Unfortunately, the NSSH is not always advanced in a modest form. Indeed
the idea that narratives play a part in self-shaping has received its greatest headline-
stealing attention when connected with and promoted under the auspices of some or
other version of Strong Narrativism. As a result different ways of grounding and
motivating the NSSH are pushed out of the limelight and can suffer from guilt by
association. Agreeing with critics of Strong Narrativism that we should be suspicious of
some of its fundamental claims, this paper makes a plea for exploring another viable
optionthat of taking seriously a modestly formulated NSSH. I return to say a few
words about how this notion can be connected with other proposals for understanding
reasons in the final section. Before suggesting a possible way forward, the next three
sections introduce Strong Narrativism and raise doubts about it.

3 Strong narrativism: stronger and weaker

Strong Narrativism insists that living and experiencing our lives narrativelyby
implicitly Narrativizing themis what constitutes us and determines who we are. A
foremost champion of this view, Rudd (2012), sees Narrativizing as required for self-
shaping of the sort described in the previous section. He contends that our ability to
create and live out our own life stories is inextricably connected with the capacity to
control and shape oneself, by endorsing some desires or dispositions, and repudiating
others (Rudd 2012, p. 2).
Rudds Narrativism is the strongest of the strong. He endorses a clutch of claims, all
of which he takes to be internally related, about what is required for genuine selfhood.5
This collection of interlinked claims makes up his Narrative, Evaluative, Self-
constitution and Teleology thesis (or NEST). He tells us that:

5
In other places Rudd trades in talk of intimate interrelations for something stronger, saying, narrative,
evaluation, (the limits of) self creation, and teleologyare all necessarily connected (Rudd 2012, p. 3).
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 27

A central claim of NEST is that the narrative, evaluative, (to an extent) self-
creative, and teleological aspects of selfhood are not distinct topics that can be
tackled separately, but that they are all intimately interrelated. Narrative has to be
evaluative; evaluation has to take a narrative form; such narrative evaluation is
teleological in character; and it is only through thinking of the self teleologically,
in narrative and (realistically construed) evaluative terms that one can properly
appreciate both what is right about the idea of self-creation and what its limits are
(emphases added, p. 4).

Rudd (2012) adds:

More importantly, this is not just a matter of understanding, as if it were a

detached intellectual exercise [it requires] living ones life as a narrative, in the
light of some conception of the good (emphases added, p. 4).

This last claim goes far beyond the commitments of a modestly construed NSSH of
the sort described above. A major difference is that NEST claims that self-shaping can
only be achieved by narrative means. This is not obviously true. It seems possible that
we might intervene upon and shape ourselves by other, non-narrative means. Someone,
S, might, for example, without making use of any personal narratives, keep a diary of
her thoughts and feelingsnoting their occurrence on specific occasions and in specific
circumstances. Furthermore, S might noteperhaps on the basis of some general
ethical theory to which they subscribe that having such thoughts and feelings on such
occasions, by anyone, would be inappropriate. S mightthrough the collection of such
information about herself (in this non-narrative way) and with appeal to moral princi-
ples of the said general theoryengage in a project of attempting to modify or shape
herself for the better accordingly. It seems possible that S might engage in such a
project without making use of anything that would qualify as a personal narrative about
herself. More work would need to be done to flesh out what this might involve. Yet if it
could be firmly established that this is a genuine possibility then it would defeat the
claim that Narrativizing is always and everywhere necessary for ethical projects.
Rudd (2012) insists that if self-shaping is to be other than a purely arbitrary process,
it requires the self to be a self-evaluating beingone that orients itself by reference to
what it takes to be values (Rudd 2012, p. 7). The case of S suggests that there may be
non-narrative ways of satisfying this requirement. This will be so if it turns out that S
need not employ narrative means of reflecting on her dispositions and attitudes (and
what she values are only the dictates of some general theory about the good). If this
possibility were realized, however psychologically odd it may appear, it would suffice
to undermine Rudds claim that ethical self-evaluation must take a narrative form
(Rudd 2012, p. 7, emphasis added). Likewise, it would put pressure on the related idea
that we need to understand the self teleologically, as being on a quest for its good
something that can only be understood in narrative form (Rudd 2012, p. 2, emphases
added).
Those who favour a more modest approach can avoid this sort of objection. The
claim that there is a strong link between narrative and self-evaluation would still be
interesting even if converted into a softer claimnot about absolute, universal neces-
sitiesbut about what is natural for most individualsnamely, as a claim about a
28 D.D. Hutto

familiar and, perhaps, non-accidentally standard mode of self-shaping in the non-

pathological human population.
There may be good reasons to think that personal narratives are, not by accident, a
natural and affectively compelling way of achieving the kind of self-reflection needed
for self-shaping. There may be an explanation why making use of personal narratives is
a psychologically prominent and effective means of self-shaping, even if it is not the
only possible means of doing so.
Even when formulated in a weaker wayin a way that disavows the stronger
commitments of NEST, the NSSH commits to the leading narrativist idea that there
is a special link between self-understanding and narrative understanding. That is to say,
even without endorsing full NEST the NSSH can embrace the claim that to understand
someonemyself or anyone elseis to be able to tell a coherent story about him or
her (Rudd 2012, p. 1). One thing that clearly distinguishes a modest NSSH from
NEST is that defenders of the latter view press for something much stronger. Following
in the footsteps of MacIntyre (1984) and Taylor (1985), fans of NEST acknowledge the
link between narrative and self-understanding but they also insist on the need to accept
a more radical, ontological thesis, according to which the self isat least to some
extentconstructed through its telling of its own story. The self is not something that
just exists, and is then narrated (by itself or by others); it only comes to exist through its
being narrated (Rudd 2012, p. 1, emphasis added).
This ontological thesis is the beating heart of Strong Narrativism. Rudd expresses
his commitment to this idea in various ways. Sometimes it is advanced as the thesis
that we live our lives as narratives (Rudd 2012, p. vi, p. 21). Sometimes it makes an
appearance as the claim that: narrativity is the way in which selves live their lives as
temporal beings (Rudd 2012, p. 6). In other places it appears as the idea that coherent
self-constituting experience is always and everywhere implicitly narratively informed.
As noted, NEST is a version of Strong Strong Narrativism. Not only does NEST
insist on strong necessity claims about the link between its various strands, it also holds
that the sort of self-shaping that is grounded in living a life narratively involve having
some sort of implicit experience of the narrative unity of ones whole life.
But one can commit to Strong Narrativism without accepting all of this. There are
weaker versions of Strong Narrativism that could be used to understand what narrative
self-shaping might involve. Schechtman (1996, 2007, 2011) advocates a weaker
version of Strong Narrativism that could do such work. It explicitly rejects some of
NESTs central commitments.
Schechtmans version of Strong Narrativism distances itself from NESTs claims (i)
that there is a necessary link between experiencing and living ones life narratively and
being on a teleological quest for the good and (ii) that in all cases we experience or live
episodes of our lives narratively by situating them in relation to a more encompassing
whole life narrative.6 Her weaker variant of Strong Narrativism does not commit to the
idea that making actions intelligible need be a weighty matter of situating the
significance of each of our token doings in the light of the meaning of our entire life
(Schechtman 2011, p. 402). She allows that the sense we make of our doings in
narrative terms can also be a much less remarkable and far-reaching affair: rather it is

6
For Schechtman there is no requirement that an identity-conferring narrative have a unifying theme, or
represent a quest or have a well-defined plot (2007, p. 163).
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 29

the sort of thing that can be achieved by narrating a series of small stories that need
have no overarching theme or purpose (Schechtman 2011, p. 403).
Despite this, her Narrative Self Constitution View (or NSCV) still incorporates
commitments that mark it out as a version of Strong Narrativism. Echoing some key
claims of NEST, it says:

we constitute ourselves as selves by understanding our lives as narrative in form

and living accordingly. This view does not demand that we explicitly formulate
our narratives (although we should be able, for the most part, to articulate them
locally when appropriate) but rather that we experience and interpret our present
experience not as isolated moments but as part of an ongoing story (Schechtman
2011, p. 398, emphases added).

Although Schechtmans NSCV is significantly weaker than NEST in a number of

important ways, it remains committed to the claim that coherent self-experience
depends upon our understanding and living out our lives in storied ways; by implicitly
Narrativizing our lives. Whether formulated in Strong or Weak ways, this is a funda-
mental shared commitment of both NEST and the NSCV. Examining its tenability will
form the focus of much of the remainder of this paper. The reason is simpleif this
core commitment proves to be problematic (as I believe it does) then this will give us a
clear reason to support the NSSH.

4 Strawsons sceptical challenges

Both NEST and NSCV hold that non-pathological self-experience requires experiencing
our lives narratively or as part of an on-going story. This is an idea that Galen Strawson,
famously, abhors. He is well aware that this Strong Narrativist claim and its standard
partners are immensely popular. Through gritted teeth, he observes that nowadays when
it comes to understanding the nature of our self-experience and selfhood talk of
narrative is intensely fashionable in a wide variety of disciplines including philosophy,
psychology, theology, anthropology, sociology, political theory, literary studies, reli-
gious studies, psychotherapy and even medicine (Strawson 2004a, p. 428). Strawson
laments this state of affairs. He aims to reverse this trend, exposing what is wrong with
the favourite idea of the narrative orthodoxythe idea that: we create or invent the
self specifically by writing or storying it (Strawson 2004b, p. 15).
Without further qualification, this not a proper target for Strawsons critical efforts.
This is because, as section one revealed, even Strong Narrativisms staunchest de-
fenders do not commit to such unguarded claims about self-creationism. Proponents of
NEST and NSCV do, however, clearly endorse the idea that coherent self-experience
depends on our living out or experiencing our lives narratively. And this claim about
narrative self-experience is minimally required for a Strong Narrativist account of self-
shaping, even if it is cast in NSCV and not fully-fledged NEST terms. This reveals that
Strong Narrativists are fully committed to something very close to what Strawson calls
the Psychological Narrativity Thesis (PNT). Officially, the PNT states that human
beings typically see or live or experience their lives as a narrative or story of some sort
or, at least, as a collection of stories (Strawson 2004a, p. 428).
30 D.D. Hutto

Anyone familiar with the debate over Narrativism knows that Strawson not only thinks
the PNT is false, he regards it as downright rotten. He regards Narrativism to be an illiberal
philosophical positionone that unhelpfully blinds us to the possibility of other, non-
Narrative modes by which we experience ourselves as temporal beings. Narrativism, he
holds, makes no allowance for Episodic ways of experiencing oneself, which is his label
for what he takes to be at least one decidedly non-Narrative mode of self-experience.
Strawson (2004a) negatively defines Episodic self-experience as the polar opposite of
Diachronic modes of self-experience. To be Episodic is to experience oneself precisely
such that one does not figure oneself, considered as a self, as something that was there in
the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future (p. 430, emphasis added).7
If Episodic modes of self-experience are so much as possible then it follows that
individuals can think about themselves as things whose persistence conditions are not
obviously or automatically the same as the persistence conditions of a human being
considered as a whole (Strawson 2004a, p. 430). Since Strawson regards being
Episodic in outlook as a parade case of having a non-Narrative outlook he holds that
if it could be established that it is possible to adopt an Episodic outlook this would
suffice to undermine the PNT.
Strawsons fundamental challenge to Narrativism is simple enough: it is to establish that
some people employ non-Narrative modes of temporal self-experience and, as such, that not
everyone tends to experience or live or see his or her life in a storied way. Strawson openly
allows that some people have Narrativizing tendencies when thinking about their lives, but
he denies all do.8 Indeed, he insists there are those who not only simply lack any Narrative
tendency, but that may have a positively anti-Narrative tendency (2007, p. 86).
In this light his target ought to be a version of PNT that is unrestricted in its scope
one that makes claims about what is true of the self-experience of the entire non-
pathological population. The fact is that Strawsons official style of argument does not
fit happily with framing the PNT as an empirical hypothesis about what is typical in the
non-pathological population. Formulated only as a descriptive thesis about typical
human tendencies for self-experience, the PNT precludes neither (i) the possibility of
non-Narrative modes of experience nor even that (ii) such tendencies might be realized
with some frequency in the non-pathological population. All the PNT rules out is that
non-Narrativizing tendencies are typical.
Thus framing the debate in the way Strawson (2004a) does should only invite a
discussion about how widespread Narrativizing, as opposed to non-Narrativizing
tendencies, really are. While that might be an interesting topic to examine, in philo-
sophical circles no one on either side of the Narrativity debate has offered anything by
way of serious evidence in support of claims about frequency or typicality of
Narrativizing as compared with non-Narrativizing tendencies. 9 Consequently, given

7
This is not to say that being Diachronic implies being Narrative. As Strawson (2007) makes abundantly clear
Diachronics neednt be Narratives, even if (as may be doubted) Narratives are bound to be Diachronics, for
the basic Diachronic experience of self and life exists just as defined in the absence of any specifically
Narrativestory discerning, unity-seekingattitude to ones own life (p. 86).
8
Strawson is upfront in saying: Everyone, I think, agrees there is such a thing as Narrativity, although there is
a large debate about what it is, exactly (2007, p. 86).
9
To be fair Strawson (2004a, 2007) does cite some cases from literature and history and these might be
thought to constitute some attempt to provide empirical evidence that non-Narrativizing self-experience is not
only possible but reasonably proliferate.
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 31

the way Strawson (2004a) originally formulates it, the truth of the PNT is wholly
consistent with Strawsons strongest item of evidence against Narrativismnamely, his
avowal that he himself exhibits non-pathological, anti-Narrativizing, Episodic tenden-
cies in his self-experience.
What this shows is that Strawsons real target should not be the PNT formulated as a run-
of-the-mill descriptive claim about how typical Narrativizing tendencies are in non-
pathological self-experience. Instead Strawson ought to be (and probably tacitly is) targeting
the central tenet of Strong Narrativism understood not as an empirical hypothesis but as a
phenomenologically undeniable truth about what is involved in any and all coherent self-
experiencethe idea that Narrative is Necessary for coherent Self-Experience (or NNSE).10
NNSE is an appropriate target for Strawons critique, and it is no straw man. As the previous
section established the two most developed statements of Strong Narrativism are both
committed to NNSE. NNSE is a, if not the, central pillar of Strong Narrativism.
Once the target of his critique is identified as NNSE it makes perfect sense for
Strawson to cite himself as an existence proof of non-Narrativizing tendencies. Only by
recognizing that his objection is directed at NNSE (and not the PNT) can we make
sense of his argumentative strategy in Against Narrativity. For in order to undermine
NNSE Strawson need only establish that Narrativizing is not necessary forhence not
an essential feature ofsome coherent self-experience. The foundations of Strong
Narrativism, strong or weak, will collapse if its critics can defeat NNSE and supply
even a single case of coherent non-Narrativizing, non-pathological self-experience.
Having clarified thiswe might wonder: hasnt Strawson (2004a) already achieved
this? Rudd (2012) and Schechtman (2007) claim he has not. The next section examines
two possible ways of replying to Strawsons challenge to Strong Narrativism. In the final
analysis, I argue, both fail. This gives us reason to be wary of Strong Narrativism, on the
assumption that there is no other tenable way for its proponents to answer Strawson.

5 Strawsons dilemma: two lines of reply

Strong Narrativism will be defeated if there exists a single instance of coherently

structured, non-pathological self-experience that does not involve Narrativizing.
Apart from citing his own tendencies as evidence, Strawson also attendsmore
neutrallyto what is involved in the everyday act of coffee making in order to set
up a different sort of challenge for Narrativists. He claims that if:

making coffee is a Narrative that involves Narrativity, because you have to think
ahead, do things in the right order, and so on, and that everyday life involves such
narratives, then I take it the claim is trivial (Strawson 2004a, p. 439).

Strong Narrativistsadvocates of NEST and the NSCVhave reacted to this triviality

charge in different ways. This is because they understand the nature of Strawsons

10
For the most part, it is clear that defenders of Strong Narrativism advance it as a structural revelation about
the nature of our phenomenology, but occasionally they also present it in ways that can look as if it is more
straightforwardly empirical in character: Our point is the descriptive one, that in normal adult humans, this
first-personal character of experience takes a specifically narrative form (Rudd 2012, p. 195)
32 D.D. Hutto

challenge differently. Despite this, in the end the way NEST and NSCV defenders reply
highlights an important fact: Strong Narrativists can only avoid the horns of Strawsons
dilemma if they successfully invoke a notion of implicit Narrativizing. At crucial points
both Rudd (2012) and Schechtman (2007) are obliged to invoke the notion of implicit
Narrativizing when trying to answer Strawson. This section shows why Strong
Narrativists of both stripes are compelled to make this move. The next section raises
concerns that the notion of implicit Narrativizing is not well defined enough to be able to
shoulder the theoretical weight Strong Narrativists need to place on it.
The first step is to look at the two Strong Narrativist replies in turn. Starting with
Rudd (2012), it is important to understand how he interprets Strawsons triviality
charge. By Rudds lights Strawson accepts that Narrativism is true in a limited
domainin coffee making type casesbut only in such a way that reveals it to be
banal. Accordingly, for Rudd, Strawsons real target is only what is claimed by the
more ambitious versions of Strong Narrativism such as NEST. Thus:

what Strawson really seems to be doing is conceding (however grudgingly) that

episodes like my coffee-making are teleological and therefore narrative; but
insisting that having all these narrative episodes going on does not mean that
my life as a whole amounts to a narrative, in any significant sense (Rudd 2012, p.
183, emphasis added).

With this in mind Rudd tries to persuade anyone swayed by such reasoning that
endorsing full-fledged NEST is, in fact, inevitable. To this end he tries to motivate belief in
the premise that short-term narratives are only really intelligible in the context of longer-
term narratives (Rudd 2012, p. 183, emphasis added). Rudd seeks to establish that any
purposeful activity, even a token act of making coffee, is something that needs to be
made sense of through a wider narrative (Rudd 2012, p. 183, emphasis added).
Why accept this? Rudd tries to convince us of its truth by reminding us of the sorts
of questions that we might ask in trying to understand the deeper reasons behind and
wider significance of any token instance of coffee making. This involves asking:

How does this particular episode of coffee making and drinking fit into my day
and my life? Is it the regular coffee I always make for myself at this time, the
making of which helps to give my day its familiar structure? Or a coffee I am
making for an unexpected visitor? Is it a bit of displacement activity to delay
getting on with some burdensome work? Is it the special blend I am proudly
making for my coffee-connoisseur friend? Does making it remind me that I need
to get more coffee in, or does the aroma suddenly take me back to a past love
affair in a distant city? (Rudd 2012, pp. 183184).

These questions are salient reminders that in order to understand the full significance
of any given doing we must situate it against a wider backdrop. Rudd thinks that this
fact justifies adopting NESTs version of Strong Narrativism. From it he concludes:

Even the simplest of present actions carries with it levels of meaning which point
into indefinite expanses of the past and future. As the coffee making example
shows, any particular narrative is always embedded in a wider narrative. A
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 33

particular narrative may be very brief, but it can always be extended, either by
going further back (or forward) in time, or by building in more detail (Rudd 2012,
p. 184 emphasis added).

Let us allow that it is true that it is narrative that makes what someone is doing at
one time intelligible by locating it with reference to what has gone before and what
future it is moving towards (Rudd 2012, p.186, Hutto forthcoming). Let us allow that
it is always, in principle, possible to situate any token doing or action within a larger
narrativea narrative that would make the said action more intelligible by revealing
where it sits in a set of wider connections.
Even if all of this is accepted it fails to establish Rudds desired conclusionnamely,
that each and every one of our token doings is always, already embedded in a wider
narrative. For the above claims are consistent with the weaker possibility that each and
every one of these actions could be so embedded and rendered intelligible by narration
in the way Rudd suggests. The fact that further questions can always be asked and
answered about a token action only establishes that narrating life episodes is always a
possibility for creatures that possess the relevant narrative capacities for this particular
form of self-understanding.
Despite Rudds strong assertions, nothing in what he says above will persuade a
sceptic to endorse his stronger conclusions about the omnipresence of Narrativizing.
Yet unless that stronger conclusion is secured Rudds reply, as laid out above, fails to
properly engage with Strawsons challengecertainly, it does nothing to defuse the
triviality charge. 11 As already noted, Strawson accepts that some people have
narrativizing capacities and tendencies; what he denies (as I have reconstructed his
target) is NNSEthat Narrativizing is necessary for coherent non-pathological self-
experience. Consequently, if Rudd is to defend his version of Strong Narrativism he
needs to defend something stronger than the idea that our narrative capacities can
always be potentially brought to bear on token doings or actions in order to reveal their
wider significance.
Rudd comes closer to supplying what is needed to do the job when he tries to
persuade us that we not only look back and tell storiesabout ourselves or about
othersbut we also live our lives forwards in narrative mode (Rudd 2012, p. 186,
emphasis added). Butat face valuethis too is not enough. For there are stronger and
weaker ways of understanding what living our lives forward in narrative mode might
amount to, and the weaker ways wont suffice for Rudds purpose. For example, living
my life forward in narrative mode may mean nothing more than I often explicitly
narrate what I will do before doing it.
Humans explicitly voice plans, make commitments and promises and they often
follow through upon forward-looking narrations. In fact, humans do this sort of thing
rather a lot. A mundane if crude example, which Velleman (2006) offers, is the act of
announcing to ones colleagues I am going home now before proceeding. The
speaker makes the utterance true by going home.
11
Strawson accepts the weaker claim that it is always possible to narrate token episodes in our lives. This is
made clear when he says: every human life is a developmental unity just in being the life of a single
human being. If this sort of developmental unity is sufficient for narrative structure in the sense of the
narrativity thesis then the thesis is trivially true of all human beings. Actually, dogs and horses can be the
subject of excellent biographies (Strawson 2004a, p. 440).
34 D.D. Hutto

It is important to observe that to count as explicit a bout of narration need not be

manifest publicly. As Goldie (2012) argues explicit narration is not necessarily public,
involving written, or spoken, or signed language or some other product that in some
way or other is necessarily already in the public domain (2012, p. 3). We must allow
for explicit if private narration that involves not text or discourse, but another kind of
representation: thoughts (Goldie 2012, p. 3). Accepting this last point does not, of
course, require adopting a contentious theory of mental representation or of the nature
of thought. All Goldie is underlining here is the utterly mundane facts that anything that
counts as a narrative must be publically narratable but not necessarily actually
publically narrated (Goldie 2012, p. 4). Explicit but private narration is the sort of
thing one engages in, for example, in preparing stories about ones past successes or
failures in advance, say, to report at an upcoming interview but then never getting the
opportunity to actually relate those stories. Goldie (2012) calls narrating in this explicit
but private mode narrative thinking through. This still counts as explicit narration
since (a) its product can be made public and (b) it involves processes of dateable,
constructive narrative activity involving certain sequences of thought, feeling and
imagination (Goldie 2012, p. 4).
It is hard to deny that we can, and often do, explicitly narrate our lives ahead of
ourselves, whether we do so publically or privately. No one need denyStrawson
includedthat we tend to frame our future actions in this way. This is especially true if
it is noted that explicit narration of our actions is not something that we need do
immediately before or while in the process of engaging in some activity. We may
explicitly narrate our commitments about future doings long in advance (as, say, when
we think about taking up a new role or moving to a new home years or months in
advance). But this provides no reason to think that we live our lives forward narra-
tively or that all of our purposeful activity is necessarily implicitly Narrativized in
some stronger sense. This is the crux. For if Strawsons triviality challenge is to be
answered Strong Narrativism needs to defend something more than the idea that we
can, and perhaps, often do explicitly frame what we are doing by narrative means, even
if we do not always make those narratives public.
Happily according to Strong Narrativists implicit Narrativizing is something other
than explicitly narrating, publically or privately. The notion of implicit narrativizing is
rather, as Rudd speaks of it, operating with an implicit sense of my life (Rudd 2012, p.
190, emphasis added). He adds:

normal human agents do have such a sense of themselves, though it may be in

large measure implicit and unarticulated. Thus my sense of who I am includes a
sense (however shadowy and implicit) of the whole of my past life (Rudd 2012,
p. 190, emphases added, see also p. 196)

It is no accident that Schechtman (2007) also calls on the notion of implicit

Narrativizing in order to defend against Strawsons challenge. This is so despite the
fact that her overall strategy for dealing with Strawsons challenge is quite different
from Rudds. Schechtman recognizes that in advancing the triviality charge Strawson is
in no way conceding that Strong Narrativism is trivially true, not even in a limited
domain. She is aware that Strawson is trying to put pressure on the theoretical notions
of Narrative and Narrativizing (distinguished from the uncontroversial everyday
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 35

lowercase notions of narrative and narrativizing) in a bid to expose that they lack any
substance. Schechtman (2011), I think, captures the true character of Strawsons
challenge better than Rudd does when she presents it as posing a dilemma for
narrative theorists. The dilemma is roughly this: either narrative views are too demand-
ing to be plausible or they are not narrative in any interesting sense (p. 408).
In reply to Strawson, Schechtman modifies her original NSCV, advancing a dual-
strand version that offers a narrative account of persons, on the one hand, and narrative
account of selves, on the other. This allows her, contra NEST, to hold that not all acts of
implicit Narrativizing require having a narrative sense of ones whole life. Her modified
NSCV holds that experiencing, and thus constituting ourselves, by Narrativizing that
takes stock of an entire life is something that we do when we think of ourselves as
persons. But the new NSCV allows that this is not the only way that Narrativizing can
operate in our self-experience. Tapping into Strawsons idea of the Episodic modes of
being, Schechtman (2007) allows, that phenomenological unity comes in smaller
packages too. Narrativizing can take the form of experiencing a given set of circum-
stances in our lives in ways that strongly grip us affectively and practically.
Schechtmans (2007) criterion for self as opposed to person constituting experience
is that for an action or experience to belong to myself I do need to identify with it or
care about or take an interest in it (p. 171). Drawing wider connections with events in
our lives that are more remote in time may be part of this kind of self-experience but
this will only be so if such events directly impact on the episode in question through
affective connections and identification (Schechtman 2007, p. 171). In cases where
that happens we may experience ourselves as selves not as persons.12
In bifurcating the NSCV in this way Schechtman hopes to make sense, within one
strand of her account, experiences of apparent Episodics like Henry James, who reports
thinking of one of his own works as that of quite another person than myself (quoted
in Strawson 2007, p. 85, see also Schechtman 2007, p. 175). Crucially, although the
new NSCV tries to acknowledge the legitimacy of identity-constituting Episodic self-
experience, it also holds that each self* is constituted by a narrative internal to it (p.
168). Hence the nature of Schechtmans peace plan is such that the existence of
Strawsons Episodics is not denied or neglected. Rather Schechtmans (2007) move
is to try to appropriately accommodate for Episodics within her version of Strong
Narrativism. Her strategy is to assimilate. Of course, she recognizes that whether the
strategy succeeds depends upon exactly how Strawson is thinking about the episodes
that make up an Episodic life (Schechtman 2007, p. 173).
A dual-strand NSCV can at least handle the Henry James sorts of case precisely
because it allows that (i) Narrativizing self-experience can involve identifying with
oneself as the same person with reference to ones entire life while at the same time
making room for (ii) affectively charged forms of Narrativizing self-experience that are
more restricted in range. It is in this way that Schechtman seeks to neutralize
Strawsons objection that in cases of Episodic self-experience a self-narrative is not
necessary (Schechtman 2007, p. 167).13 For even when Narrativizing is only of the

12
As Schechtman (2007) puts it, There really are two different questions of identity at issue in this view, and
each is answered with a slightly different narrative theory (p. 169).
13
Indeed, as Schechtman sees it, once a dual-strand NSCV is on the table many of Strawsons objections can
be seen to depend on conflating the NSCV account of persons and the account of selves (2007, p. 171).
36 D.D. Hutto

more Episodic sort it still involves a kind of story we tell ourselves about ourselves
and that having this kind of story is necessary to engage in certain kinds of distinctive
activities and interactions (Schechtman 2007, p. 172).
Coming by this different route Schechtman (2007) also reaches a point where she
needs to defend a notion of implicit Narrativizing: commitment to that notion lies at the
very heart of her NSCV. She tells us that the NSCVs most basic claim is that we
constitute ourselves by forming a narrative self-conception according to which we
experience and organize our lives. This self-conception and its operations are largely
implicit and automatic (p. 162, emphasis added). According to Schechtman our
Narrativizing self-conception is only largely implicit because she places an articula-
tion constraint on anyone whose identity is constituted by Narrativizing activity.
Consequently, such an individual must be able to articulate her narrative locally when
appropriate, or at least to recognize the legitimacy of certain questions (Schechtman
2007, p. 163; Schechtman 2011, p. 407). However, Schechtman (2007) also tells us that
being able to meet this articulation requirement demands that self-narration be more
than the subpersonal, background operation of knowledge about ones past or projec-
tions of ones future, but constructing a self-narrative is also not conceived as some-
thing that must be undertaken as a conscious and active project (Schechtman 2007, p.
163). This suggests that whatever else implicit Narrativizing may beit is something
that we doas opposed to some part of us, like a hypothesized narrative modulebut
it is something we do without thinking about it; something that is done quite automat-
ically and naturally.

6 Implicit narrativizing?

Invoking a notion of implicit Narrativizing is the move that Strong Narrativists must
make if they are to have any chance of avoiding the horns of Strawsons dilemma. Only
if Strong Narrativists can make a credible case that implicit Narrativizingin some
way or otherfeatures in all coherent experience can they defend their distinctive
proposals about self-experience and, by extension, self-shaping. For only if the notion
of implicitly Narrativizing is made clear will Strong Narrativists have what is needed to
claim that if I have the first-personal experience of tasting freshly-brewed coffee, my
experience of it is already structured in narrative terms (Rudd 2012, p. 194,
emphasis added). Rudd (2012) is quite clear that this narrativist thesis concerns our
lived, implicit narratives, rather than explicitly articulated ones (p. 200).
The crucial question is: Is the notion of implicit Narrativizing defined well enough to
be able to bear this weight? The danger is that once we distinguish explicit articulated
narratives and narrativizing (whether public or private) from the notion of explicitly
articulable Narratives and Narrativizing, it is difficult to get a clear sense what the latter
is supposed to be. It is revealing that when Strong Narrativists attempt to explicate
these notions they tend to sublimate. Sublimating, as Fischer (2011, p. 39) defines
it, is something a thinker does when a theoretical claim they advance conflicts
with something else the thinker believes and wont surrender. This results in a
spontaneous attempt to provide a new interpretation of the theoretical claims key
terms. Fischer identities two forms, negative and positive, that sublimation can
take.
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 37

Negative sublimation only tells us what a theoretical proposal does not commit
to as a way of specifying its content. To borrow from Fischer (2011), a theorist
may, for instance, insist that although they invoke a particular notion it is not to be
understood in a gross literal sense. Clearly a theorist who only negatively
sublimes fails to provide their theoretical expressions with any determinate
content (Fischer 2011, p. 57). The clear danger is that when it comes to
explicating the notions of implicit Narratives and Narrativizing we will simply
be told that these are not any kind of explicit narrative or narrativizing. Knowing
this alone leaves us none the wiser about how to positively understand the notions
of implicit Narratives and Narrativizing and, thus, no reason to think that Strong
Narrativism provides a substantive, non-vacuous proposal.
Another way of failing to give substantive content to a theoretical proposal is to go in
for positive sublimation. A positively sublimed proposal suffers from another flaw: its
champions ignore the explanations almost the moment they have given or invoked them
(Fischer 2011, p. 57). As result, there is a systematic blurring of the analysandum with the
proposed analysans.
Consider, by way of example, Rudds admission that narrativists claim that we
understand ourselves narratively insofar as we experience ourselves temporally (Rudd
2012, p. 197). In saying this Rudd supports Husserls observation that sense of the
immediate past and the expectation of the immediate future are present in, parts of, the
current experience (Rudd 2012, p. 199). Rudd takes coherently experiencing the world
in this temporal way to be just what it is to have an implicit Narrativized self-
understanding.
The fundamental problem with Rudds equation is that theoretical content of what it
is to implicitly Narrativize is positively sublimated so that it means nothing other than
the very phenomena that it was meant to substantively illuminate. This follows if to
implicitly Narrativize just is the same thing as having temporally structured self-
experience. Assuming that Strawson and non-Narrativists do not deny the existence of
the latter, it looks as if they have no choice but to accept the existence of the former.
Since it is conceptually possible to deny this equationand assuming implicit
Narrativizing is not independently defined in some other substantive way
Strawsons triviality charge surely holds up.
It is telling that Rudd sees no real gap between the idea of having structured
temporal experience and operating with an implicit Narrative. He says: if subjective
experiential time is understood in a Husserlian way, and if narrative time is understood
as our lived, largely implicit narrative, then there ceases to be a significant contrast
between experiential and narrative time (Rudd 2012, p. 199).
These are big, in fact gigantic, ifs. Having introduced them, Rudd (2012) goes on
to throw another if on the fire, putting his finger on the true bone of contention
between Strong Narrativists and their critics: If there is such a purely phenomenolog-
ical, subjective, non-narrative time, then I was wrong to say that narrative just is the
way we experience our lives in time (Rudd 2012, p. 198, emphasis added).
Is coherent yet non-Narrative temporal experience even conceivable? Do we have
any reason to believe that it might exist? Putting the question this way at least gives the
anti-Narrativist a substantive target. For even if the notion of implicit Narrativizing
remains inherently elusive, it is possible to interrogate Rudds claim that to experience
the world non-Narratively would be to experience it as a wholly structureless rhapsody
38 D.D. Hutto

of pure temporal flow (Rudd 2012, p. 200). In this regard what Rudd says
about the putative character of infantile experience is telling because he links
the emergence of implicit Narrativizing to a particular developmental moment.
He remarks that it might:

plausibly be thought that my temporal experience once was of this [structureless,

non-Narrative] sort, since, presumably, the experience of an infant is of this kind.
So we can think of narrative selfhood as crystallizing out of this free-flowing
subjective experience. But infantile subjecthood is a stage we pass through; it
is not a continuing core of our selfhood (Rudd 2012, p. 200).

On Rudds model any tendencies for structureless self-experience are completely left
behind in the early stages of our development, disappearing once we master narrative
capacities. After that point our experiences of the world are transformed forever. Thus:

Infants do not have a narrative sense of self, but they do presumably have some
sort of basic experiential selfhood; they are at least mental subjects. But it is not
as if this basic infantile non-narrative subjectivity persists into adulthood, along-
side the developed narrative sense (Rudd 2012, p. 195, see also p. 21).

Yet it is hugely implausible that humans only enjoy temporally structured self-
experience after they master narrative capacitieswhich they normally only get a firm
grip on around the age of 5 years old (Tomasello 2003, p. 276). Long before that
children rely on their training and past experience to anticipate how things will
generally unfold in their experience. They surely do not need to be a narratively
competent adult to do this. Indeed there is every reason to suppose that the great bulk
of our adult self-experience is temporally structured in innocent, child-like ways, it has
its basis in embodied habits, routines and repertoires for engaging with the world
formed early in our development and in later life. These ways of experiencing the world
owe nothing to narrativizing and they do not cease when narrative capacities for
reflecting upon and understanding the wider significance of my doings and actions
are acquired.
In sum, it seems Strong Narrativists lack the means of answering Strawson. They
cant avoid the horns of his dilemma without supplying a more worked out and
convincing account of the nature of implicit Narrativizing. To be fair, Schechtman
(2011) openly admits that there are important places where Narrative theorists are
unclear about the exact nature of their claims and points where the approach could be
further developed (Schechtman 2011, p. 411). In particular, she recognizes that this is
especially true of talk of living ones life as a narrative or implicitly Narrativizing
ones life, confessing that it is hard to say anything much more specific about how
self-narration is supposed to work (Schechtman 2007, p. 407). Yet if Strong
Narrativists are going to answer their critics they will need to provide, without
sublimating, a substantive account of these notions, and some credible evidence for
believing that such phenomena exist. This work is urgently required if Strong
Narrativism is to be taken seriously. Yet even if one doubts that such work can be
carried out there is still another, more modest way to understand the importance of
narratives in enabling us to shape our lives.
Narrative self-shaping: a modest proposal 39

7 Modest, not trivial

Where does this leave us? As things stand we should be wary of Strong Narrativism.
But, to return to the topic of concern in the opening sections, that is no reason to give up
on the idea that narrative capacities normally play an important role in enabling us to
shape ourselves. Reasons to be suspicious of Strong Narrativism and, concomitantly, its
accounts of self-experience and self-shaping, are not reasons for rejecting narrative self-
shaping proposals simpliciter. The Narrative Self Shaping Hypothesis (NSSH) de-
scribed in the first section offers a softer and more credible way of thinking about
why it is no-accident that narrative capacities play a special role in non-pathological
forms of human self-shapingespecially those connected with acting for reasons. In
coming to understand that special role the NSSH need only invoke uncontroversial
capacities for explicit narration.
Despite avoiding Strong Narrativisms problematic commitments, the NSSH is
clearly a substantive non-trivial hypothesis. Rudd (2009) is surely right to claim that:

the understanding of even simple human actions must take a narrative form is, I
would suggest, by no means a trivial point, given the continuing influence of
rival, scientistic models of action-explanation (Rudd 2009, p. 63, emphases added
see also Rudd 2012, p. 183).

That the NSSH is not trivial in this respect becomes especially clear when its natural
links with the Narrative Practice Hypothesis (NPH) are made evident. The NPH holds
that the normal route for acquiring the competence needed for making sense of
ourselves and others in terms of reasons is through engaging in socio-cultural prac-
ticesstorytelling practices that make use of specific kinds of narratives (Hutto 2007,
2008a, b, 2009b).
The NPH offers an alternative account of this competence to that given by orthodox
cognitive science and developmental psychology. According to the received view in
those fields the basic equipment needed for meta-cognitive acts of self-reflection comes
in the form of inherited cognitive devices: mindreading mechanisms of some or other
variety. For example Carruthers (2009) assumes the existence of such mindreading
mechanisms when he defends the idea that metacognition is merely the result of
us turning our mindreading capacities upon ourselves (Carruthers 2009, p. 123).
While I think we ought to follow Carrutherss (2009) lead in rejecting
introspection-based accounts of meta-cognition, there are reasons to doubt that
inherited mindreading mechanisms underpin what he calls mindreading (Hutto
2008a, Ch. 8 and 9; 2009a, b).
Nelson (2009) provides details of developmental psychological research which
complements the alternative idea, championed by the NPH, that it is socio-cultural
narrative practices that are at the root of our ability to understand others and ourselves
in terms of reasons. She details stages at which children come to construct and
comprehend narratives that are relevant to the step-by-step acquisition of theory of
mind abilities. The experimental work she reviews shows that it is empirically
plausible that children come by their capacity to understand reasons through social
interaction, by using linguistic representations while engaging in narrative practices of
different kinds.
40 D.D. Hutto

An NSSH, of the sort described in section two, can carry the day and help us to
understand how we deal with Korsgaards problem of normativity, if it turns out that the
NPH is right, that engaging with public artefactsnarratives of a special kindis the
normal route to, and thus natural mode for, understanding reasons for action. For the
NSSH only need buy into the possibility that some of the most central and distinctive
cognitive capacities of human beings are installed by the way we interact with
environmental constructs of our own making (for a detailed development of this idea
that is congenital to the NPH see 2013). The NPH provides a conceptual platform for
developing more refined empirically plausible, non-trivial hypotheses about why and
how it is that narratives are so well suited to play such a role.14 Should the NPH prove
true then we can expect that attempts to understand reasons for action by non-
narrativesay, more theoretical or generalmeans will, while not wholly impossible,
have inherent limitations.
In short, the NPH is a natural partner for the NSSH. Yet even if the NSSH is
supplemented by the NPH it remains a modest proposal when compared with what is
on offer by Strong Narrativists. A modest NSSH does not make any strong claims
about the existence of narrative selves, or living out narratives in our lives or experienc-
ing our lives narratively, and so on. It is quite possible to leave these ideas of Strong
Narrativism to one side while fully endorsing the view that a narrative understanding of
reasons is an important basis for and natural means of certain forms of self-
understanding and self-shaping. I believe that such a tale can be toldand that it is
the right tale to tellbut telling it requires telling a much longer story than I have space
for here.

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