Today's post is by Maria Cristina Contrino. Maria Cristina Contrino What is the role of narratives for our personal identity, for who we are in everyday life? What kinds of narratives shape our actions, interactions and relations? What is the role of ‘wrong’, erroneous narratives? In my paper I review three narratives accounts that highlight the importance of narratives for personal identity and argue for the practical notion of personal identity ( Schechtman 1996 ); the variety of psychological and bodily characteristics that shape a person ( Schroeder 2022 ); and the role of affectivity and bodily interactions in supporting our narratives and maintaining our identity ( Lindemann 2014 ). Yet, these approaches do not do justice to the roles of certain narratives that are not fully rational and involve errors: a narrative view needs to account for the practical significance in one’s life of erroneous narratives, such as impostor’s narratives, delusions and confabulati...
In this post, Constantine Sandis, Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and Director of Lex Academic , presents his new book on Wittgenstein for Anthem Press, Wittgenstein on Other Minds . Book cover ‘Even if someone were to express everything that is “within him”, we wouldn’t necessarily understand him’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology , § 191. The so-called ‘problem of other minds’ is typically understood as a problem in epistemology regarding whether we can ever really be sure of what anybody else is thinking or feeling. At its solipsistic extreme, philosophers have wondered whether we can ever know that other people exist at all. How can I be certain that those around me are not all automata or mere figments of my imagination? In his later work, Ludwig Wittgenstein was at pains to dismiss such worries, not because we can prove that sceptics are wrong, but because their objections can be shown to be nonsensical. G...