Distributed autobiographical memories, distributed self-narratives

Abstract

Richard Heersmink argues that self-narratives are distributed across embodied organisms and their environment, given that their building blocks, autobiographical memories, are distributed. This argument faces two problems. First, it commits a fallacy of composition. Second, it relies on Marya Schechtman's narrative self-constitution view, which is incompatible with the distributed cognition framework. To solve these problems, this article develops an alternative account of self-narratives. On this account, we actively connect distributed autobiographical memories through distributed conversational and textual self-narrative practices. This account enhances our understanding of the memory–narrative nexus and has implications for philosophical conceptions of self.