Strawson: Lives as continuous vs. ever-new

[eve_prime]

I read this really exciting article today, by Galen Strawson. This was his "Against Narrativity" article in Ratio (2004). The essence is that it's now normative to think that people experience their lives as narratives, or at least with a sense of continuity, a common "self" that they can call up in past memories and future speculations. Strawson says no; he says there are individual differences in this. Some people experience their lives as loosely connected episodes, not stories, and when they think about memories, they don't feel like the same person then as now; they don't relive those memories from the inside. Strawson calls this "episodic," as contrasted with what he refers to as the usual "diachronic" perspective.

This looks like a possible good missing piece for my research! I read one response article and have started another.