[Wellsy]

Is life like a story with a coherent narrative or is it a series of meaningless actions which we in retrospect attempt to make coherent?

EDIT: I lean towards that the tendency to split history, intelligibility and meaning from individual actions makes them incomprehensible. That any individual act only makes sense as the act of an agent ie human, when it is done with reasons and such reasons emerge from varying layers of the social reality people find themselves in. We are thrown into a world not of our making yet must make our way through it and any individual act isn't an act isolated from all sorts of practices and institutions. To not be acquainted with a practice and it's institutions, such as the practice of being a christian as part of a particular denomination and church makes it difficult to make sense of ones reasons for one's actions such as praying. It doesn't make sense to the person foreign to the tradition of Christianity. And this layer of a tradition spanning centures and institutions lasting generations informing the meaning and reasons of an individual person's actions is not accidental but essential to reality in spite of modern peoples tendency to abstract the individual from all social roles. As if a person pre-existed their development within the world.

Spoiler: show

From Alisdair MacIntyre's After Virtue https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdf

Anne Righter (1962) has ascribed to Shakespeare: that he portrayed human life in dramatic narratives because he took it that human life already had the form of dramatic narrative and indeed the form of one specific type of dramatic narrative.
...
The philosophical obstacles derive from two distinct tendencies, one chiefly, though not only, domesticated in analytical philosophy and one at home in both sociological theory and in existentialism. The former is the tendency to think atomistically about human action and to analyze complex actions and transactions in terms of simple components. Hence the recurrence in more than one context of the notion of 'a basic action' . . That particular actions derive their character as parts of larger wholes is a point of view alien to our dominant ways of thinking and yet one which it is necessary at least to consider if we are to begin to understand how a life may be more than a sequence of individual actions and episodes. Equ~ly the unity .of a human life becomes invisible to us when a sharp separation IS made either between the individual and the roles that he or she plays - a separation characteristic not only of Sartre's existentialism, but also of the sociological theory of Ralf Dahrendorf-or between the different role-and quasi-role-enactments of an individual life so that life co~es to appear as nothing but a series of unconnected episodes-a liquidation of the self characteristic, as I noticed earlier, of Goffman's sociological theory. I
...
Narrative is not the work of poets, dramatists and novelists reflecting upon events which had no narrative order before one was imposed by the singer or the writer; narrative form is neither disguise nor decoration. Barbara Hardy has written that 'we dream in narrative, day-dream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative' in arguing the same point (Hardy 1968, p. 5).

At the beginning of this chapter I argued that in successfully identifying and understanding what someone else is doing we always move towards placing a panicular episode in the context of a set of narrative histories, histories both of the individuals concerned and of the settings in which they act and suffer. It is now becoming clear that we render the actions of others intelligible in this way because action itself has a basically historical character. It is because we all live out narratives in our lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate for understanding the actions of others. Stories are lived before they are told-except in the case of fiction.

This has of course been denied in recent debates. Louis O. Mink, quarrelling with Barbara Hardy'S view, has asserted: 'Stories are not lived but told. Life has no beginnings, middles, or ends; there are meetings, but the start of an affair belongs to the story we tell ourselves later, and there are partings, but final partings only in the story. There are hopes, plans, battles and ideas, but only in retrospective stories are hopes unfulfilled, plans miscarried, battles decisive, and ideas seminal. Only in the story is it America which Columbus discovers and only in the story is the kingdom lost for want of a nail' (Mink 1970, pp. 557-8).
….
It is considerations as complex as these which are involved in making the notion of intelligibility the conceptual connecting link between the notion of action and that of narrative. Once we have understood its importance the claim that the concept of an action is secondary to that of an intelligible action will perhaps appear less bizarre and so too will the claim that the notion of 'an' action, while of the highest practical importance, is always a potentially misleading abstraction.

An action is a moment in a possible or actual history or in a number of such histories. The notion of a history is as fundamental a notion as the notion of an action. Each requires the other. But I cannot say this without noticing that it is precisely this that Sartre denies - as indeed his whole theory of the self, which captures so well the spirit of modernity, requires that he should. In lA Nausie, Sartre makes Antoine Roquentin argue not just what Mink argues, that narrative is very different from life. but that to present human life in the form of a narrative is always to falsify it. There are not and there cannot be any true stories. Human life is composed of discrete actions which lead nowhere. which have no order; the story-teller imposes on human events retrospectively an order which they did not have while they were lived. Clearly if Sartre/Roquentin is right-I speak of Sartre/Roquentin to distinguish him from such other well-know characters as Sanre/Heidegger and Sartre/Marx-my central contention must be mistaken.

There is nonetheless an important point of agreement between my thesis and that of Sartre/Roquentin. We agree in identifying the intelligibility of an action with its place in a narrative sequence. Only Sartre/Rocluentin takes it that human actions are as such unintelligible occurrences: it is to a realization of the metaphysical implications of this that Roquentin is brought in the course of the novel and the practical effect upon him is to bring to an end his own project of writing an historical biography. This project no longer makes sense. Either he will write what is true or he will write an intelligible history. but the one possibility excludes the other. Is Sartre/Roquentin right?

https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=phi

We cannot, then, explain action simply by intention. To retreat too far into the inner life is not only to try to elude responsibility for consequences, as Pippin puts it, but it is also to strip 107 action of any meaning. Kenneth Westphal makes a point that is worth noting in this context. Practical reason is inseparable from social practice. It is true that actions are carried out by individuals, but such actions are possible and only have meaning in so far as they participate in sociocultural practices. There are two important questions here, Westphal suggests: (1) are individuals the only bearers of psychological states, and (2) can psychological states be understood in individual terms? Individualists answer both questions in the affirmative, and most holists answer both questions in the negative. Hegel, however, answers the first question affirmatively and the second negatively. In other words, it is only individuals who act, have 108 intentions, construct facts, and so forth. Nevertheless, such acts, intentions, and facts cannot be understood apart from sociocultural practices—their meaning can only be understood as interpreted in a sociocultural context.

http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/nr/08_89.pdf

What is it to understand any given piece of behaviour as a human action? Consider the following example. If my head nods, it may be a sign of assent to a question or it may be a nervous tick. To explain the nod as a way of saying ' Yes' to a question is to give it a role in the context of human action. To explain the nod as a nervous tick is to assert that the nod was not an action but something that happened to me. To understand the nod as a nervous tick we turn to the neurophysiologist for a causal explanation. To understand it as a sign of assent is to move in a different direction. It is to ask for a statement of the purpose that my saying ' Yes' served; it is to ask for reasons, not for causes and it is to ask for reasons which point | to a recognisable want or need served by my action. This reference to purpose is important. When social anthropologists come across some unintelligible mode of behaviour, obedience to a primitive taboo, for example, they look for some as yet unnoticed purpose, some want or need to which such obedience ministers; and if they find none they look for some past want or need which the practice once served, even though now it is nothing but a useless survival. That is to say, we make both individual deeds and social practices intelligible as human actions by showing how they connect with characteristically human desires, needs and the like. Where we cannot do this, we treat the unintelligible piece of behaviour as a symptom, a survival or superstition.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/concepts-narrative.htm

Alasdair Macintyre (1971) claimed that narrative is the perfect instrument for explanation and understanding of the phenomena dealt with by the human sciences, and that according to this reading, the human sciences predate the conceptual natural sciences. But I think further reflection will show that narrative plays the same role in the natural sciences as well, except only that the natural sciences always make it their objective to elaborate the phenomena they study as something which exists independently of experience, with the result that natural science can only begin where narrative leaves off. But if the natural sciences are to make Nature intelligible, then they perforce must restore human beings to their place in explanation.

I think an issue with the implicit reaction to the idea of life being a multitude of different actors and narratives is that people put reality on par with fictional stories. Or they, of course, make independent such stories from reality entirely such that man apparently knowns nothing about the world or has no means or truly confirming his stories to reality in it's essence.

[BigSteve-3]

Is life like a story with a coherent narrative or is it a series of meaningless actions which we in retrospect attempt to make coherent?

If it's the former, I'd like mine to be narrated by either Morgan Freeman or Liev Schreiber.

[SolarCross]

Is life like a story with a coherent narrative or is it a series of meaningless actions which we in retrospect attempt to make coherent?

On the individual level the stories are often coherent because of purposeful action for particular goals. When we look at things in aggregate I guess the coherence is not really present except in the mind of the beholder, after the effect generally. I do not think that necessarily makes them meaningless though. Meaning is a value judgement and all value judgements are totally subjective.

[Wellsy]

But isn't the goal of an individual's action or actions propelled by a motive beyond the immediate goal.
Because if I ask why someone is doing something, whilst I might confine it to more immediate aims, I can also extend it by making a continuous and coherent chain of actions intelligible by the larger goal/motive of all of the individual actions thus constituting an activity.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Teleology.pdf

To understand how a social practice, made up of millions of individual actions, can be ‘self-conscious’ entails the distinction Hegel makes between the general and the universal. In general, not all the individual actions in a social practice are motivated by the exact same purpose or intention, not every action implies exactly the same object. For example, the aim of a capitalist firm is to expand its capital, but to do so it pursues various subsidiary aims (services) and provides wages to its employees. Thus there will be a variety of concepts of what, say, James Hardy Ltd., is aiming at, but an analysis will show that it is neither the provision of building material nor the welfare of its employees, but the accumulation of capital which is its aim, its intention. (Hegel distinguishes between ‘purposes’ such as asbestos production or wage-earning) and ‘intentions’ which provides the motivation for the diverse purposes (Hegel 1821, §§ 114-128). So, a ‘collective subject’ is not a group of people but a social practice. An entire community is seen then as an aggregate of social practices. A social practices is an aggregate of purposive actions, united by their sharing of a common intention or motivation. From this standpoint, it is self-evident that social practices are autonomous, self-conscious and teleological.

I also like this explanation, whilst my goal is to mail a letter, my reason or intention for doing so isn't simply to mail a letter, as such my intention isn't identical to my immediate goal.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Article_on_Mediation+Intention.pdf

Normally, we do things for a reason. For example, if I walk around the corner and put a letter in the postbox, the purpose of my act is putting the letter in the postbox, and the attendant walk is part of the same action, fulfilling the same purpose [Vorsatz]; the walking and stepping over obstacles along the way is all part of the action [Handlung] along with lifting the lid and placing the letter in the slot, my aim [Zweck]. There is no contradiction between all of these deeds because they are simply responding to conditions to the end of placing the letter in the postbox — posting it. But what is my reason for doing it? Obviously, I don’t do it for its own sake. Hegel calls my reason for doing it my intention [Absicht]. In this case, I am submitting a postal vote in the upcoming election and it is my intention that by means [Mittel] of the postal ballot I will cast my vote, that is, my vote will be counted. A whole series of action are entailed in casting this vote, all united by the same intention. I do this in full knowledge of the Australian postal service and electoral system; these are not merely a ‘beliefs’ (though they are that as well) but founded in practices in this country which have continued since long before I was born, and my intentions actualize in my actions the social practice of voting in Australia. Indeed, this social practice would not exist other than through the concept of voting being shared amongst millions of Australian citizens and the intentions of us all to act, according to our circumstances, on that concept. My intention is the “universal side of the action … a chain of external relations” (1821/1952, §119).

The idea here that individual actions can't be abstracted from the larger social practices, institutions and traditions that make them intelligible and even possible. The very concepts which guide my actions are based in a social reality coordinated by people.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/development-concept.htm

o we see in the instance of this simple object concept, of the type considered as an archetypal example in the Psychology of Concepts considered above, that the concept can only exist through the coincidence of three moments: Individual, Particular and Universal. We saw that
. the Individual is each concrete individual thought, action or thing;
. the Particular is some normative social practice;
. and the Universal is a word or symbol which unifies it all under a concept.

If I have never heard of trees, if I am excluded from property rights in this country, if I have never been introduced to this type of domesticated tree, or if such property rights and botanical practices never existed, I could not form the concept of ‘Andy’s Japanese Maple tree’. More generally, something is what it is, so far as human activity is concerned, only by means of the identity of Individual, Universal and Particular. This differs from the formal approach chiefly in that the relation of the Individual to the Universal is mediated by the Particular, that is, the meaning of words is determined by social practice. But for Hegel the converse relations are equally valid. My Japanese Maple tree is not my Japanese Maple tree because it resembles others of my trees or any such thing, or because of any contingent attributes of the vision from my window; it is what it is because of the specific identity of Particular, Universal and Individual described above.
...
Each of these three Immediate Concepts are made absolute by certain theories of the concept. Plato for instance believed that Universals exist, although not in a spatio-temporal sense, nevertheless, independently of human activity and the symbols by means of which Universals are represented in activity. The intersubjective theory of Robert R. Williams sees concepts entirely constructed by intersubjective actions, leaving no place for symbols or artefacts of any kind, whilst Franz Brentano allowed that only individual things exist. Although none of the Immediate Concepts have stability or can stand up to scrutiny, each is involved in the process of a concept and the immediate concept will always take one or the other of these forms, according to conditions, until forms of mediation develop. We see this when one theory of concepts is abandoned in favour of another, without attempting to interconnect the different theories in a mediating process.

Emphasizing only the individual thing renders things senseless as does prioritize the particular (social institutions and practices) or the universal (symbol for a concept).
This mediation found in Hegel is likely implicit in MacIntyre's account where he poses examples where without being put into the proper context of a social world with a history of traditions that inform the present situation an individual acts within the constraints and possibilities of, there isn't anything meaningful to be said or it is so narrow as to not be a description of humans as humans.

[SolarCross]

But isn't the goal of an individual's action or actions propelled by a motive beyond the immediate goal.

That's a very abstract question. If it is a question because you are missing an "?" at the end.

There are 8 billion human individuals on this planet each with very individual lives, any generalisations across such a set are dubious. Certainly someone in a full coma might be said to have no goal to their actions, breathing or twitching whatever. On the other end a fully realised person in their prime will have a very well conceived set of motives and goals, complex and nested.

If you really must look for an overarching narrative relevant to all 8 billion souls on this planet then Darwin would be the place to start. The goal of genetic propagation and individual survival is fairly ubiquitous obviously. Though it might be argued those goals belong to the genetic code rather than the individual built by them, the individual would be the means to the end. I guess Dawkins would argue it that way. It's realistic but some people get squeamish around reality.

[Wellsy]

That's a very abstract question. If it is a question because you are missing an "?" at the end.

There are 8 billion human individuals on this planet each with very individual lives, any generalisations across such a set are dubious. Certainly someone in a full coma might be said to have no goal to their actions, breathing or twitching whatever. On the other end a fully realised person in their prime will have a very well conceived set of motives and goals, complex and nested.

If you really must look for an overarching narrative relevant to all 8 billion souls on this planet then Darwin would be the place to start. The goal of genetic propagation and individual survival is fairly ubiquitous obviously. Though it might be argued those goals belong to the genetic code rather than the individual built by them, the individual would be the means to the end. I guess Dawkins would argue it that way. It's realistic but some people get squeamish around reality.

Im bot talking about a grand narrative to capture the entirety of humanity. It is a bit smaller in scale in that its about generational continuity that contextualizes and gives meaning to the individuals actions.

That the longer history is important to making sense of individual actions as individual actions often have an intelligibility because people do things for reasons and for reasons often in accord with some way of living. A person of course isn’t part of one single story but their story is entwined in many others. They’re part og groups which have histories which informs the standards and practice and reasons for the actions.

Later I hope to more clearly illustrate how this is the case and thus the individual presupposed before their social relations is a false and ideological abstraction common to modern thought. That often poses individuality in opposition to culture and social influences rather than as a mastery of it.