Erler 2010 - Does Memory Modification Threaten Our Authenticity?

1. Three accounts of authenticity

Harry Frankfurt: "wholeheartedness" second-order identification with first-order desires. No ambivalence is involved at the second order level. I take second-order to mean "at the decision level" and "first-order" to meet preferences that you cannot control.
The Existentialist account is similar. Honesty and autonomy are required. DeGrazia says that an agent A acts autonomously iff:
- A does X because A prefers to do X
- A has this preference because she identifies with it and prefers to have it
- This identification has not resulted primarly from influences that A would, on careful reflection, consider alientating. I take this to mean that A does things that she wants to do and wants to want to do.
The true self account of authenticity understands the true self as something that is given to us. Authenticity is understood as a virtue: the virtue of being true to yourself when doing so would have been valuable. Conversely, inauthenticity is failure to be true to yourself when it would have been valuable. So in this account, not coming out as homosexual in a homophobic environment would not be inauthentic.

Narrative vs numerical identity: narrative identity includes personality traints, character traits, personal likes and dislikes, various moral or religious commitments. Contrast with numerical identity, which deals with all the traditional questions of personal identity — these usually deal with psychological continuity, etc.

Two (related) senses:

Accurately presenting key features of your narrative identity to others instead of pretending to be something else
Refusing to change some of those features in circumstances in which it might be tempting to do so

Important to note is the difference between "true" self and "ideal" self