Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Borges and I 20ming of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him and wentfrom the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time andinfinity, but those games belong to Borges now and I shall have toimagine other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everythingand everything belongs to oblivion, or to him.I do not know which of us has written this page.ReflectionsJorge Luis Borges, the great ArgentinIan writer, has a deservedinternational reputation, which creates a curious effect. Borgesseems to himself to be two people, the public personage and theprivate person. His fame magnifies the effect, but we all canshare the feeling, as he knows. You read your name on a list, orsee a candid photograph of yourself, or overhear others talkingabout someone and suddenly realize it is you. Your mind mustleap from a third-person perspective -- “he” or “she” – to afirst-person perspective – “I.” Comedians have long known how toexaggerate this leap: the classic “double-take” in which say,Bob Hope reads in the morning newspaper that Bob Hope is wantedby the police, casually comments on this fact, and then jumps upin alarm: “That’s me!”While Robert Burns may be right that it is a gift to seeourselves as others see us, it is not a condition to which wecould or should aspire at all times. In fact, severalphilosophers have recently presented brilliant arguments to showthat there are two fundamentally and irreducibly different waysof thinking for ourselves. (See “Further Reading” for thedetails.) The arguments are quite technical, but the issues arefascinating and can be vividly illustrated.Pete is waiting in line to pay for an item in a departmentstore, and he notices that there is a closed-circuit televisionmonitor over the counter – one of the store’s measures againstshoplifters. As watches the jostling crowd of people on themonitor, he realizes that the person on the left side of thescreen in the overcoat carrying the large paper bag is havinghis pocket picked by the person behind him. Then, as he raiseshis hand to his mouth in astonishment, he notices that thevictim’s hand is moving to his mouth in just the same way. Petesuddenly realizes