Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Where was I? 237Tin Woodman, whose transformation from organic to inorganic constitution was a part ata time. In such a case, besides having yet another variation on puzzle cases concerningthe persistence of a person through a change of bodies, we would have the materials toconstruct more variations on puzzle cases concerning one self dividing into several. Ifone computer duplicate of a brain can be produced, then so can two or three or twenty.While each could control a modified brainless human body like that described byDennett, each could also control a robot like one of the Hawleys. In either sort of case,body transfer, or robot transfer, or brain transfer, or computer transfer, or whatever youwant to call it, could be accomplished without further advances in technology.I realized that I was tempted by an argument similar to one Arnauld attributes toDescartes.I can doubt that the human body David, or its brain, exists.I cannot doubt that I see and hear and feel and think.Therefore, I who see and hear and so forth cannot be identical to David or itsbrain; otherwise in doubting their existence I would doubt the existence of myself.I also realized that David could have been separated into living, functional parts.The eyes with their eyevideos could be connected with the brain down the hall. Thelimbs, now kept alive with artificial blood, could similarly each have their own room.Whether or not these peripheral systems were still involved in the operation of Plastic BigHawley, the brain might also have been taken apart, and the information between varioussubpersonal processing systems could be transferred nearly as quickly as before even if ithad to travel much farther in space. And if the brain was gone, replaced with a computerduplicate, the computer parts might be spatially spread out in one of the ways Dennettdescribes briefly in "Toward a Cognitive Theory of Consciousness" * The spatialcontiguity or chemical composition of the various internal information-processingsubsystems that together were responsible for my thoughts, actions, and passions seemedirrelevant to my personal location, unity, or identity.As Dennett first formulated his third principle of personal location, Dennett iswherever he thinks he is, it lends itself to misinterpretation. He doesn't mean that thinkingthat one is in Chapel Hill would ever be sufficient for actually being in Chapel Hill. Hemeans rather that the location of a person's point of view is the location of the person. Ofcourse people do more than literally just view things. They perceive by other senses; theymove. Some of their movements, such as head and eye* In Brainstorms