Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Software 265The gates and switches in Ralph's sensory system were going. His inputs flared,sputtered, and died. No more light, no more weight. But deep in his cache memory, hestill held a picture of himself, a memory of who he was ... the self-symbol. He was a bigmetal box resting on caterpillar treads, a box with five arms and a sensory head on a longand flexible neck. He was Ralph Numbers, who had set the hoppers free. One minute.This had never happened to him before. Never like this. Suddenly he rememberedhe had forgotten to warn Vulcan about the diggers' plan for revolution. He tried to send asignal, but he couldn't tell if it was transmitted.Ralph clutched at the elusive moth of his consciousness. I am. I am me.Some hoppers said that when you died you had access to certain secrets. But noone could ever remember his death.Just before the mercury solder-spots melted, a question came, and with it ananswer ... an answer Ralph had found and lost thirty-six times before.What is this that is I?The light is everywhere.ReflectionsThe "dying" Ralph Numbers reflects that if he gets reconstructed he will again beequipped with a self-symbol and a feeling of personal consciousness," but the idea thatthese are distinct, separable gifts that a robot might receive or be denied rings false.Adding a feeling of personal consciousness" would not be like adding taste buds or thecapacity to itch when bombarded by X-rays. (In selection 20, "Is God a Taoist?"Smullyan makes a similar claim about free will.) Is there anything, in fact, answering tothe name of a feeling of personal consciousness? And what does it have to do with havinga "self-symbol"? What good is a selfsymbol, after all? What would it do? In "Prelude,Ant Fugue" (selection11), Hofstadter develops the idea of active symbols, a far cry fromthe idea of symbols as mere tokens to be passively moved around and then observed orappreciated by their manipulator. The difference emerges clearly when we consider atempting but treacherous tine of thought