Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Software 266selfhood depends on self-consciousness, which is (obviously) consciousness of self- andsince consciousness of anything is a matter of something like the internal display of arepresentation of that thing, for one to be self-conscious, there must be a symbol-one'sself-symbol-available to display to ... um ... oneself. Put that way, having a self-symbollooks as pointless and futile as writing your own name on your forehead and staring intoa mirror all day.This line of thought kicks up clouds of dust and leaves one hopelessly confused,so let's approach the problem from another angle entirely. In the Reflections on "Gorgesand I" we considered the possibility of seeing yourself on a TV monitor and not at firstrealizing that it was yourself you were seeing. In such a case you would have arepresentation of yourself before you-before your eyes on the TV screen, or before yourconsciousness, if you like-but it would not be the right sort of representation of yourself.What is the right sort? The difference between a hesymbol and a me-symbol is not adifference in spelling. (You couldn't set everything right by doing something to your"symbol in consciousness" analogous to erasing the "h" and writing in "m".) Thedistinguishing feature of a self-symbol couldn't be what it "looked like" but the role itcould play.Could a machine have a self-symbol, or a self-concept? It is hard to say. Could alower animal? Think of a lobster. Do we suppose it is self-conscious? It shows severalimportant symptoms of having a selfconcept. First of all, when it is hungry, whom does itfeed? Itself. Second, and more important, when it is hungry it won't eat just anythingedible; it won't, for instance, eat itself-though it could, in principle. It could tear off itsown legs with its claws and devour them. But it wouldn't be that stupid, you say, forwhen it felt the pain in its legs, it would know whose legs were being attacked and wouldstop. But why would it suppose the pain it felt was its pain? And besides, mightn't thelobster be so stupid as not to care that the pain it was causing was its own pain?These simple questions reveal that even a very stupid creature must be designedto behave with self-regard-to put it as neutrally as possible. Even the lowly lobster musthave a nervous system wired up in such a way that it will reliably distinguish selfdestructivefrom other-destructive behavior-and strongly favor the latter. It seems quitepossible that the control structures required for such self-regarding behavior can be puttogether without a trace of consciousness, let alone self-consciousness. After all, we canmake self-protective little robot devices that cope quite well in their simple environmentsand even produce an overwhelmingly strong illusion of "conscious purpose"-as illustratedin selection 8,