Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Software 267The Soul of the Mark III Beast." But why say this is an illusion, rather than a rudimentaryform of genuine self-consciousness-akin perhaps to the self-consciousness of a lobster orworm? Because robots don't have the epts? Well, do lobsters? Lobsters have somethinglike concepts, apparently: what they have are in any event enough to govern themthrough their self-regarding lives. Call these things what you like, robots can have themtoo. Perhaps we could call them unconscious or preconscious concepts. Self-concepts of arudimentary sort. The more varied the circumstances in which a creature can recognizeitself, recognize circumstances as having a bearing on itself, acquire information aboutitself, and devise self-regarding actions, the richer (and more valuable) its self-conceptionthis sense of "concept" that does not presuppose consciousness.Suppose, to continue this thought experiment, we wish to provide our selfprotectiverobot with some verbal ability, so it can perform the range of self-regardingactions language makes available-such as asking for help or for information, but alsotelling lies, issuing threats, and making promises. Organizing and controlling thisbehavior will surely require an even more sophisticated control structure: arepresentational system in the sense defined earlier, in the Reflections on "Prelude, AntFugue." It will be one that not only updates information about the environment and thecurrent location of the robot in it, but also has information about the other actors in theenvironment and what they are apt to know and want, what they can understand. RecallRalph Numbers's surmises about the motives and beliefs of Wagstaff.Now Ralph Numbers is portrayed as conscious (and self-conscious -if we candistinguish the two), but is that really necessary? Might all Ralph Numbers's controlstructure, with all its information about the environment-and about Numbers himself-beengineered without a trace of consciousness? Might a robot look just like Ralph Numbersfrom the outside-performing just as cleverly in all circumstances, executing all the samemoves, making the same speeches-without having any inside? The author seems to hintthat this would be possible just make the new Ralph Numbers like the old RalphNumbers minus a self-symbol and a .feeling of personal consciousness. Now ifsubtracting the supposed self-symbol and the feeling of personal consciousness leftRalph's control structure basically intact-so that we on the outside would never be thewiser, for instance, and would go on engaging Ralph in conversations, enlisting hiscooperation, and so forth-we would be back to the beginning and the sense that there isno point to a self-symbol-no work for it to do. If instead we think of Ralph's having aself-symbol as precisely a matter of his having a control structure of a certainsophistication and versatility,