Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

The Riddle on the Universe and its Solution 281appear to rotate counterclockwise. But then the screen one level farther down will bedoubly rotated-and so on. The resulting pattern is a pretty spiral, and by using variousamounts of tilt and zoom, one can create a wide variety of effects. There are alsocomplicating effects due to such things as the graininess of the screen, the distortioncaused by unequal horizontal and vertical scales, the time-delay of the circuit, and so on.All these parameters of the self-referential mechanism imbue each pattern withunexpected richness. One of the striking facts about this kind of "self-image" pattern on aTV screen is that it can become so complex that its origin in videofeedback is entirelyhidden. The contents of the screen may simply appear to be an elegant, complicateddesign-as isapparent in some shown in the figure.Suppose we had set up two identical systems of this sort with identicalparameters, so that their screens showed exactly the same design. Suppose we now madea tiny change in one-say by moving the camera a very small amount. This tinyperturbation will get picked up and will ripple down the many layers of screen afterscreen, and the overall effect on the visible "self-image" may be quite drastic. Yet thestyle of the interlevel feedback of the two systems is still in essence the same. Aside fromthis one small change we made deliberately, all the parameters are still the same. And byreversing the small perturbation, we can easily return to the original state, so in afundamental sense we are still "close" to where we started. Would it then be more correctto say that we have two radically different systems, or two nearly identical systems?Let us use this as a metaphor for thinking about human souls. Could it be valid tosuppose that the "magic" of human consciousness somehow arises from the closing of aloop whereby the brain's high level-its symbol level-and its low level-itsneurophysiological level-are somehow tied together in an exquisite closed loop ofcausality? Is the "private I" just the eye of a self-referential typhoon?Let it be clear that we are making not the slightest suggestion here that atelevision system (camera plus receiver) becomes conscious at the instant that its camerapoints at its screen! A television system does not satisfy the criteria that were set upearlier for representational systems. The meaning of its image-what we human observersperceive and describe in words-is lost to the television system itself. The system does notdivide up the thousands of dots on the screen into "conceptual pieces" that it recognizesas standing for people, dogs, tables, and so forth. Nor do the dots have autonomy fromthe world they represent. The dots are simply passive reflections of light patterns in frontof the camera, and if the lights go out, so do the dots.The kind of closed loop we are referring to is one where a true