Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

On Having No Head 29gether immaculate Void: it is unthinkable that I could ever havebeen confused that staring wraith over there with what I plainlyperceive myself to be here and now and forever.* * *Film directors . . . are practical people, much more interestedin the telling re-creation of experience than in discerning thenature of the experience; but in fact the one involves some ofthe other. Certainly these experts are well aware (for example)how feeble my reaction is to a film of a vehicle obviouslydriven by someone else, compared with my reaction to a film of avehicle apparently driven by myself. In the first instance I ama spectator on the pavement, observing two similar cars swiftlyapproaching, colliding, killing the drivers, bursting intoflames – and I am mildly interested. In the second, I am thedriver – headless of course, like all first-person drivers, andmy car (what little there is of it) is stationary. Here are myswaying knees, my foot hard down on the accelerator, my handsstruggling with the steering wheel, the long bonnet sloping awayin front, telegraph poles whizzing by, the road snaking this wayand that, the other cars, tiny at first, but looming larger andlarger, coming straight at me, and then the crash, a great flashof light, and an empty silence . . . I sink back onto my seatand get my breath back. I have been taken for a ride.How are they filmed, these first person experiences? Twoways are possible: either a headless dummy is photographed, withthe camera in place of the head, or else a real man isphotographed, with his head held far back, or to one side tomake room for the camera. In other words, to ensure that I shallidentify myself with the actor, his head is got out of the way;he must be my kind of man. For a picture of me-with-a-head is nolikeness at all, it is the portrait of a complete stranger, acase of mistaken identity.It is curious that anyone should go to the advertising manfor a glimpse into the deepest – and simplest – truths abouthimself; odd also that an elaborate modern invention like thecinema should help rid anyone of an illusion which very youngchildren and animals are free of. But human capacity for selfdeceptionhas surely never been complete. A profound though dimawareness of the human condition may well explain the popularityof many old cults and legends of loose and flying heads, of oneeyed or headless monsters and apparitions, of human bodies withnon-human heads and martyrs who (like King Charles in the illpunctuatedsentence) walked and talked after their heads werecut off --