Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Non Serviam 300ance with their behaviour. Dobb tries to illustrate this concept with recourse to thefollowing analogy. A man may interpret the real world in a variety of ways. He maydevote particular attention – intense scientific investigation – to certain facets of thatworld, and the knowledge he acquires then casts its own special light on the remainingportions of the world, those not considered in his priority-setting research. If first hediligently takes up mechanics, he will fashion for himself a mechanical model of theworld and will see the Universe as a gigantic and perfect clock that in its inexorablemovement proceeds from the past to a precisely determined future. This model is not anaccurate representation of reality, and yet one make use of it for a period of timehistorically long, and with it can even achieve many practical successes – the building ofmachines, implements, etc. Similarly, should the personoids “incline themselves.” Bychoice, by an act of will, to a certain type of relation to their universum, and to that typeof relation they give precedence – if it is in this and only in this that they find the“essence” of their cosmos -- they will enter upon a definite path of endeavours anddiscoveries, a path that is neither illusory nor futile. Their inclination ”draws out” of theenvironment what best corresponds to it. What they first perceive is what they mustmaster. For the world that surrounds them is only partially determined, only partiallyestablished in advance by the researcher-creator, in it, the personoids preserve a certainand by no means insignificant margin of freedom of action – action both “mental” (in theprovince of what they think of their own world, of how they understand it) and “real” (inthe context of their “deeds” – which are not, to be sure, literally real, as we understandthe term, but not merely imagined either). This is, in truth, the most difficult part of theexposition, and Dobb, we daresay, is not altogether successful in explaining those specialqualities of personoid existence – qualities that can be rendered only by the language ofthe mathematics of programs and creationist interventions. We must, then take itsomewhat on faith that the activity of the personoids is neither entirely free – as the spaceof our actions is not entirely free, being limited by the physical laws of nature – norentirely determined – just as we are not train cars set on rigidly fixed tracks. A personoidis similar to a man in this respect, too, man’s “secondary qualities” – colours, melodioussounds, the beauty of things – can sometimes manifest themselves only when he has earsto hear and eyes to see, but what makes possible hearing and sight has been, after all,previously given. Personoids, perceiving their environment, give it from out ofthemselves those experimental qualities which exactly correspond to what for us are thecharms of a beheld landscape – except, of course, that they have been provided withpurely mathematical scenery. As to “how they see it,” one can make no pronouncement,