Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

On Having No Head 31The power of a simple syllogism, has reluctantly overridden thenotion that I am a necessary ingredient of the universe. Thatsyllogism is roughly, this:All human beings are mortalI am a human being.Therefore . . . I am a mortal.But for the substitution of “I” for “Socrates” this is the mostclassical of all syllogisms. What kind of evidence is there forthe two premises? The first premise presumes an abstractcategory, the class of human beings. The second premise is thatI too belong to that class, despite the seemingly radicaldifference between myself and every other member of that class(which Harding is so fond of pointing out).The idea of classes about which general statements can bemade is not so shocking, but it it seems to be a rather advancedproperty of intelligence to be able to formulate classes beyondthose that are part of an innate repertoire. Bees seem to havethe class “flower” down pretty well, but it is doubtful thatthey can formulate a concept of “chimney” or “human.” Dogs andcats seem to be able to manufacture new classes, such as “fooddish,” “door,” “toy,” and so on. But people are by far the bestat the piling up of new category upon new category. Thiscapacity is at the core of human nature and is a profound sourceof joy. Sportscasters and scientists and artists all give usgreat pleasure in their formulation of new kinds of conceptsthat enter our mental vocabulary.The other part of the first premise is the general conceptof death. That something can vanish or be destroyed is a veryearly discovery. The food in the spoon vanishes, the rattlefalls off the high chair. Mommy goes away for a while, theballoon pops, the newspaper in the fireplace burns up, the housea block down the street is razed and so on. All very shockingand disturbing, certainly -- but still acceptable.The swatted fly, the sprayed mosquitoes these build on theprevious abstractions, and we come to the general concept ofdeath. So much for the first premise.(Patricks note.. In view of this, why do we insist in stillthinking that WE are special and that WE and only WE live afterdeath????)))The second premise is the tricky one. As a child Iformulated the abstraction “human being” by seeing thingsoutside of me that had something in common – appearance,behaviour and so on. That this particular class could then “foldback” on me and engulf me – this realization necessarily comesat a later stage of cognitive development, and must be quite ashocking experience, although probably most of us do notremember it happening.The truly amazing step, though, is the conjunction of thetwo premises. By the time we’ve developed the mental power toformulate