Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Non Serviam 309to record their actions and their pursuits, but never to interfere with these. This method isalready developed and has a technology of its own – a set of instruments whoseprocurement presented difficulties that seemed all but insurmountable only a few yearsago. The idea is to hear, to understand – in short, to be a constantly eavesdroppingwitness – but at the same time to prevent one’s “monitorings” from disturbing in any waythe world of the personoids. Now in the planning stage at MIT are programs (APHRONII and EROT) that will enable the personoids – who are currently without gender – tohave “erotic contacts,” make possible what corresponds to fertilization, and give them theopportunity to multiply “sexually.” Dobb makes clear that he is no enthusiast of theseAmerican projects. His work, as described in Non Serviam, is aimed in an altogetherdifferent direction. Not without reason has the English school of personetics been called“the philosophical Polygon” and “the theodicy lab.” With these descriptions we come towhat is probably the most significant and, certainly, the most intriguing part of the bookunder discussion – the last part, which justifies and explains its peculiar title.Dobb gives an account of his own experiment, in progress now for eight yearswithout interruption. Of the creation itself he makes only brief mention; it was a fairlyordinary duplicating of functions typical of the program JAHVE VI, with slightmodifications. He summarizes the results of “tapping” this world, which he himselfcreated and whose development he continues to follow. He considers this tapping to beunethical, and even, at times, a shameful practice. Nevertheless, he carries on with hiswork, professing a belief in the necessity, for science, of conducting such experimentsalso – experiments that can in no way be justified on moral – or, for that matter, on anyother nonknowledge-advancing – grounds. The situation, he says, has come to the pointwhere the old evasions of the scientists will not do. One cannot affect fine neutrality andconjure away an uneasy conscience by using, for example, the rationalization worked outby vivisectionists – that it is not in creatures of full dimensional consciousness, not insovereign beings that one is causing suffering or only discomfort. In the personoidexperiments we are accountable twofold, because we create and then enchain the creationin the schema of our laboratory procedures. Whatever we do and however we explain ouraction, there is no longer an escape from full accountability.Many years of experience on the part of Dobb and his co-workers at Oldport wentinto the making of their eight-dimensional universum, which became the residence ofpersonoids bearing the names ADAN, ADNA, ANAD, DANA, DAAN, and NAAD. Thefirst personoids developed the rudiment of language implanted in them and had“progeny” by means of division. Dobb writes, in the biblical vein, “And ADAN begatADNA, ADNA