Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 410represents some facts about the world and about its own relationship t the world. There isno arguing with the fact that a computer can b programmed to describe the world aroundit in terms of a frame of reference centered on the machine itself, as in this: "Threeminutes ago, the Teddy bear was thirty-five leagues due east of here." Such a "herecentered, now-centered" frame of reference constitutes a rudimentary "egocentric" pointof view. "Being here now" is a central experience for any "I." Yet how can you define"now" and "here" without making reference to some "I"? Is circularity inevitable?Let us ponder for a moment on the connection of "I" and `,now." What would itbe like to be a person who had grown up normally, thus with ordinary perceptual andlinguistic capacities, but who then suffered some brain damage and was left without thecapacity to convert the reverberating neural circuits of short-term memory into long-termmemories? Such a person's sense of existence would extend to only a few seconds oneither side of "now." There would be no large-scale sense of continuity of self-no internalvision of a chain of selves stretching both directions in time, making one coherent person.When you get a concussion, the few instants before it happened are obliteratedfrom your mind, as if you had never been conscious at that time. Just think-if you wereknocked on the head at this moment, there would be no permanent trace left in your brainof your having read these past few sentences. Who, then, has been experiencing them?Does an experience only become part of you once it has been committed to longtermmemory? Who is it that has dreamt all those many dreams you don't remember one bitof?Just as "now" and "I" are closely related terms, so are "here" and "I." Consider thefact that you are now experiencing death, in a curious way. Not being in Paris right now,you know what it is like to be dead in Paris. No lights, no sounds-nothing. The samegoes for Timbuctu. In fact, you are dead everywhere-except for one small spot. Just thinkhow close you are to being dead everywhere! And you are also dead in all other momentsthan right now. That one small piece of space-time you-are alive in doesn't just happen tobe where your body is now-it is defined by your body and by the concept of "now." Ourlanguages all have words that incorporate a rich set of associations with "here" and "now"namely, "I" and "me" and so on.Now to program a computer to use words like "I" and "me" and "my" indescribing its own relation to the world is a common thing. Of course, behind thosewords there need not stand any sophisticated self-concept-but there may. In essence, anyphysical representational system, as defined earlier in the commentary on the "Prelude,Ant Fugue"