Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 414Language is what gets us into this problem (by allowing us to see th question) andwhat helps to get us out as well (by being a universal thought-exchange medium,allowing experiences to become sharable and more objective). However, it can't pull usall the way.In a sense, Gödel’s Theorem is a mathematical analogue of the fact that I cannotunderstand what it is like not to like chocolate, or to be a bat, except by an infinitesequence of ever-more-accurate simulation processes that converge toward, but neverreach, emulation. I am trapped inside myself and therefore can't see how other systemsare. Gödel’s Theorem follows from a consequence of that general fact: I am trappedinside myself and therefore can't see how other systems see me. Thus the objectivitysubjectivitydilemmas that Nagel has sharply posed are some= how related toepistemological problems in both mathematical logic, and as we saw earlier, thefoundations of physics. These ideas are developed in more detail in the last chapter ofGödel, Escher, Bach by HofstadterD.R.H.