Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Further Reading 475urther Reading 475jusseriously-that's what they all say-few can resist trying to say, at length, t where he hasgone wrong. A provocative and influential article that exploits Putnam's fantasy is JerryFodor's intimidatingly entitled "Methodological Solipsism Considered as a ResearchStrategy in Cognitive Psychology," published, along with much furious commentary andrebuttal, in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences (vol. 3, no. 1, 1980, pp. 63-73). Hiscomment on Winograd's SHRDLU, quoted in the Reflections on "Non Serviam," comesfrom this article, which is reprinted in Haugeland'sMind Design.Prosthetic vision devices for the blind, mentioned in the Reflections on both "Where AmI?" and "What is it Like to be a Bat?", have been under development for many years, butthe best systems currently available are still crude. Most of the research and developmenthas been done in Europe. A brief survey can be found in Gunnar Jansson's "HumanLocomotion Guided by a Matrix of Tactile Point Stimuli," in G. Gordon, ed., ActiveTouch (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1978, pp. 263-271). The topic has beensubjected to philosophical scrutiny by David Lewis in "Veridical Hallucination andProsthetic Vision," in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (vol. 58, no. 3, 1980, pp.239-249).Marvin Minsky's article on telepresence appeared in Omni in May 1980, pp. 45-52, andcontains references to further reading.When Sanford speaks of the classic experiment with inverting lenses, he is referring to along history of experiments that began before the turn of the century when G. M. Strattonwore a device for several days that blocked vision in one eye and inverted it in the other.This and more recent experiments are surveyed in R. L. Gregory's fascinating andbeautifully illustrated book, Eye and Brain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 3rd ed.,1977). Also see No Kohler's "Experiments with Goggles," in Scientific American (vol.206, 1962, pp. 62-72). An up-to-date and very readable book on vision is John R. Frisby'sSeeing: Illusion, Brain, and Mind(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980).Godel sentences, self-referential constructions, "strange loops," and their implications forthe theory of the mind are explored in greatdetail in Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, and with some different twistsin Dennett's "The Abilities of Men and Machines," in Brainstorms. ThatGodel's Theorem is a bulwark of materialism rather than of mentalismis a thesis forcefully propounded in judson Webb's Mechanism, Mentalism,and Metamathematics. A lighter but no less enlightening exploration ofsuch ideas is Patrick Hughes's and George Brecht's Vicious Circles andParadoxes (New York: Doubleday, 1975). C. H. Whitely's refutation ofLucas's thesis is found in his article "Minds, Machines and GOdel: AReply to Mr. Lucas," published in Philosophy (vol. 37, 1962, p. 61).