Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

This copy of The Mind’s I and begin to read it, for it promises to lead you on a voyage ofdiscovery of the self and the soul. You will learn, it says, something about what and whoyou are.You think to yourself.Here I am reading page 5 of this book; I see my hands holding this book. I have hands.How do I know they’re my hands? Silly question. hey’re fastened to my arms, to mybody. How do I know this is my body? I control it. Do I own it? In a sense I do. It’s mineto do with it as I like, so long as I don’ harm others. It’s even a sort of legal possession,for while I may not legally sell it to anyone so long as I am alive, I can legally transferownership of my body, to, say a medical school once it is dead.If I have this body, then I guess I’m something other than this body. When I say“I own my body” I don’t mean “This body owns itself” - probably a meaningless claim.Or does everything that no one else owns own itself? Does the moon belong to everyone,to no one, or to itself? What can be an owner of anything? I can, and my body is just oneof the things I own. In nay case, I and my body seem both intimately connected and yetdistinct. I am the controller, it is the controlled. Most of the time.Then The Mind’s I asks you if in that case you might exchange your body foranother, a stronger or more beautiful or more controllable body.You think that this is impossible.But, the book insists, it is perfectly imaginable, and hence possible in principle..You wonder whether the book has in mind reincarnation of the transmigration ofsouls, but, anticipating the wonder, the book acknowledges that while reincarnation isone interesting idea, the details of how this might happen are always left in the dark, andthere are other more interesting ways it might happen. What if your brain were to betransplanted into a new body, which it could then control? Wouldn’t you think of that asswitching bodies? There would be vast technical problems, of course, but, given ourpurposes, we can ignore them.It does seem hen (doesn’t it?) that if your brain were transplanted into anotherbody, you would go with it. But, are you a brain? Try on two sentences, and see whichone sounds more like the truth to you:I have a brain.I am a brain.Sometimes we talk about smart people being brains, but we don’t mean itliterally. We mean they have good brains. You have a good brain, but who or what, then,is the you that has the brain? Once again, if you have a brain, could you trade it in foranother? How could anyone detach