Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Own consciousness seems obvious and pervasive, we know that much goes on around usand even inside our bodies of which we are entirely unaware or unconscious, but nothingcould be more intimately know to us than those things of which we are, individually,conscious. Those things of which I am conscious, and the ways in which I am consciousof them, determine what it is like to be me. I know in a way no other could know what itis like to be me. From the inside, consciousness seems to be an all-or-nothingphenomenon – an inner light that is either on or off. We grant that we are sometimesdrowsy or inattentive, or asleep, and on occasion we even enjoy abnormally heightenedconsciousness, but when we are conscious, that we are conscious is not a fact that admitsof degrees. There is a perspective, then, from which consciousness seems to be a featurethat sunders the universe into two strikingly different kinds of things, those that have itand those that don’t. Those that have it are subjects, beings to whom things can be oneway or another, beings it is like something to be. It is not like anything at all to be a brickor a pocket calculator or an apple. These things have insides, but not the right sort ofinsides – no inner life, no point of view. It is certainly like something to be me(Something I know “from the inside”) and almost certainly like something to be you (foryou have told me, most convincingly, that it is the same with you), and probably likesomething to be a dog or a dolphin (if only they could tell us!) and maybe even likesomething to be a spider.Other MindsWhen one considers these others (other folk and other creatures), one considers themperforce from the outside, and then various of their observable features strike us asrelevant to the question of their consciousness. Creatures react appropriately to eventswithin the scope of their senses; they recognize things, avoid painful experiences, learn,plan, and solve problems. They exhibit intelligence. But putting matter this way might beheld to prejudge the issue. Talking of their “senses” or of “painful” circumstances, forinstance suggests that we have already settled the issue of consciousness -- for note thathad we described a robot in those terms, the polemical intent of the choice of wordswould have been obvious (and resisted by many). How do creatures differ from robots,real or imagined? By being organically and biologically similar to us – and we