Page 28 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

Where Am I? 25

could loft a ‘‘there’’ in an instant through the farthest reaches of space, and then
aimthe next ‘‘there’’withpinpointaccuracyatthe upperleftquadrantofa
freckle on my arm. Why was I having such trouble with ‘‘here’’? ‘‘Here in
Houston’’ worked well enough, and so did ‘‘here in the lab,’’ and even ‘‘here in
this part of the lab,’’ but ‘‘here in the vat’’ always seemed merely an unmeant
mental mouthing. I tried closing my eyes while thinking it. This seemed to
help, but still I couldn’t manage to pull it off, except perhaps for a fleeting in-
stant. Icouldn’tbesure. Thediscovery that Icouldn’tbesurewas also unset-
tling. How did I know where I meant by ‘‘here’’ when I thought ‘‘here’’? Could I
think I meant one place when in fact I meant another? I didn’t see how that
could be admitted without untying the few bonds of intimacy between a per-
son and his own mental life that had survived the onslaught of the brain
scientists and philosophers, the physicalists and behaviorists. Perhaps I was
incorrigible about where I meant when I said ‘‘here.’’ But in my present cir-
cumstances it seemed that either I was doomed by sheer force of mental habit
to thinking systematically false indexical thoughts, or where a person is (and
hence where his thoughts are tokened for purposes of semantic analysis) is not
necessarily where his brain, the physical seat of his soul, resides. Nagged by
confusion, I attempted to orient myself by falling back on a favorite philoso-
pher’s ploy. I began naming things.
‘‘Yorick,’’ I said aloud to my brain, ‘‘you are my brain. The rest of my body,
seated in this chair, I dub ‘Hamlet.’’’ So here we all are: Yorick’s my brain,
Hamlet’s my body, and I am Dennett. Now, where am I? And when I think
‘‘where am I?’’ where’s that thought tokened? Is it tokened in my brain,
lounging about in the vat, or right here between my ears where it seems to
be tokened? Or nowhere? Its temporal coordinates give me no trouble; must it
not have spatial coordinates as well? I began making a list of the alternatives.
1. Where Hamlet goes, there goes Dennett. This principle was easily refuted by
appeal to the familiar brain transplant thought-experiments so enjoyed by phi-
losophers. If Tom and Dick switch brains, Tom is the fellow with Dick’s former
body—just ask him; he’ll claim to be Tom, and tell you the most intimate
details of Tom’s autobiography. It was clear enough, then, that my current
body and I could part company, but not likely that I could be separated from
my brain. The rule of thumb that emerged so plainly from the thought experi-
ments was that in a brain-transplant operation, one wanted to be the donor,not
the recipient. Better to call such an operation a body-transplant, in fact. So per-
haps the truth was,
2. Where Yorick goes, there goes Dennett. This was not at all appealing, how-
ever. How could I be in the vat and not about to go anywhere, when I was so
obviouslyoutside thevat lookinginand beginningto makeguiltyplans to re-
turn to my room for a substantial lunch? This begged the question I realized,
but it still seemed to be getting at something important. Casting about for some
support for my intuition, I hit upon a legalistic sort of argument that might
have appealed to Locke.
Suppose,Iargued to myself,Iwere nowtoflytoCalifornia, rob a bank,and
be apprehended. In which state would I be tried: In California, where the rob-
bery took place, or in Texas, where the brains of the outfit were located? Would
I be a California felon with an out-of-state brain, or a Texas felon remotely