Page 31 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

28 Daniel C. Dennett

the way it seemed to me. That’s how I would put it, just off the top of my head
as it were. On the trip I reflected further about my earlier anxieties and decided
that my first post-operative speculations had been tinged with panic. The mat-
ter was not nearly as strange or metaphysical as I had been supposing. Where
was I? In two places, clearly: both inside the vat and outside it. Just as one can
stand with one foot in Connecticut and the other in Rhode Island, I was in two
places at once. I had become one of those scattered individuals we used to hear
so much about. The more I considered this answer, the more obviously true it
appeared. But, strange to say, the more true it appeared, the less important the
question to which it could be the true answer seemed. A sad, but not unprece-
dented, fate for a philosophical question to suffer. This answer did not com-
pletely satisfy me, of course. There lingered some question to which I should
have liked an answer, which was neither ‘‘Where are all my various and sundry
parts?’’ nor ‘‘What is my current point of view?’’ Or at least there seemed to be
such a question. For it did seem undeniable that in some sense I and not merely
most of me was descending into the earth under Tulsa in search of an atomic
warhead.
When I found the warhead, I was certainly glad I had left my brain behind,
for the pointer on the specially built Geiger counter I had brought with me was
off the dial. I called Houston on my ordinary radio and told the operation con-
trol center of my position and my progress. In return, they gave me instructions
for dismantling the vehicle, based upon my on-site observations. I had set to
work with my cutting torch when all of a sudden a terrible thing happened. I
went stone deaf. At first I thought it was only my radio earphones that had
broken, but when I tapped on my helmet, I heard nothing. Apparently the au-
ditory transceivers had gone on the fritz. I could no longer hear Houston or my
own voice, but I could speak, so I started telling them what had happened. In
mid-sentence, I knew something else had gone wrong. My vocal apparatus had
become paralyzed. Then my right hand went limp—another transceiver had
gone. I was truly in deep trouble. But worse was to follow. After a few more
minutes, I went blind. I cursed my luck, and then I cursed the scientists who
had led me into this grave peril. There I was, deaf, dumb, and blind, in a ra-
dioactive hole more than a mile under Tulsa. Then the last of my cerebral radio
links broke, and suddenly I was faced with a new and even more shocking
problem: whereas an instant before I had been buried alive in Oklahoma, now I
was disembodied in Houston. My recognition of my new status was not im-
mediate. It took me several very anxious minutes before it dawned on me that
my poor body lay several hundred miles away, with heart pulsing and lungs
respirating, but otherwise as dead as the body of any heart transplant donor, its
skull packed with useless, broken electronic gear. The shift in perspective I had
earlier found well nigh impossible now seemed quite natural. Though I could
thinkmyselfbackintomybody inthe tunnel underTulsa,ittook some effort to
sustain the illusion. For surely it was an illusion to suppose I was still in Okla-
homa: I had lost all contact with that body.
It occurred to me then, with one of those rushes of revelation of which we
should be suspicious, that I had stumbled upon an impressive demonstration of
the immateriality of the soul based upon physicalist principles and premises.
For as the last radio signal between Tulsa and Houston died away, had I not