This pump, which Mr Dennett calls a cascade of homunculi, was inspired by the field of artificial intelligence. (AI)

丹内特把这种泵称之为级联侏儒，其灵感自于工智能领域（AI）。

I'm the inner homunculus that's vulnerable to experience.

我是内心的小矮，易受到经验的影响。

Even the addition of a second Normal size human being wouldn't cause a structural failure, Much less a homunculus such as yourself.

就算多承重一个正常体型的类也会引致其床架松动的更别提你这样的小雏形了。

People could get their own babies painted, and they wanted them to look like cute chubby babies, not homunculi.

们可以给自己的婴上色，他们希望他们看起来可爱的胖乎乎的婴， 是矮。

They were influenced by the idea of the homunculus, which is Latin for little man.

他们受到 homunculus 概念的影响，homunculus 是拉丁语中小的意思。

Crucially, at each level down in the cascade the virtual homunculi become a bit less clever, to a point where all it needs to do is, say, pick the larger of two numbers.

这一过程的关键在于，在这个串联在一起的每一个较低层次的子系统中，那个虚拟侏儒会渐渐地变得再那么聪明，直至到达这样一个点为止。在这个点上，需要那个侏儒来做的全部事情就是在两个数字中选出较大的那一个。

The time-honoured idea that the mind is essentially a little man, or homunculus, who sits in the brain doing clever things soon becomes problematic: who does all the clever things in the little man's brain?

传统的观点认为，从本质上说，心灵是一个住在类大脑里从事智力活动小，或者侏儒。过，在丹尼特看来这种观点是站住脚的：既然如此，那么，住在这个侏儒的大脑中，从事智力活动的又是谁呢？