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，其灵感自于人工智能领域（AI）。

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

我是内心的小矮人，很容易受到经验的影响。

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人类也不会引致其床架松动的更别提像你这样的小雏形人了。

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

人们可以给自己的婴儿上色，他们希望他们看起来像可爱的胖乎乎的婴儿， 而不是矮人。

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 是拉丁语中小人的意思。

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不再那么聪明，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，心灵是一个住在人类大脑里从事智力活动小人，或者侏儒。不过，在丹尼特看来这种观点是站不住脚的：既然如此，那么，住在这个侏儒的大脑中，从事智力活动的人又是谁呢？