A simulation aims at imitating (reproducing) the external result through a different generative mechanism, while a model aims at grasping the internal structure of a phenomenon, its “inner working,” without any similarity to the result (to “how the thing appears” in its immediacy). In the case of a human being, however, simulation gets redoubled: we can build either a robot that would simulate human activity (that would—to an external observer—act like a human, engage in the solar parallax: the unbearable lightness of being no one conversation, and so on), or a robot whose “inner experience” would simulate that of a human (which would possess awareness, emotions, and so forth). The conclusion to be drawn from this is the one drawn long ago by Francisco Varela: consciousness (awareness) is a matter not of inside, but of the “interface,” of the surface-contact between inside and outside. It is this convoluted relation between Inside and Outside that, in effect, undermines the standard notion of the Cartesian subject as a res cogitans (thinking substance): it brings home the fact that the subject, precisely, is not a substance. […] What we as speaking beings experience [is] the empty core of our subjectivity: what am I? I am neither my body […], nor the stable core of my autobiographical narratives that form my symbolic identity […]
- Slavoj Zizek, from The Parallax View, pgs 222-226
