I Am a Strange LoopOne of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind examines where the self comes from – and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. “I Am a Strange Loop is a work of rigorous thinking, but it’s also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love: The Year of Magical Thinking for mathematicians.” ―Time Deep down, your brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles. On a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call “symbols.” The most central and complex symbol is the one you call “I.” An “I” is a strange loop where the brain’s symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down so that symbols seem to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. To each human being, this “I” is the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real? Is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? These are among the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter’s first book-length journey into philosophy since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach. It is a tale crisply told, rife with anecdotes, analogies, and metaphors – cutting-edge philosophy that any strange loop can understand. |
Contents
Prologue An Affable Locking of Horns | 3 |
Chapter 1 On Souls and Their Sizes | 9 |
Chapter 2 This Teetering Bulb of Dread and Dream | 25 |
Chapter 3 The Causal Potency of Patterns | 37 |
Chapter 4 Loops Goals and Loopholes | 51 |
Chapter 5 On Video Feedback | 65 |
Chapter 6 Of Selves and Symbols | 73 |
Chapter 7 The Epi Phenomenon | 87 |
Chapter 16 Grappling with the Deepest Mystery | 227 |
Chapter 17 How We Live in Each Other | 241 |
Chapter 18 The Blurry Glow of Human Identity | 259 |
Chapter 19 Consciousness Thinking | 275 |
Chapter 20 A Courteous Crossing of Words | 281 |
Chapter 21 A Brief Brush with Cartesian Egos | 301 |
Chapter 22 A Tango with Zombies and Dualism | 319 |
Chapter 23 Killing a Couple of Sacred Cows | 333 |
Chapter 8 Embaring on a StrangeLoop Safari | 101 |
Chapter 9 Pattern and Provability | 113 |
Chapter 10 Godels Quintessential Strange Loop | 125 |
Chapter 11 How Analogy Makes Meaning | 147 |
Chapter 12 On Downward Causality | 163 |
Chapter 13 The Elusive Apple of My I | 177 |
Chapter 14 Strangeness in the I of the Beholder | 193 |
Chapter 15 Entwinement | 207 |
Chapter 24 On Magnanimity and Friendship | 343 |
Epilogue The Quandary | 357 |
Notes | 365 |
| 377 | |
Permissions and Ackowledgments | 383 |
| 385 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract analogy answer audio feedback believe Bertrand Russell called camera careenium Carol causality Chapter complex concepts consciousness course creatures Dan Dennett Dennett Derek Parfit domino Douglas Hofstadter entities Episode episodic memory exist experience fact feedback loop feel formula give Gödel number happens Hofstadter 1979 human brain idea identical imagine infinite inner inside integer inverted spectrum John Searle kind Klüdgerot Kurt Gödel living look machine marble mathematical matter meaning metaphor microscopic mind molecules mosquito never notion once pairson paradoxical Parfit patterns perceive perception perhaps person philosophers phrase physical PLATO play prim numbers prime Principia Mathematica provable question readers robot Roger Sperry rules of inference Russell screen seems sense sentence simmballs simms simply someone soul strange loop structure sure symbols talking theorems things thought tiny triggered Twinwirld universe video feedback whole numbers words