I Am a Strange Loop (2 page)
Downward Causality in Mathematics
Göru and the Futile Quest for a Truth Machine
The Upside-down Perceptions of Evolved Creatures
Stuck, for Better or Worse, with “I”
Proceeding Slowly Towards the Bottom Level
Of Hogs, Dogs, and Bogs
CHAPTER 13 - The Elusive Apple of My “I”
The Patterns that Constitute Experience
Reflected Communist Bachelors with Spin 1/2 are All Wet
Am I a Strange Marble?
A Pearl Necklace I Am Not
I Am My Brain’s Most Complex Symbol
Internalizing Our Weres, Our Wills, and Our Woulds
I Cannot Live without My Self
The Slow Buildup of a Self
Making Tosses, Internalizing Bounces
Smiling Like Hopalong Cassidy
The Lies in our I’s
The Locking-in of the “I” Loop
I Am Not a Video Feedback Loop
I Am Ineradicably Entrenched…
…But Am I Real?
The Size of the Strange Loop that Constitutes a Self
The Supposed Selves of Robot Vehicles
A Counterfactual Stanley
CHAPTER 14 - Strangeness in the “I” of the Beholder
The Inert Sponges inside our Heads
Squirting Chemicals
The Stately Dance of the Symbols
In which the Alfbert Visits Austranius
Brief Debriefing
Soaps in Sanskrit
Winding Up the Debriefing
Trapped at the High Level
First Key Ingredient of Strangeness
Second Key Ingredient of Strangeness
Sperry Redux
Multiple Strange Loops in One Brain
Content-free Feedback Loops
Baby Feedback Loops and Baby “I” ’s
Entwined Feedback Loops
One Privileged Loop inside our Skull
Shared Perception, Shared Control
A Twirlwind Trip to Twinwirld
Is One or Two Letters of the Alphabet?
Pairsonal Identity in Twinwirld
“Twe”-tweaking by Twinwirld-twiddling
Post Scriptum re Twinwirld
Soulmates and Matesouls
Children as Gluons
CHAPTER 16 - Grappling with the Deepest Mystery
A Random Event Changes Everything
Desperate Lark
Post Scriptum
CHAPTER 17 - How We Live in Each Other
Universal Machines
The Unexpectedness of Universality
Universal Beings
Being Visited
Chemistry and Its Lack
Copycat Planetoids Grow by Absorbing Melting Meteorites
How Much Can One Import of Another’s Interiority?
Double-clicking on the Icon for a Loved One’s Soul
Thinking with Another’s Brain
Mosaics of Different Grain Size
Transplantation of Patterns
CHAPTER 18 - The Blurry Glow of Human Identity
I Host and Am Hosted by Others
Feeling that One is Elsewhere
Telepresence versus “Real” Presence
Which Viewpoint is Really Mine?
Where Am I?
Varying Degrees of Being Another
The Naïve Viewpoint is Usually Good Enough
Where Does a Hammerhead Shark Think it is?
Sympathetic Vibrations
Am I No One Else or Am I Everyone Else?
Interpenetration of National Souls
Halos, Afterglows, Coronas
CHAPTER 19 - Consciousness = Thinking
So Where’s Consciousness in my Loopy Tale?
Enter the Skeptics
Symbols Trigger More Symbols
The Central Loop of Cognition
CHAPTER 20 - A Courteous Crossing of Words
CHAPTER 21 - A Brief Brush with Cartesian Egos
Well-told Stories Pluck Powerful Chords
What Pushovers We Are!
Teleportation of a Thought Experiment across the Atlantic
The Murky Whereabouts of Cartesian Egos
Am I on Venus, or Am I on Mars?
The Radical Nature of Parfit’s Views
Self-confidence, Humility, and Self-doubt
Morphing Parfit into Bonaparte
The Radical Redesign of Douglas R. Hofstadter
On “Who” and on “How”
Double or Nothing
Trains Who Roll
The Glow of the Soular Corona
CHAPTER 22 - A Tango with Zombies and Dualism
Pedantic Semantics?
Two Machines
Two Daves
The Nagging Worry that One Might Be a Zombie
Consciousness Is Not a Power Moonroof
Liphosophy
Consciousness: A Capitalized Essence
A Sliding Scale of Élan Mental
Semantic Quibbling in Universe Z
Quibbling in Universe Q
CHAPTER 23 - Killing a Couple of Sacred Cows
A Cerulean Sardine
Bleu Blanc Rouge = Red, White, and Blue
Inverting the Sonic Spectrum
Glebbing and Knurking
The Inverted Political Spectrum
Violets Are Red, Roses Are Blue
A Scarlet Sardine
Yes, People Want Things
The Hedge Maze of Life
There’s No Such Thing as a Free Will
CHAPTER 24 - On Magnanimity and Friendship
Are There Small and Large Souls?
From the Depths to the Heights
The Magnanimity of Albert Schweitzer
Does Conscience Constitute Consciousness?
Albert Schweitzer and Johann Sebastian Bach
Dig that Profundity!
Alle Grashüpfer Müssen Sterben
Friends
Praise for
I Am A Strange Loop
“[F]ascinating . . . original and thought-provoking . . . [T]here are many pleasures in
I Am a Strange Loop.
”
—
Wall Street Journal
“
I Am a Strange Loop
scales some lofty conceptual heights, but it remains very personal, and it’s deeply colored by the facts of Hofstadter’s later life. In 1993 Hofstadter’s wife Carol died suddenly of a brain tumor at only 42, leaving him with two young children to care for . . .
I Am a Strange Loop
is a work of rigorous thinking.”
—
Time
“Almost thirty years after the publication of his well-loved
Gödel, Escher, Bach
, Hofstadter revisits some of the same themes. The purpose of the new book is to make inroads into the nexus of self, self-awareness and consciousness by examining self-referential structures in areas as diverse as art and mathematics. Hofstadter is the man for the job. His treatment of issues is approachable and personal, you might even say subj ective. His discussion is never overtechnical and his prose never over-bearing. He stays close to the surface of real life at all times, even as he discusses matters of the highest level of abstraction, and his book is full of fresh and rich real-life examples that give texture and authenticity to the discussion.”
—
Times Literary Supplement
, London
“[P]leasant and intriguing . . . Hofstadter is a supremely skillful master of an educational alchemy that can, at the turn of the page, transform the most abstract and complex of thoughts into a digestible idea that is both fun and interesting . . . Hofstadter’s good humor and easygoing style make it a real pleasure to read from start to finish.”
—
Times Higher Education Supplement,
London
“
I Am a Strange Loop
contains many profound and unique insights on the question of who we are. In addition, it is a delightful read.”