I Am A Strange Loop

by Hofstadter, Douglas R.

• ISBN13: 9780465030798
• ISBN10: 0465030793
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-07-08
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Douglas R. Hofstadter is College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. His previous books are the Pulitzer Prizewinning Gödel, Escher, Bach; Metamagical Themas, The Mind’s I, Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, Le Ton Beau de Marot, and Eugene Onegin.

Table of Contents

Words of Thanks	p. ix
Preface: An Author and His Book	p. xi
Prologue: An Affable Locking of Horns	p. 3
On Souls and Their Sizes	p. 9
This Teetering Bulb of Dread and Dream	p. 25
The Causal Potency of Patterns	p. 37
Loops, Goals, and Loopholes	p. 51
On Video Feedback	p. 65
Of Selves and Symbols	p. 73
The Epi Phenomenon	p. 87
Embarking on a Strange-Loop Safari	p. 101
Pattern and Provability	p. 113
Godel's Quintessential Strange Loop	p. 125
How Analogy Makes Meaning	p. 147
On Downward Causality	p. 163
The Elusive Apple of My "I"	p. 177
Strangeness in the "I" of the Beholder	p. 193
Entwinement	p. 207
Grappling with the Deepest Mystery	p. 227
How We Live in Each Other	p. 241
The Blurry Glow of Human Identity	p. 259
Consciousness = Thinking	p. 275
A Courteous Crossing of Words	p. 281
A Brief Brush with Cartesian Egos	p. 301
A Tango with Zombies and Dualism	p. 319
Killing a Couple of Sacred Cows	p. 333
On Magnanimity and Friendship	p. 343
Epilogue: The Quandary	p. 357
Notes	p. 365
Bibliography	p. 377
Permissions and Acknowledgments	p. 383
Index	p. 385
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