I Am a Strange Loop
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
One 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hofstadter who won a Pulitzer for his 1979 book, G del, Escher, Bach blends a surprising array of disciplines and styles in his continuing rumination on the nature of consciousness. Eschewing the study of biological processes as inadequate to the task, he argues that the phenomenon of self-awareness is best explained by an abstract model based on symbols and self-referential "loops," which, as they accumulate experiences, create high-level consciousness. Theories aside, it's impossible not to experience this book as a tender, remarkably personal and poignant effort to understand the death of his wife from cancer in 1993 and to grasp how consciousness mediates our otherwise ineffable relationships. In the end, Hofstadter's view is deeply philosophical rather than scientific. It's hopeful and romantic as well, as his model allows one consciousness to create and maintain within itself true representations of the essence of another. The book is all Hofstadter part theory, some of it difficult; part affecting memoir; part inventive thought experiment presented for the most part with an incorrigible playfulness. And whatever readers' reaction to the underlying arguments for this unique view of consciousness, they will find the model provocative and heroically humane.
