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1. •  
     CommentAuthorfelipevenancio
   • CommentTimeApr 4th 2006

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   Just read this review and like to share:
   
   I Am a Strange Loop
   Douglas R. Hofstadter (2006)
   ISBN: 0465030785
   
   This fascinating book tackles the weighty question of what we mean when we refer to “I.” Douglas R. Hofstadter, College Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at Indiana University, poses controversial questions on consciousness that are liable to toss all your preconceived notions of self around your head like mismatched socks on a spin cycle. If you feel like you’re falling down the rabbit-hole when you try and comprehend a concept of “I,” it’s probably due to what the Pulitzer Prize winning Professor calls the “strange loop.” According to Hofstadter this term refers to a special feedback loop that incorporates several levels of cognition within the brain. He describes the brain as working on a hierarchy, with a lower, primordial mass of freewheeling particles all the way up to the higher levels dominated by abstract “symbols”. Among the symbols, says Hofstadter, “I” is the most central and complex symbol of all and acts as a nexus between the different hierarchies. But, asks Hofstadter, do these symbols - or thoughts - defy physics? Is it a situation of mind over matter? This is one of the most interesting aspects of I am A Strange Loop, as it raises the question of whether thoughts push particles around and cause action and movement, or vice versa. Of course, this concept could raise all sorts of possibilities relating to souls, spirits and the like, but Hofstadter doesn’t take this path. Instead, he takes a scientific approach in the hope of discovering the mechanisms behind consciousness. Are our thoughts derived from particles that follow deterministic physical laws, or are we missing something? In either case the question of what a thought actually is, and how it relates to a continual concept of “I,” is sure to keep the strange loop working overtime.
   
   Taken from Science-a-gogo.
   Link: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/books.shtml
2. •  
     CommentAuthoridoru345
   • CommentTimeApr 4th 2006 edited

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   This is fascinating and brings to mind the idea - which I read, somewhere, a while ago - that we are at least two creatures
   
   Now that I think of it, I believe the source of my remembrance is the still controversial theory of Julian Jaynes: The bicameral mind
   
   Perhaps there's a more ancient self which obeys patterns of behavior burned into our cognitive template long ago and a more recent innovation (the one that, for example, writes abstract notions to be shared electronically on a global communications and entertainment network).
   
   I think there are times (e.g. when the sexual need insists upon being met, circumstances be damned) when you can almost feel - like the grinding of gears in your head - the negotiations between these loops of consciousness.
3. •  
     CommentAuthorDanieru
   • CommentTimeApr 4th 2006 edited

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   Great link, you've tempted my bookcase to gourge itself ever more...
   
   From the brief outline above, and a glimpse at the book over at amazon, it looks more like a treatise on the epistemological implications of selfhood than an examination into the material distinctness of these supposed selves (ala. Julian Jaynes).
   
   Yet, it is hard to examine a materialist view of 'I' without verging on epiphenomenalism. A good thought experimenting always helps:
   
   
   In many ways the human brain can be thought of as the hardware which runs the software of consciousness. The physical states of the computer's insides do not directly correlate to the animation of a chicken which emerges on the computer monitor, yet by picking apart the various levels of complexity, just as Hofstadter seems to be doing in his book, one can map every aspect of the animated chicken back to its computer coding.
   
   We may not be able to do this yet with the human mind, but that is not to say we will never be able to.
   
   The question arises then, how does the flitting electrical pulses dancing through a lump of organic material manifest a conscious, self aware entity which 'there is something it is like to be'? Without reading the book I can only guess, but I would assume this is where Hofstadter's 'Strange Loop' comes in. Symbolic metaphors contained in the mind can, and do, have effects lower down the hierachy of the loop.
   
   I can program my computer to run a piece of software at 12pm every day which automatically shuts itself down.... That is, the symbols manipulated via my Windows operating system act through the computers very own 'Strange Loop' to INTERACT WITH THE PHYSICAL HARDWARE OF THE COMPUTER ITSELF!
   
   How this all works I don't quite know. Maybe the software / computer engineers and the neuroscientists / philosophers of mind ought to get together over a light lunch on all this.
   
   (Forgive my philosophical babbling - it's been a few years since I sat in a lecture theatre [and even longer since I paid attention])