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I Am a Strange Loop Ebook I AM A STRANGE LOOP PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Douglas R. Hofstadter | 436 pages | 07 Aug 2008 | The Perseus Books Group | 9780465030798 | English | New York, United States I am a Strange Loop PDF Book How can a mysterious abstraction be real-or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? It mixes the music of Bach, the artwork of Escher, and the mathematics of Godel. By: Roger Penrose. However, Professor Hofstadter shouldn't complain: he started it. But that sacrifice is also our glory. In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference. There's yet another irony in all this, for he has repeatedly scorned Bertrand Russell's failure to see the implications of his own formal language, while apparently making a comparable failure to understand the implications of his own model. Such a view is hardly controversial philosophically, but it is elaborated with an astonishing reductionism. These are the strange new breed of questions emerging as we discover more and more about our prehistoric origins--questions about knowing. Can self, soul, consciousness, "I" arise out of mere matter? It was further described on its cover as a "metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll. This prevents automated programs from posting comments. Your Information Name is required. Pricing policy About our prices. Thank you. So I'll end with a few more passages from the final pages of Hofstadter's book that offer a somewhat different perspective on his worldview. A Shepard tone is another illustrative example of a strange loop. Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop. In The Biologist's Imagination, William Hoffman and Leo Furcht examine the history of innovation in the biosciences, tracing technological innovation from the late eighteenth century to the present and placing special emphasis on how and where technology evolves. URLs automatically linked. The "strangeness" of a strange loop comes from our way of perception, because we categorize our input in a small number of "symbols" by which Hofstadter means groups of neurons standing for one thing in the outside world. Name is required to post a comment. Return to Book Page. Amazon Reviews. What does throwing a Frisbee reveal about our distant ancestors? Ricoeur catches everything Hofstader takes pages to say and he does so both more succinctly and with infinitely more suggestiveness I am being mendacious, I confess. Written by a librarything. Your email address will never be sold or distributed to a third party for any reason. This is what human love means. This leads to the sort of paradoxes seen in statements such as " This statement is false ," wherein the sentence's basis of truth is found in referring to itself and its assertion, causing a logical paradox. In the early stages, Professor Hofstadter brushes aside reductionist objections to his scheme which is, by definition, an emergent property of, and therefore unobservable in, the interactions of specific nerves and neurons. Douglas R. We can abstract our experience into increasingly sophisticated concepts. The substrate is not supposed to matter. Most helpful negative review. A strange loop is a hierarchy of levels, each of which is linked to at least one other by some type of relationship. I'm at chapter 6 but I don't think I can take it any more. All stars 5 star only 4 star only 3 star only 2 star only 1 star only. View an alternate. Brilliant book on The Self Having gone through a deeply winding and spiritual path, StrangeLoop has helped me to properly understand the essence of Nisargadatta. This seems to be a Strange Loop Too Far, and as a result we find Hofstadter ultimately embracing the reductionism of which he was initially so dismissive, veering violently towards determinism and concluding with a behavioural flourish that there is no consciousness, no free will, and no alternative way of experiencing red. He does this convincingly, perhaps better than anyone else, in my decidedly personal opinion. I am a Strange Loop Writer In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. How does one depict negative mass, for example, or the folding of a protein that is contagious? Consciousness , strange loops , intelligence. I liked the book for its insights into how Goedel toppled the edifice erected by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica. Douglas Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop" tackles THE Hard Problem of the Philosophy of Mind, namely, how can consciousness arise from inanimate substances like atoms, or as he would rephrase the question, "What could ever make a mere physical pattern be Me. Traces the development of Yizkor from the original memorializing of Jewish communities destroyed by the Crusaders to the touching service we have today, and reflects on how we remember both personal losses and the martyrs of history. Unfollow podcast failed. Home 1 Books 2. Get smart. His insight is to root consciousness not in the physical manifestation of the brain, but in the patterns and symbols represented within it. The same would probably go for an amphibian or a fish or, for that matter, a human ovum that had just been fertilized by a sperm. From being a semivegetarian fish and chicken were okay , he became, just recently, a strict one. Compulsively listenable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind. While fossil digs and carbon dating tell a remarkable story about the bones and times of our ancient ancestors, we cannot help wondering what they knew, and when. Taken together, these four strands reveal a deeply integrated, rational, and optimistic worldview. Stream or download thousands of included titles. At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes' still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only 3, years ago and is still developing. It makes a subtle and complex subject understandable and vastly engaging. The book uses the distinct history of bioinnovation to discuss current trends as they relate to medicine, agriculture, energy, industry, ecosystems, and climate. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. At the end of the day, as people used to say about Los Angeles, there is not much there there. Add to list. In Your Brain Is a Time Machine , brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. Does an "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? Riccardo Leggio How does the brain construct it? It's the holiday season in Burnside, and everyone is getting into the spirit Listeners also enjoyed The empirical section of the text compares and contrasts psychotic and dissociative disorders from a wide range of perspectives, including phenomenology, childhood trauma, and memory and cognitive disturbances, whilst the clinical section focuses on the assessment, differential diagnosis and treatment of these disorders, along with proposals for new and novel hybrid disorders. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method. Bono, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Bob Geldof, Oprah, Madonna, and Angelina Jolie are just some of the entertainers, politicians, pundits, elite business people, and policy- makers whose highly visible political activism has become an integral part of their public personas. Includes bibliographical references p. F 'em! This solitude is disturbed by the appearance of Y, who insists on exposing X to the richness of the physical world. The very essense of who we think we are. By: Julian Jaynes. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. What Is Life? In The Spotlight. Looking at behavior at a sufficiently detailed level, he notes that "mere" physics could explain what we do if we knew enough about the starting places and velocities of all the trillions of molecules that compose our bodies, particularly our brains. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. In limestone bluffs and butterfly migrations, from Stone Age tool-making to Sumerian beer-making, clues are sought to better understand this strange mind that ponders the origins of its own existence. Might the fact that it is conceptually possible mean that God therefore exists? Ultimately, he concludes that consciousness arises when extremely complicated patterns of sense perception and the formation of symbols turn inward and apply themselves to themselves. He did not not quite explain what is strange about it. What is infinity? By: David Deutsch. Add payment method. What listeners say about I Am a Strange Loop. I am a Strange Loop Reviews However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that Your comment has not yet been posted. Hofstadter P Hachette Audio. Add to Wishlist. This section needs additional citations for verification. It is heart-wrenching to read how the author has tried to come to grips with her death, agonizing over how much "Carolness" and even "Carol-consciousness"--how much of her "interiority"--still lives in his brain and in those of the others who knew her.
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