I Am a Strange Loop | 
 enlarge | Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 19625
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 436
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0465030793
Dewey Decimal Number: 149
EAN: 9780465030798
ASIN: 0465030793
Publication Date: July 7, 2008 (New: This Week)
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Product Description
Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter’s first book-length journey into philosophy since Goedel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 56 more reviews...
 I'm about a third of the way through... May 22, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
...but I must say I'm moving through this book much faster than the last I read (The Shipping News), which suggests that it's more compelling somehow. In truth, however, I think I may be favorably inclined because I so-much enjoyed reading Hofstader's classics as a teen. This book is not bad, but somehow a bit melancholy. It could probably also be a bit tighter -- a little shorter. I'll try to remember to update this review once I finished the book. Happy reading.
I am a Strange Loop April 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Do you know what consciousness is? It is a mirage. Just a giant symbol in your brain, like one big complicated word that points to itself. Douglas Hofstadter first had this insight when he was 16 years old and has been trying ever since to get into words that hang together. As other reviewers have pointed out, he probably hasn't succeeded. There are several problems I see with this ideas in the book, which is otherwise a sensitive autobiographical work. The first is how the central topic of Godel's theorem connects to consciousness. The theorem, which shows how self-reference can reveal an interesting fact about arithmetic from the "top down," doesn't by any number of analogies explain how consciousness has arisen from matter. Hofstadter very briefly says that DNA uses the same "Godel Trick" in its self-replication process, but then he stops short and returns to the nether world of metaphors and life experiences. I do feel that I gained a better conceptual understanding of the notion of "I," but here Godel's theorem was of no help.
The second problem I had with this book is the writing. He simply leaves out too much scientific information for the reader to feel confident in the many analogies he offers. By knowing a bit of evolution, formal logic, and Daniel Dennett's related positions, I could make much more sense of the book than what Hofstadter was giving me. Hofstadter may not be a "greedy reductionist" in fact, but he sure is in his writing.
The final problem I had with this books is the scope. At the end of the book, the author rushes to tidy up several problems of interest to the field of philosophy, from the old problem of free will to the recent fad of zombies. This seems stretched and out of place. He then extends himself to political topics such as capital punishment, war, and his grand finale, compassion, which I found completely gratuitous. He seems to think that once one adopts his view of consciousness, ethical values and political stances should fall out almost trivially. They don't. Unfortunately, these are probably the issues closest to Hofstadter's heart, and it pains me to see him gamble on such high chances of disagreement before the book is set down. I much rather see these in different books, say a popular science book and an autobiography. A popular science book needs to relate and convince, while an autobiography need only relate. By reaching so far as to claim, for example, that musical taste (e.g. Bach or Tupac) may be a measure of how conscious someone is, Hofstadter truly boxes himself into his own world.
 Minding the Mind March 8, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I Am a Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.
Hofstadter is perhaps most famous for Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (GEB), a book that guides the reader through the study of music and art and logic problems to an understanding of Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which states that any system of logic, at least as complicated as integer arithmetic will either be self-contradictory or be incomplete (containing some theorems that cannot be proven either true or false, some of which will be true and others false). It as a wonderful read, Hofstadter is a master of pun, analogy, and parable.
Strange Loop picks up where GEB left off. Hofstadter was disappointed that people missed some of the implications of GEB, namely for understanding human consciousness. Strange Loop is an attempt to redress that.
Strange Loop slices and dices John Searle (the fellow who wrote the book that caused me to awaken with a panic attack because humans cannot have free will according to him). It builds strongly in the direction that I thought one could look for understanding how we can have physical minds that are equal to our brains (as opposed to some non-physical mind that interfaces with the world through our brains) and not be simple automatons.
Along the way, he tells deep and touching stories about his own life and the loss of his wife to cancer. An (unintended) outcome of his reasoning is a "Proof for the Existence of god" that is just as strong as his reasoning about the existence of human consciousness.
This is an incredibly rich book. As I kept reading it, new ideas and points of view kept spinning off from the text. I don't always agree with Hofstadter. For example, I find his reasoning about the "Inverted Spectrum Theory" of the experience of colors overly simplistic. If he stuck by his guns, he'd see the analogy between knurking and glebbing and his different reactions to Prokovief and Bartok. It takes no special mathematic or philosophical training to follow or enjoy the work. Although I enjoyed it more than GEB, part of me sees GEB as the greater work, but it encompasses less than Strange Loop.
Any educated person should attempt GEB and force themselves through Strange Loop.
The human mind is the greatest mistery. February 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The autor leads us into the mistery about what the man really thinks and which are the mental processes those allow that. It no very simple follows the several argument, but the auctor is able to interesting always . The fundamental concept is that, when a theory is related with itself, it borns something as the life.
 Brilliant ideas but.... February 18, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The mixed reviews here for Hofstadter's latest work reflect my mixed feelings about it. I am a HUGE fan of GEB - I read it as an impressionable 15 year old and it kick-started my profound interest in the nature of consciousness. So, as you would expect, I was giddy with excitement when I read the enticing blurb of "I am a Strange Loop" in my local bookstore. I bought it immediately. I was expecting something like a sequel to GEB, but it wasn't quite what I expected.
First of all, IAASL is not another GEB. IAASL is much less technical and much less challenging. A good portion of the book is devoted to Godel's theorem, but it is all discussed in very friendly plain English. Of course, this may be seen as a positive to those who do not have a strong mathematical/computer science background.
Second of all, IAASL is very rich in detailed analogies which serve as "intuition pumps". That is, the analogies lay the foundations (in your brain) for an intuitive understanding of some of the more difficult ideas that Hofstadter tries to articulate. Sometimes entire chapters are devoted to these intuition pumps. You may find all these analogies useful, but if you already have strong intuitions that consciousness has a mechanistic explanation, you may feel that the book is very bloated and verbose.
Third, IAASL is part thesis-on-consciousness, part autobiography. If you'd like to know more about Hofstadter and his life, then you may cherish this feature of the book. If you just want a direct discussion on the nature of consciousness, you may find the digressions into personal details a little bit annoying.
So why have I given this book 4 stars? It's because, despite the flaws (which you may not even see as flaws), I believe this is an important book that should be read by anyone who is seriously interested in understanding what consciousness is, and why it exists. In my opinion, Hofstadter's take on these thorny issues is pure genius and deeply enlightening. However, you must read IAASL (possibly multiple times) with an open mind. If you are a dogmatic dualist, then I doubt you will find the book anything but infuriating and insulting.
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