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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hofstadter—who won a Pulitzer for his 1979 book, Gödel, 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. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* For more than 25 years, Hofstadter has been explaining the mystery of human consciousness through a bold fusion of mathematical logic and cognitive science. Yet for all of the acclaim his fusion has garnered (including the Pulitzer for his Godel, Escher, Bach, 1979), this pioneer admits that few readers have really grasped its meaning. To dispel the lingering incomprehension, Hofstadter here amplifies his revolutionary conception of the mind. A repudiation of traditional dualism--in which a spirit or soul inhabits the body--this revolutionary conception defines the mind as the emergence of a neural feedback loop within the brain. It is this peculiar loop that allows a stream of cognitive symbols to twist back on itself, so creating the self-awareness and self-integration that constitute an "I." Hofstadter explains the dynamics of this reflective self in refreshingly lucid language, enlivened with personal anecdotes that translate arcane formulas into the wagging tail on a golden retriever or the smile on Hopalong Cassidy. Nonspecialists are thus able to assess the divide between human and animal minds, and even to plumb the mental links binding the living to the dead. Hofstadter's analysis will not convince all skeptics. But even skeptics will appreciate the way he forces us to think deeper thoughts about thought. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Douglas is on the right track!,
By
This review is from: I Am a Strange Loop (Paperback)
Unlike the previous long winded and arrogant reviews , I highly recommend this book. I am not going to pretend to be some pigeon holed, know-it-all philosopher, claiming to understand the universe and what consciousness is.Douglas Hofstadter attempts to understand the relationships between the "I" and the biological body. His looping analogies try to clarify what our consciousness could be in relationship with the numerous systems of symbols within our being. The book is written for an educated layman but certainly not engrossed in technical mish-mash. It is an unprovable concept and Douglas understands that. He just wishes to put the idea of "I" into some sort of representational or symbolic view within the mysterious goings-on in all of us. He does not ever expound upon souls living forever. Instead, Douglas observes that the thoughts and ideas of others can live on in others, as fragments of the deceased, in the vast collection of experiences and interactions with the "outside world". If you are interested in a very thought provoking inquiry into what your "ego" could be, you should read this book.
14 of 24 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lost in the Black Hole of Consciousness,
By Too Soon Old (Rothesay, New Brunswick Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: I Am a Strange Loop (Paperback)
When I read Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB) many years ago, I found it to be challenging, but stimulating reading, as it was imaginative in its style and approach in drawing intriguing parallels between the worlds of mathematics, music, and the art of M.C. Escher. I was therefore looking forward to another difficult but thought provoking read when "I am a Strange Loop" was published.The blurbs on the book cover called it "brilliant", "delightful" and "fascinating" and the book even won a Los Angeles Times book prize. The preface certainly got my mental juices flowing as it promised "new ideas everywhere under foot." It quickly became apparent however that the style and often obscure analogies and metaphors used in GEB were now being recycled in an attempt to explain his very subjective opinions on consciousness and how it gives rise to the sense of self (the I) and the soul! In GEB, Hofstadter showed his fascination with the logician Kurt Gödel and he trundles out Gödel's incompleteness theorem again to show that self referential equations in mathematics can be true but cannot be proven to be true. This is an example of a strange loop in mathematics that he believes also occurs in the brain during consciousness. "I can't say what it is; I just know it's true." (p285) This of course is not science it is a type of religious faith. It was not until page 292 that he actually gets around to really trying to explain what he means by his title. He sees the I of the self, as only a symbol generated in the brain to represent the self and this I can perceive the symbol of itself thus creating a strange loop. By the time I (no pun intended) had gotten this far I had already reached the conclusion that Hofstadter was perhaps starting to exhibit early symptoms of schizophrenia. He believes in degrees of soulness in living things which he calls Hunekers and this has led him to a rationalization for his vegetarianism. Vegetables don't have Hunekers but animals do. Mosquitoes have next to none and it is ok to kill them but cows are more sentient and hence have more Hunekers, and should not be killed and eaten. He also thinks that souls of people can exist outside the body and that after the tragic death of his wife he sees her soul as still existing as part of him and others. Hofstadter's views on consciousness are closer to new age thinking than to any type of science and he makes only a few vague references to the many recent discoveries about the brain and evolutionary psychology. Hofstadter's does not mention the fact that his ideal of a rational thinker, Kurt Gödel, went mad and starved himself to death and it is somewhat distressing to see that a similarly gifted mind may be headed in the same direction. It is certain that when it comes to the Black Hole of consciousness, Douglas Hofstadter is already well beyond the Event Horizon.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Irritating at best,
By
This review is from: I Am a Strange Loop (Hardcover)
I'm giving it two stars partly because I'm quite a generous person and I have no doubt there are people who will enjoy this book, but Hofstadter reads like his sole purpose for publishing is to talk exclusively about himself; he seems like a pretty irritating person who is staggeringly full of... well, you know.The best thing that can be said about this book is that it was hardcover and has an interesting title, so goes some way to make my book collection appear more impressive.
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