I Am a Strange Loop

412 pages

English language

Published March 26, 2007 by Basic Books.

ISBN:
978-0-465-03078-1
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(4 reviews)

What do we mean when we say "I"? Can thought arise out of matter? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "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. Deep down, a human 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 in your brain or mine is the one we both call "I." The "I" is the nexus in our brain where the levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will …

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Review of 'I Am a Strange Loop' on 'Goodreads'

The author's key strength is his ability to effectively explain complex topics in layman's terms using analogies. That helps a lot in this book, considering its complex topic - Consciousness. I found myself almost always agreeing with the author's idea about the existence/non-existence of the 'self'. Since I am not well-read on this topic, I will reserve from commenting too much on the topic of the 'self'. Instead, I will say that the author does a decent job of presenting the arguments objectively. And this is quite hard to achieve for a complex philosophical topic while keeping the text light and understandable.
The only minor complaint I have was that towards the end there are some sections - talking about musical tastes and their relation to the idea of self - that I found a bit out of place. I would not hold this against the author as the rest …

Review of 'I Am a Strange Loop' on 'Goodreads'

Sono in molti ad avere comprato Gödel, Escher, Bach. Parecchi l'hanno anche letto :-). Dopo più di un quarto di secolo, Douglas Hofstadter ha pensato di pubblicare questo sequel, se mi consentite l'uso del termine. In effetti di Bach e di Escher non si parla, né ci sono i dialoghi (tranne due agli estremi del libro): Hofstadter si concentra su Gödel, e parte dal suo famoso teorema - di cui viene data una spiegazione lunga, ma assolutamente cristallina - per arrivare alla sua definizione di "intelligenza", che si può più o meno riassumere come "un sistema raggiunge l'intelligenza quando riesce a creare degli «anelli nell'Io» (gli «strange loops» del titolo), vale a dire una rappresentazione interna di sé stesso, a un livello di codifica differente da quello usuale".
Personalmente mi rimangono dei dubbi sulla sua filosofia "sepolcriana" (nel senso di Ugo Foscolo): il libro però è sicuramente interessante, oltre …

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