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I Am a Strange Loop

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I Am a Strange Loop
Cover of the first edition
AuthorDouglas Hofstadter
LanguageEnglish
SubjectConsciousness, strange loops, intelligence
PublisherBasic Books
Publication dateMarch 26, 2007
Publication placeUS
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages412 pages
ISBN978-0-465-03078-1
OCLC64554976
LC ClassBD438.5 .H64 2007
Preceded byGödel, Escher, Bach 

I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop to explain the sense of "I". The concept of a strange loop was originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Synopsis

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Hofstadter had expressed disappointment with how his book Gödel, Escher, Bach, which won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, was received. In the preface to its 20th-anniversary edition, he laments that the book was perceived as a hodgepodge of neat things with no central theme. He writes: "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"[1]

Hofstadter seeks to remedy this problem in I Am a Strange Loop by focusing on and expounding the central message of Gödel, Escher, Bach. He demonstrates how the properties of self-referential systems, demonstrated most famously in Gödel's incompleteness theorems, can be used to describe the unique properties of minds.[2] As an exploration of the sense of "I", Hofstadter explores his own life and those to whom he has been close.[3][4][5][6][7][8]

Responses

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The book received favorable reviews. The Wall Street Journal called it "fascinating", "original", and "thought-provoking".[6]

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek criticizes Hofstadter's approach to selfhood—described as an illusion produced by many self-referencing loops—in his book Less Than Nothing. Drawing on Lacan and Hegel, Žižek writes that Hofstadter's account fails to recognize the necessity of "downward-causality" and that "the unique dignity of a person has nothing to do with the 'greatness' of his or her soul in Hofstadter's sense of integrating elements of numerous other Selves."[9]

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1999) [1979]. "Preface". Gödel, Escher, Bach. Basic Books. p. P–2. ISBN 0-465-02656-7.
  2. ↑ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (June 11, 2008). "An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following I am a Strange Loop". Tal Cohen's Bookshelf. Interviewed by Tal Cohen.
  3. ↑ Johnson, George (March 1, 2007). "A New Journey into Hofstadter's Mind" (Book review). Scientific American. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  4. ↑ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (March 2007). "Me, My Soul, and I". Wired. Interviewed by Kevin Kelly. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  5. ↑ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (March 22, 2007). "Author Interview". American Scientist. Interviewed by Greg Ross. Archived from the original on March 8, 2013. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  6. 1 2 Derbyshire, John (March 23, 2007). "The I's Have It". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original (Book review) on October 15, 2007. Retrieved May 7, 2025 – via olimu.com.
  7. ↑ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (April 1, 2007). "The Mind Reader". New York Times Magazine. Interviewed by Deborah Solomon. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  8. ↑ Gardner, Martin (August 2007). "Do Loops Explain Consciousness? Review of I Am a Strange Loop" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 54 (7): 853. Retrieved December 10, 2007.
  9. ↑ Žižek, Slavoj (2012) Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. "INTERLUDE 6. Cognitivism and the Loop of Self-Positing." ISBN 978-1-78168-127-5
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