In 1979, Douglas Hofstadter earned nationwide headlines when his quirky, erudite, thought-provoking Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid hit bestseller lists. The following year, it surprised no one when this imaginative book won the Pulitzer Prize. In I Am a Strange Loop, Hofstadter extends the themes of his magnum opus in new and expected ways. At the core of his narrative loop is the "I" itself, the nexus that enables us to posit our own free will. Hofstadter's own freewheeling wordplay on consciousness, cognition, physics, and identity will lead readers into radiant new avenues of inquiry.
Peter D. Kramer
Questions about the boundaries, location, continuity and constituents of the self stand at the heart of philosophy, but a mathematician and physicist, Rene Descartes, set the terms of the discussion. Who better to bring us up to date than Douglas Hofstadter? Trained in math and physics, Hofstadter won a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Godel, Escher, Bach, a bravura performance linking logic, art and music. He returns now to apply a concept from that book, the strange loop, to the definition of self.
— The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
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.)
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Library Journal
What do we mean when we say "I"? What is it like to be a strange loop? In his new excursion into the nature of consciousness and selfhood, Hofstadter (cognitive & computer science, Indiana Univ., Bloomington) returns to the themes of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid—those of "strange loops," or "tangled hierarchies," that give rise to our sense of identity. Besides updating the central thesis of strange loops from his previous books, Hofstadter introduces new ideas about the self-referential structure of consciousness and offers a multifaceted examination of what an "I" is. He conveys abstract, complicated ideas in a relaxed, conversational manner and uses many first-person stories and personal examples as well as two Platonic dialogs. Though Hofstadter admits he writes for the general educated public, he also hopes to reach professional philosophers interested in the epistemological implications of selfhood. Recommended primarily for public and undergraduate university libraries.
—Victoria Shelton
Kirkus Reviews
I think, therefore I am. But what is think, and what is I? Returning to themes first visited in Godel, Escher, Bach (not reviewed), Hofstadter ponders most idiosyncratically. Humans think because we can and must, for reasons of mental architecture and accidents of evolution; we do so, Hofstadter suggests, by recalling things we have already thought about and employing metaphors, analogies and concrete images to communicate our thinking to others. Others are important, for there is a social quality to I-ness; in one memorable passage, Hofstadter writes of his wife's early death and her ongoing presence in his mind, as if he were allowing her to use some of it to continue to live. We humans wrestle with the ghost in the machine, looking for the soul or "that special kind of subtle pattern," whatever it is that lies beneath. Hofstadter, one of whose specialties is the study of feedback loops in complex systems, coins sometimes unfortunate terms for our own loopy ways of thinking, among them "thinkodynamics" and "statistical mentalics," but the governing idea is a fruitful one: There are large-scale and small-scale things happening within our minds all the time, but it can all seem like a funhouse mirror, just as Hofstadter recalls a philosophical treatise "talking about how language can talk about itself talking about itself (etc.), and about how reasoning can reason about itself." He adds, "I was hooked," which would explain his sometimes maddeningly circuitous explorations into, say, the manipulation of symbols or the nature of dogness. And what, in the end, is I? Perhaps "a certain abstract type of locked-in loop inside the careenium or the cranium," perhaps "a shimmering rainbow-likeentity that first recedes and then disintegrates entirely as one draws ever closer," perhaps just "little miracles of self-reference." Or perhaps not. Doesn't quite add up to a unified theory of anything.
From the Publisher
"[F]ascinating... original and thought-provoking.... [T]here are many pleasures in I Am a Strange Loop."—Wall Street Journal
"I Am a Strange Loop is thoughtful, amusing and infectiously enthusiastic."—Bloomberg news
"I Am a Strange Loop scales some lofty conceptual heights, but it remains very personal, and it's deeply colored by the facts of Hofstadter's later life. In 1993 Hofstadter's wife Carol died suddenly of a brain tumor at only 42, leaving him with two young children to care for.... I Am a Strange Loop is a work of rigorous thinking, but it's also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love: The Year of Magical Thinking for mathematicians."—Time
"I Am a Strange Loop is vintage Hofstadter: earnest, deep, overflowing with ideas, building its argument into the experience of reading it-for if our souls can incorporate those of others, then I Am a Strange Loopcan transmit Hofstadter's into ours. And indeed, it is impossible to come away from this book without having introduced elements of his point of view into our own. It may not make us kinder or more compassionate, but we will never look at the world, inside or out, in the same way again."—Los AngelesTimes Book Review
"Nearly thirty years after his best-selling book Gödel, Escher, Bach, cognitive scientist and polymath Douglas Hofstadter has returned to his extraordinary theory of self."—New Scientist
"His new book, as brilliant and provocative as earlier ones, is a colorful mix of speculations with passages of autobiography."—Martin Gardiner
