I Am a Strange Loop
<p>/ by Douglas Hofstadter. - New York : Basic Books, 2008. - 412 p. ; 23,5 cm</p>
ISBN: 9780465030798
Where does the self come from - and how can our selves exist in the minds of others? 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? The concept of a strange loop Hofstadter originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
