
I Am a Strange Loop
Greg Baglia(Speaker)
Hachette Book Group (Publisher)
Published on 25. September 2018
Audio
CD-Audio
978-1-5491-7265-6 (ISBN)
Description
One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind examines where the self comes from - and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. "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 Deep down, your 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 is the one you call "I." An "I" is a strange loop where the brain's symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down so that symbols seem to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. To each human being, this "I" is the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real? Is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? These are among the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach. It is a tale crisply told, rife with anecdotes, analogies, and metaphors - cutting-edge philosophy that any strange loop can understand.
More details
Edition
Unabridged edition
Language
English
Edition type
Unabridged edition
Product notice
Audio CD
Dimensions
Height: 145 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 43 mm
Duration
Dauer: 750 min
Weight
318 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5491-7265-6 (9781549172656)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Douglas Hofstadter is a distinguished professor of cognitive science and comparative literature at Indiana University. His previous books include Gödel, Escher, Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, and Bach, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1980.