I Am a Strange Loop
by Douglas R. Hofstadter
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Book Summary Information
Author: Douglas R. HofstadterEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-26
ISBN: 0465030785
Number of pages: 436
Publisher: Basic Books
Book Reviews of I Am a Strange Loop
Book Review: Strange Loops Rule!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book after a friend of mine, who shares my interest in neurophilosophy, recommended it, and I am glad that I did. Hofstadter does a nice job of showing how the complex interactions of neurons at the basic level of the brain can lead to large scale structures which are the cause of consciousness. He terms the former "mentalics" and the latter "thinkodynamics". He then proceeds in the monistic manner of his friend Daniel Dennett to show how the material brain can produce an immaterial consciousness by the incredibly complex interactions of 100 billion neurons, which are capable of forming intricate patterns of feedback loops, and from these loops consciousness emerges. Unfortunately, he starts out by making unfair criticisms of John Searle, who has doubts that a computational system can think. In his famous (or infamous in some circles) Chinese room experiment, he merely points out that syntax, which the machine is very good at, is not the same as semantics. In other words, the poor guy in the Chinese room can translate perfectly following the set of rules, but he does not understand a word of what he translates. Searle's point is valid, and nobody, not even Searle himself, has solved this neurophilosophical dilemma.
What I find most interesting about Hofstadter's argument is that he uses Gödel's incompleteness theorem as a basis for his solution. On page 110 he says: "...what was really being explored by Gödel, as well as by many people he had inspired, was the mystery of the human mind and the mechanisms of human thinking." Gödel, in a manner which defies my mathematically impoverished mind, takes Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, which is a set of rigid rules governing logic and arithmetizes it, or, in other words, adds a higher level of meaning and then is able to manipulate this higher level so that self-referential feedback loops can emerge which have the ability to cause further feedback loops. On page 206 Hofstadter summarizes this: "Kurt Gödel .... demonstrated how high-level, emergent, self-referential meanings in a formal mathematical system can have a causal potency just as real as that of the system's rigid, frozen, low-level rules of inference."
Even more interesting, at least to me, is that Roger Penrose (The Emperor's New Mind; The Shadows of the Mind; and The Large, the Small and the Human Mind) uses Gödel's theorem to prove the opposite - that no computational system could ever possibly be the basis of thinking. Penrose says that the incompleteness theorem showed that no computational system is complete, and, therefore, cannot be the basis of human thought, which must necessarily be independent and complete in its own world. He stated it this way in The Shadows of the Mind, page vi: "Central to the arguments of Part I, is the famous theorem of Gödel ...... The conclusions are that conscious thinking must indeed involve ingredients that cannot be even simulated adequately by mere computation; still less could computation, of itself alone, evoke any conscious feelings or intentions. Accordingly, the mind must indeed be something that cannot be described in any kind of computational terms."
Let me explain the basic problem of consciousness as I see it. While playing a game of kickball I focus on a ball which is "red" and `round". If you stop and think about it, the round, red ball does not exist. In the "real" world that object consists of a gazillion elementary particles, complexly organized, which give off light waves/particles of a specific frequency, which travel into my eye, are focused on the retina, and then excite special neurons that, by way of a complex pathway, travel to our cerebral cortex and set up the complex feedback loops that Hofstadter talked of. Nowhere in this material world does a round, red ball exist. It is an illusion in our mind, but an important one if I want to be able to dodge the ball. Our brain consists of 100 billion neurons, which are connected to each other via multiple synapses (around 3000 synapses per neuron). These neurons can fire in very intricate ways, thereby setting up incredibly complicated patterns, which exist in space and time, both synchronically and diachronically. From these patterns "emerge" consciousness, much as the wetness of water emerges from the combination of hydrogen and oxygen.
I cannot fault this explanation, mainly because I can see no other way to explain consciousness without getting mystical. Nevertheless, it seems impossible for our minds to exhibit free will in a closed material system. Hofstadter solves this neatly by denying free will (see pages 339-341). Penrose tries to solve it by getting into the quantum world, which is weird (mystical?) in many ways. For example, I pity poor Schrödinger's cat, whose fate is dependent upon human consciousness somehow interacting with the quantum world. Furthermore, Bell's interconnectedness theorem (refer to Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert, page 211) indicates that we are all connected in some magical way at the micro-level of our existence. There is no doubt that we get away from the strict mechanistic causality of our macro-world when we delve into quantum mechanics. Courtesy of Sir John Eccles, the Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist (see How the Self Controls Its Brain by Eccles). Penrose says that the microtubules of each neuron, which secrete the neurotransmitters essential for synaptic transmission, are so small that they are actually part of the micro-world that operates according to quantum mechanics. Perhaps here lies the spiritual aspect of mind, which completely eludes any explanation based upon the physical laws of our macro-world.
In conclusion, I would like to bring up Cartesian dualism, which is the other way we can salvage free will. Ever since Gilbert Ryle in his 1949 book, Concept of Mind, showed how the "ghost in the machine" contradicted Descartes' mind/matter dualism, sophisticated neurophilosophers have ridiculed the spiritual concept of mind. An immaterial mind could not effect changes in material neurons anymore than Caspar, the friendly ghost, could float through a wall and then play catch with the kids. If this is true, then free will goes out the window, or through the wall, if it is an immaterial idea. It seems like a stretch to use microtubules as the means the quantum world, which has immaterial aspects to it, can effect material changes in our brain. Let me end by pointing out that Descartes, in his criticism of Newtonian gravity, was proven right by 20th physics. Descartes ridiculed the idea that gravity, a mysterious force that acted at a distance, could be the cause of planetary motion. He stated that there were "vortices" in space that controlled how celestial objects moved. Einstein showed that material bodies act to transform and curve the space around them, and that the planets move in the channels that such curved space provides.
Perhaps Descartes was also right about mind/matter dualism.
Summary of I Am a Strange Loop
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 and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. For each human being, this "I" seems to be the realest thing in the world. But how can such 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 all-powerful laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Godel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter's many readers have long been waiting for.
Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2007: Pulitzer-Prize winner Douglas Hofstadter takes on some weighty and wonderful questions in I Am a Strange Loop--among them, the "size" of a soul and the vagaries of thought--and proposes persuasive answers that surprised me both with their simplicity and their sense of optimism: a rare combination to be found in a book that tackles the mysteries of the brain. This long-awaited book is a must-have for avid science readers and navel-gazers. --Anne Bartholomew
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