Douglas Hofstadter - I Am a Strange Loop

being: in two places at the same time; at two times in the same place

being someone else: economy-class version; with a “foreign accent”

beings: defined as systems having representational universality; modeling other beings

belief: as experienced by a zombie; shared by two people

believability of The True View

Berkeley, University of California at

Bernstein, Jeremy

Berry, G. G.

Berry’s paradox: as breeding ground for Gödel’s theorem; as formalized by Chaitin; as strange-loop candidate

Bierce, Ambrose

“Bigger they are, harder they fall”

bile, single-edged or double-edged

biologists paying attention to informational rather than physical level of genes

birds saved by young Schweitzer

black-and-white smudges: as early teleportation technology; as soul-shards

black-belt maneuver by Gödel

“black holes” in video feedback

bleu blanc rouge (colors of the French flag)

blocked infinite regress

blood, nonexperienced quale of

“blooming, buzzing confusion” (Wm. James)

Bloomington, Indiana

blue humpback

blueprint used in self-replicating machine

blurriness of everyday concepts

boat with endless succession of leaks

bodies vs. souls

body parts initiate self-representation

Bohr atom, as stepping stone en route to quantum mechanics

Bohr, Niels

boiling water, reliability of

Bonaparte, see Napoleon

bon mots: by Carol Hofstadter; by David Moser

“Book of nature written in mathematics” (Galileo)

Boole, George

boot-removal analogy

boundaries between souls, blurriness of

boundaries, macroscopic, as irrelevant to particles

box with flaps making loop

Brabner, George

brain activity: hiddenness of substrate of; modeled computationally; need for high-level view of; obviousness of high-level view of

brain-in-vat scenario

brain research, nature of

brain-scanning gadgets

brain structures

brains: compared to hearts; complexity of, as relevant to consciousness; controlling bodies directly vs. indirectly; eerieness of; evolution of; as fusion of two half-brains; as inanimate; inhabited by more than one “I”; interacting via ideas; main; as multi-level systems; not responsible for color qualia; perceiving multiple environments simultaneously; receiving sensory input directly or indirectly; resembling inert sponges; unlikely substrate for interiority

Braitenberg, Valentino

bread becoming a gun

Brown, Charlie

Brownian motion

Brünn, Austria (birthplace of Kurt Gödel)

buck stopping at “I”

Bugeaud, Yann

bunnies as edible beings

“burstwise advance in evolution” (Sperry)

Bushmiller, Ernie

butterflies: not respecting precinct boundaries; in orchard, as metaphor for human soul

Buzzaround Betty

C

caged-bird metaphor; as analogous to Newtonian physics; hints at wrongness of; as ingrained habit; at level of countries and cultures; metaphors opposed to; normally close to correct; as reinforced by language; temptingness of

Cagey’s doubly-hearable line

cake whose pieces all taste bad, as inferrred by analogy

candles

cantata aria

Cantor, Georg

capital punishment

Capitalized Essences; canceled

careenium; growing up; self-image of; two views of; unsatisfactory to skeptics

Carnap, Rudolf

Carol-and-Doug: as higher-level entity; joint mind of; shared dreads and dreams of

Carolness, survival of

Carol-symbol in Doug’s brain: being vs. representing a person; triggerability of

cars: as high-level objects; pushed around by desires

Cartesian Eggo

Cartesian Ego; as commonsensical view; fading of

Cartesian Ergo

Cartier-Bresson, Henri

Caspian Gemstones, allegory of

casual façade as Searlian ploy

Catcher in the Rye, The (Salinger)

categories and symbols; see also repertoires

categorization mechanisms: converting complexity into simplicity; as determining size of self; efficiency of

Caulfield, Holden

causality: bottoming out in “I”; buck of, stopping at “I”; of dogmas in triggering wars; and insight; schism between two types of; stochasticity of in everyday life; tradeoffs in; upside-down; see also downward causality

causal potency: of ideas in brain; of meanings of PM strings; of patterns

“causal powers of the brain”, semantic

cell phones as universal machines

Center for Research into Consciousness and Cognetics

Central Consciousness Bank

central loop of cognition

cerulean sardine

chain of command in brain

chainium (dominos), causality in

Chaitin, Greg

Chalmers, David; zombie twin of

chameleonic nature: of integers; of universal machines

Chantal Duplessix, seeing pixel-patterns as events; missing second level of Aimable’s remarks

chaos, potential, in number theory

Chaplin twins, (Freda and Greta)

character structure of an individual

Chávez, César

chemistry: bypassed in explanation of heredity and reproduction; of carbon as supposed key to consciousness; reduced to physics; virtual, inside computers

“chemistry” (interpersonal); enabling people to live inside each other; as function of musical taste alignment; as highly real causal agent; as “hooked atoms”; lack of, between people

“chicken” (meat) vs. chickens

chickens as edible creatures

children: as catalysts to soul merger of parents; as having fewer hunekers than adults; self-awareness of

chimpanzees

chinchillas

Chinese people, as spread-out entity

Chinese Room

chirpy notes and deep notes interchanged

Chopin, Frédéric; étude Op. 25 no. 4 in A minor; étude Op. 25 no. 11 in A minor; nostalgia of; pieces by, as soul-shards of; survival of

chord–angle theorem

Christiansen, Winfield

church bells

Church’s theorem

cinnamon-roll aroma in airport corridor

circular reasoning, validity of, in video feedback

circumventing bans by exploiting flexible substrates

clarity as central goal

Class A vs. Class B prime numbers

classical view of human identity, see Cartesian Ego, caged-bird metaphor

clouds: interpreted in sophisticated and simple-minded ways; unconsciousness of

club: of all prime numbers; of all wff numbers

coarse-grained copies of a soul

coarse-grainedness: of others’ souls inside us; of perception; in video feedback

codons in DNA

coffee: tracked in real time by symbols in brain; turned into theorems by mathematicians

“Cogito ergo sum”

cognition, central loop of

Cohn, John H. E.

coincidences in mathematics

coin-flipping, as robust statistical phenomenon

collages, curious

collective phenomena, as valid causes

colloidal particles

color feelings as subjective inventions

colors triggering knurking or glebbing

columns in visual cortex

combustion engines

comet approaching Jupiter

communication ease between people, factors influencing

communication rate between brains: as determining number of souls present; hypothetically tweaked in thought experiments

communication rate between hemispheres as determining degree of unity of brain

communication, techniques for

compassion; etymology of the word

completeness of PM, hope for

complexity threshold for universality

comprehensibility as crucial for survival

compression of KG to humanly graspable size

computational universality

“computer” as merely a historic term