Douglas Hofstadter - I Am a Strange Loop

computer searches vs. proofs

computers: as computing devices; invisibility of computation within; as non-computing devices; programming of; Stanford University’s only

concepts: activation of; as brain structures; embodied in simmballs; handed to people on silver platter; nestedness of

Condition humaine, La (Malraux)

cone: of consciousness; of souledness

conscience: close link of concept and word to consciousness; of dogs, lions, and mosquitoes

consciousness: as an add-on feature to a brain; allegedly missing from my tale; another person’s, inside one’s own head; apparent but unreal; as automatic emergent consequence of brain design; as close relative of conscience; cone representing levels of; disintegrating; distributedness of; dollops of; equated with thinking; friendships, as criterial for; as illusion; locus, absence of; measured by musical taste; as mirage; not merely acting and claiming to be, but being ; organic chemistry as source of; physicality of; as quantum phenomenon; “right stuff ” as source of; shades of gray in; and strange loops; as thinking; threshold for; vs. reflexes; the very stuff of

Consciousness, Capitalized Essence of

Consciousness Explained (Dennett)

consistency of PM : certainty of; hope for

consistency of rock base of KJ

content: fed into “empty” feedback loop

contingent facts in geology but not math

continua of consciousness and souledness

control of your body by my brain

cookies that all taste good, by analogy

copies of another person’s memories, fidelity of

copycats, borrowing from others

core me-ness

corona during soul eclipse; soular

corridors; helical; truncated vs. endless

Cosby, Bill

counterfactuals: in formation of human self; by Stanley

counting, ill-definedness of

country vs. people

cows: as edible beings; experience of purpleness of; sacred

creativity vs. rigid rules

credit card, understanding of

crimes against animals

critical mass of soul-shards needed to qualify as some kind of survival

crystal lattice of atoms, as metaphor

C-3PO (robot)

cuteness

cyclic refilling of leaky flush toilet

cynicism, potential, on reader’s part

D

Dahl, Roald

Dalí, Salvador

dance of simmballs as thought

dance of symbols: as constituting another’s soul; as constituting consciousness; perceived by yet other symbols; as thought

darts thrown at text, causing rewriting

David and Lisa

Davies, Dennis

Dawkins, Richard

dear eater

death of Carol Hofstadter

death’s sting, reduced

Debussy, Claude

decision procedures

decisions as votes

deconstructing the “I” à la Zen

dedicated: machines; music boxes

Deep Blue (chess-playing computer)

deepest beliefs of humans involve macro-level concepts

De Morgan, Augustus

Dennett, Daniel C.; email exchange between author and; on his friend’s “desperate lark”; putting motto into friend’s mouth; teleportation fantasy by; “Where Am I?” story by; on zombies

Dennis the Menace, on leg that’s asleep

Descartes, René

descriptions of integers: long and short; vague

desires: as causal agents; in conflict with each other; imputed to flush toilet; imputed to soccer ball; imputed to sunflowers and vines; on meta-level; as prime movers; thwarted by obstacles; unanalyzability of

Desperate Lark

destructive-teleportation scenarios

detailed knowledge as blocking understanding

dialogues

diamond found in the Caspian sea

dichotomy: between the animate and the inanimate; between the physical and the nonphysical

die, unpredictability of tosses of

Dirac, P. A. M.

direct feeding: of brain solely by hard-wired perceptual system; of screen A solely by camera A

direct vs. indirect: motor control, shades of gray in; perception, shades of gray in

disease, microscopic causes of

dislodging: “I”-myth; “sun moves” myth

distance function in personality space

distorted image of self, in self-symbol

distributedness of human souls; butterfly metaphor for; easy to forget

dividuals, in Twinwirld

divine perversity

DNA

“dog”, category of

dog breeds, as proper level of discourse for dog breeders

doggie cam at kennel

dogmas, religious, as causing wars

dogs: compassion of; episodic memories of; as food; friends of; in heat; limited symbol repertoires of; magnanimity of; non-universality of; not entering into other dogs’ minds; as people; reverberant barking of; self-awareness of; size of strange loops in; as smaller-souled than humans; straining at the leash; as “who”, not “which”

dollops of Consciousness; fractional

domino chainium

Domino, Fats

domino theory of Cold War era

“doorways” in corridor

dots on a line, human souls likened to

doubts about “I”-ness

downloading virtual machines

downward causality; in brains; in careenium; in chainium; in combustion engines; disintegration of; in everyday life; in mathematics; in traffic jam

downwards reasoning: in mathematics; in mountaineering

dramaturgical conventions for pennable lines

Drawing Hands (Escher), as strange-loop candidate; with one hand erasing

drawn vs. drawer, as upwards level-shift

dreads and dreams of sunflowers

dressing styles, tested out

droning, as telltale zombie behavior

Droste’s hot chocolate

du (second-person singular pronoun) addressed to married couple

dualism: espoused by some neuroscientists; ever so gently parodied; giving up on; grazed by Sperry; implied by inverted spectrum; murkiness of; mystical terms of; pulls and pitfalls of; rejected by SL # 642; riddles evoked by

E

Eakins, Thomas, portrait of

“easy” and “hard” meanings of pixel patterns

eavesdropping, visual

eclipse of soul

ecstasy, unfelt

Edson, Russell

efficiency and survival

effortless decoding of isomorphism

egalitarian tendencies

ego, id, and superego

8, lonely cube in Fibonacci sequence

Einstein, Albert

élan mental ; sliding scale

élan vital

election as metaphor for decision-making

electromagnetic spectrum, as giving rise to visual sensations

electromagnetism: as fundamental force; as having unquestionably precise properties

electron spin, as unquestionably precise fact

electrons in non-conductors and in metals

elephant: squeezing into matchbox; squeezing DNA of, into matchbox

email exchange with Dan Dennett; act of compressing

embassies of a country, opposing caged-bird metaphor

emergent forces as patterns

emergent phenomena: in brain; in complex plane; in everyday world, coming from quantum-mechanical substrate; in minerals; resulting from Principia Mathematica pointing at itself; in video feedback

Eminem

emotional forces, as coloring one’s opinions

empathy as by-product of representational universality

empirical evidence vs. proofs

emptiness

emulation by one machine of another

English language, imprecision of

English translation of Bach aria words

Enrustle, Y. Ted

entelechy

entrenchedness of “I”: in main brain; in other brains

entwinement: of feedback loops; of human souls

envelopes in box; not perceivable individually

Epi (apparent marble in envelope box); parameters determining reality of; poem about; possible explanatory power of; seeming reality of