Douglas Hofstadter - I Am a Strange Loop

hole in PM

Holiday, Billie

“holons”

honking in traffic jam

Hopalong Cassidy smile, tested out on classmates

hopes and aspirations of sunflowers

hopes and dreams, sharable as similar patterns in different brains

Horney, Karen

horse, limping and being beaten

horsies-and-doggies style of writing

Houdini, Harry

“How real is X?”

human beings as representationally universal machines

human condition; as belief in a myth; naïve view of; tied to coarse-grainedness of human perception; trapped in a quandary

human identity, video metaphor for

humpback, blue

Huneker, James

hunekers, as measure of souledness

hunekometer

hurricane as swirling pattern

hype about robot vehicle Stanley

hypothetical syllogism

I

i, Gödel number of Imp

“i” (half-pairson pronoun in Twinwirld)

“I”: analogous to Gödel’s strange loop; of another, as perceived by oneself; artificial; automatic consequence of perception; of baby; born out of generosity; as brain-independent essence; capitalization of; certain existence of; coarse-grained perception as crucial for; as commonsense belief of average person; denoting a couple; disintegration of; as efficient shorthand; as emerging from gloom; “empty” case of; flitting from brain to brain; “freely” overriding own will; as fusion of two hemispheres; germ of; growth of, over time; as hallucination; as illusion; indexicality of; indispensability of illusion of; infinitesimal changes in, over time; influenced by closest other “I” ’s; as lacking “God’s-eye view”; launching actions and receiving feedback; likened to epiphenomenal marble; as linguistic reflexes; locking-in of; as locus of causality; main brain of; missing from mosquito brain; more than one, per brain; as “most real” of all things; mystification of; as myth, self-reinforcing; needed, in order to be; not a crutch to be tossed later; not findable in physical activity; as outcome, not starting point; paradoxicality of; of particle physicist is no less entrenched; perceived as prime mover; as plural pronoun; questionable reality of; of robot vehicle; shades of gray in; in Siamese Twinwirld; simultaneously abstract and physical; spread out among many brains; as straightforward concept; as strange loop; as Strange-Loop City; as summary of much downward causality; survival value of illusion of; of symbols for other people; as third-person entity; as transportable from brain to brain; in Twinwirld; as unavoidable illusion; unbreakable feeling of; as unified representation of hopes, beliefs, etc.; vs. “i” and “Twe”

I Am a Strange Loop : analogies in; dialogues in; form–content interplay in; new ideas in; origins of; title of; zombie perspective advocated in

“I am alive” as reflex statement

“I am edible”/“I am inedible”

“I am large, I contain multitudes” (Whitman)

“I am lying”

“I am not a theorem”

“I am thirsty”, written on beer can

“I am unprovable”

I Am You (Kolak)

“I at the Center” (Oleson)

“I can’t tell you X”, as paradoxical phrase

Icelandic language, presumed opacity of

idealized image of oneself

ideas: causal potency of; interaction among

identical twins in Twinwirld

identical twinns in Twinwirld, tendency to split apart

identity, see personal identity

“if… then…”, formalization of

“ i is not prim”

“I”-less mode of being human

illusion of consciousness

imagery, lack of

Imlac room

Imp, claim of infinitude of perfect numbers; contrasted with KG; hypothetical secondary meaning of; truth and unprovability of

inability to see low-level brain activity, as central to the strange loop of “I”-ness

inaccessibility of interiority of others

inaccessible core of passing strangers

inanimate matter, as substrate for animacy

incarceration, as indicative of soul-size

incompleteness of PM : deriving from PM ’s strength; due to system’s expressive power; following from Gödel’s formula’s existence

incomprehensibility of low-level view

inconsistency of PM following from any provable falsity

“indescribably”, as paradoxical adverb

index, ordeal of making a good

indexicality: barred by Russell; bypassing of, by Gödel; of “I” as magical; not needed for self-reference

Indian dinner chez Carol and Doug

“Indian hot” dishes

Indiana University

indirect motor control

indirect perceptual feeding

indispensable illusion of “I”

indistinguishability: of content-free loops; of self-containing singleton sets; of Universes Q and Z

inferiority complex as incommunicable feeling

infinite coincidence: apparent, in Fibonacci sequence; nonexistence of

infinite regress,; bypassed; of index entry; risk of

infinitely long formula

“Infinity, ho!”

influences of others on one’s growing soul

informational properties of molecules

inhabitation of several brains, see living

“inner light”, slowly turning on

inner voices, conflicting

insects, respect for lives of

insertion of elephant’s DNA into matchbox

insertion of huge number’s short description into PM formula

instantaneous jumping: across country; into someone else’s world

integers: describability of; flexibility and richness of; as underwriting video games; universality of, as missed by Whitehead and Russell; very large

intentionality, as synonym for having an “I”

interaction of unrelated-seeming notions in mathematics

interchangeable terms for “I”, soul, etc.

interesting vs. uninteresting integers; blurriness of the notion

interiority: entering into another’s; of Frédéric Chopin; of Carol Hofstadter; of Robert Hofstadter; of knee; of mosquitoes; preserved, by critical mass of surviving shards; of robots; secondary instantiations of; of symbols for other people; of tomato; varying levels of importability of

internal model of someone else as “wrong kind of structure” to be an “I”

internalization of outer world in brains and in careenium

interpenetrating human souls: denied by ordinary language; extent of; image of; as result of many intimate conversations

interpenetrating national souls

interword spacing, exerting control over content

Introduction to Logic (Suppes)

intuition pumps

inventors not foreseeing consequences

inverted-spectrum riddle; as fairy tale; floral variation; political variation; sonic variation; sports variation; timidity of

invisibility of numbers in today’s computers

irrelevance of lower-level details

isomorphisms: as formal analogies; as mediating reference

“is white”, color of

“It ain’t the meat, it’s the motion” (Mann and Glover)

Italian translation of Bach aria words

Italy, unclear boundaries of country and of nation

iteration in complex plane

J

James, William

jealousy, as causal agent

Jefferson, Thomas

“Jetzt bin ich ein strahlendes Paar”

Jewish sense of humor as explanatory device

Jews during Diaspora

“jilted”, as essence of Nicole episode

Jim (friend’s father)

Joan of Arc

jogger, in thought experiment

jokes, as causes of laughter

Jones, Peter

joystick control of remote robot (or dog)

judo, exploiting adversary’s strength

Jupiter, approached by comet

“just too very Berry”

K