Douglas Hofstadter - I Am a Strange Loop

SL #641: I don’t think I said that! The sense of being alive and being a unique link in the infinite chain certainly is profound. It’s just that it doesn’t transcend physical law. To the contrary, it is a profound exploitation of physical law — hardly mundane! On the other hand, the all-too-common desire to mystify the pronoun “I”, as if it concealed a deeper mystery than other words do, truly muddies up the picture. The sole root of all these strange phenomena is perception, bringing symbols and meanings into physical systems. To perceive is to make a fantastic jump from William James’ “blooming, buzzing confusion” to an abstract, symbolic level. And then, when perception twists back and focuses on itself, as it inevitably will, you get rich, magical-seeming consequences. Magical- seeming, mind you, but not truly magical. You get a level-crossing feedback loop whose apparent solidity dominates the reality of everything else in the world. This “I”, this unreal but unutterably stubborn marble in the mind, this “Epi” phenomenon, simply takes over, anointing itself as Reality Number One, and from there on out it won’t go away, no matter what words are spoken.

SL #642: So the “I” is all too marbelous — too marbelous for words?

SL #641: What?! I thought you thought my “I” idea was for the birds.

SL #642: It’s true, I did, but I think I’m catching your drift. Perhaps I’m coming around a little bit. Your strange-loop view of an “I” is close to paradoxical, and yet not quite. It’s like Escher’s Drawing Hands — paradoxical when you’re sucked into the drawing by its wondrous realism, yet the paradox dissolves when you step back and see it from outside. Then it’s just another drawing! Most intriguing. It’s all too much, and just too very Berry… to ever be in Russell’s Dictionary.

SL #641: Ah, music to my ears! I’m so delighted you find a bit of merit in my ideas. As you know, they are only metaphors, but they help me to make some sense of the great puzzle of being alive and, as you kept on stressing, the great puzzle of being here. I thank you for the splendid opportunity of exchanging views on such subtle matters.

SL #642: The pleasure, I assure you, was all mine. And I shall await our next meeting with alacrity, celerity, assiduity, vim, vigor, vitality, savoir-faire, and undue velocity. Adieu till then, and cheerio!

[Exeunt.]

CHAPTER 21

A Brief Brush with Cartesian Egos

Well-told Stories Pluck Powerful Chords

IN THE preceding dialogue, the query most insistently posed by Strange Loop #642 was, “What makes me housed in this particular brain, rather than in any other one?” However, even though Strange Loop #641 tried to provide an answer to this enigma in several different fashions, Strange Loop #642 always had the nagging feeling that Strange Loop #641 hadn’t really gotten the question, and hadn’t understood how profoundly central it is to human existence. Could it be that there is a fundamental breach of communication here, and that some people simply never will get the question because it is too subtle and elusive?

Well, if one is not averse to using a science-fiction scenario, this same question can be posed so vividly and starkly that hopefully no one could fail to understand and feel deeply troubled by the enigma. One way of doing this appears in the path-breaking book Reasons and Persons by the Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit. Here is how Parfit poses the riddle:

I enter the Teletransporter. I have been to Mars before, but only by the old method, a space-ship journey taking several weeks. This machine will send me at the speed of light. I merely have to press the green button. Like others, I am nervous. Will it work? I remind myself what I have been told to expect. When I press the button, I shall lose consciousness, and then wake up at what seems a moment later. In fact I shall have been unconscious for about an hour. The Scanner here on Earth will destroy my brain and body, while recording the exact states of all my cells. It will then transmit this information by radio. Travelling at the speed of light, the message will take three minutes to reach the Replicator on Mars. This will then create, out of new matter, a brain and body exactly like mine. It will be in this body that I shall wake up.

Though I believe that this is what will happen, I still hesitate. But then I remember seeing my wife grin when, at breakfast today, I revealed my nervousness. As she reminded me, she has been often teletransported, and there is nothing wrong with her. I press the button. As predicted, I lose and seem at once to regain consciousness, but in a different cubicle. Examining my new body, I find no change at all. Even the cut on my upper lip, from this morning’s shave, is still there.

Several years pass, during which I am often Teletransported. I am now back in the cubicle, ready for another trip to Mars. But this time, when I press the green button, I do not lose consciousness. There is a whirring sound, then silence. I leave the cubicle, and say to the attendant, “It’s not working. What did I do wrong?”

“It’s working,” he replies, handing me a printed card. This reads: “The New Scanner records your blueprint without destroying your brain and body. We hope that you will welcome the opportunities which this technical advance offers.”

The attendant tells me that I am one of the first people to use the New Scanner. He adds that, if I stay an hour, I can use the Intercom to see and talk to myself on Mars.

“Wait a minute,” I reply, “If I’m here I can’t also be on Mars.”

Someone politely coughs, a white-coated man who asks to speak to me in private. We go to his office, where he tells me to sit down, and pauses. Then he says: “I’m afraid that we’re having problems with the New Scanner. It records your blueprint just as accurately, as you will see when you talk to yourself on Mars. But it seems to be damaging the cardiac systems which it scans. Judging from the results so far, though you will be quite healthy on Mars, here on Earth you must expect cardiac failure within the next few days.”

The attendant later calls me to the Intercom. On the screen I see myself just as I do in the mirror every morning. But there are two differences. On the screen I am not left–right reversed. And, while I stand here speechless, I can see and hear myself, in the studio on Mars, starting to speak.

Since my Replica knows that I am about to die, he tries to console me with the same thoughts with which I recently tried to console a dying friend. It is sad to learn, on the receiving end, how unconsoling these thoughts are. My Replica assures me that he will take up my life where I leave off. He loves my wife, and together they will care for my children. And he will finish the book that I am writing. Besides having all of my drafts, he has all of my intentions. I must admit that he can finish my book as well as I could. All these facts console me a little. Dying when I know that I shall have a Replica is not quite as bad as simply dying. Even so, I shall soon lose consciousness, forever.

What Pushovers We Are!

The concerns around which Parfit’s two-part story revolves are clearly those that haunted Strange Loop #642. In the first part, we worry along with Parfit whether he will truly exist again after he is atomized on Earth and the signals carrying his ultra-detailed blueprint have reached Mars and directed the construction of a new body; we fear that the newly built person will merely be someone who looks precisely like and thinks precisely like Parfit, but is not Parfit. Soon, however, we are relieved to find out that our worries are unfounded: Parfit himself made it, down to the last tiny scratch. Great! And how do we know that he did? Because he told us so! But which “he” is it that gives us this good news? Is this Derek Parfit the philosopher–author, or is it Derek Parfit the intrepid space voyager?