This Loop is Recognizably Strange
I've gotten around to finishing Hofstadter's I am a Strange Loop and, in short, the book was well-thought! I found Hofstadter's approach to discussing consciousness mostly refreshing. Though, occasionally dense due to the recursive metaphors he employs to symbolize the equally recursive nature of consciousness. This technique made for some funny looks from my wife while I listened to the audio book on long car trips.
Nonetheless, I found the topic provocative. There isn't quite a concrete definition of a conscious soul provided. Rather, a deconstructed meta-analysis of feeling, with both personal and historic grounding; much of which is referenced in his other book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, which I plan to finish reading soon.
If anything, the book illustrates consciousness as a dynamic, fluid state of being that could potentially exist anywhere, nowhere, and everywhere. But, arguably, as things become more human, consciousness feels more real. I've picked up on this in my personal life, as I frequently discuss what it means to learn. A recent thought I shared with a mentor—that learning, when humanized, feels inherently paradoxical—is pleasantly explored as Hofstadter examines our tendency to humanize less conscious organisms, and objects.
Though, an interesting direction taken in the last few chapters seems to strike at core philosophical questions of free will by resonating with my understanding that I, along with consciousness, do not exist in a vacuum. Our I's are inevitably projected onto others in a fuzzy resolution which may influence their behaviors and I's to various degrees of magnitude. Hofstadter correctly comments on the double-edged nature of this as both liberating and tormenting; with the former achieved in the context of mortality, and the latter in the context of free will.
I find interesting subliminal parallels to this mechanism of interconnectedness within well-known phrases such as:
- "We are made in the image of god."
- "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
- "You are the company you keep."
- "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
- "Birds of a feather flock together."
Each, with perhaps the exception of the second, hint towards a succession or dependence of being. Am I but the sum of my experiences and affiliations? We are indeed drawn towards things that speak to our I's, but if I am a transferrable resource that is subject to rules of relativity, what frees me from a negligible difference between myself and some infinitely heterogeneous mixture of all projections? Perhaps as Hofstadter suggests, it is our ability to think onto ourselves, and mentally gaze into this vastly complex set of selves to allow our brains to homogenize it as I.