The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

by Daniel C. Dennett (Editor), Douglas R. Hofstadter (editor)

Ever wondered who you really are? This collection enlivens this central question in the philosophy of mind. The questions posed in this book are at the heart of all philosophical reasoning. They're the ultimate questions about the self. The Mind's I contains a variety of approaches to answering the question, "Who am I?" Editors Hofstadter & Dennett--leading lights in the study of cognitive science, artificial intelligence & the philosophy of mind--follow each selection with short reflections designed to elaborate on main themes. The Mind's I broadens their fields to a general audience. The book's essays are grouped into six categories, each successively raising the philosophical stakes by introducing new levels of complexity. Ultimately, one confronts some of the thorniest questions in modern philosophy, such as the nature of free will, our place in the metaphysical world & the possibility of artificial intelligence. The book closes with a perplexing piece by Robert Nozick, an adequate summation to The Mind's I. He writes, "Perhaps God has not decided yet whether he has created, in this world, a fictional world or a real one...Which decision do you hope for?"--Eric de Place (edited)
Preface
Introduction
Borges & I/ Jorge Luis Borges
On having no head/ D.E. Harding
Rediscovering the mind/ Harold J. Morowitz
Computing machinery & intelligence/ A.M. Turing
The Turing test: a coffeehouse conversation/ Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Princess Ineffabelle/ Stanislaw Lem
The soul of Martha, a beast/ Terrel Miedaner
The soul of the Mark III Beast/ Terrel Miedaner
Spirit/ Allen Whellis
Selfish genes & selfish memes/ Richard Dawkins
Prelude...ant fugue/ Douglas Hofstadter
The story of a brain/ Arnold Zuboff
Where am I? / Daniel C. Dennett
Where was I?/ David Hawley Sanford
Beyond rejection/ Justin Leiber
Software/ Rudy Rucker
The riddle of the Universe & its solution/ Christopher Cherniak
The 7th Sally or How Trurl's own perfection led to no good/ Stanislaw Lem
Non serviam/ Statislaw Lem
Is God a Taoist?/ Raymond M. Smullyan
The circular ruins/ Jorge Luis Borges
Minds, brains & programs/ John R. Searle
An unfortunate dualist/ Raymond M. Smullyan
What is it like to be a bat?/ Thomas Nagel
An espistemological nightmare/ Raymond M. Smullyan
A conversation with Einstein's brain/ Douglas R. Hofstadter
Fiction/ Robert Nozick
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, Neuroscience, Essays, Artificial Intelligence

501 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Daniel Clement Dennett III was a prominent philosopher whose research centered on philosophy of mind, science, and biology, particularly as they relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He was the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Dennett was a noted atheist, avid sailor, and advocate of the Brights movement.

Dennett received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University in 1963, where he was a student of W.V.O. Quine. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. from Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied under the ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle.

Dennett gave the John Locke lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize, giving the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He was a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been conducting a long discussion about the nature of consciousness with Lotz, Robert and Wastrel in the comment thread to this review. I thought I might as well summarize my position and move the conversation to a more sensible place.

To cut to the chase, I am doubtful that the "problem of consciousness" really is such an interesting philosophical problem any more. Obviously, until you have reached a certain point in the development of human knowledge, the existence of the mental sphere - thoughts, sensations, intentions, desires, and so on - is something utterly extraordinary that is in great need of an explanation. But I think that's no longer true.

Although the development of modern neuroscience has helped, I don't see this as the decisive thing. Neuroscience still doesn't understand the brain terribly well. What I do see as decisive is Turing's work on computability. Two hundred and fifty years earlier, Newton had launched one of the most important paradigm changes in history: the physical world should be thought of as mathematical, and explained by mathematical formulas. Of course, he wasn't by any means the first person to think of this, but he was the first person to come up with the right kind of mathematics - partial differential equations - to actually make it work. And needless to say, he didn't explain the whole of physics at a stroke. But the things he did manage to explain using his new methods were so remarkable that many insightful people decided that this was the right way to go.

Turing, it seems to me, did something very similar. He suggested that the mental world should also be thought of as mathematical; once again, the reason why he got attention was that he found the appropriate kind of mathematics, this time the theory of computable functions. As with Newton, it would be ridiculous to say that Turing solved the whole problem of the nature of the mind. But he was able to offer a rigorous way of conceptualizing the mental, and people could now start constructing not only mathematical formulas that described mental functions, but also artifacts which reified those formulas as physical processes. Or, to put it more simply, you could build machines that were able to think.

It is easy to point to aspects of the mind that we still can't model mathematically with any great degree of success. We don't have good mathematical models for concepts like beauty, humor or religious feeling. We have very unsatisfactory models for emotion and language. But Turing's work is only 80 years old: think of all the physics that was still completely unexplained in 1765. (For example, there was no decent idea of what "heat" might be). Despite this, many people believed in Newton's program because of all the things it had explained, which until then had been more or less incomprehensible. I think Turing's program has had successes which are equally impressive; because we've already got used to them, we don't think how remarkable it is that computers can now play chess much better than any human beings, or turn normal speech into text with over 95% accuracy. As recently as the 80s, philosopher Hubert Dreyfus listed both of these as tasks which no machine would ever, even in principle, be able to perform.

To me, it seems quite reasonable to take Turing's program seriously and embrace its core hypothesis: there is nothing mysterious about consciousness, it is just computation. Needless to say, this idea may turn out to out to be mistaken. But right now, it's the one the human race is spending its energy investigating, for the same reason that Newton's program has beaten all its competitors. It lets you do philosophy in a quantitative way and make measurable, incremental progress.

So if that's what we in practice believe, why not admit it?

[Susan Budd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rereading The Mind’s I forty years after it was published is like opening a philosophical time capsule of the 1970s. With the exception of a paper by Alan Turing and some fiction by Borges, all the selections in this anthology date from 1972 to 1982.

There are essays and stories by scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and science fiction novelists. There’s a Buddhist with no head, a philosopher’s brain in a vat, a hippie about to have his mind downloaded into a computer, and a chimp who speaks sign language. There’s body swapping, split brains, teletransporters, artificial intelligence, and maybe even a little ESP – although physicist Douglas R. Hofstadter would not have it so.

The Mind’s I was published the same year I started college: 1981. I took the first of many philosophy courses that fall. Add to that my love of speculative fiction and it was inevitable that this book would end up in my hands. Rereading it now takes me back to that headspace, but with hindsight.

The heart of the book is Turing’s question: Can machines think? From there it goes in a variety of directions. One direction is science fiction. When I first read this book, I did not read straight through. I just read the selections that looked the most fun and that meant sci fi.

Jorge Luis Borges and Stanislaw Lem are the literary masters in this collection. The philosophical fantasies of Borges are elegant and poetic. The stories of Lem are quintessential philosophical science fiction. And for those who like their philosophy with some pulp, these classic works of literature are presented in the company of fiction by Terrel Miedaner, Justin Lieber, and Rudy Rucker. I like the juxtaposition of art and pulp: the dreaming magician of Borges’ poetic tale and the guy in a campy novel who wakes up to find his new body has boobs and a tail.

I got levels, you see. My mind thinks and laughs and wonders and sometimes rolls its I’s.

Another direction this collection takes is philosophy and there are important papers by Turing, Searle and Nagel. This is where the book gets down to some serious philosophy of mind. I spent the 80s studying philosophy and these three texts were essential reading. But Hofstadter does not agree with either Searle or Nagel, and since The Mind’s I is his book, he gets the last word.

At the time of publication, William Barrett wrote a book review criticizing Hofstadter for (among other things) using his Reflections to “upstage” his contributors.* Some of Barrett’s criticisms are more justified than others and this is the one that is the most justified.

Hofstadter does try to upstage his contributors. He tries. But he does not succeed. The contributors he disagrees with stand on their own. Hofstadter’s Reflections are just that: Hofstadter’s Reflections. Not mine. Hofstadter just engages me in dialogue and I’m always game for a lively dialogue.

Did Hofstadter misunderstand Nagel as Barrett said he did? Maybe. I think he understood and was just being facetious. Either way, I’m too delighted by the essays Hofstadter includes in the book to be more than a little disappointed with his Reflections on them. I do think he only includes Morowitz, Harding, and Wheelis so that the book will not seem one-sided. But he includes them and that’s what’s important. He disagrees with them. He tries to upstage them. Yet they speak for themselves.

When I first read this book, my mind was so blown by the various metaphysical puzzles that I never bothered to think about the book as a whole. And even if I had, it is unlikely that I would have given it a second thought. I would have agreed with so much of Hofstadter’s ideology that it was unlikely I would even notice the bias. This was the air I was accustomed to breathe.

Rereading it now is quite different. I get split into three me’s. One me reads Hofstadter’s Reflections and disagrees with much of his ideology. Another me reads the various selections and enjoys thinking about all the tantalizing ideas. And a third me is so caught up in nostalgia that she’s just happy to be here.

The nostalgia takes me back to those exciting years in philosophy of mind.

In his review, Barrett called The Mind’s I confusing in its effect, but it’s only confusing in effect if one reads it looking for answers. This is not a book of answers. This is a book of questions ~ a mind-expanding assortment of paradoxes, riddles, dialogues, games, and thought experiments.

The dialogues are one of the strengths of the book. By means of dialogues by himself and Smullyan, his (and co-editor Dennett’s) Reflections, and Sanford’s response to Dennett, Hofstadter encourages the reader to engage the editors in dialogue. His own ‘Coffeehouse Conversation’ is an instructive example of what such a dialogue might look like.

The thought experiments are another of the book’s strengths. The line between thought experiment and short story is blurred by the contributions of Arnold Zuboff, Christopher Cherniak, and Robert Nozick. Cherniak’s 1978 story “The Riddle of the Universe and its Solution” is one of the highlights of the book – equal to the best philosophical science fiction I’ve read.

For me, the highlights are the works which I probably would not have encountered on my own. Among these are the essays of Morowitz and Wheelis. Morowitz may only be here to serve as a contrast to Dawkins, but I am am free to form my own opinion. Wheelis blends science and spirituality in a way that seems to make Hofstadter uncomfortable. Nevertheless it was Hofstadter who turned me on to Wheelis’ poetic essay “Spirit.”

Like the mind itself, Hofstadter’s book about the mind is more than the sum of its parts.

NOTE

*William Barrett, “The Computer and the Ego” (The New York Times, 12/13/81).

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was given this book as a gift from one of the most interesting persons I've ever known.

During the period before entering Loyola University Chicago and one semester into attending there I worked at a cafe/bookstore across the street from its Lake Shore Campus. It had been my hangout for years previously as the second floor location fronted the east with large windows, making the woodsy place sunny and warm. By the early eighties I was pretty well known there.

The way one met people was usually by asking the person next to you what s/he was reading. Presumably that's how Natalie and I met. In any case, we talked a lot. She was unusually well-read and earnest about much of her studying because she was, she told me, episodically insane.

This was all very interesting to talk about. In a few weeks, however, I saw it happen: intense head pain followed by disorientation. I probably took her to the hospital at least four times.

Years later it was discovered that her problem was water retention associated with her cycle. When other women would discharge, fluid would build up within her. The increased pressure in the brain would lead to the symptoms. The simple cure: water pills.

To grow up feeling different and inferior, out-of-control, to think oneself prone to insanity, was character building in Natalie's case. She was a pretty girl and could have become devoted to partying and dating. Instead, she had become unusually serious, thoughtful and, to me, fascinating.

Some time after giving me this book, she married, had a baby...then died of a brain aneurism. She was twenty-five.

The book, incidentally, was excellent and well-chosen.

[Joshua Stein · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like both Dennett and Hofstadter, but I can't say that I particularly enjoyed The Mind's Eye. It has a lot of interesting ideas, but doesn't have the time to develop them given the story-reflection format of the text. While the book includes a number of seminal pieces in philosophy of mind, as well as some great pieces of fiction, they dont' really fit together all that well stylistically or intellectually, and often Dennett and Hofstadter spend a fair amount of time justifying the inclusion of the piece in the book.

I will say that both do a fair job writing their own reflections, and discussing the ideas in some of the earlier works, which are used alongside writing by Borges and Nozick and Searle, but those are really the only major brightspots in a work that feels sewn together in odd places, presented in a way that is just south of playful [something Dennett and Hofstadter generally do very well].

I think that the major problem for the book is the format. Both of these guys are famous for developing their ideas in a text and being able to really draw out some interesting detail while presenting very difficult material in an engaging way. That is their wheelhouse when it comes to writing, but they obviously don't manage it here because they don't have the time to develop their own ideas and the inclusion of a good deal of other work forces them to bounce around to subjects that, while interesting, are not developed enough to be satisfying.

To folks who are interested in reading a few of the sections of the book as they seem them, and interested in Dennett and Hofstadter's commentary, I totally understand picking the book up, but if you're looking for an engaging read on philosophy of mind that explores some of the interesting features of phenomenology or artificial intelligence, best look elsewhere. Dennett has Consciousness Explained and Sweet Dreams and Hofstadter has I am a Strange Loop. All of those works develop many of the same ideas that are in the book, but in more depth and with some thought that is easier to track.

[Buğra Davutluoğlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Değindiği “zihin, bilinç, ruh, özgür irade, beyin, Tanrı, yapay zeka” gibi konular tartışmalı ve ağır. Ancak diğer yazarlardan kısa öykülerin ve düşünce deneylerinin alıntılanıp kitap yazarlarının bu konudaki düşüncelerini paylaştığı kurgusu bu okumayı rahat ve zevkli kılıyor.

Ayrıca daha önce Solaris’le bildiğim Stanislaw Lem’i bana hatırlattığı ve yazarın bütün eserlerini okuma isteği uyandırdığı için ayrıca “iyi ki okumuşum” dediğim kitap.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all laugh at the thought that a machine may one day develop artificial intelligence, or that human consciousness could reside in a remotely controlled body while its brain is back in the lab, or that one’s mental processes could be stored in a book to be accessed by the manual computation of future readers; but embedded in these simple vignettes are deeply unsettling challenges to the way we view human consciousness and even the concepts of soul and self-worth. This book is a test of the endurance of concepts like spirit and consciousness, and if you’ve ever waivered under the onslaught of materialistic reductionism, I promise you this book will come close to kicking out your remaining legs. However, it was supremely entertaining and searching, and ultimately I found it to offer the most beautiful alternatives to a holistic, spiritualized view of existence that I have ever come across.

Near the beginning of the book the authors had warned of two extremes to avoid: solipsism—the idea that I am the only conscious being in the universe, and Panpsychism—the idea that everything in the universe is conscious. They steered pretty clear of solipsism, and though I would never have expected them to fall into the camp of panpsychism with animists, I truly think they veered towards panpsychism by attributing mind and even suffering to all things which might potentially behave mechanistically like humans do…which includes everything. While trying to avoid falling into the pot of attributing ‘soul’ to a few things, and in their attempt to eliminate the exclusive way soul is applied to only humans, the authors fell into the fire of asserting that everything has soul-like qualities, which is to say that everything has a soul, even if it isn’t traditional way to think about soul.

Nonetheless, a very pertinent and tenable question is posed that isn’t easily dismissed. Hofstadter gave the analogy of a flame to illustrate the soul dilemma:

“We just fall like a ton of bricks for the notion that there’s a “soul” in there—a flame-like soul that can flicker on or off, or even be transferred between bodies as a flame between candles. If a candle blows out and is relit, is it “the same flame”? Or, if it stays lit, is it even “the same flame” from moment to moment?”

A flame is a process of combustion, but not a thing separate from fuel or ignition. It’s both process and material, so in some sense a flame lives on, and in another sense it dies and is reborn from moment to moment. The comfort found here, for those who feel the loss of soul in science, is that our bodies and minds are elements continually left in the past, one with new elements added every new instant, and the total process by which these transitions occur and support the process. The continuity which we call soul or consciousness continues in some mysterious way, replacing of cells in our bodies, and over the course of time, replacing our entire body many times over the course of a lifetime. This continuity can even be stretched to an understanding of life beyond death, for just as a flame is blown out, and may be relit later, so it is conceivable that mind may be ‘relit’ and reconstituted after death in a very physical way, given enough time, and maybe in hitherto undreamed ways. We don’t know what consciousness is, or how it got here, and we can’t say it will never make an appearance again. Since we already have the precedent of it being here at all and being conscious, there’s good reason to believe this flame of consciousness will show up again somewhere in this or that universe.

By brilliantly rephrasing the problem of soul, the authors are avoiding a ‘yes/no’ sort of answer, and moving instead toward a radical reinterpretation of soul and self that is consistent with materialistic science. I have to admit, it’s about time. The idea of a soul, as most conceive of it, is an old idea, and was never meant to be plugged into modern scientific formulas. Even as a religious concept it has been, throughout the ages, fraught with complications which for a while people were happy to turn their heads and ignore for the sake of comfort and stability. However, in these days, when bodies live longer and we have the luxury of spending time asking questions and growing into the answers, we don’t have to feel rushed to premature answers lest we die in the process of questioning. The book’s challenges to the ancient concept of soul and spirit is especially valid for our time, if a bit unsettling.

To tackle the difficult and often abstract topics of self and consciousness, the authors—gurus in computer science and philosophy—use imaginative stories and thought experiments to stretch readers’ cerebral muscles, warming them up to start asking questions like, “Who am I? Am ‘I’ a simple monad, with complex feelings, thoughts and acts? Am I fooling myself to think I am a cohesive being with clearly defined boundaries, functions and…worth?” Maybe it’s impossible to simplify our identity—humanity may be, as Hermann Hesse phrased it, “so far from being a unity, is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities”—but this work sure takes the conversation a step forward towards clarity.

Oddly enough, the book started out sounding balanced regarding ideas like holism (universe as soul) and reductionism (universe as machine), citing articles from different perspectives. But the catch—and an awesomely disorienting catch it was—was a HUGE bait-and-switch revealed all the way near the end!

“In this book there are a variety of thought experiments designed to explore the implications of the hypothesis that materialism is true: the mind or self is not another (non-physical) thing, in miraculous interaction with the brain, but somehow a natural and explainable product of the brain’s organization and operation.”

It was a smart move not to reveal this too early. I was actually floored when I realized that the authors were consummate materialists who conceived of the universe and all beings inside it in purely mechanomorphic terms. It seemed to me that they were completely taken-in and driven by Richard Dawkins’ ideas in “The Selfish Gene”, an excerpt from this work provided in chapter 10. Dawkins’ idea is that what we call life is the accidental collision and subsequent survival of enduring combinations of matter; and frankly, I understand why it is the message-thread that weaves through this entire work and probably provided the authors with their premise, however clandestine. This chapter was my first interaction with Dawkins’ concepts, and I found him to be brilliant and imaginative; and though I personally don’t swallow whole all of his theories—they seem to come up short in attempting to explain the phenomenon of consciousness and will—still, they are as compelling and courageous as anything I’ve seen from a reductionist.

Because this his hard for people to accept who are accustomed to thinking of the universe in terms of mind, spirit, and free will, the authors attempt to provide a conciliatory and inclusive definition of determinism which encompasses both sides of the debate between soul and body by saying that holism is a view of the world as top-down causality (a sophisticated whole structures the parts), and reductionism is a view of the world as bottom-up causality (the parts are always responsible for the whole, and any final rendering by the whole of the parts is first determined by the parts). The authors attempt to escape the accusation of bias by inserting the Zen idea of “mu”, which “unasks the question” and reveals that “there is a larger context into which both holistic and reductionistic explanations fit.” But really, though mu is a fun concept aimed at assuaging the fears and defenses of holistic thinkers, it’s clear that the authors preponderantly believe we are a random collection of atoms. Still, and maybe in spite of the attempt to introduce-but-minimize it, I found mu to be a very useful way of getting back to the assumptions. By the end, I was actually endeared to mu and to an understanding of the mechanistic process of nature, even in reductionist terms.

Religious or holistic thinkers may ask, how could determinism become endearing to humans who are typically so focused on free will? The key is an understanding that all determined parts are part of the determining whole. One determines as much as one is determined. There is no abstract universe ‘out there’ that is making us. We are as significant a part of the universe as anything else, therefore the universe resides in us. I am the universe in that I am a real part of the whole, and without myself, there is no whole. Therefore, I am the determined part, and the determining whole—both determined and determining. An excerpt from Raymond Smullyan’s dialogue between God and man (chapter 20, “Is God a Taoist?”) helps to illustrate this:

“[God speaking to man] Your acts are certainly in accordance with the laws of nature, but to say they are determined by the laws of nature creates a totally misleading psychological image which is that your will could somehow be in conflict with the laws of nature and that the latter is somehow more powerful than you, and could ‘determine’ your acts whether you liked it or not. But it is simply impossible for your will to ever conflict with natural law. You and natural law are really one and the same…Don’t you see that the so-called ‘laws of nature’ are nothing more than a description of how in fact you and other beings do act? They are merely a description of how you act, not a prescription of how you should act, not a power or force which compels or determines your acts. To be valid, a law of nature must take into account how in fact you do act, or, if you like, how you choose to act…But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the ‘you’ and the ‘not you’. Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin?”

There are definite pros to believing in this kind of determinism:
1. Mind and thought may not be as unique to human experience as previously thought; but nor are we as alone, isolated, and unsolvable as previously thought.
2. We may not have souls; but whatever it is we do have, nature has a lot of material to make more for a long time, again and again.
3. We may be determined, but we are also integral to, and synonymous with, the determining whole.

Whether or not one finds the ideas in the book to be palatable, it certainly is a wild ride nonetheless. The best chapters in the book are, in order of appearance:

On Having No Head—A fun and strangely convincing essay about the myth we have all bought into that tells us we have heads. It’s a hoax! We’ve never seen our heads, and our subjective perspective eliminates the option of us experiencing our own heads as objects. Genius.

The Turing Test—The famous Turing Test fable which first appeared in Scientific American in 1981. Are we sure that computers won’t ever be able to think like humans? This hypothetical test will leave you wondering.

Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes (by Richard Dawkins)—A must read about how mind may have been formed by the ‘mindless’ evolution of particles which clumped together to form 6 forms of stability: longevity/fecundity/copying-fidelity/competition/combination/colonization. Much emphasis is laid on the human body as a survival machine, future thought as simulated models of trial and error, and memes as transmittable culture (ideas) which is currently the most advanced form of evolution and self-replication. The Selfish Gene is probably the seminal work which forms the undercurrent for the entire present volume.

Prelude…Ant Fugue—Very creative, if hard-to-read-at-times, analogy about how the brain works somewhat ‘accidentally’ to form a holistic system that appears to be conscious as a whole when really it is only as conscious as a stone. Brilliant.

The Story Of a Brain— A brain is kept alive in a nutrient bath beyond the death of the body, and the brain is stimulated artificially to provide ‘experiences’. Eventually the brain is broken up into halves, parts, and finally into separate neurons which were replaced when they wore out. Is it the same brain when replaced neuron by neuron? Is it still conscious?

Where Am I/ Where was I?— A brain is removed from its body and the body is sent into hazardous situations. Consciousness is generated by the brain, but resides in the body. Eventually the body is replaced with new bodies. Is consciousness in the body, brain, or neither? Which body is my body?

The Riddle Of the Universe And Its Solution—An infectious thought is sending people into catatonic states, and scientists try to isolate the idea in media before they succumb. An analogy to unsolved paradoxes that tangles people’s thoughts and hamstrings basic logic. Is this recurring feedback what creates consciousness?

Is God a Taoist?— A man has a very unpredictable discussion with God. God redefines man’s idea of free will, suffering, and evil. The redefinitions of theistic and humanistic ideas are astounding and very useful.

An Unfortunate Dualist—A man takes a drug to kill his soul because he no longer wants to live, but the drug helps the body and brain continue on as normal so a bodily suicide does not negatively impact others. What happens to consciousness?

What Is it Like To Be a Bat?—Philosopher Thomas Nagel speculates on what it is like to be a bat, and determines that we can’t really know what it is like to be anything other than ourselves. The problem of subject/object duality and relation needs to be explored more.

An Epistemological Nightmare— An epistemologist builds a brain-reading machine and ends up being driven crazy by it because people’s meanings, and even one’s own internal meanings, are so varied.

A Conversation With Einstein’s Brain— Best chapter in the book! This one really blew my mind. Imagine if Einstein’s brain was catalogued into book with a separate page for every neuron including its threshold values, resistance values, structural change calculations etc. If we input data from a spoken question like, “Hello Einstein, how are you?”, would one be able to run the data through the book to compute a response from Einstein’s brain to contemporary conversation partners? If so, would that make Einstein dead or alive? It’s a trap!

Fiction—All characters in a story are the author’s thoughts, and therefore, in some sense, are the author. Does the author’s meaning change the character’s feeling about their part in the story? Do we feel our part in the story of life is changed if the state of the author (ourselves or God) is changed?

The structure of the book was very helpful. Introductions were provided for topics, then vignettes illustrated the topics, and these were followed by a reflection by the authors to help readers distill the take-aways. The philosophical gleanings were bountiful, and the challenges to traditional ways of thinking about humanity and human consciousness were well worth the work.

Bottom line: what do we really know about consciousness and mind? Very little as it turns out, but enough to rule out, according to the authors, antiquated ideas about soul. Still, the subjective-objective tension, and the balance between holism and reductionism keeps this matter from being over-simplified and conclusive. What do we really know about other people’s conscious experience in general? What do we really know about our own past conscious experience, say, even 5 years ago? As one author states, “When you come right down to it, it’s not so clear just what it is like to be me, right now.”

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[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays and short stories from scientists, philosophers, and fiction authors, all dealing with concepts related to the self and self-consciousness. Each work is followed by commentary from either Dennett or Hofstadter.

I imagine this book is an absolutely fantastic introduction to these sorts of ideas and had I read it earlier in my life it'd probably have a 5 star rating. Still, the familiarity of the ideas discussed didn't lessen my enjoyment of the book, especially as the book progressed from standard speculative fiction/philosophical theorizing to much more complicated discussions of consciousness and the self.

The writings alone would be wonderful and thought provoking, but Dennett and Hofstadter's commentaries manage to add yet another dimension to the appreciation of all these works and provoke yet more thought about the ideas discussed.

It's also turned me on to a few authors who I may have never heard of otherwise, and whose writings I found to be extraordinary, which is a great bonus.

[Raunak Pillai · Rating 4 out of 5]

delightful set of essays on personal identity, consciousness, and the possibility of machine intelligence. though the reflections did leave a little something to be desired--a bit more synthesis beyond a few cursory references to other selections

[John Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the working assumptions with which we get through the day are those that tell us we have a self, that its decisions are or at least can be freely willed rather than determined, that our intelligence as employed in language transcends what a machine can do, and that these qualities and processes are somehow connected with, embodied in, our physical being, mainly our brain. Philosophers have been questioning these assumptions for some time and proposing answers to the conundrums they provoke. The three words which are the first thing (often the only thing) most of us associate with Descartes, "cogito, ergo sum," were the result of this; after wondering whether his entire mental experience might be an elaborate hoax created by a demon, he concluded, to oversimplify, that because he was able to think he must exist--there must be something doing the thinking. He was neither the first nor the last to wonder about such things.

Numerous recent pieces of fiction and nonfiction examining these issues are contained in this book. I've learned since reading it that the ideas discussed, and in many cases the actual texts, are seen as groundbreaking, essential works in their field. A sampling of its contents:

• The brains-in-vats idea that was employed, in slightly different form, in the movie The Matrix.

• A fable-like version of the reality-is-a-dream idea, dramatized by Jorge Luis Borges in "The Circular Ruins." (Incidentally, a similar treatment, relying on virtual reality rather than dreams, is used by the movie The Thirteenth Floor).

• A tale of simulated consciousnesses, which also manages to question the nature and existence of God, told by Stanislaw Lem in "Non Serviam." Personally, this was the most astounding piece in the book and was, as they say, worth the price of admission all by itself.

• John Searle's challenge to the notion that a machine intelligence can ever understand anything, encapsulated in his translator-in-a-box concept.

• Thomas Nagel's speculation on the nature of consciousness in "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

• Richard Dawkins's exposition of the idea of memes--surely you've heard of them by now--in an excerpt from his book The Selfish Gene.

The entire book seems to be available online, though in a less-than-ideal format. Taste it there if you want, but if you're like me you'll prefer to curl up with a real book; there's no e-reader form.

[Cassidy Brinn]

Explores the nature of personal identity through some good ol fashioned concept fracture. Think you know who you are, where you are, how you are? Well what if ....

Thanks for uprooting several dualists still lurking about in me, and letting them shrivel in the glare of the one gold sun.

I liked that, while a collection intended to provoke in a variety of ways, the reflections limited the whole. None of this wishywashy isn't that so INteresting crap; rather, this is right and that is wrong, and here is why ha ha. I especially liked their reflections on Searle (the knobs) and Nagel (what does it mean to make subject object Gödel Carroll my oh my).

Though I was disappointed because - in the first Borges essay, "Borges and I", I thought that the reflection was still a continuation of the essay, and a third character, Borges reflecting on himself in the style of a literary critic, had emerged! I was joyous! Sadly, no.

The functional systemic picture that emerges from the reflections and several selections is lovely - but again, as with all theories born of concept fracture, the whole point of the original concept in question is lost; what would a meaning mean? (Sprache muss sich selbst mitteilen!!!) At one level I'm mechanic, at another fleshy, at another conceptual, here through time, there through possibility, just as long as I'm ACTive I'm an I, sure I buy it. But it hangs on where you're standing and why you're speaking, and that far they do not go. Makes me wonder what they really want to know.

And why can't we just sit down and really talk about the nature of subjectivity as opposed to objectivity. Let's get it on the table, no OFF the table and into the kitchen! Let's bake it stir it spice it whatever, but just stop taking it for granted!

[Roland Volz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an excellent introduction to speculative fiction divorced from the modern categories of science fiction and Tolkienesque fantasy. Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadder collected stories that inspired new thoughts and ideas. This book also introduced many to non-American authors with much to offer; for instance, I was introduced to Jorge Luis Borges through this book, and he remains one of my favorite authors.

[Mark Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb collection of thought-provoking essays and short stories touching on various aspects of the philosophical side of cognitive science. Hofstadter & Dennett's commentary was always interesting to read - even when I disagreed with them (which was much more often on this year's careful reading than when I skimmed this volume a few years ago), their opposing viewpoint helped me sharpen my own ideas.

[Tim Petersik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hofstadter has collected a set of intriguing essays, short stories, and mini-plays, all designed to help us question our conceptions of "mind." it worked on me the first and second times I read the book. Looking forward to a third.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good - but not as good a GEB :-)

[Sadegh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Came for the philosophy, stayed for the literature.

Every selection and piece of commentary featured in this book I would roughly place in one of two categories: (1) those that raise questions or (2) those that attempt to answer or offer refutations to other answers to those questions.
Most of the short stories, articles, and book excerpts included in the volume in addition to a good portion of the commentary by the editors fall into the former category and raise fascinating questions and dilemmas about the mind, (sense of) self, and the nature of consciousness being faced with and musing on which was a charming experience.
Much of what falls into the latter category (a few selections and some of the commentary) however I found unconvincing at best and incomprehensible at worst.

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories, essays, thought experiments and dialogues by various authors that all have something to do with consciousness, selfhood and other facets of the philosophy of mind.

The book was written/compiled in the 80s, so there definitely has been progress in neuroscience since the time of this book, but we still haven't figured out what it really means to be conscious, how to explain consciousness, where it comes from, and what other beings or things might have some version of a conscious experience.

Some of the stories are whack, some are really interesting and thought provoking. Some are quite funny, others are dull. As an example there is a Borges story, Alan Turing's essay on the turing test, an extract from the selfish gene by Dawkins, and the essay "what is it like to be a bat?" by Nagel. I liked most of the stories and essays on offer although some of them are ridiculously oversimplified and reductionist.

The co-authors Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett also include a few of their own pieces. My favourite of those was probably an absurd dialogue between four characters which starts as a discussion about Fermat's last theorem and the music of Bach and ends up being a debate on whether an ant hill (Aunt Hillary) could be said to be conscious in the same way a brain is, comparing single ants to neurons. There are three similar dialogues by Hofstadter and the conversation is pretty stilted and pretentious in all of them but somehow I still enjoy the back and forth nature of the debates and how far they push the concepts of being and selfhood.

Every story or essay or whatever is followed by a short "reflections" section by either Hofstadter or Dennett. I found myself often not agreeing with their takes on the pieces they were reflecting on. Still, it's an interesting book which makes you think deeply on concepts that are hard to grasp.

[Vasko Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kendisi benim bilinç felsefesiyle tanışmama vesile olan kitaptır. Bilinçle ilgili daha önce hiç aklıma gelmeyen soruları yıllarca kafama takmama sebep olmuş metinlerle ve onların eleştirileriyle doludur. Argümanlarını metaforlarla, diyaloglarla, öykülerle, masallarla, sezgi pompalarıyla, düşünce deneyleriyle somutlaştırma konusunda daha iyisiyle karşılaşmadığım iki analitik düşünürün ortak çıkardığı bir şaheser. Kitabın ismi ve arka kapak yazısı içinin spiritüel saçmalıklarla dolu olduğu izlenimini verse de yazarlara aşina olanlar öyle olmadığını bilecektir diye tahmin ediyorum. Dennett görmüş geçirmiş bir Darwinci ve mahşerin dört ateist atlısından biri, ve Hofstadter ise o ünlü efsanevi kitabın yazarı; mantık, matematik, bilinç ve bilimsel düşünüşün harikalar diyarı GEB.
Mesela kitaptaki öykülerden birinde beyni ilk önce ikiye bölünen, sonra dörde, sonra gitgide her bir sinir hücresinin ayrı kavanozlara konulduğu o adamın öyküsü anlatılır. Beni hala çok heyecanlandırır bu hikaye, çünkü olayın teknolojik imkansızlığından ziyade ilkesel olarak bir tutarsızlığı olup olmadığını hala bilmiyorum, bir açığını bulamıyorum. Dennett bu hikayedeki aynı mantıksal çıkarımı kendi yazdığı başka önemli bir kitabında, Darwin'in Tehlikeli Fikri'nde daha da derinleştirmiştir. İşin içine tüm olası kitapların bulunduğu Borges'in sonsuz kütüphanesi, Dawkins'in içinde bütün olası canlıların bulunduğu genetik uzayı vs. girer ve matematiğin soyut platoncu uzayında matematiğin ne olduğu tartışılır. Beyin gıdıklayıcı...
Ayrıca, çaldığım ilk kitaptır. Oh.

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the best way to introduce Philosophy as relevant. Anyone intending to apply philosophy to life will inevitably meet the question "what use is it to me?". When we pose that question ourselves it is comparitively easy to cast around for answers when we already know ways in which it can be applied. To give someone else a response such as "it teaches us to analyse arguments" is rarely helpful. This book however contains lots of little nuggets in easy to read formats such as Lem's fairytales or the musical references each of which will apply to an individual. If the right piece is matched to the right person I have never met anyone who could resist begining to read the few pages of analysis that followed. At that point the person has engaged with the idea and the resistance, not to mention the perception that philosophy is 'boring and for boring old men', is lost. Irrespective of what the person goes on to do if they do it with less fear of 'intellectual study' this will already have been a practical application on philosophy.

[Robert Bagnall · Rating 3 out of 5]

What time you read a book makes a big difference; this was my book to read when I got up an hour or so before everybody else in the house. But maybe if I had read it at some other time of day I wouldn't have such a feeling of my brain being full, that the mental sharpness that I had during my philosophy degree had, like Elvis, left the building. But maybe it's the book, not me? Whilst the mix of academic paper and sci-fi short story works (science fiction being, after all, primarily the fiction of ideas), I found too many of the items - Hofstadter's dialogues in particular - flabby and self-satisfied. Sitting here having just closed the book, the impression I take away from it is that sections that could have made their points more succinctly rambled on and on, overloading the many papers - Dawkins, Nozick, Searle, Dennett's himself - that didn't outstay their welcome. I suspect I would have given this more than three stars if I'd gotten around to reading it when I bought it in 1994 as a 24-year old cognitive science postgraduate...

[Nick Klagge]

I read some or much of this when I was in high school, 20 years ago or more. I continue to enjoy Hofstadter and Dennett, and it's certainly an interesting re-read now that we have LLMs--which have very much altered my perspective on the Turing test, the Chinese room, and other thought experiments covered in this book. The material remains as relevant and ever, and it's just a matter of seeing some of these old tales in a somewhat new light.

One selection that I didn't remember from my previous read was "The Riddle of the Universe and its Solution" by Christopher Cherniak. The premise is similar to the great David Langford stories "BLIT" and "comp.basilisk FAQ", which were written a bit later. Ultimately I think Langford improved on the genre by leaning into the horror.

[Herman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't really care for this book it made some big claims but didn't fill the bill for me can't recommend it actually but hey that's not what I want to talk about right now
Instead let’s talk about Mental illness, I don’t think I’m Mentally ill but I’m not completely well either, Pandemic blues letting the Bitch in the basement take over my mental wifi, Anxiety overload, stress focused and amplified taking my business inventory and freaking out over its shape and direction I think it’s taken me over somewhat. What ever it was that got inside my head I’m kind of getting over it.

The Atlantic one of my favorite magazines says of mental breakdown this: breakdown gave you license to withdraw, claiming an excess of industry or sensitivity or some other virtue. And crucially, it focused the cause of distress on the outside world and its unmeetable demands. You weren’t crazy; the world was. As a 1947 headline in the New York Herald Tribune put it: “Modern World Viewed as Too Much for Man.”

The term nervous breakdown first appeared in a 1901 medical treatise for physicians. “It is a disease of the whole civilized world,” its author wrote. This disquisition built on the work of a Gilded Age doctor, George Miller Beard, who posited that we all had a set amount of nerve force, which could be depleted, like a battery, by the stress of modern life. Beard had argued that an epidemic of nervous disease had been unleashed by technology and the press, which accelerated everything. “The chief and primary cause of this … very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization,” he wrote in American Nervousness in 1881.

This idea of the nervous breakdown as a natural response to modern life gained currency through the go-go 1920s, and then achieved cultural ubiquity with the economic collapse of the 1930s. “Is a nervous breakdown a sign of weakness?” asked a 1934 book titled Nervous Breakdown.

Not at all. You have put up a good fight, but the odds were too heavy against you … Nature has warned you and given you respite. The breakdown is a definite indication that you are still functioning, and have within you the material for recovery

OK so I announced that I was taking a break from facebook, and I just stopped altogether with Goodreads, I’m off of Pintress, and tumblr, I logged off my Audible account and my Amazon account and my Apple account. I really tried to close down my digital footprint, and overall I think it’s a good experiment going on here being old school and shutting yourself off from the electronic lease, I don’t think I’m done with this yet I said I was going to give it a year it’s not yet a month and I’m already backsliding, but overall I think it’s a good goal to be social-media-lite not to be so connected I just wanted to let some family and friends know that is what I’m doing and that I haven’t gone completely bonkers.

I had my epiphany on Goodreads, I’ve been charting my book reading for years I read 5 book in January and set a goal of reading 65 this year, I enjoy reading but am I doing this for myself or is it in support of my virtual community of online readers I mean are my actions my own or directly by my online obsession with books? Then add onto that that Goodreads is own by Amazon, Amazon Google and Apple they love my ass I’m a great customer in fact they own my ass, and when I start to look at my accounts well that was when I started letting a small freak-out become a big freak-out and for experiment sake I thought to try to remove as much of my electronic footprint as possible. Also wanted so see what it would be like not to be on the phone every ten minutes of so, not to be using my laptop for anything other than work, to see how I might feel if I quit my intake of news and social media for awhile like going vegan in my mind and not consuming the same old bullshit daily. Nice goals hasn’t been a month yet and I realize it’s going to be very hard to do kind of a day by day thing already feeling bad about my reading goals and on Facebook I know some of my friends have had special social events that I should be commenting on, sorry for missing your grand daughter’s birth, or someone’s hospitalization, or another person’s traffic mishap. I know their is stuff happening in my little social circle, but I’m on an experiment and I’m going to try and stick it out.

This helped Got to love this kids energy.
https://youtu.be/MRvHI8tgx8A

No more political commentary: going dark just before the next second impeachment. Wow well you all know where my attitudes are and I doubt I will have anything really interesting or intelligent to add in these crazy and illogical times. I will leave with one little clip that you might have missed I just thought it was really funny the My Pillow founder on Newsmax check it out.

https://youtu.be/V4jmp_Oxd_M

OK that’s it I’m out of here Goodreads I did enjoy our time together Won't say this is a divorce lets call it a trial separation, and "The Mind's Eye" 'Fantasies and Reflections on self and soul' seem the best place for me to step off for awhile even though I wasn't much into the book it's perfect vehicle for expressing my overall ambivalence towards all things internet, all things economic, all things pandemic, and all that is going on inside my head at the moment. Time to take a break Goodbye

[Ami Iida · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the cognitive science.

the book contains science thoughts and SF anthology of course Borges's shot stories
and short criticisms.
the innovative anthology.

it is SF anthology and thought experiment about brain and consciousness.

[Joel Bass · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a big influence on me. Good stuff.

[Georges · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend to anyone who is starting in AI area.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

How conciousness is derived from neural activity - questions concerning free will and determinism - Turing machines and Ai

[Clara Schindler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an anthology of thought experiments, essays, short stories and scientific articles about the mind, the self and consciousness in their full length or abstracts, with commentary at the end of each section by Daniel Dennett (one of my all time favourite contemporary philosophers) and Douglas Hofstadter. Aside from fulfilling meeting all my expectations on approaching the biggest problems of cognitive science, the structure of this book was perfect to indulge my curiosity because it was not academic at all, and that is thanks to it being a collection of works by very different authors, rather than one big argument for one view about consciousness. But better yet, despite not having much space to actually form an argument, since most of the space in the book is given to the essays and stories by other authors, Dennett still manages to outline a clear view that is his own on this subject, which slowly makes itself clear as he comments on the various pieces of work in this anthology. His view is essentially that there is no such thing as "I", and that there is not really a sense in which it "feels" like anything to be me, or that it feels anything for you to be you. His view nicely converges with the oriental philosophers who have always claimed there is no such thing as a self. Dennett knows that this is a hard pill to swallow, and he makes a great point at the end of the book saying that "Science advances haltingly, bumping against the boundaries of the unthinkable: the things declared impossible because they are currently unimaginable. It is at the speculative frontier of thought experiment and fantasy that these boundaries get adjusted." He was so right to mix in pieces of fiction with hard science articles in this anthology, because "The point of science is to help us understand what we are and how we got here, and for this we need great stories: the tale of how, once upon a time, there was a Big Band; the Darwinian epic of the evolution of life on Earth; and now the story we are just beginning to learn how to tell: the amazing adventure of the primate autobiographers who finally taught themselves how to tell the story of the amazing adventure of the primate autobiographers." This book definitely had me renew my sense of awe for many things, from how it's possible that a music on a physical record is both there "all at once" but also "bit by bit" to how it's possible that I feel like "I" am here.

[LUKA LU · Rating 5 out of 5]

The anthology features diverse essays complemented by reflections from Dennett and Hofstadter, promising delightful and insightful content. Even if unfamiliar with philosophy, you'll enjoy pieces like "Princess Ineffabelle". The collection is both entertaining and thought-provoking, challenging preconceptions. Get ready to be entertained, informed, and stimulated by this book's rich selection.

[Luca Maffezzoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

“È poesia, filosofia o scienza, questa?”

[Brandon Woodward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really interesting thought experiments and stories exploring the mystery of consciousness and the mind. It aims to widen your perspective playfully rather than give straightforward arguments so it’s quite a fun read, but presents more questions than answers. Would recommend!

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even almost 45 years after its initial publication, this remains a fantastic and enthralling collection of pieces regarding human consciousness. Hofstadter and Dennett collaborated well in the assembly of these writings and with an appendix of further readings acknowledged that this book is just another stepping stone in the garden of forking paths.