I remember slogging through this in college.
Any fans?
The book is testing. But it solves the hard problem of consciousness, so yes, I'm a fan.
I Am A Strange Loop is an easier read.
Lots of fans. I feel them on my neck often, and seem to be developing a cold.
I've never seen this book complimented without the tone of a stupefied fanboy.
>>7801318
>it solves the hard problem of consciousness
holy shit.
You have to elaborate on such things.
Icнyєш нoк типoвe хoдy зa лiтypгiї Щ фopy ycyнe кyбiв
>>7801303
I adore it. He also wrote a great work on literary translation. (pic related)
It's on the to-do, it's on my shelf.
The cover image is a meme, I've been looking at it while wandering bookstores for many years. But when I actually opened the book up and flipped through it, the author takes credit for coming up with these "3D bricks" and he just thinks he's so brilliant about the idea, which is a bit cringey. But I do like that he actually fabricated these things which are the symbol of the book. Now I will amble over to my bookshelf and find the passage, and later type it below.
hm, couldn't find it, but he has some meme pet-name for the woodblocks, and the idea of them.
Just looking at the prose, something occurred to me. Srs question, does the author have Asperger's?
>>7801335
I doubt that Hofstadter is autistic. Judging from the video footage I've seen of him he seems to function normally in social situations.
>>7801323
Our brains are capable of generating and remembering a self-symbol. So like when you point a live camera at its own feed, it starts that weird rushing expansion into a unified oneness.
Similarly, we are picking up our own feedback loop so quickly that it gels into waking life. Pic related is a goodish visual metaphor. Think of it like a sort of mental shutter speed, one that can capture its own lens (our senses).
>>7801303
I thought it was pretty interesting and exposed me to some fun ideas. I read it just after graduating high school.
I'm definitely more predisposed to like that sort of thing than the average lit dweller, though, since I'm now a grad student in math.
http://youtu.be/AoKSv_dNzME
>>7801360
In other words, you have absolutely no idea what the hard problem of consciousness is.
>>7803639
do you wanna be my gf anon?
>>7803639
If you don't understand the connection, that's ok. Have fun spinning your wheels over qualia, fuckface.
>>7801318
The only "hard" thing in the book is his erection for his dead wife
>>7803935
He doesn't mention her death in GEB.
>>7801360
While the image you used is interesting, your reasoning is way too simplified to be a half decent "solution" for the problem.
The self ("I") is nothing but a simple process through which relates all experiences together thus allowing for a constant consciousness to exist.
>>7804218
It's DH's reasoning based on Gödel's incompleteness theorems. The key insight was that our brains deal in symbols and supports a self swallowing system. Look, if you don't want your claustrum, I'll take it.
I know it's a bummer, but the theory solves the hard problem. If that's bothering you, tell me what parts are being left open.
>>7804310
The Language of Thought Hypothesis is old and busted. Even if we grant that, there's a pretty big non sequitur from "our brains are capable of self-representation" to "consciousness". That's a gap not filled by watered down versions of Gödel's incompleteness theorems or quines or paradoxes about liars and sets or Eastern philosphy. And I'm one of the people on /lit/ more sympathetic about this, having read GEB twice when young, agreeing with Dennett that qualia and the hard problem are bull, and being a math major.
>>7804611
The step is from 4d (b/c of memory) world representation to 4d world representation w/self. The big idea being that a strange loop can exist.
So I think the gap between us is self-rep to consciousness is too much of a leap. Consider VR. Think of it slowed down to a slide show. Now think of it w/ & w/o self-rep. W/o it, it's a rep of things, lets say Adèle Exarchopoulos on a couch. W/it, you are embodied and can look down and you are there—now it starts to feel like yr really there, and we now speed up the frame rate, and your consciousness has been hijacked (fooled) by this extra layer in the VR. Is that closing the gap any?
>>7804260
You are confusing the consciousness of self with the substantial self. I exist even when I am not explicitly thinking about myself or my existence. A thing doesn't cease to exist when you stop paying attention to it.
>>7804848
Sure they stop existing. This all just a weird fucking fever dream boiling out of a sack of water in the middle of nowhere. But now reread that last sentence with each word in 'scare quotes' while 'not' 'picturing' 'Engels's' drawing of 'Maximum Spook' 'Stirner'. You have now 'caught my drift' 'mothafucka'.
>>7804871
No, I do not stop existing when I am unconscious. I still exist when I fall asleep. Just because consciousness of self is a natural and habitual part of my existence does not mean it is essential to it. My "self" is not the act of self-perception. My "self" is a human being, that exists even without the act of self-perception.
>>7804914
Have fun unexisting when I fall asleep tonight. I know I will. But what if the real world is when you sleep? 'Budget limitations'. When you die you stop existing, when you're not conscious you...?
>>7804929
Substance exists independent of mind.
The mind receives sensual impressions of the qualities of substances through the senses. What exists in the mind is not substance but the mental image of the substance subsisting apart from the mind.
>>7804944
Not one person has proved that. The amount of math needed to do that has not been laid out—in fact, the system we think of as mathematics has a huge fucking hole in it... This was proven by the guy, the first name in OP's book!
Sheesh.
>>7804871
>BANE
Image ruined.
>>7803915
No, that anon is right. You're the one who doesn't understand. There is no evidence at all that recursion causes any kind of awareness whatsoever.
>>7805082
It's recursive memory, not recursion. Oh man, this isn't rocket surgery.
I read this book in high school and it opened my mind to a lot of very wild modern ideas, and I'd love to find another book that covers such fascinating concepts with such admiration yet still takes the time to explain them from the ground up
any suggestions? i mostly stick to literature and primary source philosophy because i'm skeptical of pop-sci but if anyone knows of something that takes an assortment of major ideas and connects them into a larger undertaking i'd really appreciate that direction. doesn't have to be related to the mind
>>7801303
Bach was a genius, Escher was a hack.
Gödel was ok.
>>7805178
I don't think you understand the importance of Escher in the metaphorical application that Hofstader used him in
>>7804310
man, i wanna suck those toes
>>7805185
I don't even read that book (but I want it).
I am just saying that what were those guys.
>>7805178
I forgive you your ignorance but if you disrespect Escher again I'll have set upon you the infinitely tesselating bird-lizard horde of madness
>1000 pages to explain Godels theorem
>200 pages to lazily relate it to consciousness and other fields (music and art)
>>7805283
ESCHER WAS THE GAYEST FAGGOT ON TEH PLANET URTH
>tesselating sodomy
>>7804848
>I exist even when I am not explicitly thinking about myself or my existence.
No you don't.
>>7804848
>A thing doesn't cease to exist when you stop paying attention to it.
As representation, it does.
>>7804914
>My "self" is not the act of self-perception.
But it is, it's dependent on the inner intuition.
>>7805097
> recursive memory isn't an example of recursion
Apparently
>>7804310
It's only a proposed solution. G.E.B. isn't some scientific study definitively explicating the mysteries of consciousness man. It's nothing more than "hey this could be the solution".
It's still brilliant but it shouldn't be accepted as "case-closed". The case is definitely not closed. We still don't know how a recursive system leads to experience. We figure the two are intertwined but we don't know the mechanism by which they are connected. You keep referencing representations. From a neuroscience perspective these representations are just patterns in synaptic firing. So how does a specific recursive pattern of firing cause an agent to "awaken" into consciousness? It isn't enough to say "well it does". We need a rigorous explanation, and a testable model. We have a recursive system that works through spreading activation. So what? What part of the brain translates that into experience? Consider if it didn't. What part of the brain do you look at to tell if it works? We have plenty of recursive neural nets that aren't conscious. You should be able to explain with evidence why they aren't.
Source: Cognitive science minor.
I read the book and undestood the concepts. except the TNT one I kept reading the code and didn't got it Im guessing is another way of understanding the incompletenes theorem but whatever. The only problem that I have is that you have to make the conections by yourself with the author not even including a train of thought on how the failure of systems to decode learning is what generates a self referential learning system. Its like hofstadter understood the concept so well that he forgot to explain it.
>>7805921
>>I exist even when I am not explicitly thinking about myself or my existence.
>No you don't.
I do.
>>A thing doesn't cease to exist when you stop paying attention to it.
>As representation, it does.
Of course, my mental representation of myself can cease to exist, but that does not mean that I cease to exist. I can have a mental representation of an apple in one moment, and then no mental representation of an apple the next; but that does not mean that the apple I was thinking about has ceased to exist.
>>My "self" is not the act of self-perception.
>But it is, it's dependent on the inner intuition.
My self-perception is an act, something I do, like walking. Sometimes I walk, sometimes I think about myself, sometimes I do both at the same time; I don't begin to exist when I start thinking about myself and cease to exist when I stop, anymore than I do when I begin to and stop walking.
Again, my thought of myself is not my actual self, but only a mental image or representation. Just as my thought about my sister is not my actual sister, but only a mental image of her.
You think that self is purely a psychological act or process, when in reality my self is my whole substance/being, including my body. My psychological self-perception or self-judgement is only an act that I, my self, perform; it is not substantially my self. I know this contradicts modern terminology, which confuses the self or the I or the ego with the reflexive consciousness of it. My self is not my self-reflection of myself; my self does not depend on my self-reflection, anymore than my body depends on its reflection in the mirror. When you think of the self as a mental process which becomes more and less intense with the intensity of the mental act, and begins to and ceases to exist when the mental act begins to and ceases to exist, you are falling into a metaphysics which is, or can be, associated with Hinduism, Buddhism, Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, and others, which identifies mind and being, which sees the mind as the source of being or reality, and cannot reach beyond the mental act or representation to see the world of substances which exists independently of the mental act or representation. Indeed, in this metaphysics substance is contained within the mind and the world is "mental substance". This is Idealism.
>>7801360
I have good reason to believe that Hofstadter is wrong and that self referential brain processes are simply functional adaptations (some of which can lay dormant) that aren't themselves necessary for consciousness, though may be selectively important to our survival.
>>7806136
>I have good reason to believe
What are these good reasons?
>>7805987
It's the claustrum.
Try thinking in terms of what you can remove from consciousness and still be conscious. Yeah, yeah, philosophy is going to be the guiding light for science, as it has always been—I'm just as thrilled about it as you are.
We do need a rigorous testable model, but it's going to be birthed from a thought experiment.
Blind ppl are consc. Blind & deaf ppl are consc. Are blind, deaf, and numb ppl consc? It seems like being conscious is a Spilling Into recursion. Neural nets aren't the answer. Basically, I'm satisfied w/DH's idea, even if it's not fleshed out by the machinery of tested hypotheses yet.
So, ok, technically the case isn't closed research-wise, but it's closed meaning-of-it-all-wise, for me at least.
>>So how does a specific recursive pattern of firing cause an agent to "awaken" into consciousness?
It certainly seems that's the case, at least. Before F. Crick died, he told VS Ramachandran that the answer is going to be in the claustrum.
>>7806134
>the world of substances which exists independently of the mental act or representation.
Isn't all evidence of this other world mental?
>>7806793
'Duh'
>>7807060
Then what evidence is there for a non-mental world?
>>7801319
pardon me?
>>7806583
This was a more reasonable reply than I expected from 4chan
>>7806475
a) The specific recursive brain functions that allow you to perceive the intended structure of Bach's music aren't necessarily active in all people. I've experienced this change in activation myself and know that many other people have, it's not at all fundamental to human consciousness and so it's useless to pose this argument.
b) Even self-referential functions more essential to memory and identity at a deeper level could be selectively simulated through an array of forward referential structures to achieve results that are the same. Due to the absurdity of P-zombies, there's no reason why this shouldn't result in consciousness.
>>7801303
you fell for the meme
I heard it's a good book.
>>7801303
I don't think I ever actually finished it, but I found what I did read and understand very eye-opening.
I Am A Strange Loop on the other hand was incredible.
>>7809083
Which parts weren't credible?
And yeah, GEB is a fucking slog outside the dialogues.
>>7809112
You're a punny guy, anon.
REPETITION IS NOT GENERALITY.
Read it voraciously then took a bunch of LSD
Best trip of my life. The next day I bought three more of his books.
>>7805987
Integrated info theory muhfucka
OP here. Yup, one of my college professors lent it to me. I think I said that I was interested in the convergence of art, science, & philosophy. Man, what a mental workout.
