{"id":11898,"date":"2010-06-05T13:54:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T11:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mono-1en-2629"},"modified":"2010-06-05T13:54:49","modified_gmt":"2010-06-05T11:54:49","slug":"what-soul-i-am-a-strange-loop-by-douglas-hofstadter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/2010\/06\/05\/what-soul-i-am-a-strange-loop-by-douglas-hofstadter\/","title":{"rendered":"What, Soul? “I Am A Strange Loop” by Douglas Hofstadter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tToday, more than two thousand years after Heraclitus wrote those
\n\twords, science has shrunk the boundaries of the soul considerably. A
\n\tsoul that can transcend space and time, survive death, and even possess
\n\tothers, is considered intellectually pass\u00e9<\/em>. In its place we
\n\thave the brain \u2013 \u201ca teetering bulb of dread and dream\u201d as the poet
\n\tRussell Edson described the grey matter which makes us who we are \u2013
\n\twhich is the indispensible substrate of our personal identity and
\n\tconsciousness. As the brain goes, so goes the mind, they say.<\/p>\n

\tNot
\n\tso fast, protests Pulitzer Prize-winning cognitive scientist Douglas
\n\tHofstadter in I Am a Strange Loop<\/em> \u2013 the thoughtful companion to
\n\tG\u00f6del, Escher, Bach<\/em>, his seminal contribution to consciousness
\n\tstudies and the field of Artificial Intelligence. Strange Loop<\/em>
\n\tsays that each of us is a point of view, and one\u2019s perspective \u2013 indeed
\n\tour most intimate subjectivity \u2013 can exist in other substrates, outside
\n\tof the brain. No, Hofstadter hasn\u2019t gone mystical, religious, or
\n\tsuperstitious; but he has pushed the boundaries of science by thinking
\n\tpoetically. This leads him to some very fruitful ways of looking at
\n\tconsciousness.<\/p>\n

\tDoes the score of a Bach fugue contain a trace of
\n\tthe composer\u2019s soul or essence? Certainly there is a world of difference
\n\tbetween the Old Master himself and a folio of his sheet music lying
\n\twaiting to be played. Nevertheless, that objective musical notation does
\n\trepresent a pattern of symbolic activity that once danced through
\n\tBach\u2019s brain. And when we listen to a particularly sublime passage,
\n\tHofstadter speculates, are we not in some sense sharing in Bach\u2019s
\n\tsubjectivity \u2013 that is, in his experience?<\/p>\n

\tPoetically speaking,
\n\tBach, Mozart, Shakespeare, Plato, Socrates and our loved ones can live
\n\ton through us insofar as we can see the world through their eyes.
\n\tImmortality by proxy may not be what most of us have in mind when we
\n\tthink about life after death, but it seems to me Hofstadter is on to
\n\tsomething very profound.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, more than two thousand years after Heraclitus wrote those words, science has shrunk the boundaries of the soul considerably. A soul that can transcend space and time, survive death, and even possess others, is considered intellectually pass\u00e9. In its place we have the brain \u2013 \u201ca teetering bulb of dread and dream\u201d as the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koromo_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-blog","koromo-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/11898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monochrom.at\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}