One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind#160;examines#160;where the self comes#160;from#160;ndash;#160;and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. ldquo;I Am a Strange Loop#8239;is a work of rigorous thinking, but#160;itrsquo;s#160;also an extraordinary tribute to the memory of romantic love:#8239;The Year of Magical Thinking#8239;for mathematicians.rdquo;#160;#8213;Time Deep down, your brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles. On a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call ldquo;symbols.rdquo;#160;The most central and complex symbol is the one you call ldquo;I.rdquo;#160;An ldquo;Irdquo; is a strange loop where the brainrsquo;s symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down so that symbols seem to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. To each human being, this ldquo;Irdquo; is the realest thing in the world. But how can such a mysterious abstraction be real? Is our ldquo;Irdquo; merely a convenient fiction?#160;Does#160;ldquo;Irdquo; exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics? These are among the mysteries tackled in#160;I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadterrsquo;s first book-length journey into philosophy since his Pulitzer Prize-winning#160;Gouml;del, Escher, Bach. It is a tale crisply told, rife with anecdotes, analogies, and metaphors ndash;#160;cutting-edge#160;philosophy that any strange loop can understand.
