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!

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.

A collection of academic essays and fictional stories dealing with the philosophy of mind and the mind-body problem.

A personal favorite is, "Where Am I?", a short, fictional story by Daniel Dennett. In this story, Dennett, or rather, Dennett's body, is sent several miles beneath the surface of the Earth to diffuse a bomb. His brain is kept safely in a tank on the surface and affixed with antenna to communicate seamlessly with his body while separated. Unfortunately for Dennett, something goes terribly wrong which causes his brain and body to lose connection. While he awaits a reconnection, his brain sits blindly in a tank and wonders who and where and what constitutes "Dennett".

Other great stories and essays by Borges, Lem, Searle, Nagel, Hofstader, Turing, and more make this collection a must-read for anyone curious about mind-body philosophy.

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.

Good read as a collection of stories and thought experiments to make one question the nature of self.

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.

Pay particular attention to the preface where Hofstadter writes "Our purpose is not so much to answer the big questions directly as to jolt everyone". This book mostly suggests interesting ideas without expounding on them too deeply, and occasionally stumbles into clarity. I particularly enjoyed "Ant Fugue" by Hofstadter himself, particularly hated "Minds, Brains, and Programs" by Searle, and mildly liked the stimulating nature of all the other selections. This is a book to look at the study of consciousness as a general whole; more specifically, the problems any study of consciousness runs into.

A colourful collection of writings around self and self-consciousness, combining fiction to philosophy and science to imaginary mind games. This was quite a unique non-fiction / fiction combination exploring a lot of intriquing ideas. Twisted my brains into a knot.

Hofstadter delivers a vastly enjoyable account accessible to any intelligent non-specialist, but on this occasion requiring far less persistence than Gödel, Escher, Bach. The ground he covers encompasses some of the most traditionally intractable problems in philosophy, yet his accounts of the various thought experiments and the issues they do and do not illuminate never appear impenetrable. The book is organised into a collection of vignettes that can easily be bitten off and chewed over independently. You will, it must be said, probably not come away from a reading with a clear answer as to the nature of the self, the seat and origin of consciousness or whether the Matrix has us. This is no fault of the author's, as some of the questions have never been answered and some of them are intrinsically irresolvable. You'll have a good understanding, though - assuming you do not start with it - of just why they are or are not irresolvable and where philosophy currently stands on them.

A masterpiece of erudition and clarity.

took me forever to finish but #worthit Hofstadter you silly guy

A really thought-provoking collection of essays and short stories about sentience. Each essay or story is followed by a short discussion by Hofstadter and/or Dennett. I enjoyed most of them, and even the ones I didn't particularly enjoy still added fresh perspective that I appreciated. Some great mind-benders in here.

The two stories by Stanislaw Lem, "The Seventh Sally" and "Non Serviam," are superb; I'd never read Lem before but I'm certainly going to be putting him on my reading lists. "The Seventh Sally" was an inspiration for SimCity. Harold Morowitz's "Rediscovering the Mind" is a great comparison of the role of an "observer" in quantum physics with the increasing reductionism in biology that leaves no place for consciousness. Jorge Luis Borges and Richard Dawkins are two of my favorite authors and this book includes two stories by Borges and a selection from Dawkins's excellent The Selfish Gene. John Searle's famous "Minds, Brains, and Programs" describes his famous "Chinese room" thought experiment and offers a lot to think and argue about. The introduction, written by Dennett, is also very good.

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