This is necessary reading for those with even a slight interest in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, or anybody that somehow still blindly subscribes to dualism. For that last one, it's probably because you haven't read this collection so you can either get on that or stay ignorant. That's not to say that if you're a dualist, you're ignorant. That's only to say if you can't form an argument for dualism without resorting to unverifiable metaphysical claims (read: religion, spirituality, soul), then yes, you are ignorant. But so am I about many, many things and I hope you'll tell me what they are. Moving on.
Some of the included works go in a bit too deep for a newcomer to some concepts but Hofstadter and Dennett do a 9/10 job of explaining and dissecting the arguments/analogies/dialogues presented in each work immediately afterward in terms that most people should be able to understand, even without any formal foundation in the above fields of study. I got lost a couple times, reread it slowly, and grasped it so you can too.
No excuses. Go find it on Amazon already.

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.

"The Mind's I" takes as its starting point the daring, perhaps reckless idea that science is in fact part of the Humanities. It argues that while the scientific method is rigorous and deals with the quantifiable, the scientific mind that gets us to the lab is as whimsical and imaginative as that of the poet or the actor up on the stage.

This obviously makes this work more accessible to the layperson, but just as easily could alienate those who like to view science as hard and discreet, not to be tampered with in an interdisciplinary manner. Or maybe not.

Regardless, both eminent scientists and brilliant fictioneers bring their minds to bear on the problem of mind here, and potential solutions to the schisms between mind and brain and brain and body. Where does the brain begin and mind end? How can we achieve some objective understanding of ourselves when we can't even see our own head? Yes, there is an essay in here about the problem of not being able to see your own head, and what that might mean ontologically for you, your head, and the universe.

Already well-covered concepts like Schrödinger's Cat are dealt with in here, as well as the "Chinese Room" problem and the concept of the Turing Test. But the presentations of the arguments are so clear and perfect, and the uses to which the arguments are put are so novel, that I didn't roll my eyes, but rather felt like an undergrad encountering this stuff for the first time.

Ultimately the essays first open then blow the mind, introducing the reader to the joys and frustration of byzantine logic problems and unresolvable paradoxes. Polish science fiction pioneer Stanislaw Lem has multiple contributions here (thank God), as does Jorge Louis Borges (thank God, again). From the hard sciences we have the seminal contribution from the aforementioned Turing, whose star continues to shine brightly as we move deeper into the age of AI. This is supplemented by another groundbreaking text by neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, whose idea of "memes" and "selfish genes," is still very much with us.

Alas, some of the chapters drag, especially those set up as disquisitions between two or three fictional characters. Call me a solipsist, but I got more out of the chapters in which the subjects examined their own minds, rather than bantering with two or three other characters in conversations that all seemed to eventually dissolve into an intellectual onanism that reminded me more of Lewis Carroll's mad creations than anything else.

That's a minor, and opiniated quibble from yours truly, though. Others are likely to find these digressionary passages playful and illuminating, perhaps even the richest of the selections on offer here. Recommended.

Solid collection of primary cognitive science readings. Hofstadter and Dennett give a good overview of the basic issues involved with consciousness studies, with an emphasis on philosophy of the mind. Both men are committed reductionists, so most of the readings are from that camp-- but they throw in Searle's Chinese Room essay and a couple of other readings to add some breadth. Some of the best readings aren't non-fiction essays, but rather the short stories by Borges and Stanislaus Lem. Those, as well as a couple of Hofstadter's dialogues, add a literary flair to the book and make it a fast, interesting read.

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?

Really insightful at times, quite dull at others. This is the first book to make me want an MC Escher tattoo, so the rating reflects that. I wish it was less materialistic, but it brings up many interesting questions.

Ogni capitolo è un brano preso dalla letturatura, dalla scienza, ecc e commentato dagli autori. Interessante.

Every morning I looked forward to reading another essay and reflection.

Si pu�� vedere questo libro in due modi: 1) come una collezione di racconti o divertissement fantascientifici orientati prevalentemente al "mindfuck" del lettore; 2) come un tortuoso trattatello sul problema della relazione tra mente e cervello, volto a tirare acqua al mulino del riduzionismo fisicalista dei due autori, noti per le loro posizioni fortemente anti-dualiste.
Considerato dal primo punto di vista, "The mind's I" �� un testo eccellente, che raccoglie scritti brillanti e ricchi di spunti suggestivi. Oltre ad ospitare ben noti racconti-capolavoro di Borges, Lem, Rucker, il volume offre l'occasione per leggere "in originale" il celebre argomento della "Stanza cinese" di Searle o "What is it like to be a bat", di Nagel. Un po' meno classe mostrano le frequenti auto-citazioni dell'Hofstadter di "G��del, Escher, Bach" o dello stesso Dennett, ma non si pu�� dire che siano loro a compromettere la godibilit�� dell'insieme.
Visto come saggio di carattere filosofico, il libro �� invece piuttosto presuntuoso e truffaldino. La consueta abitudine dei due autori - quella di "guardare al dito" per sostenere la non-esistenza della Luna - �� qui portata all'estremo con la scusa del limitarsi a fornire qualche commento non organico ai testi presentati. La "soluzione" al problema mente-cervello che emerge dal testo nel suo complesso �� profondamente lacunosa e solo eufemisticamente definibile come "gioco di specchi". Si tratta pi�� che altro di un gioco di prestigio alimentato da una retorica di seconda categoria, dalla sistematica elusione delle domande-chiave, e da un dogmatismo che - francamente - cozza piuttosto visibilmente con la caleidoscopicit�� delle visioni proposte nei brani che compongono l'antologia.

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.tMind 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.tWe 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.tWe 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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L'io della mente: Fantasie e riflessioni sul sé e sull'anima è un libro a cura di Daniel C. Dennett, Douglas R. Hofstadter e Giuseppe Trautteur. Il libro esplora i concetti di sé e anima attraverso l'esplorazione di una varietà di tematiche, come la mente, le teorie della coscienza, l'intelligenza artificiale, l'identità, l'immortalità, la memoria e altro ancora. Il libro è arricchito dalle opinioni di molti pensatori, tra cui filosofi, scienziati e altri intellettuali. L'io della mente offre una panoramica di idee su come interpretare la natura del sé e dell'anima. Si tratta di una lettura stimolante e profonda, che sfida i lettori a pensare più in profondità sulla loro essenza di vita.

Maybe not fair to compare to GEB as it's a compendium rather than a well developed single theme, but also not as monumental. Very relevant 45 years later concerning AI. Found absence of Heidegger notable in ontology discussions. I love the dialogues.