19段关于minds的选文配以19段小essay的评论；12 13 14章特别好看！最后一章正文极为智障，还好评论比较优秀…

I like anthologies. After each entry either Douglas or Daniel writes a reflection on how the article or stiry relates to what they want to say. As for the subject matter. You could say that this is an approach toward a monastic or naturalistic epistemology. It attempts do give an answer as to how consciousness can arise from the inter-complexity of our neural structure. It is provocative, but it lacks any real evidence as to a locution of beliefs and selfhood in a neural network. But on theory the idea is sound.

However, I do not hold to this belief. I think a naturalistic explanation of selfhood borders on insanity. Not because the evidence is lacking, but rather because I think anyone who tries to tell me who I am simply deserves to be shown the door and asked to leave. I might enjoy the material more if I did not find the underlying premise an offense.

But I do recommend this for anyone who wants to know what an insghtful theory of knowledge is from a naturlistic or monastic viewpoint.

Dull, dry, dated

Kitabın yorumundan önce kitabın isminin çevirisine ne kadar hayran kaldığımı söylemek istedim. Orijinal adı olan The Mind’s I yazarların I ve eye kelimelerini aynı anda çağrıştırmak için kullandıkları bir kelime oyununa sahip. Bu isim ancak bu kadar güzel çevrilebilirdi.

Kitap altı başlıktan oluşuyor.
1. Benlik Duygusu
2. Ruhu araştırmak
3. Donanımdan Yazılıma
4. Program olarak zihin
5. Yaratılmış benlikler ve özgür irade
6. İç göz

Kitap boyunca çeşitli kitaplardan ve makalelerden alınmış parçalar okuyoruz. Her bir alıntının arkasından da “Düşünceler” başlığı altında yazarlarımızın okuduğumuz metinlerle ilgili fikirlerini anlattıkları kısımlar geliyor. Bu düşünceler kısmı kitap boyunca son derece kısa tutulmuş. Hatta bazı yerlerde neredeyse kitapta izlenen düzen bozulmasın diye konulmuş gibi duruyor. Zaten alıntılanan metinler son derece etkileyiciler.
Kitap yazarların bize sunduğu bir okuma seçkisi aslında. Bilimsel metinlerden felsefi düşünce deneylerine, bilim kurgu hikayelerden spiritüel deneyimlere kadar çok değişik ve çeşitli bir seçki. Her birini okumak son derece zevkliydi. Yazarlar bu metinleri koyma sıralarına göre aslında bizim kitabı okurken oluşturduğumuz düşünce yolumuz için de bir rota oluşturmuşlar.
Yaptığımız bu okumalarda bize genel olarak ruh, beden, zihin, bilinç, ben, benlik, özfarkındalık gibi kavramların anlamlarını yeniden sorgulatmayı amaçlıyor. Bunu da farklı isimlerin ağzından yapması benim kitaba dair heyecanımı diri tuttu. Her bir metni bitirdiğimde bir sonrakine merakla başladım.

Kendisi benim bilinç felsefesiyle tanışmama vesile olan kitaptır. Bilinçle ilgili daha önce hiç aklıma gelmeyen soruları yıllarca kafama takmama sebep olmuş metinlerle ve onların eleştirileriyle doludur. Argümanlarını metaforlarla, diyaloglarla, öykülerle, masallarla, sezgi pompalarıyla, düşünce deneyleriyle somutlaştırma konusunda daha iyisiyle karşılaşmadığım iki analitik düşünürün ortak çıkardığı bir şaheser. Kitabın ismi ve arka kapak yazısı içinin spiritüel saçmalıklarla dolu olduğu izlenimini verse de yazarlara aşina olanlar öyle olmadığını bilecektir diye tahmin ediyorum. Dennett görmüş geçirmiş bir Darwinci ve mahşerin dört ateist atlısından biri, ve Hofstadter ise o ünlü efsanevi kitabın yazarı; mantık, matematik, bilinç ve bilimsel düşünüşün harikalar diyarı GEB.
Mesela kitaptaki öykülerden birinde beyni ilk önce ikiye bölünen, sonra dörde, sonra gitgide her bir sinir hücresinin ayrı kavanozlara konulduğu o adamın öyküsü anlatılır. Beni hala çok heyecanlandırır bu hikaye, çünkü olayın teknolojik imkansızlığından ziyade ilkesel olarak bir tutarsızlığı olup olmadığını hala bilmiyorum, bir açığını bulamıyorum. Dennett bu hikayedeki aynı mantıksal çıkarımı kendi yazdığı başka önemli bir kitabında, Darwin'in Tehlikeli Fikri'nde daha da derinleştirmiştir. İşin içine tüm olası kitapların bulunduğu Borges'in sonsuz kütüphanesi, Dawkins'in içinde bütün olası canlıların bulunduğu genetik uzayı vs. girer ve matematiğin soyut platoncu uzayında matematiğin ne olduğu tartışılır. Beyin gıdıklayıcı...
Ayrıca, çaldığım ilk kitaptır. Oh.

What time you read a book makes a big difference; this was my book to read when I got up an hour or so before everybody else in the house. But maybe if I had read it at some other time of day I wouldn't have such a feeling of my brain being full, that the mental sharpness that I had during my philosophy degree had, like Elvis, left the building. But maybe it's the book, not me? Whilst the mix of academic paper and sci-fi short story works (science fiction being, after all, primarily the fiction of ideas), I found too many of the items - Hofstadter's dialogues in particular - flabby and self-satisfied. Sitting here having just closed the book, the impression I take away from it is that sections that could have made their points more succinctly rambled on and on, overloading the many papers - Dawkins, Nozick, Searle, Dennett's himself - that didn't outstay their welcome. I suspect I would have given this more than three stars if I'd gotten around to reading it when I bought it in 1994 as a 24-year old cognitive science postgraduate...

This book is an anthology of thought experiments, essays, short stories and scientific articles about the mind, the self and consciousness in their full length or abstracts, with commentary at the end of each section by Daniel Dennett (one of my all time favourite contemporary philosophers) and Douglas Hofstadter. Aside from fulfilling meeting all my expectations on approaching the biggest problems of cognitive science, the structure of this book was perfect to indulge my curiosity because it was not academic at all, and that is thanks to it being a collection of works by very different authors, rather than one big argument for one view about consciousness. But better yet, despite not having much space to actually form an argument, since most of the space in the book is given to the essays and stories by other authors, Dennett still manages to outline a clear view that is his own on this subject, which slowly makes itself clear as he comments on the various pieces of work in this anthology. His view is essentially that there is no such thing as "I", and that there is not really a sense in which it "feels" like anything to be me, or that it feels anything for you to be you. His view nicely converges with the oriental philosophers who have always claimed there is no such thing as a self. Dennett knows that this is a hard pill to swallow, and he makes a great point at the end of the book saying that "Science advances haltingly, bumping against the boundaries of the unthinkable: the things declared impossible because they are currently unimaginable. It is at the speculative frontier of thought experiment and fantasy that these boundaries get adjusted." He was so right to mix in pieces of fiction with hard science articles in this anthology, because "The point of science is to help us understand what we are and how we got here, and for this we need great stories: the tale of how, once upon a time, there was a Big Band; the Darwinian epic of the evolution of life on Earth; and now the story we are just beginning to learn how to tell: the amazing adventure of the primate autobiographers who finally taught themselves how to tell the story of the amazing adventure of the primate autobiographers." This book definitely had me renew my sense of awe for many things, from how it's possible that a music on a physical record is both there "all at once" but also "bit by bit" to how it's possible that I feel like "I" am here.

Huh. I read this one too, and have completely forgotten it. And, oddly enough, I didn't think I had ever read Borges until last year, and now I discover I had read one of his stories and blanked on it. Oh well. My "I" is a white void.

Thought-provoking essays by numerous well-known authors on the nature of mind, brains, machines, intelligence, and consciousness. Articles I enjoyed include Thomas Nagel's "What's it like to be a bat?," Raymond Smullyan's "Is God a Taoist?", and John Searle's "Mind, brains, and programs." Many other outstanding authors such as Borges, Dawkins, Dennett, Lem, Turing, Hardking Morowitz, not to mention Hofstader's great articles. A little outdated here in 2012 what with the developments in embodied mind and dynamical systems cognitive science and contemporary developments in computing, robotic, and digital technologies.

Rereading The Mind’s I forty years after it was published is like opening a philosophical time capsule of the 1970s. With the exception of a paper by Alan Turing and some fiction by Borges, all the selections in this anthology date from 1972 to 1982.

There are essays and stories by scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and science fiction novelists. There’s a Buddhist with no head, a philosopher’s brain in a vat, a hippie about to have his mind downloaded into a computer, and a chimp who speaks sign language. There’s body swapping, split brains, teletransporters, artificial intelligence, and maybe even a little ESP – although physicist Douglas R. Hofstadter would not have it so.

The Mind’s I was published the same year I started college: 1981. I took the first of many philosophy courses that fall. Add to that my love of speculative fiction and it was inevitable that this book would end up in my hands. Rereading it now takes me back to that headspace, but with hindsight.

The heart of the book is Turing’s question: Can machines think? From there it goes in a variety of directions. One direction is science fiction. When I first read this book, I did not read straight through. I just read the selections that looked the most fun and that meant sci fi.

Jorge Luis Borges and Stanislaw Lem are the literary masters in this collection. The philosophical fantasies of Borges are elegant and poetic. The stories of Lem are quintessential philosophical science fiction. And for those who like their philosophy with some pulp, these classic works of literature are presented in the company of fiction by Terrel Miedaner, Justin Lieber, and Rudy Rucker. I like the juxtaposition of art and pulp: the dreaming magician of Borges’ poetic tale and the guy in a campy novel who wakes up to find his new body has boobs and a tail.

I got levels, you see. My mind thinks and laughs and wonders and sometimes rolls its I’s.

Another direction this collection takes is philosophy and there are important papers by Turing, Searle and Nagel. This is where the book gets down to some serious philosophy of mind. I spent the 80s studying philosophy and these three texts were essential reading. But Hofstadter does not agree with either Searle or Nagel, and since The Mind’s I is his book, he gets the last word.

At the time of publication, William Barrett wrote a book review criticizing Hofstadter for (among other things) using his Reflections to “upstage” his contributors.* Some of Barrett’s criticisms are more justified than others and this is the one that is the most justified.

Hofstadter does try to upstage his contributors. He tries. But he does not succeed. The contributors he disagrees with stand on their own. Hofstadter’s Reflections are just that: Hofstadter’s Reflections. Not mine. Hofstadter just engages me in dialogue and I’m always game for a lively dialogue.

Did Hofstadter misunderstand Nagel as Barrett said he did? Maybe. I think he understood and was just being facetious. Either way, I’m too delighted by the essays Hofstadter includes in the book to be more than a little disappointed with his Reflections on them. I do think he only includes Morowitz, Harding, and Wheelis so that the book will not seem one-sided. But he includes them and that’s what’s important. He disagrees with them. He tries to upstage them. Yet they speak for themselves.

When I first read this book, my mind was so blown by the various metaphysical puzzles that I never bothered to think about the book as a whole. And even if I had, it is unlikely that I would have given it a second thought. I would have agreed with so much of Hofstadter’s ideology that it was unlikely I would even notice the bias. This was the air I was accustomed to breathe.

Rereading it now is quite different. I get split into three me’s. One me reads Hofstadter’s Reflections and disagrees with much of his ideology. Another me reads the various selections and enjoys thinking about all the tantalizing ideas. And a third me is so caught up in nostalgia that she’s just happy to be here.

The nostalgia takes me back to those exciting years in philosophy of mind.

In his review, Barrett called The Mind’s I confusing in its effect, but it’s only confusing in effect if one reads it looking for answers. This is not a book of answers. This is a book of questions ~ a mind-expanding assortment of paradoxes, riddles, dialogues, games, and thought experiments.

The dialogues are one of the strengths of the book. By means of dialogues by himself and Smullyan, his (and co-editor Dennett’s) Reflections, and Sanford’s response to Dennett, Hofstadter encourages the reader to engage the editors in dialogue. His own ‘Coffeehouse Conversation’ is an instructive example of what such a dialogue might look like.

The thought experiments are another of the book’s strengths. The line between thought experiment and short story is blurred by the contributions of Arnold Zuboff, Christopher Cherniak, and Robert Nozick. Cherniak’s 1978 story “The Riddle of the Universe and its Solution” is one of the highlights of the book – equal to the best philosophical science fiction I’ve read.

For me, the highlights are the works which I probably would not have encountered on my own. Among these are the essays of Morowitz and Wheelis. Morowitz may only be here to serve as a contrast to Dawkins, but I am am free to form my own opinion. Wheelis blends science and spirituality in a way that seems to make Hofstadter uncomfortable. Nevertheless it was Hofstadter who turned me on to Wheelis’ poetic essay “Spirit.”

Like the mind itself, Hofstadter’s book about the mind is more than the sum of its parts.

NOTE

*William Barrett, “The Computer and the Ego” (The New York Times, 12/13/81).

This is the cognitive science.

the book contains science thoughts and SF anthology of course Borges's shot stories
and short criticisms.
the innovative anthology.

it is SF anthology and thought experiment about brain and consciousness.

There are not so many books that I’ve read and still remember so much of the contents after over two decades. This book is fascinating.