I'm familiar with Hofstadter's 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' (which I have yet to tackle), but this isn't so much a book written by Hotstadter entirely, but a collection of writings from various people known in the world of the philosophy of mind (Daniel Dennett being the other person that helped with the arranging of the articles in this book).

I should also preface this by saying that I've read plenty of these articles in their original journals or other compilations (IE. Nagel's 'What is it to be like a bat' in Nagel's 'Mortal Questions' and Searle's 'Minds, Brains, and Computers' in too many books to count), so the articles that were new to me were of interest for me when diving into this volume.

The book has a variety of writings that were originally published in philosophy journals, but others were more in the vain of short stories on the question of AI or consciousness studies, which I quite enjoyed reading and getting a feel for. One of particular interest would be Turing's paper, Dennet's paper 'Where Am I?', and Raymond Smullyan's 'An Unfortunate Dualist'.

I would suggest for the curious reader to go through the book and pick articles to read of interest, but be noted that some articles are in response to one another, so do keep an eye on it.

However a good collection.

_futher reading

this is another book that has been on my to be read shelf for at least 20 years. I read godel escher bach in college - in fact, I took a class on it. I just gave my copy away, actually. this book wasn't really what I was expecting - it is kind of a follow on to godel escher bach - but it's not all written by hofstadter - he has a co-author but also the book is structured as little think pieces or stories mostly by other people (a couple by borges) followed by reflections by hofstadter or his co-author talking about the selection, sometimes disagreeing with aspects of it.

basically, these are rationalist nerds - undeniably very very smart guys - who want to figure out how subjective consciousness arises from the physical brain and creates a self - with an eye to creating sentient AI, basically.

I remembered, reading this, that I don't like philosophy. after a little bit of trying to follow philosophy through its exacting language and thought experiments I am ready to say oh who gives a fuck and just go outside. in the end, I'm not the kind of person who really cares all that much how the self arises from the material brain (I'm not actually entirely convinced that our souls aren't alien parasites that have taken over the human race, which would otherwise be an altogether different sort of species). I'm pretty content letting cosmic mysteries stay cosmic mysteries. I don't have a quantum physics type of brain, I can't comprehend a lot of that stuff, and in the end, that's just fine with me. I also don't understand how a record can hold music. I mean, I've read how it's done but it seems very very strange to me that someone's particular voice can be reproduced that way. so, there are a lot of mysterious artifacts and machines around me that I use without deeply understanding and my own brain can just be another of those, lol.

I'm also not at all a fan of AI. this book was published in 1981, and I wonder how disappointed hofstadter must be with what we are calling AI today. I really don't think a computer program is going to achieve sentience by hoovering up a bunch of reddit posts and telling people they should add glue to their marinara sauce to thicken it, or plagiarizing a bunch of art and then responding to prompts with racially biased people with wonky hands.

so there is a lot of very very very hypothetical stuff in this book, like, what if we could remove your brain from your body, but then rebuild all the connections your neurons have with an electronic structure in your empty skull (I mean, right there, not gonna happen) and then your brain would send your body around on missions by relaying the impulses through radiowaves or what have you to your skull implant structure - would you be located in your brain or your body? if your body was looking at your brain in the tank, would you experience the view of your brain, or the view of your body? how would you think of your location? "do thoughts occur in the *mind*, or in the *brain*?" "where is the beauty in [a piece of music]? in the sounds? among the printed notes? in the ear, mind, or brain of the beholder?"

there are a couple of hofstader's pieces from godel escher bach in here, or maybe he wrote one of them just for this book, I don't know. he uses characters like achilles and the tortoise and makes a lot of multilevel jokes and things but they're kind of corny, in the end. these are dudes who are super into the mathematical aspects of classical music. I don't know if my dad ever read this book, but I think he would have liked it. he was into this kind of thing.

a lot of the stories in here were written specifically to engage in queries about the self, how and where it arises, and perhaps with the exception of the borges stories, they are philosophical treatises first, stories second. they are very on the nose. I prefer to engage with this kind of thing in a sort of more buried way. doctor who - what is the nature of a self that moves backward and forward through time, ranges the entire universe, and lives a series of lives in different bodies? whedon's dollhouse, where people's selves are dumped out onto tapes and then other people's tapes can be fed into their minds. for sentient AI, I'm happier reading murderbot. there's plenty of fiction out there that handles these concepts without bogging down in philosophy.

but also - I just disagree with the authors. I feel some hubris in saying that, it's like when we were in college and we did a reading and then came to class, bunch of 19 year olds, and ripped freud to shreds. I think these guys are smarter than me. they definitely have much more stem-oriented brains, and apparently philosophically oriented brains. but they are total rationalists. they took issue with one of their contributors because he mentioned that he believed ESP had been clinically proven and they were like omg, so much science would have to be thrown out and turned on its head if ESP was proven. I don't know if I believe in "ESP" per se - it seems like kind of an outdated term, but I definitely believe some people have psychic powers and have seen ghosts and I read tarot cards - which seem only marginally more magical to me than playing records, really - and I just generally believe that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy, horatio. just because science can't measure or explain something is not a reason for me to disbelieve it, whereas I feel for these guys, it totally is.

and I was raised by atheists, my dad was a scientist, so I'm not unfamiliar with this viewpoint. it just doesn't account for all my experiences. also, it's funny that they put "soul" in the title, because by "soul", they seem to just mean personality, which is not at ALL my definition of soul. "'soul' is the name we give to that opaque yet characteristic style of each individual. put another way, your soul is the 'incompressible core' that determines how you are, hence who you are." this is completely at odds with how I understand soul. soul is the unchangeable undestroyable part of you that persists after your death, on another plane. it is probably a part of the godhead. it is probably inseparable from life force. it is the part of you completely stripped of all particular personality that you have accrued from your particular configuration and biography. so it's just weird to have these two smart dudes talking about soul, and using a definition practically opposite of my understanding of soul.

in other words, this just really wasn't a book for me. some of it went over my head, some of it was interesting but not THAT interesting, I'm not on board with the whole AI project - and I've met these kinds of people before. because they don't accept anything that hasn't been run through Science (and don't get me wrong, I take vaccines, I'm not a science denier, I just don't think science is the whole story, that it ever will account for everything) they are very very sure of themselves. they think because everything they believe is true according to science, they know exactly what they are talking about and anyone who believes anything not proven by science is a deluded fool. and that's a tiresome attitude to come up against, because there is a LOT of stuff science doesn't know. living in a magical world works for me. if living in a purely rational/scientific world works for you, great, but you don't need to look down your nose at me about it. I feel like I respect these guys more than they would respect me even though I don't think they have the first clue as to what a soul is.

the blurb on the front says "philosophical fun and games of a very high order", and that seems pretty accurate. if philosophical fun and games is your jam, by all means, this is a book for you. I forgot, for 20 years apparently, that it's not my jam. anyway, I'm glad to have read it and got it out of the way. there is at least one more 20+ year resident of my to be read shelf to read, a social history of going to the beach. that's probably going to be more my scene.

Hofstadter has collected a set of intriguing essays, short stories, and mini-plays, all designed to help us question our conceptions of "mind." it worked on me the first and second times I read the book. Looking forward to a third.