{"id":354,"date":"2007-07-30T22:22:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-30T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2007\/07\/30\/354\/"},"modified":"2016-06-05T11:43:48","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T16:43:48","slug":"354","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"Reading and Listening, Consciously"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my continued quest for enlightenment and wisdom regarding the nature of human consciousness, I recently completed Douglas Hofstadter\u2019s first book, \u201cGodel, Escher, Bach<\/em>\u201d and just dug into his latest, \u201cI Am A Strange Loop<\/em>\u201d. Hofstadter seems to have a small but determined following for his \u201cstrange loop\u201d concept; just check out his reader reviews on the Amazon web site. Every now and then you see a negative review mixed in amidst the encomiums, and the fans retaliate by giving the skeptical reviewer a \u201cvery unhelpful\u201d rating. <\/p>\n

Personally, I think that the whole \u201cstrange loop\u201d concept is overblown. It sounds good at first, all mysterious and powerful and deep. Hofstadter cranks out chapters and chapters of digressions on mathematical wonders and logical twists before he finally gets around to saying what a \u201cstrange loop\u201d really is. And that turns out to be not very much. Most of his concrete examples of strange loops involve fantasies or mind tricks (e.g., the Escher paintings that he loves so much). The only real-world example that I remember from GEB regards something that almost (but didn\u2019t) happen during the Watergate political crisis in the mid-1970s. President Nixon was about to reinterpret the Constitutional balance between the courts and the executive branch of government, but in the end he backed down. So the \u201cstrange loop\u201d between the Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution regarding the extent of the President\u2019s powers, and the President interpreting the Constitution regarding the extent of the Supreme Court\u2019s powers was avoided. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this was a very good example of what a real-live strange loop would be like. Why not? Because had Nixon carried out his threat, the situation would not have lasted very long. It would have self-destructed amidst riots and gunfire. Once a strange loop leaves the mind of the mathematician and reaches the world of high-stakes politics, the strangeness evaporates into a battle of raw power. The ones who happen to bleed the least win. Simple and familiar as that. Nothing strange about it at all.<\/p>\n

Well, I still have a way to go in \u201cI Am A Strange Loop\u201d. But thus far, Hofstadter doesn\u2019t seem to be doing any better grounding his strange loops in reality. As with GEB, he is trying to convince the reader that strange loops are the cause of all reality, given that they define the true nature of human consciousness. (And as such, he tries to prove that human consciousness, and thus all reality — from an idealist point of view, anyway — is just an illusion . . . but if so, then who is left to have this illusion? Hofstadter loves paradoxes, but he doesn\u2019t seem to deal with that one.) <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Hofstadter doesn’t do much better than expose paradoxes in number theory and other such insubstantial entities. As philosopher John Searle says, consciousness somehow happens in the real, physical world, even though we don\u2019t yet understand just how. Hofstadter is having a lot of trouble getting his strange loops off the blackboard. Hofstadter has another 200 pages or so to convince me otherwise, but after reading over 800 pages of his ramblings, I don\u2019t see much solid, convincing evidence of any other kinds of strange loops happening out there in the real world that Searle refers to.<\/p>\n

On the listening end, I just finished listening to a 12 part CD lecture on Consciousness by psychologist and philosopher Daniel N. Robinson. Most of the lectures covered familiar ground for me, since I\u2019ve read over 10 books about consciousness. At the outset of his lectures, he did dwell a bit longer than usual on relating modern thought about consciousness with that of the ancient Greeks. But he soon settled down to qualia and zombies and sleepwalking and anesthesia and dream states and neuron firings and other typical points of discussion in the modern consciousness debate. So as I got to the eleventh lecture, Professor Robinson\u2019s lecture seemed relatively unremarkable, although rather pleasant to listen to given his very civilized and authoritative style. <\/p>\n

But then came lecture 12, and Professor Robinson introduced something that no one else of any intellectual and academic credibility has yet brought into the consciousness discussion. And that is the topic of morals and human values! He devoted almost all of that final half hour to questions raised by coma and vegetative state cases like Karen Ann Quinlan and Terry Schiavo (discussing both), and he doesn\u2019t leave you with a whole lot of comfort about how such cases are handled. Professor Robinson has the temerity to discuss the value of life and how it relates to our understanding of ourselves \u2013 an understanding which occurs through consciousness. The many consciousness gurus out there today (including Chalmers, Dennett, Ramachandran, Blackmore, Block, Searle, Edelman, Damasio, McGinn, Humphrey, Churchland, Baars, and yes, Douglas Hofstadter) shy away from anything so \u201ctouchy-feely\u201d, so unscientific \u2013 and so troublesome for their reductionist \u201cI can explain it all if you buy my book\u201d sales pitches. But I don\u2019t think that they can shrug off an intellectual heavyweight like Robinson very easily. <\/p>\n

So finally, someone with academic credibility has the guts to say that consciousness is about what it means to be human. We\u2019re not just talking about a liver function here or a protein cycle. When we discuss consciousness, we\u2019re talking about whether humanity really is anything more than an especially viral and adaptive animal or machine system. (Or at least whether we possibly COULD be somehow, if we keep trying). Douglas Hofstadter says that he hopes that we will all join him in seeing ourselves as \u201cstrange loops\u201d. I\u2019m not on his intellectual level, but I know that he\u2019s wrong. I had to listen to Robinson\u2019s final lecture a few times to realize just what he was saying and doing with it. It was a ray of sunshine in the gloom, a gasp of fresh air in the smoke. The best of what Athens and Jerusalem had endowed to humankind were finally being recovered from the trash-heap of modern rationalist hubris. The future may still hold a place for human dignity and respect and values, and not be overwhelmed by the useful but ultimately cold tools of skepticism and economic utility. <\/p>\n

Later this year, Robinson will add to the huge collection of modern books about consciousness with a release entitled \u201cConsciousness and Mental Life\u201d. I\u2019m obviously looking forward to it; perhaps this will finally be the edifying book on consciousness that I\u2019ve been waiting for; a book that appeals to your heart as well as your mind, a book that lets you ponder what it means to be . . . . . well, ultimately to be a being that is in a state of being. <\/p>\n

(I guess that I\u2019ll still need to give Hofstadter credit for presenting and savoring paradoxes like that).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my continued quest for enlightenment and wisdom regarding the nature of human consciousness, I recently completed Douglas Hofstadter\u2019s first book, \u201cGodel, Escher, Bach\u201d and just dug into his latest, \u201cI Am A Strange Loop\u201d. Hofstadter seems to have a small but determined following for his \u201cstrange loop\u201d concept; just check out his reader reviews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6202,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/6202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}