Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > I Am a Strange Loop

"I Am a Strange Loop" is an intellectual journey into the maze of consciousness, self-reference, and the self. Somewhat laboriously, it becomes a book on the limitations of formal systems. Hofstadter puts forth his "strange loop" concept to explain the recursive, self-referential nature of the human mind and identity. The book addresses many serious issues through everyday examples and personal stories, but they often fail due to naïvete and over-simplification. To this reviewer, its most significant utility is in making one think. The rest of the review is partly a summary of my takeaway from the book, along with comments on many parallel, independent thoughts resulting from it.

The author argues that a persistent, unitary "I" is an illusion. It is a product of a complex feedback loop of lower-level systems. In most other books of the type, the more common explanation will be along the lines of emergent phenomena. The novelty is not in the strange loop conclusions but in the Godel methods used to make some points. The author could have gone farther than he has.

An analytical philosopher would have used Godel's incompleteness theorem differently. Hofstadter's recursions, limitations, and paradoxes of thoughts are products of the languages we use. A language is a formal system subject to the same limitations as mathematical systems. Like a musical symphony, a lot that emerges heavily depends on the symbolic system used. This is well known in sciences - for example, without the languages of calculus, differential geometry, and matrix multiplications were needed for the advent of Newtonian laws, general relativity, and uncertainty principles. The same applies to terms like "I," consciousness, or Nirvana.

For most readers, "Nirvana" would appear curious in this essay. In Western languages, terms like 'consciousness' and 'free will' shape the contours of philosophical pursuits, steering them towards particular existential and ethical questions that are nowhere near as universal as they appear in their books. Conversely, the Indian languages espouse concepts like 'Jeevanatma,' leading to ideas such as 'Moksha' and 'Nirvana.' The point is that what dominates many philosophical or spiritual quests is often a function of the language used.

Godel's incompleteness theorem shows how not only many questions will remain unanswered no matter how elaborate a symbolic system is but also the inevitability of paradoxes. These paradoxes take one form in the author's recursive strange loops, although these are not the only manifestations. In conclusion, humanity has no hope of ever knowing all the answers!

The author shows how these self-referential systems, while often a philosophical quagmire, are also often vital, practical blessings. He confines himself to defend the myth of "I primarily", but many could use similar arguments to defend many other unprovable constructs. Reductive materialist views are needlessly nihilistic when billions of neurons and synapses cause multiple real and tangible macroscopic phenomena that require their own collective nouns and pronouns for not just practical use cases but also intellectual pursuits.

The book makes multiple side journeys on the topic of a hierarchy of 'souls.' The term describes the layers of complexity in cognition and consciousness across species. While unsettling when used in human contexts, this concept is useful while thinking about animal rights, and it finds an unlikely cousin in the ancient Jain doctrine of Indriyas. Jain sutras try to prioritize living beings based on their sensory faculties. Both frameworks serve as ethical guides: Hofstadter's to justify vegetarianism (he uses it for more, which is extremely contentious), and Jainism's to determine in many other walks of life.

Overall, more than the 'strange loops,' the book's discussions on Godel's framework have stronger usefulness for many moral, ethical, and existential inquiries.