I Am a Strange Loop - Douglas R. Hofstadter [175]
My brain (and yours, too, dear reader) is constantly seeking to label, to categorize, to find precedents and analogues — in other words, to simplify while not letting essence slip away. It carries on this activity relentlessly, not only in response to freshly arriving sensory input but also in response to its own internal dance, and there really is not much of a difference between these two cases, for once sensory input has gotten beyond the retina or the tympani or the skin, it enters the realm of the internal, and from that point on, perception is solely an internal affair.
In short, and this should please the skeptics, there is a kind of perceiver of the symbols’ activity — but what will not please them is that this “perceiver” is itself just further symbolic activity. There is not some special “consciousness locus” where something magic happens, something other than just more of the same, some locus where the dancing symbols make contact with… well, with what? What would please the skeptics? If the “consciousness locus” turned out to be just a physical part of the brain, how would that satisfy them? They would still protest that if that’s all I claim consciousness is, then it’s just insensate physical activity, no different from and no better than the mindless careening of simms in the inanimate arena of the careenium, and has nothing to do with consciousness!
I think it may be helpful at this point to allow my various inner skeptical voices to merge into a single paper persona (hopefully not a paper tiger!), and for that persona to lock horns in an extended dialogue with another persona who essentially represents the ideas of this book. I’ll call the voice of this book “Strange Loop #641” and the voice of the skeptics “Strange Loop #642”.
It may strike some readers that I am unfairly prejudicing the case by labeling not only myself (or rather, my proxy) a “strange loop”, but also my worthy opponent, for that might be seen as suggesting that the game is over before it’s begun. But these are nothing more than labels. What counts in the dialogue is what the characters say, not what I call them. And so, if you prefer to give Strange Loops #641 and #642 the alternative names “Inner Light #7” and “Inner Light #8”, or perhaps even “Socrates” and “Plato”, that’s fine by me.
And now, without further ado, we tune in as our two strange loops (or inner lights) begin their amiable debate. Oops! I guess I’ve been rambling on a bit too long here, and we seem unfortunately to have missed a bit of the two friends’ opening repartee. Oh, well, that’s life. I expect you and I can jump in at this point without feeling too lost. Let’s give it a try…
CHAPTER 20
A Courteous Crossing of Words
Dramatis personæ:
Strange Loop #641: a believer in the ideas of I Am a Strange Loop
Strange Loop #642: a doubter of the ideas of I Am a Strange Loop
SL #642: Dreary, oh so dreary. In fact, your picture of the soul is not just dreary; it’s completely empty. Vacuous. There’s nothing spiritual there at all. It’s just physical activity and nothing more.
SL #641: What else did you expect? What else could you expect? Unless you’re a dualist, that is, and you think souls are ghostly, nonphysical things that don’t belong to the physical universe, and yet that can push pieces of it around.
SL #642: No, I don’t go for that. It’s just that there has to be something extremely special that accounts for the existence of spiritual, mental, feeling, perceiving beings in this physical world — something that explains our inner light, our awareness, our consciousness.
SL #641: I couldn’t agree with you more. An explanation of such elusive phenomena surely calls for something special. Building