I Am a Strange Loop - Douglas R. Hofstadter [230]
Page 165 not only although…but worse, because… For another treatment of the perverse theme of “although” turning into “because”, see Chapter 13 of [Hofstadter 1985].
Page 166 the same Gödelian trap would succeed in catching it… For an amusing interpretation of the infinite repeatability of Gödel’s construction as demonstrating the impossibility of artificial intelligence, see the chapter by J. R. Lucas in [Anderson], which is carefully analyzed (and hopefully refuted) in [DeLong], [Webb], and [Hofstadter 1979].
Page 167 called “the Hilbert Program”… See [DeLong], [Wolf ], [Kneebone], and [Wilder].
Page 170 In that most delightful though most unlikely of scenarios… [DeLong], [Goodstein], and [Chaitin] discuss non-Gödelian formulas that are undecidable for Gödelian reasons.
Page 172 No reliable prim/saucy distinguisher can exist… See [DeLong], [Boolos and Jeffrey] , [Jeffrey], [Goodstein], [Hennie], [Wolf ], and [Hofstadter 1979] for discussions of many limitative results such as this one (which is Church’s theorem).
Page 172 It was logician Alfred Tarski who put one of the last nails… See [Smullyan 1992] and [Hofstadter 1979] for discussions of Tarski’s deep result. In the latter, there is a novel approach to the classical liar paradox (“This sentence is not true”) using Tarski’s ideas, with the substrate taken to be the human brain instead of an axiomatic system.
Page 172 what appears to be a kind of upside-down causality… See [Andersen] for a detailed technical discussion of downward causality. Less technical discussions are found in [Pattee] and [Simon]. See also Chapters 11 and 20 in [Hofstadter and Dennett], and especially the Reflections. [Laughlin] gives fascinating arguments for the thesis that in physics, the macroscopic arena is more fundamental or “deeper” than the microscopic.
Page 174 leaving just a high-level picture of information-manipulating processes… See [Monod], [Berg and Singer], [Judson], and Chapter 27 of [Hofstadter 1985].
Page 177 symbols in our respective brains… See [Hofstadter 1979], especially the dialogue “Prelude… Ant Fugue” and Chapters 11 and 12, for a careful discussion of this notion.
Page 178 the forbidding and inaccessible level of quarks and gluons… See [Weinberg 1992] and [Pais 1986] for attempts at explanations of these incredibly abstruse notions.
Page 178 the only slightly more accessible level of genes… See [Monod], [Berg and Singer], [Judson], and Chapter 27 (“The Genetic Code: Arbitrary?”) in [Hofstadter 1985].
Page 179 we…best understand our own actions as… See [Dennett 1987] and [Dennett 1998].
Page 181 embellished by a fantastic folio of alternative versions… [Steiner 1975] has a rich and provocative discussion of “alternity”, and the dialogue “Contrafactus” in [Hofstadter 1979] features an amusing scenario involving “subjunctive instant replays”. See also [Kahneman and Miller] and Chapter 12 of [Hofstadter 1985] for further musings on the incessantly flickering presence of counterfactuals in the subconscious human mind. [Hofstadter and FARG] describes a family of computational models of human thought processes in which making constant forays into alternity is a key architectural feature.
Page 182 housing a loop of self-representation… See [Morden], [Kent], and [Metzinger].
Page 186 as the years pass, the “I” converges and stabilizes itself… See [Dennett 1992].
Page 188 we cannot help attributing reality to our “I” and to those of other people… See [Kent], [Dennett 1992], [Brinck], [Metzinger], [Perry], and [Hofstadter and Dennett].
Page 189 I was most impressed when I read about “Stanley”, a robot vehicle… See [Davis 2006].
Page 193 just a big spongy bulb of inanimate molecules… I suppose almost any book on the brain will convince one of this, but [Penfield and Roberts] did it to me as a teen-ager.
Page 194 pioneering roboticist and provocative writer Hans Moravec… For some of Moravec’s more provocative speculations about the near-term future of humanity, see [Moravec].
Page 194 from the organic chemistry of