The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

The Mind's I - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

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Author: Douglas R Hofstadter
Daniel C Dennett/
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1981
Language: English
Pages: 501
ISBN/UPC (if available): 014006253X

Description

What is the mind?

Who am I?

Can machines think?

Anyone who confronts these questions runs headlong into perplexities. We conceived this book as an attempt to reveal those perplexities and make them vivid, This book, then, is designed to provoke, disturb and befuddle its readers, to make the obvious strange and, perhaps, to make the strange obvious-The Authors.

Here is their selection of strange thought-experiments, mind-stretching fantasies and humorous dialogues all designed to entice and tease the imagination into new and unexpected places. Like Godel, Escher, Bach, it is an extraordinary combination of science and art that will instruct and delight for years to come.

Is the soul, as Hofstadter asks, combining two puns with a spoonerism, greater than the hum of its parts? If this ancient and dark metaphysical mystery has ever troubled you, buy this superb collection, with its equally wondrous commentaries.
-Martin Gardner, author of Mathematical Circus

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

I. A SENSE OF SELF

Borges and I
Jorge Luis Borges

On Having No Head
D E Harding

Rediscovering the Mind
Harold J Morowitz

II. SOUL SEARCHING

Computing Machinery and Intelligence
A M Turning

The Turing Test: A Coffeehouse Conversation
Douglas R Hofstadter

The Princess Ineffabelle
Stanislaw Lem

The Soul of Martha, a Beast
Terrel Miedaner

The Soul of the Mark III Beast
Terrel Miedaner

Spirit
Allen Wheelis

Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes
Richard Dawkins

Prelude...Ant Fugure
Douglas R Hofstadter

The Story of a Brain
Arnold Zuboff

IV. MIND AS PROGRAM

Where Am I?
Daniel C Dennett

Where Was I?
David Hawley Sanford

Beyond Rejection
Justin Leiber

Software
Rudy Rucker

The Riddle of the Universe and Its Solution
Christopher Cherniak

V. CREATED SELVES AND FREE WILL

The Seventh Sally or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good
Stanislaw Lem

Non Serviam
Stanislaw Lem

Is God a Taoist?
Raymond M Smullyan

The Circular Ruins
Jorge Luis Borges

Minds, Brains, and Programs
John R Searle

An Unfortunate Dualist
Raymond M Smullyan

VI. THE INNER EYE

What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Thomas Nagel

An Epistemological Nightmare
Raymond M Smullyan

A Conversation with Einstein's Brain
Douglas R Hofstadter

Fiction Robert Nozick

Further Reading

Acknowledgments

Index