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Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Quotes of Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter

Douglas R. Hofstadter _ Surfaces and Essences: Analogy
We have a very hard time "seeing" our cognitive activity because it is the medium in which we swim. The attempt to put our finger on what counts in any given situation leads us at times to making connections between situations that are enormously different on their surface and at other times to distinguishing between situations that on first glance seem nearly identical. Our constant jockeying back and forth among our categories runs the gamut from the most routine behaviors to the most creative ones.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
if one keeps climbing upward in the chain of command within the brain, one finds at the very top those over-all organizational forces and dynamic properties of the large patterns of cerebral excitation that are correlated with mental states or psychic activity…. Near the apex of this command system in the brain…. we find ideas. Man over the chimpanzee has ideas and ideals. In the brain model proposed here, the causal potency of an idea, or an ideal, becomes just as real as that of a molecule, a cell, or a nerve impulse. Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other and with other mental forces in the same brain, in neighboring brains, and, thanks to global communication, in far distant, foreign brains. And they also interact with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burst-wise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the evolutionary scene yet, including the emergence of the living cell. Who
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
Through many types of abstraction and analogy-making and inductive reasoning, and through many long and tortuous chains of citations of all sorts of authorities {which constitute an indispensable pillar supporting every adult's belief system, despite the insistence of high-school teachers who year after year teach that "arguments by authority" are spurious and are convinced that they ought to be believed because they are, after all, authority figures}, we build up an intricate, interlocked set of beliefs as to what exists "out there" - and then, once again, that set of beliefs folds back, inevitably and seamlessly, to apply to our own selves.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
What gives us word-users the right to make life-and-death decisions concerning other living creatures that have no words? Why do we find ourselves in positions of such anguish {at least for some of us}? In the final analysis, it is simply because might makes right, and we humans, thanks to the intelligence afforded us by the complexity of our brains and our embeddedness in rich languages and cultures, are indeed high and mighty, relative to the "lower" animals {and vegetables}. By virtue of our might, we are forced to establish some sort of ranking of creatures, whether we do so as a result of long and careful personal reflections or simply go along with the compelling flow of the masses. Are cows just as comfortably killable as mosquitoes? Would you feel any less troubled by swatting a fly preening on a wall than by beheading a chicken quivering on a block?
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ Gödel, Escher, Bach: An
To paraphrase Descartes again: "I think; therefore I have no access to the level where I sum.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
There are those who will immediately be drawn to the idea of pattern-seeking, and
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
what happens on the lower level is responsible for what happens on the higher level, it is nonetheless irrelevant to the higher level. The higher level can blithely ignore the processes on the lower level.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ Gödel, Escher, Bach: An
But finally I realized that to me, Godel and Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to construct the central object, and came up with this book.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ Gödel, Escher, Bach: An
I personally cannot imagine that consciousness will be fully understood without reference to Godelian loops or level-crossing feedback loops.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ Gödel, Escher, Bach: An
What does it matter if two brains are isomorphic, or quasi-isomorphic, or not isomorphic at all? The answer is that we have an intuitive sense that, although other people differ from us in important ways, they are still 'the same' as we are in some deep and important ways. It would be instructive to be able to pinpoint what this invariant core of human intelligence is, and then to be able to describe the kinds of 'embellishments' which can be added to it, making each one of us a unique embodiment of this abstract and mysterious quality called 'intelligence.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
Concepts in the brains of humans acquired the property that they could get rolled together with other concepts into larger packets, and any such larger packet could then become a new concept in its own right. In other words, concepts could nest inside each other hierarchically, and such nesting could go on to arbitrary degrees.
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Douglas R. Hofstadter _ I Am a Strange Loop
It is curious, how one often mistrusts one's own opinions if they are stated by someone else.
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