I don’t have the foggiest idea why I wrongly remembered the poignant phrase that Charlie Brown utters here, but in any case the slight variant “horsies and doggies” long ago became a fixture in my own speech, and so, for better or for worse, that’s the standard phrase I always use to describe my teaching style, my speaking style, and my writing style.
In part because of the success of Gödel, Escher, Bach, I have had the good fortune of being given a great deal of freedom by the two universities on whose faculties I have served — Indiana University (for roughly twenty-five years) and the University of Michigan (for four years, in the 1980’s). Their wonderful generosity has given me the luxury of being able to explore my variegated interests without being under the infamous publish-or-perish pressures, or perhaps even worse, the relentless pressures of grant-chasing.
I have not followed the standard academic route, which involves publishing paper after paper in professional journals. To be sure, I have published some “real” papers, but mostly I have concentrated on expressing myself through books, and these books have always been written with an eye to maximal clarity.
Clarity, simplicity, and concreteness have coalesced into a kind of religion for me — a set of never-forgotten guiding principles. Fortunately, a large number of thoughtful people appreciate analogies, metaphors, and examples, as well as a relative lack of jargon, and last but not least, accounts from a first-person stance. In any case, it is for people who appreciate that way of writing that this book, like all my others, has been written. I believe that this group includes not only outsiders and amateurs, but also many professional philosophers of mind.
If I tell many first-person stories in this book, it is not because I am obsessed with my own life or delude myself about its importance, but simply because it is the life I know best, and it provides all sorts of examples that I suspect are typical of most people’s lives. I believe most people understand abstract ideas most clearly if they hear them through stories, and so I try to convey difficult and abstract ideas through the medium of my own life. I wish that more thinkers wrote in a first-person fashion.
Although I hope to reach philosophers with this book’s ideas, I don’t think that I write very much like a philosopher. It seems to me that many philosophers believe that, like mathematicians, they can actually prove the points they believe in, and to that end, they often try to use highly rigorous and technical language, and sometimes they attempt to anticipate and to counter all possible counter-arguments. I admire such self-confidence, but I am a bit less optimistic and a bit more fatalistic. I don’t think one can truly prove anything in philosophy; I think one can merely try to convince, and probably one will wind up convincing only those people who started out fairly close to the position one is advocating. As a result of this mild brand of fatalism, my strategy for conveying my points is based more on metaphor and analogy than on attempts at rigor. Indeed, this book is a gigantic salad bowl full of metaphors and analogies. Some will savor my metaphor salad, while others will find it too… well, too metaphorical. But I particularly hope that you, dear eater, will find it seasoned to your taste.
A Few Last Random Observations
I take analogies very seriously, so much so that I went to a great deal of trouble to index a large number of the analogies in my “salad”. There are thus two main headings in the index for my lists of examples. One is “analogies, serious examples of”; the other is “throwaway analogies, random examples of”. I made this droll distinction because whereas many of my analogies play key roles in conveying ideas, some are there just to add spice. There’s another point to be made, though: in the final analysis, virtually every thought in this book (or in any book) is an analogy, as it involves recognizing something as being a variety of something else. Thus every time I write “similarly” or “by contrast”, there is an implicit analogy, and every time I pick a word or phrase (e.g., “salad”, “storehouse”, “bottom line”), I am making an analogy to something in my life’s storehouse of experiences. The bottom line is, every thought herein could be listed under “analogies”. However, I refrained from making my index that detailed.
I initially thought this book was just going to be a distilled retelling of the central message of GEB, employing little or no formal notation and not indulging in Pushkinian digressions into such variegated topics as Zen Buddhism, molecular biology, recursion, artificial intelligence, and so forth. In other words, I thought I had already fully stated in GEB and my other books what I intended to (re)state here, but to my surprise, as I started to write, I saw new ideas sprouting everywhere under foot. That was a relief, and made me feel that my new book was more than just a rehash of an earlier book (or books).
Among the keys to GEB’s success was its alternation between chapters and dialogues, but I didn’t intend, thirty years later, to copycat myself with another such alternation. I was in a different frame of mind, and I wanted this book to reflect that. But as I was approaching the end, I wanted to try to compare my ideas with well-known ideas in the philosophy of mind, and so I started saying things like, “Skeptics might reply as follows…” After I had written such phrases a few times, I realized I had inadvertently fallen into writing a dialogue between myself and a hypothetical skeptical reader, so I invented a pair of oddly-named characters and let them have at each other for what turned out to be one of the longest chapters in the book. It’s not intended to be uproariously funny, although I hope my readers will occasionally smile here and there as they read it. In any case, fans of the dialogue form, take heart — there are two dialogues in this book.
I am a lifelong lover of form–content interplay, and this book is no exception. As with several of my previous books, I have had the chance to typeset it down to the finest level of detail, and my quest for visual elegance on each page has had countless repercussions on how I phrase my ideas. To some this may sound like the tail wagging the dog, but I think that attention to form improves anyone’s writing. I hope that reading this book not only is stimulating intellectually but also is a pleasant visual experience.
A Useful Youthfulness
GEB was written by someone pretty young (I was twenty-seven when I started working on it and twenty-eight when I completed the first draft — all written out in pen on lined paper), and although at that tender age I had already experienced my fair or unfair share of suffering, sadness, and moral soul-searching, one doesn’t find too much allusion to those aspects of life in the book. In this book, though, written by someone who has known considerably more suffering, sadness, and soul-searching, those hard aspects of life are much more frequently touched on. I think that’s one of the things about growing older — one’s writing becomes more inward, more reflective, perhaps wiser, or perhaps just sadder.
I have long been struck by the poetic title of André Malraux’s famous novel La Condition humaine. I guess each of us has a personal sense of what this evocative phrase means, and I would characterize I Am a Strange Loop as being my own best shot at describing what “the human condition” is.
One of my favorite blurbs for GEB came from the physicist and writer Jeremy Bernstein, and in part it said, “It has a youthful vitality and a wonderful brilliance…” True music to my ears! But unfortunately this flattering phrase got garbled at some point, and as a result there are now thousands of copies of GEB floating around on whose back cover Bernstein proclaims, “It has a useful vitality…” What a letdown, compared with a “youthful” vitality! And yet perhaps this new book, in its older, more sober style, will someday be described by someone somewhere as having a “useful” vitality. I guess worse things could be said about a book.
And so now I will stop talking about my book, and will let my book talk for itself. In it I hope you will discover messages imbued with interest and novelty, and even with a useful, if no longer youthful, vitality. I hope that reading this book will make you reflect in fresh ways on what being human is all about — in fact, on what just-plain being is all abou
t. And I hope that when you put the book down, you will perhaps be able to imagine that you, too, are a strange loop. Now that would please me no end.
— Bloomington, Indiana
December, MMVI.
PROLOGUE
An Affable Locking of Horns
[As I stated in the Preface, I wrote this dialogue when I was a teen-ager, and it was my first, youthful attempt at grappling with these difficult ideas.]
Dramatis personæ:
Plato: a seeker of truth who suspects consciousness is an illusion
Socrates: a seeker of truth who believes in consciousness’ reality
PLATO: But what then do you mean by “life”, Socrates? To my mind, a living creature is a body which, after birth, grows, eats, learns how to react to various stimuli, and which is ultimately capable of reproduction.
SOCRATES: I find it interesting, Plato, that you say a living creature is a body, rather than has a body. For surely, many people today would say that there are at least some living creatures that have souls independent of their bodies.
PLATO: Yes, and with those I would agree. I should have said that living creatures have bodies.
SOCRATES: Then you would agree that fleas and mice have souls, however insignificant.
PLATO: My definition does require that, yes.
SOCRATES: And do trees have souls, and blades of grass?
PLATO: You have used words to put me in this situation, Socrates. I will revise what I said — only animals have souls.
SOCRATES: But no, I have not only used words, for there is no distinction to be found between plants and animals, if you examine small enough creatures.
PLATO: You mean there are some creatures sharing the properties of plant and animal? Yes, I guess I can imagine such a thing, myself. Now I suppose you will force me into saying that only humans have souls. SOCRATES: No, on the contrary, I will ask you, what animals do you usually consider to have souls?
PLATO: Why, all higher animals — those which are able to think. SOCRATES: Then, at least higher animals are alive. Now can you truly consider a stalk of grass to be a living creature like yourself?
PLATO: Let me put it this way, Socrates: I can only imagine true life with a soul, and so I must discard grass as true life, though I could say it has the symptoms of life.
SOCRATES: I see. So you would classify soulless creatures as only appearing alive, and creatures with souls as true life. Then am I right if I say that your question “What is true life?” depends on the understanding of the soul?
PLATO: Yes, that is right.
SOCRATES: And you have said that you consider the soul as the ability to think?
PLATO: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then you are really seeking the answer to “What is thinking?” PLATO: I have followed each step of your argument, Socrates, but this conclusion makes me uneasy.
SOCRATES: It has not been my argument, Plato. You have provided all the facts, and I have only drawn logical conclusions from them. It is curious, how one often mistrusts one’s own opinions if they are stated by someone else.
PLATO: You are right, Socrates. And surely it is no simple task to explain thinking. It seems to me that the purest thought is the knowing of something; for clearly, to know something is more than just to write it down or to assert it. These can be done if one knows something; and one can learn to know something from hearing it asserted or from seeing it written. Yet knowing is more than this — it is conviction — but I am only using a synonym. I find it beyond me to understand what knowing is, Socrates.
SOCRATES: That is an interesting thought, Plato. Do you say that knowing is not so familiar as we think it is?
PLATO: Yes. Because we humans have knowledge, or convictions, we are humans, yet when we try to analyze knowing itself, it recedes, and evades us.
SOCRATES: Then had one not better be suspicious of what we call “knowing”, or “conviction”, and not take it so much for granted?
PLATO: Precisely. We must be cautious in saying “I know”, and we must ponder what it truly means to say “I know” when our minds would have us say it.
SOCRATES: True. If I asked you, “Are you alive?”, you would doubtless reply, “Yes, I am alive.” And if I asked you, “How do you know that you are alive?”, you would say “I feel it, I know I am alive — indeed, is not knowing and feeling one is alive being alive?” Is that not right?
PLATO: Yes, I would certainly say something to that effect.
SOCRATES: Now let us suppose that a machine had been constructed which was capable of constructing English sentences and answering questions. And suppose I asked this English machine, “Are you alive?” and suppose it gave me precisely the same answers as you did. What would you say as to the validity of its answers?
PLATO: I would first of all object that no machine can know what words are, or mean. A machine merely deals with words in an abstract mechanical fashion, much as canning machines put fruit in cans.
SOCRATES: I do not accept your objections for two reasons. Surely you do not contend that the basic unit of human thought is the word? For it is well known that humans have nerve cells, the laws of whose operation are arithmetical. Secondly, you cautioned earlier that we must be wary of the verb “to know”, yet here you use it quite nonchalantly. What makes you say that no machine could ever “know” what words are, or mean?
PLATO: Socrates, do you argue that machines can know facts, as we humans do?
SOCRATES: You declared just now that you yourself cannot even explain what knowing is. How did you learn the verb “to know” as a child?
PLATO: Evidently, I assimilated it from hearing it used around me.
SOCRATES: Then it was by automatic action that you gained control of it.
PLATO: No… Well, perhaps I see what you mean. I grew accustomed to hearing it in certain contexts, and thus came to be able to use it myself in those contexts, in a more or less automatic fashion.
SOCRATES: Much as you use language now — without having to reflect on each word?
PLATO: Yes, exactly.
SOCRATES: Thus now, if you say, “I know I am alive”, that sentence is merely a reflex coming from your brain, and is not a product of conscious thought.
PLATO: No, no! You or I have used faulty logic. Not all thoughts I utter are simply products of reflex actions. Some thoughts I think about consciously before uttering.
SOCRATES: In what sense do you think consciously about them?
PLATO: I don’t know. I suppose that I try to find the correct words to describe them.
SOCRATES: What guides you to the correct words?
PLATO: Why, I search logically for synonyms, similar words, and so on, with which I am familiar.
SOCRATES: In other words, habit guides your thought.
PLATO: Yes, my thought is guided by the habit of connecting words with one another systematically.
SOCRATES: Then once again, these conscious thoughts are produced by reflex action.
PLATO: I do not see how I can know I am conscious, how I can feel alive, if this is true, yet I have followed your argument.
SOCRATES: But this argument itself shows that your reaction is merely habit, or reflex action, and that no conscious thought is leading you to say you know you are alive. If you stop to consider it, do you really understand what you mean by saying such a sentence? Or does it just come into your mind without your thinking consciously of it?
PLATO: Indeed, I am so confused I scarcely know.
SOCRATES: It becomes interesting to see how one’s mind fails when working in new channels. Do you see how little you understand of that sentence “I am alive”?
PLATO: Yes, it is truly a sentence which, I must admit, is not so obvious to understand.
SOCRATES: I think it is in the same way as you fashioned that sentence that many of our actions come about — we think they arise through conscious thought, yet, on careful analysis, each bit of that thought is seen to be automatic and without consciousness.
CHAPTER 1
On Souls and Their Sizes
Soul-Shards
ONE gloomy day in early 1991, a couple of months after my father died, I was standing in the kitchen of my parents’ house, and my mother, looking at a sweet and touching photograph of my father taken perhaps fifteen years earlier, said to me, with a note of despair, “What meaning does that photograph have? None at all. It’s just a flat piece of paper with dark spots on it here and there. It’s useless.” The bleakness of my mother’s grief-drenched remark set my head spinning because I knew instinctively that I disagreed with her, but I did not quite know how to express to her the way I felt the photograph should be considered.
After a few minutes of emotional pondering — soul-searching, quite literally — I hit upon an analogy that I felt could convey to my mother my point of view, and which I hoped might lend her at least a tiny degree of consolation. What I said to her was along the following lines.
“In the living room we have a book of the Chopin études for piano. All of its pages are just pieces of paper with dark marks on them, just as two-dimensional and flat and foldable as the photograph of Dad — and yet, think of the powerful effect that they have had on people all over the world for 150 years now. Thanks to those black marks on those flat sheets of paper, untold thousands of people have collectively spent millions of hours moving their fingers over the keyboards of pianos in complicated patterns, producing sounds that give them indescribable pleasure and a sense of great meaning. Those pianists in turn have conveyed to many millions of listeners, including you and me, the profound emotions that churned in Frédéric Chopin’s heart, thus affording all of us some partial access to Chopin’s interiority — to the experience of living in the head, or rather the soul, of Frédéric Chopin. The marks on those sheets of paper are no less than soul-shards — scattered remnants of the shattered soul of Frédéric Chopin. Each of those strange geometries of notes has a unique power to bring back to life, inside our brains, some tiny fragment of the internal experiences of another human being — his sufferings, his joys, his deepest passions and tensions — and we thereby know, at least in part, what it was like to be that human being, and many people feel intense love for him. In just as potent a fashion, looking at that photograph of Dad brings back, to us who knew him intimately, the clearest memory of his smile and his gentleness, activates inside our living brains some of the most central representations of him that survive in us, makes little fragments of his soul dance again, but in the medium of brains other than his own. Like the score to a Chopin étude, that photograph is a soul-shard of someone departed, and it is something we should cherish as long as we live.”
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