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"For an imperfect but vivid concrete analogue to this curious abstract phenomenon, think of what happens when a TV camera is pointed at a TV screen s… - Douglas Hofstadter
"For an imperfect but vivid concrete analogue to this curious abstract phenomenon, think of what happens when a TV camera is pointed at a TV screen so as to display the screen on itself (and that screen on itself, etc.)- what in GEB I called a "self-engulfing television", and in my later writings I sometimes call a "level-crossing feedback loop."
When and only when such a loop arises in a brain or in any other substrate, is a person-a unique new "I" - brought into being. Moreover, the more self-referentially rich such a loop is, the more conscious is the self to which it gives rise. Yes, shocking though this might sound, consciousness is not an on/off phenomenon, but admits of degrees, grades, shades. Or, to put it more bluntly, there are bigger souls and smaller souls."
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About Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is a mathematician, cognitive scientist, and Pulitzer Prize winning author.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Native Name:
Douglas Richard Hofstadter
Alternative Names:
Douglas R. Hofstadter
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Additional quotes by Douglas Hofstadter
"the Godelian strange loop that arises in formal systems in mathematics (i.e., collections of rules for churning out an endless series of mathematical truths solely by mechanical symbol-shunting without any regard to meanings or ideas hidden in the shapes being manipulated) is a loop that allows such a system to "perceive itself", to talk about itself, to become "self-aware", and in a sense it would not be going too far to say that by virtue of having such a loop, a formal system acquires a self."
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