I have a couple of reviews in que, but have been drawn to other things this month. However, though the distraction or rather attraction may be, this posting has clear roots in the works of Douglas Hofdsadter. No matter your intellect, you can appreciate Hofstadter’s work. Godel- Echer -Back won awards. I am a Strange Loop speaks to how thinking works. Eugine Onegin, speaks to the heart and soul of a thinking person. So whatever your itch Hofstadter can scratch it.
For me, recursive thinking, and a continuous feed back of such, played on my heart strings and in my head in April drawing on all three books. Only he who has read all three books could fully appreciate my intentions. So the following is a tribute of poems inspired by Hofstadter’s works. It coursed through many layers of my brain in a continuous loop connecting mind, heart, and soul. This is first a tribute to him. As coincidence would have, it is also a tribute to those who have blessed my life; some with good fortune and some as conduits to the fate of living with the deeds of one’s’ youth. To both I say we are all much the same regardless of where and how our paths intersect. I might say that consistent with Hofstadter’s trilogy; the loop, made real, is now complete.
Onegin
Chapter Eight Verse’s Forty-eight and Forty-nine
And out she strode. Eugene stands shattered
As if by thunder’s awesome blast
His breast’s awash with grief: he’s battered,
Adrift in raging seas, aghast.
But hark – some spurs are heard, encroaching:
It’s Tatyans’s husband, fast approaching…
And at this juncture grave and grim
We’ll let my hero sink or swim.
O reader dear: we’ll take our vacations
From him, for now forevermore.
It’s been enough! We’ve come ashore
At last, we two! Congratulations
Upon our finally reaching port.
Hurrah! What’s left is sweet and short.
Dear reader, friend or foe, at present
I’d like – whoever you might be –
To take my leave on terms most pleasant.
And thus farewell. Whate’er from me
You sought in this light stanza –
Some boisterous souvenir bonanza,
Relief from toils and drudgery,
Some lively scenes, some jeux’d’espirit-
Perhaps just some errors in my grammar! –
God grant that in my modest art.
For entertainment, for your heart,
For dreams, or for the press’s yammer,
You have found at least a grain or two.
And on that note, farewell to you!
A Mother’s Love
Time and space do the heavens grace
Allysum’s tender color embroidered lace
T ending her garden with love and care
Year after year there is no time to spare
Tying nature and family a harvest of produce
Amorous devotion does anyone notice
Time’s span and space knows no boundary
Yearning for meaning heart strings tarry
Tender is the song to her child she kisses
Amidst her toils a song she misses
Tending to weeds amongst her collard greens
Yoga her portal to heavens beyond waxed beans
Transcending through mists of heaven’s gate
Anchored by her mother’s blind fate
Two slices of bread makes her the sandwich
Yearning for meaning , words find no language
Torn my demands on each side of her generation
Always there she provides the fruits of her garden
Tempting her soul does Onegin lurk
Yet steadfast to her fate dose she work
Nature of Rain
From the heavens the essence of nature
Form in droplets of nurturing water.
Each with a destined journey to the sea.
Where they become One with their brothers
Yet remain still a droplet.
Each droplet's journey akin to a journey of man.
He knows his origin and has faith in his arrival.
Home where in the body of the whole exists
the body of the self. Knowing self is Self
Knowing we are all One is knowing self
You Can't Stop Love
Like the power of a flowing river
Love brings a mysterious shiver
To he who stands in its way
For nothing can hold it at bay
Like the acorn of a century oak
A life time love's flame is stoked
A man can travel the world
In its shade the dream-world swirls
Love's tears may water the sapling
A women's beauty enchants aptly
A lifetime he waits for her affection
Forever flowing love's devotion
Eugine Onegin's fate was sealed
Love for Tatyana fate did steal
She too fell innocently to fates prey
Their love to another they shan't say
Sure as the sun sets a moon rises
Love's flow in the constellation of Isis
In to the arms of heavens paradise
Delivers treasure of love's merchandise
Such treasure is companion to the soul
It's weight thru life’s journey be its toll
In eternity shall be its birth
The kingdom of heaven on earth
Orange Juice
It is a simple concept if only we look within: Everything in Nothing.
In old saws and adages on village square, there is found the phrase
In the village air as they conclude ‘When you squeeze an orange,
Orange juice comes out.’ They never say if it’s how it might taste.
There are times when events unmercifully put a man in a vice
Its living and surviving that squeeze him to make things nice
Whether it said by Moses, Buddha, Shiva, Mohammad, or Christ
Universal is the message: When you close your eyes and meditate
Look within, you shall find peace if only for a moment, do not hesitate
As busy it may be when you clear your mind of all its drama,
When there is nothing left to think about, beyond your karma
Search ye shall find; or stop searching; to your brother namaste.
One coin, two sides. In that nothingness is energy in your being.
It’s called love, acceptance of what it is, unconditionally.
So when you have nothing what more could you ask for but
To invest in that moment of Everything in Nothing…
My Treasury
Where you find a paradox there is an energy to mint
Two sides of one coin bound together by a simple edge
Clearing the mind, the work the yoga we search for a hint
The quest for God, thru epiphany comes knowledge
Anxiety tears at the choice to spend it or save it
Purchase or invest, betwixt becomes our choices
Chop wood carry water, life’s toil do we commit
Letting it go to the moment we release these vices
Wood and water, God’s gifts, our comforts of natures
Should commitment to work interrupt our quest?
Or to do nothing and be perceived a worthless character
Spent are my coins, intellect or intuition, needless be a treasure chest
If I Were Christ
If I were Christ and your were my Magdeline
Amidst your gasp don’t think this so benign
If it be true; we are sons of One God and no other
Then surely we are to each other his brother
So close then it must be, yet difficult to see
Brothers we are, if so it is, then so it must be
On earth a material existence we all co-create
All sons of man we must all choose a mate
In youth where ones place in his life is being sorted out
A young man’s consciousness may have a lapse of doubt
Where two souls become entangled an intricate bond
Beyond our body temples, to a fate souls respond
On earth men and women bound in marriage
Day to day they burden with baggage in carriage
Let life’s riches bloom in preparation for eternity
Where two souls once again fulfill their destiny
We Are All Fishermen
John and James worked the docks of Galilee
A day at sea labored in to the docks they arrive late
Sold their catch to merchants for the city jubilee
A festival it was the guest of honor their first mate
Talk of the town; our guest says be kind to your brother
But they already know, as there may not be another
Luke and Paul one a physician, the other a solicitor general
One a student of Alexandria wise to the body and mind
Laws of men, to a son of a Pharisee come natural
Each capable of bending words, symbols in prose or rhyme
Spun and woven they say be kind to your brother
But they already know, as there may not be another
All four men write the good book in their own tongue
Credentials shan’t impede the festival conversation
Let the wine be spilled, elders proverbs told to their young
No matter their persuasion it is a simple revelation
Whether from Moses’ table or Jesus’ sermon sung
In their differences they recognize the sameness in each other.
Twenty Days In The Sun
This is a love story of Tatyana and Onegin
It is not about love but of love
Love is forgiveness as no one is guilty
Love is atonement being at one with one
In this trinity love completes the soul.
Upon canvas of midnight tempest
Are brush strokes lashing ones soul
Lightning flashes shadows thru mist
Longing for morn, night black as coal
Mighty oak's canopy of shade put to test
Whisper of tenderness a woman's breath
Love borne on the innocence of early dawn
Eyes portal to her soul tests love of her bequeathed
Extended her love in the storm her shelter drawn
Hope for the mighty oak against nature's test
What fate sought to separate loves flame?
God's will bestowed on two souls entwined
They venture through Onegin’s gate
They navigate by intuition an order divine
Tatyana's reach transcends natures test
Twenty days did Onegin feel her charm
Basking with energy the warmth of morning's sun
Upon Taty's rising sun the tempest disarmed
Twas not to her arms did Onegin run
But a level beyond earth under heaven's sun
Yet Pushkin's curse contrives a poets serenity
Twenty days time his limit under heaven's sun
Taty's yoga carries Onegin's opus into eternity
Not into each others arms did they run
Incomplete their mission in God still remain
Loving life, they live on to let it be
In life their lives remain separate
A mystery of intertwined souls
Must journey through time where eternity waits
And so it is what is to be human
This is a love story of Tatyana and Onegin
It is not about love but of love
Love is forgiveness as no one is guilty
Love is atonement being at one with one
In this trinity Love completes the soul
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Eugine Onegin
Eugine Onegin
By Douglas Hofstadter
Hofstadter’s preface is an intriguing love story by a master of symbols and patterns who falls prey to compulsiveness and pounces on random coincidences. He gives in to love-for the poem, if only for the love of his wife, Carol. The question that anyone familiar with Hofstadter is; is this book Carol’s symbol, his deceased wife living beyond her mortality? Ironically, the story line by the original author Sergeevich Pushkin, the godfather of Russian literature, is a love story as well. Hence you’ll find two parallel themes in my review. First is the answer to the Hofstadter question. The second is a question to all of you. Pushkin’s love story told in poetry is one of familiar refrain. I suspect love manifests itself in many ways and thrives on many different levels..
In Hofstadter’s book I Am a Strange Loop, discussed in my review found here on Cigar Room of Books, he tells a touching true-life story of his wife’s passing. In that story he eventually climbs out of the funk he found himself in. This translation project was his bridge. He provides a rationale of how the entwined life between himself and Carol became an entwined thought pattern. Thought being capable of transcending modalities, allows is wife Carol to live on through the people she was close to, and then through generations. In piecing together the story in Strange Loop and his preface in this book, I have come to conclude that the hidden power of love drove Hofstadter, to this project so that he could release his grief and find a higher plane to express his love for Carol. The most remarkable feat I find is this book is Hofstadter's soul, already fluent in a few languages which are mere symbols of thought, flowing from the patterns of DNA, he translates a poem written in Russian, a language he is not fluent in, by the most renowned Russian author ever, and receives high accolades from Russians who say he captured the pure essence of Pushkin’s heart and mind.
You find evidence in chapter 7 verse 23: to my summation. This stanza is Tatyana’s soul reacting to the same books her long departed Onegin had read. The story places Tatyana in the same study that Onegin had spent time in. Pushkin infers that time and space becomes only somewhat relevant as she is experiencing the thoughts and feelings of her denied true love through the common denominator of the word symbols. In that room she becomes one with her lover. All of the entwined expressions of life between Douglas and Carol continue through their children and through their work.
There could be found on many pages,
The clench marks of his fingernails.
The girl, her gaze alert, engages
Two eager eyes upon these trails
Tatyana notes, with trepidation
The types of thought and observation
That struck Onegin forcefully
Things he agreed with silently.
The margins brought to her attention
Tracks from his pencil, trapped in coal.
Thus everywhere Onegins soul
Transduced itself, without intention
Through jotted words, through checks and hooks,
Through interrogatory crooks.
The story line is pretty simple and one that should find common experience amongst most readers. What makes this book worth reading is the story is told in verse. I am told many a Russian has it committed to memory which is a testament to the passion I have experienced in my Russian experiences. Eugene is your classic Russian youth full of vim and vigor and a penchant to be a man of the world. Tatyana is a unique young woman with a penchant to marry the person she loves rather than the person presented to her by society’s fate. As the story unfolds Tatyana submits her soul to Onegin in classic Russian form through a love letter invitation. Onegin, who inwardly discovers her inward beauty as well as his love for her rebukes Tatyana as being too vulnerable to withstand the realities his antics. As tradition forces herself, Tatyana is destined to be matched up with someone in the person of Eugene’s rival friend. The rivalry ends in a duel where Eugene while victor, he is deeply remorseful and becomes reclusive. As there lives take separate courses Eugene eventually finds in his approach to Tatyana the “shoe on the other foot” and an already married Tatyana, still with a deep love for Eugene must now reproach him.
To comment on the story and its translation I provide the following view. In my youth the popular song was Love The One You’re With and we all did. But until a man seasons a few years he is lacking in the skills and judgment to respond appropriately. There is much more to love than the outward directed world reveals. My guess is that the reason Russians can remember the poem, is it sings a familiar refrain in the lives of many. In reading this book if you find the same fate, close your eyes and be there now. In this world where you come in to it and leave it alone, and some times in the middle you feel the same; this poem committed to memory, may be your one friend to help you feel not so alone. I wonder if Hofstadter found this same experience?
From a scientific or Darwinian view and a take away on Hofstadter: If DNA is a pattern that evolves through experiences within each host, it is the pattern or symbol of your soul that lives on. Hence life that looks to flourish and continue on in this world requires a host willing to conceive, bare and nourish the symbol of her being, a child. That requires a mate. In natural mate selection to the host searches for a mate with the mutual respect for life, found in love for one another. A love for one another that are vested in the ability to recognize the interconnectedness found in oneness of mankind beginning with one’s self. This couple then forms a life together contributing to a home, village, and state world. This is where the continuation of their DNA (symbols of their souls) continues on.
By Douglas Hofstadter
Hofstadter’s preface is an intriguing love story by a master of symbols and patterns who falls prey to compulsiveness and pounces on random coincidences. He gives in to love-for the poem, if only for the love of his wife, Carol. The question that anyone familiar with Hofstadter is; is this book Carol’s symbol, his deceased wife living beyond her mortality? Ironically, the story line by the original author Sergeevich Pushkin, the godfather of Russian literature, is a love story as well. Hence you’ll find two parallel themes in my review. First is the answer to the Hofstadter question. The second is a question to all of you. Pushkin’s love story told in poetry is one of familiar refrain. I suspect love manifests itself in many ways and thrives on many different levels..
In Hofstadter’s book I Am a Strange Loop, discussed in my review found here on Cigar Room of Books, he tells a touching true-life story of his wife’s passing. In that story he eventually climbs out of the funk he found himself in. This translation project was his bridge. He provides a rationale of how the entwined life between himself and Carol became an entwined thought pattern. Thought being capable of transcending modalities, allows is wife Carol to live on through the people she was close to, and then through generations. In piecing together the story in Strange Loop and his preface in this book, I have come to conclude that the hidden power of love drove Hofstadter, to this project so that he could release his grief and find a higher plane to express his love for Carol. The most remarkable feat I find is this book is Hofstadter's soul, already fluent in a few languages which are mere symbols of thought, flowing from the patterns of DNA, he translates a poem written in Russian, a language he is not fluent in, by the most renowned Russian author ever, and receives high accolades from Russians who say he captured the pure essence of Pushkin’s heart and mind.
You find evidence in chapter 7 verse 23: to my summation. This stanza is Tatyana’s soul reacting to the same books her long departed Onegin had read. The story places Tatyana in the same study that Onegin had spent time in. Pushkin infers that time and space becomes only somewhat relevant as she is experiencing the thoughts and feelings of her denied true love through the common denominator of the word symbols. In that room she becomes one with her lover. All of the entwined expressions of life between Douglas and Carol continue through their children and through their work.
There could be found on many pages,
The clench marks of his fingernails.
The girl, her gaze alert, engages
Two eager eyes upon these trails
Tatyana notes, with trepidation
The types of thought and observation
That struck Onegin forcefully
Things he agreed with silently.
The margins brought to her attention
Tracks from his pencil, trapped in coal.
Thus everywhere Onegins soul
Transduced itself, without intention
Through jotted words, through checks and hooks,
Through interrogatory crooks.
The story line is pretty simple and one that should find common experience amongst most readers. What makes this book worth reading is the story is told in verse. I am told many a Russian has it committed to memory which is a testament to the passion I have experienced in my Russian experiences. Eugene is your classic Russian youth full of vim and vigor and a penchant to be a man of the world. Tatyana is a unique young woman with a penchant to marry the person she loves rather than the person presented to her by society’s fate. As the story unfolds Tatyana submits her soul to Onegin in classic Russian form through a love letter invitation. Onegin, who inwardly discovers her inward beauty as well as his love for her rebukes Tatyana as being too vulnerable to withstand the realities his antics. As tradition forces herself, Tatyana is destined to be matched up with someone in the person of Eugene’s rival friend. The rivalry ends in a duel where Eugene while victor, he is deeply remorseful and becomes reclusive. As there lives take separate courses Eugene eventually finds in his approach to Tatyana the “shoe on the other foot” and an already married Tatyana, still with a deep love for Eugene must now reproach him.
To comment on the story and its translation I provide the following view. In my youth the popular song was Love The One You’re With and we all did. But until a man seasons a few years he is lacking in the skills and judgment to respond appropriately. There is much more to love than the outward directed world reveals. My guess is that the reason Russians can remember the poem, is it sings a familiar refrain in the lives of many. In reading this book if you find the same fate, close your eyes and be there now. In this world where you come in to it and leave it alone, and some times in the middle you feel the same; this poem committed to memory, may be your one friend to help you feel not so alone. I wonder if Hofstadter found this same experience?
From a scientific or Darwinian view and a take away on Hofstadter: If DNA is a pattern that evolves through experiences within each host, it is the pattern or symbol of your soul that lives on. Hence life that looks to flourish and continue on in this world requires a host willing to conceive, bare and nourish the symbol of her being, a child. That requires a mate. In natural mate selection to the host searches for a mate with the mutual respect for life, found in love for one another. A love for one another that are vested in the ability to recognize the interconnectedness found in oneness of mankind beginning with one’s self. This couple then forms a life together contributing to a home, village, and state world. This is where the continuation of their DNA (symbols of their souls) continues on.
I Am A Strange Loop
I Am A Strange Loop
By Michael Hofstadter
How real is X to you...the moment you start taking X for granted, then it would seem you would consider X's reality highly dubious.
This, a book of analogies and metaphors, presents a plethora of academic notions in a down to earth way, spinning science subjects such as physics, mathematics at the logical level, chemistry, psychology, humanities, and a touch of theology, to describe the human experience, which Hofstadter calls a Strange loop. He brings in a lot of his humble personality and subtle sense of humor to help the reader feel like his best friend is telling you about a crazy dream he had the night before. In keeping with the spirit of the book I recognize that every reaction or review would carry the bias of the reviewer’s life experience, whether that be one of science, business, art, sports, spiritual, or just a plain ordinary person…most of us. I am going with the human experience henceforth. With regard to the human experience Hofstadter suggests that in order to perceive our universe, you must have a soul, described in the book as that with the capability to interpret the symbols of the universe.
From small to large, while there is a DNA make up that begins things, Hofstadter puts forward the notion, backed with enough thought to be the foundation of a thesis, but not enough to make a boring academic read, that DNA must be capable eventually through development in chemical communication of powering enough energy to a.) Interpret symbols, b.) Share these symbols with other beings, and c.) Care about the other being. Please understand not I did not state the possibility of a soul to be strictly the domain human beings. Hofstadter, in no way suggests the human being as the center of thought but in many ways implies that souls are not dependent on the human form. This is clearly in sync with Emerson, and Jesus to name a couple souls, but is scientifically based in the 21st century.
What you come to more fully appreciate as a result of reading this book is not ABC as I described in the above paragraph, but CBA in that a soul cares about others, if for no other reason than because what symbols you project, are the symbols you receive. In other words the definition of You resides within the essence of You; a strange loop when looked at it from almost every scientific vantage point. These ideas, while they come into my life from a totally different direction, coincide with to the teaching in Unity’s Course In Miracles, where coincidences are noteworthy, or maybe a strange loop.
In my first reaction to the book I draw a question. Is the quest for power merely the expression to be immortal, to live on through the expressed patterns of your mind, the liaison and ambassador of your soul, by touching the souls of the multitudes? Is this the treasure beyond the deepest chest of gold? Hofstadter begins his answer to this by describing famous people who have left legacies behind. For example he uses Johan Sebastian Bach’s music; not just his music that was heard in the present but in his sheet music notes, patterns of his soul, composed to live in the lives/souls of many others for centuries to come. The notes are experienced again and again, not just buy the performers but the listeners producing moods and reactions that then manifest themselves with a life of their own to be transmitted through other souls. He recognizes that with each “knowledge transfer” there is a degree of separation, but the life pattern of Bach lives on in the mind of man well beyond the expiration of his body.
Using physics metaphor Hofstadter makes up a cranium to illustrate the expansion and more importantly the reduction of thought as a person interprets reality. In the Craniem box there are large balls and there are real small beads sized balls all moving and vibrating in the box. The beads size balls represents reality at microscopic DNA/molecule/atomic level. That is how things are!! Given that the human brain cannot interpret this with any level of survivable efficiency, it begins the process of categorization or distilling small sims (the beads) into larger simballs reducing a multitude of input into a symbolic (large ball) interpretation of reality. We at human level live life at the symbolic "large ball" level, which in society one must clearly appreciate that misunderstood symbols can be very apt at twisting the story in the way things really are. Hofstadter calls this Epiphenomenon, which can be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.
After Hofstadter busts your brain with a short foray in Principia Mathamatecia and logical equations only to prove that it is purely logical to define yourself using variables within your self, (Goedel), he spends the last half of the book bringing physics and logic to simple human. He begins this by applying his personal experience in the loss of his wife. His bereavement was not for his loss but for what his deceased wife is missing. He describes the entwinement of souls as the experience he had with his wife as the reason he can contemplate that she (her patterns/symbols) in fact do live on at least through him. The term he discusses is Entwinement where dualism in consciousness is at work. Where Hofstadter settles on right/left brain at a scientific level, I would prefer brain/soul and wonder why Hofstadter cannot do so in the book.
Hofstadter accepts the notion of soul mates as though very plausible but more occult in nature as opposed to science, so he cannot support it. He suggests, “If souls are patterns then “I” can exist outside (separate from) a body. I think Hofstadter’s only hang-up is his sole experience in life is through academia. When Hofstadter writes: There are shallower aspects of a person and their dependant aspects, and the deeper aspects are what imbue the shallower ones with genuine meaning. If our souls have a deep resemblance, then our beliefs will be the same, and we will intuitively resonate with each other.” I am convinced academia is his only hang up with regard to this subject.
On the heels of this personal subject Hofstadter explores the “I” or the “I’ness” experience. He springs into it with a quote from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. '' Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in case of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved and commit suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rises that must be fulfilled after death? Because it is as though the one who is left stays for a time on stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is leave, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?'' In his discussion on this excerpt he says not only do we find us individually an “I” (one person-one soul or caged bird) but as social beings a dependency to live on in each brain contains multiple strange loops of one another. We are all One. I think Jesus was quoted as saying that and John Lennon wrote a song on and in the same spirit.
To make his ideas really stick Hofstadter speaks on Love. To summarize: “in death of a body, though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word love cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”, the mere deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you; the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind in humanity.” In this, one should find sufficient meaning to make the next choice and every succeeding choice one with an elevated conscience. I was recently challenged with the question; why would I care if my spirit lives on, I want to be here now. After writing this review my answer to this person is; if you could find comfort in a way to live beyond death or outside your body, you would first transcend the fear of death and then fear itself. With this transcendence you would live your "here and now" in a much more satisfying way.
I Am In A Strange Loop
By Paul Murphy
THE DANCE OF SYMBOLS IN YOUR BRAIN...to spot the gist
The dance of I and we flow with the grist
To symbol’s tune on the grand universe's ballroom floor
Time made in eons of mankind locked behind a door
Or seconds of fleeting thought the footsteps in unison
Exchanged at a glance in love of which there is no comparison
Whispering breaths of intimacy in a spirit of feelium
Waltzing souls of universal One
We, under halo of midnight's son
By Michael Hofstadter
How real is X to you...the moment you start taking X for granted, then it would seem you would consider X's reality highly dubious.
This, a book of analogies and metaphors, presents a plethora of academic notions in a down to earth way, spinning science subjects such as physics, mathematics at the logical level, chemistry, psychology, humanities, and a touch of theology, to describe the human experience, which Hofstadter calls a Strange loop. He brings in a lot of his humble personality and subtle sense of humor to help the reader feel like his best friend is telling you about a crazy dream he had the night before. In keeping with the spirit of the book I recognize that every reaction or review would carry the bias of the reviewer’s life experience, whether that be one of science, business, art, sports, spiritual, or just a plain ordinary person…most of us. I am going with the human experience henceforth. With regard to the human experience Hofstadter suggests that in order to perceive our universe, you must have a soul, described in the book as that with the capability to interpret the symbols of the universe.
From small to large, while there is a DNA make up that begins things, Hofstadter puts forward the notion, backed with enough thought to be the foundation of a thesis, but not enough to make a boring academic read, that DNA must be capable eventually through development in chemical communication of powering enough energy to a.) Interpret symbols, b.) Share these symbols with other beings, and c.) Care about the other being. Please understand not I did not state the possibility of a soul to be strictly the domain human beings. Hofstadter, in no way suggests the human being as the center of thought but in many ways implies that souls are not dependent on the human form. This is clearly in sync with Emerson, and Jesus to name a couple souls, but is scientifically based in the 21st century.
What you come to more fully appreciate as a result of reading this book is not ABC as I described in the above paragraph, but CBA in that a soul cares about others, if for no other reason than because what symbols you project, are the symbols you receive. In other words the definition of You resides within the essence of You; a strange loop when looked at it from almost every scientific vantage point. These ideas, while they come into my life from a totally different direction, coincide with to the teaching in Unity’s Course In Miracles, where coincidences are noteworthy, or maybe a strange loop.
In my first reaction to the book I draw a question. Is the quest for power merely the expression to be immortal, to live on through the expressed patterns of your mind, the liaison and ambassador of your soul, by touching the souls of the multitudes? Is this the treasure beyond the deepest chest of gold? Hofstadter begins his answer to this by describing famous people who have left legacies behind. For example he uses Johan Sebastian Bach’s music; not just his music that was heard in the present but in his sheet music notes, patterns of his soul, composed to live in the lives/souls of many others for centuries to come. The notes are experienced again and again, not just buy the performers but the listeners producing moods and reactions that then manifest themselves with a life of their own to be transmitted through other souls. He recognizes that with each “knowledge transfer” there is a degree of separation, but the life pattern of Bach lives on in the mind of man well beyond the expiration of his body.
Using physics metaphor Hofstadter makes up a cranium to illustrate the expansion and more importantly the reduction of thought as a person interprets reality. In the Craniem box there are large balls and there are real small beads sized balls all moving and vibrating in the box. The beads size balls represents reality at microscopic DNA/molecule/atomic level. That is how things are!! Given that the human brain cannot interpret this with any level of survivable efficiency, it begins the process of categorization or distilling small sims (the beads) into larger simballs reducing a multitude of input into a symbolic (large ball) interpretation of reality. We at human level live life at the symbolic "large ball" level, which in society one must clearly appreciate that misunderstood symbols can be very apt at twisting the story in the way things really are. Hofstadter calls this Epiphenomenon, which can be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.
After Hofstadter busts your brain with a short foray in Principia Mathamatecia and logical equations only to prove that it is purely logical to define yourself using variables within your self, (Goedel), he spends the last half of the book bringing physics and logic to simple human. He begins this by applying his personal experience in the loss of his wife. His bereavement was not for his loss but for what his deceased wife is missing. He describes the entwinement of souls as the experience he had with his wife as the reason he can contemplate that she (her patterns/symbols) in fact do live on at least through him. The term he discusses is Entwinement where dualism in consciousness is at work. Where Hofstadter settles on right/left brain at a scientific level, I would prefer brain/soul and wonder why Hofstadter cannot do so in the book.
Hofstadter accepts the notion of soul mates as though very plausible but more occult in nature as opposed to science, so he cannot support it. He suggests, “If souls are patterns then “I” can exist outside (separate from) a body. I think Hofstadter’s only hang-up is his sole experience in life is through academia. When Hofstadter writes: There are shallower aspects of a person and their dependant aspects, and the deeper aspects are what imbue the shallower ones with genuine meaning. If our souls have a deep resemblance, then our beliefs will be the same, and we will intuitively resonate with each other.” I am convinced academia is his only hang up with regard to this subject.
On the heels of this personal subject Hofstadter explores the “I” or the “I’ness” experience. He springs into it with a quote from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. '' Late the next morning he sat sewing in the room upstairs. Why? Why was it that in case of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved and commit suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rises that must be fulfilled after death? Because it is as though the one who is left stays for a time on stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is leave, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time in the soul of the living?'' In his discussion on this excerpt he says not only do we find us individually an “I” (one person-one soul or caged bird) but as social beings a dependency to live on in each brain contains multiple strange loops of one another. We are all One. I think Jesus was quoted as saying that and John Lennon wrote a song on and in the same spirit.
To make his ideas really stick Hofstadter speaks on Love. To summarize: “in death of a body, though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word love cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”, the mere deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you; the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind in humanity.” In this, one should find sufficient meaning to make the next choice and every succeeding choice one with an elevated conscience. I was recently challenged with the question; why would I care if my spirit lives on, I want to be here now. After writing this review my answer to this person is; if you could find comfort in a way to live beyond death or outside your body, you would first transcend the fear of death and then fear itself. With this transcendence you would live your "here and now" in a much more satisfying way.
I Am In A Strange Loop
By Paul Murphy
THE DANCE OF SYMBOLS IN YOUR BRAIN...to spot the gist
The dance of I and we flow with the grist
To symbol’s tune on the grand universe's ballroom floor
Time made in eons of mankind locked behind a door
Or seconds of fleeting thought the footsteps in unison
Exchanged at a glance in love of which there is no comparison
Whispering breaths of intimacy in a spirit of feelium
Waltzing souls of universal One
We, under halo of midnight's son
Godel, Escher, Bach
Godel, Escher, Bach
an Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas Hofstadter
GEB
The following are my notes as I read the book. Some day in the future I’ll ironically complete this review.
1. I read this book because I needed to understand what motivated my eldest son to pursue the study of cognitive science. If you need a different reason to inspire your to read this book, go to the book store and open GEB to pages 532- 533 and comprehend Hofstadter's "Dogmap" you would begin to appreciate the essence of the book. In this essence there is a blend of multi level constructs of thought that provides a scientific or academic understanding of cognitive science mixed in with unique blend of Hofstadter humor to clearly place this book in any philosophy college as well. . It may be just enough to lure you not just in to this book but the world of cognitive science.
2. In a self referential way, this book is about "level thinking", where knowledge at a high level may or may not have been constructed or made evident at a lower level. The notion that understanding things at a high level with the understanding of its lower level constructs is the mark of intelligence, of biological or any other means. This book examines the meaning of life if life were to begin at the thought level. In the course of discussion meaning, the scientific and then esoteric of theorems and truth come out. What is a self evident truth an undeniable proof, and what an accepted truth a bottomed out recursive analysis of any subject where bottoming out is most apropos in an every day practical world. For this reader coming to that understanding of the material put forth was a mental workout 740 pages long.
3. This Book is about
a. Meaning truth
i. evidence
b. Math – Music - Art
c. microbiology
i. how the brain works
ii. how protein works
iii. DNA, symbols
iv. RNA, the messenger
v. Thought is in the RNA message not the DNA symbols.
d. AI
i. Math
ii. symbols
iii. Logic
iv. Programming said logic
e. The Eternal Golden Braid
i. Godel’s incompleteness theorem
ii. Bach’s, Fugues and the famous Musical Offering
iii. Escher’s Tangled Hierarchy of multilevel thinking
iv. The most remarkable concept that is only implied by the author in his title at least, and can only be constructed in the context of the mind of this reader/writer, is the author’s word choice of “Eternal”, a symbol of thought that eludes to time. Eternal suggests an endless lifespan. While Hodstadter’s analytical delivery goes to the depth of constructive scientific thought, it takes on a feel of Zen Buddhism and also implies the same message of Jesus Christ that we are not of this world and that through transcendence, may you find your self at peace, one with all that is.
4. Knowing that every aspect of our physical make up is incomplete, and every aspect of every other physical manifestation of the universe is also incomplete is exactly what makes us whole in our oneness of the universe.
This is Christ's message of transcendence; your being is not of this world.
5. The book spawned TJ's DNA model of a helix reflecting symbols. Now I am envisioning a model of symbols and signals where a massive amount of laser light patterns of a mesh as in Indra's Net each of a color all rotating at different rates of speed around an axis. When the intersections of one nets mesh passes through the intersection of another net's mesh; the mixing of the individual color creates a new color. When each net is connected to a terminal bus for input that bus controls the rate of rotation. The AI comes in where when and individual net becomes so influenced by the interaction of other nets that the base color of that net changes as in changing your mind on some basic premise. The changing of color in that one mesh will now cause a change in color patterns representing a higher level of a changing of the mind. Then on a higher level each of the rotating Indra Armatures are networked. I haven't worked that out at even the idea level yet.
6. This book is like a gymnasium for the brain. Reading it is a mental workout. Your brain comes out of each workout with yet a fresher look on your world. Each degree of freshness adds a new level of thinking. Just when you think you have bottomed out Hoffstadter takes you up a level or ten and associates a presentation of a complex description of the way things work to an outward phenomena of every day occurrences that an average person can not just understand but appreciate to the extent that the mental workout will change the very way you interact with your world around. Being always conscious of your red blood cell count is not required to have a conscience understanding that a healthy diet will contribute to your red blood cell count.
7. Self referential games; without self is there meaning?
8. My thought: in a novel, why do symbols of ideas or otherwise understood as words to tell a story produce a more meaningful interaction with the reader than images, voice if a movie?
9. Page vii Hofstadter suggests a paradox that reasoning of motion as an example makes reasoning impossible.
My thoughts: if your original perspective is incongruent with reality then Hofstadter’s paradox is not a paradox at all it just faulty reasoning.
10. Page 49: isomorphism applies when two complex structures can heaped to each other I. Such a way that to each part of one structure there is a corresponding part on the other structure where corresponding means that the two parts play similar roles in there respective structures.....Information perceiving information
11. Contracrostipunctus: truth is found in the feedback loop of I. When I is a perfect mirror, forward and backwards, converse and inverse, of what is projected, no matter how multifaceted the individual, you reach the same transcendence as Jonathon Livingston Seagull’s grey to white, Gandalf's grey to white, J. S, Bach's final Contrapunctius, Christ's resurrection.
12. Meaning requires context. A DNA genome can only have a mechanical ability to grow in to it's phoneme. In the DNA of man, exists exotic propensity for the initiation of thought, a higher degree of conscience separate from consciousness. That thought only has meaning within the context of all thought, whether consciously available to the subject thinker or not. The agent of thought is the trigger responsible for the word symbol God where with standing all it's variations, derivative meanings is the context of life for mankind. Where the mystery comes in to play is the context of an environment that nourishes man without his thought. We call this nature, the nature of our context within our context. The closer we come to understanding this the more we appreciate the mechanics of nature in the study of the mystery of the universe, God..
13. Is the pursuit of AI along the lines of programming possible when programming uses logic and within logic, a derivative of the mathematical sciences, looms Godel's incompleteness theorem that states the answer lay out side the equation? In other words logic can be mapped and intelligence cannot. Intelligence is when a being can think both logically and illogically to discover or really to possibly create a new axiom. Edison thought through 15,000 experiments logically before the light came on. I am curious if the eventual success had a pre ordained logic that was proved or was there accidental discoveries along the way. Logically and illogically as said is a paradox. Is there a string of logic that contains all truths within itself? Says Godel no. So must one defy logic to find truth. Is truth separate from meaning? Can there be meaning in things that are false?
14. If in all things that are not axiomatic having a possibility of contradicting each other when is it prudent to accept a "thing" on faith and when do you take the test to the "bottom" where the shouting match occurs?
15. In TNT Hofstadter states in the context of determining truth from that which is false that it is important to follow the rules and not one's knowledge of the passive meanings of the symbols, he further states the latter type of knowledge is invaluable in guiding the route of derivation.
I interpret this invaluable route to be that of intelligence of which is the essence of breaking through mans yet to be completed understanding of the universe. To do this would be to prove Godel’s incompleteness theorem to be false. Is breaking this paradox like transcending "apparent" realities such a time?
16. In the context of bottoming out in a recursive pattern does a man’s mind have a bottom? And if so and machines are made capable to run loops adnauseum is that intelligent life? Or is that analysis paralysis? Is not a continuous loop and a bottomless recursion the same thing of which both by there definition would be very limited in determining axioms?
17. Intelligence depends crucially on the (ability to create high-level descriptions of complex arrays, such as chess boards, television screens, printed pages or paintings."
18. On recursive-ness: because we find breaking all events and object down to it's core code not only too difficult but also in many cases void of meaning anyway we break it down to appropriate levels creating symbols and each level sends signals to other symbols creating new symbols which are all abstracts of reality. Your meaning of life is at best an abstract of mine.
19. Because man freely chooses which data to hold and which to discard and which to discard abstracts are the precise results of free will. Or is it instinctive will until you are awakened to this phenomena of man over all other species. Is this not what we mean by creation...we each create our own abstract of the world around us
20. As we ramble through the arithmoqueinification logic to rationalize supernatural numbers and find Lincoln's answer to how long a man’s legs should be; you come to a demonstrable bottoming out of recursive-ness. Is there a point where deriving an axiom without proving it becomes profitable? Or in the vernacular of Hofstadter, is there a ~profit in pursuit of supernatural numbers, the pursuit of numbers that have no unique definition?
21. When a computer can see three dimensions on a flat piece of paper like humans do the discussion on artificial intelligence may begin
22. Page 521. What RNA is to life itself, agents of the DNA message to ribosome, protein, and amino acids; are people's thoughts, the message between the synapse dendrites are to each other. The balance of life rests on a scale in the context of the universe. All things must be interpreted in the context of the whole.
23. If you were to go to the book store and open GEB to pages 533- 533 and comprehend Hofstadter's "Dogmap" you would begin to appreciate the essence of the book. It may be just enough to lure you not just in to this book but the world of cognitive science.
24. Page 582. It is certain that Hofstadter is circling around the mechanics and the definition of meaning. Then by page 582 he suggests that because if the endless connections to all possibilities in a decision, time is the one variable that renders the whole definition futile. However the mechanics remain sound.
25. Page 665-8. As Hofstadter discusses his epigenesis of the crab canon and describes the fission of thought (his) he draws a parallel to bio chemistry and implies through a parallel mapping that the construct of thought and life are replicas of each other in a self refererential way
26. The reason we need a mate is we are incapable of judging whether our rough system is peculiar or not through self reference.
Bibliography
1. Page 65 things become quite confusing as soon as your perceive :meaning” in the symbols which your are manipulating.
2. Page 87 Thus, at first sight, it seems that Godel has unearthed a hitherto unknown, but deeply significant, difference between human reasoning and mechanical reasoning. The mysterious discrepancy in the power of living and non living systems is mirrored in the discrepancy between the notion of truth, and that of theorem-hood…or at least that is the romantic way to view the situation.
3. Page 133 This is the crucial fact that distinguishes recursive definitions from circular ones. There is always some part of the definition which avoids selfe reference. So that the action of constructing an object which satisfies the definition will eventually bottom out.
4. Page 142 An agnostic friend of mine once was struck by G-plot’s infinitely many infinities that he called it “ a picture of God”, which don’t think is blasphemous at all.
5. Page 162 To put it as succinctly as possible, one view says that in order for DNA to have meaning, chemical contest is necessary; the other view says that only intelligence is necessary to reveal the “intrinsic meaning” of a strand of DNA.
6. Page 192 Once again, we are up against the issue which Lewis Carrol set forth in his Dialogue: you can’t go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over.
7. Page 193 in Propositional Calculus…rules are derived. It is a part of knowledge which we have about the system. That this rule always keeps you within the space of theorem needs proofs, of course – but such a proof is not like a derivation inside the system. It is a proof in the ordinary intuitive sense – a chain of reasoning carried out in the I-mode.
8. Page 197 More radical attempts abandon completely the quest for completeness or consistency, and try to mimic human reasoning with all its inconsistencies. Such research no longer has as its goal to provide a solid underpinning for mathematics, but purely to study human thought processes.
9. Page 210 Now the translations of “6 is even” are quite different strings and it is by no means obvious that theoremhood of any one of them is tied to theoremhood of any of the others….The evidence lies in our minds, since as humans, we almost automatically think about interpretations, not structural properties of formulas.
10. Page 228 Thus, it is important to embed TNT within a wider context, a context which enables new rules of inference to be derived, so that derivations can be speeded up. This would require formalization of the language in which rules of inference are expressed-that is, the metalanguage. And one could go considerably further. However, none of those speeding up tricks would make TNT any more powerful; they would simply make it more usable.
11. Page 285 or to take a sequence of images on a television screen which shows Shirley McLean laughing. When we watch that sequence, we know that we are actually looking not at a woman, but it is the furthest thing from out min. We have these two wildly opposing representations of what is on the screen, but that does not confuse us. We can just shut one out, and pay attention to the other-which is what all of us do, Which is “more real”? It depends on whether you’re a human, a dog, a computer, or a television set.
12. Page 287 intelligence depends crucially on the ability to create high-level descriptions of complex arrays such as chessboards, television screens, printed pages.
13. Page 302 This is kind of primordial self-knowledge which is so obvious that it is hard to see it all: it is like being conscious that the air is there. We never really bother to think about what might cause these defects of our minds: namely, the organization of our brains. To suggest ways of reconciling the software of the mind with the hardware of the brain is a main goal of this book.
14. Page 309 In coming Chapters, where we discuss the brain, we shall examine whether the brain’s top level-the mind-can be understood without understanding the lower levels on which it both depends and does not depend. Are there laws of thinking which are “sealed off” from the lower laws that govern the microscopic activity in the cells of the brain? Can mind be “skimmed” off of the brain and transplanted into other systems? Or is it possible to unravel thinking processes into neat and modular subsystems? Is the brain more like an atom, a renormalized electron, a nucleus, a neutron, or a quirk? Is consciousness an epiphenomenon? To understand the mind, must one go all the way down to the level of the nerve cells?
15. Page 322 I find it much easier to change points of view. When I do so, vocabulary of technology comes back: the MEANING of the caste distribution and PURPOSFULNESS of signals. This not only happens when I think of aunt colonies, but also when I think about my own brain and other brains. However, with some effort I can always remember the other point of view if necessary, and drain all these systems of meaning too.
16. Page 349 on Modules Which Mediate Thought Processes: Philosophically, the most important question of all this: What would the existence of modules-for instance, a grandmother module-tell us? Would this give us any insight into the phenomenon of our own consciousness? Or would it still leave us as much in the dark about what consciousness is, an does knowledge that a brain is built out of neurons and glia? The crucial step that needs to be taken is from a low-level – neuron to neuron – description of the same state of brain. ….we want to shift the description of the brain state from signal level to symbol level.
a. My thought; I am not sold on this as I get from the same material that intelligence is a construct of colliding ideas at the messenger level-the RNA level, not the DNA symbol level.
17. Page 349 It is an interesting question whether in each symbol there are certain core neurons, which invariably fire when the symbol is activated. If such a core set of neurons exists, we might refer to it as the “invariant core” of the symbol.
18. Page 355 Sometimes conditions can arise where two previously unlinked symbols get activated simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion. The may fit together so well that it seems like an inevitable union. And a single new symbol is formed by the tight interaction of the two old symbols. If this happens, it would be fair to say that the new symbol “always had been there but never had been activated” – or should one say it has been “created”?
19. Page 360 Our facility for making instances out of classes and classes out of instances lies at the basis of our intelligence, and it is one of the great differences between human thought and the thought processes of other animals.
20. Page 378 reliable pathways of (thought or reason) are what constitute knowledge. Pieces of knowledge merge gradually with beliefs, which are also represented by reliable pathways, but perhaps ones which are more unsusceptible to replacement if, so to speak, a bridge goes out, or there is a heavy fog. This leaves us with fancies, lies, falsities…
21. Page 381 You will again chunk these programs in your mind, looking for conceptual hardware, you are not comparing software-you are comparing “etherware” the pure concepts which lie back of the software. There is some sort of abstract “conceptual skeleton” which must be lifted out of the low levels before you can carry out a meaningful comparison of two programs in different computer languages, of two animals, or of sentences in different natural languages.
22. Page 383 The physical status of a brain, if read correctly, gives information telling not which pathways could be followed, but rather how much resistance could be offered along the way.
23. Page 385 To be precise, by “subsystem”, I mean a constellation of symbols, each of which can be separately activated under the control of the subsystem itself. The image I wish to convey of a subsystem is that it functions almost as an independent “subbrain”, equipped with its own repertoire of symbols which can trigger each other internally.
24. Page 389 Although conscious beings have the power of going on, we do not wish to exhibit this simply as a succession of tasks they are able to perform, nor do we see the mind as an infinite sequence of selves and super-selves. Rather, we insist that a conscious being is a unity, and though we talk about parts of the mind, we do so only as a metaphor, and will not allow it to be taken literally.
25. Page 407 the pq system does not include enough of the core truths of N to count as “a number theory.” What, then, are these core truths of N? They are the primitive recursive truths: that means the involve only predictably terminating calculations.
26. Page 429 If we accept CT-Thesis, we have to conclude that Gloop is a myth – there are no restrictions to remove in Floop, no ways to increase its power by unshackling it as we did ion Bloop.
This puts us in the uncomfortable position of asserting people can calculate Reddiag [N] for any value of N, but there is no way to program a computer to do so. For if it could be done at all, it could be done in Floop – and by construction, it can’t be done in Floop. This conclusion is so peculiar that it should cause us to investigate very carefully the pillars on which it rests. And one of them if you will recall, was our shaky assumption that there is a decision procedure which can tell terminating form non terminating Floop programs. The idea of such a decision procedure already seemed suspect, when we saw the existence would allow all programs of number theory to be solved in a uniform way. Now we have double the reason for believing that any termination test is a myth – that there is no way to put Floop programs in a centrifuge and separate out terminators from non terminators.
27. Page 438 The first key idea of Godel’s proof is the deep discovery that there are strings of TNT which can be interpreted as speaking about other strings of TNT; in short, that TNT as a language, is capable of “introspection”, or self scrutiny. This is what comes from Godel-numbering. The second key idea is that the property of self scrutiny can be entirely concentrated into a single string; thus that string’s sole focus of attention is itself. This “focusing trick” is traceable, in essence, to Cantors diagonal method.
28. Page 479 In Zen too, we can see this preoccupation with the concept of transcending the system.
29. Page 501 But recall that in Chapter VI, we made the concept of “intrinsic meaning” dependent on a hypothesized universal notion of intelligence. The idea was that, in determining the intrinsic meaning of an object, we could disregard some types of outer message – those which would be universally understood. That is, if the decoding mechanism seems fundamental enough, in some ill-defined sense, then the inner message which it lets be revealed is the only meaning that counts.
30. Page 503 Clearly an individual is never identical to either of its parents: why, then, is the act of making young called “self reproduction”? The answer is that there is a course grained isomorphism between parent and child; it is an isomorphism which preservers information about species, Thus what is reproduced is the class, rather than the instance.
31. Page 517 As was mentioned above, in many cells, DNA, the ruler of the cell, dwells in its private “Throne Room” the nucleus of the cell. But most of the “living” in the cell goes on outside of the nucleus, namely the cytoplasm – the “ground” to the nucleus “figure” In particular, enzymes which make practically every life process go, are manufactured by ribosome in the cytoplasm, and they do most of their work in the cytoplasm.
32. Page 519 Now when a strand of mRNA, after it escapes into the cytoplasm, encounters a ribosome, a very intricate and beautiful process called translation takes place. It could be said that this process of translation is at the very heart pf all life, and there are many mysteries connected with it.. But essence it is easy to describe. First let us give a picturesque image, and then render it more precise. Imagine the mRNA to be like a long piece of magnetic recording tape, and the ribosome to be like the tape recorder. As the tape pass through the playing head of the recorder, it is “read” and converted into music, or other sounds. Thus magnetic markings are “translated” into notes. Similarly,, when a “tape” of mRNA passes through the “playing head” of a ribosome, the “notes” which are produced are amino acids, and the “pieces of music” which they make up are proteins. This is what translation is all about.
33. Page 541 Henkin Sentences and Viruses: Now both of these contrasting types of self-reference in molecular biology have their counter parts in mathematical logic. We have already discussed the analogue of self-defeating phages – namely, strings of the Godal type, which assert their its own unproducibility within specific formal systems. But one can also make a counterpart sentence to a real phage: the phage asserts its own producibility in a specific formal system. Sentences of this type are called Henkin Sentences, after the mathematical logician Leon Henkin. They can be constructed exactly along lines of Godal sentences, the only difference being the omission of a negation. One begins with an “uncle” pf course: 3a3a’:
34. Page 547 Illustrative of this is the amazing fact that in biological systems,all the various features necessary for self replication (viz language, program, data, interpreter and processor) cooperate to such a degree that all of them are replicated simultaneously – which show how much deeper is biological self-rep’ing than anything else yet devised along those lines by humans.
35. Page 559 We have come to the point where we can develop one of the main theses of this book: that every aspect of thinking can be viewed as a high-level description of a system which, on a low level, is governed by simple, even formal rules. The system is of course is the brain – unless one is speaking of thought processes flowing in another medium, such as computer circuits.
36. Page 577 There is no reason to believe that a computer’s faultlessly functioning hardware could not support high-level symbolic behavior which would represent such complex states as confusion, forgetting, or appreciation of beauty. It would require that there be massive subsystems interacting with each other according to a complex logic. The overt behavior could appear either rational or irrational, but underneath it would be the performance of reliable, logical hardware.
37. Page 582 by contrast, the semantic aspects of form are those which cannot be tested in predictable lengths of time: the require open ended test. Such an aspect is theoremhood of TNT-strings, as we have seen. You cannot just apply some standard test to a string and find out it is a theorem. The act of pulling out a string’s meaning involves, in essence, establishing all the implications of its connections to all other strings, and this leads, to be sure, down open-ended trail. So semantic properties are connected to open ended searches because an object’s meaning is not localized within the object itself. This is not to say that no understanding of any object’s meaning is possible until the end of time, for as time passes, more and more of the meaning unfolds. However there are always aspects of its meaning which will remain hidden arbitrarily long.
38. Page 618 Representing Knowledge In a Logical Formalism: The basic operations in such representations are, not surprisingly, formalizations of deductive reasoning. Logical deductions can be made using rules of inference analogous to some of those in TNT. Querying the system about some particular idea sets up a goal in the form of a string to be derived.
an Eternal Golden Braid
by Douglas Hofstadter
GEB
The following are my notes as I read the book. Some day in the future I’ll ironically complete this review.
1. I read this book because I needed to understand what motivated my eldest son to pursue the study of cognitive science. If you need a different reason to inspire your to read this book, go to the book store and open GEB to pages 532- 533 and comprehend Hofstadter's "Dogmap" you would begin to appreciate the essence of the book. In this essence there is a blend of multi level constructs of thought that provides a scientific or academic understanding of cognitive science mixed in with unique blend of Hofstadter humor to clearly place this book in any philosophy college as well. . It may be just enough to lure you not just in to this book but the world of cognitive science.
2. In a self referential way, this book is about "level thinking", where knowledge at a high level may or may not have been constructed or made evident at a lower level. The notion that understanding things at a high level with the understanding of its lower level constructs is the mark of intelligence, of biological or any other means. This book examines the meaning of life if life were to begin at the thought level. In the course of discussion meaning, the scientific and then esoteric of theorems and truth come out. What is a self evident truth an undeniable proof, and what an accepted truth a bottomed out recursive analysis of any subject where bottoming out is most apropos in an every day practical world. For this reader coming to that understanding of the material put forth was a mental workout 740 pages long.
3. This Book is about
a. Meaning truth
i. evidence
b. Math – Music - Art
c. microbiology
i. how the brain works
ii. how protein works
iii. DNA, symbols
iv. RNA, the messenger
v. Thought is in the RNA message not the DNA symbols.
d. AI
i. Math
ii. symbols
iii. Logic
iv. Programming said logic
e. The Eternal Golden Braid
i. Godel’s incompleteness theorem
ii. Bach’s, Fugues and the famous Musical Offering
iii. Escher’s Tangled Hierarchy of multilevel thinking
iv. The most remarkable concept that is only implied by the author in his title at least, and can only be constructed in the context of the mind of this reader/writer, is the author’s word choice of “Eternal”, a symbol of thought that eludes to time. Eternal suggests an endless lifespan. While Hodstadter’s analytical delivery goes to the depth of constructive scientific thought, it takes on a feel of Zen Buddhism and also implies the same message of Jesus Christ that we are not of this world and that through transcendence, may you find your self at peace, one with all that is.
4. Knowing that every aspect of our physical make up is incomplete, and every aspect of every other physical manifestation of the universe is also incomplete is exactly what makes us whole in our oneness of the universe.
This is Christ's message of transcendence; your being is not of this world.
5. The book spawned TJ's DNA model of a helix reflecting symbols. Now I am envisioning a model of symbols and signals where a massive amount of laser light patterns of a mesh as in Indra's Net each of a color all rotating at different rates of speed around an axis. When the intersections of one nets mesh passes through the intersection of another net's mesh; the mixing of the individual color creates a new color. When each net is connected to a terminal bus for input that bus controls the rate of rotation. The AI comes in where when and individual net becomes so influenced by the interaction of other nets that the base color of that net changes as in changing your mind on some basic premise. The changing of color in that one mesh will now cause a change in color patterns representing a higher level of a changing of the mind. Then on a higher level each of the rotating Indra Armatures are networked. I haven't worked that out at even the idea level yet.
6. This book is like a gymnasium for the brain. Reading it is a mental workout. Your brain comes out of each workout with yet a fresher look on your world. Each degree of freshness adds a new level of thinking. Just when you think you have bottomed out Hoffstadter takes you up a level or ten and associates a presentation of a complex description of the way things work to an outward phenomena of every day occurrences that an average person can not just understand but appreciate to the extent that the mental workout will change the very way you interact with your world around. Being always conscious of your red blood cell count is not required to have a conscience understanding that a healthy diet will contribute to your red blood cell count.
7. Self referential games; without self is there meaning?
8. My thought: in a novel, why do symbols of ideas or otherwise understood as words to tell a story produce a more meaningful interaction with the reader than images, voice if a movie?
9. Page vii Hofstadter suggests a paradox that reasoning of motion as an example makes reasoning impossible.
My thoughts: if your original perspective is incongruent with reality then Hofstadter’s paradox is not a paradox at all it just faulty reasoning.
10. Page 49: isomorphism applies when two complex structures can heaped to each other I. Such a way that to each part of one structure there is a corresponding part on the other structure where corresponding means that the two parts play similar roles in there respective structures.....Information perceiving information
11. Contracrostipunctus: truth is found in the feedback loop of I. When I is a perfect mirror, forward and backwards, converse and inverse, of what is projected, no matter how multifaceted the individual, you reach the same transcendence as Jonathon Livingston Seagull’s grey to white, Gandalf's grey to white, J. S, Bach's final Contrapunctius, Christ's resurrection.
12. Meaning requires context. A DNA genome can only have a mechanical ability to grow in to it's phoneme. In the DNA of man, exists exotic propensity for the initiation of thought, a higher degree of conscience separate from consciousness. That thought only has meaning within the context of all thought, whether consciously available to the subject thinker or not. The agent of thought is the trigger responsible for the word symbol God where with standing all it's variations, derivative meanings is the context of life for mankind. Where the mystery comes in to play is the context of an environment that nourishes man without his thought. We call this nature, the nature of our context within our context. The closer we come to understanding this the more we appreciate the mechanics of nature in the study of the mystery of the universe, God..
13. Is the pursuit of AI along the lines of programming possible when programming uses logic and within logic, a derivative of the mathematical sciences, looms Godel's incompleteness theorem that states the answer lay out side the equation? In other words logic can be mapped and intelligence cannot. Intelligence is when a being can think both logically and illogically to discover or really to possibly create a new axiom. Edison thought through 15,000 experiments logically before the light came on. I am curious if the eventual success had a pre ordained logic that was proved or was there accidental discoveries along the way. Logically and illogically as said is a paradox. Is there a string of logic that contains all truths within itself? Says Godel no. So must one defy logic to find truth. Is truth separate from meaning? Can there be meaning in things that are false?
14. If in all things that are not axiomatic having a possibility of contradicting each other when is it prudent to accept a "thing" on faith and when do you take the test to the "bottom" where the shouting match occurs?
15. In TNT Hofstadter states in the context of determining truth from that which is false that it is important to follow the rules and not one's knowledge of the passive meanings of the symbols, he further states the latter type of knowledge is invaluable in guiding the route of derivation.
I interpret this invaluable route to be that of intelligence of which is the essence of breaking through mans yet to be completed understanding of the universe. To do this would be to prove Godel’s incompleteness theorem to be false. Is breaking this paradox like transcending "apparent" realities such a time?
16. In the context of bottoming out in a recursive pattern does a man’s mind have a bottom? And if so and machines are made capable to run loops adnauseum is that intelligent life? Or is that analysis paralysis? Is not a continuous loop and a bottomless recursion the same thing of which both by there definition would be very limited in determining axioms?
17. Intelligence depends crucially on the (ability to create high-level descriptions of complex arrays, such as chess boards, television screens, printed pages or paintings."
18. On recursive-ness: because we find breaking all events and object down to it's core code not only too difficult but also in many cases void of meaning anyway we break it down to appropriate levels creating symbols and each level sends signals to other symbols creating new symbols which are all abstracts of reality. Your meaning of life is at best an abstract of mine.
19. Because man freely chooses which data to hold and which to discard and which to discard abstracts are the precise results of free will. Or is it instinctive will until you are awakened to this phenomena of man over all other species. Is this not what we mean by creation...we each create our own abstract of the world around us
20. As we ramble through the arithmoqueinification logic to rationalize supernatural numbers and find Lincoln's answer to how long a man’s legs should be; you come to a demonstrable bottoming out of recursive-ness. Is there a point where deriving an axiom without proving it becomes profitable? Or in the vernacular of Hofstadter, is there a ~profit in pursuit of supernatural numbers, the pursuit of numbers that have no unique definition?
21. When a computer can see three dimensions on a flat piece of paper like humans do the discussion on artificial intelligence may begin
22. Page 521. What RNA is to life itself, agents of the DNA message to ribosome, protein, and amino acids; are people's thoughts, the message between the synapse dendrites are to each other. The balance of life rests on a scale in the context of the universe. All things must be interpreted in the context of the whole.
23. If you were to go to the book store and open GEB to pages 533- 533 and comprehend Hofstadter's "Dogmap" you would begin to appreciate the essence of the book. It may be just enough to lure you not just in to this book but the world of cognitive science.
24. Page 582. It is certain that Hofstadter is circling around the mechanics and the definition of meaning. Then by page 582 he suggests that because if the endless connections to all possibilities in a decision, time is the one variable that renders the whole definition futile. However the mechanics remain sound.
25. Page 665-8. As Hofstadter discusses his epigenesis of the crab canon and describes the fission of thought (his) he draws a parallel to bio chemistry and implies through a parallel mapping that the construct of thought and life are replicas of each other in a self refererential way
26. The reason we need a mate is we are incapable of judging whether our rough system is peculiar or not through self reference.
Bibliography
1. Page 65 things become quite confusing as soon as your perceive :meaning” in the symbols which your are manipulating.
2. Page 87 Thus, at first sight, it seems that Godel has unearthed a hitherto unknown, but deeply significant, difference between human reasoning and mechanical reasoning. The mysterious discrepancy in the power of living and non living systems is mirrored in the discrepancy between the notion of truth, and that of theorem-hood…or at least that is the romantic way to view the situation.
3. Page 133 This is the crucial fact that distinguishes recursive definitions from circular ones. There is always some part of the definition which avoids selfe reference. So that the action of constructing an object which satisfies the definition will eventually bottom out.
4. Page 142 An agnostic friend of mine once was struck by G-plot’s infinitely many infinities that he called it “ a picture of God”, which don’t think is blasphemous at all.
5. Page 162 To put it as succinctly as possible, one view says that in order for DNA to have meaning, chemical contest is necessary; the other view says that only intelligence is necessary to reveal the “intrinsic meaning” of a strand of DNA.
6. Page 192 Once again, we are up against the issue which Lewis Carrol set forth in his Dialogue: you can’t go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over.
7. Page 193 in Propositional Calculus…rules are derived. It is a part of knowledge which we have about the system. That this rule always keeps you within the space of theorem needs proofs, of course – but such a proof is not like a derivation inside the system. It is a proof in the ordinary intuitive sense – a chain of reasoning carried out in the I-mode.
8. Page 197 More radical attempts abandon completely the quest for completeness or consistency, and try to mimic human reasoning with all its inconsistencies. Such research no longer has as its goal to provide a solid underpinning for mathematics, but purely to study human thought processes.
9. Page 210 Now the translations of “6 is even” are quite different strings and it is by no means obvious that theoremhood of any one of them is tied to theoremhood of any of the others….The evidence lies in our minds, since as humans, we almost automatically think about interpretations, not structural properties of formulas.
10. Page 228 Thus, it is important to embed TNT within a wider context, a context which enables new rules of inference to be derived, so that derivations can be speeded up. This would require formalization of the language in which rules of inference are expressed-that is, the metalanguage. And one could go considerably further. However, none of those speeding up tricks would make TNT any more powerful; they would simply make it more usable.
11. Page 285 or to take a sequence of images on a television screen which shows Shirley McLean laughing. When we watch that sequence, we know that we are actually looking not at a woman, but it is the furthest thing from out min. We have these two wildly opposing representations of what is on the screen, but that does not confuse us. We can just shut one out, and pay attention to the other-which is what all of us do, Which is “more real”? It depends on whether you’re a human, a dog, a computer, or a television set.
12. Page 287 intelligence depends crucially on the ability to create high-level descriptions of complex arrays such as chessboards, television screens, printed pages.
13. Page 302 This is kind of primordial self-knowledge which is so obvious that it is hard to see it all: it is like being conscious that the air is there. We never really bother to think about what might cause these defects of our minds: namely, the organization of our brains. To suggest ways of reconciling the software of the mind with the hardware of the brain is a main goal of this book.
14. Page 309 In coming Chapters, where we discuss the brain, we shall examine whether the brain’s top level-the mind-can be understood without understanding the lower levels on which it both depends and does not depend. Are there laws of thinking which are “sealed off” from the lower laws that govern the microscopic activity in the cells of the brain? Can mind be “skimmed” off of the brain and transplanted into other systems? Or is it possible to unravel thinking processes into neat and modular subsystems? Is the brain more like an atom, a renormalized electron, a nucleus, a neutron, or a quirk? Is consciousness an epiphenomenon? To understand the mind, must one go all the way down to the level of the nerve cells?
15. Page 322 I find it much easier to change points of view. When I do so, vocabulary of technology comes back: the MEANING of the caste distribution and PURPOSFULNESS of signals. This not only happens when I think of aunt colonies, but also when I think about my own brain and other brains. However, with some effort I can always remember the other point of view if necessary, and drain all these systems of meaning too.
16. Page 349 on Modules Which Mediate Thought Processes: Philosophically, the most important question of all this: What would the existence of modules-for instance, a grandmother module-tell us? Would this give us any insight into the phenomenon of our own consciousness? Or would it still leave us as much in the dark about what consciousness is, an does knowledge that a brain is built out of neurons and glia? The crucial step that needs to be taken is from a low-level – neuron to neuron – description of the same state of brain. ….we want to shift the description of the brain state from signal level to symbol level.
a. My thought; I am not sold on this as I get from the same material that intelligence is a construct of colliding ideas at the messenger level-the RNA level, not the DNA symbol level.
17. Page 349 It is an interesting question whether in each symbol there are certain core neurons, which invariably fire when the symbol is activated. If such a core set of neurons exists, we might refer to it as the “invariant core” of the symbol.
18. Page 355 Sometimes conditions can arise where two previously unlinked symbols get activated simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion. The may fit together so well that it seems like an inevitable union. And a single new symbol is formed by the tight interaction of the two old symbols. If this happens, it would be fair to say that the new symbol “always had been there but never had been activated” – or should one say it has been “created”?
19. Page 360 Our facility for making instances out of classes and classes out of instances lies at the basis of our intelligence, and it is one of the great differences between human thought and the thought processes of other animals.
20. Page 378 reliable pathways of (thought or reason) are what constitute knowledge. Pieces of knowledge merge gradually with beliefs, which are also represented by reliable pathways, but perhaps ones which are more unsusceptible to replacement if, so to speak, a bridge goes out, or there is a heavy fog. This leaves us with fancies, lies, falsities…
21. Page 381 You will again chunk these programs in your mind, looking for conceptual hardware, you are not comparing software-you are comparing “etherware” the pure concepts which lie back of the software. There is some sort of abstract “conceptual skeleton” which must be lifted out of the low levels before you can carry out a meaningful comparison of two programs in different computer languages, of two animals, or of sentences in different natural languages.
22. Page 383 The physical status of a brain, if read correctly, gives information telling not which pathways could be followed, but rather how much resistance could be offered along the way.
23. Page 385 To be precise, by “subsystem”, I mean a constellation of symbols, each of which can be separately activated under the control of the subsystem itself. The image I wish to convey of a subsystem is that it functions almost as an independent “subbrain”, equipped with its own repertoire of symbols which can trigger each other internally.
24. Page 389 Although conscious beings have the power of going on, we do not wish to exhibit this simply as a succession of tasks they are able to perform, nor do we see the mind as an infinite sequence of selves and super-selves. Rather, we insist that a conscious being is a unity, and though we talk about parts of the mind, we do so only as a metaphor, and will not allow it to be taken literally.
25. Page 407 the pq system does not include enough of the core truths of N to count as “a number theory.” What, then, are these core truths of N? They are the primitive recursive truths: that means the involve only predictably terminating calculations.
26. Page 429 If we accept CT-Thesis, we have to conclude that Gloop is a myth – there are no restrictions to remove in Floop, no ways to increase its power by unshackling it as we did ion Bloop.
This puts us in the uncomfortable position of asserting people can calculate Reddiag [N] for any value of N, but there is no way to program a computer to do so. For if it could be done at all, it could be done in Floop – and by construction, it can’t be done in Floop. This conclusion is so peculiar that it should cause us to investigate very carefully the pillars on which it rests. And one of them if you will recall, was our shaky assumption that there is a decision procedure which can tell terminating form non terminating Floop programs. The idea of such a decision procedure already seemed suspect, when we saw the existence would allow all programs of number theory to be solved in a uniform way. Now we have double the reason for believing that any termination test is a myth – that there is no way to put Floop programs in a centrifuge and separate out terminators from non terminators.
27. Page 438 The first key idea of Godel’s proof is the deep discovery that there are strings of TNT which can be interpreted as speaking about other strings of TNT; in short, that TNT as a language, is capable of “introspection”, or self scrutiny. This is what comes from Godel-numbering. The second key idea is that the property of self scrutiny can be entirely concentrated into a single string; thus that string’s sole focus of attention is itself. This “focusing trick” is traceable, in essence, to Cantors diagonal method.
28. Page 479 In Zen too, we can see this preoccupation with the concept of transcending the system.
29. Page 501 But recall that in Chapter VI, we made the concept of “intrinsic meaning” dependent on a hypothesized universal notion of intelligence. The idea was that, in determining the intrinsic meaning of an object, we could disregard some types of outer message – those which would be universally understood. That is, if the decoding mechanism seems fundamental enough, in some ill-defined sense, then the inner message which it lets be revealed is the only meaning that counts.
30. Page 503 Clearly an individual is never identical to either of its parents: why, then, is the act of making young called “self reproduction”? The answer is that there is a course grained isomorphism between parent and child; it is an isomorphism which preservers information about species, Thus what is reproduced is the class, rather than the instance.
31. Page 517 As was mentioned above, in many cells, DNA, the ruler of the cell, dwells in its private “Throne Room” the nucleus of the cell. But most of the “living” in the cell goes on outside of the nucleus, namely the cytoplasm – the “ground” to the nucleus “figure” In particular, enzymes which make practically every life process go, are manufactured by ribosome in the cytoplasm, and they do most of their work in the cytoplasm.
32. Page 519 Now when a strand of mRNA, after it escapes into the cytoplasm, encounters a ribosome, a very intricate and beautiful process called translation takes place. It could be said that this process of translation is at the very heart pf all life, and there are many mysteries connected with it.. But essence it is easy to describe. First let us give a picturesque image, and then render it more precise. Imagine the mRNA to be like a long piece of magnetic recording tape, and the ribosome to be like the tape recorder. As the tape pass through the playing head of the recorder, it is “read” and converted into music, or other sounds. Thus magnetic markings are “translated” into notes. Similarly,, when a “tape” of mRNA passes through the “playing head” of a ribosome, the “notes” which are produced are amino acids, and the “pieces of music” which they make up are proteins. This is what translation is all about.
33. Page 541 Henkin Sentences and Viruses: Now both of these contrasting types of self-reference in molecular biology have their counter parts in mathematical logic. We have already discussed the analogue of self-defeating phages – namely, strings of the Godal type, which assert their its own unproducibility within specific formal systems. But one can also make a counterpart sentence to a real phage: the phage asserts its own producibility in a specific formal system. Sentences of this type are called Henkin Sentences, after the mathematical logician Leon Henkin. They can be constructed exactly along lines of Godal sentences, the only difference being the omission of a negation. One begins with an “uncle” pf course: 3a3a’:
34. Page 547 Illustrative of this is the amazing fact that in biological systems,all the various features necessary for self replication (viz language, program, data, interpreter and processor) cooperate to such a degree that all of them are replicated simultaneously – which show how much deeper is biological self-rep’ing than anything else yet devised along those lines by humans.
35. Page 559 We have come to the point where we can develop one of the main theses of this book: that every aspect of thinking can be viewed as a high-level description of a system which, on a low level, is governed by simple, even formal rules. The system is of course is the brain – unless one is speaking of thought processes flowing in another medium, such as computer circuits.
36. Page 577 There is no reason to believe that a computer’s faultlessly functioning hardware could not support high-level symbolic behavior which would represent such complex states as confusion, forgetting, or appreciation of beauty. It would require that there be massive subsystems interacting with each other according to a complex logic. The overt behavior could appear either rational or irrational, but underneath it would be the performance of reliable, logical hardware.
37. Page 582 by contrast, the semantic aspects of form are those which cannot be tested in predictable lengths of time: the require open ended test. Such an aspect is theoremhood of TNT-strings, as we have seen. You cannot just apply some standard test to a string and find out it is a theorem. The act of pulling out a string’s meaning involves, in essence, establishing all the implications of its connections to all other strings, and this leads, to be sure, down open-ended trail. So semantic properties are connected to open ended searches because an object’s meaning is not localized within the object itself. This is not to say that no understanding of any object’s meaning is possible until the end of time, for as time passes, more and more of the meaning unfolds. However there are always aspects of its meaning which will remain hidden arbitrarily long.
38. Page 618 Representing Knowledge In a Logical Formalism: The basic operations in such representations are, not surprisingly, formalizations of deductive reasoning. Logical deductions can be made using rules of inference analogous to some of those in TNT. Querying the system about some particular idea sets up a goal in the form of a string to be derived.
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