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Tags: hofstadter

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  Gödel, Escher, Bach

  An Eternal Golden Braid

  by Douglas R. Hofstadter

  Douglas Hofstadter’s book is concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human... (more)
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  I Am a Strange Loop

  by Douglas R. Hofstadter

  Douglas Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach --an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the... (more)
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  Metamagical Themas

  Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern

  by Douglas R. Hofstadter

  A bestselling collection of brilliant and quirky essays, on subjects ranging from biology to grammar to artificial intelligence, that are unified by one primary concern: the way people perceive and think.
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  The Mind's I

  Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul

  by Douglas R. Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennett

  Brilliant, shattering, mind-jolting, The Mind's I is a searching, probing nook--a cosmic journey of the mind--that goes deeply into the problem of self and self-consciousness as anything written in our time. From verbalizing chimpanzees to scientific speculations involving machines with souls, from the mesmerizing, maze-like fiction of Borges to the tantalizing, dreamlike fiction of Lem and Princess... (more)
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  Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

  by Richard Hofstadter

  "The most comprehensive, succinct, and well-written one-volume treatment of the subject now available." -- Walter Laqueur
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  Gödel's proof,

  by Ernest Nagel, Douglas R. Hofstadter

  "A little masterpiece of exegesis." - Nature "An excellent nontechnical account of the substance of Gödel's celebrated paper." -American Mathematical Society In 1931 Kurt Gödel published his fundamental paper, "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of -Principia Mathematica- and Related Systems." This revolutionary paper challenged certain basic assumptions underlying much research in mathematics and... (more)
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  Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies

  Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought

  by Douglas R. Hofstadter

  "Will change your idea of what it is to be creative and even what it is to be human."--(William Poundstone, New York Times Book Review )
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  The Age of Reform

  From Bryan to F.D.R.

  by Richard Hofstadter

  This book is a landmark in American political thought. It examines the passion for progress and reform that colored the entire period from 1890 to 1940 -- with startling and stimulating results. it searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.