Name: The Mind's I
ISBN: 9780465030910

The Mind's I

With contributions from Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Dawkins, John Searle, and Robert Nozick, The Mind's I explores the meaning of self and consciousness through the perspectives of literature, artificial intelligence, psychology, and other disciplines. In selections that range from fiction to scientific speculations about thinking machines, artificial intelligence, and the nature of the brain, Hofstadter and Dennett present a variety of conflicting visions of the self and the soul as explored through the writings of some of the twentieth century's most renowned thinkers.

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rwmjMay 2026

The Mind's I (a collection of essays) or I Am a Strange Loop are probably more appropriate reading here.

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rwmjDec 2025

There's a fun short story about this topic in a book called "The Mind's I" [1] edited by Hofstadter and Dennett. Unfortunately the Internet Archive copy is locked and the cat is sitting on my lap so I can't grab my copy right now, but I think it's possibly "The Soul of Mark III Beast" by Terrel Miedaner.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I

Update: Found a PDF: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/339/Mark.pdf

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hsodSep 2025

Douglas Hofstadter wrote an essay about this essay in the book “The Mind’s I” which I thoroughly enjoyed reading even if a lot of it is beyond me. There’s a somewhat janky OCR version here http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-24-what-is-it-l...

Classic Hofstadter, he introduces a concept called a “Be-Able Thing” (BAT for short)

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0_____0Aug 2025

Looking at this thread, it's pretty obvious that most folks here haven't really given any thought as to the nature of consciousness. There are people who are thinking, really thinking about what it means to be conscious.

Thought experiment - if you create an indistinguishable replica of yourself, atom-by-atom, is the replica alive? I reckon if you met it, you'd think it was. If you put your replica behind a keyboard, would it still be alive? Now what if you just took the neural net and modeled it?

Being personally annoyed at a feature is fine. Worrying about how it might be used in the future is fine. But before you disregard the idea of conscious machines wholesale, there's a lot of really great reading you can do that might spark some curiosity.

this gets explored in fiction like 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' and my personal favorite short story on this matter by Stanislaw Lem [0]. If you want to read more musings on the nature of consciousness, I recommend the compilation put together by Dennet and Hofstader[1]. If you've never wondered about where the seat of consciousness is, give it a try.

Thought experiment: if your brain is in a vat, but connected to your body by lossless radio link, where does it feel like your consciousness is? What happens when you stand next to the vat and see your own brain? What about when the radio link fails suddenly fails and you're now just a brain in a vat?

[0] The Seventh Sally or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good https://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/analytic/Lem1979.html (this is a 5 minute read, and fun, to boot).

[1] The Mind's I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul. Douglas R Hofstadter, Daniel C. Dennett.

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BaeocystinMar 2025

Seconded. Blindsight remains one of my favorite meditations on the Mind's I (not a typo) that I've read.

Echopraxia, the 'sequel' (the events occur at the same time as the events in Blindsight, with a completely different group of characters) has grown on me over time, too. At the very least, it gave me a great appreciation for Portia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(spider)

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sitkackFeb 2025

Mind's I is a much better book, GEB is one of those books that everyone has that no one has read. Read the Cliff's Notes for GEB and spend your time on Mind's I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I

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