Friday, February 11, 2011

Strange Loops

"To make an 'I' you need meanings, and to make meanings you need perception and categories... The closing of the strange loop of human selfhood is deeply dependent upon the level-changing leap that is perception, which means categorization, and therefore, the richer and more powerful an organism's categorization equipment is, the more realized and rich will be its self. Conversely, the poorer an organism's repertoire of categories, the more impoverished will be the self, until in the limit there simply is no self at all... In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference."
-Douglas Hofstadter
Consciousness Researcher
Author of Godel, Escher, Bach
(1945 - )

3 comments:

Joy Mystic said...

Here is some added thoughts:

The mind classifies what the body’s eyes bring to it according to preconceived values, judging where each sense datum fits best. What basis could be faultier than this? Unrecognized by itself, asked to be given what will fit into these categories. And having done so, it concludes that the categories must be true....

Read more @ http://www.willtoknow.com/will-to-know/ ~ (sources included)

xmeesx said...

Wow!
This looks like a drawing from Fischer..

Mind blowing in my opinion!

bryan said...

what a great shaped stair well. just waiting to be shot