My admiration for Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop," the subject of my previous post, is evidenced by the fact that I just carted the 410 pages to Maui—adding the weight of this hardcover book to my 50 pound suitcase limit, every ounce of which I'm going to need on our return trip after our usual rampaging through Lahaina t-shirt shops.
But I wanted to ponder my strange loopiness some more while on vacation. At the moment I'm listening to Napili Bay waves, rather than Oregon rain, but the same "I" seemingly is doing the listening though its body has traveled far today.
Or so I've always thought.
Hofstadter calls this the "caged bird" metaphor. The cage is the body, or cranium, and the bird is the soul. There's one bird to one cage. And if you're spiritually inclined, supposedly the bird can be freed from the cage.
Satori! Enlightenment! Salvation!
But this presumes that the bird is real. There's an "I" separate and distinct from the physical matter that comprises the brain and the rest of the body. What if there isn't? What if instead of a caged bird, we're actually…
Even Hofstadter has trouble finishing the sentence.
It is not easy to find a strong, vivid metaphor to put up against the caged-bird metaphor. I have entertained quite a few possibilities, involving such diverse entities as bees, tornadoes, flowers, stars, and embassies. The image of a swarm of bees or of a nebula clearly conveys the idea of diffuseness, but there is no clear counterpart to the cage (or rather, to the head or brain or cranium). (A hive is not what I mean, because a flying swarm is not at all inside its hive).
The basic problem is that when you go looking for the "I," it's impossible to pin down. That's what leads Hofstadter to say that the "I" is a hallucination hallucinated by a hallucination.
Sounds a lot like Buddhism and quite a few other maya-embracing philosophies. The difference, though, is that Hofstadter apparently doesn't offer a way out of the illusion (I've got a few more chapters to read). He strikes me as a Buddhist who doesn't believe in enlightenment, just the emptiness of individuality.
Hofstadter's favorite image concerning the sense of "I" comes from his experience of squeezing his hand around a pack of about a hundred envelopes that were in a box. When he did this, he felt a marble in the midst of them. Strange.
He tried to shake the marble out from the envelopes. No luck. Then he went through them one by one and found that each envelope was empty. Even stranger. Upon closer inspection, he realized that at the vertex of each envelope's flap there was a triple layer of paper and a thin layer of glue.
This area couldn't be compressed as much as the rest of the envelope. So when a hundred of them were aligned precisely and pressed together, voila, a marble. Or rather, an epiphenomenon that felt uncannily like a marble.
An epiphenomenon…is a collective and unitary-seeming outcome of many small, often invisible or unperceived, quite possibly utterly unexpected, events. In other words, an epiphenomenon could be said to be a large-scale illusion created by the collusion of many small and indisputably non-illusory events.
Just like the "I." According to Hofstadter my sense that I'm indisputably me (which for you, obviously, is that you're you—not me) arises from countless experiences from birth until now. Each of us is way more than a hundred experience-envelopes stacked up together.
That me-bump we feel in the center of us, it's as real as the marble.
The problem is that in a sense, an "I" is something created out of nothing. And since making something out of nothing is never possible, the alleged something turns out to be an illusion, in the end, but a very powerful one, like the marble among the envelopes.
However, the "I" is an illusion far more entrenched and recalcitrant than the marble illusion, because in the case of "I," there is no simple revelatory act corresponding to turning the box upside down and shaking it, then peering in between the envelopes and finding nothing solid and spherical in there.
We don't have access to the inner workings of our brains. And so the only perspective we have on our "I"-ness comes from the counterpart to squeezing all the envelopes at once, and that perspective says it's real!
I love it. And I hate it.
For me, pondering Hofstadter's book has been like getting on the best ride in the Existential Theme Park. It started off with some exciting ups and downs, which I enjoyed. But then I hit the part where you feel like everything has been pulled out from under you.
Whoa, momma! Stop the ride! No, wait, I want more! Changed my mind again, stop the freaking ride, NOW!
On the whole, I like the feeling of free-falling. Except when I don't. "I"s are like that—fickle. More on this later, after the jet lag wears off and the warm water wears on.
Hi Brian,
Saying that the "I" is a hallucination seems pretty close to the Buddhist idea of no-self to me. As I understand it, Advaita teaches that there is one Self (masquerading as innumerable objects), while early versions of Buddhism say that there is no self (objects are empty). David Loy argues that in either case, the subject-object distinction is broken down - so the end result is the same (non-duality).
Advaita and Buddhism both seem to have difficulty explaining enlightenment. The Self (Advaita) doesn't need to be enlightened, while the self (Buddhism) cannot be enlightened because it does not exist. The closest that I have got to understanding this is that enlightenment is a state of mind which sees the unreality of the self.
One analogy that occurred to me recently is that in the same way that God (as creator) is an illusory explanation for the world, so "I" (as a centre of experience) is an illusory explanation for the mind. Superficially, we imagine that the world has a cause and the mind has a centre.
Basically, I'm just thinking (and not-thinking) my way through this stuff. I enjoy reading your blog, and I have a copy of your book on Plotinus - which I haven't read yet.
Love, Jeremy
Posted by: Jeremy | April 24, 2007 at 09:04 AM
When we say 'I am' we are making an object of the conceiving subject. It appears that we exist as objects as long as this 'I am' is seen as a subject which, being conceived, becomes an object. This is the mechanism by which we appear to be...the merry-go-round upon which we ride.
So what/where is the subject that conceives 'I am', the object? The only subject that cannot be an object is that which cannot be conceived...the absence of our presence and the absence of the presence of our absence.
In order to be we must project ourselves as purely conceptual objects, phantoms, which we cannot actually be except as appearance only.
When subject and object are seen as one, we become both simultaneously...and this is why, not being, we are!
I am that, but I am not!
Posted by: Tucson Bob | April 24, 2007 at 09:10 AM
Can't you be like all the other strange loops visiting Maui and just go to a Luao. Don't forget to put some SPF 55 on your brain. :-)
Posted by: Marcel Cairo | April 24, 2007 at 09:32 AM
Jeremy and Tucson Bob, good comments. Hofstadter addresses the Buddhism/Taoism connection re. enlightenment in a way that makes sense to me.
Namely, that it too is an illusion. We can never get down to rock-bottom non-conceptual reality. Humans aren't configured to perceive quarks and other sub-atomic phenomena.
So even when you simply chop wood and carry water, you're engrossed in the illusion of wood and water. That's why I said Hofstadter is Buddhism without the enlightenment.
But from what you guys said, it sounds like Buddhism itself can be conceived as being without enlightenment.
Marcel, don't fear. I spend most of my time on Maui acting exactly like the typical tourist strange loop. Am about to head for the beach and loop out on the sand and ocean for a couple of hours.
The luau's aren't very vegetarian friendly. I enjoy the entertainment, but not the roast pig and all the other carnivorous fare.
Posted by: Brian | April 24, 2007 at 12:33 PM
Are any of you aware that science seems to be drawing towards this conclusion?
Consciousness is an emergent system, akin to a bee colony, comprised of a few thousand dumb bees (neurons). An individual bee or neuron produces and does nothing. Several thousand do something entirely different than one could ever do.
In my mind, regardless of what Hofstadter's bee analogy is, I interpreted it this way. A cloud of bees takes on a certain form as a circle or ellipse but individually, there is nothing. If the bees dispersed, there would be nothing in between them, holding them together.
Posted by: Ashwin | April 24, 2007 at 02:45 PM
Fun!
Let's try these analogies for the "I":
1. Coronal mass ejections (or CMEs) are huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours.
2. A tessellation is created when a shape is repeated over and over again covering a plane without any gaps or overlaps.
3. collective movements are common phenomena in human behaviour, particularly economic collective choices, reasons of social events, e.g. fashions, socio-economic herding, and possibly market fluctuations.
Just like Hofstadter's "bees, tornadoes, flowers, stars, and embassies," and nebulae.
I see patterns everywhere because I am a pattern. Epiphenomena are described to me as marbles within paper mounds, as kaliedoscopos: I am epiphenomenon and only perceive what I understand.
The elves are giggling. ALL OF THEM!
Posted by: Edward | April 24, 2007 at 03:37 PM
Okay, so this today, the elves are chanting a challenge/response, "Chicken!" "Egg!" "Chicken!" "Egg!"
Is the environment I perceive previous to my perception, (tree falls in forest, etc.) and so the "I" another expression of pattern dancing? Or, (as Tuscon Bob so accurately and succinctly describes,) is the pathology of perceptual necessity part of the wholeness of creation?
Did "I" make the universe, or did the universe express "I"?
Since being and non-being arise simultaneously, both of these conditions are the same, and I am all and nothing.
"Chicken!" "Egg!" "Chicken!" "Egg!"
Posted by: Edward | April 25, 2007 at 09:32 AM
Other than Aristotle, who says you can't be both "I" AND "not I"?
Posted by: Brendan | April 25, 2007 at 02:08 PM
Thanks for this & the other post regarding Hofstsadter's book, Brian. I had intended on checking it out after David Lane mentioned it on RSS. You seem to have given a nice synopsis on the general content of the book.
I remember reading Godel, Escher, Bach many many years ago. It was indeed a very difficult read (I was a mid-teen, which prob didn't help!). The one thing that really struck me about that book (as I understood it), was the suggestion that the one single thing in creation I had considered 'absolute' or objectively 'true'...mathematics....was also a self-contained system, based on unprovable assumptions. IE, maths too is an illusion, in relation to the absolute! (Godel's incompleteness theorem?). This, then, pulls the rug out from under all our assumed 'truths', scientific as well as religous (quantum uncertainty also seems to indicate this?)
Ahh, what a strange world/existence we are experiencing.....
Posted by: Manjit | April 27, 2007 at 04:04 PM
Namaste,
Just visited www.sentient.org
A good site.
Posted by: Nikhilesh | April 29, 2007 at 10:10 PM
'WHO' IS THINKING 'YOUR' THOUGHTS ?
Thinking can be found. But, thoughts
are physical things.
Science has now proven consciousness
is temporal. Consciousness is a series
of individual sparks. Like
the propellers on an aeroplane,
it gives the illusion of continuity.
So, consciousness is an effect, not
a cause. Like wine is fermented from
grapes.
No 'I' can be found, only physical thoughts.
And consciousness is temporal. It is
not the so called 'Self'.
The brain personalizes thought. Thought
takes on a 'persona'. But, does impersonal
thought have a 'persona"?
Instead of a 'who', we find a 'what'.
The personalization of impersonal thought
is the fatal flaw in man.
When a person realizes they have no 'self',
all efforts for greed, power, deceit, fall
away by themselves.
This is effortless. The person can no longer
wax a 'self' they realize has no existence.
Like Santa Claus is dispelled, so is the self. It all 'happens' at once. How long did
it take you to realize after you found out Santa was a myth, did you act nice and not naughty ? We no longer waited for Santa
to come down the chimney.
Instantly all the Santa myths disappeared.
The Santa myth could no longer get us to
react.
And, so it is with the 'self'. Once realized
the self does not exist, it cannot get us
to react.
Nor, can the 'selfs' of others.
Everything is seen as moving, but
there are no 'movers'.
Everything has been depersonalized.
The great myth is finished with instantly.
There are no stages and no path.
A person is either totally there, or totally
not 'there'.
No God is found upon realization. No soul
is found and it is unknown if an afterlife exists.
So, why bother with realization ?
Those whom have reached this point very
rarely teach how it is done. Instead, they
seen to want to help humanity instead.
They do not say become enlightened. Instead,
they might say, "My friend, I have been down the road you now travel, here is what
I have found and this will not help you."
They tend to just guide people back on track.
They cannot be humble, because they have
no self to resist. They cannot be either
good nor evil, because nothing tempts them
that would hurt another human being, or animal.
Posted by: mike williams | January 17, 2009 at 03:19 AM