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Apr 18 2007

Creating the I: The Role of Memory

Posted by: Robert Sandberg in The Self, philosophy, tags: ,

In his newest book, Douglas Hofstader attempts to define the difficult-to-define, self-aware mind, the “I.” The entire volume comprises his attempt. Not that being difficult-to-define is all bad. Its being difficult-to-define has made possible exclamations like the Firesign Theater’s Radio Theater’s: Who am us, anyway?

At the close of chapter 6 Hofstadter writes:

The depth and complexity of human memory is staggeringly rich. Little wonder, then, that when a human being, possessed of such a rich armamentarium of concepts and memories with which to work, turns its attention to itself, as it inevitably must, it produces a self-model that is extraordinarily deep and tangled. That deep and tangled self-model is what “I”-ness is all about.

Douglas Hofstadter
I Am a Strange Loop

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