An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following ''I am a Strange Loop''

		Understanding writes in reply to Mike A.: RE: Totally unsatisfying! You've completely missed DRH's point in his discussion of the 'soul'. He, in Strange Loop, explicitly says that when he speaks of the 'soul', he does not refer to the orthodox meaning of the word (that is, the religious, ''magic'' essence in people), but refers rather to an embodiment of what separates the human consciousness from a fly's consciousness. Hoftstadter's 'soul' is the 'I' he mentions in the title; it is the you that is unique to you, the me that is unique to me, and the sentience shared by all human life, as opposed to the seeming lack of sentience that exists in a tree.
		[381] Posted on Thursday, 30 April 2009 at 17:19 GMT [Reply to this] [Permalink]