being someone else: economy-class version; with a “foreign accent”
beings: defined as systems having representational universality; modeling other beings
belief: as experienced by a zombie; shared by two people
believability of The True View
Berkeley, University of California at
Bernstein, Jeremy
Berry, G. G.
Berry’s paradox: as breeding ground for Gödel’s theorem; as formalized by Chaitin; as strange-loop candidate
Bierce, Ambrose
“Bigger they are, harder they fall”
bile, single-edged or double-edged
biologists paying attention to informational rather than physical level of genes
birds saved by young Schweitzer
black-and-white smudges: as early teleportation technology; as soul-shards
black-belt maneuver by Gödel
“black holes” in video feedback
bleu blanc rouge (colors of the French flag)
blocked infinite regress
blood, nonexperienced quale of
“blooming, buzzing confusion” (Wm. James)
Bloomington, Indiana
blue humpback
blueprint used in self-replicating machine
blurriness of everyday concepts
boat with endless succession of leaks
bodies vs. souls
body parts initiate self-representation
Bohr atom, as stepping stone en route to quantum mechanics
Bohr, Niels
boiling water, reliability of
Bonaparte, see Napoleon
bon mots: by Carol Hofstadter; by David Moser
“Book of nature written in mathematics” (Galileo)
Boole, George
boot-removal analogy
boundaries between souls, blurriness of
boundaries, macroscopic, as irrelevant to particles
box with flaps making loop
Brabner, George
brain activity: hiddenness of substrate of; modeled computationally; need for high-level view of; obviousness of high-level view of
brain-in-vat scenario
brain research, nature of
brain-scanning gadgets
brain structures
brains: compared to hearts; complexity of, as relevant to consciousness; controlling bodies directly vs. indirectly; eerieness of; evolution of; as fusion of two half-brains; as inanimate; inhabited by more than one “I”; interacting via ideas; main; as multi-level systems; not responsible for color qualia; perceiving multiple environments simultaneously; receiving sensory input directly or indirectly; resembling inert sponges; unlikely substrate for interiority
Braitenberg, Valentino
bread becoming a gun
Brown, Charlie
Brownian motion
Brünn, Austria (birthplace of Kurt Gödel)
buck stopping at “I”
Bugeaud, Yann
bunnies as edible beings
“burstwise advance in evolution” (Sperry)
Bushmiller, Ernie
butterflies: not respecting precinct boundaries; in orchard, as metaphor for human soul
Buzzaround Betty
C
caged-bird metaphor; as analogous to Newtonian physics; hints at wrongness of; as ingrained habit; at level of countries and cultures; metaphors opposed to; normally close to correct; as reinforced by language; temptingness of
Cagey’s doubly-hearable line
cake whose pieces all taste bad, as inferrred by analogy
candles
cantata aria
Cantor, Georg
capital punishment
Capitalized Essences; canceled
careenium; growing up; self-image of; two views of; unsatisfactory to skeptics
Carnap, Rudolf
Carol-and-Doug: as higher-level entity; joint mind of; shared dreads and dreams of
Carolness, survival of
Carol-symbol in Doug’s brain: being vs. representing a person; triggerability of
cars: as high-level objects; pushed around by desires
Cartesian Eggo
Cartesian Ego; as commonsensical view; fading of
Cartesian Ergo
Cartier-Bresson, Henri
Caspian Gemstones, allegory of
casual façade as Searlian ploy
Catcher in the Rye, The (Salinger)
categories and symbols; see also repertoires
categorization mechanisms: converting complexity into simplicity; as determining size of self; efficiency of
Caulfield, Holden
causality: bottoming out in “I”; buck of, stopping at “I”; of dogmas in triggering wars; and insight; schism between two types of; stochasticity of in everyday life; tradeoffs in; upside-down; see also downward causality
causal potency: of ideas in brain; of meanings of PM strings; of patterns
“causal powers of the brain”, semantic
cell phones as universal machines
Center for Research into Consciousness and Cognetics
Central Consciousness Bank
central loop of cognition
cerulean sardine
chain of command in brain
chainium (dominos), causality in
Chaitin, Greg
Chalmers, David; zombie twin of
chameleonic nature: of integers; of universal machines
Chantal Duplessix, seeing pixel-patterns as events; missing second level of Aimable’s remarks
chaos, potential, in number theory
Chaplin twins, (Freda and Greta)
character structure of an individual
Chávez, César
chemistry: bypassed in explanation of heredity and reproduction; of carbon as supposed key to consciousness; reduced to physics; virtual, inside computers
“chemistry” (interpersonal); enabling people to live inside each other; as function of musical taste alignment; as highly real causal agent; as “hooked atoms”; lack of, between people
“chicken” (meat) vs. chickens
chickens as edible creatures
children: as catalysts to soul merger of parents; as having fewer hunekers than adults; self-awareness of
chimpanzees
chinchillas
Chinese people, as spread-out entity
Chinese Room
chirpy notes and deep notes interchanged
Chopin, Frédéric; étude Op. 25 no. 4 in A minor; étude Op. 25 no. 11 in A minor; nostalgia of; pieces by, as soul-shards of; survival of
chord–angle theorem
Christiansen, Winfield
church bells
Church’s theorem
cinnamon-roll aroma in airport corridor
circular reasoning, validity of, in video feedback
circumventing bans by exploiting flexible substrates
clarity as central goal
Class A vs. Class B prime numbers
classical view of human identity, see Cartesian Ego, caged-bird metaphor
clouds: interpreted in sophisticated and simple-minded ways; unconsciousness of
club: of all prime numbers; of all wff numbers
coarse-grained copies of a soul
coarse-grainedness: of others’ souls inside us; of perception; in video feedback
codons in DNA
coffee: tracked in real time by symbols in brain; turned into theorems by mathematicians
“Cogito ergo sum”
cognition, central loop of
Cohn, John H. E.
coincidences in mathematics
coin-flipping, as robust statistical phenomenon
collages, curious
collective phenomena, as valid causes
colloidal particles
color feelings as subjective inventions
colors triggering knurking or glebbing
columns in visual cortex
combustion en
gines
comet approaching Jupiter
communication ease between people, factors influencing
communication rate between brains: as determining number of souls present; hypothetically tweaked in thought experiments
communication rate between hemispheres as determining degree of unity of brain
communication, techniques for
compassion; etymology of the word
completeness of PM, hope for
complexity threshold for universality
comprehensibility as crucial for survival
compression of KG to humanly graspable size
computational universality
“computer” as merely a historic term
computer searches vs. proofs
computers: as computing devices; invisibility of computation within; as non-computing devices; programming of; Stanford University’s only
concepts: activation of; as brain structures; embodied in simmballs; handed to people on silver platter; nestedness of
Condition humaine, La (Malraux)
cone: of consciousness; of souledness
conscience: close link of concept and word to consciousness; of dogs, lions, and mosquitoes
consciousness: as an add-on feature to a brain; allegedly missing from my tale; another person’s, inside one’s own head; apparent but unreal; as automatic emergent consequence of brain design; as close relative of conscience; cone representing levels of; disintegrating; distributedness of; dollops of; equated with thinking; friendships, as criterial for; as illusion; locus, absence of; measured by musical taste; as mirage; not merely acting and claiming to be, but being; organic chemistry as source of; physicality of; as quantum phenomenon; “right stuff ” as source of; shades of gray in; and strange loops; as thinking; threshold for; vs. reflexes; the very stuff of
Consciousness, Capitalized Essence of
Consciousness Explained (Dennett)
consistency of PM: certainty of; hope for
consistency of rock base of KJ
content: fed into “empty” feedback loop
contingent facts in geology but not math
continua of consciousness and souledness
control of your body by my brain
cookies that all taste good, by analogy
copies of another person’s memories, fidelity of
copycats, borrowing from others
core me-ness
corona during soul eclipse; soular
corridors; helical; truncated vs. endless
Cosby, Bill
counterfactuals: in formation of human self; by Stanley
counting, ill-definedness of
country vs. people
cows: as edible beings; experience of purpleness of; sacred
creativity vs. rigid rules
credit card, understanding of
crimes against animals
critical mass of soul-shards needed to qualify as some kind of survival
crystal lattice of atoms, as metaphor
C-3PO (robot)
cuteness
cyclic refilling of leaky flush toilet
cynicism, potential, on reader’s part
D
Dahl, Roald
Dalí, Salvador
dance of simmballs as thought
dance of symbols: as constituting another’s soul; as constituting consciousness; perceived by yet other symbols; as thought
darts thrown at text, causing rewriting
David and Lisa
Davies, Dennis
Dawkins, Richard
dear eater
death of Carol Hofstadter
death’s sting, reduced
Debussy, Claude
decision procedures
decisions as votes
deconstructing the “I” à la Zen
dedicated: machines; music boxes
Deep Blue (chess-playing computer)
deepest beliefs of humans involve macro-level concepts
De Morgan, Augustus
Dennett, Daniel C.; email exchange between author and; on his friend’s “desperate lark”; putting motto into friend’s mouth; teleportation fantasy by; “Where Am I?” story by; on zombies
Dennis the Menace, on leg that’s asleep
Descartes, René
descriptions of integers: long and short; vague
desires: as causal agents; in conflict with each other; imputed to flush toilet; imputed to soccer ball; imputed to sunflowers and vines; on meta-level; as prime movers; thwarted by obstacles; unanalyzability of
Desperate Lark
destructive-teleportation scenarios
detailed knowledge as blocking understanding
dialogues
diamond found in the Caspian sea
dichotomy: between the animate and the inanimate; between the physical and the nonphysical
die, unpredictability of tosses of
Dirac, P. A. M.
direct feeding: of brain solely by hard-wired perceptual system; of screen A solely by camera A
direct vs. indirect: motor control, shades of gray in; perception, shades of gray in
disease, microscopic causes of
dislodging: “I”-myth; “sun moves” myth
distance function in personality space
distorted image of self, in self-symbol
distributedness of human souls; butterfly metaphor for; easy to forget
dividuals, in Twinwirld
divine perversity
DNA
“dog”, category of
dog breeds, as proper level of discourse for dog breeders
doggie cam at kennel
dogmas, religious, as causing wars
dogs: compassion of; episodic memories of; as food; friends of; in heat; limited symbol repertoires of; magnanimity of; non-universality of; not entering into other dogs’ minds; as people; reverberant barking of; self-awareness of; size of strange loops in; as smaller-souled than humans; straining at the leash; as “who”, not “which”
dollops of Consciousness; fractional
domino chainium
Domino, Fats
domino theory of Cold War era
“doorways” in corridor
dots on a line, human souls likened to
doubts about “I”-ness
downloading virtual machines
downward causality; in brains; in careenium; in chainium; in combustion engines; disintegration of; in everyday life; in mathematics; in traffic jam
downwards reasoning: in mathematics; in mountaineering
dramaturgical conventions for pennable lines
Drawing Hands (Escher), as strange-loop candidate; with one hand erasing
drawn vs. drawer, as upwards level-shift
dreads and dreams of sunflowers
dressing styles, tested out
droning, as telltale zombie behavior
Droste’s hot chocolate
du (second-person singular pronoun) addressed to married couple
dualism: espoused by some neuroscientists; ever so gently parodied; giving up on; grazed by Sperry; implied by inverted spectrum; murkiness of; mystical terms of; pulls and pitfalls of; rejected by SL # 642; riddles evoked by
E
Eakins, Thomas, portrait of
“easy” and “hard” meanings of pixel patterns
eavesdropping, visual
eclipse of soul
ecstasy, unfelt
Edson, Russell
efficiency and survival
effortless decoding of isomorphism
egalitarian tendencies
ego, id, and superego
8, lonely cube in Fibonacci sequence
Einstein, Albert
élan mental; sliding scale
élan vital
election as metaphor for decision-making
electromagnetic spectrum, as giving rise to visual sensations
electromagnetism: as fundamental force; as having unqu
estionably precise properties
electron spin, as unquestionably precise fact
electrons in non-conductors and in metals
elephant: squeezing into matchbox; squeezing DNA of, into matchbox
email exchange with Dan Dennett; act of compressing
embassies of a country, opposing caged-bird metaphor
emergent forces as patterns
emergent phenomena: in brain; in complex plane; in everyday world, coming from quantum-mechanical substrate; in minerals; resulting from Principia Mathematica pointing at itself; in video feedback
Eminem
emotional forces, as coloring one’s opinions
empathy as by-product of representational universality
empirical evidence vs. proofs
emptiness
emulation by one machine of another
English language, imprecision of
English translation of Bach aria words
Enrustle, Y. Ted
entelechy
entrenchedness of “I”: in main brain; in other brains
entwinement: of feedback loops; of human souls
envelopes in box; not perceivable individually
Epi (apparent marble in envelope box); parameters determining reality of; poem about; possible explanatory power of; seeming reality of
Epimenides
epiphenomena: in brain; in careenium; in envelope box; in minerals; in video feedback
episodes as concepts
episodic memory: central role of, in “I”-ness; containing precedents for new situations; of dogs; of human beings
episodic projectory
episodic subjunctory
Erdös, Paul
Ernst, Tom
errors, study of
Escher, Maurits Cornelis
essence: extraction of, in brain; pinpointing of, as the goal of thought
essential incompleteness
essentially self-referential quality required to make an “I”
esthetic pressures as affecting content
études (Chopin)
etymologies of words
Euclid’s Elements
Euclid’s proof of infinitude of primes
Eugene Onegin (Pushkin)
Euler, Leonhard
Everest, Mount
everyday concepts defining human reality; blurriness of
evolution: of brain complexity; of careenium; and efficiency; of hearts; producing meanings in brains as accidental by-product; producing universality in brains as accidental by-product; throwing consciousness in as a bonus feature
existence: blurriness of, of “I”
experiences, as co-present with “I”-ness; as determining “I”, not vice versa; “pure”, as unrelated to physics
experiencers vs. non-experiencers
explanations, proper level of
Exploratorium Museum
I Am a Strange Loop Page 54
