Douglas Hofstadter (2007), I Am a Strange Loop, New York: Basic Books
(hardback, ISBN 978-0-465-03078-1; Library of Congress 2007310563, call
number BD438.5 .H64 2007; xix, 412 pp., [4] pp. of plates, illustrated,
some in colour, references pp. [377]–382, index). The trade paperback (ISBN
978-0-465-03079-8, 436 pp.) followed; the publisher gives its on-sale date
as 8 July 2008. The catalogue records give only the year 2007 for the
hardback, so published: carries the year, as the first of January. Open
Library dates it 26 March 2007, which I could not confirm from the publisher
or a library catalogue.
Key takeaways
Registered from the publisher’s description and the catalogue record, not a reading. What follows is what the book and its cataloguers say about it.
- The publisher’s description (Basic Books, for the paperback), verbatim in part: “Deep down, your brain is a chaotic seething soup of particles. On a higher level it is a jungle of neurons, and on a yet higher level it is a network of abstractions that we call ‘symbols.’ The most central and complex symbol is the one you call ‘I.’ An ‘I’ is a strange loop where the brain’s symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down so that symbols seem to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.” It asks: “Is our ‘I’ merely a convenient fiction? Does ‘I’ exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the all-powerful laws of physics?” It calls the book “Douglas Hofstadter’s first book-length journey into philosophy since his Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach”, and heads it: “examines where the self comes from – and how our selves can exist in the minds of others.”
- The catalogue’s summary (from an earlier publisher description) calls it “Hofstadter’s long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach—an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity”, which “argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains.”
- The Library of Congress subject headings: consciousness; intellect; self (philosophy); soul.
- Contents, from the Library of Congress contents note: Preface: an author and his book; An affable locking of horns; On souls and their sizes; This teetering bulb of dread and dream; The causal potency of patterns; Loops, goals, and loopholes; On video feedback; Of selves and symbols; The epi phenomenon; Embarking on a strange-loop safari; Pattern and provability; Gödel’s quintessential strange loop; How analogy makes meaning; On downward causality; The elusive apple of my “I”; Strangeness in the “I” of the beholder; Entwinement; Grappling with the deepest mystery; How we live in each other; The blurry glow of human identity; Consciousness = thinking; A courteous crossing of words; A brief brush with Cartesian egos; A tango with zombies and dualism; Killing a couple of sacred cows; On magnanimity and friendship; Epilogue: the quandary. The note gives no chapter numbers or pages.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-01 at the owner’s request for Douglas Hofstadter on strange loops and the self. This is that account’s book-length statement. No anthology topic holds it, it carries no instruction for machine-learning practice, and the anthology does not hold it (checked by grep).
Deferred because it was not read. This record files a book from its
publisher’s description and contents when no lawful text can be read, and
does not rebuild a book from what others say about it.
Its publisher presents it as a return to the themes of Gödel, Escher,
Bach, in this batch, and two of its contents entries (“Pattern and
provability”, “Gödel’s quintessential strange loop”) take up that book’s
Gödelian construction. No extends: is declared: it is the publisher, not
the book as I could see it, that says the later book builds on the earlier.
Where it bears on the record. These are my inferences from the description and the contents titles, not claims the book was read to make:
- Hofstadter’s lead essay in the world-models theme issue, “Is there an ‘I’ in AI?”, is being filed at the same time by another reader. The issue’s editorial (LIT-195), as NOTE-136 reads it, reports his claim that passing a consistent-understanding Turing test suffices to attribute thinking, and that conscious AI may come “perhaps even by 2033”. This book’s entry “Consciousness = thinking” carries the equation that claim needs, and a reading should check whether the essay’s position is already this book’s.
- That puts it on one side of the record’s open question whether any evidence can settle machine consciousness (THEORY-023). If thinking is consciousness, behavioural evidence of thinking is evidence of consciousness, which is the step THEORY-023’s readings say mimicry undercuts. The pairing is mine.
- The description’s “symbols seem to have gained the paradoxical ability
to push particles around”, and the entries “The causal potency of
patterns” and “On downward causality”, put the book in the record’s
discussion of levels and emergence: Dennett’s real patterns (LIT-220),
and Rizi on what emergence is (LIT-150). Hence
metaphysics. - “How we live in each other” and the publisher’s selves that “exist in the
minds of others” are a claim that a self is not confined to one head.
The record’s nearest reading is Clark and Chalmers’s extended mind
(LIT-097), which infers in one paragraph that the self extends too. Hence
identity, first: the book’s question, by its title, its description and its catalogue headings, is what an “I” is.
Access when seeded:
- Library of Congress catalogue record (lccn.loc.gov/2007310563, through the loc.gov JSON API): publisher, date, extent, references pages, call number, subjects, contents note and summary. The MARCXML and MODS links on lccn.loc.gov returned HTTP 404.
- The public MARC record of the Internet Archive’s catalogue copy (iamstrangeloop00hofs; OCLC 64554976): ISBNs 0465030785 and 9780465030781, and the same contents note.
- Hachette Book Group’s page for the paperback (ISBN 9780465030798): the description, on-sale date and page count. Its page for the hardback ISBN redirected and gave nothing.
- The Internet Archive scans (iamstrangeloop00hofs, iamstrangeloop0000hofs) are lending-only (access-restricted), so I did not open them. HathiTrust returned no record for the LCCN.
- Crossref has no DOI for the book, only for reviews of it.
- WorldCat returned HTTP 429. Google Books’ API refused for an exhausted daily quota.