50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain
50,000 MILES BENEATH MY BRAIN
Rereading The Mind’s I is like opening a philosophical time capsule of the 1970s. With the exception of a paper by Alan Turing and some fiction by Borges, all the selections in this anthology date from 1972 to 1982.
There are essays and stories by scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and science fiction novelists. There’s a Buddhist with no head, a philosopher’s brain in a vat, a hippie’s mind downloaded into a computer, and a chimp who speaks sign language. There’s body swapping, split brains, teletransporters, artificial intelligence, and maybe even a little ESP – although physicist Douglas R. Hofstadter would not have it so.
The Mind’s I was published the same year I started college: 1981. I took the first of many philosophy courses that fall. Add to that my love of speculative fiction and it was inevitable that this book would end up in my hands. Rereading it nowadays takes me back to that headspace, but with hindsight.
The heart of the book is Turing’s question: Can machines think? From there it goes in a variety of directions. One direction is science fiction.
Jorge Luis Borges and Stanislaw Lem are the literary masters in this collection. The philosophical fantasies of Borges are elegant and poetic. The stories of Lem are the quintessence of philosophical science fiction. These works of literature are presented in the company of pulp fiction. I like the juxtaposition: the dreaming magician of Borges’ poetic tale and the guy in a campy novel who wakes up to find his new body has boobs and a tail.
I got levels, you see. My mind thinks and laughs and wonders and sometimes rolls its I’s.
Another direction this collection takes is philosophy and there are important papers by Turing, Searle and Nagel. This is where the book gets down to some serious philosophy of mind. I spent the 80s studying philosophy and these three texts were essential reading. But Hofstadter does not agree with either Searle or Nagel, and since The Mind’s I is his book, he gets the last word.
At the time of publication, William Barrett wrote a book review criticizing Hofstadter for (among other things) using his Reflections to upstage his contributors. Some of Barrett’s criticisms are more justified than others and this is the one that is the most justified. Did Hofstadter misunderstand Nagel as Barrett said he did? I think he understood and was being facetious.
When I first read this book, my mind was so delighted by the various metaphysical puzzles that I never bothered to think about the book as a whole. And even if I had, it is unlikely that I would have given it a second thought. I would have agreed with so much of Hofstadter’s ideology that it was unlikely I would even notice the bias. This was the air I was accustomed to breathe.
Rereading it now is quite different. I get split into three me’s. One me reads Hofstadter’s Reflections and disagrees with much of his ideology. Another me reads the various selections and enjoys thinking about all the tantalizing ideas. And a third me is so caught up in nostalgia that she’s just happy to be here.
The nostalgia takes me back to those exciting years in philosophy of mind.
In his review, Barrett called The Mind’s I confusing in its effect, but it’s only confusing in effect if one reads it looking for answers. This is not a book of answers. This is a book of questions – a mind-expanding assortment of paradoxes, riddles, dialogues, games, and thought experiments.
Like the mind itself, Hofstadter’s book about the mind is more than the sum of its parts.