Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 11:35:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: waiting for Godel OK, Ralph, here goes. My father proved the most generalized form of Godel's Theorem. (see J.Barkley Rosser, "Extensions of some theorems of Godel and Church," _Journal of Symbolic Logic_, 1936, vol 1, pp. 87-91). He gave me my copy of Hofstadter's book. I know that he considered it (he is dead now) to be mostly a pop schlop book, but then you would be unable to read what he did not consider to be such. But I also know that he considered Hofstadter's argument about the relationship between self- referencing and artificial intelligence to be a very serious hypothesis, although I think that he ultimately sided with Searle on the matter of genuine human consciousness. Guess, you got caught with your wee-wee hanging out on this one. Better stick to looking for infinity in a grain of sand or convincing the proletariat that "Jerusalem" is a comprehensible poem. (We still love you, Ralph. Hey, you are being invoked over on M1 against the tirades of malecki as proof that M2 is not a simpy-wimpy duck pond!) (BTW, I happen to like "Jerusalem" myself, but then I am a hopelessly petit bourgeois intellectual, quack, quack, :-).) More seriously, Ralph, there is certainly a narcissistic, petit bourgeois strand to "self-conscious pomo" where people get so caught up in thinking about how they are thinking and looking at themselves looking at themselves looking at... that, well.... So, the point is well taken. But I would also contend that some of this is both useful and even necessary. How does a class become conscious of itself if it does not engage in at least some degree of self consciousness? A few further remarks on Hofstadter's book: 1) Bach's piece is "Musical Offering" ("Musikalisches Opfer") 2) There is some stuff on Zen in the book, but I agree with Jukka that Zen paradoxes are relevant to paradoxes of mathematical logic. My father, who was very hard nosed, paid little attention to them, but some of his closest friends, colleagues, and sometimes co- authors did (or do), e.g. Stephen C. Kleene (dead) and Raymond Smullyan (still alive and very wittily active). 3) There is only a small amount on quantum mechanics in the book and it pretty much stays away from some of the woozier kinds of stuff one finds in many books dealing with the "broader implications" of the topic. No Schrodinger's Cat, for example. I do note that some serious physicists have suggested more recently a quantum mechanical explanation for consciousness, e.g. Roger Penrose, _The Emperor's New Mind_. A Trot physicist friend of mine wrote a very favorable review of that book. He was very happy that it provided a clear materialist foundation for consciousness (are you listening, Adam R.?). 4) My favorite tidbit in Hofstadter's _Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid_ is in the bibliography where the following entry appears: "Gebstadter, Egbert B. _Copper, Silver, Gold: an Indestructible Metallic Alloy_, Perth: Acidic Books, 1979. A formidable hodge-podge, turgid and confused---yet remarkably similar to the present work. Professor Gebstadter's Shandean digressions include some excellent examples of indirect self-reference. Of particular interest is a reference in it well-annotated bibliography to an isomorphic, but imaginary book". How so proto-pomo. J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. (a.k.a. "Dr. Blood") --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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