Hofstadter's quest: A tale of cognitive pursuit

Abstract

A tale of cognitive pursuit hat Douglas Hofstadter is, quite simply, is a phenomenologist, a practicing phenomenologist, and he does it better than anyone else.Ever.For years he W has been studying the processes of his own consciousness, relentlessly, unflinchingly, imaginatively, but undeludely.He is not a Phenomenologist with a capital "P"-with few exceptions, Phenomenologists don't actually do phenomenology, they just write about doing it.In stark contrast to the Husserlian school(s) of Phenomenology, which advocates the epoche'or "bracketing" that excuses the investigator from all inquiry, speculative or otherwise, into the underlying mechanisms, the Hofstadterian school of phenomenology stresses the need to ask-and answer-the question about how it works.Hofstadter's initial phenomenological observations are laced with questions and suggestions about dynamics and mechanisms; he watches his own mind work the way a stage magician watches another stage magician's show, not in slack-jawed awe at the "magic" of it all, but full of intense and informed curiosity about how on earth the effects might be achieved.In 1979, Douglas Hofstadter published Godel Escher Bach:An Eternal Golden Braid, a brilliant exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: recursion, computation, reduction, holism, meaning, "jootsing" (Jumping Out Of The System), "strange loops," and much, much more.What made the book's expositions so effective were a family of elaborate (and lovingly elaborated) analogies: the mind is like an anthill, a formal system is like a game, theorem and nontheorem are like figure and ground, and Bach's Inventions are like dialogues, to mention a few.The whole analogypackage was wrapped in layers of self-conscious reflection."Anything you can do I can do meta-" was one of Doug's mottoes, and of course he applied it, recursively, to everything he did.Then in 1985 came Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, its title drawn from the title of his monthly column in Scientific American, which was of course an anagram of its predecessor, Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games."More word-play, more games, more analogies, more recursion, more selfconscious reflection-all brilliant, but many began to wonder: what, actually, was Hofstadter doing?Was there a serious research project here, or just fun and games and self-absorption?His fans were fascinated, but even some of his colleagues and graduate students-even his friend and co-author (of TheMind's I: myself)-began to worry a bit about his lengthy odysseys into toy worlds (ambigrams, bizarre fonts, curious doodles on long rolls of paper).This man wanted to be taken seriously, but where was the focused, rigorous investigation of some phenomena, where was the discipline?It was right in front of our noses-