Hofstadter's _I Am a Strange Loop_

David Deutsch writes in his review: 'I Am a Strange Loop is supposed to explain that a mind is a near-infinitely extendable, self-referential loop of symbols that suffers – or rather, benefits – from the hallucination of being an "I". Furthermore (Hofstadter says paradoxically), that hallucination is itself an "I". Hofstadter's "strange loop" is a bit like an ordinary feedback loop, such as the images in a pair of parallel mirrors facing each other, but instead of merely depicting itself physically, it symbolically refers to itself. And unlike ordinary self-referential statements, like this one, the symbol inside a brain that refers to itself as "I" is not used by anyone else: it is someone. [...] Hofstadter embraces irrationality itself: "Our very nature is such as to prevent us from understanding our nature." '