Surfaces and Essences

Surfaces and Essences PDF Author: Douglas Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465018475
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
Shows how analogy-making pervades human thought at all levels, influencing the choice of words and phrases in speech, providing guidance in unfamiliar situations, and giving rise to great acts of imagination.

Surfaces and Essences

Surfaces and Essences PDF Author: Douglas Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465018475
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
Shows how analogy-making pervades human thought at all levels, influencing the choice of words and phrases in speech, providing guidance in unfamiliar situations, and giving rise to great acts of imagination.

I Am a Strange Loop

I Am a Strange Loop PDF Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465030785
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Argues that the key to understanding ourselves and consciousness is the "strange loop," a special kind of abstract feedback loop that inhabits the brain.

Metamagical Themas

Metamagical Themas PDF Author: Douglas R Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786723866
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
Hofstadter's collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Gödel, Escher, Bach PDF Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher: Penguin Group(CA)
ISBN: 9780140289206
Category : Art and music
Languages : en
Pages : 832

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Book Description
'What is a self and how can a self come out of inanimate matter?' This is the riddle that drove Douglas Hofstadter to write this extraordinary book. In order to impart his original and personal view on the core mystery of human existence - our intangible sensation of 'I'-ness - Hofstadter defines the playful yet seemingly paradoxical notion of 'strange loop', and explicates this idea using analogies from many disciplines.

Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies

Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies PDF Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780140258356
Category : Analogy
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Hosftadter and his colleagues at The Fluid Analogies Research Group have developed computer models that help describe and explain human discovery, creation and analogical thought. The key issue of perception is investigated through the exploration of playful anagrams, number puzzles, word play and fanciful alphabetical styles, and the result is a survey of cognitive processes. This text presents the results.

The Origin of Concepts

The Origin of Concepts PDF Author: Susan Carey
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199838801
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
New in paperback-- A transformative book on the way we think about the nature of concepts and the relations between language and thought.

The Mind's I

The Mind's I PDF Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780710803528
Category : Artificial intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description


Surfaces and Essences

Surfaces and Essences PDF Author: Douglas R Hofstadter
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465021581
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize -- winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of human thought for over thirty years. Now, with his trademark wit and special talent for making complex ideas vivid, he has partnered with Sander to put forth a highly novel perspective on cognition. We are constantly faced with a swirling and intermingling multitude of ill-defined situations. Our brain's job is to try to make sense of this unpredictable, swarming chaos of stimuli. How does it do so? The ceaseless hail of input triggers analogies galore, helping us to pinpoint the essence of what is going on. Often this means the spontaneous evocation of words, sometimes idioms, sometimes the triggering of nameless, long-buried memories. Why did two-year-old Camille proudly exclaim, "I undressed the banana!"? Why do people who hear a story often blurt out, "Exactly the same thing happened to me!" when it was a completely different event? How do we recognize an aggressive driver from a split-second glance in our rearview mirror? What in a friend's remark triggers the offhand reply, "That's just sour grapes"? What did Albert Einstein see that made him suspect that light consists of particles when a century of research had driven the final nail in the coffin of that long-dead idea? The answer to all these questions, of course, is analogy-making -- the meat and potatoes, the heart and soul, the fuel and fire, the gist and the crux, the lifeblood and the wellsprings of thought. Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights. Like Gö, Escher, Bach before it, Surfaces and Essences will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core -- the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences -- this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking.

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

Knowledge Representation and Reasoning PDF Author: Ronald Brachman
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
ISBN: 1558609326
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Knowledge representation is at the very core of a radical idea for understanding intelligence. This book talks about the central concepts of knowledge representation developed over the years. It is suitable for researchers and practitioners in database management, information retrieval, object-oriented systems and artificial intelligence.

The Sixteen Pleasures

The Sixteen Pleasures PDF Author: Robert Hellenga
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1569478112
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Art and poetry, mystery and desire collide in this sensual and “elegantly moving” literary romance set in the cobbled streets and painted halls of Florence, Italy (New Yorker). Margot Harrington, an American volunteer in Florence, is an expert at book conservancy. While struggling to save a waterlogged convent library, she comes across a fabulous volume of 16 erotic drawings by Giulio Romano, accompanying 16 steamy sonnets by Pietro Aretino. When first published over 4 centuries ago, the Vatican ordered all copies destroyed. This one—now unique—volume has survived. The abbess prevails upon Margot to save the order’s finances by selling the magnificently illustrated erotica discreetly—meaning without the bishop’s knowledge. Margot’s other clandestine project is a middle-aged Italian who is boldly attempting radical measures to save endangered frescoes. She is 29 and available; he, older and married. He shares her sense of mission and soon her bed in this daring story of spiritual longing and earthly desire.