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Quote by Douglas Hofstadter

“The Strange Loop phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchial system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.”

Quote by Douglas Hofstadter

Author

Douglas Hofstadter

Douglas Hofstadter is an American cognitive scientist and writer renowned for his contributions to cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and literature. His research focuses on the nature of thought, the nature of consciousness, and the cognitive differences between humans and machines. more

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“No reference is truly direct — every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is.”

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“The entire effort of artificial intelligence is essentially a fight against computers’ rigidity.”

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“Suppose we concede that if I had been born of Muslim parents in Morocco rather than Christian parents in Michigan, my beliefs would be quite different. [But] the same goes for the pluralist...If the pluralist had been born in [Morocco] he probably wouldn't be a pluralist. Does it follow that...his pluralist beliefs are produced in him by an unreliable belief-producing process?”

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“Reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions.”

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“The Christian philosopher has a perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is interesting but fundamentally irrelevant.”

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“In religious belief as elsewhere, we must take our chances, recognizing that we could be wrong, dreadfully wrong. There are no guarantees; the religious life is a venture; foolish and debilitating error is a permanent possibility. (If we can be wrong, however, we can also be right.)”

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“Most of us form estimates of our intelligence, wisdom, and moral fiber that are considerably higher than an objective estimate would warrant; no doubt 90 percent of us think ourselves well above average along these lines.”

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“If we don't know that there is such a person as God, we don't know the first thing (the most important thing) about ourselves, each other and our world. This is because the most important truths about us and them, is that we have been created by the Lord, and utterly depend upon him for our continued existence.”

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“Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it -- and a greater fool if you count upon it.”

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