I Am a Strange Loop (84 page)

perceptual systems: growing over time; impoverished

perfect numbers, potential infinitude of

person: as point of view; shallower and deeper aspects of

personal gemma (Lem), as core of human identity; obliteration of; riding, diminished, on another’s hardware;
see also
Cartesian Ego

personal identity: coalescing slowly over time; as determined by brain, not vice versa; as determined by dollop doled out; as determined by most intense source of perceptual input; as determined by naming conventions and pronoun conventions; as determined by serial number; as determined by slider on wire; as determined by strange loop’s content; as incoherent notion; lacking in sewing machines; puzzles about, in a world with Consciousness; shared by the two halves of a pairson; untrustability of claims about

personality: layering of; space of

perversity of metamathematical results

Peterson, Nancy

Pfeiffer, John

philosophers: falling for Searle’s ploys; having ambitions of rigor; fear of being a zombie; knurking and glebbing without need for a brain

philosophizing like Roger Sperry

photograph: as evidence for reality; felt as meaningless; as set of soul-shards; triggering-power of

physical activity: hypothetically inadequate to explain feeling; as insufficient for skeptics; as sufficient for SL #641

physicality and “I”, conflict between

physics: as opposed to free will; as the sole type of causality

picket line in play, analogous to picket line outside theater

Pickwick, Samuel, Esq.

“Pig” (Roald Dahl short story)

piggybacked mappings

pig head, severed, on display

Pig Latin as language

piglet in Sardinian banquet

pigments in eyes

pinball machines and careenium

pistons pushed by pressure of gas

pitch: of audio feedback system;
vs.
rumble

pixel patterns on TV screen: as coding for events; as meaningless patterns when seen by dogs; as teleportation technology

planetoids, growing by collisions

plant and shoots, opposing caged-bird metaphor

plants as potentially having souls

Plath, James

Plato, as dialogue character

plays about plays

pleasure and displeasure as flipped sensations

Pluto, dubious category membership of

PM
(formal system of
Principia Mathematica
); believed consistent by all logicians; destroyed by any provable falsity; enrichment of, still incomplete; expressive power of, as doom; Gödel numbering of; hope of completeness of; hope of consistency of; impossibility of gaining completeness by augmenting; notation of, exhibited; pointing at self is like video camera pointing at TV; proved incomplete by Gödel; as universal representational system

PM
strings, edible
vs.
inedible

poems: found in the text; self-writing

point of view: missing in physical activity; as transportable and modular

pointers: in a mind, to other things; inwards-pointing; outwards-pointing

Poland surviving as abstract landless entity

Policansky, David

political feelings, innate

Pollock, Jackson, painting by

Pomponnette, straying cat

porcinal identity

“pork”
vs.
pigs

Porter, Cole

portrait of someone else in one’s brain, grain size of

Posh Shop Picketeers, The
(Rosalyn Wadhead)

pottery
vs.
pattern

Poulenc, Francis

powers in the Fibonacci sequence; powers in the wff numbers

“preceded by itself in quote marks”

precision, lack of, in language

predictable macroscopic phenomena

preludes and fugues

Presley, Elvis

pressure, as emergent phenomenon

pressures collectively dictating pathway in life

prim numbers; as apex of 46-story abstraction tower; infinitude of; mirroring provable formulas; recognized by Göru; sums of two; uncanny power of; unpredictability of; as valid subject of study in number theory

primary location of being, blurriness of

primary meaning of KG,
see
lower-level meaning

primary self, associated with a given brain; unthreatened by coarse-grained rivals

primary swirl, as personal gemma

prime factorizations of integers

prime mover (641)

prime numbers; of form 4
n
+ 1
vs.
form 4
n
+ 3gaps between; infinitude of; machine for detecting; sums of two; as sums of two squares

Prince Hyppia

Prince Hyppia: Math Dramatica
(Y. Ted Enrustle)

Princess Bloppia

Principia Mathematica
(Whitehead and Russell)hypothetical volumes devoted to wff numbers and prim numbers; as intrinsically vulnerable to self-reference; as invaded fortress; one page of; opening with self-reference; praised by Gödel; prickly notation of; as solid foundation for all of mathematics; its strength is its weakness; studying its own properties

prisons, morality of

privileged strange loop in brain

probability theory, origin in gambling

projectory,
see
episodic

Prokofiev, Sergei; piano concerto #3; violin concerto #1

“pro-lifer-ate”

pronouns: as embodying default assumptions; as self-referential devices; used in text in unusual manner;
see also
indexicality

pronoun conventions: as reflecting degree of souledness; as reflecting one’s beliefs about identity; as reinforcing naïve ideas of identity; in violation of naïve ideas of identity

proof in geology

proof in mathematics; assumed equivalence to truth; unclear nature of;
vs.
computer searches

provable formulas of
PM
(theorems); always true

Provable-KG Scenario; assumed; not believed by KG; shown wrong

pseudo-memories as valid memories

psychological continuity

psychopaths, violent, as low-huneker beings

pulsating patterns in video feedback

puns, tested out

purpleness, experience of

Pushkin, Alexander

pushovers, naïve (author and reader alike)

putting on and taking off someone else’s style

Q

Q
(the product of all prime numbers)

Qéé Dzhii, numerologist in
Prince Hyppia

qualia, as ineffable, primordial experiences; toilets and; as usual
sine qua non
for consciousness

Quandary, The

quantum electrodynamics

quantum-mechanical collisions as ultimate reality

quantum mechanics, development of

quarks

Quine, Willard Van Orman

Quine’s analogy for Gödel’s construction

Quine’s Quasi-Quip and Quine’s Quip; yielding self-referential sentence

quotation marks: analogous to taking Gödel numbers; proper use of; questionable use of; in self-referential sentences; shades of gray for

R

Racecar Power
^®
,
as optional

Rachmaninoff, Sergei

radar

radicals

rainbow, as metaphor for “I”-ness

random glitches in mathematics

randomness of physical world but not of math

randomness of simm-level activity in careenium

ranking of creatures’ “value”

Rattner, Justin

Ravel, Maurice

raw sensation,
see
qualia, experience

reachable
vs.
non-reachable integers

Reagan, Ronald

reality: blurriness of; as determined by perception; dubious, of where one is located; grounding of; of higher-level view of living organisms; of “I”, tacitly presumed by average person; levels of; macroscopic patterns as “realest” level of; of pixel patterns on screen; sorting-out of

reasoning, mechanization of

reasonless pattern in mathematics

Reasons and Persons
(Parfit)

reasons behind patterns

reception
vs.
perception

recursive rules: with outputs always larger than inputs; with outputs possibly smaller than inputs

recursively defined sets of formulas

recursively defined sets of integers

red and blue sensations, flipping of

red spot in Exploratorium

reductionism’s lack of respect for spatiotemporal boundaries

reductionist view: of careenium; of dog traits; of gas; hopeless complexity of; of video feedback;
see also
boundaries

Reductionist View (of Derek Parfit)

reference, as always mediated by analogy; direct
vs.
indirect, as matter of degree

reflexes
vs.
consciousness

regrouping as strategy in pattern-hunting

regularities in macroworld; in mathematics, as always having reasons

relativity

reliable macroscopic phenomena taken for granted

religion, as cause for war

remote events as causes

repertoires of symbols; as determinant of size of self; in dogs; extensibility of, in human minds; in mosquitoes; and representational universality

Replicator inside Teletransporter

representational universality of human brains

resonance frequency in audio feedback

resonance in personality space with others

resurrection of departed, in souls of living

reverberant barking

reverberant parking lot

reverence: for Bach; for life

rhyming prose

rhythmic prose

Richard, Jules

riddles about the Capitalized Essence of Consciousness

“right stuff ”
vs.
“wrong stuff ”: Searle’s refrain; as substrate of consciousness

ripples: as represented in symbols in brain; sent out and returning

Roberts, Lamar

robots: consciousness of; controlled by joysticks; engaged in collective honking orgy; location of body
vs.
location of “brain”; platoon of many clones, as all lifeless; transmitting perceptions to remote brain

robot vehicles; honking at each other; souls of

Rodgers, Richard

roller coaster: confused with baseball game; in movie theater

roman à clef

romantic situations, analogy between

Roosevelt, Eleanor

rope, swinging, unconsciousness of

Rosser, Kathleen

rouge
means “blue”

Rovereto, Italy

R2-D2 (robot)

rubber-band brains

ruby found in the Caspian Sea

rules of inference; analogous to rules in recursive definitions; careful design of; ignoring all meaning; mirrored by computational rules; producing shorter output strings than input strings

running despite pain

running out of primes

Russell, Bertrand: banishing self-reference; banning self-containing sets; blindsided by Gödel’s insights; conceding there is meaning in
PM
formulas; denying there is meaning in
PM
formulas; employing self-referential language; formalizing reasoning; as paranoiac paradoxophobe; repelled by self-reference; second-worst nightmare; seeing only one level of meaning for
PM
strings; seemingly unaware of self-referential sentences in
Principia Mathematica
; unaware of integers’ universality; as whiteheaded alien from Ukia; worst nightmare

Russellian meaning of KG,
see
lower-level meaning

S

“s” (symbol in
PM
)

Sabatini, Silvia (lap-loop person “B”)

sacred cows, killing of

sacred
vs.
profane; Schweitzer on

Sadat, Anwar

Sagan, Françoise

Sallows, Lee

Sanskrit

Santa Claus, deconstructing of

sardines,
see
herrings

Sardinian pig roast

saucy (non-prim) numbers; preferred to prim numbers by Qéé Dzhii; recognized by Göru

saxophones and sassafras trees

Scanner inside Teletransporter

scarlet sardine

Schank, Roger

schism perceived between goal-lacking and goal-possessing entities

Schrödinger, Erwin

Schweitzer, Albert; Bach and; guns and; Günsbach and; as musician; rare compassion of; reverential style of, as Bach organist; on sacred
vs.
profane

science-fiction thought experiments; as liberating

Scientific American

scientific viewpoint as correct but too complex

Scriabin, Alexander

Searle, John

second meaning lurking in first meaning

secondary meaning of KG,
see
higher-level meaning

secondary swirl, as diluted “I” in another’s brain

seeds, in recursive definitions

seeing out from another’s viewpoint

seeing straight through pixels to events

self: inner layers of; middle layers of; outer layers of; reality of; as union of two half-selves

self-affirming formula

Self-Analysis
(Horney)

self-awareness, limited: of children; of dogs; of robot vehicles

self-confidence
vs.
self-doubt

self-delusion as part of self-symbol

self-destruction of audio feedback system

self-inventorying sentences

selflessness; and soul-full-ness

self-perception; of dogs; of humans; of mosquitoes; naturalness of; of robot vehicles

self-reference: banishment of; as cause for
PM
’s incompleteness; centrality of, in life; essential; as innocuous; of
Principia Mathematica
; via reference to clone; seemingly direct but actually indirect; as spelled out by Gödel; without indexicality; without infinite regress

self-referential sentences; failed attempts at constructing; in
Principia Mathematica
; without indexicals