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Hofstadter is a loopy loop. This opus might have made an interesting short essay, but is instead a stultifyingly long book. The main points could have been made in only a few pages. In the early pages of the book the author tends to define terms precisely in sometimes excruciating detail, while throughout the book, for the central concept, he uses soul, intelligence, mind, consciousness, identity, "Iness", and some other terms including "feeling" and "personality traits" interchangeably. One is left asking what is the Iness he is trying to talk about. In later pages he either uses words very carelessly, or intentionally chooses words to derisively bias or limit argument and create artificial boundaries to exploration of beliefs. Hofstadter presents mind games that are both impossible and unhelpful, from which he tries to draw conclusions applicable in the real world; presents analogies that are not analogous; forces either/or binary limits on multiple choice situations; uses fallacious reasoning, and dictates the way "others" (unenlightened others?) must think, which are contrary to the way at least this "other" thinks. His central theme is that consciousness or Iness is the symbols and patterns carried in the neurological network of cell based structures we call a brain. These patterns and symbols have been built up over time from our experiences and learning. Seems plausible enough. But then he posits that one person's patterns can be copied, complete, but at lower resolution in another's brain, even to the extent that the essence of one person's Iness can live on in another. In reality we all have mental filters such that we store very different patterns from very nearly the same experiences and no two person's filters distort reality in the same way. What we can capture of another's patterns are simply distorted representations of one view of those patterns, (not lower resolution copies), such that they would be totally unrecognizable to the other. Hofstadter then extends his fallacy to say that all of the patterns that make up an individual survive at different levels of detail in the minds of those who have known them well. All that really survives is some of the impressions they have made, not their patterns. Footprints in the sand are not even partially the feet that made them. He also goes to great length to describe ascending layers of complexity from inanimate elements through living cells and neuronal structures to thinking brains, and finally to the complex patterns that result in self-awareness or Iness. All well and good. But then he posits a hierarchy of "animacy" from some undefined minimum state to fully developed Iness and has the gall to suggest that those with more developed esthetic sense, specifically for music, and especially Bach's music, have a higher level of Iness, and by extension are more animate. Of course he loves Bach. What self serving nonsense! As major lacunae in all his elaboration of the development from experience of the symbols and patterns that constitute the Iness of each of us, he never considers either DNA or brain chemistry that would predispose what patterns might be developed, nor inherited hard wiring that limit the possible patterns, although he does deride free will. It's as if we all start with the same native potential and develop our personalities only through experience. A detailed discussion of all of the absurdities presented would approach book length, - but why go on? The book is long, repetitive, often internally inconsistent, frequently silly, generally tedious, occasionally smug, sometimes polemic, consistently egotistical, and in the end, in its conclusion, simply trivial. Be warned dear reader, this book is a gross waste of mental energy.