I Am a Strange Loop

I Am a Strange Loop is a philosophical voyage into what it means to be. The chapters vary in format, including stories and first person experiences. One recurring theme is of "feedback loops" such as with a microphone or taking a video of a display screen. There is also an exploration of what we use for meaning and thinking. There are many scales we can look at. While most everything that happens is technically an interaction of molecules, that level is generally not interesting to us. Instead, we are more concerned with things at higher levels, like the interaction between people.

What makes us "better" than other animals? The author became concerned with animals and thus felt ethically inclined to not eat meat. (A Roald Dahl story helped push him over the edge.) However, he doesn't view mosquitos as having sufficient strength to be valued as sentient. They recur as the "non-sentient" beings. He even explains how the bugs would not waste resources on deep thought.

What makes ones self? What if we separated into twins? Or what if we were fully copied and placed in another location. Which one would be the self? Do animals identify a self? What attributes of oneself can be changed while still maintaining selfhood? Many similar questions are analyzed through a variety of means to identify what makes "I". Even language itself plays a key role in how we see ourselves and the world. 

The book also ties in a number of interesting concepts such as musical performance. It flows well, even if some of the concepts seem to be only tangentially related.