Books like Gödel, Escher, Bach

01

Consciousness Explained

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Consciousness Explained is Daniel Dennett's attempt to replace what he calls the Cartesian Theater — the intuitive picture of consciousness as a single unified stream of experience observed by a self — with a model he calls Multiple Drafts.

Both dig into consciousness.

02

The Emperor's New Mind

Roger Penrose · Science

The Emperor's New Mind is Roger Penrose's argument that human consciousness cannot be reproduced by any computational device — that the mind is not, in the relevant sense, a computer — and that understanding consciousness will require fundamental advances in physics, particularly in reconciling quantum mechanics with general relativity.

Shares consciousness and artificial intelligence with Gödel, Escher, Bach.

03

A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking · Science

A Brief History of Time is Stephen Hawking's attempt to explain the biggest questions in physics — where the universe came from, how it behaves, and where it might be going — to readers with no scientific training.

A kindred science read.

04

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

James Gleick · Science

The Information traces the history of information — as a concept, a technology, and a way of understanding the universe — from the talking drums of West Africa through the telegraph, the printing press, the telephone, and into the digital age.

A kindred science read.

05

How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker · Science

How the Mind Works is Steven Pinker's synthesis of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, built around a central thesis: the mind is a computational system — a neural computer — shaped by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems that faced our ancestors on the Pleistocene savanna.

Both dig into consciousness.

06

The Mind's I

Douglas Hofstadter & Daniel Dennett · Philosophy

The Mind's I is a collaborative anthology edited by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, two of the most influential thinkers on consciousness and mind of the late twentieth century.

Shares self-reference and consciousness with Gödel, Escher, Bach.

07

How to Create a Mind

Ray Kurzweil · Science

Ray Kurzweil's central claim in How to Create a Mind is that the neocortex — the part of the brain responsible for higher thought — operates on a single repeating algorithm called the pattern recognition theory of mind.

Shares consciousness and artificial intelligence with Gödel, Escher, Bach.

08

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Max Tegmark · Science

Life 3.0 is Max Tegmark's accessible survey of the questions raised by the prospect of human-level and superhuman artificial intelligence: What are the plausible paths to AGI?

Shares consciousness and artificial intelligence with Gödel, Escher, Bach.

09

Atlas of AI

Kate Crawford · Science

Atlas of AI is Kate Crawford's account of what artificial intelligence actually is — not a disembodied intelligence but a physical system built from extracted minerals, underpaid labor, vast energy consumption, and accumulated data taken largely without meaningful consent.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

10

Deep Learning

Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville · Science

Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville is the standard graduate-level textbook on the mathematical and computational foundations of deep neural networks.

Both dig into artificial intelligence.

11

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Merlin Sheldrake · Science

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist who has spent his career studying fungi, and Entangled Life is his account of what fungi are, what they do, and why most people who think they know something about the natural world understand almost nothing about this kingdom of life.

Both dig into consciousness.

12

From Bacteria to Bach and Back

Daniel C. Dennett · Science

Daniel Dennett's 2017 book is his most comprehensive attempt to explain how minds — conscious, intentional, creative minds — could have evolved from mindless matter without any homunculus, soul, or top-down designer.

Both dig into consciousness.