[Davertron]

This could be really good; I've started reading this book twice now, and gotten about 1/3 of the way through both times before my brain starts to melt.

Also, Douglas Hofstatder's "I Am A Strange Loop" is a little more accessible and is all about consciousness, if that part of Godel, Escher, Bach interests you.

[jacoblyles]

From what I remember of his work, I don't care for Hofstatder's style. He describes a bunch of mysterious things, including consciousness, and winks suggestively that they all could have something to do with each other. You feel like you have learned something, but you really haven't. His corpus consists of "mysterious answers to mysterious questions" (http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu/mysterious_answers_to_mysterious_...). It doesn't actually enhance our understanding of the world.

[jacobolus]

Also worthwhile is Hofstadter’s essay/lecture, “Analogy as the Core of Cognition”, http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy.h...

[ojbyrne]

"could be really"? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of those words - this is from 2007, and everything from the course is on that page, including videos of the lectures.

[jacquesm]

I interpret that as based on the portion that the GP has consumed. Like eating a 3 course meal, if the starter is great you might say 'this meal could be really good', you can't tell for sure because you haven't eaten all of it, hence the caveat.