Douglas Hofstadter speaks in the latest edition of Wired about his new book, I Am A Strange Loop. As he explains, he’s trying to figure out “What Am I?”

One good prototype [of a strange loop] is the Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other. A more abstract one is the sentence I am lying. Such loops are, I think anyone would agree, strange. They seem paradoxical and even strike some people as dangerous. I argue that such a strange loop, paradoxical or not, is at the core of each human being. It is an abstract pattern that gives each of us an �??I,�?� or, if you don�??t mind the term, a soul.