Strange Loops

Lately I have read a few books on mind and brain. Earlier this year, I read Douglas Hofstadter's latest book I Am A Strange Loop. One of the premises of Hofstadter's book is that the thing we typically call a "soul" is the inevitable by-product of a brain of sufficient power to represent concepts of arbitrary levels of abstraction. Once this happens, a sort of feedback he calls a Strange Loop occurs and - presto! - the soul emerges. Chapter One is Hofstadter's accidental vegetarian manifesto, in which he argues it is immoral to consume a being with a Strange Loop. Later on, Hofstadter presents a very real version of life-after-death in which a copy (albeit not identical) of one person's Strange Loop lives on in the brain of another. Hofstadter appeals to me as a software guy. To understand the mind, he says, it is not necessary (and may be a real distraction) to sort out the precise mechanics of the brain.