Stanford Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker Lecture Thursday, March 6, 2013.

Douglas Hofstadter, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature. Indiana University.

What is a quintessential category? Bird, perhaps? Or maybe chair? And what is a quintessential concept? Two? Number? Prime number?

I’m not trying to put words into your mouth — I’m just trying to get you to ask yourself these questions. Also, I wonder if by any chance you thought that these are really exactly the same question, in which case you might have wondered why I asked you the same question twice.

Or did you perhaps think something along these lines: \.