I picked up this book partly because I found Goedel, Escher, Bach a brilliant read, and partly because I find the subject of consciousness interesting in itself.
This book features numerous articles and excerpts from a wide array of authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Alan Turing, Richard Dawkins, and a number of less well known (outside computer science) intellects. These passages all have some relevance to the topics of "Self", "Soul", "Consciousness", and "Free Will", and the pieces are each analysed by one or both of the editors. I found quite a few of these to be worth while reading, and some were very interesting and enlightening. There were a few that were excercises in idiocy, and ultimately a waste of time to read, with the simple point they were trying to illustrate being obvious from the start. Also large excerpts from GEB and the Selfish Gene were present, which was annoying as I already have them and have read them within recent memory, though readers unfamiliar with these works should not mind this, and to be fair GEB would bear re-reading more than most books.
On the whole I found the opinions of the editors and articles to be too close to the strong AI position, with the brain frequently being assumed analogous in structure to a digital computer, and mappable. I am glad I have read Roger Penrose's books on consciousness ,(which are not as readable as this by the way ) , otherwise I may well have been swept along with these views and their otherwise unavoidable implications. A frequently made assumption of this book is that the brain is identically mappable, (thus preserving self), though there is currently no reason to believe it is, with accurate quantum measurements not ever being possible under current theory. This makes a lot of the articles seem irrelevent to reality, though, never the less interesting. Overall, depsite this, it is an interesting read, and there is a lot in it of worth. It is a longish book, but the type is large enough, and it didn't take me that long to get through it. It will disappoint those expecting another must-read like Goedel, Escher, Bach, but for others less picky it should make do. ( )

I love the story of 'the man with no head.' Thought provoking. Wonderful! ( )

Brilliant, shattering, mind-jolting, THE MIND'S I is a searching, probing book -- a cosmic journey of the mind -- that goes as deeply into the problem of self and self-consciousness as anything written in our time. From verbalizing chimpanzees to scientific speculations involving machines with souls, from the mesmerizing, mazelike fiction of Borges to the tantalizing, dreamlike fiction of Lem and his Princess Ineffabelle, her circuits glowing red and gold, THE MIND'S I opens the mind to the Black Box of fantasy, to the windfalls of reflection, to new dimensions of exciting possibilities.

Hofstadter verges on brilliance. His Godel, Escher, Bach is among my top 1 or 2 books ever. In this work he continues his themes of intelligence and identity. ( )