Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter unleashes a multifaceted theory of mind and consciousness. One of the central motifs or metaphors the author uses in Goedel, Escher, Bach is music. The Bach component of the book begins in depth starting on page 607, when the author presents the question, "Who Composes Computer Music?" The author claims, "There are various levels of autonomy which a program may seem to have in the act of composition," (Hofstadter 607). However, the computer-generated compositions follow predictable algorithms. The songs, riffs, and sounds computers generate are qualitatively different from those that are created by human beings.

Computers and brains are different, Hofstadter points out, in that computers cannot experience self-consciousness. Self-consciousness remains one of the core barriers to artificial intelligence. Given there is no "who" in a computer, a computer program cannot create music any more than it can write novels. A...
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