May 16, 2022
Metahaven, Feelium, insert for Real Review No. 12, Spring 2022. “Feelium” is a hypothetical substance (and joke) proposed by Douglas Hofstadter as part of a discussion of recursive phenomena in mind and mathematics. “Unfortunately,” he writes, “no one has ever found a single atom or molecule of feelium, and I suspect that even if we did find a mysterious substance present in all higher animals but not in lower ones, let alone in mere machines, you would start wondering how it could be that any mere substance, inanimate and insensate on its own, could give rise to sensation.” (Douglas Hofstadter, I am a Strange Loop, New York: Basic Books, 2007, 288.)
