The Computing Brain

Scott Aaronson wrote a very nice piece about consciousness and Quantum Mechanics. Actually, he’s just bashing some of Penrose’s ideas about consciousness and the inability of machines to achieve it.

I personally dislike these ideas of Penroses or Searles (Such as the Chinese Room). I find that any logical proof regarding a computation machine must apply, by definition, to humans (the thought experiments such as the Chinese Room or the halting problem do not refer to a computer - they portray ideas inherent to any logic system).

If you think otherwise, it means you are assuming humans are beyond computers to begin with - and then no wonder you reach this conclusion eventually.

Recent findings in NeuroScience strongly imply that there is no central point of consciousness in the brain. This is because different parts of the brain deal with different actions in a disjoint manner, i.e.: While there is heavy processing of visual perception, there is no activity in the “introspective” area of the brain, and vice versa. This shows us that there is no central “observer” in the brain, but rather we experience different things due to brain activity in different regions.

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