[gregfjohnson]

I wonder about the relationship between consciousness and Turing completeness. Although we don't have infinite tapes inside our heads, it seems that one could imagine a succession of progressively richer finite approximations to Turing-style computational universality. Perhaps "degrees on consciousness" as discussed in the article have to do with the depth of the approximation a creature with a given physiology can make to computational universality. I believe that the independent evolution of eyes resulted in surprising similarities, because of the underlying physics of photons, and the constraints placed on solving the same problems of interpreting streams of photons. It might be that there is some similar unifying computational phenomenon that drives evolution to similar mutually intelligible consciousnesses even via radically distinct evolutionary paths.

[codeulike]

Turing Completeness is pretty mundane. You just need GOTOs and IF statements, and registers/variables. Thats it really. Its not hard to acheive at all.

The Emperors New Mind by Roger Penrose discusses the opposite idea, that consciousness has a non-computational element that could never even be approximated by a turing machine. I don't really agree with it but its an interesting book.

[codeulike]

And for those who havent heard of him - Roger Penrose is a serious scientist and philosopher who did some of the key work on Black Holes with Stephen Hawking, so he's worth listening to.

[abellerose]

Your comment reminds me of the question, is the human brain really just a collection of complex machines?

source - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39482345

What we describe as awareness "consciousness" might not really exist. If everything is just a subsystem of the main system being the universe. Anyway I find it a fun philosophical question to think about.