[myrmidon]

Gonna grab those, thanks for the recommendation.

If you are interested in the opposite point of view, I can really recommend "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology" by V. Braitenberg.

Basically builds up to "consciousness as emergent property" in small steps.

[omnicognate]

Thanks, I will have a read of that. The strongest I've seen before on the opposing view to Penrose was Daniel Dennett.

[irickt]

Dennett, Darwins Dangerous Idea, p448

... No wonder Penrose has his doubts about the algorithmic nature of natural selection. If it were, truly, just an algorithmic process at all levels, all its products should be algorithmic as well. So far as I can see, this isn't an inescapable formal contradiction; Penrose could just shrug and propose that the universe contains these basic nuggets of nonalgorithmic power, not themselves created by natural selection in any of its guises, but incorporatable by algorithmic devices as found objects whenever they are encountered (like the oracles on the toadstools). Those would be truly nonreducible skyhooks.

Skyhook is Dennett's term for an appeal to the supernatural.

[slow_typist]

Braitenberg emphasised the importance of analog circuits though.