WHY CONSCIOUS UNDERSTANDING IS NON-COMPUTATIONAL

There are many facets to human mentality. It may well be that some of these can be explained in terms of our present-day physical concepts (compare Schrödinger, 1958) and, moreover, are potentially amenable to computational simulation. The proponents of artificial intelligence (AI) would maintain that such a simulation is indeed possible – at least for a good many of those mental qualities that are basically involved in our intelligence. Furthermore, such a simulation could be put to use in enabling a robot to behave, in those particular respects, in the same kind of way as a human being might behave. The proponents of strong AI would maintain, moreover, that every mental quality can be emulated – and will eventually be superseded – by the actions of electronic computers. They would also maintain that such mere computational action must evoke the same kind of conscious experiences in a computer, or robot, as we experience ourselves.

On the other hand, there are many who would argue to the contrary: that there are aspects of our mentality that cannot be addressed merely in terms of computation. Human consciousness, on such a view, would be such a quality – so it is not simply a manifestation of computation. Indeed, I shall argue so myself; but more than this, I shall argue that those actions which our brains perform in accordance with conscious deliberations must be things that cannot even be simulated computationally – so certainly computation cannot of itself give rise to any kind of conscious experience.