Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Emperor's New Mind:
Somehow, consciousness is needed in order to handle situations where we have to form new judgements, and where the rules have not been laid down beforehand.
I argue that the phenomenon of consciousness cannot be accommodated within the framework of present-day physical theory.
All I would myself ask for would be that our perceptive interrogator should really feel convinced, from the nature of the computer’s replies, that there is a conscious presence underlying these replies
What is it that we can do with conscious thought that cannot be done unconsciously? The problem is made more elusive by the fact that anything that we do seem originally to require consciousness for appears also to be able to be learnt and then later carried out unconsciously (perhaps by the cerebellum
The algorithm has some kind of disembodied ‘existence’ which is quite apart from any realization of that algorithm in physical terms.
According to strong AI, it is simply the algorithm that counts. It makes no difference whether that algorithm is being effected by a brain, an electronic computer, an entire country of Indians, a mechanical device of wheels and
I can at least state that my point of view entails that it is our present lack of understanding of the fundamental laws of physics that prevents us from coming to grips with the concept of ‘mind’ in physical or logical terms
Moreover, the slightest ‘mutation’ of an algorithm (say a slight change in a Turing machine specification, or in its input tape) would tend to render it totally useless, and it is hard to see how actual improvements in algorithms could ever arise in this random way. (Even deliberate improvements are difficult without ‘meanings’ being available.
is not easy to ascertain what an algorithm actually is, simply by examining its output.
In order to decide whether or not an algorithm will actually work, one needs insights, not just another algorithm.
do not see how natural selection, in itself, can evolve algorithms which could have the kind of conscious judgements of the validity of other algorithms that we seem to have.
there seems to be something non-algorithmic about our conscious thinking. In particular, a conclusion from the argument in Chapter 4, particularly concerning Gödel’s theorem, was that, at least in mathematics, conscious contemplation can sometimes enable one to ascertain the truth of a statement in a way that no algorithm could.
The viewpoint is that it is simply the logical structure of the algorithm that is significant for the ‘mental state’ it is supposed to represent, the particular physical embodiment of that algorithm being entirely irrelevant.
The judgement-forming that I am claiming is the hallmark of consciousness is itself something that the AI people would have no concept of how to program on a computer.
WHAT PRECISELY IS an algorithm, or a Turing machine, or a universal Turing machine? Why should these concepts be so central to the modern view of what could constitute a ‘thinking device’?
The question was: is there some general mechanical procedure which could, in principle, solve all the problems of mathematics (belonging to some suitably well-defined class) one after the other?
Hilbert had asked for no less than a general algorithmic procedure for resolving mathematical questions – or, rather, for an answer to the question of whether or not such a procedure might in principle exist
What on earth does any of this have to do with our feelings of conscious awareness?
The claim looks to me suspiciously like a dogmatic assertion, perhaps no less dogmatic, even, than those assertions of strong AI which maintain that the mere enacting of an algorithm can conjure up a state of conscious awareness!
Perhaps consciousness is, after all, merely a spectator who experiences nothing but an ‘action replay’ of the whole drama.
One can argue that a universe governed by laws that do not allow consciousness is no universe at all.
though much of what is actually involved in mental activity might do so.
