From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxa!mhb5c!mhb5b!mjs
Newsgroups: net.ai
Title: Re: Consciousness, Monism, and Brain as Machine
Article-I.D.: mhb5b.121
Posted: Tue Feb  8 19:54:19 1983
Received: Fri Feb 11 06:05:31 1983
References: <274@houxf.UUCP>

One point in your treatise struck me as unfounded (but not by much).
You state that the human brain is capable of sustaining consciousness
(no argument, mostly), but that a PDP-11/70 clearly is not.  Well, it
ain't all that clear.  How many CPU hours (perhaps the proper measure
is Gigainstructions?) have all the 11/70's in the world executed?  How
many Gigainstructions must a human execute after birth before it
reaches consciousness?  And what is the relative power of a human
"instruction" vs. a PDP-11 instruction?  As long as I'm playing Devil's
advocate, can anyone prove that a Turing machine is capable (or
incapable) of consciousness?