Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 54 of 171
Computations are not like gravity
“Historically, significant scientific progress has commonly been achieved in the absence of formal definitions. For instance, the phenomenological laws of electrical current flow were formulated by Ohm, Ampere, and Volta well before the discovery of the electron in 1892 by Thompson. For the time being, therefore, I adopt a working definition of consciousness and will see how far I can get with it.” We use computations and information now because these are the best tools we have ever had to study the brain, and it is the only way we know of to program computers. Computations and information turn out to be very good descriptive tools for studying nature, but they are not part of nature except insofar as our brains can produce these concepts. In other words, if there had never been conscious agents (such as humans), computations would not exist. Computations are not like gravity, which exists whether or not we do. What we need to discover are the deeper physical principles upon which the brain builds not only the concepts of computation and information, but also consciousness. Interestingly, the fact that human consciousness is noncomputational may not prevent us from using computations to create artificial consciousness. For example, the concept of lift is entirely a human invention. It does not exist in the ontologically objective physical world, yet we have successfully used the idea of lift to create man-made flight.