Conciousness, bacteria, and the Turing Machine

A digital computer system is limited in its capabilities by the Turing Machine. A Turing Machine has no consciousness. Therefore a digital computing machine has no consciousness.

We define consciousness as the ability for the Turing Machine to stop at will and restart at will any number of times irrespective of what its program tells it to do and yet pass the Turing Test of maintaining an intelligent conversation with another similar Turing Machine.

Philosophers have given several definitions of consciousness. For our purposes of this paper, we choose to define consciousness in terms of a Turing Machine because Computer Science students recognize Turing Machines quite well.

Consciousness is built in at the single-cell level in living nature. Even a bacterium can perform tasks at self-determined discontinuities such as bacterium spontaneously dancing as mentioned in the book "The Emperor's Mind" by Roger Penrose.

The lack of consciousness in a digital computer implies that it is never spontaneous and hence we hypothesize that it can never learn like a living system can.

If you search the internet using www.google.com for "25,000 rat neurons" you will encounter a system of neurons which make self-learning of the task of flying a computer simulation. This self-learning, we guess, is superior to that of an artificial neural network simulation on a computer, because individual neurons and cells have consciousness because they have the intrinsic property that they are living.

Consciousness is intrinsically present in life. It is intrinsically not present in non-living objects.

A conscious computer like the human brain can examine a non-conscious Turing Machine and decide whether it will stop or execute forever. Therefore, all Turing Machines halting problem is solvable by a conscious human brain but not solvable by a (non-conscious) Turing Machine. Therefore, we have invented the bacterial brain concept.

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