Consciousness is not computation
I am of the mind that consciousness <i>is</i> an emergent property of the various interconnected information processing systems of the brain.  There&#x27;s just too much evidence: for instance, changing the physiology of the brain through drugs or trauma has predictable changes on consciousness.  From that perspective, I think it&#x27;s pretty clear that consciousness is <i>some kind</i> of computation rooted in the physical world.<p>However to the question of whether consciousness is a classical computation which could be expressed as a classical computer program, that part is up for grabs.  The brain processes information in a fundamentally different way than classical computers: it&#x27;s essentially a massive dynamical system of many many variables all interacting with each-other in real time.  It&#x27;s entirely possible that, given the dimensionality and parallelism of the brain, that there&#x27;s not enough material or energy in the universe to construct a computer capable of simulating the entire system in real time.  Maybe quantum computers will be able to manage it, or maybe we&#x27;ll need to engineer biological neural networks to get there artificially.<p>Or maybe consciousness is a thin illusion on top of a couple of clever tricks we have yet to figure out yet.<p>Anyway I hope we get a little closer to figuring it out in my lifetime.