Dave Moore

"I don't consciously control most of what's going on in my body" Indeed not--and yet your brain controls many of these lowlevel functions--and is affected by them in turn. Your brain cells, for instance, are powered by mitochondria.

"I don't find just phrasing these questions very convincing." I admit, they weren't really meant to be--to another person. But what went on in my head as I asked myself those questions persuaded me, my only claim. 

"With these assumptions, operating from a single tape is not very limiting" Note that in my model, the operation of the tape reader itself is controlled by the tape, even to such things as clearing malfunctions. How deep does... (read more)

"What if our brains just happen to be Turing machines?" Another way to ask this might be, "Is  consciousness computable?" Might I suggest another question? "Does it matter that Turing machines are self-contained; in other words, that they do not sense or interact with their environment?" Our brains do not only sense and interact with our environment, they also sense and control our own bodies. And our bodies, at numerous levels, down to our individual cells, sense and control their own status. Does it matter that the canonical Turing machine has no sensory apparatus, other than that which detects ones and zeroes on the program tape? What if it instead also sensed... (read more)