What Is Consciousness? Artificial Intelligence, Real Intelligence, Quantum Mind, And Qualia
Stuart A. Kauffman, Andrea Roli

TL;DR
This paper redefines consciousness as organisms finding affordances in their environment, arguing that true artificial general intelligence and classical physics cannot fully explain mind, which is partly quantum-supported and involves actualized potentia and qualia.
Contribution
It introduces a novel perspective on consciousness based on affordances, challenges the feasibility of Turing-based AI, and provides evidence for quantum support of brain-mind processes.
Findings
Artificial general intelligence based on UTMs is impossible.
Brain-mind involves quantum processes supported by strong evidence.
Mind actualizes quantum potentia, leading to qualia and perception.
Abstract
We approach the question "What is Consciousness?" in a new way, not as Descartes' "systematic doubt", but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one's way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might be beneficial or avoiding those that might be harmful. "Possible uses of X to accomplish Y" are "Affordances". The number of uses of X is indefinite (or unknown), the different uses are unordered, are not listable, and are not deducible from one another. All biological adaptations are either affordances seized by heritable variation and selection or, far faster, by the organism acting in its world finding uses of X to accomplish Y. Based on this, we reach rather astonishing conclusions: (1) Artificial general intelligence based on universal Turing machines (UTMs) is not possible, since UTMs cannot "find" novel affordances. (2) Brain-mind is not purely…
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Taxonomy
TopicsComputability, Logic, AI Algorithms
