i am not going to argue with you on that one. you clearly have given it more thought than i did. i did not read the book you mentioned. but i do like the lookup table idea. intuitively it makes a lot of sense to me. the lookup table does not preclude the co-existence of a computer. let's just say that the idea is that the Brain is more a lookup table than a computer. what is exactly happening while we are learning during our life-time? why does it take forever to learn something at a decent level. maybe we are just filling in the table with many pre-computed solutions.
When someone solves a problem that requires any kind of creativity, in particular, say when I play a chess game, there is both lookup, and there is something that is not necessarily computational. Or say, when someone writes a poem. The best example is when mathematicians prove a theorem, or perhaps the highest form of creativity, when a mathematician invents a new technique unknown to prove a problem. This is supremely not a lookup table by any stretch of the imagination. This exact example is the one used by Penrose to show that human beings aren't some sort of von-Neuman machine. Mathematicians intuit the solution out of nowhere, then build a suspension bridge between what is known and the other side of the knowledge bridge. We might still be some sort of machine, e.g., a quantum computer of some sort. We just aren't like the thing on your desktop.
i don't think that those precomputed solutions are used exactly as written. there may be some sort of a computer that merges the most relevant solutions in a fuzzy manner. the same computer may be used during the learning phase to generate novel solutions that are stored for later use.
Well, I understand what you are trying to say, and it can even make sense. In fact, I can code exactly what you said in a couple of hours (fuzzy databases are well known). Sadly, my computer is still not writing poetry or inventing new mathematical techniques, nor can I have a conversation with it. However, they play a mean game of chess!
And of course he was right. To the extent that a computer and a mind aren't the same thing they wouldn't work alike. Two things that aren't the same thing have characteristics that differ. As to quantum anything being the source that manifestations of creativity percolate from, theres no proof of it. I think its got more to do with the possible patterns a physical brain, that gives rise to Mind, is capable of. No parallel processing super computer will ever be able to match it for shear scope and I don't think it needs an assist from beyond the quantum divide to create given its onboard resources. Probably nothing you didn't already know.
What if consciousness is nothing more than a highly connected system that can detect its own feedback through any scaling of itself? I realize this is also recursive, but it seems more than just that...
Well, some in neuro Science believe that consciousness is the activity level of chemical synaptic activity and the resulting frontal/pre frontal processing of said chemical activity. In a "not so" free flowing (except in sleep) layered system, the unconscious being a lower (slower moving, deeper pathways) level of chemical activity located in regions of the early brain (prior to neo-cortex) and having heavy activity in long term memory. Whereas the conscious has evolved as the neo cortex evolved and, in humans, has a much higher level of chemical activity and much more fluid and highly developed neural efficiency which has much of its activity in the frontal cortex and utilizes shorter term and medium term memory more often...all in a normal human brain. In this concept consciousness is actually meta-conscious and unconscious is actually conscious which gives the unconscious a better standing in the context than it receives in today's mainstream (unconscious actually meaning "outside of" or "without" any consciousness). Maybe one of the things that metaphysics was intended to explore as opposed to just another word for philosophy. Philos meaning "love of " Another good question: What is dreaming and how does it relate to the consciousness. By the way, a human head transplant planned in Russia may answer these question better (will he gain consciousness?)