World renowned author Robert Penrose gave the keynote address for a day-long conference Saturday in a filled-to-capacity Cook Auditorium, discussing the possibility of a conscious computer.
The conference, titled "Of Apples and Origins: Stories of Life on Earth," was sponsored by the College and the New Hampshire Humanities Council.
Penrose is the author of the 1989 book "The Emperor's New Mind," which fueled public interest in the interrelationship between artificial intelligence and the human mind.
Among Penrose's major contentions is that computers will never be able to think as humans do.
Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and author of the book "Consciousness Explained," presented the opposing viewpoint at the conference, contending that the creation of a conscious computer will be "the inevitable culmination of scientific advances that have gradually demystified and unified the material world."
In addition to their speeches and workshops, Penrose and Dennett participated in a round-table discussion with Colin McGinn, a philosophy professor at Rutgers University, in New Jersey, and author of "The Problem of Consciousness."
The speakers advanced their theories and predictions regarding the possibility of consciousness through artificial intelligence in a debate mediated by Eric Chaisson of the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University.
Chaisson empathized with the audience and set a light tone for the debate when he began the discussion by saying he was confused, and asking the speakers if they were confused as well.
"The very fact that the mind leads us to truths that are not computable convinces me that a computer can never duplicate the mind," Penrose said in a news release.
"It could well be that the way the universe actually operates is according to some non-computable procedure," Penrose said in the discussion.
To demonstrate the ambiguity in determining consciousness, Dennett cited similarities in the physical construction of the human mind and the nervous system of a cockroach and asked "Is the brain of a cockroach non-computable?" Penrose responded that he did not know.
