The Emperor's New Mind Quotes

“All I would myself ask for would be that our perceptive interrogator should really feel convinced, from the nature of the computer’s replies, that there is a conscious presence underlying these replies”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The algorithm has some kind of disembodied ‘existence’ which is quite apart from any realization of that algorithm in physical terms.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“I argue that the phenomenon of consciousness cannot be accommodated within the framework of present-day physical theory.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“What is it that we can do with conscious thought that cannot be done unconsciously? The problem is made more elusive by the fact that anything that we do seem originally to require consciousness for appears also to be able to be learnt and then later carried out unconsciously (perhaps by the cerebellum”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“Somehow, consciousness is needed in order to handle situations where we have to form new judgements, and where the rules have not been laid down beforehand.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“According to strong AI, it is simply the algorithm that counts. It makes no difference whether that algorithm is being effected by a brain, an electronic computer, an entire country of Indians, a mechanical device of wheels and”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“I can at least state that my point of view entails that it is our present lack of understanding of the fundamental laws of physics that prevents us from coming to grips with the concept of ‘mind’ in physical or logical terms”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“Moreover, the slightest ‘mutation’ of an algorithm (say a slight change in a Turing machine specification, or in its input tape) would tend to render it totally useless, and it is hard to see how actual improvements in algorithms could ever arise in this random way. (Even deliberate improvements are difficult without ‘meanings’ being available.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“is not easy to ascertain what an algorithm actually is, simply by examining its output.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“In order to decide whether or not an algorithm will actually work, one needs insights, not just another algorithm.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“do not see how natural selection, in itself, can evolve algorithms which could have the kind of conscious judgements of the validity of other algorithms that we seem to have.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“there seems to be something non-algorithmic about our conscious thinking. In particular, a conclusion from the argument in Chapter 4, particularly concerning Gödel’s theorem, was that, at least in mathematics, conscious contemplation can sometimes enable one to ascertain the truth of a statement in a way that no algorithm could.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The virtue of any specific algorithm would lie in its performance, namely in the accuracy of its results, its scope, its economy, and the speed with which it can be operated. An algorithm purporting to match what is presumed to be operating in a human brain would need to be a stupendous thing.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The quantity 'i' cannot, of course, be a real number since the product of a real number with itself is always positive (or zero, if the number is itself zero). For this reason the term *imaginary* has been conventionally applied to numbers whose squares are negative. However, it is important to stress the fact that these 'imaginary' numbers are no less real than the 'real' numbers that we have become accustomed to. As I have emphasized earlier, the relationship between such 'real' numbers and *physical* reality is not as direct or compelling as it may at first seem to be, involving, as it does, a mathematical idealization of infinite refinement for which there is no clear *a priori* justification from Nature.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind

“though much of what is actually involved in mental activity might do so.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“One can argue that a universe governed by laws that do not allow consciousness is no universe at all.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“Perhaps consciousness is, after all, merely a spectator who experiences nothing but an ‘action replay’ of the whole drama.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The claim looks to me suspiciously like a dogmatic assertion, perhaps no less dogmatic, even, than those assertions of strong AI which maintain that the mere enacting of an algorithm can conjure up a state of conscious awareness!”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“What on earth does any of this have to do with our feelings of conscious awareness?”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“Hilbert had asked for no less than a general algorithmic procedure for resolving mathematical questions – or, rather, for an answer to the question of whether or not such a procedure might in principle exist”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The question was: is there some general mechanical procedure which could, in principle, solve all the problems of mathematics (belonging to some suitably well-defined class) one after the other?”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“WHAT PRECISELY IS an algorithm, or a Turing machine, or a universal Turing machine? Why should these concepts be so central to the modern view of what could constitute a ‘thinking device’?”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The viewpoint is that it is simply the logical structure of the algorithm that is significant for the ‘mental state’ it is supposed to represent, the particular physical embodiment of that algorithm being entirely irrelevant.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

“The judgement-forming that I am claiming is the hallmark of consciousness is itself something that the AI people would have no concept of how to program on a computer.”
― Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics