From: Freeman Craig Presson (dhr@iname.com)
Date: Thu Jun 24 1999 - 08:20:32 MDT
On 23 Jun 99, Billy Brown wrote:
> I highly recomment Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Back: An Eternal
> Golden Braid" for its treatment of this topic. His theory (in very
> simplified form) is that consciousness is a natural result of the inherent
> complexity [...]
The simplified form of "his" theory is not original to him (not that you
necessarily meant that it was), although certain refinements are/may be. I
heard it first from Asimov, I think, and it would be interesting to know how
far back it goes. If someone pointed the idea out in the writings of Turing,
or Babbage, or even da Vinci, I would not be surprised. I have (one of my
many) defective memory of something germane in von Neumann's writings,
but I can't pull it up (time to consult ELTM, obviously -- starting with this
list).
-- fcp@traveller.com (Freeman Craig Presson)
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