In his book Shadows of the Mind A search for the missing science of consciousness.pdf

Penroses Godelian argumentSolomon FefermanDepartment of MathematicsStanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305-2125Penrose reduxIn his book Shadows of the Mind: A search for the missing science of con-sciousness [SM below], Roger Penrose has turned in another bravura perfor-mance, the kind we have come to expect ever since The Emperors New Mind[ENM ] appeared. In the service of advancing his deep convictions and daringconjectures about the nature of human thought and consciousness, Penrosehas once more drawn a wide swath through such topics as logic, computa-tion, articial intelligence, quantum physics and the neuro-physiology of thebrain, and has produced along the way many gems of exposition of dicultmathematical and scientic ideas, without condescension, yet which shouldbe broadly appealing.1 While the aims and a number of the topics in SM arethe same as in ENM , the focus now is much more on the two axes that Pen-rose grinds in earnest. Namely, in the rst part of SM he argues anew andat great length against computational models of the mind and more speci-cally against any account of mathematical thought in computational terms.Then in the second part, he argues that there must be a scientic account ofconsciousness but that will require a (still to be found) non-computationalextension or modication of present-day quantum physics.1Take, as just one example, the vivid mini-\history in SM , pp. 249{256, of the originsof probability theory and complex numbers in the work of the 16th century mathematicianand physician, Gerolamo Cardano | as a prelude to an explanation of Schrodingerianquantum mechanics. 1 I am only competent to say something substantive about the rst partof the new eort, resting as it does to a considerable extent on a version ofGodels (rst) incompleteness theorem. Penrose had advanced that previ-ously in ENM , but the line of argument was much criticized, as it had beenin the past when advanced by others (e.g. J.R. Newman and E. Nagel, andJ.R.