Rickert on embedded computation (was re: science of consciousness.)

[Patrick Juola]

In article <6i88a8$j7g at ux.cs.niu.edu> rickert at cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>andersw+ at pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>In article <6i7h70$gij at ux.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert at cs.niu.edu> wrote:
>>>andersw+ at pitt.edu (Anders N Weinstein) writes:
>>>There are things that are being done by the computer on my desk that
>>>I could not map into a Turing machine.
>
>>>I'm not talking 'analog'.  My concern is with interaction.  A Turing
>>>machine is not interactive.  A person is, and the computer on my desk
>>>is.
>
>>Formal models of computation treat *interaction* in terms of 
>>symbols getting written onto the tape memory. This seems a 
>>pretty good model of how the operating system code views a device. 
>
>Right.  But you generally have to model this as a Turing machine with
>oracle.  You can't model it as a plain Turing machine.  The oracle
>places the interactive symbols on the tape in a way that is not
>predictable from within the Turing machine model.

But Turing machines neither need nor are expected to predict their
inputs.

	-kitten