Physics and Metaphysics Look at Computation

Abstract

As far as algorithmic thinking is bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations, the Church-Turing thesis appears to hold. But is physics, and even more so, is the human mind, bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations? What about the powers of the continuum, the quantum, and what about human intuition, human thought? These questions still remain unanswered. With the strong Artificial Intelligence assumption, human consciousness is just a function of the organs (maybe in a very wide sense and not only restricted to neuronal brain activity), and thus the question is relegated to physics. In dualistic models of the mind, human thought transcends symbolic paper-and-pencil operations.