kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT) (11/18/85)
I agree with Christopher Reedy that a human with access to the world's libraries has information processing capabilities equivalent to a Turing machine with unlimited external memory. (We are ignoring the time-efficiency issue, of course, when we speak of Turing-equivalence.) Nevertheless, there do seem to be some functions of the brain that transcend pure information processing. I suspect these have to do with survival instincts, healing, and propagation of the species. (This is not to say that a race of machines couldn't be created with these additional properties. But I don't think they are inherent in a Turing machine.) --Barry Kort