[Gmail deleted my previous post attempts!?] AP Goucher's "proof" that Turing machines cannot be conscious i.e. "tons of simple systems have Turing universal power", is wrong since Turing machines need infinite memory and providing a system with Turing universal power with an infinite uncorrupted-by-external-noise memory, seems impossible in our universe. So argument based on impossible premise. You can get pretty far with a large finite memory but it seems by far the most probable way a universal-Turing-like machine with large finite memory could arise naturallly is via what we call "life"... Other arguments might include "Turing machine is made of unconscious components" -- but so is allegedly-conscious-entity AP Goucher. Or "self awareness," whatever that is. It seems clear to me a Turing machine which can fully examine (and emulate arbitry bits of!) its entire program is far more self-aware than AP Goucher will ever be. Albeit I must admit this: a Turing machine via introspection is not really capable of deducing its full internal workings (transition table, program) with full confidence since maybe those things had been evilly designed by machine's creator to mislead it. Think can prove this deduction task is undecidable. To break out of this quagmire and make progress we need to begin with a DEFINITION of "consciousness." And I would prefer it be "scientific." I am not sure what definition APG had in mind but it seems clear his notion was not scientific since he agrees it is not externally measurable and I presume also not even internally measurable (how does APG know he is not a program running on a TM?) hence fails Popperian criteria for being "scientific." Consult my paper Mathematical definition of 'intelligence' (and consequences) http://rangevoting.org/WarrenSmithPages/homepage/iq.pdf and section 21 provides an inadequate preliminary discussion of "consciousness." It contains this definition: Tentative Proposal: A consciousness is "an intelligent entity which interacts with some law-obeying randomized external environment in an effort to increase some kind of numerical reward." The paper defines "intelligence" and proves theorems about it, albeit essentially the same definitions and same theorems were also found independently by Marcus Hutter. Now the hackers in the audience might be interested in creating (for the first time?) an intelligent computer program. This is not difficult, I believe it could be done in 1 week of programming. Maybe even 1 day if you are really good. The paper explains how and proves such programs exist. Unfortunately the easy-to-create intelligent programs will be very slow. Another valuable task would be creating an intelligence testing framework and ongoing intelligence competition. Paper also explains how to do that. The fact the so-called "AI community" has not done these things is a severe indictment of it. If this Tentative Proposal can be made more precise we will have a mathematical definition of consciousness and will be able to prove theorems about it; it will become fairly clear AP Goucher really is conscious; we will know conscious computer programs exist and be able to create them; and we'll hopefully be able to prove theorems about what certain conscious entities "experience" when in quantum superpositions.