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Abstract We approach the question ‘What is consciousness?’ in a new way, not as Descartes’ ‘systematic doubt’, but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one’s way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might be beneficial or avoiding those that might be harmful. ‘Possible uses of X to accomplish Y’ are ‘affordances’. The number of uses of X is indefinite (or unknown), the different uses are unordered, are not listable, and are not deducible from one another. All biological adaptations are either affordances seized by heritable variation and selection or, far faster, by the organism acting in its world finding uses of X to accomplish Y. Based on this, we reach rather astonishing conclusions: 1. Artificial general intelligence based on universal Turing machines (UTMs) is not possible, since UTMs cannot ‘find’ novel affordances. 2. Brain-mind is not purely classical physics for no classical physics system can be an analogue computer whose dynamical behaviour can be isomorphic to ‘possible uses’. 3. Brain-mind must be partly quantum—supported by increasing evidence at 6.0 to 7.3 sigma. 4. Based on Heisenberg’s interpretation of the quantum state as ‘potentia’ converted to ‘actuals’ by measurement, where this interpretation is not a substance dualism, a natural hypothesis is that mind actualizes potentia. This is supported at 5.2 sigma. Then mind’s actualizations of entangled brain-mind-world states are experienced as qualia and allow ‘seeing’ or ‘perceiving’ of uses of X to accomplish Y. We can and do jury-rig. Computers cannot. 5. Beyond familiar quantum computers, we discuss the potentialities of trans-Turing systems.
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