Manuel Blum
Carnegie Mellon University / University of California, Berkeley
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
Manuel Blum is the Bruce Nelson University Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 1995 Turing Award “in recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography and program checking.”
In recent years, Blum has dedicated his research to formalizing a theoretical computer science model of consciousness, the Conscious Turing Machine (CTM), developed alongside Lenore Blum. The CTM defines consciousness as a mathematically precise cycle of competitive information aggregation from massively parallel Long-Term Memory processors into a singular Short-Term Memory state that is subsequently broadcast system-wide.
Blum’s model proves that high-level subjective cognitive experiences, such as pain, pleasure, fear, and self-awareness,can be understood as operational, computational algorithms necessary for coordinating resource allocation in autonomous systems.
Known for. Turing Award Laureate (1995), Conscious Turing Machine (CTM) formal architecture, Blum axioms of computational complexity, cryptography pioneer
Coverage on this site
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Manuel Blum is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.