Mind, Computation and the Incompleteness of the Formal System

Abstract The nature of mind and the relationship of mind to the current form of AI is one of the great and fundamental topics of contemporary philosophy and science. Is the human mind computational or not? Can the brain perform processes that no Turing machine can perform? Can the mind be simulated? Does the incompleteness of the formal system, or the undecidability of all formulas, mean the impossibility of intelligent behaviour? Is it a necessary condition of intelligence to answer all possible questions and tasks, and if so, what answers will be sufficient in the assessment? Only correct answers, or on the contrary, does “only correct” mean too precise and therefore infallible, thus again exclusively “inhuman”? The main aim of this study is to analyse Gödel’s answer to the question about the nature of mind, his metaphysical assumptions and its implications for the current debate on AI.