  It is generally accepted that machines can replicate cognitive tasks
performed by conscious agents as long as they are not based on the capacity of
awareness. We consider several views on the nature of subjective awareness,
which is fundamental for self-reflection and review, and present reasons why
this property is not computable. We argue that consciousness is more than an
epiphenomenon and assuming it to be a separate category is consistent with both
quantum mechanics and cognitive science. We speak of two kinds of
consciousness, little-C and big-C, and discuss the significance of this
classification in analyzing the current academic debates in the field. The
interaction between the system and the measuring apparatus of the experimenter
is examined both from the perspectives of decoherence and the quantum Zeno
effect. These ideas are used as context to address the question of limits to
machine consciousness.
