Comment by tananan

What strikes me as interesting about the idea that there is a class of computations that, however implemented, would result in consciousness, is that is is in some way really idealistic.

There's no unique way to implement a computation, and there's no single way to interpret what computation is even happening in a given system. The notion of what some physical system is computing always requires an interpretation on part of the observer of said system.

You could implement a simulation of the human body on common x86-64 hardware, water pistons, or a fleet of spaceships exchanging sticky notes between colonies in different parts of the galaxy.

None of these scenarios physically resemble each other, yet a human can draw a functional equivalence by interpreting them in a particular way. If consciousness is a result of functional equivalence to some known conscious standard (i.e. alive human being), then there is nothing materially grounding it, other than the possibility of being interpreted in a particular way. Random events in nature, without any human intercession, could be construed as a veritable moment of understanding French or feeling heartbreak, on the basis of being able to draw an equivalence to a computation surmised from a conscious standard.

When I think along these lines, it easy to sympathize with the criticism of functionalism a la Chinese Room.