Pan-Computationalism

It is possible to see computations happening everywhere in all physical systems. We just decide which aspects of the system represent 1s and 0s (or any other value to be computed) and track them over time or space. As those aspects change, some computation is taking place.

Some computations might be more useful than others. We've gone to great effort to make finely tuned computations that work well for us, but the general structure of computation is everywhere. I can look at a tree as a computational system, in which the number of rings calculate its age or the density of the leaves calculate a complicated algorithm based on its environmental history. As we turn lights on and off throughout the day, perhaps it is communicating in Morse code to some unknown observer.

The key issue is that by looking at physical systems in very fine-grained ways, e.g. allowing individual atoms to represent information, we can see almost any computation in almost any physical system. Any plausible algorithm for consciousness can plausibly be found in a pail of pond water or a large enough wall. If some clever enough observer can see the right pattern of 0s and 1s, we have to assume the computation is there..