Computational
Explores the nature of computation, its role in reality, and what it takes to define computation adequately.
Supporting Arguments (4)
Church Turing Thesis
Most natural processes are computable, so it's likely consciousness is too.
Cognitive Science & AI Success Argument
Computational models have been very successful at reproducing cognition, so they will eventually reproduce phenomenal consciousness too.
Ontic Structural Realism
If reality is fundamentally just a set of relationships, then consciousness is also defined by its relational (and thus functional) structure.
Informational Ontologies
If reality is fundamentally made of information, then consciousness is a form of (substrate independent) information processing.
Challenging Arguments (9)
Problem of Many Minds
Sub-algorithms of a CF algorithm may constitute independent minds themselves.
Simulation Equivalence Argument
Simulating a thing (like weather) is not the same as instantiating it physically.
Possibility of Analogue Computation
Consciousness might depend on continuous (analogue) processes, not discrete (digital) ones.
Fractional / Borderline Qualia
Inexact computation could result in incomplete or "fractional" states of consciousness.
Pan-Computationalism
Any physical system can be seen as computing almost any algorithm if you interpret it creatively enough.
Unfolding Problem
Any recurrent neural network can be made feedforward-only, conflicting with evidence of recurrency and self-reference in humans.
Pen & Paper Argument
CF says you could create a conscious experience by manually computing an algorithm on paper over thousands of years.
Counterfactual Computation Critique
CF says consciousness depends on what a system could do (counterfactuals), not what it actually does, which can lead to odd results.
Neural Replay
Artificially replaying neural firing patterns would produce the same output without the causal structure CF requires.