Substrate
Asks whether the substrate of consciousness matters: can silicon, quantum fields, or other media generate consciousness, or are neurons special?
Supporting Arguments (4)
Church Turing Thesis
Most natural processes are computable, so it's likely consciousness is too.
Fading Qualia
If you slowly replaced your neurons with functionally equivalent chips, your consciousness would fade but you wouldn't be able to report it.
Dancing Qualia
If your neurons were rapidly swapped with functionally equivalent chips that don't support qualia, you would not be able to report the "dance".
Multiple Realisability Argument
Since different brains can have the same mental state (e.g., pain), what must matter is the functional pattern, not the physical material.
Challenging Arguments (8)
Chinese Room Argument
A system can perfectly mimic understanding without being conscious.
Leibniz's Mill / Chinese Nation
If a conscious machine were huge, you would only see its parts, not a mind.
Slicing Problem
A trivial physical operation on a 3D Turing machine could theoretically multiply the number of minds at no cost.
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.
Embodiment Requirements
Consciousness may require a physical body that interacts with the world.
Unfolding Problem
Any recurrent neural network can be made feedforward-only, conflicting with evidence of recurrency and self-reference in humans.
Pen & Paper Argument
The algorithm that is conscious in a computer can, by CF assumption, be replicated in all relevant aspects of its function by writing it out by hand on pen and paper, e