If you think consciousness is a real existent thing then it has to either be in:
The Software, or
The Hardware.
Assuming to be in the hardware causes some weird problems. Like “which atom in my brain in the conscious one?”. Or “No, Jimmy can’t be conscious because he had a hip replacement, so his hardware now contains non-biological components”.
Most people therefore assume it is in the software. Hence why a simulation of you, even one done by thousands of apes working it out on paper, is imagined to be as conscious as you are. If it helps, that simulation (assuming it works) will say the same things you would. So, if you think its not conscious then you also think that everything you do and say, in some sense, does not depend on your being conscious, because a simulation can do and say the same without the consciousness.
There is an important technicality here. If I am simulating a projectile then the real projectile has mass, and my simulation software doesn’t have any mass. But that doesn’t imply that the projectiles mass does not matter. My simulation software has a parameter for the mass, which has some kind of mapping onto the real mass. A really detailed simulation of every neuron in your brain will have some kind of emergent combination of parameters that has some kind of mapping onto the real consciousness I assume you possess. If the consciousness is assumed to be software, then you have two programs that do the same thing. I don’t think there is any super solid argument that forces you to accept that this thing that maps 1:1 to your consciousness is itself conscious. But there also isn’t any super solid argument that forces you to accept that other people are conscious. So at some point I think its best to shrug as say “if it quacks like consciousness”.
If you think consciousness is a real existent thing then it has to either be in:
The Software, or
The Hardware.
Assuming to be in the hardware causes some weird problems. Like “which atom in my brain in the conscious one?”. Or “No, Jimmy can’t be conscious because he had a hip replacement, so his hardware now contains non-biological components”.
Most people therefore assume it is in the software. Hence why a simulation of you, even one done by thousands of apes working it out on paper, is imagined to be as conscious as you are. If it helps, that simulation (assuming it works) will say the same things you would. So, if you think its not conscious then you also think that everything you do and say, in some sense, does not depend on your being conscious, because a simulation can do and say the same without the consciousness.
There is an important technicality here. If I am simulating a projectile then the real projectile has mass, and my simulation software doesn’t have any mass. But that doesn’t imply that the projectiles mass does not matter. My simulation software has a parameter for the mass, which has some kind of mapping onto the real mass. A really detailed simulation of every neuron in your brain will have some kind of emergent combination of parameters that has some kind of mapping onto the real consciousness I assume you possess. If the consciousness is assumed to be software, then you have two programs that do the same thing. I don’t think there is any super solid argument that forces you to accept that this thing that maps 1:1 to your consciousness is itself conscious. But there also isn’t any super solid argument that forces you to accept that other people are conscious. So at some point I think its best to shrug as say “if it quacks like consciousness”.