Well, it's inconceivable to Searle. Searle's problem is that, much as we can't imagine how silicon can be conscious, we can't imagine how squishy physical brai

Well, it's inconceivable to Searle. Searle's problem is that, much as we can't imagine how silicon can be conscious, we can't imagine how squishy physical brains are capable of conscious experiences either, even though we know they are, because we are. His solution is that biological stuff just has these special properties, that's a "brute fact" about biological stuff and it's not true of silicon stuff. And I think most philosophers of mind (who are, by and large, nonprogrammers) think that's too 'magical' to be true. In fact a very popular idea now in philosophy is that consciousness is (in some sense) a fundamental physical property, and when physical things are arranged in the right way, they become conscious like us or any other animal. And the proper arrangement of particles to invoke these high-level conscious properties must help organisms survive, or else it'd be unlikely that we have them. And so machines structured the right way can probably be conscious too.