You'd like "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. It's about exactly this question, and he goes with it even further :) For one example he considers information proc

You'd like "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. It's about exactly this question, and he goes with it even further :) For one example he considers information processing to be consciousnes, then asks about random patterns in cosmic dust that by chance encode another steps in a conscious process every 3 million years. Is that a conscious thing? What if it is? It goes very abstract very fast, and I disagree with some conclusions, but I still recommend it. > is the paper conscious? Not paper, but the person implemented in such a way - yes. You don't say "my proteins are conscious", you say "I am conscious". The substrate only needs to ensure the process works correctly and the inputs and outputs are matched. In your example it's like virtualization in IT - you can run a game on the computer, or run a virtual machine on the computer and run the game on that virtual machine. The game is running either way, it even runs on these same transistors, but it's a different process. Besides, I think consciousness is very handweavy, and if I had to bet I would bet: - consciousness isn't a thing, it's just a bad abstraction (70%) - consciousness is emergent in a fully physical universe (25%) - consciousness is fundamental, and part of the laws of universe (5%)