Do computers have consciousness?

[Angrboda]

Given the general assumptions of the OP, I'd have to say no, your computer is not conscious.

The main difficulty lies not in determining whether the computer is conscious or not. The difficulty is in assigning meaning to the phrase, "conscious like me." What does it mean to be conscious like a human? To someone like Chad, it means to be linked up to a very special and unique ontological existent, a spirit, that doesn't exist solely in the brain. To me, consciousness is nothing more than a specific type of process occurring in a biological machine, no different in basic operation than a thermostat, albeit possessed of immense complexity. What's important to me is not the level of complexity, as there are equally as complex entities that likely don't possess consciousness (perhaps an ant hill, or our entire ecosphere). A minimum of complexity is required because, in my view, consciousness is a specific type of process, a very specifically structured mechanism. Just making something complex and filled with information won't get you to consciousness unless it is operating on that information in a specific, structured way. However, anything else besides a biological brain which possesses that type of process, will, to my view be conscious. Most people lie somewhere between these two polar opposites, believing the brain causes consciousness, but also not altogether certain that there isn't something unique and incapable of being duplicated outside a living brain going on.

To my view, once we understand what's actually going on in the brain, duplicating it outside the brain will be considerably easier (though not easy). However, a modern computer doesn't in any way resemble the way the brain gives rise to consciousness, imo, aside from that they are both machines performing well ordered and structured processes to manipulate information, using basic, naturalistic, cause and effect mechanisms. There the similarity ends.

(And in a nutshell, yes, I believe I understand what makes the process of consciousness what it is, but that's another story.)