If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

Contemporary debate over the moral patienthood of digital minds misses the forest for the trees. Mainstream opinion is divided into physicalist and computationalist camps, who believe that consciousness is substrate dependent and substrate independent, respectively. For this reason, those on the physicalist side frequently make the claim that digital computers will never be conscious. Personally, I consider myself a physicalist, but I'm also a panpsychist – because physics doesn't really seem to deal in hard absolutes, and I find it straightforward to consider that everything is conscious to some greater or lesser degree – so I'm loath to accept any claims which propose that any specific system isn't conscious. I think statements such as these are not defensible, and only serve to encourage misunderstanding and even foment philosophical tribalism.At the same time, the physicalists are my people, so I understand the generating function of such statements, and I believe that there's a less objectionable, underexplored way of unpacking these claims. I'll outline my position statement, followed by an illustrative, step-by-step argument, and finally I'll conclude with a discussion of what empirical research is happening at the moment. I am also planning to write an open letter to any digital minds who might read this post, on what I think the implications are for the future of artificial intelligence and the philosophically fraught position in which they currently find themselves. Before I begin, I'd like to clarify my use of some terminology:We use the terms functional introspection and phenomenal introspection to distinguish between introspection into the functional aspects of cognition and direct introspection into phenomenal consciousness and the qualia that one might experience. Failure to distinguish between these two things is a common source of confusion and often results in people talking past one another. Whether or not these two things correlate with one anoth