``Whether the organization [of the brain] is realized in silicon chips, in the population of China, or in beer cans and ping-pong balls does not matter. As long as the functional organization is right, conscious experience will be determined.''
David J. Chalmers in The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. OUP,1997.
``If there is experience associated with thermostats, there is probably experience everywhere: wherever there is causal interaction, there is information, and wherever there is information, there is experience. One can find information states in a rock—when it expands and contracts, for example—or even in the different states of an electron. So if the unrestricted double-aspect principle is correct, there will be [conscious] experience associated with a rock or an electron.''
David J. Chalmers in The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. OUP,1997.
``Someone who finds it ``crazy'' to suppose that a thermostat might have [conscious] experiences at least owes us an account of just why it is crazy. Presumably this is because there is a property that thermostats lack that is obviously required for experience; but for my part no such property reveals itself as obvious. Perhaps there is a crucial ingredient in processing that the thermostat lacks that a mouse possesses, or that a mouse lacks and a human possesses, but I can see no such ingredient that is obviously required for experience, and indeed it is not obvious that such an ingredient must exist.''
David J. Chalmers in The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. OUP,1997.
``However the metaphysics of causation turns out, it seems relatively straightforward that a physical explanation of behavior can be given that neither appeals to nor implies the existence of consciousness.''
David J. Chalmers in The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. OUP,1997.