Josh Purtell argues a stone computer emulating a brain would break our consciousness intuitions
JoshPurtell · x · 2026-10-04
An ongoing machine-consciousness debate: Josh Purtell contends that a stone computer perfectly emulating the human brain would be so enormous that intuition breaks down — much like how many people find it plausible the sun could be conscious. Analog LLMs, by contrast, would be small and feel more like the Antikythera mechanism, which is decidedly not intuitively conscious.
He then sketches a functionalist reading that matches everyday intuition: sun conscious? > analog brain conscious? >> LLMs not conscious, explaining why our intuitions differ so sharply across computing substrates.
Related event: AI Researchers Clash Over Whether LLMs Can Be Conscious(12 posts)→
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