The argument that we are machines made of meat and so machines made of any other substance may be conscious too is a remarkably weak one to me (a lay person, not a consciousness or AI researcher).
Isn't any arbitrary region in space a machine? Because it has physical inputs, physical outputs can some kind of physical computation within? An elevator is a machine but so is the building with many elevators. A city with many buildings, cars, people etc. (all the physical space and things in it withing the bounds of the city) is another machine. Is a city conscious? Clearly it is more complex than an individual brain?
From a slightly different angle - why does my consciousness stop at the limits of my body while the physical chain of reactions extends smoothly well beyond it, and infinitely into the universe?
Isn't any arbitrary region in space a machine? Because it has physical inputs, physical outputs can some kind of physical computation within? An elevator is a machine but so is the building with many elevators. A city with many buildings, cars, people etc. (all the physical space and things in it withing the bounds of the city) is another machine. Is a city conscious? Clearly it is more complex than an individual brain?
From a slightly different angle - why does my consciousness stop at the limits of my body while the physical chain of reactions extends smoothly well beyond it, and infinitely into the universe?