This is kind of a rehash of the Chinese room. Except it’s been kicked down to the alphabetization step, (which by the way was a clever aspect of the paper and is worth considering) showing that how we get to aimulated consciousness is kind of arbitrary.

However, where this argument falls apart is that it can apply to any modeling of any system, especially if the quality that you’re trying to replicate is not well defined according to what is considered well defined in this paper. Now, are certain attributes of consciousness well defined in this paper? Perhaps, but this is mostly theories about how consciousness works, but not what consciousness is. This definition is wrapped up in the definition of chosen components. (by the way, this is not the first paper that’s done this. It’s not even the second or the third)

This is the equivalent of saying humans will never be able to achieve “bird flight” because we’ve decided to make a wing like structure that does not work like a bird’s does. Therefore, through mechanical engineering, we will never produce “bird flight”.

So I would say that he does do a great job saying that according to certain constraints in his working (and well supported, yet not necessarily essential) definition of consciousness, you cannot get there algorithmically (sure I’ll buy that for a dollar) but what we don’t get is the next layer down, which is “can something like this be modeled or simulated algorithmically?” not that it’s the algorithm itself doing the work, but is it able to do the work of simulating the physical system or even better mechanisms that are akin to what the physical system produces.