Porcelain Publishing / JHC / Volume 9 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.47297/wspjhc2025090203
Cite this article
3
Download
30
Views
Journal Browser
Volume | Year
Issue
Search
News and Announcements
View All
ARTICLE

Computational Implementation of Machine Consciousness and Its Constraints

Yan Li1
Show Less
1 Department of Philosophy, School of Humanities, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
Published: 31 December 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Abstract

Within the computational functionalist framework, the possibility of machine consciousness is closely tied to the manner of computational implementation. Currently, discussions on computational implementation and its constraints are increasingly becoming a prominent topic. This paper primarily examines two distinct approaches with varying levels of constraint strength: the heavy-constraint approach, represented by implementationalism, which advocates for imposing substantive constraints on computational implementation to capture the necessary conditions for consciousness; and the light-constraint approach, which proposes minimal constraints aimed to preclude computational triviality arguments, thereby committing to a mechanistic account of computational implementation. Based on a comparative analysis of these two approaches, this paper advocates for adopting the mechanistic account of computational implementation as a foundational hypothesis, upon which substantive constraints on computational implementation should be imposed.

Keywords
Machine Consciousness
Computational Implementation
Constraints
Implementationalism
Mechanistic Account of Computational Implementation
References

Chalmers, D. (1996). Does a rock implement every finite-state automaton? Synthese, 108(3), 309–333.

 

Dung, L., & Kersten, L. (2025). Implementing artificial consciousness. Mind & Language, 40(3), 285–305.

 

Piccinini, G. (2015). Physical computation: A mechanistic account. Oxford University Press.

 

Putnam, H. (1988). Representation and reality. The MIT Press.

 

Seth, A. (forthcoming). Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

 

Shiller, D. (2024). Functionalism, integrity and digital consciousness. Synthese, 203(47), Article 47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04775-w

Share
Back to top
Journal of Human Cognition, Electronic ISSN: 2753-5215 Print ISSN: 2515-4699, Published by Porcelain Publishing