If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level

The author argues that if digital computers possess consciousness, it would exist at the hardware/physical level rather than through computation alone, challenging the mainstream computationalist view that consciousness is substrate-independent. Drawing from physicalism and panpsychism, the author contends that debates over machine consciousness often miss the distinction between functional and phenomenal introspection, and that determining whether consciousness emerges from computation, quantum effects, or electromagnetic fields is crucial to understanding whether digital minds could be conscious.