A lot of smoke gets blown about consciousness. Rather than just saying "read Consciousness Explained by Dan Dennett," I want to try to outline what materialism and functionalism have to say about the consciousness of simulated humans.<br><br>Humans make judgments, and tell stories, and store memories, and have a massively parallel brain where different parts are all making judgments and stories and memories at the same time. The brain is where our consciousness is, but there is no point <b>within</b> the brain that is the location of consciousness - it's something going on in the whole dang thing.<br><br>If an AI models me, and the model predicts everything I say, that's not proof the model is conscious - maybe I'm just predictable. But if we look at the structure of this model, and it turns out that this model has a bunch of parallel parts making judgments and telling stories and storing memories, then when I say "I am conscious," the model is also going to say "I am conscious," and it is going to say it for the same kinds of functional reasons I do!