Could you clarify why you think that this reading assignment illuminates the question being discussed? I just reread it. For the most part, it is an argument against dualism. It argues that consciousness is (almost certainly) reducible to a physical process.

But this doesn't have anything to do with what ArisKatsaris wrote. He was questioning whether consciousness can be reduced to a purely computational process (without "some unidentified physical reaction that's absent to pure Turing machines".)

Consider the following argument sketch:

1. Consciousness can be reduced to a physical process.
2. Any physical process can be abstracted as a computation.
3. Any computation can be modeled as a Turing Machine computation.
4. Therefore, consciousness can be produced on a TM.

Each step above is at least somewhat problematic. Matt1 seemed to be arguing against step 1, and Drescher does respond to that. But ArisKatsaris seemed to be arguing against step 2. My choice would be to expand the definition of 'computation' slightly to include the interactive, asynchronous, and analog, so that I accept step 2 but deny step 3. Over the past decade, Wegner and Goldin have published many papers arguing that computation != TM.

It may well be that you can only get consciousness if you have a non-TM computation (mind) embedded in a system of sensors and actuators (body) which itself interacts with and is embedded in within a (simulated?) real-time environment. That is, when you abstract the real-time interaction away, leaving only a TM computation, you have abstracted away an essential ingredient of consciousness.