I completely agree--XiXiDu was summarizing Massimo Pigliucci's argument, so I figured I'd summarize Eliezer's reply. The real heart of the question, then, is figuring out which one consciousness is really like. I happen to think that consciousness is closer to math than sugar because we know that intelligence is so, and it seems to me that the rest follows logically from Minsky's idea that minds are simply what brains do. That is, if consciousness is what an intelligent algorithm feels like from the inside, then it wouldn't make much sense for it to be substrate-dependent.