In Zombies! Zombies? Eliezer mentions that one aspect of consciousness is that it can causally affect the real world, e.g. cause you to say "I feel conscious right now", or result in me typing out these words.
Even if a generally accepted mechanism of consciousness has not been found yet are there any tentative explanations for this "can change world" property? Googling around I was unable to find anything (although Zombies are certainly popular).
I had an idea of how this might work, but just wanted to see if it was worth the effort of writing.
I fully support using high-level models. After all, doing any sort of macroscopic work by modeling elementary particles is computationally intractable on a fundamental level.
The problem with emergence is that it's used to sneak in nonreducible magic too often. I need the reminder that however interesting airplanes are, there's nothing there that isn't the result of elementary particles and fundamental fields.