David Pearce : Stefan, thanks. Yes, David Chalmers is admirably open-minded. But at the end of the day, he's a dualist. Chalmers sympathetically explores the monistic conjecture that consciousness discloses the mysterious "fire" in the equations of physics that exhaustively describe our world. However, he rejects the conjecture that consciousness discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical for two reasons. Above, I touched on the second reason. On the face of it, neither classical nor quantum physics can account for phenomenal binding. Even if the basic stuff of the world is fields of experience, then insofar as our neurons are discrete classical objects, then a "pack of neurons" could no more be a unitary subject of experience than skull-bound Americans could be a pan-continental subject of experience.
[By contrast, I argue that our bound phenomenal minds - and the classical world-simulations they run - are an entirely quantum phenomenon. Of course, there are powerful counterarguments against this conjecture. These objections rely on the intuitively ludicrously short time-frames at which quantum coherent neuronal superpositions (cf, Schrödinger's cat) are effectively destroyed in the brain, i.e. lost to the environment via thermally-induced decoherence in ways that are for all practical purposes irreversible.
Fortunately, the conjunction of these two implausible-sounding claims [1: experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical; and 2: phenomenal binding is a manifestation of macroscopic quantum coherence] yields novel and testable scientific predictions - albeit predictions that most neuroscientists would confidently predict will turn out to be false.
For some idea of the technical challenges involved in this kind of experiment, perhaps see:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.2635v1.pdf]
Does any of this really matter ethically?
If you believe classical digital computers can become sentient, support "mind uploading" and are poised to become posthuman superintelligence(s), then yes.
In other words, I could be completely mistaken.