Virtual Machine Functionalism (VMF) is the only form of functionalism worth taking seriously in Philosophy of Mind and theories of consciousness.

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• Virtual Machine Functionalism (VMF)framework0.915
  A philosophy-of-mind view that mental phenomena are implemented by virtual machines running on physical brains, irreducible to physics alone.
• If computational functionalism is false, consciousness may be impossible in non-organic artificial systems.hypothesis0.769
  Contrapositive possibility acknowledged.
• The Machine Consciousness Hypothesis rests on metaphysical assumptions summarized as computationalist functionalism, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the hypothesis.claim0.760
  Paper's statement of the metaphysical presuppositions of the MCH
• If computational functionalism is correct, then some computations suffice for consciousness and the question is which ones and when they will exist in AI.hypothesis0.758
  Conditional underlying the consciousness route.
• Functional and phenomenal introspection are distinguishable, and whether they correlate in machines is an open question.claim0.752
  Core conceptual distinction introduced at the start; defines the paper's central problem.
• We hypothesize that general computational machines with sufficient resources possess the necessary and sufficient means to implement consciousness, and that successful implementation can be established via analysis or testing.hypothesis0.751
  The central hypothesis of the paper
• It is hard to coherently deny functionalism in any reasonable theory of consciousness, since any theory must tie consciousness to certain configurations, which smuggles functionalism back in.claim0.748
  Paper's argument that all viable theories of consciousness implicitly rely on structural-functional criteria
• Virtual Machineconcept0.741
  A computing layer above physical hardware; Sloman uses this as an analogy for mental processes not reducible to physics.