It is possible that one day computer programs designed for cognition might be able to pick out centers and rank-order them by degree of life

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• Can computers be conscious? Or more specifically, can today's computers fully emulate the way in which organisms compute minds?question0.802
  Central research question motivating the entire paper
• The degree of life of each center is correlated with the degree to which that center is a picture of the self, and this holds for all people, not just individuals.claim0.795
  Proposition 2 of the Mid-Book Appendix; the claim that self-likeness is a universal, species-wide measure of life.
• Cognitive functions, including sentience, can potentially be achieved by very different systems and their disparate substrates.claim0.784
  Central multiple-realizability claim of the paper, from abstract and §2.
• It is basically impossible to determine if a computer program generates conscious experience by merely observing its performance; a test for consciousness must take internal structure into account.claim0.783
  Paper's argument against behavioral tests for consciousness, establishing why MCH requires internal analysis
• The newly created centers work best, if they are based on something, some trace, that is there already.claim0.782
  The principle of preserving and intensifying existing centers, key to the fundamental process.
• The relative degree of life is already there, in the computable, mathematical, structure of the space.claim0.774
  Affirmation that life is not merely subjective but an objective, calculable feature of space.
• We can best assess function by assessing the degree of life in various centers.claim0.773
  Practical prescription for design: evaluate life instead of checking functional lists.
• Intelligence and cognition exist on a continuum; modern bioscience offers no support for clean bright-line distinctions between cognitive and non-cognitive beings.claim0.770
  Anti-essentialism claim: questions like 'is it cognitive?' are scientifically unjustified; modern view must ask 'what kind' and 'how much'.