I got the impression from GEB that once you could model high level conscious processes (which are informing the ‘switching’ of the aggregates out of which they are built), you could assemble a consciousness-generating mechanism out of any physical (or non-physical I suppose) substrate. I think the examples Hoffstaeder uses are billiard balls knocking into one another and a series of buckets pouring water into one another… so long as those processes can contain (ah!) glyphs of themselves in a meaningfully non-abstract fashion.
I’ve really been meaning to re-read it, bought ‘I am a Strange loop’ in order to dip my toes back in gently.
