Personally, I'm one of those who believes human consciousness CAN, in principle, be distilled into another vessel, whether it be another biological system or a computer. I personally do not believe we will ever be able to do this, but only because the technology will be too difficult for us to ever master, not because of any fundamental differences between hardware and software.

Of course, there is no way I can prove this, but neither can the opposite be proved either, without getting bogged down in metaphysical absurdities.

I believe a perfect recording of a symphony is equivalent to the performance, the photograph of the painting is equivalent to the original. What matters is the information content, not the medium, Marshall McLuhan notwithstanding. I believe in the Turing Test, von Neumann machines, and that the perfect counterfeit is indistinguishable from the original.

I also believe this suggests serious issues. Is a perfect copy of a consciousness, one created by "recording" a mind, or one generated by some sort of time travel accident, equivalent to the original? There may be quantum differences, down at the Uncertainty Principle level, but how would that manifest itself? After all, we are all constantly changing at the molecular level anyway.

These are not the kind of questions science can answer, but that art is perfectly suited to ask.