I like the Dijkstra quote here: "The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim." No matter how you define "swimming", the submarine works and is useful.
I guess it touches on whether machines will be able to have conscious experience similar to ours and if so will we be able to achieve immortality through uploading.
Will we be able to upload ourselves and maintain our biological consciousness? No, neuron systems are the only substrate on which we can currently confirm that consciousness arises from-- the current problem with saying machines are conscious still applies.
You are making an arbitrary choice here - why the neurons? Why not the whole brain? Some structure within the brain? The molecules making up the neurons?
The line is arbitrary, but it doesn't matter so much. The factual reality is that neuron systems are what we can currently (currently! this may change) prove gives rise to consciousness, regardless of philosophical attempts at violence against the science.
Read this:
"We know people can have only 50% of a full brain"
And so the question is how you define a full brain.
Neuron systems are network. It might as well be that a network is needed not the neurons per se.
Who's "we", you p-zombie?
Similarly, whether a machine can conceivably 'think' is very relevant. We are asking whether a machine can do certain specific things a human can do and are hard to envision a machine doing.
Whatever your response to the Chinese room argument (and more sophisticated variations), it will be a part of your theory of mind that is not obviously correct and will not be accepted by all others without further support.