Or in another way, if you say "it is an inherent property of computation", then I'd counter "define computation in terms of laws of physics". You can't. Computation is as ill defined as consciousness from the laws of physics perspective.
The problem of "being" (why there is something rather than nothing) is similar. It's not just that we don't have a physics explanation for why anything exists in the first place; it's that physics may not be able to answer that kind of question at all.
None of that is necessarily "pseudoscience" or necessarily bullshit (though it's easy enough to find examples of both).
I am skeptical of the circularity of the argument, though. There must be a "physics explanation" because physics explains everything. And we know that, because if physics can't explain it, it doesn't exist. And we know that, because physics explains everything.
(Not accusing you in particular of making that argument . . .)
But now I'm actually not so sure. You seem to not admit of a category of things that physics can't explain. There are things it does not currently explain, things it has not yet explained, things it has explained wrongly, and things it may never explain as an historical matter. But not things it can't explain ("can't" in the sense of "is incapable of").
Do I have you right on that?
If there is a separate world outside of this world etc, then that would get incorporated into physics. I don't see how any scientific explanation for consciousness wouldn't become a part of physics.
Basically, physics describes all the rules of this world. Consciousness exists and is a part of the world, so it is a part of the rules of the world, so it is a part of physics.
How would you define an operation that doesn't just makes every process in the entire world a computation?
Nature doesn't distinguish. But we do, for practical reasons.
If what you imagine to be consciousness is a recognizably interesting computation, the details that make it recognizable are objective, but your interest in it as a topic to talk about is purely subjective.
Edit: I should put that differently. Your sense of the criteria by which the problem may be considered solved does not preclude thermostat consciousness. And if that is allowed, then yes: the problem is solved. But I sense, again, the assumption of physicalism (or ontological naturalism), and I don't know why that premise admits of no dissent or argument.
I'm not setting a trap. I'm just trying to clarify your position.
Biologists used to talk about a "vital force". Alive things had it, dead things didn't. Now biology is mature enough to recognize that there is no such force. People chasing consciousness are in the position of the biologists who insisted, in the face of biochemistry, that there was still a vital force.
There is a physical phenomenon: we observe people insisting there is such a thing as consciousness. Why do they do this? That is something an explanation could address. Not everybody insists. Are people who don't not conscious? What is common to everybody who insists, and also everybody they insist it about? They all observe themselves experiencing, and act on those observations. So, if there is anything to be defined, it is probably defined by that.
We could make a machine that perceives, and perceives itself perceiving. If that machine would not be described by insisters as conscious, I would expect a reason why not.