alt Hacker NewsSearle refutes your claim that there’s magical thinking.
“Searle does not disagree with the notion that machines can have consciousness and understanding, because, as he writes, "we are precisely such machines". Searle holds that the brain is, in fact, a machine, but that the brain gives rise to consciousness and understanding using specific machinery.”
But the core of the original argument is that programs only manipulate symbols and consciousness can never arise just through symbol manipulation - which here then becomes 'we have not discovered the algorithms' for consciousness yet.
It's just a contradiction.