I don't think causal scope is what makes a virtual candle virtual.

If I make a button that lights the candle, and another button that puts it off, and I press those buttons, then the virtual candle is causally connected to our physical reality world.

But obviously the candle is still considered virtual.

Maybe a candle is not as illustrative, but let's say we're talking about a very realistic and immersive MMORPG. We directly do stuff in the game, and with the right VR hardware it might even feel real, but we call it a virtual reality anyway. Why? And if there's an AI NPC, we say that the NPC's body is virtual -- but when we talk about the AI's intelligence (which at this point is the only AI we know about -- simulated intelligence in computers) why do we not automatically think of this intelligence as virtual in the same way as a virtual candle or a virtual NPC's body?

Yes, causal scope isn't what makes it virtual. It's what makes us say it's not real. The real/virtual dichotomy is what I'm attacking. We treat virtual as the opposite of real, therefore a virtual consciousness is not real consciousness. But this inference is specious. We mistake the causal scope issue for the issue of realness. We say the virtual candle isn't real because it can't burn our hand. What I'm saying is that, actually the virtual candle can't burn our hand because of the disjoint causal scope. But the causal scope doesn't determine what is real, it just determines the space and limitations of potential causal interactions.

Real is about an object having all of the essential properties for that concept. If we take it as essential that candles can burn our hand, then the virtual candle isn't real. But it is not essential to consciousness that it is not virtual.