The state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings; a person’s awareness or perception of something; the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world; the individual awareness of unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments; subjective and unique awareness of oneself and the world around.
Note the repeated use of the word “awareness,” which leads to the question, “What is awareness”?
Here is one answer: In philosophy and psychology, awareness is a perception or knowledge of something.
The concept is often synonymous to consciousness.[2] However, one can be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it, such as in the case of blindsight.
The states of awareness are also associated with the states of experience so that the structure represented in awareness is mirrored in the structure of experience.
Conscious?
Based on these definitions, is a photon conscious? A stone? A house? A bacterium? A bee? A tree? A fish? A bear? A human in a coma? A sleeping human? An awake human?
Where in the above list do you draw the line between consciousness and non-consciousness?
Scientists have expended prolific efforts searching for the elusive anatomical correlate of consciousness. Yet, the origins of consciousness remain unclear. By Yuhong Dong M.D., Ph.D., Makai Allbert, September 30, 2024
This is part 1 in “Where Does Consciousness Come From?”This series delves into research by renowned medical doctors to explore profound questions about consciousness, existence, and what may lie beyond.
“As a neurosurgeon, I was taught that the brain creates consciousness,” said Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote in detail about his experiences with consciousness while in a deep coma.
Many doctors and biomedical students may have been taught the same about consciousness. However, scientists are still debating whether that theory holds true.
The more we learn about consciousness, the more we begin to believe that consciousness is not just a brain function.
Imagine a child observing an elephant for the first time. Light reflects off the animal and enters the child’s eyes. Retinal photoreceptors in the back of the eyes convert this light into electrical signals, which travel through the optic nerve to the brain’s cortex. This forms vision or visual consciousness.
How do these electrical signals miraculously transform into a vivid mental image? How do they turn into the child’s thoughts, followed by an emotional reaction—“Wow, the elephant is so big!”
The question of how the brain generates subjective perceptions, including images, feelings, and experiences, was coined by Australian cognitive scientist David Chalmers in 1995 as the “hard problem.”
As it turns out, having a brain may not be a prerequisite for consciousness.
The Lancet recorded a case of a French man diagnosed with postnatal hydrocephalus—excess cerebrospinal fluid on or around the brain—at the age of 6 months.
Despite his condition, he grew up healthy, became a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant.
When he was 44 years old, he went to the doctor due to a mild weakness in his left leg. The doctors scanned his head thoroughly and discovered that his brain tissue was almost entirely gone.
Most of the space in his skull was filled with fluid, with only a thin sheet of brain tissue.
“The brain was virtually absent,” wrote the lead author of the case study, Dr. Lionel Feuillet, of the Department of Neurology, Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille, France.
The man had been living a normal life and had no problem seeing, feeling, or perceiving things.
The Lancet recorded a case of a French civil servant diagnosed with postnatal hydrocephalus at the age of 6 months. Later, an MRI revealed massive enlargement of the lateral, third, and fourth ventricles, a very thin cortical mantle, and a posterior fossa cyst.
The normal brain cortex is responsible for sense and movement, and the hippocampus is responsible for memory. Hydrocephalus patients lose or have significantly less volume of these brain regions, yet they can still perform related functions.
The eye is a mechanism. We see because automatic chemical, electronic, and mechanical effects create an illusion of sight.
Even without substantial brains, these people can have above-average cognitive function.
Professor John Lorber (1915–1996), a neurologist from the University of Sheffield, analyzed more than 600 cases of children with hydrocephalus. Of those, he found that half of around 60 children with the most severe type of hydrocephalus and cerebral atrophy had an IQ higher than 100 and lived normal lives.
Among them, one university student had excellent grades, a first-class honors degree in mathematics, an IQ of 126, and was socially normal.
This math genius’s brain was only 1 millimeter thick, while an average person’s is usually 4.5 centimeters thick—44 times larger.
“The important thing about Lorber is that he’s done a long series of systematic scanning rather than just dealing with anecdotes.” Patrick Wall (1925–2001), professor of anatomy at University College London, was quoted as saying in an article by Roger Lewin published in Science in 1981 discussing Lorber’s article.
The cases of people without brains challenge the conventional teachings that brain structure is the basis for generating consciousness.
Is our brain—weighing about three pounds, with roughly two billion neurons connected by around 500 trillion synap ases—the real source of consciousness?
Some scientists have proposed that deep and invisible structures in the brain explain normal cognitive function—even with severe hydrocephalus.
These structures may not be easily visible on conventional brain scans or to the naked eye. However, the fact that they are not readily apparent doesn’t mean they don’t exist or aren’t important for brain function.
Here, science begins a strange but typical journey. The belief that the brain is the source of consciousness is ingrained.
When someone who clearly is conscious but has very little brain is examined, the immediate attempt is to save the “consciousness-is-in-the-brain” hypothesis.
So, scientists search for invisible brain structures that account for the phenomenon of consciousness.
It reminds one of the search for invisible connections among entangled quantum particles, with even the great Einstein complaining about “spooky action at a distance.”
We now believe there are no invisible connections among entangled particles, and in the same vein, I suggest there are no invisible brain structures that account for consciousness.
“For hundreds of years neurologists have assumed that all that is dear to them is performed by the cortex, but it may well be that the deep structures in the brain carry out many of the functions assumed to be the sole province of the cortex,” Wall commented in the 1981 article.
Or, it may be no such structures exist.
These unknown deep structures “are undoubtedly important for many functions,” said neurologist Norman Geschwind (1926–1984) from Beth Israel Hospital, affiliated with Harvard University, in the 1981 article.
Furthermore, the deep structures “are almost certainly more important than is currently thought,” said David Bowsher, a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Liverpool in the UK, in the same article.
The source of consciousness may exist in realms we’ve yet to explore. When medical theories can’t solve a mystery, physics might step in with a plot twist—in particular—quantum physics.
Quantum physics, which no human understands, has become the new “dark magic” or the new “God,” explaining all that current science cannot explain.
“To understand consciousness, we can’t just look at the neurons,” Dr. Stuart Hameroff, director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, told The Epoch Times.
Even single-celled organisms like paramecium demonstrate purposeful behaviors such as swimming, avoiding obstacles, mating, and, significantly—learning—without having a single synapse or being part of a neural network.
That should be a clue. “Purposeful behaviors” require purpose, and presumably, having a purpose requires some element of consciousness.
According to Hameroff, these intelligent, possibly conscious behaviors are mediated by microtubules inside the paramecium. The same microtubules are found in brain neurons and all animal and plant cells.
Microtubules, as the name suggests, are tiny tubes inside cells. They play essential roles in cell division, movement, and intracellular transport and appear to be the information carriers in neurons.
The proteins that make up microtubules (tubulin) are “the most prevalent or abundant protein in the whole brain,” Hameroff told The Epoch Times. He hypothesizes that microtubules are key players in human consciousness.
Hameroff still fights to preserve some semblance of a brain/consciousness connection. Scientists cannot entirely let go of a belief.
They can only chip away at it until nothing is left, by which time a new generation comes along to say, in essence, “the sun does not revolve around the earth.”
“Because [when] you look inside neurons, you see all these microtubules, and they’re in a periodic lattice, which is perfect for information processing and vibrations,” Hameroff stated.
Due to their properties, microtubules function like antennas. Hameroff says they serve as “quantum devices” to transduce consciousness from a quantum dimension.
British physicist, mathematician, and Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose and Hameroff hypothesized a theory that quantum processes generate consciousness.
Quantum refers to tiny units of energy or matter at a microscopic level. Its unique features can help us understand many things that current science cannot explain.
As does black magic and religion. That, in fact, is the foundation of religion — explaining what science cannot explain.
In simple terms, microtubules act as a bridge between the quantum world and our consciousness. They take quantum signals, amplify them, organize them, and somehow, through processes we don’t fully understand, turn them into the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts that make up our conscious awareness.
Somehow. Somehow. Somehow.
Microtubules can explain bewildering facts about the brain. Hameroff posits that the brains of individuals born with hydrocephalus can adapt as their microtubules control neuroplasticity and reorganize their brain tissue.
“So over time, the microtubules in that brain adapt and rearrange themselves to sustain consciousness and cognition,” he said.
Other scientists are also using alternative quantum theories to explain mental activities. A study published in Physical Review E shows that vibrations in lipid molecules within the myelin sheath can create pairs of quantum-entangled photons.
It suggests that this quantum entanglement may help synchronize brain activity, providing insights into consciousness.
It’s like this. We don’t understand quantum entanglement, and we don’t understand consciousness, so maybe one causes the other.
We also don’t understand God, so perhaps we should throw Him (Her, It) into the mix and completely depart from science.
“Rather than a computer of simple neurons, the brain is a quantum orchestra,” Hameroff described, “Because you have resonances and harmony and solutions over different frequencies, much like you do in music. And [so] I think consciousness is more like music than it is a computation.”
Hey, why not? If we don’t understand microtubules or entangled protons, why not music?
Science is always evolving. The study of consciousness is still an area of active research and debate in neuroscience and philosophy. However, each new discovery opens up new possibilities. As we continue to explore these mysteries, let’s remain curious and open-minded.
Open-minded, but not empty-minded. Tossing out WAGs (Wild Ass Guesses) isn’t exactly science.
Let’s return to what we can agree on. Whatever consciousness is, it relates to sensing stimuli. When in daily parlance we speak of a person not being conscious, the belief is that person is not reacting to stimuli.
He (she, it) can’t see, hear, feel, smell, or taste, or at least not report on any of those senses. But we know an “unconscious” person has processes that continue. Administer an electric shock, and his leg will jump, so at least the muscles in his leg are conscious—probably his entire body.
His body reacts to outside stimuli, though perhaps one tiny portion of his brain doesn’t communicate what we call awareness.
When I am sleeping, the line between awareness and unawareness is blurry. I sense sounds and touch, which is why you can wake me by shouting or shaking me.
Let’s take it down a bit:
I play games, just for the fun of it. Am I conscious?
he question of whether bees are conscious is fascinating. Recent research suggests that bees exhibit behaviors that imply a form of consciousness. For instance, bees can recognize human faces, count, use tools, and even show signs of emotions.
They also demonstrate self-awareness and the ability to learn new tasks.
While bees’ brains are much simpler than human brains, containing about a million neurons compared to our 86 billion3, these complex behaviors indicate that bees might have a rudimentary form of consciousness.
A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.
OK, we’re down to other animals evenparamecium – animal-like protists- which “swim, avoid obstacles, mate, and, significantly—learn—without having a single synapse or being part of a neural network.
What is the commonality among all animals?
They sense. How do we know? Because they react to outside stimuli.
OK, what about plants. Are they conscious?
When I asked the AI Copilot that question, it answered:
While plants exhibit sophisticated behaviors and can respond to their environment in remarkable ways, they do not have brains or nervous systems comparable to those of animals.
Some researchers argue that plants might have a form of “plant cognition,” which allows them to adapt and respond to stimuli in ways that seem intelligent.
For example, plants can send warning signals to other parts of themselves when damaged and produce chemicals to deter predators.
However, most scientists agree that plants do not possess consciousness as we understand it.
There’s that science focus on a brain, or lack thereof, again.
Consciousness typically involves subjective experiences and awareness, which require a complex nervous system and brain.
Because AI simply gathers information, it spews out the old “consciousness-is-in-the-brain” hypothesis, which doesn’t recognize game-playing bees, much less paramecium, those swimming, obstacle-avoiding mating, and learning creatures as being conscious.
Where do they draw the line? Can only humans be conscious? Or, more reasonably, can all living things have some element of consciousness.
What is the common element for human, other animal, and plant consciousness? Reacting to stimuli.
That’s all a “conscious” person does.
When you “see,” photons reflect off objects and pass through the cornea, which refracts the light. The photons then go through the lens, which further focuses the light onto the retina, which contains rods and cones.
These photoreceptors convert light into electrochemical signals that travel along the optic nerve to the visual cortex in the brain, which processes these signals and interprets them as images.
It’s all electro-mechanical. There is no magic. It’s just photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc., doing what they are stimulated to do, which gives us an illusion we term “consciousness.”
Where consciousness began
All those electrons, protons, neutrons, etc., were created from pure energy.
All things that exist must have a beginning, so if consciousness exists, where does it begin?
Does it begin with the human brain? With a game–playing, mating insect’s brain. With a brainless paramecium? With a tree sending, receiving, and interpreting signals from other plants and animals?
With a rock that expands, contracts, or moves because of wind, rain, heat, cold, and vibrations? With a photon that responds to other photons and other quantum particles? Where is that bright line between consciousness and non-consciousness?
I submit there is no such line and that searching for it is a fool’s errand based on anthropomorphism, the belief that we are an example for everything.
We may be special or even superior in a few ways, but we are not unique, and consciousness is not a unique attribute of anything.
All we do is react to stimuli, just as everything in the universe does. That is consciousness.
The more sophisticated our reaction, the greater is our consciousness.
This takes us to the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the earth and everything on it, organic and inorganic, are one organism, working together to promote and maintain life.
That hypothesis also intimates the earth itself is conscious and has conscious intent.
The Gaia hypothesis posits that the Earth is a self-regulating complex system involving the biosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrospheres and the pedosphere, tightly coupled as an evolving system. The hypothesis contends that this system as a whole, called Gaia, seeks a physical and chemical environment optimal for contemporary life.
The logical inference is that the entire universe is an incredibly complex arrangement in which the unlikely existence of life evolved from energy and quantum particles actually is not only likely but inevitable for a conscious being testing infinite possibilities.
For those of you who consider the complexity of the human brain as being a factor in consciousness, consider the complexity of the entire universe, and the existence of uncountable conscious entities all interacting via particle motion and entanglement.
I go along with consciousness being an awareness of something other than nothing. If there’s nothing then there’s no consciousness, like before you were born or Zero. So, consciousness begins with “an awareness” of some otherness, which includes self-consciousness against a backdrop and an awareness of reality. Awareness or (consciousness) begins with 2, not 1. There’s no 1 in the real world, no singularity is provable or possible, except in theory or science fiction.
If consciousness is awareness, then what is awareness? Is an ant “aware”? Is a tree aware of its surroundings? Is a bacterium aware? Is a virus aware? Is a sleeping person aware?
I believe you have fallen into the trap that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries. You have stated the problem in a way that makes it impossible to solve because you have anthropomorphized it.
Obviously a bacterium is “aware” of its surroundings. It could not survive unless it was aware. Are you ready to say a bacterium is conscious? I am.
Yes, Pando and all other trees send signals, receive signals and respond to signals, just as you do.
As do bacteria. As do rocks. As do photons. As does the earth itself, the solar system, the galaxy and the universe — they all send, receive and respond to signals. Thank you for your response to my signal.
I am not a scientist — I dropped out of school in Grade 12 — twice! I also dropped out of university — twice. I finally received my Bachelor of Social Work when I was 57 — because I was finally ready to get it. All of which has abdolutely nothing to do with anything.
As far as I can tell, consciousness comes from being alive — from having life. Which is why I question the consciousness of a photon. What is it a photon senses?
Is it the brain that is conscious, or is it the mind? The brain remains after death, the mind does not. Nor does life.
I may be being simplistic, but I see life as beong the seat of consciousness, and the mind as the part of us that ecpresses our consciousness. This is my philosophy of life — life is consciousness!
That leaves a few questions: What is life? What is consciousness? Is a dog conscious? Is a bee conscious? A bacterium? A virus? A tree? A sleeping person?
You are about to begin a voyage that has occupied philosophers for eons. That is why it is called a “hard problem.” The statement of the problem is what makes it hard.
I state consciousness is the reaction to stimuli. Suddenly, the problem becomes simple. The greater the reaction to the more stimuli, the greater the consciousness. No mysticism required.
As for a photon, it senses whatever it reacts with. It can many different energies vibrating in what we see as colors or feel as heat. It can be entangled with other photons. It can act as a particle or as a wave.
“…If consciousness is awareness, then what is awareness…?”
They’re both two sides of the same coin though vary in degree. But then what is the coin? To me, the ‘coin’ is the ability to differentiate, i.e. life. Only life can purposely differentiate ( reproduce) by awareness or consciousness of another system like itself. A rock cannot reproduce nor is it aware of the need to survive. Yes, a rock or photon can react or sense vibrations but that’s not the same as the ability or need to differentiate and survive. Sensation is different from reproduction. The former is picking up vibes, the latter is doing something about it progressively.
“… Or is consciousness just an illusion that your brain has conjured up? …”
What is objectively, really “out there” is what our subjective “in there” brains detect. By science and repeated experimental experience of experts, we determine if “out and in” or subjective and objective are the same.
Everything with sensorial equipment, eyes, ears, nose, etc., in short, a brain, can only detect a tiny, tiny, portion of reality. Before microscopes, telescopes, etc. were invented, our senses made contact with very little of reality and still do. We only ‘see’ a small share (colors) of the wavelengths in the whole electromagnetic spectrum and hear very little with our ears. We still don’t know what’s beyond the furthest seeable galaxy. We peer further than ever before in every direction and never reach an end.
The best we can do is what our logical brains/minds allow. There’s a lot more to reality and we’ll have to wait for scientific minds and instruments to penetrate the illusion we call reality.
On another note, perhaps we should ask what we mean by Alive instead of what is consciousness or awareness. Where is the line between alive and dead? eternal and temporal?
Just thought of this while trying to tie-in to MS: Anything physical senses. Paper and coin sense. But legally, money and the monetary system is a non-sense.
Can the photon refuse to react? That would definitely display consciousness. Just because it does react is meaningless to me if it always reacts the same way under the same circumstance — like a well-oiled machine. We know machines are not conscious.
You ask, what is life? Does a thing come into being, change itself in some way, then cease to be after some period of time? I cannot say what life is, but to the best of my knowlege all living things display those 3 elements — birth, growth, death.
This, of course, begs the question, are bacteria and viruses living? They certainly reproduce themselves by splitting into exact duplicates of themselves, which could be considered an act of birth, but it is for better and wiser people than I to say if they actually actually change or grow in some way. Or do they do these things because their nature forces them to act in one and only one way. (In other words I don’t know if what they have is life or just some kind of predetermined existence. I can and have argued both sides. So again, do they have choice in their actions?) I think the ability to choose to act or not act under equal circumstances certainly sounds like some kind of consciousness.
And then, we have to add the consideration of anthropomorphism. Do we only see life where we can see similarities to our own lives? Is a planet alive? Is an airless blob of matter floating through space alive?
Anyway, to summarize, in my little mind, anything that comes into being, grows or changes by internal processes, and at some point be it microseconds or billions of years, dies or ceases to exist, then that constitutes life of some kind. And if nothing else, life contains the possibility of consciousness, even if we cannot see it.
And please remember, I am just a person with no education in any of these particular fields. Any knowledge or awareness comes from a lifetime of studying me, because I am the only example of life that I can actually know. Everything else is extraneous to me, though I can theorize.
Science has not taken us there yet, so I cannot comment in the way you are asking me to. When I considered fhe planet, all these other things were being represented by the planet. There are things we do not know.
So maybe I must adjust my criteria somewhat. In order to be born, or somehow created, i would expect there must be a continuation process, as in having a parent or parents. As far as we know, none of your items are continuations of previous beings — but nor can I totally rule them out because I simply do not know. That is part of “my” anthropomorphism problem. I cannot see a continuation process, but that does not mean it isn’t there.
But for arguments sake, none of them are “life as we know it.” A cooling chunk of lava does not a live rock make. The rock cannot change itself, it can only change through actions of outside forces.
But to go in a different direction, are the cells in our bodies concious? I would tend to say yes, each cell fits the process of birth, change, and death. In fact I would go so far as to theorize the possibility of our own consciousness being a group of cellular consciousnesses working together as a collective. I know that a gut feeling is more often right than an idea born in my head. My body has often saved me from harm by warning me with a strong feeling I cannot explain except by such a collective consciousness.
So far, you have offered me no reason to change my mind that my pseudo-definition of life is wrong. Can you respond in such a way as to agree or dfisagree or even a maybe.
What are your personal thoughts about life and consciousness. We are at the table of discussion. It is time for “your” response, not the response of anyone else. You must have your own ideas…
I don’t know how to define life, but my definition of consciousness is sensing, and everything senses, so to some degree, everything is conscious. It’s a “hard problem” because we insist on anthropomorphizing a word that has nothing to do with life, but rather to do with existence.
By sensing do you mean “with the senses,” or “being aware of,” or “reacting to”? Or some combination of these ways of sensing. Trees sense coming danger and they react in a way to save themselves — i would certainly call this a form of vonsciousness.
But in truth I find the sensing concept “as I understand it” to be too general. I think life is a more specific thing. I think life requires a set of characteristics, for want of a better word. Life may not require consciousness, but to me it requires the possibility of consviousness. I would never consider a rock concious of anything. But then, may our definitions of consciousness are different…
Your final sentence hits the mark. “Consciousness” is a semantic question, not a physical one. In your mind, only life can be “conscious,” though you can’t define life, either.
“Consciousness” is a “hard problem” because it has different definitions, depending on the speaker.
Consider the opposite of “conscious”, “unconscious.”
Is a sleeping person or a comatose person unconscious? A sleeping person’s body is sensing, and reacting to, its environment. It senses the ambient temperature and adjusts accordingly. It senses loud sounds and wakes up. It senses a hard touch and wakes up. It senses food in its digestive tract and digests it. It senses pain.
So, is a sleeping person conscious? Your answer depends only on YOUR DEFINITION of “conscious,” and not THE DEFINITION.
I see you have evolved in your struggle to understand. Now you believe life is something that requires the possibility of consciousness. I have no idea what that means, but it is your unique definition. Others have different definitions.
A rock is made of chemicals and life evolved from chemicals, so does a rock have the same possibility of consciousness as its constituent chemicals?
Human sperm begin with spermatogonia: These are the initial germ cells that divide and differentiate into a sperm. Is a germ cell conscious? Is the resultant sperm conscious?
Is an egg conscious? The sperm and egg both sense their environment and react to it.
When you put them together, they form a zygote. Is a zygote conscious? As a zygote develops it becomes a blastocyst. Is a blastocyst conscious?
As the blastocyst implants in the uterus, it forms an embryo, and after that, a fetus. Is an embryo conscious? Is a fetus conscious? At some point a baby is born. Is a baby conscious?
Are any or all of the above conscious? When does consciousness begin? You can define consciousness according to your wishes, and that will give you YOUR answer, but not THE answer.
If spermatogonia are not conscious, when does consciousness begin. If they are conscious, then tell me why a rock is not conscious. What are your criteria for consciousness?
You now have arrived in “the hard problem” that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries — all because it’s not a physical question but a semantic question.
About the size of a human finger, bluestreak cleaner wrasse are tiny, blue, black and white fish that live on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. Bluestreak cleaner wrasse set up “cleaning stations” on the reefs, then wait for other fish to show up so they can eat the parasites off their bodies, per the Georgia Aquarium. These diminutive swimmers are industrious, inspecting up to 2,000 fish each day. They also have good memories and can recognize more than 100 different “clients.”
Scientists already knew bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) were savvy creatures. In 2018, they became the first fish to pass what’s known as the mirror test, an experiment used to gauge self-awareness by assessing whether or not an animal recognizes its own reflection. Other creatures that have passed the mirror test include bottlenose dolphins, chimpanzees and Asian elephants.
Last year, researchers also showed that bluestreak cleaner wrasse could recognize themselves in photos after looking at their reflection in a mirror.
Scientists wanted to explore the bluestreak cleaner wrasse’s self-awareness on an even deeper level, so they set up a series of new laboratory experiments. They shared their findings in a new paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
In the first phase, researchers placed a bluestreak cleaner wrasse inside a clear fish tank. Then, they held photos against the glass showing bluestreak cleaner wrasses of varying sizes—some that were 10 percent larger than the fish in the tank, and some that were 10 percent smaller.
No matter which photo the scientists showed, the bluestreak cleaner wrasse inside the tank tried to attack it.
Next, the team repeated the same experiment but added a mirror to the tank. The fish checked out their own reflection before deciding whether to fight—and they would only battle photos of smaller intruders, not larger ones.
To scientists, this suggests that bluestreak cleaner wrasse are capable of understanding their own body size, as well as how their body size stacks up against a rival.
“This was unexpected because we had an image that this fish always shows aggression against rivals, regardless of size,” says study co-author Taiga Kobayashi, a scientist at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, to New Scientist’s Corryn Wetzel.
There are no mirrors in the wild, so the findings also suggest that bluestreak cleaner wrasse adapted and learned to use the mirror as a self-preservation tool. This discovery can “help clarify the similarities between human and non-human animal self-awareness and provide important clues to elucidate how self-awareness has evolved,” Kobayashi says in a statement.
Tweaks to entrances, tunnels and chambers may help prevent diseases from spreading
If an infection takes hold in an ants’ nest, it could spell disaster for the whole colony. But some worker ants appear to have a workaround for that. When exposed to a pathogen, black garden ants (Lasius niger) tinkered with their nest layout in ways that could slow the spread of disease, a new study suggests.
Limiting social contact — through social distancing, for example — is thought to be an effective barrier against the spread of disease (SN: 3/13/20). Humans also alter what the researchers call spatial networks by, for instance, using parts of a building or city as quarantine zones or expanding urban spaces.
To see whether ants act in a similar way, Nathalie Stroeymeyt and her team at the University of Bristol in England let 20 groups of 180 black garden ants excavate nests in soil-filled jars. The day after digging started, the researchers added 20 more worker ants to each jar, with half of the jars receiving groups infected with a fungal pathogen.
Over the next six days, the researchers used video to monitor the ants’ behavior and micro-CT scans to study the evolution of their nests.
Ant colonies exposed to the pathogen dug nests faster and initially made more tunnels than healthy colonies, and after six days, had made several structural modifications, including spacing entrances 0.62 centimeters farther apart on average. The exposed colonies also placed chambers — which house colony resources such as queens, their brood and food — in less central locations. And ants infected with the fungus spent more time at the surface than their coworkers, which the study suggests is probably a form of self-isolation.
The team then used spatial network analysis and disease transmission simulations to see if the changes would have any noticeable impact on the way disease would spread in the nests. Taking the designs crafted by the exposed and unexposed colonies, the team simulated what would happen if a pathogen was introduced. Ant colonies in the disease-resistant redesigns would have a significantly lower fungal load — and fewer lethal doses — than those in nests built without any previous exposure to disease, the team found.
The findings are fascinating, though not surprising, says Sebastian Stockmaier, a behavioral disease ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Social insects like ants, bees and termites have evolved a range of colony-level defenses to effectively manage diseases, he says, and large-scale outbreaks are rare.
Group living is generally thought to increase the risk of disease, and this threat is particularly pronounced in social insects because of their low genetic diversity and frequent social interactions, factors which help disease to spread. Because of this, when faced with disease, “their strategies are typically targeted at protecting the group as a whole, rather than focusing on the individual,” says Stockmaier.
What if everything in our world has a soul and mind? What if every desk, chair, and potted plant has a conscious stream of thoughts? That’s the basic idea behind Panpsychism, a theory first put forward in the late 16th century by Francesco Patrizi. It’s been a hundred years or so since science won out about this theory in the 1920s, but now it’s regaining momentum.
To understand why this theory is regaining popularity requires us to look at one of the most difficult conundrums that human scientists have ever faced: where consciousness comes from. Scientists have been trying to solve this hard problem for over a hundred years, and while developments in neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have come far, we still don’t have a definitive answer.
The argument is regaining momentum, though, thanks in part to the work of Italian neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, who proposed the idea that there is widespread consciousness even found in the simplest of systems. Tononi and American neuroscientist Christof Koch argued that consciousness will follow where there are organized lumps of matter. Some even believe that the stars may be conscious.
This basic idea, then, seems to suggest that grouped lumps of matter, like the very chair you’re sitting in right now, may have a stream of consciousness. Of course, not everyone agrees with this. Many still take the stance that this is just an attempt to grasp at straws, if you will, in a bid to understand consciousness and how it comes to be.
The main idea behind Panpsychism seems to rely on the belief that if brains are not required for consciousness, then anything can be conscious of its existence, and thus, everything has different experiences. But there are more than just the believers and unbelievers here. There are actually some who believe that consciousness is all an illusion, which raises even more questions.
Keith Frankish, an honorary professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, told Popular Mechanics that he believes that consciousness is just an illusion of our own minds. Whether or not the very stars are conscious has yet to be proven, of course. And we’re still a long way from understanding the brain and how it correlates to different things within our world.
This is still an area of science that draws a lot of big question marks from scientists. All you can really say for sure is what you believe. Are you conscious? Or is consciousness just an illusion that your brain has conjured up? It is certainly an interesting thought.
I can’t say whether plants are intelligent; there is no uniform definition of intelligence. But I can say with assurance that plants are conscious, meaning they sense their surroundings. Everything does, with the only difference being how much sensing they do and what they do about it.
Another relevant article: Do plants and trees have consciousness? The author of the article struggles with the question only from lacking a definition of “consciousness.”
The correct definition of consciousness is sensingness, i.e. the ability to sense. Since everything senses its environment, consciousness is in everything, with the only difference being the amount of sensing and what is done in reaction to the sensing.
A human takes action, so does a bee and a tree. A rock erodes. Water reacts by boiling or evaporating or forming ice. Everything is conscious. The makes the so-called “hard problem” simple. No need to anthropomorphize. Just evaluate the input and the reaction and you have the amount of consciousness.
It’s as though someone asked you, “How would you add 2+2? And your answer was, “Begin, by finding the cube root of a 500 digit number.”
Consciousness very simply is sensing and reaction. Nothing more. No multi-dimention, other-worldly answers needed. Everything senses, Everything reacts. Just quantify and I’ll tell you how conscious it is.
I admit I was skeptical of your Sensing and Reaction theory of consciousness at first, but new findings, such as this one from Yale University lend credence to it by showing that sensing regions of the brain and stimulation of areas of the brain associated with consciousness, all activate at the same time, as measured by a “fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) datasets collected from 1,561 healthy adult participants as they performed 11 different tasks using four senses: vision, audition, taste, and touch.”
Thank you, Scott. Interesting article. Of course, it still lingers in the “awareness = consciousness” trope, and I suggest consciousness is far more than that.
We still face the questions about what is conscious: An ape? A bee? A tree? A rock? The Earth? The universe?
Can a part be conscious, while the whole is not? We are part of the universe, and there is agreement that we are conscious and part of the universe, so is the universe conscious? I suggest that it is.
As I see it, consciousness is a universal condition that can be measured according to reaction. Until there is agreement on that point, there never will be answers to the above questions, nor will there be a measure of consciousness.
That said, thank you again for the article. It is, as has been said, “One small step for a man.” Still awaiting the “giant leap for mankind.”
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
I go along with consciousness being an awareness of something other than nothing. If there’s nothing then there’s no consciousness, like before you were born or Zero. So, consciousness begins with “an awareness” of some otherness, which includes self-consciousness against a backdrop and an awareness of reality. Awareness or (consciousness) begins with 2, not 1. There’s no 1 in the real world, no singularity is provable or possible, except in theory or science fiction.
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If consciousness is awareness, then what is awareness? Is an ant “aware”? Is a tree aware of its surroundings? Is a bacterium aware? Is a virus aware? Is a sleeping person aware?
I believe you have fallen into the trap that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries. You have stated the problem in a way that makes it impossible to solve because you have anthropomorphized it.
Obviously a bacterium is “aware” of its surroundings. It could not survive unless it was aware. Are you ready to say a bacterium is conscious? I am.
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Reminds me of something I read about trees being able to ‘signal’ each other.
What would Pando say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
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Yes, Pando and all other trees send signals, receive signals and respond to signals, just as you do.
As do bacteria. As do rocks. As do photons. As does the earth itself, the solar system, the galaxy and the universe — they all send, receive and respond to signals. Thank you for your response to my signal.
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I am not a scientist — I dropped out of school in Grade 12 — twice! I also dropped out of university — twice. I finally received my Bachelor of Social Work when I was 57 — because I was finally ready to get it. All of which has abdolutely nothing to do with anything.
As far as I can tell, consciousness comes from being alive — from having life. Which is why I question the consciousness of a photon. What is it a photon senses?
Is it the brain that is conscious, or is it the mind? The brain remains after death, the mind does not. Nor does life.
I may be being simplistic, but I see life as beong the seat of consciousness, and the mind as the part of us that ecpresses our consciousness. This is my philosophy of life — life is consciousness!
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That leaves a few questions: What is life? What is consciousness? Is a dog conscious? Is a bee conscious? A bacterium? A virus? A tree? A sleeping person?
You are about to begin a voyage that has occupied philosophers for eons. That is why it is called a “hard problem.” The statement of the problem is what makes it hard.
I state consciousness is the reaction to stimuli. Suddenly, the problem becomes simple. The greater the reaction to the more stimuli, the greater the consciousness. No mysticism required.
As for a photon, it senses whatever it reacts with. It can many different energies vibrating in what we see as colors or feel as heat. It can be entangled with other photons. It can act as a particle or as a wave.
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“…If consciousness is awareness, then what is awareness…?”
They’re both two sides of the same coin though vary in degree. But then what is the coin? To me, the ‘coin’ is the ability to differentiate, i.e. life. Only life can purposely differentiate ( reproduce) by awareness or consciousness of another system like itself. A rock cannot reproduce nor is it aware of the need to survive. Yes, a rock or photon can react or sense vibrations but that’s not the same as the ability or need to differentiate and survive. Sensation is different from reproduction. The former is picking up vibes, the latter is doing something about it progressively.
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What about a virus? Or a flame which multiplies by differentiating between flammable and nonflammable?
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“… Or is consciousness just an illusion that your brain has conjured up? …”
What is objectively, really “out there” is what our subjective “in there” brains detect. By science and repeated experimental experience of experts, we determine if “out and in” or subjective and objective are the same.
Everything with sensorial equipment, eyes, ears, nose, etc., in short, a brain, can only detect a tiny, tiny, portion of reality. Before microscopes, telescopes, etc. were invented, our senses made contact with very little of reality and still do. We only ‘see’ a small share (colors) of the wavelengths in the whole electromagnetic spectrum and hear very little with our ears. We still don’t know what’s beyond the furthest seeable galaxy. We peer further than ever before in every direction and never reach an end.
The best we can do is what our logical brains/minds allow. There’s a lot more to reality and we’ll have to wait for scientific minds and instruments to penetrate the illusion we call reality.
On another note, perhaps we should ask what we mean by Alive instead of what is consciousness or awareness. Where is the line between alive and dead? eternal and temporal?
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The fact that we cannot answer the final question in your comment, is part of why I say that consciousness is sensing, and everything senses.
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Just thought of this while trying to tie-in to MS: Anything physical senses. Paper and coin sense. But legally, money and the monetary system is a non-sense.
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🙂
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Can the photon refuse to react? That would definitely display consciousness. Just because it does react is meaningless to me if it always reacts the same way under the same circumstance — like a well-oiled machine. We know machines are not conscious.
You ask, what is life? Does a thing come into being, change itself in some way, then cease to be after some period of time? I cannot say what life is, but to the best of my knowlege all living things display those 3 elements — birth, growth, death.
This, of course, begs the question, are bacteria and viruses living? They certainly reproduce themselves by splitting into exact duplicates of themselves, which could be considered an act of birth, but it is for better and wiser people than I to say if they actually actually change or grow in some way. Or do they do these things because their nature forces them to act in one and only one way. (In other words I don’t know if what they have is life or just some kind of predetermined existence. I can and have argued both sides. So again, do they have choice in their actions?) I think the ability to choose to act or not act under equal circumstances certainly sounds like some kind of consciousness.
And then, we have to add the consideration of anthropomorphism. Do we only see life where we can see similarities to our own lives? Is a planet alive? Is an airless blob of matter floating through space alive?
Anyway, to summarize, in my little mind, anything that comes into being, grows or changes by internal processes, and at some point be it microseconds or billions of years, dies or ceases to exist, then that constitutes life of some kind. And if nothing else, life contains the possibility of consciousness, even if we cannot see it.
And please remember, I am just a person with no education in any of these particular fields. Any knowledge or awareness comes from a lifetime of studying me, because I am the only example of life that I can actually know. Everything else is extraneous to me, though I can theorize.
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Are your criteria met by a fire? A river? A meteor? A star? A cloud? An odor? A galaxy? A mountain?
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Science has not taken us there yet, so I cannot comment in the way you are asking me to. When I considered fhe planet, all these other things were being represented by the planet. There are things we do not know.
So maybe I must adjust my criteria somewhat. In order to be born, or somehow created, i would expect there must be a continuation process, as in having a parent or parents. As far as we know, none of your items are continuations of previous beings — but nor can I totally rule them out because I simply do not know. That is part of “my” anthropomorphism problem. I cannot see a continuation process, but that does not mean it isn’t there.
But for arguments sake, none of them are “life as we know it.” A cooling chunk of lava does not a live rock make. The rock cannot change itself, it can only change through actions of outside forces.
But to go in a different direction, are the cells in our bodies concious? I would tend to say yes, each cell fits the process of birth, change, and death. In fact I would go so far as to theorize the possibility of our own consciousness being a group of cellular consciousnesses working together as a collective. I know that a gut feeling is more often right than an idea born in my head. My body has often saved me from harm by warning me with a strong feeling I cannot explain except by such a collective consciousness.
So far, you have offered me no reason to change my mind that my pseudo-definition of life is wrong. Can you respond in such a way as to agree or dfisagree or even a maybe.
What are your personal thoughts about life and consciousness. We are at the table of discussion. It is time for “your” response, not the response of anyone else. You must have your own ideas…
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I don’t know how to define life, but my definition of consciousness is sensing, and everything senses, so to some degree, everything is conscious. It’s a “hard problem” because we insist on anthropomorphizing a word that has nothing to do with life, but rather to do with existence.
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By sensing do you mean “with the senses,” or “being aware of,” or “reacting to”? Or some combination of these ways of sensing. Trees sense coming danger and they react in a way to save themselves — i would certainly call this a form of vonsciousness.
But in truth I find the sensing concept “as I understand it” to be too general. I think life is a more specific thing. I think life requires a set of characteristics, for want of a better word. Life may not require consciousness, but to me it requires the possibility of consviousness. I would never consider a rock concious of anything. But then, may our definitions of consciousness are different…
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Your final sentence hits the mark. “Consciousness” is a semantic question, not a physical one. In your mind, only life can be “conscious,” though you can’t define life, either.
“Consciousness” is a “hard problem” because it has different definitions, depending on the speaker.
Consider the opposite of “conscious”, “unconscious.”
Is a sleeping person or a comatose person unconscious? A sleeping person’s body is sensing, and reacting to, its environment. It senses the ambient temperature and adjusts accordingly. It senses loud sounds and wakes up. It senses a hard touch and wakes up. It senses food in its digestive tract and digests it. It senses pain.
So, is a sleeping person conscious? Your answer depends only on YOUR DEFINITION of “conscious,” and not THE DEFINITION.
I see you have evolved in your struggle to understand. Now you believe life is something that requires the possibility of consciousness. I have no idea what that means, but it is your unique definition. Others have different definitions.
A rock is made of chemicals and life evolved from chemicals, so does a rock have the same possibility of consciousness as its constituent chemicals?
Human sperm begin with spermatogonia: These are the initial germ cells that divide and differentiate into a sperm. Is a germ cell conscious? Is the resultant sperm conscious?
Is an egg conscious? The sperm and egg both sense their environment and react to it.
When you put them together, they form a zygote. Is a zygote conscious? As a zygote develops it becomes a blastocyst. Is a blastocyst conscious?
As the blastocyst implants in the uterus, it forms an embryo, and after that, a fetus. Is an embryo conscious? Is a fetus conscious? At some point a baby is born. Is a baby conscious?
Are any or all of the above conscious? When does consciousness begin? You can define consciousness according to your wishes, and that will give you YOUR answer, but not THE answer.
If spermatogonia are not conscious, when does consciousness begin. If they are conscious, then tell me why a rock is not conscious. What are your criteria for consciousness?
You now have arrived in “the hard problem” that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries — all because it’s not a physical question but a semantic question.
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Is a tiny fish conscious?
Bluestreak cleaner wrasse are small, territorial fish that aggressively fend off intruders. But when they have access to a mirror, the fish size themselves up before deciding whether or not to fight.
About the size of a human finger, bluestreak cleaner wrasse are tiny, blue, black and white fish that live on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. Bluestreak cleaner wrasse set up “cleaning stations” on the reefs, then wait for other fish to show up so they can eat the parasites off their bodies, per the Georgia Aquarium. These diminutive swimmers are industrious, inspecting up to 2,000 fish each day. They also have good memories and can recognize more than 100 different “clients.”
Scientists already knew bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) were savvy creatures. In 2018, they became the first fish to pass what’s known as the mirror test, an experiment used to gauge self-awareness by assessing whether or not an animal recognizes its own reflection. Other creatures that have passed the mirror test include bottlenose dolphins, chimpanzees and Asian elephants.
Last year, researchers also showed that bluestreak cleaner wrasse could recognize themselves in photos after looking at their reflection in a mirror.
Scientists wanted to explore the bluestreak cleaner wrasse’s self-awareness on an even deeper level, so they set up a series of new laboratory experiments. They shared their findings in a new paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
In the first phase, researchers placed a bluestreak cleaner wrasse inside a clear fish tank. Then, they held photos against the glass showing bluestreak cleaner wrasses of varying sizes—some that were 10 percent larger than the fish in the tank, and some that were 10 percent smaller.
No matter which photo the scientists showed, the bluestreak cleaner wrasse inside the tank tried to attack it.
Next, the team repeated the same experiment but added a mirror to the tank. The fish checked out their own reflection before deciding whether to fight—and they would only battle photos of smaller intruders, not larger ones.
To scientists, this suggests that bluestreak cleaner wrasse are capable of understanding their own body size, as well as how their body size stacks up against a rival.
“This was unexpected because we had an image that this fish always shows aggression against rivals, regardless of size,” says study co-author Taiga Kobayashi, a scientist at Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan, to New Scientist’s Corryn Wetzel.
There are no mirrors in the wild, so the findings also suggest that bluestreak cleaner wrasse adapted and learned to use the mirror as a self-preservation tool. This discovery can “help clarify the similarities between human and non-human animal self-awareness and provide important clues to elucidate how self-awareness has evolved,” Kobayashi says in a statement.
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Is an ant conscious?
Ants changed the architecture of their nests when exposed to a pathogen
Tweaks to entrances, tunnels and chambers may help prevent diseases from spreading
If an infection takes hold in an ants’ nest, it could spell disaster for the whole colony. But some worker ants appear to have a workaround for that. When exposed to a pathogen, black garden ants (Lasius niger) tinkered with their nest layout in ways that could slow the spread of disease, a new study suggests.
Several animals are known to alter their behavior to avoid infections, including humans, guppies and mice. But these are the first nonhuman animals shown to actively alter their surroundings in response to infections, researchers report September 2 in a paper posted at bioRxiv.org. The preprint has yet to be peer-reviewed.
Limiting social contact — through social distancing, for example — is thought to be an effective barrier against the spread of disease (SN: 3/13/20). Humans also alter what the researchers call spatial networks by, for instance, using parts of a building or city as quarantine zones or expanding urban spaces.
To see whether ants act in a similar way, Nathalie Stroeymeyt and her team at the University of Bristol in England let 20 groups of 180 black garden ants excavate nests in soil-filled jars. The day after digging started, the researchers added 20 more worker ants to each jar, with half of the jars receiving groups infected with a fungal pathogen.
Over the next six days, the researchers used video to monitor the ants’ behavior and micro-CT scans to study the evolution of their nests.
Ant colonies exposed to the pathogen dug nests faster and initially made more tunnels than healthy colonies, and after six days, had made several structural modifications, including spacing entrances 0.62 centimeters farther apart on average. The exposed colonies also placed chambers — which house colony resources such as queens, their brood and food — in less central locations. And ants infected with the fungus spent more time at the surface than their coworkers, which the study suggests is probably a form of self-isolation.
The team then used spatial network analysis and disease transmission simulations to see if the changes would have any noticeable impact on the way disease would spread in the nests. Taking the designs crafted by the exposed and unexposed colonies, the team simulated what would happen if a pathogen was introduced. Ant colonies in the disease-resistant redesigns would have a significantly lower fungal load — and fewer lethal doses — than those in nests built without any previous exposure to disease, the team found.
The findings are fascinating, though not surprising, says Sebastian Stockmaier, a behavioral disease ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Social insects like ants, bees and termites have evolved a range of colony-level defenses to effectively manage diseases, he says, and large-scale outbreaks are rare.
Group living is generally thought to increase the risk of disease, and this threat is particularly pronounced in social insects because of their low genetic diversity and frequent social interactions, factors which help disease to spread. Because of this, when faced with disease, “their strategies are typically targeted at protecting the group as a whole, rather than focusing on the individual,” says Stockmaier.
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It’s odd how often related articles pop up after I publish a post on the subject.
Scientists can’t decide if consciousness is real or fake
What if everything in our world has a soul and mind? What if every desk, chair, and potted plant has a conscious stream of thoughts? That’s the basic idea behind Panpsychism, a theory first put forward in the late 16th century by Francesco Patrizi. It’s been a hundred years or so since science won out about this theory in the 1920s, but now it’s regaining momentum.
To understand why this theory is regaining popularity requires us to look at one of the most difficult conundrums that human scientists have ever faced: where consciousness comes from. Scientists have been trying to solve this hard problem for over a hundred years, and while developments in neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have come far, we still don’t have a definitive answer.
The argument is regaining momentum, though, thanks in part to the work of Italian neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, who proposed the idea that there is widespread consciousness even found in the simplest of systems. Tononi and American neuroscientist Christof Koch argued that consciousness will follow where there are organized lumps of matter. Some even believe that the stars may be conscious.
This basic idea, then, seems to suggest that grouped lumps of matter, like the very chair you’re sitting in right now, may have a stream of consciousness. Of course, not everyone agrees with this. Many still take the stance that this is just an attempt to grasp at straws, if you will, in a bid to understand consciousness and how it comes to be.
The main idea behind Panpsychism seems to rely on the belief that if brains are not required for consciousness, then anything can be conscious of its existence, and thus, everything has different experiences. But there are more than just the believers and unbelievers here. There are actually some who believe that consciousness is all an illusion, which raises even more questions.
Keith Frankish, an honorary professor of philosophy at the University of Sheffield, told Popular Mechanics that he believes that consciousness is just an illusion of our own minds. Whether or not the very stars are conscious has yet to be proven, of course. And we’re still a long way from understanding the brain and how it correlates to different things within our world.
This is still an area of science that draws a lot of big question marks from scientists. All you can really say for sure is what you believe. Are you conscious? Or is consciousness just an illusion that your brain has conjured up? It is certainly an interesting thought.
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OMG, read this: What if the Universe is conscious?
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Good article that relates to the above post: “Are plants intelligent?”
I can’t say whether plants are intelligent; there is no uniform definition of intelligence. But I can say with assurance that plants are conscious, meaning they sense their surroundings. Everything does, with the only difference being how much sensing they do and what they do about it.
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Another relevant article: Do plants and trees have consciousness? The author of the article struggles with the question only from lacking a definition of “consciousness.”
The correct definition of consciousness is sensingness, i.e. the ability to sense. Since everything senses its environment, consciousness is in everything, with the only difference being the amount of sensing and what is done in reaction to the sensing.
A human takes action, so does a bee and a tree. A rock erodes. Water reacts by boiling or evaporating or forming ice. Everything is conscious. The makes the so-called “hard problem” simple. No need to anthropomorphize. Just evaluate the input and the reaction and you have the amount of consciousness.
Here the “hard problem becomes the ridiculous problem: Human consciousness may come from another dimension, scientist suggests
It’s as though someone asked you, “How would you add 2+2? And your answer was, “Begin, by finding the cube root of a 500 digit number.”
Consciousness very simply is sensing and reaction. Nothing more. No multi-dimention, other-worldly answers needed. Everything senses, Everything reacts. Just quantify and I’ll tell you how conscious it is.
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I admit I was skeptical of your Sensing and Reaction theory of consciousness at first, but new findings, such as this one from Yale University lend credence to it by showing that sensing regions of the brain and stimulation of areas of the brain associated with consciousness, all activate at the same time, as measured by a “fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) datasets collected from 1,561 healthy adult participants as they performed 11 different tasks using four senses: vision, audition, taste, and touch.”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05-deep-brain-regions-link-consciousness.html
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Thank you, Scott. Interesting article. Of course, it still lingers in the “awareness = consciousness” trope, and I suggest consciousness is far more than that.
We still face the questions about what is conscious: An ape? A bee? A tree? A rock? The Earth? The universe?
Can a part be conscious, while the whole is not? We are part of the universe, and there is agreement that we are conscious and part of the universe, so is the universe conscious? I suggest that it is.
As I see it, consciousness is a universal condition that can be measured according to reaction. Until there is agreement on that point, there never will be answers to the above questions, nor will there be a measure of consciousness.
That said, thank you again for the article. It is, as has been said, “One small step for a man.” Still awaiting the “giant leap for mankind.”
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