Can single cells have consciousness/awareness?

[Sandracottus]

Awareness and consciousness are essentially different with the former being more basic. Reductionist science (or perhaps modern science itself) seems to argue that only the aggregate organism of cells possess consciousness. Of course we dont know why this must be so.

How should we explain the example of the amoeba , if we are to insist that single cells cannot possess consciousness?

Just one instance for the first post -- The single celled amoeba immediately retracts and moves out when excesses of acidity or alkalinity effects its environment. It makes a choice. It seems to be aware of its needs. Instantaneously.

Does someone know more about this sort of phenomenon?

 

[Inferno]

Can single cells have consciousness/awareness?

No. Well, most probably not. There's nothing that seems to indicate this.

Does someone know more about this sort of phenomenon?

It's basically a reflex. Take yourself: If you hold your hand over a flame, you'll instinctively retract your hand because it hurts. There's nothing voluntary about it, you do it instinctively, it's a reflex. The same is true for blinking: If something goes near your eye, you blink; it's a reflex.

There are lizards that have a spot on top of their heads called a parietal eye. Normally, they'll move out of the sun when they're warm enough. Tape that eye shut and they'll sit in the sun and overheat.

The same is true with cells: There are bits and pieces in the cell that tell it "hey, enough of that".

It's not consciousness nor awareness and certainly not self awareness, it's just a reflex.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Short answer No.
Long answer. First of all what do you mean by consciousness? What does that mean. No really, what does it mean? Believe it or not, this sort of thing is really not well defined.
What we have is a vague idea of what it means to be aware, and it involves not only the ability to react to external stimulus but also having some form of abstraction (a meta reference if you will) about the stimulus and the reaction as well as concept of consequence. There are allot of things that can react to stimuli, even death things can do that. But our vague idea of what awareness/conscious is seams at least to necessitate that the concept of action and reaction itself must be part of the decision making of a subsequent action even if the sum total of such an influence is zero. If nothing else, at least that we think it must be part of it, and if something happens to not posses that we can safely say that it is not aware.
And as for applying this criteria to an amoeba, then no, an amoeba is not aware.

 

[Xenophanes]

Short answer No.
Long answer. First of all what do you mean by consciousness? What does that mean. No really, what does it mean? Believe it or not, this sort of thing is really not well defined.

I am not sure I agree that this is relevant, things are ill-defined until critical engagement has given us defintion we can use, and then we use definitions as a kind of short hand for what is taken for granted in our theories. So of course it is ill-defined.

What we have is a vague idea of what it means to be aware, and it involves not only the ability to react to external stimulus but also having some form of abstraction (a meta reference if you will) about the stimulus and the reaction as well as concept of consequence.

Dead things do not have functional sensory organs. I would also disagree that awareness is cognitive, less so metacognitive. Because awareness is about sensing your environment and responding to it. Conciousness on the other hand is cognitive at least. and relies on some kind of self-awareness.

But our vague idea of what awareness/conscious is seams at least to necessitate that the concept of action and reaction itself must be part of the decision making of a subsequent action even if the sum total of such an influence is zero

You do realise you contradicted yourself, right?

If nothing else, at least that we think it must be part of it, and if something happens to not posses that we can safely say that it is not aware.
And as for applying this criteria to an amoeba, then no, an amoeba is not aware.

At the risk of sounding kookie, I would say that an ameoba has a some kind of awareness of its surroundings, if only very basic. It at least has stimulus response amd functional sensory organs. Maybe saying "organs" is going a bit too far, but they do have a sense called chemotaxis. I would say this is a rudimentary type of awareness.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

But our vague idea of what awareness/conscious is seams at least to necessitate that the concept of action and reaction itself must be part of the decision making of a subsequent action even if the sum total of such an influence is zero

You do realise you contradicted yourself, right?

No, I don't, how so?

Dead things do not have functional sensory organs.

What do you mean by death and "sensory organ"? Because I'm pretty sure I can come up with an example where this statement is false.
Example one:
You can stimulate a recently cadaver-ed human and sense activity, either by sticking probes in it's spinal cord or even by making it move by reflexive reaction.
Example the Lazarus Reflex

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2729975
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1028853


Lets give a different example of a "sensory organ" on a different type of thing we consider death.
The kinetic sculptures of Theo Jansen

Because awareness is about sensing your environment and responding to it.

Both previous examples do those things. Are they aware?

Conciousness on the other hand is cognitive at least. and relies on some kind of self-awareness.
(...)
At the risk of sounding kookie, I would say that an ameoba has a some kind of awareness of its surroundings, if only very basic. It at least has stimulus response amd functional sensory organs. Maybe saying "organs" is going a bit too far, but they do have a sense called chemotaxis. I would say this is a rudimentary type of awareness.

Well it is not kookie at all. It's just that there is to much to grey area, because this sort of thing is not well defined at all. Is it aware? maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That would depend on what we mean by that.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Awareness and consciousness are essentially different with the former being more basic. Reductionist science (or perhaps modern science itself) seems to argue that only the aggregate organism of cells possess consciousness. Of course we dont know why this must be so.

How should we explain the example of the amoeba , if we are to insist that single cells cannot possess consciousness?

Just one instance for the first post -- The single celled amoeba immediately retracts and moves out when excesses of acidity or alkalinity effects its environment. It makes a choice. It seems to be aware of its needs. Instantaneously.

Does someone know more about this sort of phenomenon?

The problem here is the ambiguity of the terms "awareness" and "consciousness".

A better way to view this is through exploring the use of the words "sentient" and "sapient".

Sentient means that one is aware/conscious of one's surroundings through the senses.

Sapient means that one is self-aware or self-conscious.

An amoeba is undoubtedly sentient but not sapient.

I've been wondering lately if sapience was a evolutionary improvement on sentience since the latter leads to individual life-forms being trapped by knee-jerk instinctive reactions to circumstances that, when inappropriate, resulted in death.

Those that survived were, in some sense, not as trapped by - in other words, "rose above" - their basic instincts, and thus their genes were propagated through time.

A biblical example of this - no, I'm not promoting the bible! - is seen in Judges 7: 1-8

1 Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.

2 And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.

3 Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand.

4 And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go.

5 So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink.

6 And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water.

7 And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place.

8 So the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and he sent all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained those three hundred men: and the host of Midian was beneath him in the valley.

One could argue that those who drank water like dogs (brought mouth to water) were more trapped by their instincts than those who knelt and used their hands to cup water and bring it to their lips.

[Actually, the lesson of this passage was that God used the least courageous of the host to defeat the Midianites lest they thought it was their own doing - according to Josephus:

Why the lap-water test? Opinions differ. Most students of the Bible assume that those who cupped their hands and dipped water for drinking were chosen because they were careful and deliberate. The ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, conjectured that those who lapped like a dog were fearless and that those who dipped their hands in the water were cowards. His conjecture is that God used the 300 cowards to defeat the enemy. We aren't actually told in scripture why this test was used.

The above makes my point nicely, I think.]

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Xenophanes]

You can offer definitions all you want, but does what you say solve any problems? Does it in fact refute what I am saying. I can't see why currently.

If something has an influence of 0, it does not have influence, and therefore it cannot necessarily have anything to do with it.

Stop saying something is "ill-defined" it is irrelevant. We do not usually get all our information about a word from the definition, in fact we very rarely do, If you do not understand a word in a sentence try giving criticism anyway, take a guess. And anyway there are many undefined terms we use in science... they are expedients.

I am not giving you definitions. I have many reasons for this 1) They do not help. 2) definitions come after critical enagement not before.

The two examples you gave. the first one is to do with the fact that giving an electical stimulus to a cadaver will make it respond, but that is not the organ respodning to its environment, that is a puraly physical phenoman that can be described by physics. Or it might be the case that the cadaver, ie, the human being is dea, but that certain parts of its organs have not persihed. These two answers are sufficient.

The one with jensen is more specific, I would say that there is a grey area yes, I would open that they do react to their environment, and therefore might have some rudimnentary awareness.

Well it is not kookie at all. It's just that there is to much to grey area, because this sort of thing is not well defined at all. Is it aware? maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That would depend on what we mean by that.

It has nothing to do with how we define them. This is called conventionalism and leads straight to relativism. If we say something has awareness we are saying something about it, not about words. Our theories have to solve problems.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

You can offer definitions all you want, but does what you say solve any problems? Does it in fact refute what I am saying. I can't see why currently.

Yes, I am convinced of that, otherwise I wouldn't have stated it.

If something has an influence of 0, it does not have influence, and therefore it cannot necessarily have anything to do with it.

It is not necessarily about the effectiveness of the stimulus. But about the knowledge of it's existence, lets say "to be aware of it". For example imagine that you were to be injected with a drug that would make you completely paralyzed, you couldn't move a finger, nor a eye-lash, nor a grunt, you couldn't react to any stimuli what soever. Apart from the fact that you had a hearth beat and breath, you were at first sight indistinguishable from dead.
Imagine now that the same drug left all your sensory organs fully functional, you could see, hear, smell, you could feel everything.
As grim as this prospect already is, imagine that this was a drug that had been given to you in preparation for a surgery. And the surgeon would just be hacking away at you, slicing you open to remove some organ.
Now here is my question. Would you really be feeling pain just because you couldn't react to it? Is it true that just because all those stimuli amount to zero output from you that it means that you were not aware?
And before you say, "Hey, you would know it when I was back out of the drugs, and I would definitely react then", what if you had died in surgery? Would that mean that you were not aware?

Stop saying something is "ill-defined" it is irrelevant. We do not usually get all our information about a word from the definition, in fact we very rarely do, If you do not understand a word in a sentence try giving criticism anyway, take a guess. And anyway there are many undefined terms we use in science... they are expedients.
I am not giving you definitions. I have many reasons for this 1) They do not help. 2) definitions come after critical enagement not before.
(...)
It has nothing to do with how we define them. This is called conventionalism and leads straight to relativism. If we say something has awareness we are saying something about it, not about words. Our theories have to solve problems.

No. On the contrary, it's the crux of the problem. The problem isn't about anything else. Because once you are able to define what it means to be aware, the problem just vanishes. Because then you could easily tell if something fits the definition or not. You could tell if something is conscious or not just by looking at its properties and see how it matches the definition. When you say that X is "conscious", what do you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion?
How could you say that X is conscious when you don't even knowing what conscious is?
If you don't define it, it is absolutely meaningless to talk about it, except if you are talking about how you would want to define it, and what sort of things you would want to include under that label when trying to craft a definition.
And this is the problem of the new age wind heads. They don't know what conscious is! To say that "conscious" is transcendental, or that it is inheritable love, it's absolutely meaningless and no more coherent than baby talk.

The two examples you gave. the first one is to do with the fact that giving an electical stimulus to a cadaver will make it respond, but that is not the organ respodning to its environment,

Yes it is! Of course it is. It couldn't be anything else.

that is a puraly physical phenoman that can be described by physics.

Of course it is! So is literally everything else in the universe. Can you even name a single example of a phenomena that isn't purely physical or that can not reasonably be expected to be described by physics?

Or it might be the case that the cadaver, ie, the human being is dea, but that certain parts of its organs have not persihed. These two answers are sufficient.

Then I have to ask what do you mean by perished then? And if that is your rebuttal, how do you explain your own answer to the very next example, which is considered "dead" by almost all definitions?

The one with jensen is more specific, I would say that there is a grey area yes, I would open that they do react to their environment, and therefore might have some rudimnentary awareness.

So does a computer. So does the gate mechanism on a train crossing. So does the dead person.

 

[flywheelShyster]

Awareness and consciousness are essentially different with the former being more basic.

I am not sure what distinction you are making here.

Reductionist science (or perhaps modern science itself) seems to argue that only the aggregate organism of cells possess consciousness.....How should we explain the example of the amoeba , if we are to insist that single cells cannot possess consciousness?

Susan Blackmore in her book "Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction " argues that we should think of consciousness as being a continuum.

 

[flywheelShyster]

our vague idea of what awareness/conscious is seams at least to necessitate that the concept of action and reaction itself must be part of the decision making of a subsequent action even if the sum total of such an influence is zero. If nothing else, at least that we think it must be part of it, and if something happens to not posses that we can safely say that it is not aware

I do not agree.
I think that whereas consciousness/awareness may be an input to decision making it itself is independent of decision making.
It is an informative state.
One which tells you what is going on, what the rest of yourself is thinking, if you will.
One can be aware without the ability to do anything, much like a passenger on a bus.
I think one needs distinguish between thinking and consciousness, acting and consciousness.
One can act without being conscious of it e.g much of driving or sleep walking; one can arrive at conclusions to questions without knowing how those conclusions were arrived at, e.g. on awaking from sleep.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

... I don't get your objection. How does it even distinguish from the very last post before your own?

 

[flywheelShyster]

... I don't get your objection. How does it even distinguish from the very last post before your own?

O.K. Perhaps I read you as saying something you didn't.
What I thought you were saying was that consciousness was part of our decision taking processes (the action and reaction part of what you had written)
There I am leaping in without reading.

Best wishes
Julius

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

What I thought you were saying was that consciousness was part of our decision taking processes (the action and reaction part of what you had written)

Yes. It is a required but not sufficient condition. And I also stated that it's role need not be efficient.

 

[flywheelShyster]

What I thought you were saying was that consciousness was part of our decision taking processes (the action and reaction part of what you had written)

Yes. It is a required but not sufficient condition.

Sorry to appear stupid.
I don't understand: what is required and for what?

Do you mean that consciousness is necessary for decision making
and that decision making also involves other things, processes say?

Yes, decision making involves a whole lot of processes.
However, is consciousness a necessary component of that,
i.e. in the absence of consciousness no decisions can be made?

If that is what you are saying then
how do you account for our apparently making so many decisions unconsciously,
e.g. saying what we say before we think to say it.

I seem to recall experiments which show a time lag between our making a decision and our becoming conscious of it.

True, we often engage in an internal dialogue regarding various possibilities and alternatives but in my view that is not the same as making a decision. Rather it is like looking at various paths through the country prior to deciding which one to take. Certainly the internal dialogue can list various merits and demerits of each choice but that again is just laying out the menu. The actual decision seems made in the unconscious.

If I have misunderstood you then please clarify.

Would be interesting to think of a way of investigating this kind of thing.
There must be a few doing it.

Julius

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

I don't understand: what is required and for what?

"That it could in principle take part in the decision making process" is a requirement if what we are talking about has anything to do with consciousness. If what you are talking about could not in principle influence any future decision making, then we are not talking about consciousness.

Do you mean that consciousness is necessary for decision making

No.

and that decision making also involves other things, processes say?

That is truth, but that is not what I said.

I seem to recall experiments which show a time lag between our making a decision and our becoming conscious of it.
True, we often engage in an internal dialogue regarding various possibilities and alternatives but in my view that is not the same as making a decision. Rather it is like looking at various paths through the country prior to deciding which one to take. Certainly the internal dialogue can list various merits and demerits of each choice but that again is just laying out the menu. The actual decision seems made in the unconscious.

True, some decision can be made before we become aware of it. But because we became aware of it, that in itself can be used to shape future behavior.

 

[flywheelShyster]

True, some decision can be made before we become aware of it. But because we became aware of it, that in itself can be used to shape future behavior.

Absolutely, in the sense that becoming aware of more aspects of a particular thing or problem provides more information and possibly more options. Yes.

 

[australopithecus]

Nice to see Mr "EVERYTHING IS INDIAN" back again.

 

[DanDare]

Can a brick be conscious? Can humans other than yourself be conscious? Show your reasoning.