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> I find myself wondering if there is a primitive consciousness on the cellular level That seems to be obviously true to me. The alternative would be that cons
by brabel 3y ago
> I find myself wondering if there is a primitive consciousness on the cellular level
That seems to be obviously true to me. The alternative would be that consciousness simply appears at some point out of literally nowhere because there would be no lower levels from which it emerges.
- eternauta3k 3y agoSounds like this * pushes the problem one level down ("why are cells conscious?") * adds the problem of explaining how consciousness of a person relates to consciousness of its cells. What would this model help explain?
- brabel 3y agoRight, but it seems that both problems are easier than "it just emerges out of nothing". Cells consciousness would be a much, much simpler sort of consciousness, something any "object" that somehow is capable of searching for food and avoiding "danger" should possess. Higher level things emerging from similar, but lower level things is not a mystery, it's something expected (like ant colonies).
- eternauta3k 3y agoI'm vaguely for pan-psychism as in, it sounds good but I haven't thought about it for even 5 minutes. But I'm more interested in the version where all matter has some kind of proto-consciousness. Still, no idea how it's suposed to work in detail: how can it make a difference whether a particle is part of an information-processing system? There is an infinitude of mappings between physical systems and mathematical functions (I'm probably plagiarizing a half-forgotten version of this https://joe-antognini.github.io/ml/consciousness https://joe-antognini.github.io/ml/consciousness )
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI has to go all the way down by that logic, right?