Some related articles.

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-scientists-self-awareness-fish.html

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220217141331.htm

Article If a fish can pass the mark test, what are the implications ...

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-small-fish-classic-self-awareness.html

Article Internally Generated Predictions Enhance Neural and Behavior...

Article Evolution of nociception and pain: evidence from fish models

Article Can fish really feel pain?

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/mind-2

Regards,

Joachim

Thank you Joachim. Ed

Edward J Tehovnik

In a word "yes" naturally the structure of fish brain is directly phylogenetically congruent with our own, providing a matrix in which to continually form associative memory and sustain ongoing perception while receiving sensory signals.

It is most likely that invertebrates with differently shaped cortical and sub cortical structures also sustain the requirements for consciousness.

Do not be intimidated by the contorted language of some members who are trolling these waters, and who are deeply mistaken about the properties and time scales in biology.

Article Sentience in living tissue Commentary on Woodruff on Fish Feel

Nobody knows what consciousness is. Nobody knows what knowing is. How can you find ”it” in a fish?

Leonard Greenfield it is true that conversations using the term "consciousness" are fraught with entanglments with religion, pseudo quantum physics, spiritualism, and legends, but in all cases of consciousness in action, there is an aspect of acting from memory and the experience of being familiar with somebody or some place.

With regard to Fish, the following links of familiarity and friendship might be interesting:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/animal-emotions/201406/fish-are-sentient-and-emotional-beings-and-clearly-feel-pain

https://www.instagram.com/p/CuA2MmlvI8C/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8bx06eHEF3/

https://www.instagram.com/p/C0YackQP7Ze/

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2NYhH8Pg_k/

I am not aware of any accounts wherein amphibians are clearly affectionate, and although while some frogs brood their offspring, they may do it without any special cognitive involvement; reptiles have been observed being affectionate (especially monogamous couples - lizards that sun together and groom eachother).

Among Insects, bees and wasps are known to recognize and build trust relations with some humans while being exceptionally aggressive with others. Much of the circumstantial evidence about friendliness relates to trust, comforting, and grooming, and although these activities can within a species lead to successful mating, they require a bit of a playful intellect to engage. It is the kind of thing you do not see plants doing, and certainly rocks have not been observed fooling around.

Dear Prof. Leonard Greenfield:

After checking out your credentials on ResearchGate, I noticed that you have an interest in Homo neanderthalensis. As for the study of consciousness, there are two extreme views: the view of Noam Chomsky (2012) is that consciousness/ thinking (through language) is an attribute of Homo sapiens only, thereby excluding all other animals (which likely includes Homo neanderthalensis) from this possibility, and the other extreme view is the one advanced by Christof Koch (2013) that all integrated systems may possess this attribute which would allow AlphaGo and other forms of AI to qualify as being conscious. Taking a middle ground, let’s explore the possibility that consciousness (or the zest for life, i.e., volition through mobility to advance an organism’s survival into the next generation) is an attribute that is possessed by amoebas up to and including Homo sapiens along with our extinct relative, Homo neanderthalensis. A hypothesis is not a proof, but a way to pose a question. Neuroscience and the study of evolution are at the point where we can begin to assess how far consciousness can be extended via living organisms. If physics had shut the door to Einstein’s theories, then it would have died as a thriving discipline. Let’s not shut the door to the study of consciousness as it may pertain to living organisms.

Cosmin Visan

Are you self aware? is it the kind of thing that you keep up 24/7, or is it intermittent self awareness?

Is Poznansky going to publish your paper?

Is he one of the self aware ones

I used to be a paleoanthropologist but currently I am writing a book on human behavior entitled “A Non-DarwinIan Explanation of Human Behavior”. It is based on the application of cybernetics to functional biology. The process (not property) all organisms share is autopoiesis which is defined as the ability to produce one’s own organization. This is a processual definition of life and one consistent with the biology of all organisms. The organization of a machine, living or otherwise, is defined as the physical components of the machine and their physical interactions. The organization of a bicycle would be described as having pedals, chain, gears,

wheels, and so on and their physical interactions with each other and the bicycle rider. Now ask yourself, where did the bicycle get its parts? Did it assemble them into a working bike. Did it maintain them or replace them when broken. No. Its organization was a product of something other than the bike. This makes it a

non-living system. Living systems have their own organization as the product of their own organization- self organizing. Autopoietic. Their own processes produce themselves. Their behaviors are designed and exclusively designed to counter any disturbances to their autopoiesis. These may be contrary to “fitness” as seen in numerous examples of human behavior. Bhuddist monks, nuns and priests, career women, WW2 Japanese soldiers willingly participating in Bonsai charges and so on. These may be irrelevant to fitness like hobbies, admiring art, sports, and so on.

if consciousness is ever defined it will be with a cybernetic model of processes known at the molecular level.

Very nice piece. Ed Tehovnik

You can’t define terms like this unless you have a processual model at the neuronal level worked out and nobody has. Can you tell me in terms of the hierarchical ordering of negative feedback circuits what constitutes “consciousness“ in neuronal networks? The definition cannot be at the overt behavior level. Can you tell me causally why a digital clock shows the time it does based on an understanding of the circuitry in the clock? Why should an understanding of consciousness not include an understanding of the processes in the brain that make whatever this is possible? This is why philosophy will never provide more than subjective evaluation. Based on processual models a definition will have to include a description of the hierarchy of negative feedback processes involved. When you told us what it is “exactly“ and excluded any understanding of the functional biology of neuronAl networks, I paid no attention to your explanation. My “disrespect” is to the answer you provided not to you. Scientists should pay attention only to the data and theories and not their personal feelings. My age does not matter, I am supposed to be skeptical and critical of what people say in science and it doesn’t matter whether they feel hurt or not. Feeling snubbed is not a component of science that makes any difference as to whether we should accept or not accept the hypotheses of others.

I have seen pictures of neurons, never pictures of “god”. If you think your view of “reality” is correct, it has no place in science - you need to be able to sense objects in order to consider them to be real and external to the observer. Do you think neurophysiologists are all sharing illusions? You are “playing in the wrong ballpark“

If you want to preach you should do it at the Pearly Gates or at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem, not on ResearchGate. You are obviously into dogma which is precisely what scientists are told not to engage in. You have no idea what I have experienced but what you are talking about is religion, not science. In scientific discourse we do not make righteously indignant comments about other scientists. If I seem isolated it is because I, like other scientists, have filtered out all of the non-science nonsense we get exposed to. We ignore in our current thinking what has, in our eyes, been falsified.

Dear Cosmin; I just watched part of the first video you are following. It is an epistemology about consciousness. While I agree that conscious perception includes organism related priorities so that it creates part of its reality, I don’t agree that it creates all of it. There is sensory perception which occurs just prior to conscious perception. These peripheral neurons are interacting with an external reality before the nervous system converts these primary signals into secondary and higher signals. In conscious perception we become “aware” only when signals represent comparisons and difference. However, differences are not externally real - you cannot sense them. They have no location in time or space. However, real things make it possible for our minds to create the notion of difference. If one has concluded that “it“ is all mind created, they are no longer in the world of the science of things and their causality. If you were hit in the face with the hand that you claim is not real, would you sense pain ?

This individual sounds like he thinks he is “living” in the “Matrix”. My ontology does not include that there is nothing except thought.

Cybernetics is about identifying components of systems and their physical interactions with one another that make the system possible. In systems interactions between components are highly repetitious, rather than random. If repetitious, they are processes. If the product of their operations is the system itself it is living. The components are molecular and interactions between them can be identified. Does this sound at all like computational?

Leonard Greenfield

As maniacally dogmatic as Cosmin self presents, Ponansky's self importance is unparalleled. One is virtually anti-science, and the other is anti-anything including his own previous statements (mentally autoimmune?).

We can still exercise our minds composing rational responses as we see fit.

Whoever benefits from these efforts lets us know when they can.

I may not agree with these gentlemen but I do appreciate the opportunity to exercise my thinking against theirs. As I told my graduate students for many decades, do not laugh at what you consider to be stupid ideas. Instead, use them to identify why they are stupid based on your own thinking.

I have seen fish enjoy interacting with humans for play, A goldfish allowed himself/herself to be lifted out of the water and be thrown about 8 feet and then repeat this over and over. I don’t believe that the fish was awarded with food. He/she simply enjoyed the experience.. Enjoying your humor about rocks.

A question of Prof. Leonard Greenfield:

"There is evidence that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens exchanged genes and that they had a comparable neocortical brain structure (Sansalone et al. 2023). Whether the two groups were evolving to be one (or two) species before Homo neanderthalensis went extinct 40,000 years ago is unclear." (Tehovnik 2023)

Dear Leonard, given that you a knowledgeable on Homo neanderthalensis, would you have an answer on speciation between the two groups?

It seems that the shared DNA is a product of intermating only between male Homo sapiens and female Neanderthals from the Middle East as indicated from mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. There is no evidence, as far as I know, of any Neanderthal Y chromosome genes in modern humans and little or no Neanderthal DNA of any kind in modern Africans. If so, the most likely explanation would be that contacts between these groups would have been unfriendly as was the case in modern humans invading a foreign population. Vikings, for example, would often kill off the males and children of the populations they raided and mate with or without the consent of the surviving females. Homo sapiens females would not choose to mate with males they perceived as behaviorally inferior (and uglier?) to their usual mates. Their assessments proved to have been accurate as modern sapiens, in Europe for example, multiplied their numbers 10 fold while Neanderthals underwent extinction while both groups experienced the same harsh environmental conditions. In chapter 3 of my book on vitamin D deficiency this matter is discussed in far more detail. If female modern humans were repulsed by male Neanderthals this would not bode well for widescale intermating. 600000 years of genetic differentiation could not stop gene flow but the successful mingling of populations also involves the adaptive success of hybrids but these do not seem to exist in Europe, Asia, or Africa.

All of this assumes, of course, that we can use skeletal features of closely related primates to identify species within genera. This optimistic conclusion has been falsified by DNA and skeletal evidence in every living primate genus. It’s time for the paleo guys to recognize the limitations of skeletal evidence in fossil species recognition.

Thank you very much, Leonard, for your complete answer. Ed

“Do fishes have all the neural components to support consciousness?”

- to answer this question it is evidently necessary before to understand – what if “Life”? and what is “Consciousness”?; for what is necessary before to understand – what are a few other fundamental phenomena/notions, first of all – what are “Matter”– and so what are material structures, “Space”, Time”, “Energy”, “Information”, all of which, including “Consciousness”. in the mainstream philosophy and sciences, including seems for the posters in this thread, are fundamentally completely transcendent/uncertain/irrational,

- and so any really scientific answers to the questions above in framework of the mainstream are principally impossible; and, say, that

Nobody knows what consciousness is. Nobody knows what knowing is. How can you find ”it” in a fish?…?”

- is really utmost rational post in the thread now.

The fundamental phenomena/notions above can be, and are, rigorously scientifically defined/understandable only in framework of the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s philosophical 2007 “The Information as Absolute” conception, recent version of the basic paper see

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363645560_The_Information_as_Absolute_-_2022_ed

- so more see the linked paper, here only note, that the thread question really is too concrete. Fundamentally really all living beings on Earth have some fundamentally non-material consciousnesses, which are, with a well non-zero probability, versions of the one concrete Consciousness version – “consciousness on Earth”.

So, say, bacteria at seeking for a food moves, by using its, say, flagellums, say, against a water flow to a food source, having at that no any “neural components” – quite analogously as that fishes – and humans – do, etc.

Recent SS post in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_quantum_entanglment_the_origin_of_our_consciousness/4is relevant to this thread question.

Cheers

no, bacteria are not analogous to humans, not even by 1/10000th of characteristics.

There are lots of shared traits in both. Bacteria and humans are living systems - self organizing and they both have developmental and homeostatic processes. Developmental processes continue from parents to offspring and follow lineal causal sequences that terminate. Homeostatic processes follow a pattern of negative feedback that includes circular causality and they operate when conditions in the organism are not optimal. All negative feedback systems are operationally integrated with one another. They are sensitive to external and internal conditions. They correct any perturbations A to autopoiesis to a not A condition. Both organisms have the same genetic code and similar processes of protein synthesis, that were discovered in E. coli. The point is that despite their different levels of complexity there are a variety of useful analogies to be gleaned.

yes, but cognitive familiarity does not set in until some form of multicellular brain develops which can retain impressions from experience, and assess if new impressions may be familiar to those obtained earlier.

bacteria and protozoans do not retain impressions that produce the familiarity effect later on, they are merely chemotaxic and phototropic.

a few common aspects of living do not automatically involve all aspects of life, so we need not project conscious behavior onto bacteria where there is none, just as we need not project cardiac muscle cell abilities upon skin cells or rods or cones in the retina.

the collective behavior of several cell types in the brain are required to retain the impressions of global neural activity and restore them later when a stimulus is similar in some way.

No question that the analogies are limited, as I also discuss in my book, but they involve aspects of all living systems that are far easier to identify in a bacterial species. Even if the cup is not half full it doesn’t mean it’s not worth drinking. Molecular level geneticists derived their founding concepts from E coli - they just didn’t drink until the last drop. Perhaps you would like to read the draft of some of my book? Regards, Len

Sure post a link

These tiny fish combine electric pulses to probe the environment

"Elephantnose fish share electric pulses to extend their senses, and the bumblebees that show a uniquely human trait...

Many ocean-dwelling animals sense their environment using electric pulses, which can help them hunt and avoid predators. Now research shows that the tiny elephantnose fish can increase the range of this sense by combining its pulses with those of other elephantnose fish. This allows them to discriminate and determine the location of different objects at a much greater distance than a single fish is able to. This is the first time a collective electric sense has been seen in animals, which could provide an ‘early-warning system', allowing a group to avoid predators from a greater distance..."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00685-6

Thank you.