At least cells have some sense for their own state. For example, if they recognize that DNA repair is not possible, they decide to undergo apoptosis. Bacteria have quorum sensing. Cells in an organism know where they are for to be able to switch on the right genes at the right time.

https://phys.org/news/2016-04-cell.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7151920.stm

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/ucl-sns102513.php

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-08/ucl-snc081110.php

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-cells-destiny.html

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-gps-rhythmic-neurons-code-position.html

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/plos-scu050610.php

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/41/16301.full

The difference to human consciousness is that the latter stores information about events in a memory, to be able to reflect on it later.

Cells do not have such a memory, except a tiny specialized one like CRISPR.

Regards,

Joachim

The question "Is a cell conscious" is related to two other questions asked by the author:"Can robots become conscious?" and "Is consciousness the Schroedinger wave function of the brain?"

Dear Harry:

I think that any answers given to you question will have to deal with how we are defining 'consciousness' and 'self-consciousness.' Your phrase "any feedback process originating from an entity and experienced by that same entity" is a good step in the right direction.

The assumption that thought is an internalized language seems too limited, but here, also, the concept of 'language' must be defined. Stretching the semantic scope of this verbal sign, we may speak of many sorts of languages, each corresponding to a specific mode of 'thought': visual, corporal, musical, mathematical, etc. 'Thought', as I understand it, is much more than verbal language. It is any cognitive process that I can pay attention to, that is, any conscious process. Nonconscious processes, however, are inextricably intertwined with conscious processes, and should not be excluded from our consideration.

Behind this problem is a centuries-old tradition in Western philosophy and religions that overvalues rarefied 'mental' processes, especially verbal language, and undervalues cognitive processes resulting from multisensorial perception and action that emerge from our continuous interaction with our environmental and social contexts.

That said, I suppose that any life form experiences something that we might call 'consciousness,' depending on how we define the latter term, and that the nature and the degree of complexity of this 'consciousness' is determined by the body of the organism and its environmental context.

Warm regards,

David

I just saw this article, which explores alternate meanings for the word 'conscious' (in humans); it relates to the present conversation:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259916557

On cognition in cells, I recommend this chapter by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303719589

There is more material in the section on "Evolutionary cognition and aesthetics" in this bibliography:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317351468

Article What makes a conscious process conscious?

Chapter On Bacteria, Corporeal Representation, Neandertals, and Mart...

Data Embodied cognition and aesthetic experience: a bibliography ...

Dear David, First of allm thank you for your contribution. In the definition "any feedback process originating from an entity and experienced by that same entity produces self-consciousness."i tried to catch the essence of the phenomenology of consciousness. However, this definition, when not further developed, does not distinguish between a shallow, transient consciousness and the depth of a self enriched with many mental faculties and the complexity of the information from the "environmental context".

Dear David, Thanks again, this time for the material. I forgot to add something important to introduce the question "Is the cell conscious?" Many people would agree tha consciousness is due to evolution. What do you understand by that? What does consciousness evolve from? Is it something that comes with life? Does it start with the first cell? That is what i believe. Therefore the question.

I agree with what you are saying, Harry. Unicelular organisms are at one end of a gradient of complexity in cognitive ability, and humans are at the other extreme. The evolution of consciousness therefore developed gradually along with the bodies of living organisms. I'm talking about living organisms here. The question of the possibility of something like 'consciousness' in the way the universe structures itself is more complex and is much harder to pin down.

I do not think so.

Antonino. please explain. You probably know something i ignore.

David; If consciousness arises in the Cartesian way, then the semantic evolution must be studied together with the biological evolution, the "language" becoming more evolved with the complexity of the organism in relation with its "environmental context"

A Working Hypothesis.

The self-organization of the lipid membrane is the formation of a primitive brain. What follows is the orchestration of the cell biology by the interaction of the primordial brain with the original organic soup..

It is a very delicate and complex matter. In principle the misleading factor is the term "conscious". What does it means conscious? This is the point. The biological cell is a complex system able to sustain a life cycle.... and so on...

Sorry to say that I'm not able to write down why for me a biological cell isn't conscious.

I can state that for my point of view conscious means  to be "able to activate or inhibit biological processes voluntarily"

But we can play this funny game also about atoms, protons, electrons the universe dark matter but the crucial point still remains always the same.

When biological systems and or materials react each other we can interpret these phenomena as reactions. When biological systems (not materials) voluntarily decide to do something or, better, are able to control or inhibit some reactions, well this is conscience for me.

For me cells are not conscious. Are just victims of a proper codified life circle.

Interesting to read David Charles Wright-Carr's posts.

That makes sense to me, Harry. The authors that got me thinking along these lines are Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, two philosophically-inclined biologists from Chile. References to their work, some of it freely available on the web, can be found in the bibliography I referenced on this thread six hours ago. Biology can help us bring our discussions about cognition (both conscious and nonconscious) down to earth and place it in its natural context.

Dear Harry,

Descartes first meditation is almost a joke,  Descartes begin it by saying that if he want to think properly, he has to base his thinking on certain ideas, ideas that he cannot doubt.  Nobody needs to read the rest of it, it is obvious that the guy will come down to one think that he cannot doubht, that he is thinking.   This is almost a joke given that he had eliminated the idea that he had a body as not really sure.  HOw stupid could be a genius.  

Lets do our own first meditation.  I cannot doubt that I experience something.  This is what being alife means for me.  Now can we doubt that being alife for any living entity is primary a form of experience.  I do not doubt  this and so I equate life and experience and I take experience as the bottom reality.  It is always embodied. Being alife is always the experience of an embodied interaction with other living and non living entities or a preparation for such experience like in dreams and thoughts where the interacting engine is in neutral and not in gear connected to the motor system.

Dear Ales,

Suppose that each of cell in your body is conscious and that your consciousness is the consciousness of one of these cell, a giant neuron  wrapped around your brain.

https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/giant-neuron-found-wrapped-around-brain-might-explain-consciousness 

hello

It is therefore proposed that a bound conscious experience is a property of an individual cell, not a group of cells. Since it is unlikely that one specific neurone is conscious, it is suggested that every neurone has a version of our consciousness, or at least some form of sentience.

from this link bellow

www.ucl.ac.uk/jonathan-edwards/publications/conscpropcells

The question i ask is not  whether i am sure about the fact that i experience doubt,It is why i have an experience at all, or why am i conscious? And immediately together with this question, a second question: what is consciousness? Is consciousness life? I fainted several times but was still alive. By asking "Is a cell conscious?" the question is what is there in a cell that by evolution leads to consciousness? For this, I must posit a tentative mechanism or process of consciousness and try to understand how evolution has lead to this process. For Descartes, the process in question is thinking. But for him thought was a substance. For most of us it is the result of the evolution of semantics. As Descartes, I believe that only humans really think. However by understanding what that means, we can implant the human way of thinking into robots, Now, the human way of thinking is probably a good candidate for the proposed tentative definition of self-consciousness: "a feedback process originating from an entity and experienced, via sensors, by that same entity".

Yes that true and is result of evolution.

The thoight as dwveloped by humanity progresses with giant steps accelerating technological achievements and is reciprocally accelerated by these achievements. The evolution of animals is slow, depending on random mutations, which are generally not very successful. Human evolution  is memetic, not genetic.

Harry,

I am of the position that CONSCIOUSNESS=LIFE and the evolution of life = the evolution of conscousness.  Life/consciousness is ALWAYS an embodied interaction experience.  ALWAYS relational/interactional.  When we are not conscious, our body is alife but we our life is suspended like the life of a frozen frog is suspended but if our body is alife and in good enough shape then our life can resume/return to it.  If life IS consciousness then cells are conscious but have the limited consciousness of cells.  Different cells have different consciousness since different type of body interface have different type of interaction and life is what is like to interact. All life form has a form of what is like to interact, have a form of consciousness, have a different form of life.  The more evolve is an organism and the more varied and extended is its form of interaction/consciousness.   To the question wheter the biosphere has consciousness or not, many such as Teilhard de Chardin saw it as having it,  as being from the beginning of the creation of the planet from a magma gradually evolving a more and more conscious layer and the last lawyer being humanity itself being gradually transformed as one biospheric consciousness, one planetary conscious being that Lovelock called Gaia.  I am entirely agreeing with this image and our common task is to reveal this to ourself, to fully become conscioius as we are all part of Gaia.  Not an intellectual realization but an intimate vivid conscious certainty of it which will allow us to live together.  I do expect at this point that Gaia will then search for become one at an highest planetray level, at a level of planetary being communities, Galactic community and there I expect an evolution to take place trying to reach the whole Universe, to reach the consciousness of GOD.  But this is just a pale shawdow that a low life human can grasp and has not even yet to live.

Dear Harry

Every cell wants to eat and reproduce, but none of them will have the thought"I think, therefore I am", except possibly the......

Narayanan

The question is, does the cell feel hunger?

Kind regards,

Marko

A computer can carry out very complex calculations without understanding or knowing what it does, we can carry out the same syntactic rules as a computer but at the same time know what we do. The reason is that our cognition involves emotion. Reciprocally, I assume that we do not feel liike a cell because our emotion involves cognition.

The elusion of entropy at the cost of increasing the overall entropy of the universe requires that a "cell" be conscious of itself in relation to the universe. 

No, the cell is not self-conscious. Remember the metaphysics of choice is neutral monism of Russellian-type of which non reductive physicalism in a special case. The functional hierarchy  from quantum to molecular to cellular to system is needed for consciousness to be expressed as we know it. At the smallest scale, the quantum potential which results in the manifestation of  consciousness is hidden from perception. When the technology advances the issues will become more prevalent, but for now it is not yet fully recognized. How can it be if consciousness has yet to be artificially inseminated. 

Andreas,

''But if cells are conscious that would mean that we have to apply human rights to every living being from humans to the simplest cell (or maybe even 'down' to the viruses - that depends on definition). What does it mean to our ethics?''

Some countries have adopted animal rights.  They did not gave human rights to animals.  I have no clue about what  a cell right could be?

Dear Louis

I think this would be related to"copyright" issues. There are laws on what someone can do with the cells collected from another person. Afterall, science is yet to create a cell

Narayanan

Harry Friedmann :

>A computer can carry out very complex calculations without understanding or knowing what it does, we can carry out the same syntactic rules as a computer but at the same time know what we do. The reason is that our cognition involves emotion. Reciprocally, I assume that we do not feel liike a cell because our emotion involves cognition.

Dear Marko Vitas,

A computer is very far from equilibrium. It processes complex operations, using electrical energy and producing results and heat. So far, ordinary computers can carry out only iterative procedures according to a program and unpredictable results that significantly differ from one computer to another similar one with the same program are usually attributed to malfunction.. Therefore, I assume that garden variety computers are without understanding or knowledge of whatever they do. This will change when the computers will carry out calculations using the time-dependent Schroedinger equation including decoherence.

At least cells have some sense for their own state. For example, if they recognize that DNA repair is not possible, they decide to undergo apoptosis. Bacteria have quorum sensing. Cells in an organism know where they are for to be able to switch on the right genes at the right time.

https://phys.org/news/2016-04-cell.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7151920.stm

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/ucl-sns102513.php

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-08/ucl-snc081110.php

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-cells-destiny.html

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-gps-rhythmic-neurons-code-position.html

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/plos-scu050610.php

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/41/16301.full

The difference to human consciousness is that the latter stores information about events in a memory, to be able to reflect on it later.

Cells do not have such a memory, except a tiny specialized one like CRISPR.

Regards,

Joachim

Each of us is conscious but each of us is only one consciousness. But we are wired-in in such a way that we are empathic to each other, we sense each other consciousness. The more we love someone and the more conscious we are of the other consciousness and so we can speak of a partial merging of the consciousness; there are not totally individual. According to Aristotle: "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Bacteria do sometime began to love each other and form colonies. Each of us is the love union of the cells of our bodies. Some cancerous one refused this love and started to love other and form tumour and then we are in trouble. Societies do have such . trouble to when people stop loving each other. And all the prophets and saints of all religions have called for us to love each other, to bring us to really become one, the next step of our evolution. Understanding bacterial merging-love might help us finding this road towards our own merging.

According to the Christian apologist of the fourth century called Lactantius, the word religion is derived from the Latin verb religare, to bind or to reconnect. The same meaning is given by St. Augustine in his treatise "On the True Religion" where he says that " Religion binds (religat) us to the One Almighty God. Every monotheistic religion has this unification in love as its highest ideal: "And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" Deuteronomy 6:5. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Matthew 22: 37.

Our body's architecture is fractal, not just the sum of numerous bricks and layers, so to speak. Hence, the dynamics and sturcture of the whole goes hand in hand with the very same structure and dynamics of the parts. Living cels are very much conscious as we, ads a whole, are. Yet, human beings are not fully rational. Most of our life goes in "automatic pilot". I have written a paper with this same argument. I am just waiting the next step: ("Awaitng for revierwers selection").

Dear Carlos, I find the statement "Our body's architecture is fractal" intriguing. Of course the body is " not just the sum of numerous bricks and layers" and every part has only meaning as a part of a whole.but is it a self similar part of that whole? The cells of different organs have different functions. Although they all have the same genome they differ epigenetically.

Dear Harry,

THis is my conception of ''religere'', to live together. I do believe that ''ME'' is this call to live together that is materialized by the cells of my body and their actions in the world and I believe the ''GOD'' is this call in me and in all of us ''TO LIVE TOGETHER'' . It only initially existed at the level of the tribe. A first primate prophet managed to begin the process of uncoupled the primate imagination, the first call to of God for the creation of humanity and now the call is for humanity to come together. And there is no reason to think that this call to come together stop at the level of this planet, it has to reach eventually many level above our level of life, to the level of Universe. This is what has and is creating the whole cosmos.

Dear Louis,

In the Bible, The love of a fellow human is subordinate to the love of God, as if you cannot trust a godless human being, Thus we read in Leviticus 19:18 "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD" and in Matthew 22:39 "Thou shalt love thy neighsbor a thyself" Matthew 22:39 where this commandment is second after "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Matthew 22: 37.

Is a cell self-conscious? is a good question. A cell is self-conscious if another neighboring cell can confirm. A cell cannot exist independently at the moment. This is similar to what I mentioned in RG, connecting intelligence is a human intelligence (HI) component. If you consider the HI is the ability and skill of "learning, understanding and thinking", the connecting intelligence facilitates the HI's learning, understanding and thinking, it also facilitates the micro-structure evolution of our brain. The latter I mentioned 20 years ago. Therefore, inter-cell consciousness is an excellent topic.

Prof Dr Zhaohao Sun

2017-11-8

Dear Harry,

According to Peirce the meaning of a concept correspond to the potential consequences of this concept.

Is there a consequence in considering the Love of God before the Love of neighbors versus putting the Love of neighbors before the Love of God? For me there is no meaning, or consequence in any of the ordering.

Dear Prof Dr Zhaohao Sun,

I found your statement "A cell is self-conscious if another neighboring cell can confirm.", which connects subjectivity to intersubjectivity, very interestiing. So maybe I am wrong by denying concepts to unicellular organisms, in view of the fact that they communicate via calcium waves. My argument starts by mentioning that according to Dan Michael Psatta: "We must delimitate as much as possible the term of consciousness. I consider that before consciousness there are stages such as sensitivity, sensibility". It is possible that sensitivity exists already at a primitive level in unicellular organisms. This sensitivity allows the cell to perceive stimuli, for instance the influx of ions through voltage-gated ion channels, changing the membrane potential. This modification of the membrane potential encodes the stimulus and changes the ion concentration in the cytosol. The ATP activated ion current which expells surplus ions from the cytosol is conjugated with an outgoing quantum wave packet which decodes the incoming stimulus, containing all its information. This information is the percept. As Kant instructed us: percepts without concepts are blind, and it took billions uf years to develop brains with cognitive functions to evolve phenomena composed of percepts and concepts. In the attached file, we show how fibroblasts perceive an elecromagnetic stimulus causing an influx of calcium ions into the cytosol, followed by an outflow of these ions.

I also find the following note by JOACHIM LIPSKI very relevant to the present debate:

A well-worn distinction in philosophy is that between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Access consciousness can be ascribed functionally, such as in your example of a predator or prey perceiving a cat. Put briefly, we do not need evidence that the perceiving animal has phenomenal consciousness (i.e. qualitative experience, in Chalmer's sense) in order to know that it can perceive the cat -- the fact that prey shows specific avoidance behavior, whereas the predator shows specific predatory behavior, is good evidence for perception in these cases. Perception can in this sense be understood merely functionally - and from functional ascriptions, ascriptions of phenomenal consciousness does not follow. (See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/)

Dear Harry

By the same token, if a bacteria perceives it's prey and shows predatory behaviour it is only functional perception and not and not phenomenal consciousness, is it not so?

Narayanan

Dear Harry,

Access consciousness can be observed and thus scientifically established but . this expression ''access consciousness''' is pernicious since it disconnect perception from consciousness. It is experimentally established that we do perceive many things unconsciously but we all our phenomenal consciousness is bodily perceptive but not the reverse. Because consciousness needs to be selective and it would be functionally unproductive to allow everything to be conscious creating a conscious traffic jam. But what we unconsciously perceive can in certain circumstance become at the center of attention and become consciously perceived. I would argue that no living entity is totally unconscious. I can't prove this but nobody can prove the opposite thesis. I take for a basic axiom that LIVING = CONSCIOUSNESS. If one do not accept this axiom then one has to explain what consciousness is, when it appear in biological evolution and what biological structure allows it. In order word when an unconscious biological machine become a living conscioius being, become a reality for itself. The simplest answer is : when a conscious living entity want to survive it is conscious and is not a ''thing''. I personally think that cells are not the first living entities but believe particle are living but more primitive form of living and more primitive form of consciousness. I am back to the monads and to Leibniz. The living is characterize by growth and so we can consider the whole of the Universe and its evolution as a living organism made of societies of more primitive ones down to the particles and all are in evolution mirroring each other. Here we come to Von Uexkull notion of life.

Dear Narayanan, Good question. The bacteria try to stay alive, that is to say, far from thermodynamic equilibrium. This looks like a purpose, but biologists would deny this and explain it by causality. The question about SELF consciousness is whether a cell can experience its own acts. This requires adequate sensors and some memory. My guess is that the self of bacteria is of very short duration, very different from the human self.

Is a sperm or ovum conscious, and aware of what it has to do?

Narayanan

I am not an expert in this field but I think Prof. Joachim's comments and links are very comprehensive and convincing. Indeed, cells are self-conscious otherwise they would not have been able to switch to healthy regions. Best regards

Dickson

Dear Harry,

Nobody question that the body of a bacteria is very different from a human body. IF a bacteria has an experience , this experience has to do with its interaction. What can be assessed scientifically is necessarily assessed from our exterior observation of the bacteria's behavior. We can assess other human experience based on them being biologically very similar and being able to speak to each other and testify to each other but this is not a scientific observation. Scientifically we can only assess behavior and we cannot even say another human is conscious. In fact, we can't even say what being conscious is scientifically. WE can say it to each other but not scientifically. Like pointing a tree we can teach a viewing child, here is a tree and then the child knows what is a tree. No definition provided here , simply an association made in his experience. We can't do that in science, the very pointing is part of our experience. So we are totally within it, including all of our sciences. We all intrinsically know that other human live in the same experiencing bubble, or one very close to ours and so we are convinced not by scientific critera. We have the same impossible scientific task with any life form. So my position has to fall onto a dogmatic one: Consciousness=LIFE and it is not a scientific dogma because science by definition exclude life and only include machine-like aspect of Nature. How do we make the scientific reductionist vision of the world with a LIVING experience of the world. I think it has to be totally compatible as long as one realise that the scientific vision is part of our living experience and study it as a natural emerge from it, from our bodily desire to control the inanimate world and that other forms of experiences allow us to go further.

Dear Louis, Narayanan and Dickson, An organism can have perceptions and even react to them in an adequate manner without being conscious. These reactions are simple reflexes to stimuli. Consciousness involves reflection, an action by which the organism, through its sensors, signals, physically or chemically, its reaction to stimuli, to itself. These inner reflections, are qualitatively different from the effect of the stimuli and represent the qualia of experience. They develop into concepts in humans.

Harry,

Anybody is constantly oblivious of most of what is around us and most of our action are performed almost automatically. When you speak, you move your tonge very rapdidly and you have almost no consciousness of what it is doing. But we are conscious and if we were not we would not be able to learn anything new. Consciousness does not need reflection in general. If you accidentally hammer your finger, you are conscious of it without any reflexion. Yes, inner reflections is a self-enact form of bodily experience similar to the dreaming self-enaction of experience. Humans are probably the only animal that can have inner reflection, explicit form of memory. But this is only one form of experience and this form of experience is very similar to the natural primate form of experience except that it is self-enact in parallel to the normal bodily experience. Understanding how it is done provide the answer to how we evolved from our primate ancestors. It is related to mammalian play and mammalian dreams which are two forms of self-enact experience.

Hammering of a finger or whatever else in the body may cause an unconscious reflex. But when it causes pain it is far more complex. I become aware of the fact and also that it is i who am in pain. The becoming aware of the pain is my involuntary reaction or response decoding the sense impression encoded by the hammering, somewhere in the cortex.

Dear Harry,

The feeling of pain is most probably a feeling that a bacteria has when placed into a precarious situation. It is pain that tell the organism that something is wrong and allow the organism to guide its behavior. The mecanisms mediating pain have to be vastly different and the localisation and what to do are vastly different but I see no reason to not assume that a bacteria can experience pain in some critical circumstance for its life. In complex animal, pain is mediate by more primitive nervous system structure than the cortex. Humans have much more developed cortex than other primates but there is no reason to suspect that we experience physical pain differently than other primate. We get crazy and experience experience emotional pain more frequently given that we live in crazy societies but the mecanisms are most probably the same as in the primate. I take the reality of consciousness not as uniquely related to the mecanism mediating them and I think that almost all that we can experience can be experience by vastly different organisms than ourself. Pain and pleasure of eating or the feeling of ''light'' (symbol of God) are probably as old as organic life itself but mediate by vastly different bodies.

Dear John, Narayanan asked whether a sperm cell is aware of what it has to do. Although it would seem that the aim of the sperm cell is the ovum, biologists will probably prefer a causal mechanism. For instance, that the flagellum is an organelle activated by a physical or chemical gradient. Similarly, cells devoid of flagella could move in the direction of a gradient by depolymerization amd repolymerization of the cytoskeleton. Your opinion?

Dear Harry and others

Anyone who offers an opinion on my (sub)question regarding sperm should account for the fact that a sperm is at best half-a-cell; it does not have most of the structures that a cell has. Calling it a cell might even be wrong. It cannot be cultured since it can not 'reproduce' and colonise as a normal cell can.

Narayanan

Dear Narayanan,

''Is a sperm or ovum conscious, and aware of what it has to do?''

Sperms and ovums are living organisms and have a task to do and some awareness of what they are doing. I do not see why I should think otherwise. But I do not know much about them , did not observe them.

Dear Marko,

About the cell has the ability to "feel" hunger, if we consider that there are some pathways that are activated inside the cells, without any signal from a central nervous system or other hormone, when these cells are in culture and in a condition of starvation (AMPK, an enzyme that senses when the ratio AMP:ATP increase or decrease, in other words, when lack "food" for maintaining that cell in an anabolic state, for example), these cells trigger some responses to try to get nutrients from your own structure, for example. I guess yes, in this case I think is plausible to say that cell has your own consciousness. I mean, this enzyme, the AMPK will trigger responses in that cell according the lack of nutrients in its medium, and in my point of view, this is a kind of level of consciousness.

Dear Louis

I can not fully agree with the first part of your answer. I am not that sure about the sperm/ovum being 'truly' living entities; independently they can never hope to survive (this is different from organisms that have very very short life span).

About the third part of your comment; viz 'I do not know much about them'... Well, though many people know a lot about their physical characteristics, I don't think anyone knows about their 'thoughts' or consciousness. I am sure you have thought, at least now, more about these aspects than most scientists. Also, these will be put in the dustbin as mysticism

Narayanan

I consider particularly interesting the definition given by Maturana and Varela, who define the living system as an autopoietic system, arousing from the chemical and physical contingency, which originates, develops emergent properties and keeps itself and its borders in time (homeostasis) through constant recursive processes.

Moreover, according to these authors, any living system is equipped with sensory and cognitive properties over its environment: consider, for example, the chemotaxis operated by bacteria, and many other possible examples, where the term cognition does not coincide with consciousness or perception of itself, but it represents the sensory ability of the system through which we find the best and most appropriate response and action of the same system with respect to the environment. Precisely thanks to the knowledge of the environment cognition processes, living systems radically change their environment: consider the complex example of hives or the seemingly simplest example of Helicobacter pylori and its urease activity, allowing the colonization and modification of a prohibitive environment such as the gastric mucosa. In this conceptual vision the living system is fully responsible and creator of the construction of its environment. In other words, the living system can be described as a closed operational system, open to environmental perturbations, that is, a system containing all information and causes that implement it, but which is set up as a thermodynamically open system to its own environment. In this context, the autopoietic (living) system, the cognition considered as a sensory property of the living system with respect to the environment, and the environment are considered an integrated and interdependent single unit.

In conclusion, every living system is: autopoiesis, cognition, replication and is the constructor of its environment. but cognition is not self-consciousness, this develops on the evolutionary scale

According to the definition "any feedback process originating from an entity and experienced by that same entity produces self-consciousness" proposed in the text introducing the question " is a cell self conscious?", it would seem that the adenosine monophosphate activated protein kinase (AMPK) discussed above by Pedro Paulo Gattai is indeed a valid candidate for consciousness. It is also a fitness and longevity boosting super-food, see: https://www.superfoodly.com/what-is-ampk-activator/

Harry,

A heating system regulate by a thermostat feedback is not conscious or self-conscious. Any machine, feedback or no feedback has no consciousness. I would say that any system that we can specify entirely its working as a machine has no consciousness since its specifification do not involve any consciousness and so it has not.

Nicola,

If living organism can be specified as machines, whatever type of machine then it would be unconscious and non living. I agree that we may characterize certain machine like aspect of living organism, we may say that they are autopoietic systems but there are not at the core define by this. The core is unspecifiable and conscious and creative of the organism and it is a requirement for it to be living and conscious.

Dear All:

Although I agree with Louis that life and consciousness (basic consciousness as sentience or capacity of feeling hunger, pain, etc.) are colsely related, according to my model there is an important difference.

Feelings are carried by hydro-ionic waves that require a multicellular system; see: Article Astroglial hydro-ionic waves guided by the extracellular mat...

while life can exist for the single cell that has only metabolism and a flux of energy directed towards survival.

It is true that the Schroedinger-type waves conjugate to the ion flows involved in action potentials are conscious of engrams in the cortex they decode. However, true consciousness must also include self consciousness. This necessitates an outgoing action induced by the mentioned ion flows, memory of this outgoing action impressed in the cortex and partial coincidence of the partial incoming feedback of the outgoing action with its memory in the cortex.

Dear Harry,

We are conscious in dreams without any outgoing action of our body. So outer action of the body is not always necessary for consciousness.

Dear Alfredo,

We (encultured humans) have very complex life experience and of course each life form has a life experience made possible by the type of action and type of body physiology it has. Life always evolve incrementally, it substract little and add new layers of physiology and experience. So our life experience is layered the ways life on this planet has evolved. So although the body of the homo sapiens sapiens is relatively very recent, most of my experience is about very very old life experience. So it is because of this that we can sort out our experience and discover throw instrospection the very history of the life experience we are. It is why some exceptional humans called reaching a state of enlightment, a state wakefullness. Their state of experience does not provide them necessarily a explicit scientific knowledge of this history of the life experience but I think it is possible and it is what a genius is able to do. We are not external observer but insigntfull observer.

Dear Louis, By incoming, i mean what comes into the cortex from the senses. By outgoing, I mean what comes into the cortex from the ARAS.

Dear Roman, How does your teleo-functionalism square with my dialectic mechanism of consciousness where consciousness arises in the cortex as the interaction of a decoding outgoing wave coming from the ARAS and engrams in the cortex encoded by incoming waves from stimuli perceived by the (inner and outer) senses?

In the cell this dialectic mechanism already exists in a primitive form, taking the cell mebrane in the role of the cortex and an organelle in the cytoplasma in the role of the ARAS. The cell senses are the membrane potential, ion and other channels and receptors.

Many years ago I read a paper (I forgot the precise reference) about the growth of hepatocytes in a silicum chip. The authors observed that if the chip area was too small, the hepatocyte did not produce albumin, if too large it grew and reproduced itself remaining "young" not producing albumin also. The sense of surface to volume ratio is just the best example I think of a whole sensing itself. In this physical sense these cells had a sense of themselves. What this has to do with high mammals perception and human mind? Nothing in my view.

Mind is a colletive entity, each single brain will express several minds during life Example of this is language. This network is a colletive mind in which English predominates. My native language use is far more complex and I use several dialects depending in which mode of communation I am using.

Dear Vera and Others

As I understand it, no one knows what exactly makes a cell decide to start cell division, except that it has something to do with cell volume. Therefore you can be very right in saying that 'these cells have a sense of themselves', more so because reproduction is the ultimate proof of life.

But this being so, I would say that this has a lot to do with even high mammal perception. Look at it this way: Need to procreate and the need for sexual act are not fully under the control of the voluntary mind (as I think). This is more so for the males, who has to initiate the action.

Narayanan

Roman Poznanski : "The cell is self-aware of its own function it has no self-awareness of the organism as a whole. For that to occur the integration of brain functions across the hierarchical levels of organization expressed as a teleofunctionality vector potential must be known a priori".

Vera Maura Fernandes de Lima: "Many years ago I read a paper (I forgot the precise reference) about the growth of hepatocytes in a silicum chip. The authors observed that if the chip area was too small, the hepatocyte did not produce albumin, if too large it grew and reproduced itself remaining "young" not producing albumin also. The sense of surface to volume ratio is just the best example I think of a whole sensing itself. In this physical sense these cells had a sense of themselves,"

I believe that the cell has an integrating organ: the cell membrane and the membrane potential, playing the role of an interface., controlling the interaction (input/output) of the cell as a whole with its surrounding.

Roman. What makes you believe that the cell response is not unified, for instance in preserving homeostasis? And is Vera's note not a convincing example of cell-function integration? Don't you think that unification via hierarchy is only required in multicellular organisms where different organs perform different tasks? In a quantum dialectical description, the cell membrane, by its membrane potential and its receptors, is the sensorium of the cell, which records or encodes all the perceptions of the cell. These records are decoded by quantum waves conjugate to a particle or ion efflux from an organelle within the cytosol. What is the meaning of a teleofunctional vector potential known a priori? Are we talking about science or prophecy?

Polariton Bose-Einstein condensates in neurons.

In the 29//01/ 2018 update of the project "Prescriptive Ontology in the Hebrew Bible" on ResearcgGate, polariton information decoding behavior was attributed to a network of encoded microtubules in a pyramidal neuron. Information integration was assumed to be carried out by polariton Bose-Einstein (B-E) condensation. Unity of consciousness was attributed to this polariton information integration mechanism. We hope that experimental work on neurons of various types will indeed prove the presence of polariton B-E condensation in these cells, for instance by demonstrating Rabi splitting in their transmission spectra, see: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b06999 This would be an important step toward the understanding of the consciousness process.

Unity of Consciousness cannot be understood by the multiplicity of classical particles.

That is where quantum coherence is needed. Unfortunately quantum behavior becomes equal to classical behavior in macrosystems at ordinary temperaturesm due to decoherence. Polaritons are the exception. That is the reason why experimental evidence for the existence of polariton condensates (see: Article The new era of polariton condensates

An important experimental parameter to be discovered in the polariton Bose-Einstein neural condensate is the frequency of the polariton oscillations. This would allow therapeutic acoustic or elevtromagnetic brain stimulation.

Thw question about the consciousness of the cell depends on the presence of a quantum mechanism of coherence. Such a mechanism is provided by the pumped polariton activity of the microtubules which gives rise to orchestrated Bosr-Einstein condensates, The Bose-Einstein condensate causes strong coupling between light and matter. The stability obtaibed thereby is the cause of the self-organization of the system into the Bose-Einstein state.

Dear Harry

Is our consciousness too related to the Bose-Einstein condensate etc that you mention here?

Narayanan

The cell consciousness arising from the cell or neuron synchronization is transmitted to the higher regions of the brain causing consciousness.

In that case, how does the cell loss when unnecessary parts of the body such as the limbs, a large part of the intestines, etc., are removed?

How does your theory explain Phantom limb, dreams, etc?

Narayanan

No, a cell is not self-conscious.

The cell is informed of the stte it is in by the described quantum mechanism. It transmits, together with othercells, this information to HOT (higher order of thought) regions of the brain. Cells posses memory which are encoded bits of information. Phantom limbs, dreams are memory effects..

And, Sir, what about the first part of my doubt?

Narayanan

When you consider the cell as a part of a brain, the cell has some consciousbess or sentience. However, that is NOT your consciousness or sentience, Your sentience or consciousness involves the whole brain which carries the information coming from the body and its senses, The brain functios as a hierarchy, like a Russian doll: small parts in larger parts into still largwr parts, until the whole brain is involved. only when this integrated whole is estabkished you become conscious.

Sir

Hierarchy implies that there is a superior most 'something'. Do you think so in the case of consciousness; a single or group of Brain cell?

Do all the cells in the body have the Bose-Einstein condensate etc? Or only the brain cells?

Narayanan

Hierarchy in the sense that consciousnes is obtained by a bottom up information process and by a top down effector process. The polariton Bose Einstein process is the fundamental self-organization mechanism which produces robust organic life in such a way that it is always also sentient life.

Matter is not conscious. Only the electromagnetic field part of the pumped polariton condensate of the brain is conscious provided that the wave oscillates at the gamma wave frequency. All the brain wave frequencies are the Rabi frequencies of polariton condensates in the strong coupling limit. The neurons contributing to the conscious gamma waves are spread out across the cortex. The bosonic gamma wave integrates their information. Neurons which do not participate in the cognition process are inhibited : they are not pumped by the ARAS in order not to waste energy on whatever would turn the attention away from the cognitive object (s) under consideration.

What i mean by integrate is for instance a red book. you do not see red connected with a book.

@Roman

Not exactly, but it points in some direction I think.

So, there seems to be a class of cognitive processing neurons. Are they responsible for our 'sense of consciousness as an individual'? How many of them could be there (number or %of total)? Do they have discussions between themselves, and make our decisions collectively?

I am not making fun; but is asking these in earnest? I have my own ideas which would be obviously 'unscientific' to all.

Narayanan

The cognitive processing neurons are activated neurons giving a representation of reality, They are not conscious, Their activity is that component of the polariton condensate energy which is in the neurons. When (like in a phase transition) this energy becomes an electromagnetic field in the brain cavity, it becomes conscious of the represented reality and can correct and improve it by a repeated feedback process (a "discussion"). The frequency of the feedback process is the frequency of the gamma brain waves. Physically, it is the Rabi frequency of the activated polariton condensate. The dynamics of the cognitive feedback process is the modification of the neuronal activation and inhibition map.

Is conciousness necessary for self defence?

Look at what tumor cells do when you try to kill them.

Information is relative to consciousness or sentience It's nature is physical, It consists of an environmental chemical or physical stimulus of the senses or receptors, which induces the organism to favor and give access to what is useful or desirable for its livelihood or gives it pleasure and to avoid giving access to what is noxious or gives it displeasure. Without this information-based discrimination of access, life could not exist.

A tumor cell is 'conscious' of the presence of chemotherapeutic agents and takes steps to neutralise them. This is presumably some form of evolutionary determined self preservation.

These cells signal to one another and it is likely that such signalling not only indicates some extraordinarily rudimentary self awareness but awareness of their 'peers' and even surroundings.

Humans have for far too long considered their own form of self awareness to be the only condition worthy of consciousness. They are almost certainly mistaken.

Day after day, cell-to-cell communication is demonstrated in a network of signal complex and pathways, some of which have won Nobel Prizes

https://www.rndsystems.com/pathways/il2-signaling-pathwayshttps://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2014/08/12/signaling-and-signaling-pathways/

https://www.cellsignal.com/contents/science/cst-pathways/science-pathways

https://www.amazon.com/Cell-Talk-Transmitting-Mind-into/dp/155643913X

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_signaling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transductionh

ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosstalk_(biology)

I think there are many levels/shapes/patterns of consciousness. These patterns emerge quite spontaneously when the necessary organismic complexity exists (see Haken, 1988 for explanation of synergetics). Self-consciousness is, in my opinion, a relatively high level or pattern of consciousness , and one which requires more than a (very) complex organism. It requires a culture of complex organisms. The reasons for this has to do with the type of information that constitutes a pattern of consciousness. From the POV of a cell, some information is available to it - perhaps temperature, nutrient gradients, charge, light etc. Obviously, I think, it navigates the topology of relevance in the manner in which all life does, with the goal of survival and reproduction in ‘mind’. Self-consciousness would mean, that it was aware of its own activities. Consciousness, in our normal way of defining it, would mean that the information mentioned earlier was available to cell, in an adaptive and integrated yet differentiated manner. I am having trouble imagining that proces taking place in a single cell. Rather, I believe information is mechanically sorted for valence, and mechanically acted upon.

The mechanisms required for human level consciousness are theorized (Edelman & Tononi) to be reentrant connections between spatially distributed groups of specialized neurons, specifically within the thalamocortical meshwork. This network of reciprocal connections enables the synchronization of disparate areas of the brain to become a single functional cluster. Not all neurons (of course) are included in a given cluster, and even the constituent neuronal groups of a stable cluster change. Given that such immense complexity is needed before self-consciousness in humans is a possibility (remember, even babies, with essentially the same structural architecture, do not operate at that level until 12-18 months of loving care), I think the term ‘self-consciousness’ is not applicable to single cells.

I would like to have a taxonomy of the different levels of consciousness, from, say, atoms to enlightened beings. What is it like at each level.

Thank you for the thought provoking question.