An interesting read. “A group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/
honestly consciousness is probably on a spectrum, depending on the complexity needed for their behaviour, rather than an is/isn’t thing.
If consciousness is merely defined as being aware of one’s surroundings: I would think that most living things have it.
Has the actual mechanism of consciousness been discovered? Do we know what causes it? Where it comes from? How it is separate from simply reacting to stimuli?
The fundamental mechanism is still unknown, however we do know some important details about consciousness:
- It’s not a simple binary all-or-nothing
- It can change naturally or artificially
- It’s divisible and perhaps even additive
We know this due to a number of phenomena:
- Natural variation in states like awake, alert, groggy, asleep, comatose
- Altered states due to alcohol or drugs (drunk, high, caffeinated, hallucinating, suppressed with anaesthesia)
- Disorders such as Body Identity Dismorphic Disorder (BIID - thinking a major limb doesn’t belong to your body) or Phantom Limb (sensing an limb that isn’t there). Look these up if you’re unfamiliar, they’re fascinating.
Together these and other observations suggest that consciousness is an emergent phenomena (not present in simple organ structures alone) and occurs along a scale, likely proportional to brain size. And just as your daily state can change (between sleep and wakefulness at minimum) it seems a reasonable hypothesis that other creatures experience something similar, though perhaps with a lower maximum awareness in their most alert state.
Also we are familiar with informational structures - thinking machines - with a greater intelligence than their single biological components. For example, an ant hive. Each individual ant is a simple creature, programmed with instructions that allow a hive of ants to manage armies, roads, farms, nurseries, exploration, hunts, and war. Likewise, humans are able to come together and form communities, nations, corporations, and religions. Compound intelligences with a vast, inhuman intelligence.
I believe that if knowledge and awareness create consciousness, then human organisations must be conscious beings.
Maybe the mechanism hasn’t been discovered because consciousness isn’t mechanical.
What are you suggesting? What is the alternative?
“Meanwhile, crayfish display anxiety-like states — and those states can be altered by anti-anxiety drugs.”
The gave crayfish Zoloft…and it worked.
In other news, human free will was found to be a delusion.
“Humans and insects both have free will” and “humans and insects both lack free will” are each easier to swallow than “humans have free will but insects don’t.”
(Free will requires consciousness)
Consciousness obviously, being self aware maybe not
I really don’t understand their examples. Like I get self-recognition and memory but what makes play behaviour, curiosity, anxiety-like states, and problem-solving signs of consciousness? These are at the end of the day organisms responding to stimuli, something all organisms by definition do. Is pain response a sign of consciousness but something like phototaxis isn’t only because the former is ‘complex’ and the latter ‘simple’?
