Are atoms, bacteria and plants conscious?

Are atoms, bacteria and plants conscious?



Johnathan Moens

Consciousness is what you experience in everyday, waking life. It’s the smell of freshly made pastry, the taste of hot chocolate and the sounds of birds chirping away. All of these experiences are sensorial, fleeting, intangible. Yet neuroscientists tend to agree that consciousness is produced by the brain — a physical, tangible, organ. The question is: how is that possible? How can experiences that feel intangible arise from a physical structure like the brain?

Philosophers and scientists have grappled with this question for centuries, but there is still no consensus. Recently, a theory of consciousness called “panpsychism” has gained traction in philosophical discourse. Panpsychists argue that consciousness is the fundamental building block to everything in the universe – from quarks and molecules all the way to brains and bodies. 

In this podcast, Scienceline speaks to philosophers David Chalmers, Philip Goff, and biologist Karl Niklas about panpsychism and whether atoms, plants and bacteria are conscious.

Are atoms, bacteria and plants conscious?



Johnathan Moens

(personal judgement)  Plants and bacteria - Yes     Atoms - No

Plants and bacteria change real-world probabilities with their information processing.  Atoms do not.

Panpsychism seems to be increasingly resorted to by materialists who, faced with an unsolvable Hard Problem, are attracted to a theory that requires them to break with materialism to the absolute minimum extent. But I think it is deeply flawed. This was discussed and hashed out extensively a while ago in Psiencequest.

Seven reasons why panpsychism is almost certainly wrong (1-3 courtesy Titus Rivas at http://txtxs.nl/artikel.asp?artid=843), and also from previous discussion here at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-w...m+Problems .

"1. Panpsychism seems incompatible with a substantial personal self or soul...If the mind is composed of mental elements linked to the physical components of (parts of the) brain and if mental processes are intrinsically linked to physical processing in the brain, it is unclear where the personal self could ever come in.

2. Panpsychism leads to parallellism
Panpsychists may deny that their position leads to a parallellism between mental and neurological processing, in other words: they may deny that panpsychism is incompatible with mind-brain interaction. I do hold that panpsychism leads to parallellism, because according to panpsychism any event in the mind is mirrored by an event in the brain (as two intrinsically linked aspects of reality), and vice versa, so that mental processes are by definition parallelled by cerebral processes, and vice versa....(Parallelism) leads to an unsolvable epistemological problem. If the brain never affects the mind, this means we can never have a good reason to believe there is a physical brain (or even a physical world), as it would never affect our minds. Therefore, panpsychism should be abandoned in favour of theories that allow for a causal impact from the brain upon our mind. Note: and it is obvious that brain events do affect the mind.

3. Panpsychism seems incompatible with data from research into psi and survival  (the empirical argument)
Although panpsychism seems to be rather popular among people who are interested in psychical research or parapsychology, its implications actually seem largely incompatible with such an interest. In psi research, the results suggest that the mind may possess certain causal properties that are lacking in the brain, because in psi it transcends the physical boundaries of the brain. This goes against the mind-brain parallellism implied by panpsychism (see objection 2). In survival and reincarnation research, the results suggest that the personal self and its mind survive death and can in principle be linked to a new brain after death. This goes against both parallellism and the very reason why panpsychism is proposed by naturalists..."

(4) Another argument, this time from Jim Smith: "
Quantum Mechanics indicates consciousness is fundamental. Matter is derived from consciousness. This is incompatible with panpsychism"

(5) Another argument (my own):
(Another) problem with (panpsychism) is that the Universe comprises an incredibly complex interdependent system of natural laws following many beautiful mathematical constructions, that is also incredibly fine tuned for life as we know it. This gives the strong appearance of design by a focused, sentient superintelligence that creatively invents, not one that is not self-aware. By analogy, in our experience the only source of greatly complex specified information (in the form of intricate machines and mechanisms) is focused sentient human intelligence.

(6) From Psiborg: "I think Panpsychism as usually presented does have problems (How do the little bits of qualia add up?)" Note: this is called the Combination Problem.

(7) Per (6) above, what is the ultimate nature of each of these little bits of qualia? Panpsychism just kicks the can down the road so to speak, in that it ultimately still doesn't  answer this question.

The most important arguments here seem to me to be 3, 4 and 6 - and neither they nor the others seem even to be addressed in the discussion. Not surprising. 3 and 5 especially encroach on the taboo area. The discussion seems to focus almost exclusively on the issue that there is little or no evidence that microorganisms, other relatively simple organisms, or especially atoms have any form of consciousness. Important, but not the whole picture.

The discussion seems to focus almost exclusively on the issue that there is little or no evidence that microorganisms, other relatively simple organisms, or especially atoms have any form of consciousness. Important, but not the whole picture.

In modern times it is understood that bacteria have contributed immense amounts of generative information processing.

 Living systems have to constantly sense their external environment and adjust their internal state in order to survive and reproduce. Biological systems, from as complex as the brain to a single E. coli cell, have to process these information in order to make appropriate decisions. How do biological systems sense the external signals? How do they process the information? How do they respond to the signals? Through years of intense study by biologists, many key molecular players and their interactions have been identified in different biological machineries that carry out these signaling functions. However, an integrated, quantitative understanding of the whole system is still lacking for most cellular signaling pathways, not to say the more complicated neural circuits.

To study signaling processes in biology, the key thing to measure is the input-output relationship. The input is the signal itself, such as chemical concentration, external temperature, light (intensity and frequency), and more complex signal such as the face of a cat. The output can be protein conformational changes and covalent modifications (phosphorylation, methylation, etc.), gene expression, cell growth and motility, as well as more complex output such as neuron firing patterns and behaviors of higher animals.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4955840/

Charles Darwin thought that mind went "all the way down in evolutionary processes.  The evidence is overwhelming that it does.  

 According to this proposal, bacteria are goal-oriented informavores who adapt to situations, learn from their environment, and interact with what their environment affords to them—they count as perfectly competent informavores.

Fermín Fulda (2017) argues for this view and explains that it has the advantage of avoiding the dilemma of considering bacteria as either full-blown cognizers (like humans) or mere machines. It also has the advantage of offering a spectrum of cognitive agency and a spectrum of informavores, which could also be understood in terms of various types of attention (Haladjian and Montemayor, 2015). The issue of whether bacteria are conscious must be settled independently of whether or not they count as informavores—not all informavores must be conscious, even if they pay attention to what their environment presents them (see Montemayor and Haladjian, 2015). So in agreement with Fulda, we believe bacteria are legitimate informavores rather than mere transmitters of information, even if they lack the type of cognition characteristic of human rationality. The important point is that agency (being oriented toward goals that agents must be capable of meeting based on their selective and trust-worthy capacities) defines the boundary between mere machine and informavores.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...and-plants

Key words are affords, cognitive agency, goal orientation

Seven reasons why panpsychism is almost certainly wrong (1-3 courtesy Titus Rivas at http://txtxs.nl/artikel.asp?artid=843), and also from previous discussion here at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-w...m+Problems .

I don't understand the parallelism charge against Panpsychism?

I don't understand the parallelism charge against Panpsychism?

Titus Rivas: "I do hold that panpsychism leads to parallellism, because according to panpsychism any event in the mind is mirrored by an event in the brain (as two intrinsically linked aspects of reality), and vice versa, so that mental processes are by definition parallelled by cerebral processes, and vice versa...."

It was indeed hard to find something on this in the literature on panpsychism. I did find the following. I guess it makes sense:

From Some Remarks on Panpsychism and Epiphenomenalism, by Karl Popper, at https://www.jstor.org/stable/42966456?seq=1:

"Panpsychism is the view that all matter has an inside aspect which is a soul-like or a consciousness-like "quality". Thus for panpsychism, matter and mind run "parallel" like the outside and the inside aspects of an eggshell (Spinozistic parallelism). In non-living matter, the inside aspect may not be conscious: the soul-like precursor or consciousness may be described as "pre-psychical" or "proto-psychical". With the integration of atoms into giant molecules and living matter, memory-like effects emerge; and with the higher animals, consciousness emerges."

For myself I'd draw a distinction between saying atoms are conscious and the consciousness of atoms resolves itself into our consciousness by some mysterious means of combination.

The Jains, for example, believed that even matter held consciousness that could awaken and rise up to higher levels of being. So atoms might be sleeping/dreamings souls and gods might be more awakened/aware than we can conceive.

For myself I'd draw a distinction between saying atoms are conscious and the consciousness of atoms resolves itself into our consciousness by some mysterious means of combination.

First - a shoutout to the study of Jainism, a non-violent and highly ethical worldview.

I remain very hopeful about science and reasoning to address this critical issue.  The deepest dives into understandings of life and meaning can be outside our scope at this time, but worth experiencing.  Still, the "how" of mind is can be moved further down the road, once focus shines on it.  There is much to measure and analyze.

The "mysterious means of combination in consciousness" - at a most general level - appears approachable in terms of measuring the logical structure of outcomes.  (as exampled in prior citation) "To study signaling processes in biology, the key thing to measure is the input-output relationship."  

Aware agents detect structured information in their environments.  When objects are useful, they are imported by detection via the agent's senses and understanding.  Measuring this importation is done with the math tools related to the formulas for mutual information.

An affordance - or useful object - is assimilated in the mind of the agent by detection of the senses capturing essentials of the physical structure as representation.  And the ability to understand relations brings the functionality to an information object in mind.  An information object being structured as an idea, fact, thought or plan.  It is a nexus of probability waves.  

Consider a chair; you can see one and subconsciously think of resting the feet.  The conscious mind catches-up by focusing on the physical object and exporting the representation of the visual array to the mind's understanding.  A chair affords the use of sitting (as isomorphic to the need) and the mind's efferent systems delivers a nervous signal to move to the chair and sit.

The potential for mutual information of the chair and the informational gain of the visual array are confirmable.   The mutual information of the logical affordance is measurable after transmission and assimilation.  The outcome is observable.    What this takes is a full acceptance that the information object is real in a real-world informational environment.  Further, the acceptance that real-world probabilities are the basis for causal decisions derived from agents.  Bacteria do all this.

First - a shoutout to the study of Jainism, a non-violent and highly ethical worldview.

I have to admit I don't know much about Jainism, but the metaphysics of their belief seems to be inline with what I at least think of as the "Perennial Wisdom" - that the Divine descends into the material and then ascends again.

I remain very hopeful about science and reasoning to address this critical issue.  The deepest dives into understandings of life and meaning can be outside our scope at this time, but worth experiencing.  Still, the "how" of mind is can be moved further down the road, once focus shines on it.  There is much to measure and analyze.

The "mysterious means of combination in consciousness" - at a most general level - appears approachable in terms of measuring the logical structure of outcomes.  (as exampled in prior citation) "To study signaling processes in biology, the key thing to measure is the input-output relationship." 

Ah I was specifically referring to the combination of atomic consciousness into my own. Though while I agree that from the outside there is much to be modeled, I would say that while we can delineate aspects of our experience it does come to us in a complete wholeness.

As Titus Rivas notes in the site Nbtruthman mentioned it's consciousness' simplicity, in this sense, that suggests the self cannot decompose in the way material things can be broken down. One of the ways in which the phenomenal self seems to be of a different realm than the Physical, though perhaps not a different realm that the Vital.

Aware agents detect structured information in their environments.  When objects are useful, they are imported by detection via the agent's senses and understanding.  Measuring this importation is done with the math tools related to the formulas for mutual information.

An affordance - or useful object - is assimilated in the mind of the agent by detection of the senses capturing essentials of the physical structure as representation.  And the ability to understand relations brings the functionality to an information object in mind.  An information object being structured as an idea, fact, thought or plan.  It is a nexus of probability waves.  

Consider a chair; you can see one and subconsciously think of resting the feet.  The conscious mind catches-up by focusing on the physical object and exporting the representation of the visual array to the mind's understanding.  A chair affords the use of sitting (as isomorphic to the need) and the mind's efferent systems delivers a nervous signal to move to the chair and sit.

The potential for mutual information of the chair and the informational gain of the visual array are confirmable.   The mutual information of the logical affordance is measurable after transmission and assimilation.  The outcome is observable.    What this takes is a full acceptance that the information object is real in a real-world informational environment.  Further, the acceptance that real-world probabilities are the basis for causal decisions derived from agents.  Bacteria do all this.

Isn't it more my conscious recognition of what a chair is that leads me to realize I can rest my feet?

I do agree there are aspects here that are measurable, though I am not sure we could definitively sort out what is subconscious, conscious, and in between...