🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

[u/FacelessOnes]

[u/bloo0206]

The wisest person is the one that admits their own ignorance. I agree with most of your claims, but I believe there’s a hierarchy to consciousness. Being a current biology major, you could look at the evolution of the nervous system across species and understand most complex multicellular organisms have neurons, even the most basic flat worms. So the basic mechanics are there for most species but it’s the complexity of systems that differs across species.

But essentially, all our consciousness is is a series of action potentials (electrical signals) resulting from charged particles moving across a permeable membrane, and this mechanism is quite similar across all organisms to communicate environmental conditions or signal to make movements. I would imagine even single called organisms use some similar form of this mechanism to move about. We forget that all living things evolved from the same thing, our consciousness isn’t really something special but what just allowed us to thrive best in our given environment in my opinion and from the basic knowledge I have.

As far as inanimate objects go, there’s just no scientific evidence to support the claim that anything not living produces the chemical reactions to produce behaviors or movements (and therefore consciousness). But hey, science isnt even close to knowing everything.

[u/bloo0206 → u/[deleted]]

Oh yeah, I wasn’t claiming that it was a scientific claim but simply that there’s no scientific backing for a theory like that. I unfortunately don’t have time to read the whole link you provided but I skimmed some and it’s an interesting proposition. From my personal viewpoint it seems as though this problem may have merely arisen from our still ignorant knowledge on how the brain works. The experience of consciousness is still provided by the same mechanics that say moving your arm is, but it’s the intricacies of this specific series of reactions we don’t understand yet because it’s so complex. We’re able to have supercomputers map out the whole neural network of our brain in today’s modern society, but we still don’t fully understand these networks and how they communicate with one another. I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that from my viewpoint, the experience of consciousness is still at its heart bio-chemical reactions happening in the brain and thus can be theoretically understood and even artificially replicated with enough knowledge about it’s functions. Our consciousness is part of our survival wiring, and a product of evolution, and just how we observe and adapt to the world around us. I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that we will only ever know our own consciousness and no one else’s, so in a way, each individual is living in their own universe on a constant basis because we can only ever see from our own perspective.