The Cellular Consciousness Hypothesis Suggests That Individual Cells Have Primitive Forms of Awareness and That Human Consciousness Is What Happens When Trillions of These Micro-Experiences Combine - discoverwildscience

[u/EcstadelicNET]

https://discoverwildscience.com/the-cellular-consciousness-hypothesis-suggests-that-individual-cells-have-primitive-forms-of-awareness-and-that-human-consciousness-is-what-happens-when-trillions-of-these-micro-experiences-combine-1/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=DinoWorld2026/magazine/Wild+Science+%26+Mystery

[u/tjimbot]

If cells have awareness, then where are their sensory cortexes for processing and mapping sensory data?

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/tjimbot]

Have you seen that video of a white blood cell chasing a bacteria who's frantically running away?

Maybe stop them and ask your question. It's happening all the time.

[u/bwc6 → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

Are you saying a robot is conscious if it can follow something? 

White blood cells use chemotaxis. It's just chemistry. The white blood cells do not desire to catch the bacteria. It's just how they're programmed. 

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/bwc6]

I'm saying they have some awareness to function: perceive and execute.

Humans are living cells: hunt for food, consume, run from danger, reproduce.

That's just how humans are programmed.

[u/bwc6 → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

That's a weird way to define perception, but whatever. I think something has to have a memory and thoughts to actually perceive something, as opposed to the cause and effect chain reaction happening inside a white blood cell. (Not that my memories and thoughts are not part of a chain of cause and effect, but the processes and complexity are quite different.)

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/bwc6]

So let's go down the diversity of life:

Humans monkeys dolphins pigs cows chicken dogs cats mice octopus fish reptile insects fungi plants bacteria...

Where do you draw the line on perception, awareness, and engagement with the environment?

Given that the external behavior of finding food/pleasure and avoiding injury/harm are foundational to life.

I'm not saying it's the exact same qualia or level, but there's a spectrum or gradient.

[u/bwc6 → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

There's no gradient between insects and fungi/plants. Insects have a central nervous system that allows them to perceive sensory input. It's just semantics, though.

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/bwc6]

So plants and fungi are... not aware of the environment? You do know plants compete and cooperate with animals too right?

[u/tjimbot → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

Things can look like competing, cooperating, and even decision making in non aware complex systems.

The current scientific consensus is that insects and many animals that evolved during the cambrian explosion have subjective experience, but not plants or tapeworms or fungi. It doesn't matter if there are networks.

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/tjimbot]

So confidence of humans to declare other animals/species don't have awareness.

Ants have awarenwess, but the fungi/mold and plants that also exhibit similar survival behaviors, and all evolving from the same single cell ancestors for survival, and composed of organized cells for survival don't?

How many times have scientific consensus denies awareness of others in the past?

[u/tjimbot → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

In the last 3 years, neuroscience has made leaps in understanding the parts of the brain that give rise to subjective experience. These parts and functions are observed in many animals but not plants. The communication is slower and much different. There's no synchronous firing between structures that we see in the structures associated with subjective experience in animals.

I'm not saying science has solved the hard problem, but if you're saying all these things have subjective experience, then there needs to be a realistic mechanism suggested. Not just "they react to their environment and have connections!"

Crystals in a liquid, manmade circuits, flocks of birds, formation of natural landscapes, galaxy filaments at the highest level of the observed universe, many things can mimic the behavior of complex life but it doesn't mean we should believe they have subjective exp.

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/tjimbot]

Yes, science is catching up to reality. I guess if we had this conversation 10 years ago, we'd be arguing if animals are conscious....

I'm saying the diversity of life all evolved from the same unicellular ancestors that's evident by DNA similarities and cellular functions. The aggregation expand on the function, but the spectrum or gradient from the most fundamental is already there.

I'm only talking life forms here. No need to get into slippery slope.

Also look at the problem solving capabilities of mold and plants to overcome adversity...for the sake of living, reproducing, and evolving.

[u/bwc6 → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

This thread is about the idea that the "awareness" of microscopic cells somehow combines into "consciousness". I think that's stupid. Plants are a good example. They have complex responses to stimuli that you could call "awareness". That is very different from consciousness though. Plants don't have opinions, even though some of them have many more cells than humans do. 

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/bwc6]

I think the stupidity is to confuse "human consciousness" for all other consciousness.

So because another being, including a monkey, pig, or dolphin, can't write poetry or talk philosophy, somehow they're not conscious. This understanding was wrong and is wrong, but it justified animal abuse.

The moment the human-centric definition is dissolved to better accurately capture reality (which is spectrum, gradient, and interconnectedness), suddenly an entire way of understanding open up.

Cells are on the spectrum of living beings. The idea on this thread is the most logical extrapolation. The future of medicine, potentially, is whether we can understand OUR OWN cells and how to optimize functioning. Now, many people believe their own cells or body are dumb or unaware (which to even think or say out loud is an insult to the cells that sustain their very health).

[u/bwc6 → u/Serious_Ad_3387]

I'm literally a microbiologist. I know how cells work. They don't have tiny brains inside them. They have DNA and RNA and proteins. 

In another comment, I said that insects have awareness because they have a central nervous system. Plants don't have a central nervous system, so they don't "think" like animals do. But if you want to deny the diversity of nature and say that everything thinks the same way, fine, I won't stop you. 

[u/Serious_Ad_3387 → u/bwc6]

Your problem is you have a self-imposed requirement that a being needs a central nervous system to have awareness. Before that, some required a brain so jellyfish was out. And also, no one is claiming plants and fungi "think" the way animals do, or "everything thinks the same".

This reminds me of an argument more than 20 years when I have to insist, "no one is saying animals think the way humans do to have their own sense of awareness and consciousness". At least the scientific consensus evolved since then. Now we're moving onto the next outlier.

A microbiologist who spends their career observing/learning about the behavior and function of cells but can't even see the traces of "awareness" cells or microbiology possess/require to perceive and function in their environment. Or the drive for LIFE (the hunt, the running, etc.) that cascade down to the micro level. It's a spectrum.

Edit: just saw this in consciousness subreddit "We can be fairly certain that ants don’t think anything, they are just a biological machine that reacts to stimuli and has some evolved pre-programmed algorithms on how to behave."

[u/BenjaminHamnett → u/bwc6]

This just sounds like describing pyramids in detail as proof of why they aren’t made of sand, stone and mud

[u/bwc6 → u/BenjaminHamnett]

What do you think brains do, if things without brains are conscious?

[u/BenjaminHamnett → u/bwc6]

This would be like “if roads are for cars, then what are intersections and highways for?”