I don't think it can be determined what awareness a primitive cellular animal has of its environment. Other than by observing its behavior and chemical activity. It is by this stage in its evolution an organism, an individual entity or being. Not just the aggregation of a few million chemical reactions.
I disagree. For very simple organisms it is possible to enumerate their sensory gamut and this gives you a measure of their awareness in terms of response to the environment. A simple organism
is a self-sustaining aggregation of a few million chemical reactions; it is the organisation of the components and their reactions that is important.
I am regarding consciousness as an emergent property of the organism as a whole not just the computation going on in its nervous system. However I accept that this computation is necessary for the development of consciousness from more simple awareness.
OK - a brain of some sort (a neural plexus) is necessary for the neural interactions that give rise to consciousness, and requires a body for support and sensory I/O, so your regard seems superficially reasonable, pending an explanation of what you mean by '
an emergent property of the organism as a whole'.
We've been round the 'all life is conscious' and even 'everything is conscious' roundabout elsewhere, and it leads nowhere useful; it emasculates the concept and leads to mystical universal consciousness woo. I'm quite happy to accept 'awareness' as a measure of response to environmental stimuli, but this is very different from conscious awareness.
It does not follow for me that machines controlled by programs are anything other than automatons, however complex the activity involved.
But you feel that a biological cell is not an automaton (an entity that follows or responds to coded instructions)? When Craig Venter's team assembled Synthia, a synthetic DNA sequence in a denucleated bacterial cell, which replicated just like a natural bacterium, did they create an automaton? If not, why not?
If it were demonstrated that they were conscious entities I would reconsider.
What would you accept as a demonstration of consciousness?
At least you now appear to accept that a non-biological consciousness could be demonstrated. I did find it curious that you (elsewhere?) posited consciousness in simple biological creatures, but were not prepared to accept consciousness in an arbitrarily complex artificial computational system, emulating, for example, a mammalian brain. Yet you still seem unable to articulate why. Something about organic chemistry?
No I'm not restricting it to life as we know it. I don't think we can even begin to understand how an alternative life form may be composed.
OK - I take it that means you accept my minimal definition for life (posted earlier).
Life as we know it results in the only example of consciousness we have. I am open to other forms of consciousness, however I regard the living organism as a whole to be a prerequisite for the emergence of that consciousness.
So you are open to consciousness in any dynamic self-organising, self-sustaining, structured system that responds coherently to its environment (my minimal definition of life) - even if it was a non-biological construct?
Probably not, a computer would beat me hands down at chess.
What has that to do with anything? Chess doesn't require consciousness.
I know it might come across that way. My difficulty is that I am used to discussing these issues in an entirely different language which is regarded as nonsense of the first order on this website.
There's your problem. We try to use critical thinking to translate unconventional non-scientific ideas and concepts into science. This gives us a common language for investigation and analysis. For this we need evidence and or detailed explanation. I suggest the problem isn't the language per se, but the ideas and concepts expressed in it.
