Are cells conscious?

[scruffy]

Hint:

Experimental test of photonic entanglement in accelerated reference frames - Nature Communications

The unification of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics is a long-standing challenge in physics. Here the authors investigate the effects of a wide range of accelerations on an entangled photon pair, providing an upper bound for the effects of non-inertial frames on quantum systems.

www.nature.com

 

[ding]

Interesting statement.

What is the difference between consciousness and sentience?

They are similar, but to me in the context of this discussion conscious would be awareness of one's self and one's environment. Whereas sentient would be able to perceive or feel things.

 

[scruffy]

They are similar, but to me in the context of this discussion conscious would be awareness of one's self and one's environment. Whereas sentient would be able to perceive or feel things.

I think I understand what you're trying to say.

But... you're using psychology words. Perceive, feel... those are loaded words. They presuppose a level of "awareness". Which I would argue, is different from simple chemical transduction.

But let's talk about it. We're talking about single cells, yes?

Some bacteria and plants have a cell "wall", which is a layer outside of the cell membrane. Cell walls for example, make it difficult to study membrane biophysics.

Much is known about chemical transduction. There are basically two kinds, direct and indirect. The indirect kind, involved a "second messenger". For example, some molecule outside the cell, binds to a receptor that's sitting in the membrane, and that results in the receptor changing shape, which in turn results in something else happening "inside" the cell (on the other side of the membrane).

A well known example is a D1 dopamine receptor, which uses cyclic AMP as a second messenger inside the cell.

On the other hand, the direct kind is more like a pore (a "selective" pore usually). In this case, an increase in chemical concentration outside the cell, is directly and immediately reflected inside. An example would be an ungated ion channel. Here, the protein in question is "trans-" membrane, and its shape is such that it only interacts with one specific type of chemical. This is common for, say, ion channels like sodium or chloride - and in a more sophisticated implementation the channel can be "gated" in a manner controlled by the cell, either chemically or using some other physical phenomenon like electric potential.

So, how can a cell be "aware" of its environment? Well, that question depends on the way information is being transmitted. In every cell, there is a passive mode, and an active mode. The passive mode is what we usually call "stimulus and response". A changing chemical concentration could be the stimulus, and maybe the cell shuts down some ion channels in response. This is what the engineers call a "control system", it's basically a feedback loop.

However the active mode is much more interesting. Instead of responding to a changing stimulus (SR), the cell constantly "polls" its environment. This mode is sometimes called TOTE, it means test-operste-test-exit. The cell is constantly asking itself "where am I now". Clearly, this mode requires considerably more organization than the passive mode, and one of its key characteristics is there's always a DELAY between the question and the answer. Which means two things: a) the cell has to remember it asked the question, and b) it has to "model" what the answer means when it finally arrives. (In other words it has to know which answer relates to which question).

I would claim, that the minute you go active, you're automatically in "awareness". At the level we're discussing, such awareness is very very primitive, but it's qualitatively no different from a human being aware of one's environment.

The next step would be to become aware of the question itself, which is to say, making the internal state part of the environment. This situation obtains for example, with DNA repair mechanisms. The cell is noticing "uh oh, there's a problem here, let me go dispatch some enzymes to take care of it". The response is localized, and purposeful - and the results are monitored. Qualitatively very similar to what humans do with an overdrawn bank account lol.

So in this latter case the cell has an idea of what's important and what's not, it will typically shift resources to make more repair enzymes if they're needed. Ultimately this ties back to the programming in the DNA, which is both the knowledge and the capability.

As an observer, if you see the cell shifting resources to meet a need, you'd probably say it's "aware" of the need, wouldn't you?

 

[ding]

I think I understand what you're trying to say.

But... you're using psychology words. Perceive, feel... those are loaded words. T

No, not psychology. The senses; touch, smell, see, taste, hear. Change "feel" to "sense" or "touch" if you want. I don't care. But of the 5 senses I suspect "touch" is the appropriate sense in the context of the discussion of conscious vs sentient. All life is sentient in that it can sense and respond to its surroundings, but not all life is conscious. I reserve conscious for higher life forms.

 

[scruffy]

No, not psychology. The senses; touch, smell, see, taste, hear. Change "feel" to "sense" or "touch" if you want. I don't care. But of the 5 senses I suspect "touch" is the appropriate sense in the context of the discussion of conscious vs sentient. All life is sentient in that it can sense and respond to its surroundings, but not all life is conscious. I reserve conscious for higher life forms.

So, what if I poke a pin in your finger and you say "ouch" - is that conscious or not?

I'm pretty sure you'll be conscious of the pain.

The psychologist Julian Jaynes is famous for trying to draw the same boundary you're attempting. He wrote a book called "the origins of consciousness" in which he claimed there is no recorded use of the word "I" prior to about 1500 BC. He therefore restricts consciousness specifically to "self" consciousness.

I say he's completely wrong, both factually and theoretically. There is no question in my mind that dogs and cats are conscious too. You get love from a dog and curiosity from a cat, neither of those could exist without consciousness.

 

[ding]

So, what if I poke a pin in your finger and you say "ouch" - is that conscious or not?

I'm pretty sure you'll be conscious of the pain.

The psychologist Julian Jaynes is famous for trying to draw the same boundary you're attempting. He wrote a book called "the origins of consciousness" in which he claimed there is no recorded use of the word "I" prior to about 1500 BC. He therefore restricts consciousness specifically to "self" consciousness.

I say he's completely wrong, both factually and theoretically. There is no question in my mind that dogs and cats are conscious too. You get love from a dog and curiosity from a cat, neither of those could exist without consciousness.

I associate conscious with life that has central processing. There's different levels of consciousness; from the rudimentary to the complex. I associate sentience with all life.

 

[scruffy]

I associate conscious with life that has central processing. There's different levels of consciousness; from the rudimentary to the complex. I associate sentience with all life.

Okay, so your word "sentience", I call "awareness". We agree that it's a more primitive state than consciousness.

So then, I would ask this: doesn't sentience presuppose an existing foundation? For example - in the pinprick scenario, you have a "reflex" that causes your hand to withdraw - and psychophysics shows that such withdrawal occurs even before you "feel" any pain. Same when you go to the neurologist and he taps your knee, the reflex kicks in before you even realize your knee was tapped.

That's the difference between passive and active. The reflex is stimulus-response, whereas my suggestion is the "feeling" part is ACTIVE. You've heard the expression the pain "intrudes on your consciousness" - well, that's like forcing you to pay attention. And "attention" is the first part of "test and operate". (You can't test unless you're paying attention).

The corollary is, individual cells can "feel" because they can test. They can "pay attention". They have a large repertoire of attentive behavior, that are resource constrained just like ours. They have to decide what to pay attention to, just like we do.

For this purpose, they use a "charge field" created by the glycolipids in the cell membrane. Most of the glycans have free negative charge on the part that sticks out of the membrane - which means in turn, that surrounding water molecules will point their hydrogens (protons) at them, with the oxygen orbitals being on the outside. Therefore you have what basically amounts to a capacitor, on the outside of every cell.

 

[scruffy]

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.4707

 

[ding]

Okay, so your word "sentience", I call "awareness". We agree that it's a more primitive state than consciousness.

So then, I would ask this: doesn't sentience presuppose an existing foundation? For example - in the pinprick scenario, you have a "reflex" that causes your hand to withdraw - and psychophysics shows that such withdrawal occurs even before you "feel" any pain. Same when you go to the neurologist and he taps your knee, the reflex kicks in before you even realize your knee was tapped.

That's the difference between passive and active. The reflex is stimulus-response, whereas my suggestion is the "feeling" part is ACTIVE. You've heard the expression the pain "intrudes on your consciousness" - well, that's like forcing you to pay attention. And "attention" is the first part of "test and operate". (You can't test unless you're paying attention).

The corollary is, individual cells can "feel" because they can test. They can "pay attention". They have a large repertoire of attentive behavior, that are resource constrained just like ours. They have to decide what to pay attention to, just like we do.

For this purpose, they use a "charge field" created by the glycolipids in the cell membrane. Most of the glycans have free negative charge on the part that sticks out of the membrane - which means in turn, that surrounding water molecules will point their hydrogens (protons) at them, with the oxygen orbitals being on the outside. Therefore you have what basically amounts to a capacitor, on the outside of every cell.

Do you believe rocks are sentient? Do you believe rocks are conscious?

 

[ding]

So then, I would ask this: doesn't sentience presuppose an existing foundation?

Yes, and that foundation is living things.

 

[scruffy]

Do you believe rocks are sentient? Do you believe rocks are conscious?

My pet rock is definitely conscious. He asks me for a haircut about once a month.

 

[scruffy]

Yes, and that foundation is living things.

Which you still can't define, except by example.

If I asky you "what is a computer chip" and you say "it adds numbers" then I know you don't know.

 

[scruffy]

Yes, and that foundation is living things.

Expand your mind.

Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains

Cells emerged at the very beginning of life on Earth and, in fact, are coterminous with life. They are enclosed within an excitable plasma membrane, which defines the outside and inside domains via their specific biophysical properties. Unicellular organisms, ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Senomic = sentient

Memristor = neuron

The theory is, active cellular components generate an extracellular FIELD which satisfies all the requirements of consciousness.

The requirements are:

1. An egocentric reference frame
2. A stateful memory that spans t=0
3. Sensory and motor capability around the span

That's it, that's all. Give me those 3 things and i'll build you a conscious device.

The authors call their concept a "nano-brain". I call mine a "Markov cloud". Same difference.

An identical proposal has recently been forwarded by phenomenologic philosophers in England. They reached the same conclusion by different means.

 

[scruffy]

The physics around this is complex.

When it comes to life, we're dealing with non-equilibrium thermodynamics. And irreversible processes.

The best studied example so far, is the actin-myosin interaction in a contracting muscle. It uses up ATP, and the way it does is what matters.

Actin and myosin are a subset of cellular motility. Like the microtubules we discussed earlier.

To understand what's happening with actin and myosin, we have to invoke a basic principle of quantum mechanics: energy can take all available paths at the same time. (This is a guiding principle in Feynman diagrams, as they apply to things like quantum tunneling).

The simplest example of this comes from plants and bacteria, in a molecule called the FMO complex, which is common in green sulfur bacteria. It is a pigment-protein that harvests energy from light. It could not do what it does, without the quantum effects.

Fenna–Matthews–Olson complex - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Well, it turns out, actin and tubulin behave in a somewhat similar manner. Not only that, but the membrane "pores" we talked about earlier also exhibit some of these characteristics.

The deal is, that during the ratcheting of the myosin head, the myosin, actin, and ATP behave like a single molecule. Their wave functions merge, there is entanglement between them. The same thing happens in the ion pores, where the entanglement is reflected as tunneling. In muscle, the myosin head moves spatially, but it is trapped in an energy well until the ATP transfer is finished.

Induced potential model of muscular contraction mechanism and myosin molecular structure - PubMed

The proposed model is characterized by the constant r (Eq. 2-1), the induced potential (Fig. 1), two attached states of a myosin head (Fig. 1), the nonlinear elastic property of the crossbridge (Eq. 2-7), and the expression of U* (Eqs. 3-8 and 3-9), which led us to the following conclusions. 1...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

One can NOT look at these processes using classical physics, because doing so leads to very large violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Instead, one must use non-equilibrium quantum mechanics so as to understand the available energy flows.

In the case of the FMO complex, the multiple simultaneous pathways result in nearly 100% energy efficiency. Which is an astounding result that wouldn't be possible at all but for the irreversibility of wave function collapse. The collapse happens at the point of energy exhaustion, just like it does for myosin.

So now, we are fulfilling ALL THREE of the essential requirements for consciousness. We have a synthetic reference frame by virtue of entanglement, the entanglement spans the time frame of the chemical reaction, AND there is ongoing (molecular) sensory and motor activity the whole time.

It is probably obvious that this is a highly reductionist model. The idea is, we have to put millions and billions of these together, before we get anything resembling a qualia.

Qualia:

Qualia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

One of the important papers on qualia comes from Antonio Damasio at USC. But he's a psychologist, he speaks a different language.

Damasio's theory of consciousness - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You have to think a little to grasp the connection. It's okay, it takes time. (It took me about 6 months, then one day I just woke up and said "duh").

Life is biophysics. All of it. Including consciousness. Anything we can find in humans, has correlates at the nanoscopic level. Single cells are large enough to accommodate a rudimentary awareness, but not large enough to make much use of it. For that we need ensembles of cells working together

In the human brain, every time a neuron fires there is a magnetic field associated with it. Neurons in the hippocampal CA1 region reach criticality in time with the theta rhythm (maybe 7-8 times a second), and the firing of ONE neuron in the adjoining EC2 region is sufficient to collapse the criticality.

Non-local, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, built on irreversible processes. That's life.

 

[ding]

Expand your mind.

Biomolecular Basis of Cellular Consciousness via Subcellular Nanobrains

Cells emerged at the very beginning of life on Earth and, in fact, are coterminous with life. They are enclosed within an excitable plasma membrane, which defines the outside and inside domains via their specific biophysical properties. Unicellular organisms, ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Senomic = sentient

Memristor = neuron

The theory is, active cellular components generate an extracellular FIELD which satisfies all the requirements of consciousness.

The requirements are:

1. An egocentric reference frame
2. A stateful memory that spans t=0
3. Sensory and motor capability around the span

That's it, that's all. Give me those 3 things and i'll build you a conscious device.

The authors call their concept a "nano-brain". I call mine a "Markov cloud". Same difference.

An identical proposal has recently been forwarded by phenomenologic philosophers in England. They reached the same conclusion by different means.

 

[ding]

Which you still can't define, except by example.

If I asky you "what is a computer chip" and you say "it adds numbers" then I know you don't know.

Maybe try using google.

 

[scruffy]

Maybe try using google.

Google is of.limited value. Too much fluff.

 

[ding]

Google is of.limited value. Too much fluff.

It works pretty well if you are trying to list the characteristics that living things possess that inanimate objects like rocks don't possess.

 

[scruffy]

It works pretty well if you are trying to list the characteristics that living things possess that inanimate objects like rocks don't possess.

No, it doesn't. Too much misinformation. Too many people like you, that are just taking wild swags.

 

[22lcidw]

My pet rock is definitely conscious. He asks me for a haircut about once a month.

The person who promoted and sold pet rocks some decades ago made a mint. So, they have to be sentient.