Comment by stared
18 hours ago
Daniel Dennet in „Consciousness Explained” argues that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, and when we look at its individual components, it is like seeing an illusionist’s trick.
We may wonder how many grains of sand make a dune, of how many molecules of water make a liquid. (John Conway would argue that it takes a single spin-1 particle to have free will, but I digress.)
The same way, even if individual chemical reactions are simple (you don’t want to use that phrasing when talking with a biologists) or neural activities are simple (likewise, with a neuroscientist), it does not mean that the collective process is simple.
Which to me, raises an interesting question:
- How many individual components do you need for it to emerge?
Most people would be okay with saying that individual cells are not conscious, maybe even that tree are not conscious even thought they are made of many cells. Neurons seem to be the determinant factor in deciding whether something could have a consciousness, but again how many do you need? Does growing 1B neurons count as a brain if they are not organized?
>- How many individual components do you need for it to emerge?
If it is about the relationship between components, then I would imagine just two. Then it is a matter of scale.
This seems to be anathema to many people. I'm not sure why but the notion of something having a tiny bit of consciousness that is imperceptible seems to be unacceptable. There are so many things that we cannot comprehend at small scales. Nobody really has a handle on how large a Planck length is.
For some reason it comforts people to think there is a threshold at which it all switches on, but for what reason would there be a threshold?