I see this term a lot, people saying “that’s just vulgar materialism!” I haven’t seen an explanation of what it is yet.
Oh, they found out what anesthetics does. It stops the formation of microtubuals within cells. So, pretty much anything can be anesthetized. And it suggest microtubuals might play a role in cognition.
I don’t really see why plants wouldn’t have some rudimentary sense of themselves? I mean, it wouldn’t be as detailed as what animals experience, but they’re alive, so why not? Maybe that’s a leap. But, so is assuming the inverse. Arguably, that’s a bigger assumption; why one kingdom of life and not the other?
This sounds like Penrose’s stuff which is umm not widely accepted.
Being alive is not a clearly defined state, it’s a classification we impose on the world. Assuming life is conscious is pretty close to panpsychism, especially when we get to organisms like fungi or plants without centralised structures. That’s not saying it’s wrong, as you say we can’t exactly go and measure it. At this stage it is not an empirical question.
But uncertainty doesn’t mean anything is equally likely. toy example: radioactive decay timing probabilities.
Most people tend to come down on assuming brains have something to do with consciousness because humans describe consciousness being modified by stuff happening to their brains and not the rest of them. If you come down on all life being conscious to some degree or another why? and where do you differ from the pan psychics who say all stuff is conscious to some degree or another?
