Brains are not required to think or solve problems – simple cells can do it
Brains may not be the only seat of problem-solving: new research on cells, slime molds, and bioelectric signaling suggests even simple organisms and tissues can encode memories, anticipate events, and adapt in goal-directed ways. Commenters use this to revisit long‑running debates about what counts as intelligence or cognition, how (or whether) it differs from consciousness or “lived experience,” and whether materialist explanations can fully account for subjective awareness. The findings also prompt comparisons with AI systems like large language models, raising questions about internal world models, embodiment, and how far current architectures are from anything we would call truly aware.
Cellular Cognition and Bioelectricity
- Many comments highlight work showing single cells, tissues, and simple organisms solving spatial and developmental problems via bioelectric and chemical networks, not just genes.
- Some see this as a major shift: cognition as “what life does” from the cell up, not something that appears only with brains.
- Others caution against overinterpreting: “bioelectricity” compresses very complex ion–chemical dynamics, and demonstrating that you can perturb a system electrically or via RNA does not prove that’s the primary substrate of memory or intelligence.
- RNA-based “memory transfer” and epigenetics are discussed; skeptics question replication and warn against labeling regulatory changes as “memory” in the everyday sense.
Intelligence, Cognition, Consciousness, Awareness
- Repeated attempts to separate:
- Intelligence/cognition: goal-directed problem solving, prediction, internal state.
- Consciousness: subjective, “what it is like,” lived experience.
- Awareness: sometimes described as the “blank canvas” on which conscious content appears.
- Some argue simple systems (cells, thermostats) are intelligent but probably not conscious; others push panpsychist views where some proto‑experience pervades matter.
Philosophical Debates: Materialism, Qualia, Self
- Intense debate over whether subjective experience can be fully physical.
- Positions represented: strict physicalism, eliminative materialism (“qualia are mis-modeled internal states”), panpsychism, property dualism, neutral monism, and various Buddhist/idealistic views.
- Thought experiments (p‑zombies, Mary’s room, split-brain cases, anesthesia, meditation) are used to argue both that consciousness is fundamental and that it might be an illusion or epiphenomenon.
- Several grapple with “Why am I this person and not someone else?”; some see this as a strong challenge to physicalism, others as a pseudo‑problem born of language.
AI, Brains, and Embodiment
- Large language models are frequently compared to biological systems:
- Pro: they maintain internal models, predict, and can reason about counterfactuals.
- Con: no persistent self, no embodied sensorimotor loop, limited memory and time-awareness; far from brain complexity and efficiency.
- Some suggest that giving AI bodies, continuous sensory streams, and richer internal memory could push them toward something like consciousness; others say consciousness is not “required” for any particular function.
Multi‑scale and Collective Minds
- Commenters speculate about:
- Neurons and bodies as “hive minds” of cells.
- Human societies or multi‑species systems as higher‑level cognitive or even conscious entities.
- Opinions split between finding these hierarchies compelling and seeing them as diluting terms like intelligence and consciousness until they lose explanatory power.