CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 65Philosophy and Theoretical SciencePhilosophy of Biology and Scientific ExplanationEmbodied and Extended Cognition

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 167 of the 167 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The First Minds: Caterpillars, Karyotes, and Consciousness

Reber, Arthur S.·2018
DOI 10.1093/oso/9780190854157.001.0001
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The book presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are conscious, though it is a sentience of a primitive kind. They have minds, though they are tiny and limited in scope. There is nothing even close to this thesis in the current literature on consciousness. Hints that cells might be conscious can be found in the writings of a few cell biologists, but a fully developed theory has never been put forward before. Other approaches to the origins of consciousness are examined and shown to be seriously or fatally flawed, specifically ones based on: (a) the assumption that minds are computational and can be captured by an artificial intelligence (AI), (b) efforts to discover the neurocorrelates of mental experiences, the so-called Hard Problem, and (c) looking for consciousness in less complex species by identifying those that possess precursors of those neurocorrelates. Each of these approaches is shown to be either essentially impossible (the AI models) or so burdened by philosophical and empirical difficulties that they are effectively unworkable. The CBC approach is developed using standard models of evolutionary biology. The remarkable repertoire of single-celled species that micro- and cell-biologists have discovered is reviewed. Bacteria, for example, have sophisticated sensory and perceptual systems, learn, form memories, make decisions based on information about their environment relative to internal metabolic states, communicate with one another, and even show a primitive form of altruism. All such functions are indicators of sentience. Conversations with a caterpillar function as a literary vehicle Finally, the implications of the CBC model are discussed along with a number of related issues in evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, the possibility of sentient plants, the ethical repercussions of universal animal sentience, and the long-range impact of adopting the CBC stance.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/oso/9780190854157.001.0001

Cites

167 of 167 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 63

  1. 1981, Parapsychology: Science or Magic?
  2. Allen, G. (1987). Materialism and reductionism in the study of animal consciousness. In G. Greenberg & E. Tobach (Eds.), Cognition, Language, and Consciousness: Integrative Levels. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  3. 2009, Plant-Environment Interactions: From Sensory Plant Biology to Active Plant Behavior (Signaling and Communication in Plants)
  4. 2015, Microbiology: Electrical signaling goes bacterial., Nature
  5. Bekoff, M., & Allen, C. (1997), Cognitive ethology: Slayers, skeptics, and proponents. In R. W. Mitchell, N. Thompson, & L. Miles (Eds.), Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals: The Emperor’s New Clothes? New York: State University of New York Press.
  6. 2018, It’s Westworld. What’s wrong with cruelty to robots?
  7. 2014, The computational and neural basis of cognitive control: Chartered territory and new frontiers., Cognitive Science
  8. 2010, Do Fish Feel Pain
  9. 2018, Conscious machines: Defining questions (Comment on Dehaene et al. 2018)., Science
  10. 1970, Neuronal mechanisms of habituation and dishabituation of the gill-withdrawal reflex in Aplyisa., Science
  11. 1996, The Conscious Mind
  12. Clifford, W. (1874/1886). Body and mind. In Fortnightly Review, December. Reprinted in L. Stephen & F. Pollack (Eds.), Lectures and Essays. London: Macmillan.
  13. 2015, Expertise revisited, Part 1—Interactional expertise., Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
  14. What do animals want? Review of D. R. Griffin., Animal Minds. The New York Times
  15. 1986, The Blind Watchmaker
  16. 2018, Response (to Carter et al. and Spatola & Urbanska, 2018)., Science
  17. 1972, What Computers Can’t Do
  18. Trekkies Swoon for android as show enters next warp., Orlando Sentinel
  19. 1991, The Science of the Mind
  20. 2018, The Conscious Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
  21. 2014, Consciousness in the universe: A review of the Orch OR theory., Physics of Life Reviews
  22. 1998, Is Data Human
  23. 2012, Free Will
  24. Hodos, W. (2009). Evolution of the spine. In M. D. Binder, N. Hirokawa, & U. Windhorst (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Berlin: Springer.
  25. 2007, I Am a Strange Loop
  26. 1981, The Mind’s I
  27. 1906, The Behavior of the Lower Organisms
  28. 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow
  29. 1992, The New Anthropomorphism
  30. 2006, Concept quantum mechanics in the brain., Nature
  31. 2006, The Singularity is Near
  32. Laumond, J-P. (2016). Anthropomorphic action in robotics. In J. Oberst & S. Sanders (Eds.), Brain-Inspired Intelligent Robotics: The Intersection of Robotics and Neurosciences. Washington, DC: Science/AAAS.
  33. 2012, Evolution of human emotion., Progress in Brain Research
  34. 2016, Science
  35. 2015, The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
  36. 2015, Biology Letters
  37. 2017, Consciousness is not inherent in but emergent from life. Commentary on Reber on Origins of Mind., Animal Sentience
  38. 2001, The conscious cell., Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
  39. The Guardian.
  40. 1974, What is it like to be a bat?, The Philosophical Review
  41. 2018, The power of many., Science
  42. 1989, The Emperor’s New Mind
  43. 1994, Mechanisms, microtubules and the mind., Journal of Consciousness Studies
  44. 2011, Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows 1000 Words
  45. 2012, Cyanophora paradoxa genome elucidates origin of photosynthesis in algae and plants., Science
  46. 2007, Do cells think?, Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
  47. 1985, Dictionary of Psychology.
  48. Reber, A. S. (2011). An epitaph for grammar. In C. Sanz & R. P. Loew (Eds.), Implicit and Explicit Language Learning. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
  49. 2012, Poker, Life, and Other Confusing Things
  50. 2012, The EVF Model of Gambling: A novel framework for understanding gambling and, by extension, poker., Gaming Research and Review Journal
  51. 2001, Dictionary of Psychology
  52. 2009, Dictionary of Psychology
  53. A Revolutionary: The Life of Donald R. Griffin
  54. 1949, The Concept of Mind
  55. Exclusive: Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio and Others Debate Christof Koch on the Nature of Consciousness., Scientific American
  56. 1999, The Primacy of Movement
  57. 1941, The Meaning of Evolution
  58. 2011, Practical Ethics
  59. 2007, Panpsychism in the West
  60. 2018, Conscious machines: Robot rights. (Comment on Dehaene et al. 2018)., Science
  61. 1982, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  62. Tolman, E. C. (1959). Principles of purposive behavior. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: The Study of a Science, Vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  63. 1973, The Secret Life of Plants

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 65

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Reber, A. S.
Affiliations
University of British Columbia (CA)
Corresponding author
Reber, Arthur S.
ORCID
Reber, Arthur S.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York
Published
2018-12-22
DOI
10.1093/oso/9780190854157.001.0001
OpenAlex
W4235317699
Cited by
65
References
167
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1
FWCI
3.78
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy of Biology and Scientific Explanation
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
Keywords
origin of consciousness, sentience, unicellular organisms, hard problem of consciousness, bacterial communication, evolution of the mind, philosophy of mind

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review