[edgyquant]

>The primordial single-cell organism from which we all evolved was not conscious, but rather just a biological machine.

I reject this assumption. We have no reason to assume cells aren't aware beings and that a sense of being isn't fundamental to at least all life.

[bheadmaster]

Do you, then, agree that a machine that is built to work in the same manner as that single-cell organism (which I assume should be possible with the current technological level humans are at) is also conscious?

That path would lead to a conclusion that all matter is, in some way, conscious. I don't disagree, but I find that such definition of consciousness diverges from what we usually mean by it - a walking, talking being that has thoughts and can communicate them to us, or something.

[joshuahedlund]

> which I assume should be possible with the current technological level humans are at

More of an aside, but we are way way way way below the technological level necessary to construct a machine of the same complexity as a self-replicating self-organizing single-cell organism. Nano scale is nano. We're just barely figuring out how to consistently and accurately modify several nucleotides at once, and not even by creating our own tools but by clumsily repurposing pre-existing bacterial tools we happened to stumble across.

[bheadmaster]

Interesting, I haven't really thought much about the details of such construction.

Though in principle, it's still the same. Long age and randomness of the universe have allowed it to perform a quite exhaustive brute-force search of all possible configurations of atoms, eventually stumbling upon a self-replicating configuration from which we have evolved, but humans could theoretically find one from scratch too, it would just take too much time, like reversing a cryptographic hash.

[edgyquant]

>Do you, then, agree that a machine that is built to work in the same manner as that single-cell organism (which I assume should be possible with the current technological level humans are at) is also conscious?

No, not without serious proof.

[nextaccountic]

But where is the serious proof that single cell organisms are conscious?

(Can I even prove that I'm myself conscious?)

[lostmsu]

It is not too far from the usual meaning if you take it to be a number instead of boolean. E.g. humans ~100, rat ~1, single-cell ~1e-8, etc

[uoaei]

Four options are available:

1. You have no experiences.

2. You have experiences without awareness of what they represent.

3. You are aware of things without being aware of self-as-thing.

4. You are aware of self-as-thing in the midst of other things.

We have no reason to assume cells aren't aware, a sense bolstered by observational studies of how they respond to chemical gradients, etc., but it is quite a leap to get from "recognizing food" to "recognizing the control I have over my environment and effecting changes beneficial to some internally generated goal".