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by rustymonday 1092 days ago
So by this definition bacteria has consciousness. I would have to disagree that bacteria are conscious.
1 comments

Bacteria using their flagella to move away from danger seems like a conscious decision to me. It's analogous to the "Are viruses life?" question, where on the fringe it does get a bit more interesting. Any poorly defined term is going to raise interesting questions on its edge cases.
A fridge turns on when the temperature sensor detects that it's too warm inside, is that consciousness?
Can a temperature sensor have experiences? It's stateless. Maybe that's an element to it. To revise, inputs and outputs with some concept of statefulness.
Relative to its own perspective and contextual existence, sure, yes it is. Does that intimidate your human consciousness for some reason?
I think if you're going to define consciousness this simply then the word ceases to have any real meaning.
This is obviously not what people mean when they use the word. You've "resolved" the difficulty by just avoiding it.