William Thomas wrote:
> So, does a virus have consciousness? what about a tree? do they function
> without this thing consciousness? and if consciousness is the ability to be
> aware of oneself, and the tree is not aware of itself, how does it interact
> with its environment?
Ask yourself, how does a single human CNS neuron interact with its environment?
In the context of being part of a larger self-aware organism.
But does an organism have to be self-aware to interact with the environment? I
don't think so. It's a short jump from a cell or small group of cells that
regulates input or output of something in the environment to maintain
homeostatis to finding a cooperative relationship that does the same. And
sometimes the question of just what constitutes the organism and what
constitutes the environment is simply a matter of where you stand.
Mitochondria are generally describes as cell organelles- part of the cell- but
they're not, really. They're a seperate population of organisms with their own
genetic material that ineract with their environment- the cell. They have what
appears for all the world to be a cooperative relationship with the host
organism, but does the cell "know" about the mitochondria, and do the
mitochrondria "know" about thecell? No. They're both simply performing some
regulatory functions.
