Okay, thanks for answering. Before I move on, I'll note that a newly severed frog's leg still contains many living frog cells; and furthermore, as it decomposes, it continues to host a vast number of living organisms, the bacteria and fungi and protozoa and so forth that cause the decomposition. These living organisms do not duplicate the genetic legacy of the frog leg cells (though they do in fact share a vast number of genes with the frog and with each other), so if there were a frog leg consciousness, there does not seem to be any clear moment when that consciousness would cease. The same appears to apply to a hypothetical case of removing genes one at a time from a single cell (replacing their functions as needed with life-support machinery) until all one has left is a cell membrane and a lot of life-support machinery.
I am no expert on the biology of cells, although I don't think that hypothetically deconstructing a cell is of much use here. Due to my point that it is a fully functioning cell which has consciousness. It might be possible when cellular biology is more advanced, to isolate consciousness in one organelle or another, or a group of them cooperating, or the relevance of the presence of DNA. If I were to speculate on any of this, I would be working entirely on intuition within speculation, which I doubt would be of much use.
My point hinges on the idea of a cell as a fully functioning entity and a multi cellular organism as a colony of cells cooperating to generate a complex organism.
By analogy we could imagine a cell as a fully functioning TV(old fashioned with valves etc), consciousness being the programme on the screen*. If one takes a scalpel(wire cutters) to it, one will rapidly discover that it is not any more conscious, no picture on the screen.
A multi cellular organism would be made up of millions of TVs, resulting in a transformed experience and consciousness, like say an enormous cinema screen in 3D.
*the use of consciousness here might need to be tabulated into constituent requirements.
The case I'd really like to move on to, though, is organisms that can survive complete freezing (and therefore the complete cessation of all chemical reactions, fluid convections, diffusive movements through fluids, and mechanical motions of its parts). They can then revive and resume all metabolic functions when thawed. There are many such organisms, most of them simple gametes or protozoa, but also including some animals such as the
tardigrade.
Presumably a tardigrade has tardigrade-consciousness. So, let's suppose we freeze a tardigrade for a few days at near absolute zero, then revive it.
While frozen, does it still have tardigrade-consciousness?
Interesting, my intuition would be that it would not be conscious while frozen, equivalent perhaps to our experience of taking a general anaesthetic, in relation to self-consciousness.
When revived again after being frozen, does it have tardigrade-consciousness?
Yes, because it is fully functional. It is remarkable that these organisms can survive freezing. There must be a complex physiology developed to cope with the destructive effects of crystallisation. Presumably it is avoided by some kind of solidification of a fluid state.
When revived again after being frozen, does it have the same tardigrade-consciousness that it had before, a different one, or is that question meaningless?
if it were alive after thawing, it would be conscious, because it is alive and fully functional.
I would suggest that what we are thinking of is an "internal state", something not fully understood by science. What the internal state of a cell is like, as a personal experience, is probably beyond us.
