A mountain doesn't mean something it is not. A mountain doesn't even mean a mountain. It simply is a mountain. Water flowing over a cliff doesn't mean anything other than water flowing over a cliff. It doesn't even mean water flowing over a cliff. It simply is water flowing over a cliff.
In information systems, things mean other things; things that they are not. In spoken language, sounds mean things they are not. One particular sound means mountain. It is not, itself, a mountain. It is just a sound. But we have all agreed that that sound means mountain. Other sounds mean water flowing over a cliff. They are not, themselves, water flowing over a cliff. They are just sounds. But we have all agreed that those sounds mean water flowing over a cliff.
In written language, we have all agreed that squiggles of certain shapes on paper (or a computer screen) mean other things. Usually, they mean sounds; sounds which, themselves, mean something. The squiggles mountain mean the sounds most of us are now hearing in our heads, which, in turn, mean the big hunk of earth rising above the earth surrounding it.
However, for all the squiggles in a book, there is no meaning, no information, without us interpreting it. Something that is not those squiggles is needed to recognize that they are symbols previously agreed upon to represent something else, and interpret them. Indeed, something that is not those squiggles is needed to establish in the first place that those squiggles mean the things they mean, so that the squiggles can then be interpreted by any who know how to do so. Otherwise, they are just squiggles, and may as well be the result of spilled ink.
Proto-consciousness might experience any number of purely physical things. But that's like an automobile engine sitting on blocks, never put into an auto. Or a propeller buried in the ground. Things that serve specific functions in order to do, or help do, specific things, are sometimes not in the position to serve that function and help bring about that thing.
Experience of physical only gets you so far. But information is not physical. It is not a micro physical property, like mass and charge. It is not a macro property, like liquidity. It is not a macro characteristic, like height. It is not a physical process, like metabolism or flight, which we can see depend on the physical properties like mass and charge. It is not a characteristic of a physical process, like speed. We can't detect it with our senses or technologies. We can't measure its length. We can't weigh it. We can't examine it in any way.
So, when proto-consciousness experiences the process of information being interpreted, it experiences something like itself - something not physically reducible. Perhaps "like knows like." Perhaps there is resonance. Without information processing, proto-consciousness is like an empty bucket drifting through empty space. When information is being processed, it is like the bucket came down upright on the ground, and is able to catch the rain.
Maybe a better analogy would be a generator that isn't hooked up to anything. There's something in it that is not being used. Someone who doesn't know what a generator is would have no idea that there's something in it that can do amazing things.
Of course, no analogy is good, because every example we might come up with is reducible to the physical properties and laws of physics that we know and can study, while consciousness is not. There is no true common ground; no equivalencies to compare. Other than the fact that physical and mental are both parts of our reality. But they are too different to have a very useful analogy.
DNA
DNA is an information system. It has meaning. It is about something that it is not. DNA is two complimentary strands of nucleotides running along sugar phosphate backbones, and joined by hydrogen bonds. DNA means chains of amino acids and proteins, which, once constructed, build living organisms.
A few things, very interrelated things, make DNA more extraordinary than any other information system.
1) DNA is not an information system created by humans. It is naturally occurring. DNA came along looooong before humans. Which means it is not interpreted by humans. Of course, we interpret it, now that we're here.
2) If DNA contained information before humans came along to interpret it, then something else must have been interrupting it. Because, if nothing is interpreting, then there is no information. So what was interpreting the information in DNA before we came along?
The best answer seems to be the laws of physics. DNA, itself, is a part of the process of interpreting the information within itself. Molecular machines - such as RNA polymerase, mRNA, tRNA, and ribosomes - themselves manufactured based on the information in DNA, read the information in DNA, and then manufacture the amino acids and proteins, thus building life.
3) DNA is what I call active information. As opposed to static information. A book is an example of static information. A book is filled with information, but does nothing. A book about architecture does not construct buildings. It doesn't even draw blueprints. Further, I can read the book, and learn about architecture, yet I might never construct a building, or even draw blueprints. I need not act on information. The information can just sit in the book, and in my head, and nothing ever has to come of it.
Now that we exist, and have learned what we have learned, we can interpret DNA. But when we do interpret it, we don't have to do anything with that information. We can, and often do. But it's a choice.
DNA is active information because that which was interpreting DNA long before we existed has no ability to choose whether or not to act on the information. The laws of physics require certain things to happen under certain circumstances. For example, when the stem of an apple hanging on a tree weakens below a certain point, the laws of physics are such that the apple falls. Likewise, the laws of physics are such that the enzyme helicase unzips DNA by breaking the hydrogen bonds that bind the base pairs. Helicase unzipping DNA is part of a series of physical events, all driven by the laws of physics, that interprets information as it runs its course.
No part of this is optional. The physical properties of the universe, the laws of physics, require that the information in DNA be acted upon. They require that that which DNA means comes into being in physical form.
Of course, the information within DNA has to be in its original medium. The same information can be written down in a book. It can be written in a book using any type of notation we want. We can write it in binary. We can write it in English, French, or any other language. We can write pages ofstrings using the characters A, C, G, and T. We can write pages of strings using the words adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. We can draw any DNA molecule, in every detail, representing every atom in any way we want. But in no case is the book going to build amino acids and proteins. The information has to be "written" in its original form, with molecules.
Since DNA is the first information system that ever existed, it is the first time proto-consciousness experienced something non-physical - the process of information interpretation. Information was interpreted, and used to build something. And the proto-consciousness of all the particles involved experienced it.
If information being processed is a necessary ingredient of consciousness, and DNA making amino acids and proteins is the first instance of information being processed, marking the first time proto-consciousness experienced it, it was only a tiny step above the existence of proto-consciousness. It wouldn't have been even a glimmer of actual consciousness. DNA isn't conscious. The first amino acids and proteins weren't conscious. The first time proteins metabolized and reproduced, and were wrapped in a membrane, meeting the barest minimal qualifications of life, it wasn't conscious. It was only the start of the journey.
Evolution could then work on this life, producing many more processes. Some processes may involve information. And DNA was always present. Always replicating, always producing proteins. The proto-consciousness would experience more and more as the ages crawl by.
Still, there is no consciousness. Why not? When does consciousness finally appear? There's one thing that consciousness cannot exist without, no matter what else is present.
A mind.
Consciousness is not present without thinking. A lifeform with a beating heart, breathing lungs, metabolism, and reproduction is not conscious if it does not have a mind.
In Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, Antonio Damasio writes:
In Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam write:Life sailed forth without words or thoughts, without feelings or reasons, devoid of minds or consciousness. And yet living organisms sensed others like them and sensed their environments. By sensing I mean the detection of a “presence”—of another whole organism, of a molecule located on the surface of another organism or of a molecule secreted by another organism. Sensing is not perceiving, and it is not constructing a “pattern” based on something else to create a “representation” of that something else and produce an “image” in mind. On the other hand, sensing is the most elementary variety of cognition.
It seems Ogas and Gaddam think sensing, alone, isn't thinking. Thinking also requires doing. So a mind requires a minimum of two thinking elements: a sensor and a doer. The simplest hypothetical mind would have one sensor and one doer. Apparently, we are not aware of such a thing on the planet. The simplest mind we are aware of is the archaea, which has two sensors and two doers. I'm not going to pretend I know anything about this, and detail isn't important for my point. The general idea is that a protein called rhodopsin changes shape when the light changes. This starts a chain of events that leads to the archaea's archaella (flagella) moving, which moves the archaea. A little more detail is found starting at 3:00 of this video.A mind is a physical system that converts sensations into action. A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body. This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking, the defining activity of a mind.
The archaella do not move because the photons hit them. Nor do they move because of a brute-force chain reaction, like dominos simply banging into each other. The archaella move because a series of chemical reactions carriers the information that light with certain characteristics is in a certain direction.
That is a mind processing information, even if only at an incredibly basic level. The information of the light causes the response of movement. Information is causing something to happen. Something that came into existence (archaea) through the processing of information (molecular machines using the information in DNA to make proteins) has a mind that processes information.
This is the true beginnings of consciousness.
Among the other creatures/minds Ogas and Gaddam discuss is the roundworm. Roundworm has a new thinking element, to help out its sensors and doers. It has thinkers. It has two thinkers: one activates the doers that move the roundworm forward, and the other activates the doers that move the roundworm backward. These thinkers are also connected to each other, and inhibit each other. If food is sensed ahead, the forward thinker starts its doers, and inhibits the backward thinker. If poison is sensed ahead, the backward thinker starts its doers, and inhibits the forward thinker. The stronger the signal a thinker receives, the stronger it inhibits the other thinker.
In the roundworm, we have a creature that came into existence through the processing of information that is now processing information about two different things in the environmental, is judging how good or bad those things are, comparing their merits against each other, and acting on the decision it comes to. That's a good deal of information processing, in just a roundworm.
If all of this, and more, right on up to us, is nothing more than the physical properties and processes we know from our senses and sciences, there is no reason for any process or creature to be subjectively experiencing what is happening, or its own existence. Nothing described suggests such a thing. There is no reason to think conscious beings constructed of different materials than us would examine us, and understand that we are conscious. No neuron, or neurotransmitter, or sense, or storage system, or any other thing or process known to our sciences suggests it.
The more a living thing, that is, a thing built from an information system, processes information with its mind, the more information processing it's proto-consciousness experiences, and the greater its consciousness.
How many steps are between the sensor and doer in an information processing system? How many information processing systems does an entity have? How does the nature of the information in an information processing system change between the sensor and the doer? How do the information processing systems within an entity interact?
The proto-consciousness within each particle of its mind experiences what is happening to it. And, as the different parts of the body function as one unit - the body - all of the thinking elements function as one mind, and all of the proto-consciousness functions as one consciousness.
I believe Integrated Information Theory is the idea. Some certain degree of information integration must be reached to attain any given level of consciousness. But I don't think information is consciousness. I think information is the catalyst.