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.
If the particles in a group, regardless of why it is considered a group, are in physical-only relationships, the group is not conscious - does not subjectively experience - as a group. 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.
All the particles of an information processing system are experiencing. And the processing of information unifies a system in a way that physical proximity does not. Perhaps consciousness experiences something like itself - something not physically reducible. Perhaps "like knows like." Perhaps there is resonance. Maybe an 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.
Where does information, and consciousness of groups of particles as a unit, begin?
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 make DNA more extraordinary than any other information system.
1) DNA is the first information processing system we know of. Possibly the first in the universe.
2) DNA is not an information processing system created by humans. It is naturally-occurring.
3) DNA is what I call active information. In its natural form, the system that synthesizes protein - DNA, RNA polymerase, helicase, mRNA, tRNA, aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase, ribosomes, etc. - will synthesize protein. No part of the process is optional. The physical properties of the universe, the laws of physics, require certain things to happen under certain circumstances. Where DNA is concerned, they require that the information in DNA come into being in physical form.
This is 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.
Since DNA is the first information processing system that ever existed, it is the first time groups of particles were conscious as a unit. But it is important to remember that the conscious unit can only experience its own nature. Human abilities/characteristics like thinking, awareness, self-awareness, and sentience are not consciousness, or aspects of consciousness. They are only things humans experience. They are part of human nature. DNA does not experience anything of those things.
But DNA was also the beginning of life. Rvolution could then do its work. Many more information processing systems were added to life.
Some processes may involve information. And DNA was always there, at the center. The conscious units experienced more and more as the ages crawled by. Until, eventually, the mind came into being.
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 of the impact of the photons. 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.
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 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 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 consciousness functions as one consciousness.