
13/07/2025
In an attempt to define consciousness as simply as possible, we could say that it is the ability of a system to respond to stimuli. This system can also be the nervous system, however simple it may be.
Suppose we stimulate an atom by applying ultraviolet light or other electromagnetic radiation to it. One or more electrons may stir and react by jumping to a higher orbit, further away from the nucleus. When we remove this stimulus, these electrons can fall back to their previous orbit and in the process emit photons of a certain energy or frequency.
By applying different stimuli, we will elicit different reactions from this system.
Next, let us take a virus and stimulate it. It will react with a greater number of reactions. If we look at a bacterium in a microscope and feed it, it will react with even more reactions than the virus.
The higher and more complex the organism, the more varied and numerous the responses to a single stimulus. When we come to mammals and eventually humans, the number of possible responses increases rapidly.
Let us therefore define this number as the number of consciousness. Let us assume that the number of responses of a system can be equated to consciousness.
Perhaps at first we try to imagine a stone or an atom as a living being, because we associate consciousness with life. But this idea is only a human limitation; even a stone may have difficulty understanding human consciousness. At the moment, we only use the term "living beings" to refer to beings that can reproduce. We project our behaviour onto other systems by saying that there is no life starting from the atom and moving on to larger systems, and then suddenly, when atomic systems have reached a certain degree of organization, 'life' appears because we can recognise our behaviour in it.
All matter contains consciousness (or life) to a greater or lesser extent. It may be subtle or primitive. We humans are designed in such a way that, with the appropriate knowledge and skills, we can interact with anything that has consciousness at any level.