this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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The line is it being a conscious effort.
Reflexes weren’t a conscious effort.
Sure, how do you detect conscious effort from outside?
Yeah, reflexes could be considered a conscious effort of a part of your body. Or your immune system might be considered "conscious" of a virus that it's fighting off. What's a testable definition of "conscious" that excludes those?
I think that "conscious" is also a relative term, i.e. "Conscious of what?" A cell in your body could be said to be conscious of a few things, like its immediate environment. It's clearly not conscious of J-pop though. But to be fair to it, none of us are "really" conscious of say Sagittarius B2 or an organism living at the bottom of the ocean.
The best way I've found to think about it is that consciousness can be thought of as a world model. The bigger the world model, the more consciousness it could be said to have. Some world models might be smaller, but contain things that bigger ones don't though. Worms don't understand what an airplane is, but humans also don't really understand the experience of wriggling through soil.
The decision would be made by measurable neurological means not chemical ones.
What measurable neurological means?
Complex, integrated electrical patterns rather than just the presence of a specific chemical.
The measure of electrical activity in the motor cortex (visible via EEG) that builds up milliseconds before a person makes a conscious, voluntary movement. It’s distinct from the sharp spike of a reflex.
If the action originates from the Prefrontal Cortex (executive function/planning), it’s generally considered "conscious effort." If the signal bypasses the cortex and stays in the brainstem or spinal cord, it’s a reflex.
I'm not sure what you're referring to with the "chemical" thing. I didn't say anything about a chemical marker, is that like a theory of consciousness? I've never heard of it, I'd like to at least investigate it if you can provide a link. I can't find any references linking consciousness to a specific chemical, but I admittedly didn't look all that hard.
I was using "chemical" as a shorthand for simple, automatic biological triggers to contrast them against complex, integrated networking.
i.e, for a Venus fly trap, a trigger (like a fly touching a hair) releases chemicals (ions like Calcium) that cause an electrical wave. This wave forces water to move quickly out of cells (turgor pressure), making the leaf collapse shut.
Consciousness is measurable because it’s not just that simple chemical reflex. It is the complex electrical buildup (readiness potential) in the brain's cortex that happens before the action.