{"id":239025,"date":"2026-06-16T02:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T07:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/new-studies-suggest-consciousness-exists-in-organisms-without-brains"},"modified":"2026-06-16T02:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T07:04:12","slug":"new-studies-suggest-consciousness-exists-in-organisms-without-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/new-studies-suggest-consciousness-exists-in-organisms-without-brains","title":{"rendered":"New studies suggest consciousness exists in organisms without brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-studies-suggest-consciousness-exists-in-organisms-without-brains.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How does a physical system such as the brain produce the ineffable phenomenon of conscious experience? Philosopher David Chalmers famously named this the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/consc.net\/papers\/facing.pdf\">Hard Problem of Consciousness<\/a>\u201d in 1995. Proponents argue that, while cognitive functions such as categorisation or information integration might be explained mechanistically in the central nervous system, the origins of subjective experience resist such explanation. Detractors suggest that the Hard Problem is merely a collection of lesser puzzles that have yet to be solved through greater material understanding of the brain.<\/p>\n<p>The heart of this controversy may lie in its core premise: that consciousness arises from a neuronal system organized around a brain. The deep entrenchment of this preconception isn\u2019t surprising, given that our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.upenn.edu\/~cavitch\/pdf-library\/Nagel_Bat.pdf\">own consciousness<\/a> is the only one we have access to. But this \u201cbrain-centrism\u201d pervades the cognitive sciences, shaping our understanding of other beings and approaches to research. It\u2019s one of several kinds of scientific chauvinism that currently limit the field of enquiry and hamper our scientific approach to <a href=\"https:\/\/iai.tv\/articles\/new-studies-suggest-consciousness-exists-in-organisms-without-brains-auid-3597\/video\/the-extended-mind\">other kinds of minds<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How does a physical system such as the brain produce the ineffable phenomenon of conscious experience? Philosopher David Chalmers famously named this the \u201cHard Problem of Consciousness\u201d in 1995. Proponents argue that, while cognitive functions such as categorisation or information integration might be explained mechanistically in the central nervous system, the origins of subjective experience [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}