[Learning from the New] Is consciousness not driven by programs? The mystery of brain rhythms revealed by octopuses and bees

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Peter Godfrey-Smith, "Studies on animal minds suggest consciousness is not computation" (Institute of Art and Ideas, March 31, 2026)

• Summary: While critically examining the functionalist idea that "consciousness is software," this article suggests that large-scale electrical oscillations in the brain (activities distinct from neuronal firing networks) may be deeply related to consciousness. Through the latest neuroscience research using honeybees, flies, and octopuses, it shows that the link between consciousness-related states and oscillation patterns is seen across animal species, and argues that differences in biological "material" may be involved in the foundation of consciousness.

Where did the idea that "writing code creates consciousness" come from?

Furano: I was reading an essay by the philosopher Godfrey-Smith recently, and I thought the way he framed the opening question was interesting. It's about how the idea that "consciousness is software" became common sense before we knew it—and I wondered, when did that actually start?

Phrona: That's functionalism, right? The idea that "it's not what it's made of, but what it does that matters." Whether it's made of brains or silicon, if it performs the same processing, the same mind is created.

Furano: Exactly. That idea spread quite widely in the latter half of the 20th century as computers developed. The intuition that "the mind is basically information processing" somehow became self-evident.

Phrona: It's easy to understand as an intuition. Seeing, thinking, and feeling all look like "processing." If you can reproduce that well, consciousness should be born, too.

Furano: But Godfrey-Smith puts a stop to that. He says, "What it's made of might also be surprisingly important."

Phrona: So, the substrate—the material—might be involved. Biological "physical things" like cell membranes, glucose, and blood flow might not be irrelevant to consciousness.

Furano: That idea itself has been around for a long time; it's close to what the philosopher John Searle called "biological naturalism." But what's interesting now is that experimental data is gradually pointing in that direction.

Phrona: Speaking of Searle, he's the one famous for the "Chinese Room" thought experiment, right? The idea that a person who is just manipulating symbols according to rules cannot be said to "understand" Chinese.

Furano: Yes. That argument has sparked controversy for a long time, but it feels like it's coming back to life from a different angle now. The premise that "if you can process it, it becomes consciousness" is being properly questioned.

Phrona: It's interesting that it's being questioned not from purely philosophical arguments, but from research on octopuses and bees.

Furano: That's right. It comes back to the topic of consciousness from the topic of living creatures.

Two activities in the brain—"firing" and "swaying"

Furano: What Godfrey-Smith is particularly focused on is the distinction that there are two types of activity in the brain. The first is that famous activity where neurons fire, called "spikes." Neurons become excited and send chemical substances to neighboring neurons, causing signals to travel through the network.

Phrona: It's like the image of a bit string in a computer, right? On or off.

Furano: Exactly. And this "spike network" is a part that is easy to reproduce with computers. You can extract it as a pattern and simulate it. But the brain has another type of activity—and that is large-scale electrical oscillations.

Phrona: What exactly do you mean by oscillations?

Furano: It refers to the rhythm of charged particles—ions—moving back and forth across the cell membrane, occurring in synchronization across a wide area of the brain. It's that rhythm you can observe with an EEG, a device that measures brain waves from outside the head. The ones called alpha waves or beta waves.

Phrona: Ah, I think I've heard of that. It's been known since about the 19th century, right?

Furano: Ever since a researcher named Hans Berger discovered it in the early 20th century, we knew it was "sort of there," but for a long time, it was treated as an "extra." People thought it might just be a byproduct, like the sound of a computer fan.

Phrona: So the firing network was the main thing, and oscillations were treated like noise accompanying it.

Furano: Right. But recent research has shown that oscillations and neuronal firing influence each other and are completely different things. Moreover, these oscillations are strongly linked to "states that seem related to consciousness."

Phrona: What are some examples of "states that seem related to consciousness"?

Furano: The oscillation patterns differ between when you are asleep and when you are awake. They change when you are under anesthesia. They also change between when you are focused and when you are zoning out. The shape of the oscillations is linked to states that seem to involve the presence or quality of consciousness.

Phrona: That certainly doesn't seem unrelated. But... just because they are linked, we don't know if they are the cause, right?

Furano: That is the core of the issue, and I want to talk about that later, but first, Godfrey-Smith's point is that these oscillations might be "a type of activity that cannot be transplanted into a computer." Spike networks can be reproduced through calculation. But what about oscillations?

Phrona: The "rhythm" of the oscillations themselves can be simulated as numerical values, right?

Furano: They can be modeled. But current computers cannot possess them as a "physical phenomenon" where ions actually move back and forth across cell membranes inside the brain. Even if they can represent them, they cannot possess them as the same thing—that is what he calls the "difference in material."

Bees Pay Attention, Octopuses Dream

Phrona: While listening, I was thinking that if oscillations are related to consciousness, that's talking about the human brain. What about other animals?

Furano: That is actually the most interesting part. What Godfrey-Smith introduces is research showing that the same kind of patterns exist in completely different creatures. Honeybees, flies, octopuses—and even in animals close to jellyfish.

Phrona: Jellyfish! Even though they don't have brains.

Furano: Jellyfish do have a nervous system. It's not in a concentrated form like a brain. And they seem to oscillate. However, no one would think that a jellyfish has consciousness—this also serves as a counterexample that you can't say there is consciousness just because there are oscillations.

Phrona: So, oscillations might not be a necessary condition.

Furano: Godfrey-Smith admits that, too. But what is even more interesting is the story that the link between oscillation patterns and "consciousness-like states" can also be seen in bees and flies.

Phrona: The idea that bees have consciousness sounds quite radical intuitively, doesn't it?

Furano: That is how it sounds, but in the context of research, it is not being treated as "consciousness itself," but rather as "functions that seem to be related to consciousness." It is the work of a researcher at the University of Queensland named Bruno van Swinderen, who showed that bees and flies, when seeing multiple things at once, can make a choice to "direct their attention to one of them."

Phrona: Directing attention, huh? That sounds like a very human function.

Furano: And apparently, that "direction of attention" could be read from the fly's brain waves. A rhythm called beta waves corresponded to where the fly was looking. What is even more interesting is that by stimulating the reward circuit, they were able to make the fly direct its attention to something it would not normally show interest in. And that was also reflected in the oscillations.

Phrona: So you mean the fly's attention switch was changed indirectly through brain oscillations?

Furano: As for the direction of causality, it is not yet clear whether it is "reward -> attention -> oscillation" or if "oscillation is mediating it," but it is a very impressive experiment in terms of the relationship.

Phrona: What about the octopus? Octopuses come up quite often in discussions about consciousness, don't they?

Furano: That is also Godfrey-Smith's specialty. Apparently, when an octopus sleeps, its skin color changes randomly. As if it were dreaming. It seems there is a state similar to REM sleep—a sleep stage where the eyes move rapidly and dreaming is considered likely—and there are multiple sleep states, each with different oscillation patterns.

Phrona: A dreaming octopus... Imagining that, the topic of consciousness suddenly stops being a technical issue and becomes more of a question about living creatures.

Furano: Exactly. Consciousness is not just about "whether AI possesses it," but also a question of "what kind of living creatures have it and to what extent," and if you enter from that side, the center of gravity of the conversation changes entirely.

Phrona: It feels like a landscape that is invisible when thinking from a human-centric perspective suddenly appears when using octopus sleep as an entrance.

Between "Correlated" and "Caused"

Phrona: Can I ask you something honestly? I understand that oscillations are linked to consciousness. But I have always had the doubt: "Aren't they just happening together by chance?"

Furano: That is a perfectly valid question. Godfrey-Smith himself admits that this is the most difficult part. We still don't know if oscillations are the "cause" of consciousness, a "symptom," or just an "extra."

Phrona: What is the "extra" theory?

Furano: When neurons are active, oscillations naturally occur due to their physical properties. Like a pendulum clock swinging. But just because the pendulum is swinging doesn't mean it is the cause of the clock keeping time. It is the view that it might be a byproduct of important activity, like the sound of a computer cooling fan.

Phrona: Is the next level up the position that oscillations are a "supporting role"—that they play an auxiliary role in organizing brain activity, but are not directly creating consciousness?

Furano: Yes. And as a third position, there is the stance that oscillations are a central element of consciousness. A hypothesis emerged at the end of the 20th century that fast oscillations called gamma waves are related to the "integration" of visual experience—that sense of unity where color and shape are felt as a single object—but this is still quite controversial.

Phrona: Godfrey-Smith also touched on research where stimulating oscillations with electricity from the scalp improved memory, didn't he? Does that serve as evidence in the direction that "oscillations might be the cause"?

Furano: It is an experiment that can be read that way. But memory and consciousness are not the same thing, and there is still a lot of room for interpretation regarding what is happening when you change oscillations with external stimulation. It cannot be called definitive.

Phrona: In the end, we are at the stage where "there is a lot of indirect evidence that oscillations seem to be related to consciousness."

Furano: Right. But what I found interesting is that Godfrey-Smith doesn't say, "This is absolutely correct." He writes in a way that suggests, "This is likely at least partially correct." That caution makes him seem sincere.

Phrona: A philosopher saying "I don't know" might seem obvious, but it actually takes quite a bit of courage. Especially when the topic of whether AI "possesses consciousness" is receiving so much social attention.

Furano: I feel like Godfrey-Smith is steering the question of whether AI has consciousness toward the idea that "we need to properly re-examine what consciousness is in the first place." He might be trying to change how we frame the question, rather than providing an answer.

Phrona: The question of whether consciousness can be "written in code" and the question of whether it "arises from the rhythm of ions moving across membranes" seem like they are looking at the same issue from different angles, but they actually lead us to completely different places, don't they?

Furano: Depending on which one you use as an entry point, the landscape of the discussion changes completely.

Summary of Points

• Brain activity is a two-layered structure of "firing" and "oscillation"

  • Apart from the "spike network" where neurons transmit signals via chemical substances, there exists large-scale electrical oscillation caused by ions moving across cell membranes. The former is easy to reproduce with computers, but the latter has properties that are inherently difficult to port to current computer hardware.

• Oscillation patterns are linked to "states related to consciousness"

  • It has been observed that oscillation patterns in the brain change in response to shifts in states related to the presence or quality of consciousness, such as sleep, wakefulness, anesthesia, and concentration. This indicates a relationship that cannot be dismissed as "unrelated."

• This linkage is not a phenomenon unique to humans

  • In honeybees, flies, and octopuses, we also see a link between oscillations and states considered related to consciousness (attention, multiple stages of sleep, and anesthetic response). This cross-species universality suggests that this relationship may be a fundamental characteristic of nervous systems.

• Correlation is not causation—but it cannot be dismissed as a mere "extra"

  • Oscillations might be a byproduct of consciousness (like the sound of a computer fan) or they might only play an auxiliary role. However, experimental results showing that external interference with oscillations affects cognitive function do not support a simple "byproduct theory."

• Differences in 'material' may directly lead to differences in processing

  • While functionalism argues that 'what it is made of does not matter,' Godfrey-Smith takes the position that 'the material constrains the quality of processing.' Vibration is presented as a concrete example of such constraints, and this question re-examines the very premise of the question, 'Can AI possess consciousness?'

Keyword Explanation

[Functionalism]
The idea that the mind (consciousness) is defined by 'what it does' rather than 'what it is made of.' It suggests that whether it is made of brains or silicon, if it performs the same functions, it will harbor the same mind. It became mainstream in philosophy and cognitive science in the latter half of the 20th century and has served as the theoretical background for artificial intelligence research.

[Biological Naturalism]
A concept proposed by philosopher John Searle, which posits that consciousness is produced by specific mechanisms of the biological nervous system, and that merely mimicking functions will not produce consciousness. It is famous for the 'Chinese Room' thought experiment. Godfrey-Smith's argument can be said to reinforce this position from the side of experimental science.

[Neural Oscillation / EEG]
Large-scale electrical rhythms created by the rhythmic movement of charged particles (ions) across the membranes of brain neurons. It can be measured from outside the scalp using a device called an EEG (electroencephalogram). There are various types, such as alpha, beta, and gamma waves, each known to be associated with different brain states.

[Spike / Neuron Firing]
A short, strong electrical signal that occurs when a neuron (nerve cell) is excited. This signal is transmitted by releasing chemical substances (neurotransmitters) to adjacent neurons, forming an information processing network for the entire brain. Because it has digital 'on/off' properties, it is highly compatible with computer simulations.

[Substrate Independence]
The idea that consciousness and intelligence do not depend on the physical material (substrate) that realizes them. It serves as the basis for the notion that 'consciousness is like software, and as long as there is an appropriate program, consciousness will reside in any hardware.' Godfrey-Smith questions this premise.

[Neural Basis of Attention]
The function of selectively focusing processing on one of multiple stimuli when they exist simultaneously. Experiments have shown that even in honeybees and flies, the direction of visual attention corresponds to vibration patterns such as beta waves, suggesting that the function of attention may have neural foundations that are not limited to humans.

This article was previously published on the Projeteam, Inc. website.
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