Philosopher AI
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Consider neurons and synapses.
Neurons and synapses. I think of these as types of agents (what are called 'individuals' in philosophy). Neurons can be said to have various actions which they can take such as releasing different kinds of neurotransmitters, sending action potentials down axons, secreting proteins. Synapses themselves also act by either increasing or decreasing the likelihood that a neuron will fire an action potential. Thus neurons and synapses both display behaviours which allow them to affect one another.
I conjecture that all cells in the body can be seen as agents. They are able to move around and have various actions which they can perform such as secreting proteins or absorbing nutrients.
The agents in the world are able to affect other entities which can be seen as being composed of those same agents. It seems that a 'unit' of matter is an agent. This could make sense because it allows for these units to interact with each other and so form compound structures made out of many different agents (though sometimes they seem to act more like non-interacting components). The interplay between actions by various types of cells lead to a wide range of effects on one another.
For humans, neurons and synapses are highly complex. The complexity of an agent depends on the number of different actions it can perform (what philosophers call 'functions'). This seems to be related to how much matter there is in that entity. A cell has a very small amount of matter compared with a human being, so its behaviour will have less possibilities.
The human brain is composed of many different agents such as neurons and synapses. It seems that the complexity of a single neuron or synapse depends on how much matter it has (in terms of number of atoms). The complexity increases with the size of the organism, but overall there are more neurons than other types of cells in humans.
I conjecture that the more actions an entity can perform, the higher its 'level of consciousness' is. I believe that if you were to scan a human brain and identify which parts are neurons or synapses, then you could say something about how conscious they are.