Do plants demonstrate intelligence according to the talk?

Yes. He notes that plants can learn and form associations in experiments, showing adaptivity that isn’t purely programmed. This challenges the view that intelligence is exclusive to animals. [Starts around 198 seconds]

What is said about heredity beyond genes?

He suggests that genes contain relatively little information and that inheritance includes patterns transmitted in ways not limited to DNA, indicating non-genetic transmission. This broadens the concept of what biology passes on. [Starts at 186 seconds]

Does intelligence require consciousness, according to the talk?

Yes. He argues that intelligence requires a degree of consciousness, and, conversely, without consciousness, ‘intelligence’ as such is hard to make sense of. This links conscious experience to intelligent processing. [Starts at 258 seconds]

What is the difference between being a corpse and daydreaming in terms of consciousness?

He emphasizes a fundamental distinction: as a corpse, one lacks consciousness in that body, whereas during daydreaming or sleep, many processes continue outside conscious awareness. This clarifies what ‘loss of consciousness’ really means. [Starts at 291 seconds]

How much of our experiences are unconscious, according to the talk?

He states that approximately 99.44% of what we experience is unconscious, highlighting how much of perception and processing happens outside our awareness. This underscores the vastness of unconscious processing in everyday life. [Starts at 317 seconds]

Key Moments

Iain McGilchrist - What Living Things are Conscious?

Closer To Truth

Education5 min read6 min video

Feb 28, 2026|2,171 views|90|50

closer to truth robert lawrence kuhn Iain McGilchrist consciousness philosophy philosophy of mind what is consciousness what things are concscious philosophy tube

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Key Moments

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TL;DR

Consciousness is a process, not a thing, permeating life from cells to landscapes.

Key Insights

Consciousness is a process and a fundamental aspect of reality, not a single object or location.

Consciousness exists across life, from the simplest cells to plants, through complex interactions and adaptive responses.

Intelligence requires some degree of consciousness; without consciousness, intelligent behavior as we understand it would be inexplicable.

heredity goes beyond genes; non-genetic transmission shapes development and behavior across generations.

Ethical stewardship of the natural world matters; treating nature as a conscious cosmos requires humility and responsibility.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS A PROCESS, NOT A THING

McGilchrist argues that consciousness cannot be pinned down as a discrete 'thing' with a fixed location. Instead, it is a pervasive process that participates in the fabric of reality. He suggests that values like love and beauty are not private properties of individual subjects but expressions of a conscious cosmos that shapes and animates experience. This shifts the debate away from asking where consciousness resides to recognizing it as a dynamic, relational process that operates across scales and contexts.

ETHICS OF A CONSCIOUS WORLD

A central ethical claim is that all existence deserves respect because it participates in a conscious world we share. We have historically treated nature as a mere store of resources, often destroying beauty and complexity in the process. We inherit a world with history and value, and we pass it on to future generations. The argument emphasizes responsibility: choices should honor the inherent worth of beings and their capacity to evoke wholesome responses, rather than exploiting them for convenience.

CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE SIMPLEST LIFE FORMS

Consciousness is not limited to humans or complex creatures. Even the simplest life forms exhibit signs of consciousness through highly organized, responsive systems. A single cell engages in thousands of interactions per second and can detect damage and initiate repairs. It can act beyond hereditary programming, responding to conditions in novel ways. This demonstrates that consciousness is a property of living complexity at all scales, not something reserved for higher brains.

HEREDITY AND TRANSMISSION BEYOND GENES

The discussion moves beyond the idea that DNA alone encodes all information. Patterns and experiences can be transmitted across generations in non-genetic ways, challenging a gene-centric view of inheritance. Over the last few decades, biology has revealed layers of information flow through environments, networks, and cultural contexts. This broadens our understanding of how organisms develop and adapt, placing the conscious conditions of life within a broader temporal and ecological web rather than inside a single genome.

PLANTS AS INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS

Plants are presented as strong evidence for intelligent behavior outside human cognition. In experiments, they learn associations within days: a puff of air predicting light, or growth patterns adjusting to stimuli. These responses are not purely programmed; they reflect flexible, adaptive intelligence emerging from interactions with the environment. This challenges simplistic distinctions between mind and mechanism and supports the view that intelligence is a property of living systems at multiple organizational levels.

INTERACTIONISM AND THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE

There is a nuanced discussion about interactivism: intelligence seems to require some degree of consciousness, yet the precise boundaries are not fully defined. If a system lacks consciousness entirely, it would be difficult to account for genuinely intelligent behavior. At the same time, conscious beings can deploy cognitive processes without full, moment-by-moment awareness. This highlights that intelligence and consciousness are deeply linked, but not reducible to a single, uniform phenomenon.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIVING BEINGS AND CORPSES

A key distinction concerns what happens when consciousness is interrupted. A corpse loses consciousness in the body, while many unconscious processes continue to operate, sustaining life through regulation and maintenance. Even during sleep or distracted states, significant brain activity occurs outside awareness. He notes that a large majority of our experience—often cited as around 99.44%—is unconscious, underscoring that consciousness is selective and complemented by vast unseen processes.

SLEEP, DAYDREAMING, AND UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING

Beyond the explicit focus of waking consciousness, there is extensive unconscious processing that governs perception and adaptation. The brain organizes, learns, and responds to stimuli without conscious attention, shaping behavior and experience. This reinforces the claim that conscious experience is a slice within a broader continuum of activity. The relationship between conscious intention and unconscious regulation is asymmetrical: awareness is selective, while much of life’s work proceeds out of sight.

THE BIOLOGICAL REVOLUTION OF THE LAST DECADES

McGilchrist points to a major shift in biology over the past 20 years: plants can learn, and even simple organisms demonstrate sophisticated information processing. The old view of life as a rigid, robotic system no longer holds. Instead, living systems continuously invent and adapt through dynamic information processing. This reframes human capabilities—reflection, creativity, moral insight—as deeply connected to, rather than separate from, the broader spectrum of life’s cognitive capacities.

WE ARE NOT ROBOTS: LIMITS OF PROGRAMMABILITY

A caution emerges against reducing all life to programmable mechanics. While technology and computation offer powerful tools, they cannot capture the fullness of living experience. Humans are not mere automatons; consciousness and value arise within a multilevel, evolving network of information and meaning. Machines, no matter how advanced, may imitate aspects of cognition but struggle to replicate the qualitative depth of embodied, lived consciousness that characterizes sentient beings.

CONSCIOUSNESS IN LANDSCAPES AND LIVING SYSTEMS

The discussion extends to landscapes as part of the conscious cosmos. There is a sense in which nature possesses consciousness through its relation to our shared reality, but the appropriate response is reverence rather than exploitation. The dialogue links physical function with aesthetic and ethical dimensions, urging humanity to recognize the beauty, history, and interdependence of ecosystems. Consciousness thus informs not only biology but our stance toward the world we inhabit.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: A PRACTICAL OUTLOOK

Ultimately, the view presented invites practical responsibility. Acknowledging consciousness as a process embedded in life shapes debates about animal rights, dietary choices, AI, and sustainability. The takeaway is not mysticism but a grounded ethic: cultivate humility before life, nurture conditions that enable learning and repair, and strive to pass on a richer, more conscious heritage for future generations. This stance integrates science, ethics, and care for the living world.

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He argues that consciousness is not a separate object or location; it is a process within a conscious cosmos. This reframes how we think about where consciousness resides and emphasizes its pervasive, relational nature. [Starts at 34 seconds]