We don’t know enough about human consciousness to know that for sure. Plenty of animals have fewer braincells than humans, but we don’t know enough about their consciousness to say whether they have an internal experience.
That’s what I mean. It’s hubris to assume we can culture human braincells in a petri dish just because there’s a lack of evidence one way or a other whether it’s aware.
There’s a lack of evidence for anything not being conscious.
Neurons work by generating electrical signals in response to stimulus (either electrical inputs from other neurons or physical/sensory inputs activated by light or touch etc.) and they do this in a physical way.
If they’re conscious, then there’s a pretty good chance that power plants are conscious, computers are conscious and pretty much everything else in the world is conscious.
I’m not sure there’s any requirement for consciousness to include “human-like reasoning” or “understanding” for it to have some kind of experience and perspective. Humans make a lot of assumptions about the world to make it for the patterns we’re used to.
A cluster of neurons trained to play doom might have consciousness but it’s not likely to think like a human, just like a rock or a plant or an ant or an iPhone might have consciousness.
Whether it’s ethical to squash an ant or turn off an iPhone or stimulate a lab-grown neuron depends on your ethical framework and your philosophical worldview.
wonderingwanderer
TechLich