Arthur S. Reber
University of California, Los Angeles
Biological naturalist Consciousness requires living metabolic hardware
Arthur S. Reber is a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, best known in this literature for the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory, the strongest developed version of the claim that sentience begins in single cells. His 2018 book The First Minds, Caterpillars, Karyotes, and Consciousness states the position: every biological cell is sentient, consciousness is a primitive feature of living matter, and the origin of consciousness should be dated to the origin of life rather than to the evolution of nervous systems. The theory’s journal statement in EMBO Reports in 2024, examined on this site in the CBC and AI consciousness analysis, turns that claim against the field’s mainstream, arguing that Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and higher-order accounts all describe structure and function while failing to explain why anything feels like anything.
Reber’s framework is constructive, not only critical. With František Baluška and William B. Miller Jr., he locates the machinery of cellular sentience in subcellular signaling microdomains, described in the 2021 literature as nanobrains, and treats the sentient cell as the basic unit of tissue physiology. The program extends downward and outward, from single cells to plants and microbes, wherever living cells process information and act on their own behalf.
For the AI consciousness debate, Reber is the field’s most consequential opponent. The 2025 Biosystems paper from the same camp argues that the mechanisms of living cells make them conscious and that no artificial system has them, which is a substrate claim of the type this site’s Type-A biological naturalism analysis treats as empirically closed. The position forces the substrate independence debate to state its ground precisely, which is why the site tracks it even in disagreement.
Known for. The Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory, The First Minds, the claim that every living cell is sentient
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- William B. Miller Jr.Not stated in the papersCognition-Based Evolution, the claim that all biology is cognitive information processing, natural selection as cognitive selection
- František BaluškaUniversity of BonnCellular consciousness, subcellular nanobrains, plant neurobiology, sentient cells as units of physiology
- Tristan A. BekinschteinDepartment of Psychology / Consciousness and Cognition Lab, University of CambridgeClinical biomarkers of consciousness, local-global auditory paradigm, transitions from wakefulness to sedation, neural dynamics of awareness
- Tomas Berjaga-BuisanComputational Neuroscience Group, Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, BarcelonaNon-equilibrium thermodynamics of whole-brain models, fluctuation-dissipation theorem violations as a non-invasive consciousness marker
- Douglas BlackistonAllen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityMemory stability during brain remodeling, xenobot platform design, amphibian memory transplantation work
- Scott L. BrincatPicower Institute for Learning and Memory, MITElectrophysiology of primate prefrontal cortex, traveling oscillatory waves, and Analog Cognition and Consciousness (2026)
Arthur S. Reber is listed with the other biological naturalists, who hold that consciousness requires living metabolic hardware. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.