Yes. Brains are not necessary for consciousness. Several days ago I gave you this link to my post explaining things, according to my thinking on the subject:
It seems to me you’re wanting to go from Ground Zero. But I’m not sure that’s possible. None of us invented any of these ideas, and we wouldn’t be having this same conversation if people hadn’t been discussing it, and making at least some progress, for millennia. Sure, without ever having heard a single word about the topic of consciousness in our lives, any of us might still notice certain things, wonder certain things, and even come to some opinions. But I don’t think we’d be as far along t…
Also, here are some quotes that will hopefully help. While I don’t fully agree with any of them, they all have the same understanding I do, that consciousness does not mean things like brains and thinking.
In this article , Goff writes:
Panpsychism is sometimes caricatured as the view that fundamental physical entities such as electrons have thoughts; that electrons are, say, driven by existential angst. However, panpsychism as defended in contemporary philosophy is the view that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous, where to be conscious is simply to have subjective experience of some kind. This doesn’t necessarily imply anything as sophisticated as thoughts.
Of course in human beings consciousness is a sophisticated thing, involving subtle and complex emotions, thoughts and sensory experiences. But there seems nothing incoherent with the idea that consciousness might exist in some extremely basic forms. We have good reason to think that the conscious experiences a horse has are much less complex than those of a human being, and the experiences a chicken has are much less complex than those of a horse. As organisms become simpler perhaps at some point the light of consciousness suddenly switches off, with simpler organisms having no subjective experience at all. But it is also possible that the light of consciousness never switches off entirely, but rather fades as organic complexity reduces, through flies, insects, plants, amoeba, and bacteria. For the panpsychist, this fading-whilst-never-turning-off continuum further extends into inorganic matter, with fundamental physical entities – perhaps electrons and quarks – possessing extremely rudimentary forms of consciousness, which reflects their extremely simple nature.
In this Ted Talk , Chalmers says:
Even a photon has some degree of consciousness. The idea is not that photons are intelligent, or thinking. You know, it’s not that a photon is wracked with angst because it’s thinking, “Aaa! I’m always buzzing around near the speed of light! I never get to slow down and smell the roses!” No, not like that. But the thought is maybe the photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling. Some primitive precursor to consciousness.
In Panpsychism in the West , Skrbina writes:
I don’t know why Skrbina used the word “minds”. He’s not describing a mind, and it couldn’t apply to an atom anyway. He’s just confusing the issue. “Experiences” would be a better word.