Do Cells have Feelings?

[greenroomer]

Hi all,

Perhaps this is a bit elementary, but do cells have feelings? Do cells experience pain or mental distress?

[MrMistery]

I guess the pain receptors would experience pain 🙂 🙂
Generally, no, they don’t
What do you mean exactly by this question?
Regards,
Andrew

[greenroomer]

To elaborate more on this question, how are we to know if killing cells is wrong? If they are a life form why do we not worry about killing them when we engage in debates about whether killing animals or plants is wrong?

I’m having an internal debate and I’m trying to find some reason why killing cells is okay, but killing humans is not.

[mith]

It’s wrong because the law says it’s wrong. Purely instinctive drive would dictate that we kill for food/territory/mates, unless of course there was some benefits to a community. See our other thread on altruism.

[hiro]

o…well…
can i ask u questions?
u..as a human, as a kind of creature….your body consists of different kinds of functional cells…..
do u have feeling?
and can i kill your cells which are inside your body?

p.s. my english is not good…gramma may make a mistake

[mith]

I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

[hiro]

quote greenroomer:

To elaborate more on this question, how are we to know if killing cells is wrong? If they are a life form why do we not worry about killing them when we engage in debates about whether killing animals or plants is wrong?

I’m having an internal debate and I’m trying to find some reason why killing cells is okay, but killing humans is not.

^^”’i told you my eng is bad..hahaha
i mean according to geenroomer said, how are we to know….is wrong? so i give human as an example here…and think of the cells inside human body and then kill our cells…see whether it is right or wrong…
don’t just think animals and plants are different from us…we are both creatures only…

= =/// understand?? 😳 😳

[MrMistery]

Here is a better example. If killing cells was wrong, than you would never wash your hands or brush your teeth not to kill bacteria?
Or is it wrong to purify water(kill bacteria+protists) in order to keep people healthy?
Is it wrong to kill a patogen bacteria?
Without being mean or unfair i think i can safely say that you are wrong. Killing cells has nothing to do with ethics
Regards,
Andrew

[cm5687]

i completely agree with you andrew, killing cells is not wrong, without it we may never be able to develop new drugs/cures. i agree with cloning for stem cells, however if the embryo has reached the point where it has devolped the basic human charteristics of being able to think etc then it is wrong

killing humans is different to killing cells, we are aware that we are alive, they are not, they do not feel pain or any other emotion

[Poison]

I think the strongest fact about human is the ’emotion’.

[cm5687]

that is my point how can something be truely alive and human (this is referring to the cloning debate that is on going) if it does not have the most basic of all human traits emotion, the ability to love, to hate and to feel sympathy makes us human. this is why i agree with cloning for whatever purpose as long as we can be sure that the embryo does not display these human traits, this also applies to animals as they show these traits.

indvidual cells do not show emotions, people dont say sorry bacteria when they stand on them.

i think i mite be going off on one now and straying off the subject

basically individual cells do not feel, they have no where to process them, a collection of cells can feel but only after a certain point

[Tam]

erm…

im not sure i understand the question.

you dont see hippies joining hands, waving candles and singing “we shall overcome” over cell death.

[Ken Ramos]

You ask if cells have feelings? Good question. 😀 I have found that protists, protozoa, respond to various forms of stimuli either positively or negatively. Evidently they must “feel” something. They exhibit aggressive behavior, for example Lacrymaria olor is an extreamly aggressive single celled protist. As for stress, they do feel physical stress, in that some protists will form cysts when enviromental conditions become adverse for their existance. Therefore placing them under physical stress. As for human cells, I am sure that there are other possible examples that could be used but I find the single-celled protists to be good examples for cellular study. I hope that this gives you something to go on. If not I would be happy to discuss this topic further 🙂

[MrMistery]

If they can detect stimules it is no doubt: yes! But i think that the true meaning of this question was if cells have emotions.

[Ken Ramos]

That question still haunts me. I understand that we are talking emotions here. As an amateur protozoologist, I have often wondered the same thing in relation to the single celled organisms that I observe. To be happy or sad we need to have some form of awareness to produce an emotional response or so I would think. So allow me to pose a question. Do single celled organisms posess a certain form of awareness and if awareness produces emotional responses then why would one of these single celled organisms be incapable of, at least, some primative form of emotional response? They dispaly all the other physiological aspects of much higher animals that are capable of displaying some form of emotion, so how about or why not some form of awareness on a unicellular level? Sounds far fetched doesn’t it? 😕 Ah well, if we don’t ask, we will never know.

That was a good question posed here, Do cells have feelings (emotions)? I am sure the question is in relation to cells which make up tissue, no doubt but I could not help but to interject more into the question than what was asked. Don’t ask me the time or I may try to explain how a clock works 😆 But if anyone has any thoughts as to the habits of single celled protists or even care to speculate if they may have a certain form of awareness. I would be interested to hear what they may have to say.

Thanks for the reply 😀

[dragonblood]

😕 dont u have to have a brain to experience emotion? they have a nuclious, but no brain. 😕

[dragonblood]

i dont really think they do ❓

[dragonblood]

i mean how can it 😐

[Madrick]

I don’t think cells have feelings…thier nucleus probably does not actually “think” about it’s pain. 😕 But we shall never know(well, we might, but you know what I mean).

[MrMistery]

Interesting point of view, Ken Ramos. But i remain at my opinion that they do not. Here is my argument: is emotion different from intelligence? YES. Will we be able to ever make a computer that is aware of his existance? Yes, by artificial intelligence. Will that computer have emotions? No, of course not. So awareness does not equal emotion. Are protists intelligent? That might be fun to discuss 😀 😀

[dragonblood]

as i had said before unicelluler organisims dont have brains so how could they feel ❓

[cm5687]

what is an emotion, surely it is just a perception of something, one thing that a person may feel as love another may feel as anger. and surely the perception is caused by a stimulus, if a unicellular species is capable of receving a stimulus it most in some way analyse it, could the way in which it anaylses it be determined as its perception to the stimulus and therfore perhaps they can have an emotion

i admit i may be well off here, im just writing what i think, if i am wrong please do not hesitate to say

[Chris4]

When cells receive a stimulus they have a programmed response. Whether its stress or whatever. Signal binds to receptor on cell surface and gets transmitted to the nucleus which responds by producing certain proteins and ultimately the cell responds in a certain way. Im generalising this part a lot here as its not important and i dont have time to explain in detail the signal transduction pathways and all that.
If one organism is aggressive or not then thats the nature of its genes and how it is programmed.
Now, if you observed one cell behaving differently to a typical stimulus then could you perceive that as an emotion?
Maybe cells can be unhappy and decide they dont want to grow or divide anymore so undergo apoptosis. Theres a thought. Depressed cells commiting suicide. 😆

I think cells would have to have intelligence and language for emotions. Which requires a brain. So I think they dont have emotions like mammals or other animals have, but just programmed responses.

[Poison]

quote Chris4:

Maybe cells can be unhappy and decide they dont want to grow or divide anymore so undergo apoptosis. Theres a thought. Depressed cells commiting suicide. 😆

So maybe we should try to find ways to force cancer cells to be ‘depressed’… 😆

[mith]

So, reflexes don’t count as emotions right?

[Chris4]

ummm. no.
Think about a reflex action you or I would do. Its instinct.
I would describe emotions as love, hate, fear, pleasure, sadness… I dont think you can describe them as relexes.
But.. thats just me. People may describe relexes and emotions differently.

[DoctorGeorge]

Most cells aren’t equipped to feel pain, and emotion even more so. I wouldn’t be so naive as to assume that induvidual cells have no consciousness, but we have no way of telling if they are emotive. As for pain, I understand that nerve cells tell the brain that they are being damaged, and it’s then the brain that creates the pain to warn our body to move or stop the damage; although, that’s just an educated guess.

[Mister Jon]

I agree in saying they don’t – They have no nerves or pain receptors so therefore cannot ‘feel’. The nucleus, nicknamed ‘the brain’ of a cell cannot contain feelings either because they only contain genetic material.

[Inuyasha]

NO. Think about it. Feelings are emotional sitimulates. Can individual cells receive these simulates. NO. THINK. Can cells think? NO. Therefore they can not have emotion.

[b_d_41501]

DEFINITELY NOT 😆

[biostudent84]

quote Inuyasha:

NO. Think about it. Feelings are emotional sitimulates. Can individual cells receive these simulates. NO. THINK. Can cells think? NO. Therefore they can not have emotion.

They can’t think from your perspective. No one’s ever been ask the cell if it’s able to think…

Do you think? Or is it just neurons firing in patterns in your brain?

[b_d_41501]

They fire in thinking patterns, I think? lol. I do get what you are saying though.

[Ken Ramos]

Given the ability to think, consider this. An amoeba, a single celled or unicellular organism, exhibits choice in selecting food. It has no brain in the way that we think of a brain but instead must have some sort of bio- receptors to distinguish what is food and what is not food. If there are bio-recpeptors of some sort, would they or could they be controled by the nucleus or operate independantly from it. Could we say that this particular cell is capable of thought or reasoning? Remember it is capable of making a choice and is a single cell. 🙂

[MrMistery]

it’s not a choice. it’s only proteins with specific functions of binding to a specific “thing” 😉

[Eminem]

My point of view is that if you look at this question in a cellular point of view, then no, cell does not feel at all. In fact, even we, humans, do not feel. What does the word feel mean? It is simply a cause and effect : for example, someone punches you, you feel the pain, then you may feel sadden or anger. So if that is the definition of feeling, what is the difference between human feeling and reactions programed in a computer.

These human emotions can be simply a message sent by your nerve cells to the brain (kind of like the electric current sent by a computer to the centre CPU)

So…

(this is getting interesting ) 8)

[mikki]

Cells die off everyday and more are created to replace the dead ones. Maybe read up on the life cycle of a cell.

[mikki]

One more thing I thought cells carry out there “function” by following a set of codes within their chemical make up. Maybe I should read up on the life cycle of a cell. It is just amazing how some of you can remember so much biology without batting an eyelash.

[cool A-level student]

i know how you feel at times, you guys are genius’s

anyway, i don’t think cells have feelings, they are very limited life forms, only a whole organ full of nerve cells can produce the intelligence of us, including feelings, the cell simply lacks what i think is neccasary in order for them to think or feel

[Author]

Posts