The speaker proposes that if consciousness is a cell-communication pattern that produces a self-stabilizing observer, it could enable learning and perception and explain biological consciousness.

“I don't know if plants are conscious. That's something that we might have to find out in simulations once we understand what consciousness is. But if consciousness is basically a pattern in the communication between cells that leads naturally to the emergence of an observer that stabilizes itself as an observer to make learning happen and perception happen and so on, then we have a hypothesis about what consciousness is in the biological organism.”