are plants conscious?

[BundleflowerPower]

And onto the fungi topic, how the heck does cordyceps, a fungus (supposedly a 'lower' being right?) 'control' insects?

Something else that was discussed in another thread, I also find fascinating the idea of plants that produce opioids to make bees 'sluggish' so they stay more in contact with the pollen.. And my thought regarding that was, how much are these substances we are taking and plants we therefore propagate part of the plants' master plan to take over the world?

But yeah great posts and links everybody

This was discussed in the book, "the botany of desire," about cannibis. Plants are pretty clever arnt they

 

[downwardsfromzero]

For me the question "are plants conscious?" (in the sense of "is any given plant conscious?") is akin to asking "Is your hand conscious?"

Plants display properties more akin to consciousness when they are networked through the rhizosphere. The rhizosphere reaches into the petrosphere (as in rocks) and the, um, hydrogeosphere, the water in the planet Earth. This is then a vast, networked system. We humans can be more a part of it as indeed some of us are. For me, this is a key message of plant work, not to mention atmospheric and weather phenomena...

Looking at the dictionary definition of consciousness, it then merely raises the question of what we mean by 'aware'.

 

[Icon]

I suppose it does come down to personal definition. I had my membership removed just for replying on a topic like this with my opinion, simply because it wasn't in the looking glass section. Glad to see something has changed here to allow such debates.

Anyway I think consciousness can be applied to all things that react to stimulation in ways that defend its own existence. On that definition, plants are just as conscious as animals and even atoms. Why is it so normal and boring that a plant grows toward light, that an animal withdraws their body from flame, that a crystal binds with neighboring molecules? Clearly it's alive and doing something intelligent. Whether it was programmed to react that way via DNA or a software program, it exhibits awareness of its existence and purpose. I think that's incredible and something to be appreciated.

Looks like the argument is more about free-will though. A human can choose to override their programming and burn themselves alive. I suppose plants, molecules, animals don't have that same option.

 

[dreamer042]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Neurons:

Brain:

Nervous System:

Mycellium:

Leaf:

Roots:

Cobwebs:

Lightning:

Forest:

Rivers:

Moscow:

Night:


Facebook connections:

Internet:

Dark Matter:

Local Universe:

How likely is it that consciousness exists only on a single level of a fractal universe?

 

[concombres]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Neurons:

Brain:

Nervous System:

Mycellium:

Leaf:

Roots:

Cobwebs:

Lightning:

Forest:

Amazon Basin:

Moscow:

Night:


Facebook connections:

Internet:

Dark Matter:

Local Universe:

How likely is it that consciousness exists only on a single level of a fractal universe?

I like this idea.
I've always felt like everything in existance was part of a cosmic fractal.
If you look at it from the point of view of how everything is made up, matter is made up of sub atomic particles. Each neutron, electron, & nucleus forms an atom.
Groups of atoms form molecules, etc. all the way up to the universe or multiple universes on a massive scale.
In that sense, would humans, animals, plants, planets, & even solar systems not show evidence of being a small but neccessary part of a larger & larger system & the larger the scale becomes (ex. Ecosystem, planet, solar system, universe) & serving a function in the system. Maybe each individual part doesn't have a very important function, but as a whole species, ecosystem, or planet the function becomes more & more important.
In that context would humans, plants, animals, etc. not be the building blocks to something much larger, in the same way sub atomic particles are?
Who's to say if you could zoom out & see the whole picture everything contained within millions of galaxies, universes, dimensions, etc. is not a single, living, conscious, extremely powerful being & everything in it is a working part that is neccessary for it's survival?

 

[DreaMTripper]

The Universal brain?

 

[anrchy]

See my problem is how can we separate the mechanisms that allow all plants and animals to interact with their environment? All plants and animals use basically the same mechanisms.

Its all automated if you ask me. You burn your hand, you are pre-programmed to feel pain. We just happen to have the ability to commit the incident to memory so we can avoid the same scenario. Maybe plants dont need memory because they dont walk around bumping into things. We evolved memory and it led us down the path we are on. Plants had a much longer time to evolve into what they became. Talking about complexity, plants are technically more complex than we are.

If you remove memory, ability to change location, verbal and physical communication, you are basically a mushroom that needs to figure out how to manipulate its environment in order to eat and reproduce.

Omg, we are walking mushrooms!

 

[lsDxMdmaddicThc]

As for them growing to the light source and injuring themselves;
This is probably because plants are naturally used to their light source being 92,960,000 miles away.

So...they aren't really awere of their environment? They just do what they are supposed to do. Growing into the direction of the light.

The definition of Conscious "aware of and responding to one's surroundings; awake."
Google Search.
By that definition, all life is conscious to some degree.

This would also be true for a computer.

Phototropism (see above) is one of many things that clearly and scientifically demonstrate that plants are conscious to some degree.

How so? It just shows that a sensoric and maybe some kind of feed back is involved. But the actions can still be automated.

I think it's quite clear plants are conscious at basic and more complex levels.

I think we wouldn't discuss here then.

Well according to the definition "aware of and responding to one's surroundings", they are conscious.
I'm going by the standard definition of consciousness. Do you have an alternative?

Phototropism shows that the plant is aware of the sun's location and responds to grow according...thus fitting the (standard) definition of conscious.

"I think we wouldn't discuss here then."
Someone asked the question "are plants conscious?", I simply answered it with logic.

 

[steppa]

Well according to the definition "aware of and responding to one's surroundings", they are conscious.

True. But so is my telephone then. It's aware that it's beeing called and responds to the calling stimulus by ringing.

I'm going by the standard definition of consciousness. Do you have an alternative?

"Perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation."

I'd go so far to say that a baby or a really small child isn't conscious. For me consciousness implicates some kind of meta-awareness. Beeing aware of beeing aware. I think that certain criterias must be met for meta-awarness beeing able to emerge. But I'm unsure what these criterias are.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

This is true...sometimes. What do those pictures say to you? To me they say that human pattern recognition is a thing that's easily tricked into seeing connections where there aren't any.

A spider web is a spider web and a lightning is a lightning.

What they show is, that there are certain patterns that are functioning very efficent in what they do, which is why nature developed those over time via try and error/evolution.

 

[Chan]

It doesn't answer the original question, of course, but it nicely sums up the problem IMO...

He taught her
He taught her how to split and define
But if you study the logistics and heuristics of the mystics
You will find that their minds rarely move in a line
So its much more realistic
To abandon such ballistics
And resign to be trapped on a leaf in a vine

Brian Eno - Backwater (excerpt)

 

[AcaciaConfusedYah]

Just ask a plant, they'll tell ya. If they are feeling quiet, well.... smoalk moar

 

[Kazoo...]

this article brings up some interesting perspectives on this topic: Plant Intelligence | Reality Sandwich

 

[Orion]

I've hear it said that for something to be anything more than a drone, it needs to be able to change it's mind. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I think it is often considered that if something cannot make it's own decision, then it is simply following orders. We don't control every tiny chemical release or electrical impulse in our brains, but we consider ourselves conscious. It's a bit of a conundrum.

 

[hixidom]

Plants have even evolved defense mechanisms to defend against being eaten & methods of spreading seed via animals.

I think this particular point is most compelling to me. For example, plants do not feel pain, but some plants have thorns...How do those plants know that animals feel pain?

Obviously they don't. The reason they have thorns is the same reason that any organism has any particular property: It was an accident. Individual plants are not aware of their environment, nor are they able to adapt. Thus I would not consider them to be intelligent.

That being said, if you take a species as a whole over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, it appears that they do adapt. So I would say that individual plants are not conscious but that a species as a whole is conscious over a very long time scale. Intelligence is proportional to this time scale. As a comparison, humans can adapt to a stimulus within around 1 second while plants can adapt to a stimulus within 1 million years. Therefore humans are 1Myr/1s=3e13 times more intelligent than plants. Since all systems could be found to have some level of intelligence based on this sort of analysis, is it really worth pointing out that plants are intelligent? They are negligibly intelligent in my opinion.

EDIT: I should add that this criteria for intelligence is based on abilty to adapt within a certain time. Obviously we have built machines that can react to stimuli within nanoseconds (e.g. my laptop) but cannot adapt, creatively, to new stimuli and are thus not intelligent. For this reason, I think it is important to distinguish between adaptive and reactive responses.

 

[BundleflowerPower]

They're is quite a bit of exiting research being done in this arena. I think if one takes into account recent developments, for instance that it's been shown that plants can distinguish self from non-self http://www.plantbehavior.org/about.html, plants can distinguish kin from non kin Deep evolutionary origins of neurobiology: Turning the essence of ‘neural’ upside-down, that entire forests may be conscious entities, do to the fungal networks that connect the roots Archived Article Notice, among many other examples, like the fact that plants can impart knowledge to humans which is normally beyond human knowledge, one could easily come to the opinion that they are in fact conscious, and perhaps more intelligent than (most) humans lol.

Regardless of weather they are or not, plants are living beings and in my opinion should be treated with respect. It always gets me that there are all these animal rights people who are vegetarian, yet plants give us WAY more material resources than animals. Your house is constructed from plants, even the concrete roads we drive on needed lumber to build the form work that the concrete is poured into, our medicines, our food (including the plants that the animals we eat feed upon), and most important the air we breathe, etc. In short, humans are utterly dependent upon the plants.

To me it's just remarkable that a creature which is stuck to the ground and can't move is capable of all the things they are. It seems to me that if they were just automatons they would have went extinct long ago, or at least not been quite so successful at covering the planet.

I treat my plants as if they are aware, because if the roles were reversed that's how I would want to be treated.

http://www.plantbehavior.org/neuro.html

Plant Neurobiology, a Fascinating Perspective in the Field of Research on Plant Secondary Metabolites

In this Editorial, I comment on the exciting and original topic of plant neurobiology, focusing on natural products whose biosynthesis is shared by animal and plant organisms, i.e., indoleamines (melatonin and serotonin) and catecholamines (dopamine, ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

http://neuteboom.it/?p=171

 

[○]

everything is consciousness

 

[spinCycle]

Last time I asked one it told me it was.

 

[Praxis.]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Neurons:

Brain:

Nervous System:

Mycellium:

Leaf:

Roots:

Cobwebs:

Lightning:

Forest:

Rivers:

Moscow:

Night:


Facebook connections:

Internet:

Dark Matter:

Local Universe:

How likely is it that consciousness exists only on a single level of a fractal universe?

Beautiful, my friend.

Have you heard of the theory of constructal law? It's very interesting. From wiki:

Constructal law is a theory of the generation of design (configuration, pattern, geometry) in nature. According to this theory, natural design and the constructal law unite all animate and inanimate systems.[1] The constructal law was stated by Adrian Bejan in 1996 as follows: "For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it."[

There's a book by that guy, Adrian Bejan, about it called "Design in Nature" and its supposed to be pretty good, and accessible to laypeople. I personally haven't read it but I'd like to get around to it.

I'm of the opinion that plants are most definitely conscious, but as others have stated I guess it depends on how one defines consciousness. Sentient vs conscious? Even so I'd have to argue that plants appear to even be sentient, at least from my limited knowledge of plant science.

 

[Icon]

The leaves of the vine Boquila trifoliolata change depending on the species of tree it’s growing on.
“We currently lack a mechanistic explanation for this unique phenomenon,” the scientists write. B. trifoliolata doesn’t even have to be touching its host to mimic it. . .

[Vine (V) growing on six different trees (T)]

South American vine is a masterful mimic | Science News

The vine Boquila trifoliolata changes the shape of its leaves to match its host and avoid getting eaten.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[BundleflowerPower]

The leaves of the vine Boquila trifoliolata change depending on the species of tree it’s growing on.
“We currently lack a mechanistic explanation for this unique phenomenon,” the scientists write. B. trifoliolata doesn’t even have to be touching its host to mimic it. . .

[Vine (V) growing on six different trees (T)]

South American vine is a masterful mimic | Science News

The vine Boquila trifoliolata changes the shape of its leaves to match its host and avoid getting eaten.

www.sciencenews.org

That's remarkable. Passiflora does something similar. I've noticed it prefers to grow on sweet gum trees and rag weed, both have very similar leaf structure.