Do Plants Have Consciousness?

[Running Bear]

Plants can sense the light,smell chemicals,sense gravity and can even hear. Some plants like Mimosa pudica have been shown to have a long term memory and can even learn. When I drink ayahuasca I can sense their presence. Why is it that no one seems to care about the destruction of the amazon rainforest? Many People seem to care about animals but very few care about the plants and it doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Chan]

Hug, elusive =/= mythical.

Consciousness has so far eluded easy definition, along with dark matter and a host of other very complex phenomena, but it's a bit of a leap to throw them all in with the unicorns...

And, any successful attempt at defining consciousness will inevitably have to draw on the widest set of examples from which the definition will finally be distilled, so expanding our notions of potential sources of consciousness is a pretty good place to start, IMO, and questions/threads like this one ought to be welcome.

 

[a1pha]

And, any successful attempt at defining consciousness will inevitably have to draw on the widest set of examples from which the definition will finally be distilled, so expanding our notions of potential sources of consciousness is a pretty good place to start, IMO, and questions/threads like this one ought to be welcome.

They are of course welcome. However, years of philosophical training taught me first and foremost to define terms before coming to some conclusion on them. Psilociraptor claims s/he is certain that some P is conscious so I would hope s/he first has a definition of consciousness. This would help the discussion tremendously if we are to conclude plants are/are not in fact conscious.

 

[Valmar]

Since you are certain of this could you provide us a definition of consciousness?

I'm less interested in the source of consciousness than the definition of it.

Well... that's where I'm stumped. I know that I am aware, conscious. I just have a hard time pinning down what exactly consciousness is. I'm not even sure the question can be answered with any amount of words. Or if so, it would be a vaguely partial answer at best.

Well... the latter will have to do, then. I'll think some more, then attempt some sort of definition.

 

[Chan]

They are of course welcome. However, years of philosophical training taught me first and foremost to define terms before coming to some conclusion on them.

Not all things are amenable to definition, yet...as the UK government is only just finding out!

 

[Psilociraptor]

And, any successful attempt at defining consciousness will inevitably have to draw on the widest set of examples from which the definition will finally be distilled, so expanding our notions of potential sources of consciousness is a pretty good place to start, IMO, and questions/threads like this one ought to be welcome.

They are of course welcome. However, years of philosophical training taught me first and foremost to define terms before coming to some conclusion on them. Psilociraptor claims s/he is certain that some P is conscious so I would hope s/he first has a definition of consciousness. This would help the discussion tremendously if we are to conclude plants are/are not in fact conscious.

"I guess it depends on how you define consciousness. I personally believe all matter is conscious" Actually i said it depends how you define it and said I BELIEVE all matter to be conscious. As far as certainty, I am certain that I am. However you wish to define that, the one irrefutable fact is that I'm experiencing my own being. And i argue that this experience of being is not the result of neurochemistry. 1 neuron + 1 neuron = 2 communicating neurons. Add up a billion if you will. I do not believe one can establish a logical connection between the phenomena of experience in its most basic form and the informatic exchange of the neural network. That certainly alters what you experience. But the phenomena of experience itself cannot (as far as I'm convinced) be reduced to the physical mechanics of the brain. We know this because in the mainstream world view, were we to build a computer, we would not expect it to be a witness to its own calculations.

So in defining consciousness as the most fundamental capacity to perceive, i believe all things are conscious. Just as all things bear their fundamental physical/energetic properties. That's what I mean by consciousness. The ability to think, perceive light, integrate data, and identify as self is of course a manifestation of evolutionary processes. But were we to define consciousness in that light we would be limited in our ability to understand the perceptual capacities of the universe. All systems detect, assimilate, and distribute information. There is no clear physical distinction between what our brain does and the rest of the universe. The only difference is in form and the resulting contents of our perception.

 

[hug46]

I am not claiming that consciousness doesn't exist just that there is a possibility that it doesn't . Or that maybe people dress it up in clothes that help to make it something that it isn't (i am not referring to anyone in this thread). My definition of consciousness is that it is the processing of information. So with my definition plants would be conscious, as would be everything else that i can think of. It is a fairly simple and straightforward definition and probably wrong but it can encompass such definitions as awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, emotiaonal response, concern for some social or political cause etc.

The problem i have with Ndes, obes, telepathy etc being associated with some external source is that they don't seem to be that common occurences. I will get a load of responses saying that the internet is full of accounts of these types of things but i have never met anyone who is telepathic. If there was some kind of source consciousness that made people telepathic surely me and all my friends and aquaintances would be telepaths.

Is the hard problem of consciousness just hard because the mechanisms by which we have a rich inner quality to our experiences are too complicated to work out or is there really something more than just mechanisms?

 

[hsisixnf]

consciousness IS

:thumb_up: :thumb_up:

 

[dreamer042]

Why is it that no one seems to care about the destruction of the amazon rainforest? Many People seem to care about animals but very few care about the plants and it doesn't make sense to me.

I think this gets at the heart of my feelings on the topic. While we argue semantics and create arbitrary definitions of words like "conscious" "sentient" and "alive" in endless circles. While we throw around papers and books filled with the opinions of nice men and women in white lab coats about what constitutes intelligence, or thinking, or awareness. While we play our arrogant academic monkey games; the genocide is ongoing. The death march is exponential and all pervasive reaching into the realms of humans, animals, plants, soils, oceans, atmosphere, etc, etc, etc...

The question to my mind is not "are plants conscious?" or even "how conscious are plants?" but rather, "how would our actions change if we acted as if they were?" Would we be moar mindful of how we walk on the grass? Would we have a different perspective of the weeds we pull from our gardens? Would we be able to identify leaves as well as brands? If we adopted a cosmology in which nature was alive and talking to us, would we take the time to learn to listen?

Here's a nice short story to tell around the camp fire: The Other Way to Listen

 

[Jees]

...Why is it that no one seems to care about the destruction of the amazon rainforest?...

Key word: seems

 

[a1pha]

While we argue semantics and create arbitrary definitions of words like "conscious" "sentient" and "alive" in endless circles...

While I agree with your position, I think it important to challenge folks who use the words "certain" and "consciousness" in the same sentence. To my mind it is crucial to challenge the view that one can be certain about a thing like consciousness because the more one probes the concept the more one realizes the futility in defining such a term.

For me, at least, this was important to my future understanding (or lack thereof) of things like DMT, nature and consciousness.

 

[Koornut]

Plants are alive, that should be enough cause for inquiry.

 

[roninsina]

Forgive my stumbling attempt at teasing out what my intuition is trying to tell my modest intellect. I think I'm happy, if only for the moment, with a definition of intelligence, that has occurred to me while reading this (most enjoyable) thread, this evening.

Intelligence is roughly a system that is analogous to another system. A system that is an ongoing model of another system that is housed within, or is directly acted upon by an intermediary host. The system that is within (or directly acted upon by) the host, is reflective of the external system that can, in turn act upon the host. The internal system can store previous representations of the external system, allowing the host to act in advance, i.e. at the beginning of a series of events represented within both systems. This enables/causes self perpetuation of the host system; altruism notwithstanding, as altruism is systemic self perpetuation e.g. the perpetuation of a species or of life in general.


I suppose these systems could exist independently of a host intermediary, as the number five can exist independently from five of something. But I would more relevantly suppose that plants (and maybe a lot of other things) could be defined as intelligent if this were the criteria.

I'm sure this could have been worded more eloquently and clearly (it's much past my bedtime), but I hope it makes sense to somebody.

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

No one seems to know what consciousness actually is. It seems to me that it is an umbrella term for whatever meaning an individual has decreed for it based on their beliefs and life experiences. In that respect unless someone comes up with an objective meaning for consciousness there is a possibility that consciousness is a myth and therefore plants arn't conscious and nor are we.

We're certainly conscious. Certainly aware. So are plants. But what's the source of this consciousness and awareness? Not the brain... because accounts of OBEs, NDEs, telepathy, with and without psychedelics, prove that there's something... but we just don't know what consciousness is. It's not materially quantifiable.

If there's one thing I know to be undisputably true - it's that I am aware of my own beingness. Everything else, including sensory input, I can happily doubt.

Eben Alexander III is a neurosurgeon, in 2008 while in a meningitis-induced coma he reports having an NDE (it's a trip too, it could double for a DMT breakthrough)

Supposedly his brain was in a state where it was "brain-dead" to some degree, and should not have been able to produce consciousness, yet Dr. Alexander reports having intense conscious experiances...

Eben Alexander III (born December 11, 1953) is an American neurosurgeon and the author of the book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he describes his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will determine that the brain does not create consciousness and that consciousness survives bodily death. -Wikipedia

After an intense DMT breakthrough in 2012 I reached the same conclusions, that consciousness is not a product of the physical body, I also experienced death and non-physical being...

Scientifically, this proves very little, though to to myself, as an individual, my DMT experiance confirms it, also reading the Tibetan book of the dead, and hearing stories from people like doctor alexander really seem to confirm that others have had this experiance as well, though by very different means...it's as if there are many vehicles to the same end...

If consciousness is not a product of our nervous system or our physical body, if these things are not prerequisites for conscious-being, than what limits where consciousness can reside? Technically any living thing, plant, fungi, animal, microorganism, etc...can be, and likely are conscious...

(The above are my opinions, not scientific facts)

-eg

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

No one seems to know what consciousness actually is. It seems to me that it is an umbrella term for whatever meaning an individual has decreed for it based on their beliefs and life experiences. In that respect unless someone comes up with an objective meaning for consciousness there is a possibility that consciousness is a myth and therefore plants arn't conscious and nor are we.

If I had to define consciousness, I would say Consciousness is awareness...or awareness of your awareness...something like that.

-eg

 

[Valmar]

If consciousness is not a product of our nervous system or our physical body, if these things are not prerequisites for conscious-being, than what limits where consciousness can reside? Technically any living thing, plant, fungi, animal, microorganism, etc...can be, and likely are conscious...

Include metals in that list. J.C. Bose had done experiments where he determined that plant cells, animals cells and metals all have a common vibrational signature of life, which could be weakened, strengthened, and even "flatlined", killed, permanently. He could poison them, revive them with medicines and fully kill them. The poisons and medicines all had the same effects on them, though heavily diluted doses of poisons could also revive them... why? Mainstream (that is, not "fringe") science doesn't know... Bose seems to have proven that homeopathy has something going for it, without realizing it?

All in all, very curious stuff... and oddly ignored by mainstream science for a good century. I can only speculate as to why...

Look at the book I linked earlier in the thread. The chapter dedicated to Bose looks at this phenomenon.

Plants are certainly alive. Certainly aware and conscious of their environment, as much as us animals. How exactly intelligent they are, we may have trouble determining. Plant intelligence is suited to certain things. Non-human intelligence is suited to certain things. We cannot say, objectively, that our human intelligence is somehow superior. We cannot use our intelligence as a standard without being very arrogant and blind. Which may show that we aren't quite as intelligent as we think we are...

Who is "we"? Well, anyone who proclaims that human intelligence is somehow superior to any other kind of intelligences, with whatever dogmatic rationalizations they can dream up.

/rant

 

[Valmar]

If I had to define consciousness, I would say Consciousness is awareness...or awareness of your awareness...something like that.

"Consciousness"... I agree with your definition. I can see what you mean, but others just looking at the raw words might not grasp the deeper meaning you are trying to convey.

Consciousness... how to definitively describe that which escapes concise description? Awareness... that is primal? Of non-physical origin? Is consciousness a structure? Could we call it "soul"? "Spirit"? We lack an agreement on how describe consciousness, because no-one really can pin down what it is, or its origin. It's not the "hard" question for no reason.

Consciousness is... itself. It has no physical origin. I dare say it even precedes the spiritual realms. I would say that... Consciousness, Awareness, awareness of Awareness... is primal to the very fabric of Reality. It precedes the gods, even...

So, plant consciousness... one can cut off a part of a plant, and treated correctly, it can grow as an independent plant... what happens to such a plant's consciousness?

So many curious mysteries... more than we humans have any capacity to solve with our currently limited scientific tools. If only they would embrace psychedelics as part of their main toolset. I'll paraphrase Nikola Tesla, that mainstream science must think in terms of energy and vibration, and when science as an institution does, it will go farther in a decade than it did before.

Well, those are my garbled, mostly on topic thoughts...

 

[roninsina]

:lol: In my somnambulistic state, last night I failed to take my thoughts farther than an attempted definition of intelligence, and neglected an opinions of consciousness.

I would say consciousness is a subjective quantity of intelligence, as I previously "defined" intelligence. Though I believe the intermediary host could be one of the systems I described, rather than a physical body. To attempt further illustration; I proffer the triple burner of Chinese medicine as a rudimentary example. The triple burner represents a body of functions and can be used to effectively diagnose ailments within the body. There is no specific individual location of the triple burner, nor could it be removed surgically if it were causing too many problems, but this makes it no less real. In this sense, I believe a non-physical body of logic (likely, necessarily much more complex than the notion of the triple burner) could possibly act as intermediary between two or more systems in order to self perpetuate, but IMO it is still a subjectively quantitative matter to call it consciousness.

I don't think we have to stretch things quite this far to acknowledge plant consciousness. The chemical interactions within and between plants as causing physical changes internally and externally, reacting to environmental conditions, even reacting beforehand as indication of capacity for prediction, and examples of plant communication have repetitiously been shown to be analogous to the same in humans and other animals.

Any old how, it doesn't sound like there are too many votes against plant consciousness. What a fun thread. I can't imagine too many other places where his conversation could take place. Keep going, Nexus :thumb_up: may you live forever.

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

If consciousness is not a product of our nervous system or our physical body, if these things are not prerequisites for conscious-being, than what limits where consciousness can reside? Technically any living thing, plant, fungi, animal, microorganism, etc...can be, and likely are conscious...

Include metals in that list. J.C. Bose had done experiments where he determined that plant cells, animals cells and metals all have a common vibrational signature of life, which could be weakened, strengthened, and even "flatlined", killed, permanently. He could poison them, revive them with medicines and fully kill them. The poisons and medicines all had the same effects on them, though heavily diluted doses of poisons could also revive them... why? Mainstream (that is, not "fringe") science doesn't know... Bose seems to have proven that homeopathy has something going for it, without realizing it?

All in all, very curious stuff... and oddly ignored by mainstream science for a good century. I can only speculate as to why...

Look at the book I linked earlier in the thread. The chapter dedicated to Bose looks at this phenomenon.

Plants are certainly alive. Certainly aware and conscious of their environment, as much as us animals. How exactly intelligent they are, we may have trouble determining. Plant intelligence is suited to certain things. Non-human intelligence is suited to certain things. We cannot say, objectively, that our human intelligence is somehow superior. We cannot use our intelligence as a standard without being very arrogant and blind. Which may show that we aren't quite as intelligent as we think we are...

Who is "we"? Well, anyone who proclaims that human intelligence is somehow superior to any other kind of intelligences, with whatever dogmatic rationalizations they can dream up.

/rant

This is the first I have heard of J.C. Bose, and to be honest, I was quite skeptikal, I was almost certain this was a pseudo-science of some sort, so I started at my usual starting point for brief general information, Wikipedia. (And while Wikipedia is not an in depth research tool in my mind, it is great for obtaining a general overview on a topic, allowing you to gain a general idea regarding the topic.)

So:

Born in Mymensingh, Bengal Presidency during the British Raj,[10] Bose graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta. He then went to the University of London to study medicine, but could not pursue studies in medicine because of health problems. Instead, he conducted his research with the Nobel Laureate Lord Rayleigh at Cambridge and returned to India. He then joined the Presidency College of University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made remarkable progress in his research of remote wireless signalling and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio signals. However, instead of trying to gain commercial benefit from this invention, Bose made his inventions public in order to allow others to further develop his research.

Bose subsequently made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. Although Bose filed for a patent for one of his inventions because of peer pressure, his reluctance to any form of patenting was well known. To facilitate his research, he constructed automatic recorders capable of registering extremely slight movements; these instruments produced some striking results, such as Bose's demonstration of an apparent power of feeling in plants, exemplified by the quivering of injured plants. His books include Response in the Living and Non-Living (1902) and The Nervous Mechanism of Plants (1926). -Wikipedia

These were some of the general highlights from bose's Wikipedia page.

... however I'm still uncertain what to make of this guy or his ideas, I'm definantly going to have to do a little more research than skimming through Wikipedia before I will be able to form an opinion...but I can say that this is fairly interesting, and that it may actually be worth looking into (though had this man not had so many academic ties, I would have been much more hesitant)

He used his own invention, the crescograph*, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues -Wikipedia

*

A crescograph is a device for measuring growth in plants. It was invented in the early 20th century by Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose - a Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist.

The Bose crescograph uses a series of clockwork gears and a smoked glass plate to record the movement of the tip of a plant (or its roots) at magnifications of up to 10,000. Marks are made on the plate at intervals of a few seconds, demonstrating how the rate of growth varies under varying stimuli. Bose experimented with temperature, chemicals, gases, and electricity.<[1]

A Bose-inspired modern electronic Crescograph [2] was designed and built by Randall Fontes to measure plant movement at Stanford Research Institute for (S.R.I Project 3194 (Task 3) November 1975), which culminated in a report.[3]

The Electronic Crescograph plant movement detector is capable of measurements as small as 1/1,000,000 of an inch. However, its normal operating range is from 1/1000 to 1/10,000 of an inch. The component which actually measures the movement is a differential transformer. Its movable core is hinged between two points. A micrometer is used to adjust and calibrate the system. It could record plant growth, magnifying a small movement as much as 10,000,000 times.-Wikipedia

Ok, here's the mention of similarities between plant cells and metals:

Bose performed a comparative study of the fatigue response of various metals and organic tissue in plants. He subjected metals to a combination of mechanical, thermal, chemical, and electrical stimuli and noted the similarities between metals and cells. Bose's experiments demonstrated a cyclical fatigue response in both stimulated cells and metals, as well as a distinctive cyclical fatigue and recovery response across multiple types of stimuli in both living cells and metals.

Bose documented a characteristic electrical response curve of plant cells to electrical stimulus, as well as the decrease and eventual absence of this response in plants treated with anaesthetics or poison. The response was also absent in zinc treated with oxalic acid. He noted a similarity in reduction of elasticity between cooled metal wires and organic cells, as well as an impact on the recovery cycle period of the metal.[29][30]

-Wikipedia

I'm still working out the implications of all this, though I really don't see much indicating consciousness as being involved...

Again, I still need to look into this more before I will be able to say anything about it one way or the other...


-eg

 

[entheogenic-gnosis]

Another thing to keep in mind when saying "fungi are more like animals than plants"

In 1998 scientists discovered that fungi split from animals about 1.538 billion years ago, whereas plants split from animals about 1.547 billion years ago. This means fungi split from animals 9 million years after plants did, in which case fungi are actually more closely related to animals than to plants. The fact that fungi had motile cells propelled by flagella that are more like those in animals than those in plants, supports that." -- Science Daily -

The below quote is in relation to mycelial mats and their similarities to brains...

"I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges." ― Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

This quote was in relation to my statements about mycelial mats being "brains"

"I see the mycelium as the Earth's natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross-species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape."
- Paul Stamets, Mycelium

I'm am also of the opinion that fungi are conscious...


And if animals and fungi and microorganisms can be conscious, why not plants?

Are a nervous system and a brain really essential for consciousness?

I would say no.


Ok, I'll stop here...




-eg

I still have the image of the mats of mycelium, some stretching miles*, as being like these giant brains...

The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons, now, if you took into account how many neuron similar structures are present in a mat of mycelium, specially a mat of mycelium that is spanning miles and miles, it would be a brain larger than any known brain in any living creature, imagine the type of consciousness these massive brain like mycelium structures could be capable of having...

Then, to find that some fungi (and plants) are producing compounds, which are for all intents and purposes alterations of our higher neurotransmitters, the situation becomes even more intriguing...

It's seems plants and fungi are not only conscious, but that some species of plants/fungi have even developed means of communication with humans, through production of compounds which are near identical to the higher neurotransmitters of humans (5-hydroxy-tryptamine, N-acetyl-5-methoxy-tryptamine, 6-methoxy-tetrahydro-beta-carboline, dimethyltryptamine, 3,4-dihydroxy-phenethylamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and so on, these are human higher tryptamine/phenethylamine neurotransmitters)

Neurotransmitters are messenger molecules, and if there was a form if interspecies communication, it would be facilitated by these messenger molecules...

--------

"I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges." ― Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World

Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape."
- Paul Stamets, Mycelium

I think plants and fungi may even be conscious in a much more broad and larger way than individual humans...

It's definantly a different sort of consciousness...

------

( * Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus )

-eg

 

[hug46]

Eben Alexander III is a neurosurgeon, in 2008 while in a meningitis-induced coma he reports having an NDE (it's a trip too, it could double for a DMT breakthrough)

Supposedly his brain was in a state where it was "brain-dead" to some degree, and should not have been able to produce consciousness, yet Dr. Alexander reports having intense conscious experiances...

Eben Alexander III (born December 11, 1953) is an American neurosurgeon and the author of the book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he describes his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will determine that the brain does not create consciousness and that consciousness survives bodily death. -Wikipedia

I remember reading about this guy and it was very interesting but the thing i don't understand about his experience was that, if he was conscious and aware non locally from his brain and he was seeeing all this stuff and having these experiences, how did he remember them? Arn't memories stored in the brain? Or is exterior consciousness able to store memories and bring them back to download into the hippocampus? But what do i know?
This guy is a neurosurgeon, he must be right mustn't he??

After an intense DMT breakthrough in 2012 I reached the same conclusions, that consciousness is not a product of the physical body, I also experienced death and non-physical being...

Yes but surely you experienced these states of non physical being because of what DMT did to your brain. If you physically didn't have a brain and someone administered a breakthrough dose of DMT to you more than likely wouldn't have had the same experience or come to the same conclusions. Or any conclusions for that matter.