entheogenic-gnosis said:
Yes, there are conflicting opinions, you have to weigh the evidence, James (JC) Cahill makes a great case with wild tobacco. (I already made my plants manipulating life through chemistry argument using jc Cahill' s wild tobacco research as an example...
If you won't review jc cahill and his wild tobacco plant/parasite/chemical work, how can you effectively debate against it.
Please elaborate how it points out, or even proves, intent. This specifically has been the object of contention all along. You keep restating your belief, but never actually provide reasonably argued evidence, nor do you respond to the objections and arguments against "plant intent".
I'll restate my earlier objections, to which you do not respond at all, not even superficially:
pitubo said:
No, all you point out is just a mechanism. Nature has "created" many mechanisms, complex and intricate, many even beyond our understanding. In a way our very own understanding and our intent are examples of such mechanisms. So far I see no reason to attribute the mechanisms of intent in a strict and literal sense to any members of the plant kingdom.
You add your own unproven interpretations to your examples, examples that upon further investigation do not support your interpretation at all. There is no reasonable basis for the supposition of intent in your examples, only anthropomorphic wishful thinking. There is no scientist backing up your interpretations and claims, and the videos and articles you point to are in fact quick to declare the metaphorical nature of any and all plant "intelligence" descriptions.
You quote a Michael Pollan, who is not a plant biologist, but a journalist, with a side business of writing books about food morality. But even he does not back up or support your interpretations: read the
actual article that is the basis of the one you pointed to. It clearly does not back up your position and your far-reaching suppositions.
Did you even read the above Newyorker article by Michael Pollen yourself? It does mention your examples, but it does not support your suppositions of intent at all.
entheogenic-gnosis said:
Please watch the film, I've already articulated the experiments, I'm not transcribing the whole film here...
Nobody is asking you to transcribe the whole film. Instead, you are being asked to point out at which point in the video (min:sec) you presumption of intent is proven or even argued. It would obviously be very nice if you could transcribe that part in a few sentences, but the main requirement is to point out where the video conclusively proves your point. If you will not, but instead insist that I have to watch the whole video, it makes me doubt severely that there is
any such conclusive proof in the video at all.
entheogenic-gnosis said:
The fact that you have not watched the film, but then will criticize the science says a good deal, you didn't believe me when I said it, so I provided a film full of people with PHD' s botany, if you don't accept their evidence, than I don't know what to tell you...
The first video you linked already puts "behavior" in quotes, that to me is already a pretty strong indication of the filmmaker's position. Even if the film claims "plant intentions" to be real, it is still a pbs documentary, created to entertain, not to publish science.
But let's cut short all the needless arguing about the merits of using hours of video in place of concise arguments, that is a meta-discussion and only further derails the thread.
Lets instead simply go to the horse's mouth and see what J.C. Cahill has to say for himself on the matter. Please follow me to his professional website
http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/cahill_lab/. Well, what a surprise, it currently features prominently the following pdf:
http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/cahi...015/02/Behavioural-Ecology-SI-flyer_final.pdf, which contains the following, rather unambiguous text:
R.C. Cahill said:
This Special Issue focuses on how application of principles from animal behaviour can improve our ability to understand plant biology and ecology. The goal is not to draw false parallels, nor to anthropomorphize plant biology, but instead to demonstrate how existing and robust theory based upon fundamental principles can provide novel understanding for plants.
It is pretty clear what Cahill's position is with reagard to "plant intentions", isn't it?
The full article can be had
here, but I'll attach it for reference.
entheogenic-gnosis said:
If you want the evidence behind what I'm saying, do some independent research into the area.
I just did.
entheogenic-gnosis said:
I could spend 10 pages articulating out these experiments, or you could simply watch the film being discussed, there's no shame in using learning aides, teachers show films to teach students and prove points all the time...
I have yet to come across a scientific publication (with doi index number, no less) in film format. A teaching tool or a popularizing format does not make a scientific publication. Nor is it proper etiquette to respond to a request for proof or arguments by posting youtube links to undifferentiated hours of videos - even if these were purely scientific.
entheogenic-gnosis said:
Anamnesia understood the points just fine, and contributed, Anamnesia understood and threw back some really amazing ideas in response, gave me some great taking off points for good discussion...
I'd say that your thread was going fine for a while.
It stayed on topic for a while, but
starting here Anamnesia wanders off into speculation about the intent of nature and you run with it.
Someone
tries to point out gently that you may have stopped making sense, but you persist and start arguing your convictions about plants' intentions in a duet with Anamnesia.
After a few iterations of increasingly wild speculation,
I step in to point out a second time the lack of apparent sense. Admitted, I did so in a less gentle way than the earlier voiced objection, but then again, the speculation had also wildly increased (and also strayed off-topic to an equal extent).
This only causes you to dig your heels in deeper into the sand,
to which I respond by addressing the lack of any reasonable indication of factual substance of your claims, the fact that the "evidence" you put forward actually mostly negates your claims, and the IMHO lame way of "youtube"-style arguing you practice.
Anamnesia is first to respond and has a little, partially off-topic, debate with me.
Then
you respond, in which you:
- needlessly quote the entire post you are responding to;
- misattribute parts of the side debate with Anamnesia (the indignation you express applies entirely to your own misattribution);
- completely ignore my core point that you misunderstand the metaphorical character of "intent";
- express further indignation that I am not instantly prepared to sit and watch many hours of video that would presumptively prove your point.
entheogenic-gnosis said:
I mean to you want to argue and fight? Or do you want blow each other's minds? Who cares if there's speculation, it's entertaining, and it's a workout for the intellect, good mental hygiene, ya know? I'd have discussions with Anamnesia all day before I would watch tv, even if they do get subjective.
I don't mind creative speculation at all. It is only when speculation and facts are getting mixed up that I raise an issue. If you are unable to back off and admit that speculation is only speculation and not scientifically established fact, then don't blame others for the discussions that ensue.
A workout for the intellect should IMHO include at least a decent amount of critical thinking. Merely surfing in a bubble of associative flow may lead to intellectual sloppiness instead.
PS: bonus material!
That special issue of 'AoB Plants', with the above quoted introduction by professor Cahill, also contains an article of interest to some of the speculation earlier in the thread, about plants and neurotransmitters. The authors make tha case that plants produce these chemicals as a result of the interaction with ants.
Curious isn't it? The plants care not at all about "elevating the human ape to global consciousness", they are really interested in ants instead. Well, that ought to tone down our elevated self-importance a bit.
Extrafloral-nectar-based partner manipulation in plant–ant relationships
Extrafloral-nectar-based partner manipulation in plant–ant relationships
D. A. Grasso, C. Pandolfi, N. Bazihizina, D. Nocentini, M. Nepi and S. Mancuso
AoB PLANTS (2015) 7 : plv002
doi: 10.1093/aobpla/plv002
Abstract
Plant–ant interactions are generally considered as mutualisms, with both parties gaining benefits from the association. It has recently emerged that some of these mutualistic associations have, however, evolved towards other forms of relationships and, in particular, that plants may manipulate their partner ants to make reciprocation more beneficial, thereby stabilizing the mutualism. Focusing on plants bearing extrafloral nectaries, we review recent studies and address three key questions: (i) how can plants attract potential partners and maintain their services; (ii) are there compounds in extrafloral nectar that could mediate partner manipulation; and (iii) are ants susceptible to such compounds? After reviewing the current knowledge on plant–ant associations, we propose a possible scenario where plant-derived chemicals, such as secondary metabolites, known to have an impact on animal brain, could have evolved in plants to attract and manipulate ant behaviour. This new viewpoint would place plant–animal interaction in a different ecological context, opening new ecological and neurobiological perspectives of drug seeking and use.