Plants have consciousness....

[Gabler]

Yes. It seems (to me) that he has defined it as “things we can image with 2020’s tech” when men are shown photos or some similar experiment.

That seems like worthy research and yes maybe a part of the answer, but for me it’s inadequate and doesn’t do more than scratch the surface of what I experience as consciousness.

He seems to agree with you there.

 

[WestHavenMusician]

Instead of actual research, we can all just troll on the internet. That can also get us quite far. I guess I shouldn't have apologized.

I mean, you posted a citation that you probably didn’t read, and when I looked up what the author said, and shared with you that it matched my understanding as presented here, you seemed to pretend that didn’t happen. Or something.

That was you who posted that citation, right?

I think I’m likely to be the only one participating in this thread who has personally published peer reviewed research (my doctorate is in the social sciences) so I’m not sure what you mean by “actual research,” if you’re suggesting that I don’t know what “actual research” is.

I hardly think that piping up to assert that a more global understanding of consciousness is at least worth treating with respect - is trolling.

 

[WestHavenMusician]

He seems to agree with you there.

It’s a fascinating discussion. And I think it’s very relevant to plant care — as our species interacts with another.

How does the shaping of a plant, shape us?

This is the more eastern philosophical element of the art that I also hope to come to explore more deeply

 

[Glaucus]

Good thread.. I appreciate the discussion. 2 questions. Do you all think Science, Mathmatics, Quantum Theory etc. was invented or discovered? What about NDE that some have had consciousness outside the body?

I think we invented them. It is a bit of a philosophical question. I used to say the opposite. I am not a mathematician so not too strong an opinion on if math is discovered or invented. I think more mathematicians would say that math is discovered than there would be physicists that say QM is discovered. And some mathematicians would say that math is discovered, but physics is invented. I don't think many physicists believe that QM is an exact model of how the universe operates. In fact, it is probably zero. But it is our best attempt at making an approximation. And it is extremely good at that. The difference between 'discovery' and 'invention' could be if QM is both a reflection of who we are as humans, as well as of the physical world, then it would be an invention..But if it is purely based on the physical realityl, then it could be a discovery, as long as there aren't alternative models that are equally easy to discover and that are equally successful at predictions. Since we tried really hard, and we only found QM, then either QM is the only thing us humans can discover/invent. Or at this level of understanding, QM is the only model you can discover. Which would make it a discovery rather than an invention. And an alien intelligence would discover the same QM. And an all-knowing intelligence that were to explain to us how physics works would explain to us the QM model. Because at that level of abstraction, of predictive accuracy, QM is just how the universe operates. And there would be no other way to achieve the same thing. Hence a discovery.

Near Death experiences are just the human brain having lack of oxygen. They can be induces by drugs for research purposes. Yes, some people find them really remarkable. They are real experiences. But they are more akin to someone tripping on psychedelic mushrooms than something supernatural. And yes, people putting chemicals in their brain can lead to life-altering experiences.

I think I’m likely to be the only one participating in this thread who has personally published peer reviewed research (my doctorate is in the social sciences) so I’m not sure what you mean by “actual research,” if you’re suggesting that I don’t know what “actual research” is.

I never met someone with a doctorate who told me, unprompted, three times in one day, that they had a doctorate. Especially not when we were talking about a subject that they didn't have a doctorate in.
And I met plenty of smug assholes with doctorates.

Ï am not saying you don't know what the research is. I am saying you are deliberately sabotaging any debate. Probably someone's alt bored of talking bonsai. Maybe bored stuck at some Family event on US Labour Day. Typing nonsense about the connection between black hole singularities and bonsai consciousness on their phone, while ignoring their boring extended family.

Maybe instead of posting here, email your old professor and propose to them to publish these ground breaking ideas you have on consciousness.

 

[Cajunrider]

I have a true story to tell.
Once up on a dark stormy night in the Pacific ocean, a vessel laden with “boat people” was taking in water. Every one was knee deep in the holds bailing water as hard as they could, saved for one who was complaining loudly. The gruff captain gritted his teeth then bellowed: “Everybody knows that you have doctorate degree! Now bail or leave my boat!”

Well you all know that I am just paraphrasing in nice English. What was said in Vietnamese was far more salty and makes my brother and I laugh each time we tell the story.

Now can somebody tells me how to whisper to two giant BCs I have and tell them to quit sulking and bud out already.

 

[Lorax7]

Seems like you guys have a lot of idle time on your hands and could really use a hobby to occupy your time. I happen to know of hobby that’s just the thing to keep you busy… it involves taking young trees, growing them in containers, and using wire to move the branches around so that they look like miniature versions of full sized trees. It’s fun, I promise!

 

[WestHavenMusician]

@WestHavenMusician
Look, you can come here and be welcome to talk about bonsai. It was just a bit strange that you said that, quote, "Science has no comprehensive understanding of consciousness." But we do. We made up that word. And we wrote a ton about what we think it is, and is not. Sorry for saying you don't know anything about all these things. You probably do. Just your posts don't show it. And I got annoyed and I apologize for that. You just kept quoting me, questioning what I said, without saying what your meant, or what your counter-example was.

If you were going to say that despite advances in cell biology, neurology, psychology, cognitive sciences, we can't explain how what we call 'consciousness' emerges from neurons, then yes. That's true. But that's not what you said.
And when you say strange things like that and then accuse me of not providing citations, then I get annoyed. I am here to do some forum postings. Not to write scientific papers. If I say something that's wrong, point it out, and I can provide citations, or try finding one and learn I was wrong.

And to @Gabler as well, the entire premise of the paper I linked on plants not possessing consciousness is that plants do not have anything like a brain, and therefore cannot have consciousness.
If you have examples from the scientific literature about examples of consciousness without brains then provide them and we can discuss. But right now, I am having to pre-empt what I think others here are trying to say. The interesting examples of communication in biology that people may confuse for consciousness have all been brought up by me.

To me, a lot of things in nature are really cool exactly because they are not like us humans. Exactly because they don't have consciousness, don't have thoughts, don't have an inner dialogue. Instead, they have many things that we humans don't have. I don't like the idea that we need to convince people that nature is more like us than we think, to get people to care more about nature. Though I might be wrong here and it may be the only way.

I’m still mostly looking past the condescending “Look, you can…” stuff. I doubt you have any standing to dictate to me what I can and cannot do.

You asked for articles. Here are the first four hits on Google Scholar when a search is run for “Plants and Consciousness” — three of the four are in general at odds with your argument. Only one of the four supports your argument.

This would seem to strongly align with my initial assertion that science has no clear understanding of consciousness.

 

[WestHavenMusician]

I have a true story to tell.
Once up on a dark stormy night in the Pacific ocean, a vessel laden with “boat people” was taking in water. Every one was knee deep in the holds bailing water as hard as they could, saved for one who was complaining loudly. The gruff captain gritted his teeth then bellowed: “Everybody knows that you have doctorate degree! Now bail or leave my boat!”

Well you all know that I am just paraphrasing in nice English. What was said in Vietnamese was far more salty and makes my brother and I laugh each time we tell the story.

Now can somebody tells me how to whisper to two giant BCs I have and tell them to quit sulking and bud out already.

There are lots of studies that show how effective it is to talk to your plants!

 

[Gabler]

I think we invented them. It is a bit of a philosophical question. I used to say the opposite. I am not a mathematician so not too strong an opinion on if math is discovered or invented. I think more mathematicians would say that math is discovered than there would be physicists that say QM is discovered. And some mathematicians would say that math is discovered, but physics is invented. I don't think many physicists believe that QM is an exact model of how the universe operates. In fact, it is probably zero. But it is our best attempt at making an approximation. And it is extremely good at that. The difference between 'discovery' and 'invention' could be if QM is both a reflection of who we are as humans, as well as of the physical world, then it would be an invention..But if it is purely based on the physical realityl, then it could be a discovery, as long as there aren't alternative models that are equally easy to discover and that are equally successful at predictions. Since we tried really hard, and we only found QM, then either QM is the only thing us humans can discover/invent. Or at this level of understanding, QM is the only model you can discover. Which would make it a discovery rather than an invention. And an alien intelligence would discover the same QM. And an all-knowing intelligence that were to explain to us how physics works would explain to us the QM model. Because at that level of abstraction, of predictive accuracy, QM is just how the universe operates. And there would be no other way to achieve the same thing. Hence a discovery.

Near Death experiences are just the human brain having lack of oxygen. They can be induces by drugs for research purposes. Yes, some people find them really remarkable. They are real experiences. But they are more akin to someone tripping on psychedelic mushrooms than something supernatural. And yes, people putting chemicals in their brain can lead to life-altering experiences.



I never met someone with a doctorate who told me, unprompted, three times in one day, that they had a doctorate. Especially not when we were talking about a subject that they didn't have a doctorate in.
And I met plenty of smug assholes with doctorates.

Ï am not saying you don't know what the research is. I am saying you are deliberately sabotaging any debate. Probably someone's alt bored of talking bonsai. Maybe bored stuck at some Family event on US Labour Day. Typing nonsense about the connection between black hole singularities and bonsai consciousness on their phone, while ignoring their boring extended family.

Maybe instead of posting here, email your old professor and propose to them to publish these ground breaking ideas you have on consciousness.

This is a fun philosophical discussion. It has no point. It's just entertaining in its own right. Nobody is trolling. We're all just talking. I'm not sure I understand why you're starting to get annoyed.

 

[Glaucus]

I’m still mostly looking past the condescending “Look, you can…” stuff. I doubt you have any standing to dictate to me what I can and cannot do.

You asked for articles. Here are the first four hits on Google Scholar when a search is run for “Plants and Consciousness” — three of the four are in general at odds with your argument. Only one of the four supports your argument.

This would seem to strongly align with my initial assertion that science has no clear understanding of consciousness.

View attachment 565985

Is it really your argument that I am wrong because when you google, the personalized result that you get seems to show 3 out of 4 papers that you think agree with you?

You really have to try better to troll more successfully for people to actually amuse you and engage with that.

 

[nuttiest]

Now can somebody tells me how to whisper to two giant BCs I have and tell them to quit sulking and bud out already

heehee- they are just unconscious

 

[WestHavenMusician]

Is it really your argument that I am wrong because when you google, the personalized result that you get seems to show 3 out of 4 papers that you think agree with you?

You really have to try better to troll more successfully for people to actually amuse you and engage with that.

Google scholar doesn’t work that way to my knowledge.

It doesn’t return personal algorithm based results in the way you suggest / assume.

I think someone else posted the first article from Cell. You’ll note that there is another article from the same publication that has the opposite findings.

The two articles in the same peer reviewed journal should also serve to support my point, if frequency of top hits doesn’t.

We still haven’t talked about your cited Consciousness textbook author who also seems to disagree with you. I would think that means that you’ve conceded that particular point?

 

[WestHavenMusician]

Is it really your argument that I am wrong because when you google, the personalized result that you get seems to show 3 out of 4 papers that you think agree with you?

You really have to try better to troll more successfully for people to actually amuse you and engage with that.

Google scholar doesn’t work that way to my knowledge.

It doesn’t return personal algorithm based results in the way you suggest / assume.

Link:
A Google search of info relevant to the above

I think someone else posted the first article from Cell. You’ll note that there is another article from the same publication that has the opposite findings.

The two articles in the same peer reviewed journal should also serve to support my point, if frequency of top hits doesn’t.

We still haven’t talked about your Consciousness textbook author who also seems to disagree with you. I would think that means that you’ve conceded that particular point?

 

[Glaucus]

You are right, I didn't know it was google scholar, which it is. And it gives the same 4 papers for me. But, isn't this an incredibly weird argument?

Especially considering what these other 3 papers actually are. The first one was the one I linked previously.
Also, before I talk about the other 3, I'd like to remind you that this all started with you saying that science has no idea what consciousness even is. But now you are showing me scientific papers that not only seem to assume science does know what it is, it also can apply it to plants. And your false belief is even that these 3 other papers make a strong case for plants being conscious? How did this happen?

Additionally, after I showed you that science indeed produces a ton of material on consciousness, you tried to slight me for not providing citations. So I gave you a link to a highly cited paper and a highly cited book. Which I have never claimed to have read. And then you just assumed I hadn't read them. As if I ought to have read them. Or as if I had falsely claimed to have read them. The idea that I should be familiar with these two citations was silly. I never said they agreed with me. Or anything like that.

But, now you claim these 3 papers agree with you that plants have consciousness. Now, I don't know how you happened to switch from claiming science can't know what consciousness is, to now claiming science can not only know what consciousness is, but that we also are positive that plants are conscious.
But did you even at least read the abstracts of these 3 papers? One of them says this: "The goal of this article is not to provide a positive argument for plant cognition and consciousness" So that one claims not to even provide an argument. So that is one strike down. The other one says, in the abstract, this: "By contrast, plant consciousness appears to be a different ‘breed’ altogether." Which is a bit vague. But if you read the actual paper itself, it is pretty clear that they want to introduce an alternative term, namely 'plant consciousness', which is whatever it is that plants have that most closely resembles 'animal consciousness'. Which is why in the second to last sentence of the abstract, they mention animals. And that this 'plant consciousness' which, my paraphrasing, is 'clearly distinct' from actual consciousness, should be a term science should start to use to talk about plants.

And the final paper, you didn't even scan that. That one is about actual consciousness. Actual consciousness of humans. Of shamans. Being high on psychedelic plants: "The core mental effects required for a drug to be used in shamanistic rituals include light-headedness, enhanced imagery, and experience intensification. This constellation was the reason why, in his classification of psychoactive compounds, the pioneer German psychopharmacologist Louis Lewin established in 1924 a group of drugs under the appropriate name of Phantastica."

So none of these 3 papers even make the argument that plants are conscious. Neither do the two papers cited by the Cell paper, that indeed I linked earlier, that puts cold water on plants being conscious. The Cell paper was a response to the media reaction to these two papers about 'plant neurobiology'.

From the Cell paper:

Since its debut on the pages of Trends in Plant Science in 2006 [1], the subfield of ‘plant neurobiology’ (PN) has been dogged by controversy [2]. Not surprisingly, the controversy became a publicity bonanza for the new paradigm, transforming some of its more provocative advocates into media darlings [3–5]

1) Brenner, Eric D., et al. "Plant neurobiology: an integrated view of plant signaling." Trends in plant science 11.8 (2006): 413-419.
2) Alpi, Amedeo, et al. "Plant neurobiology: no brain, no gain?." Trends in plant science 12.4 (2007): 135-136.
3) Pollan, M. (2013) The intelligent plant. The New Yorker, 23 December, pp. 92–105.
4) Dewar, E. (2013) Shh…the plants are thinking, MacLeans, Published online 16 September 2013.
5) Morris, A. (2018) A mind without a brain: the science of plant intelligence takes root. Forbes Magazine, Published online 9 May 2018.

Note, the 'publicity bonanza' 3 to 5 are clickbait media articles about paper 1 and 2. NOT other scientific articles. And the world 'consciousness' does not appear in article 1 or 2.

If you had just read just the first paragraph of the Cell paper when I linked this, you wouldn't now be making this stupid argument.

Maybe you should actually read the 3 papers you linked that are not about psychedelics and about shamanism. And you'd actually learn something. Then maybe on your real account, you can have an interesting conversation on something like plant cognition, if that ever comes up on this forum.

 

[fredman]

Back to topic...

People (apart from the East...generally speaking) today are totally oblivious of what consciousness really is (funny that the easiest way out is to make fun of it).
It is something so simple yet to complex for the human mind (in its unconscious state) to grasp. Consciousness is outside of us...that's why it can't be reasoned by the mind. Our awareness is what lets it in....and ultimately communicates itself to us.
When it comes to plants...and the animal kingdom, I think they operate on a different state...or level, of consciousness.
The whole creation is connected (for lack of a better word)...whether we realise/belief it or not. Plants and animals I think are way more "connected" than us. We have to go seek consciousness....rest of creation are in a permanent state of awareness....on some level that isn't comprehensible to most of human kind.

I found a video that explains consciousness for what it really is. He's a Buddhist...but don't let that put you off. They've been knowing and living it for thousands of years.

 

[eugenev2]

So let me play devils advocate here for a second...lets assume camp plants have a consciousness and camp plants do not have a consciousness are both correct.

I pose a few questions to the people who believe plants can feel, communicate and have a consciousness, why in the universe are you practicing bonsai in the first place? It's the equivalent of severe torture, waterboarding, pulling of toenails, flaying someone's skin? Do you have some deep down serial killer instinct? Should we be calling the plant version of peta on you?

 

[fredman]

I pose a few questions to the people who believe plants can feel, communicate and have a consciousness, why in the universe are you practicing bonsai in the first place? It's the equivalent of severe torture, waterboarding, pulling of toenails, flaying someone's skin? Do you have some deep down serial killer instinct? Should we be calling the plant version of peta on yo

Damn good question. I think of it when I speak to them...and work on them.
For me, at this stage its still only a "belief".
I do it with the utmost respect and love for the plant...not because I have to...its just me and always has been. I love plants.
Also...I don't know if they really get "hurt"....my logic says...I don't think so. Definitely not as we know it. They're of a different awareness....remember

 

[Deleted member 47471]

I loved this. Especially when she says..."plants sacrifice so much in order for us to live".

The implications of consciousness and self-awareness are:

1. To know (knowledge, to reason, and the intrinsic/inherent appeals to authority therein, i.e., epistemology). Do the plants, therefore, know they are plants?

2. Subject to objective morality (this manifests in many forms: arguing that God is evil, arguing that God is good, or that we ought to "do good" to others for the sake of doing good and that evil, malice, harm etc. is "wrong" or "undesirable"-- even in the context of man's actions against nature/creation/plants/trees/etc., not solely person-to-person). Therefore (according to the proposed argument above), plants are not morally neutral; rather, they are moral beings capable and observable of both morally good and morally bad behavior. My question is: "Are you certain you want to take this stance of plant consciousness?" The question is important because the very concept of "consciousness" is bound to epistemology (whether atheistic, materialistic, or religious in context) and carries with it the inherent obligation to account for the plant's knowledge of itself and the implied behavioral culpability to whatever system of morality imposed upon it.

3. Worship. Everybody worships something or someone (God, perceived deities, creation/nature - - including the worship of Bonsai - -, intellect, sciences, philosophies, music/the arts, the self and on and on) and no human being is a non-worshiper. The implication, then, is... If plants have consciousness and self-awareness, then they are bound to epistemology, morality (whether it is argued as subjective or objective, it is argued for to begin with) and they are thus, worshipers.

The ultimate disconnect, however, is that only humans are Imago Dei (made in the image of God), and are the only beings in existence with moral obligation to the Creator and culpable in their accountability. Man is, therefore, the only truly conscious being. This cannot and does not apply to plants or animals. Why? Man (human beings in the broad sense) is the only being capable to conceive of an idea and take actions to bring it to fruition. Consciousness is inherent to this ability. Now, one could argue a predator stalks its prey on the Serengeti, or beavers build a dam in a river, but neither are the same as project managers or contractors building a community, or someone purchasing a gun or an explosive for the purpose of murder.

The nature of the original post and thread welcomes this kind of dialogue, and I am thankful for it. Thanks for hearing me out (whether in disagreement, agreement, or indifference)

 

[penumbra]

Amazed that this is still going on.
Consider that consciousness is all there is. It is not a part of us. We are a part of it.

 

[gooeytek]

Discovery and invention have such variable meanings.

It’s interesting to note that the “vent” root of “invention” has a meaning that is related to “spirit” and “inspiration.” These words relate to breath, wind, and breathing.

...

That is incorrect.