I think people liken it to human consciousness because that’s what they know, but I think most people understand that’s an abstraction and the reality is much more sciencey and nuanced
Paywall so I can’t actually read the whole article but from the abstract:
Based on a survey of the brain anatomy, functional complexity, and behaviors of a broad spectrum of animals, criteria were established for the emergence of consciousness.
“We’ve drawn an arbitrary line around ‘consciousness’ and have decided what’s on either side” isn’t exactly the concrete dismissal they seem to think it is.
Not arbitrary: consciousness is a defined word with historical meaning. “Consciousness comes from the Latin word conscious, which means “knowing with” or “having joint knowledge.” The term evolved in English during the 17th century, with its modern meaning relating to awareness of one’s own mind first appearing in the late 1600s.”
You have arbitrarily redefined consciousness, implicitly by context to include any response to the environment. What good is epistemology if a plant’s hormonal action implies self awareness?
Edit: Imagine, if you will, that the stream of consciousness using language to tie a plant’s hormonal action to self awareness, e.g., words like “plants know when” is just as much of a cognitive and emotional hallucination as the most sublime sounding gibberish produced by an LLM.
While you can just make shit up in definitions, you don’t get to claim that others use your definition. All you’re actually doing here is destroying words.
Plants absolutely “feel” things, they can sense gravity and the sun, some plants respond directly to touch (Venus flytrap, shameplant), there’s tons of research on their ability to “hear” (check out buzz pollination and beach evening primrose, super interesting). They have vibrational and chemical communication abilities we’re only just beginning to understand. If you mean they don’t feel human emotions, well yeah, they’re not human. But to say they don’t feel is simply inaccurate.
There are a bunch of people who’ve bought into the enchanting myth that plants feel things and “scream in pain”.
It’s not really surprising since most people don’t know botany or plant psychology, but love a nice TED talk.
Plants Neither Possess nor Require Consciousness: Trends in Plant Science
I think people liken it to human consciousness because that’s what they know, but I think most people understand that’s an abstraction and the reality is much more sciencey and nuanced
Paywall so I can’t actually read the whole article but from the abstract:
“We’ve drawn an arbitrary line around ‘consciousness’ and have decided what’s on either side” isn’t exactly the concrete dismissal they seem to think it is.
Not arbitrary: consciousness is a defined word with historical meaning. “Consciousness comes from the Latin word conscious, which means “knowing with” or “having joint knowledge.” The term evolved in English during the 17th century, with its modern meaning relating to awareness of one’s own mind first appearing in the late 1600s.”
You have arbitrarily redefined consciousness, implicitly by context to include any response to the environment. What good is epistemology if a plant’s hormonal action implies self awareness?
Edit: Imagine, if you will, that the stream of consciousness using language to tie a plant’s hormonal action to self awareness, e.g., words like “plants know when” is just as much of a cognitive and emotional hallucination as the most sublime sounding gibberish produced by an LLM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Problem_of_definition
Yeah, none of those issues contradict anything I said.
Ok.
While you can just make shit up in definitions, you don’t get to claim that others use your definition. All you’re actually doing here is destroying words.
Plants absolutely “feel” things, they can sense gravity and the sun, some plants respond directly to touch (Venus flytrap, shameplant), there’s tons of research on their ability to “hear” (check out buzz pollination and beach evening primrose, super interesting). They have vibrational and chemical communication abilities we’re only just beginning to understand. If you mean they don’t feel human emotions, well yeah, they’re not human. But to say they don’t feel is simply inaccurate.
Plant psychology 🤣
It might be (is!) a scam but at least we got some good music out of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Wonder's_Journey_Through_"The_Secret_Life_of_Plants"