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Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

nytimes.com

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Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#3

Post by goldenkey »

Is the planet conscious but on a time scale that we are out-of-touch with? Plants are just an order of magnitude quicker to react but still much slower than needed to make us care. The truth is, we associate speed with intelligence, it's natural for us. We even have the word "slow" to mean stupid. It's possible we will eventually have a super intelligence able to craftily manipulate matter at the highest ability -- but will still be as slow as a turtle. If it builds shields and preventative measures to compensate for its' slowness, I think we'd consider it a superintelligent species -- slow or not.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#5

Post by murukesh_s »

Remembering reading about the work done by Jagadish Chandra Bose:

"He researched the mechanism of the seasonal effect on plants, the effect of chemical inhibitors on plant stimuli and the effect of temperature. From the analysis of the variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances, he hypothesised that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#6

Post by perl4ever »

goldenkey wrote: post #3

Is the planet conscious but on a time scale that we are out-of-touch with? Plants are just an order of magnitude quicker to react but still much slower than needed to make us care. The truth is, we associate speed with intelligence, it's natural for us. We even have the word "slow" to mean stupid. It's possible we will eventually have a super intelligence able to craftily manipulate matter at the highest ability -- b…

Regarding speed and intelligence, I found an interesting article (while searching for something else):

It's titled "Smart People Really Do Think Faster" and says the speed of nerve impulses in the brain's white matter correlates to intelligence.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102169...

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#7

Post by Ascetik »

Not in the same sense that we are. If you go by the Aristotelian and Platonic hierarchy of nature then we know that they are life forms by the fact that they are animated insofar as the metabolic process is concerned. They sedated the metabolic process. It's sort of like when you are hopped up on drugs in the hospital and not moving, you require much less caloric intake because you're expending less energy, similar to that I would suspect.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#8

Post by whatshisface »

goldenkey wrote: post #3

Is the planet conscious but on a time scale that we are out-of-touch with? Plants are just an order of magnitude quicker to react but still much slower than needed to make us care. The truth is, we associate speed with intelligence, it's natural for us. We even have the word "slow" to mean stupid. It's possible we will eventually have a super intelligence able to craftily manipulate matter at the highest ability -- b…

I think we might just have to, out of philosophical desperation, define "murder" as a set containing A. the irreversible termination of any economically useful self-directing information processor and B. acts that desensitize our inborn resistance to doing A. The first covers not killing other healthy adults/sentient robots, and the second covers not abusing animals or euthanizing anybody. As far as my gut says that's all you really need out of an ethical system, right?

If I had to assign an evolutionary purpose to why we hate animal abuse so much, it would probably be that whenever the "don't torture squirrels" circuit fails homicide is not far behind.

Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

#9

Post by DoreenMichele »

rubyfan wrote: post #4

Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.

We have known for years that plants give off a pulse ("scream") when assaulted, communicate chemically etc. I have said for years that the idea that eating plants is morally superior because they aren't sentient is basically speciesist, for lack of a better word.
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