The case against plant consciousness
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The case against plant consciousness
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Re: The case against plant consciousness
#2This just sounds like a member of the old guard being uncomfortable with progress. His arguments dont seem very strong, questions over why plants would have such a capacity. Then some hand waving about alternative explanations for experimental results. Probably just another case of the dismantling of human exceptionalism making people uncomfortable.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#3I'm sure that "consciousness" is carefully defined in the paper, but, from the article "...whether plants can think, learn, and intentionally choose their actions..." is a much easier position to debate than whether plants are in some sense aware of themselves, their environment and others like themselves, which is what I think of when I hear "consciousness".
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#4So here's an interesting question: if plants are conscious, can vegans eat them? And if not, what will they eat? Not trying to troll vegans; if this is different and some one can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#5So here's an interesting question: if plants are conscious, can vegans eat them? And if not, what will they eat? Not trying to troll vegans; if this is different and some one can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
I'm not a vegan, but if you think of veganism as more of a "harm reduction" approach to eating, it doesn't matter whether you define plants to be conscious or not. As in, it causes relatively more harm to a large number of organisms to eat an animal as food (the animals are presumably going to eat plants anyway), versus cutting out the middle man and just eating plants.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#6So here's an interesting question: if plants are conscious, can vegans eat them? And if not, what will they eat? Not trying to troll vegans; if this is different and some one can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
If consciousness is a byproduct of advanced organization of organic matter, I imagine we can use technology to create simplified versions that lack the complexity required for consciousness while still being nutritious.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#7Those interested in this topic may wish to check out Michael Marder's "Plant-Thinking" [2013] -- on the philsophical rather than scientific end of the spectrum, but thought-provoking.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#8So here's an interesting question: if plants are conscious, can vegans eat them? And if not, what will they eat? Not trying to troll vegans; if this is different and some one can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
I'm not a vegan, but if you think of veganism as more of a "harm reduction" approach to eating, it doesn't matter whether you define plants to be conscious or not. As in, it causes relatively more harm to a large number of organisms to eat an animal as food (the animals are presumably going to eat plants anyway), versus cutting out the middle man and just eating plants.
Fair enough. I guess not all vegans will be homogeneous here either; I'm assuming some are in it for harm reduction, some for ecology, some for the "animals cute" factor. Oh well. I appreciate the insight.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#9This just sounds like a member of the old guard being uncomfortable with progress. His arguments dont seem very strong, questions over why plants would have such a capacity. Then some hand waving about alternative explanations for experimental results. Probably just another case of the dismantling of human exceptionalism making people uncomfortable.
Or it sounds like someone very familiar with the literature who's uncomfortable with some hyperbolic claims in his field. Someone who is comfortable attributing consciousness to arthropods is probably comfortable with dismantling human exceptionalism.
Re: The case against plant consciousness
#10So here's an interesting question: if plants are conscious, can vegans eat them? And if not, what will they eat? Not trying to troll vegans; if this is different and some one can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
If consciousness is a byproduct of advanced organization of organic matter, I imagine we can use technology to create simplified versions that lack the complexity required for consciousness while still being nutritious.
> I imagine we can use technology to create simplified versions that lack the complexity required for consciousness while still being nutritious
You could say the same about breeding animals for meat or even people for slavery - in fact that seems to be not to many steps down that route. I don't think either are acceptable though, so we're back to deciding where to draw that suffering line.