The Plant Consciousness Wars

Of course, one might argue this is the only way to know anyone else is conscious besides us...

This is one aspect of some of the encounters during an NDE. A person may encounter some being, perhaps with no clearly-visible features, and there is no speaking, no sound, no words. But the contact between them is richer and more meaningful than any usual meeting of two people in their everyday physical form. The communication is fuller, more detailed and comprehensive.

I've often thought that when we feel particularly 'in tune' or a sense of understanding with another person in ordinary life, it is because of this same sort of non-physical communication. The words spoken  or actions we make are just something on which to place our attention, almost as a distraction, while the real communication is taking place independently via another route.  The same applies of course when we may receive other messages, not necessarily directed at us, but just things associated with the emotional state of another person. I don't really think it is realistic to imagine that all communication takes place only via physical channels.

On a related topic, one of the most painful or hurtful experiences for me, at any age, though occurring in childhood frequently, is to be misunderstood or disbelieved. We can express ourselves honestly and sincerely, but the other party is not obliged to accept our communication. On the other hand, during (for example) NDE encounters, there are no such misunderstandings.

OTOH, with plants we run into the same question as animals - does a plant merely move toward the Sun's light or does it [move while] thinking of the "Sun" and the "light"? And if we could make a machine the mimics plant behavior, would we accept it has consciousness?

It is a trivial but fun task in electronics to build some device which follows the light. One little project is to lay out a track on the floor or a table which consists of something like a white background with a solid black line. A small wheeled vehicle illuminates the track and uses a pair of photocells to detect the reflected light, and linked to a mechanism which steers the vehicle to keep it centred on the track. The mechanical parts are the most tricky to build, the electronics is very elementary.

On a related topic, one of the most painful or hurtful experiences for me, at any age, though occurring in childhood frequently, is to be misunderstood or disbelieved. We can express ourselves honestly and sincerely, but the other party is not obliged to accept our communication. On the other hand, during (for example) NDE encounters, there are no such misunderstandings.

This reminds me of something I knew as a small child. It was very obvious to me that there were better means of communication than the clumsy sounds that we make with our mouths. I think I remembered the fuller, more complete communication, which resulted in a non-judgemental empathy, from wherever I'd been prior to inhabiting this Earth body. I mention judgement here, in the Earthly sense it seems to me related directly to an incomplete communication. If we can truly place ourselves in another's shoes (or mind) in order to share their experience, their story, the idea of judging them would no longer make sense.

Wildly off-topic I'm afraid. I apologise for the diversion from the subject of Plant Consciousness.

IMHO, no. Simulation is not the same as actual - that's why it is called simulation (mimicry). A more difficult question is how do we define consciousness? Thinking may be a feature of consciousness but does not define consciousness so to say that a plant does not think is not to say that a plant is not conscious. Plants might process stimulation differently - without thinking but with some form of awareness. 

It could be argued that a machine equipped with sensors has "awareness" but the response to the stimulus arriving from those sensors is pre-programmed and algorithmic. I don't believe that subjectivity has any part to play in algorithmic programming (other than, perhaps, the subjectivity of the programmer) but it does, to some degree, in the behaviour of living things. To what degree and how subjectivity arises are questions I have no answers for but I am certain that a program can only simulate, not experience, subjectivity.

Yeah it's an interesting question - Life seems to be defined by an inner teleology to sustain itself, whereas machines would have to be programmed to try and do things like [grow] and reproduce.

If we ever get to the point where machines are close enough to plants - perhaps using nanotechnology? - it would be arguable it's not longer simulation...but this is something that seems quite far off if not impossible.

 Mentation is basically thinking, a property of sentient consciousness. 

Whereas human sentient consciousness can't be modeled as merely advanced stimulus/response feedback systems, or modeled any other way for that matter. 

I disagree that mentation is anything other than the general activity of mind.  Mind is strongly active at less than full human consciousness.  Mind is at the root of evolution, in how living things operate as active information processing pieces of the natural universe.

Mind should be understood by its works.  Mind is the structuring of future or past probabilities into current actualities - directly - via the generation of information objects (thoughts if you like).  Minds have the causative power to change real world probabilities, and these changes are quantified as to results propagated in the environment.  Results, as outcomes, are observable in the ambient environments, both physical and informational.   Knowing and understanding useful techniques and applying them in context with the surroundings can be most effective in altering the course of events.  Plants, bugs, bacteria and octopuses all do it.

The term "scientific property" is confusing and associated with Materialism of past centuries.  Properties are better understood as math models that predict their manifestation.  Hence, the modern probabilistic outlook, sees causality as predictive outcomes, outcomes that are mathematical/logically modeled.  Quantum physics, Bayesian analysis and the MTC are based entirely within the context of probabilistic and statistical formulations.  Data rule. 

This practice of cold and hard pragmatism weeds out the potential subjective nature of "properties".  Wetness is only a property to agents with sense of touch.  There is no "essence of wet in chemistry".  But math models can be created using Bayesian techniques, which detail the structure of logical responses (from mind not matter) by living things to wetness. 

There are no opportunities during the physical exchanges of forces and particles to get quantities other than SI units.  To make changes to entropy, communication channels or functional sequences being represented - it's information science measurements that are made.

There is a simple logic to the behavioral activity of living things and without exception semantic information is being processed by the bio-bits.  There are basic understandings about the food chain and one's current status in it.  

To get quantified output from a specific environment, one can measure ordered sequences, organization, target achievement, appropriate physical responses and appropriate emotional behavior. The units of measure from Thermodynamics, the Mathematical Theory of Communication and logic systems will work.  Maybe they need to be  further developed, as informatics is a new set of science practices.  Just look at how it has become a driver in biology in recent years.

Plants have the SAME basic natural language rules, as the encoding systems for single cell organisms.  This is true, as well as for the rest of all biota.  While the different domains of living things express themselves in myriad ways and specific complexities, its all from the same coded structure "spoken" by life.  The structured code facilitates molecular activity that is highly organized.  At its core the "living information" presents purposeful behavior that detects affordances and sequences the following events to extract their value.

Much of mentation is subconscious and from instinct.  Consciousness - such as human awareness - is not needed to configure the  information of a bacterium or enfolding plant stem that will bring to a probability of 1 - a core behavior.  Probability changes when mind outputs structured information, which catalyzes signals within the organism.

Seeing mind as an activity, which scientifically is measured by information transformations is already taking shape.

Just look at how it has become a driver in biology in recent years.

Can you say more about this?

If we ever get to the point where machines are close enough to plants - perhaps using nanotechnology? - it would be arguable it's not longer simulation...but this is something that seems quite far off if not impossible.

In theory this seems plausible. However, this is dependent on understanding just what it is we are attempting to simulate or emulate. For example, if we want a machine which can convert sunlight into chemical energy, we can probably do this. But if we want to completely emulate every aspect of a plant, we would need to completely understand the plant.

As a detail we might ask, does the machine need to have consciousness? In order to answer that we would first have to understand whether or not a plant has consciousness.

[Laird]

without exception semantic information is being processed by the bio-bits.

Just curious: are you suggesting that all semantic information can be reduced to (bio-)bits? Or am I misunderstanding your suggestion?

Can you say more about this?

Here is a link to the journal, the topics express the range of research and their volume the interest level.

https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/issue/35/14

one of the links

Motivation
The fast growth of bioinformatics adds a significant difficulty to assess the contribution, geographical and thematic distribution of the research publications.

Results
To help researchers, grant agencies and general public to assess the progress in bioinformatics, we have developed BIOLITMAP, a web-based geolocation system that allows an easy and sensible exploration of the publications by institution, year and topic.

Just curious: are you suggesting that all semantic information can be reduced to (bio-)bits? Or am I misunderstanding your suggestion?

I am not.  I am just asserting that bio-information is loaded with semantic meaning, from an epistemological viewpoint.

How semantic information is "grounded" in bits naturally and in bio-bits as telenomic behavior is a large complex topic.  However, the purposeful pathways of bio-information are clearly defined when behavior is simulated virtually.  Purpose and belief fall out of the models as they are parsed with Bayesian techniques.  Purpose and belief will never be quantified in Kgs or chemical composition.

They are important structural categories in information science and in linguistics.