The Plant Consciousness Wars

Courtesy of the Anomalist - here's an article at Stranger Dimensions, discussing a study that reports plants emitting ultrasonic distress signals when they suffered drought or damage. The characteristics of the signals varied with the species and the type of stress experienced:
https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2019/...-stressed/

The original paper is here:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/...0.full.pdf

[Laird]

Timothy Grieve-Carlson has an article on the Paracultures blog from March 15 Speaking with Plants in the New York Times. It builds on earlier posts reflecting on such books as Supernature, and reflects not just on The Secret Life of Plants, but also modern researchers such as Monica Gagliano and her 2019 book Thus Spoke the Plant. In the process, it notes how far the mainstream press has come in terms of acceptance of such anomalous science, comparing the pseudoskeptical reaction of the press to The Secret Life of Plants versus its recognition of Monica's Thus Spoke the Plant.

Most relevant to this thread, it references and quotes Monica's "succinct and piercing ethical critique of conventional science, which she derives from the results of of her empirical analyses. She puts it rather simply: “The disarticulation of plants as subjects and their cultural (re)construction as objects of scientific exploration not only contradicts the emerging and expanding understanding of plant behavior, including matters of plant intelligence, agency, and intersubjectivity, but it is also of monumental concern in regards to the ethical significance of human-plant relations,” she writes (68).

Gagliano does not only position her research as a new phase in the study of cognition in the plant sciences: she takes the extra step of pointing out how her own scientific work has profound implications for the moral status of nonhumans in contemporary society. Indeed, she turns these tables of science against itself when she points out that studies in genetic modification are, in fact, unscientific approaches rooted in false assumptions about the ethical and subjective status of plants: “Under these circumstances, the scientific method demands us to rectify our approach be de-objectifying plants and no longer granting scientific legitimacy to GM [genetic modification] plant research.” (107)

The secret life of plants: how they memorise, communicate, problem solve and socialise

Amy Fleming

Mancuso and his colleagues have become experts in training plants, just like neuroscientists train lab rats. If you let a drop of water fall on a Mimosa pudica, its kneejerk response is to recoil its leaves, but, if you continue doing so, the plant will quickly cotton on that the water is harmless and stop reacting. The plants can hold on to this knowledge for weeks, even when their living conditions, such as lighting, are changed. “That was unexpected because we were thinking about very short memories, in the range of one or two days – the average memory of insects,” says Mancuso. “To find that plants were able to memorise for two months was a surprise.” Not least because they don’t have brains.

One of the most controversial aspects of Mancuso’s work is the idea of plant consciousness. As we learn more about animal and plant intelligence, not to mention human intelligence, the always-contentious term consciousness has become the subject of ever more heated scientific and philosophical debate. “Let’s use another term,” Mancuso suggests. “Consciousness is a little bit tricky in both our languages. Let’s talk about awareness. Plants are perfectly aware of themselves.” A simple example is when one plant overshadows another – the shaded plant will grow faster to reach the light. But when you look into the crown of a tree, all the shoots are heavily shaded. They do not grow fast because they know that they are shaded by part of themselves. “So they have a perfect image of themselves and of the outside,” says Mancuso.

Another misconception is that plants are the definition of a vegetative state – incommunicative and insensitive to what is around them. But Mancuso says plants are far more sensitive than animals. “And this is not an opinion. This is based on thousands of pieces of evidence. We know that a single root apex is able to detect at least 20 different chemical and physical parameters, many of which we are blind to.” There could be a tonne of cobalt or nickel under our feet, and we would have no idea, whereas “plants can sense a few milligrams in a huge amount of soil”, he says.

[Laird]

Cross-posting here:

The Society for Scientific Exploration's EdgeScience #44, December 2020, just released, is a Special Issue devoted entirely to the article Sentient Plants: A Product of Nature or Human Imagination? by science journalist Krissy Eliot. I for one am looking forward to reading this one! It can be freely downloaded here.

Bean plants with intent?

"...they used time-lapse photography to document the behaviour of 20 potted bean plants, grown either in the vicinity of a support pole or without one, until the tip of the shoot made contact with the pole. Using this footage, they analysed the dynamics of the shoots’ growth, finding that their approach was more controlled and predictable when a pole was present. The difference was analogous to sending a blindfolded person into a room containing an obstacle, and either telling them about it or letting them stumble into it.

“We see these signatures of complex behaviour, the one and only difference being is that it’s not neural-based, as it is in humans,” Calvo said. “This isn’t just adaptive behaviour, it’s anticipatory, goal-directed, flexible behaviour.”"

Mentioned here already is a new very interesting and very thorough and extensive article in the SSE journal Edge Science, Sentient Plants: A Product of Nature or Human Imagination? The writer examines all the arguments in detail and still remains on the fence, but to me it is looking more like the former than the latter. 

Just a small sampling of some the amazing information condensed in these pages:

...there is a scientific consensus that plants can receive and process information from the environment in complex ways. They have memory, are capable of decision-making, and even possess their own versions of all five human senses. Considering these findings, some scientists say that plants are not only intelligent—but even conscious—and
that this should change how we understand and interact with plants forever.
....................................
Stefano Mancuso, a professor at the University of Florence and founder of the controversially named International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology (LINV), supports the idea
that plants may be sentient. According to the LINV website, plants are as sophisticated as animals. They are highly sensitive, intelligent, capable of cost-benefit analysis, and able to recognize their separateness from other things — the difference between self and non-self.

Do plants sleep?

Scientists from Austria, Finland, and Hungary used lasers to measure the movements of birch trees overnight, discovering that in darkness, the tree branches would actually start to droop by as much as four inches, suggesting the trees may be resting.
..........................
(One) explanation, the researchers say, is that the trees may be tuned to a kind of sleep-wake cycle. During the day, the leaves and branches use energy to reach toward the sunlight, but at night, they may just be chilling out, relaxing.

..........................

But just because plants are going through a process that appears similar to sleep, does that mean that they can be unconscious—and therefore, during the day, be awake and conscious? Some plant neurobiologists say yes, pointing to the results of a study published in Annals of Botany showing that anesthetics cause Mimosa pudica plants, pea tendrils, Venus flytraps, and sundew traps to lose their autonomous and touchinduced movements, just like animals.

Other topics covered:

Recognizing Friend or Foe
Communicating on Purpose
The Wood Wide Web
Plant Memory: Not Your Mother’s Memory
Learning and Choice
Plants appear to feel things - does that mean they have some form of consciousness?
So what if plants don't have brains:

"...if plants can function in brain-like ways, then the presence of an actual brain is irrelevant to their capacity for sentience. “A plant’s functions are not related to organs—which means plants breathe without having lungs, nourish themselves without having a mouth or stomach, stand erect without having a skeleton, and as we will
soon see, make decisions without having a brain..."

The Hard Problem as applied to plants:

"“I can’t say for sure what [consciousness] is,” says von Diest, a post-doctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and at Coventry University in the UK. “What I can say is that there seems to be growing evidence for the fact that our consciousness is non-local, meaning it’s not limited to the human brain, and it’s not even limited to the human mind. It’s pervasive in all of life..."

An interesting new article on the possibility of plant consciousness, at https://nautil.us/issue/104/harmony/plan...t-even-see .

František Baluška is a plant cell biologist at University of Bonn, and has for some time been of the opinion that plants are intelligent — after all, they can process information and make decisions. And they apparently feel pain and may even see. From the interview:

"One of the first things we talked about was how plants feel pain. Fellow foresters roll their eyes when I talk about spruce feeling pain when they are attacked by bark beetles. “Of course a plant, trees can feel pain,” the professor answered when I asked him about it. “Every life form must be able to do that in order to react appropriately.” He explained that there is evidence for this at the molecular level. Like animals, plants produce substances that suppress pain. He doesn’t see why that would be necessary if there was no pain.

There’s a vine that grows in South America that adapts to the form of the tree or bush it is climbing on. Its leaves look just like the leaves on the host plant. You might think this is chemically controlled. In that case, the vine might be detecting scent compounds from the bush and changing the shape of its leaves in a way that was genetically predetermined. Three different leaf shapes had been observed. Then a researcher came up with the idea of creating an artificial plant with plastic leaves and relocating our botanical chameleon to its new home. What happened next was amazing. The vine imitated the artificial leaves, just as it had imitated the leaves in nature. For Baluška this is clear proof that the vine can see. How else could it get information about a shape it had never encountered before? In this case, the usual suspects—chemical messages released by the host plant or electric signals between both plants—were absent. He went further. In his opinion, it is conceivable that all plants might be able to see."

Note: Baluska doesn't know whether plants have consciousness. But the article notes:

"Do plants wake up (after they are observed to recover from a general anaesthetic that suppresses all electrical activity) as we do when we come to after a general anesthetic? This is the critical question, because in order to wake up, you need one thing above all others: consciousness. And it was exactly this question that a reporter from The New York Times posed to Baluška. I really liked his answer: “No one can answer this because you cannot ask [the plants].”

Note: Baluska doesn't know whether plants have consciousness. But the article notes:

This is the critical question, because in order to wake up, you need one thing above all others: consciousness. And it was exactly this question that a reporter from The New York Times posed to Baluška. I really liked his answer: “No one can answer this because you cannot ask [the plants].

Personally, I'm always dissatisfied with this sort of answer, "No one can answer this", it is a kind of feeble way of avoiding even trying.

Think of some unrelated question: "What does the far side of the Moon look like?", at some point this question must have been asked and the answer would come back, "No one can answer this, because no-one can go there". I think we need to be open about many such questions, and the possibility of there being a way to answer them, or many different ways. For example without really trying, I could think of three possible ways to attempt to find an answer. These suggestions are 1. meditation, 2. a drug trip and 3. examine NDE reports to see whether the question has already been answered. Of course other people with a different mindset than myself might think of other quite different possibilities. I think it is better to try than just say "it's impossible". I also am reminded of some of Cleve Backster's studies.

On a lark, Backster, who had a playful streak that belied his military background (he studied astrology, dabbled with LSD and supposedly spent a summer as a stunt diver in a circus), decided to hook the plant up to his lie-detection machine.

In human subjects, a polygraph measures three things: pulse, respiration rate and galvanic skin response, otherwise known as perspiration. If you’re worried about being caught in a lie, your levels will spike or dip. Backster wanted to induce a similar anxiety in the plant, so he decided to set one of its leaves on fire. But before he could even get a match, the polygraph registered an intense reaction on the part of the Dracaena. To Backster, the implication was as indisputable as it was unbelievable. Not only had the plant demonstrated fear — it had also read his mind.

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/artic...e-backster

Cleve Backster (1924–2013) was a polygraph expert known for his research into plant and cell biocommunication. From the late 1960s, Backster attracted considerable notice with experiments that he claimed demonstrated a degree of conscious awareness in plants, from which he developed his theory of ‘primary perception’. Attempts at replication were mixed, and the findings remain controversial.

Personally, I'm always dissatisfied with this sort of answer, "No one can answer this", it is a kind of feeble way of avoiding even trying.

Think of some unrelated question: "What does the far side of the Moon look like?", at some point this question must have been asked and the answer would come back, "No one can answer this, because no-one can go there". I think we need to be open about many such questions, and the possibility of there being a way to answer them, or many different ways. For example without really trying, I could think of three possible ways to attempt to find an answer. These suggestions are 1. meditation, 2. a drug trip and 3. examine NDE reports to see whether the question has already been answered. Of course other people with a different mindset than myself might think of other quite different possibilities. I think it is better to try than just say "it's impossible". I also am reminded of some of Cleve Backster's studies.



https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/artic...e-backster

However, the question of how to be sure that another being actually has consciousness is a very deep and difficult one, and one that has not been answered.  As has been discovered by neuroscientists and especially philosophers working on the consciousness problem. It's really a mystery, involved with the so-called Turing Test, which really isn't certain since the other being could really be a very sophisticated AI giving programmed responses and interjections based on a huge data base of conversations. There actually seems to be no possible way to be absolutely sure since ultimately you would have to be able to get inside another person's head and actually experience their stream of consciousness (like a Vulcan mind-meld).

There actually seems to be no possible way to be absolutely sure since ultimately you would have to be able to get inside another person's head and actually experience their stream of consciousness (like a Vulcan mind-meld).

Yeah, I don't trust the Turing test, I think it's obsolete. When you say "get inside another person's head and actually experience their stream of consciousness" that was what I had in mind in my suggestions of meditation/drugs/ NDE, all of which potentially include that sort of mind-meld - at least possibly. There's also dreaming. The possibilities go on and on. Though I respect your point of view, I personally don't accept the "impossibility" as a complete answer, it expresses a limited view rather than all possible views. With due respect of course.

I remember as a small child being either falsely accused of something, or harshly judged over it, and I understood then that if the person could share my thoughts and experiences they would be accepting rather than judgemental. Which is exactly what is found in NDE accounts. I must have recalled that from before I was born, I think.