Oof, what a read :/ I’m very familiar with plants as I’ve studied them for years. Please don’t take this article serious. I wish there was more research communication of how cool plants are and how they function/live. But this article is not the way to go. This is pseudoscience. Most of this is just twisting words to sound nice without any real understanding underneath. The following are my thoughts while I read the article:
Interesting read, although when I stumbled upon this I started to have doubts: “a skill that surely helped on the savannah when we had to recognize a tiger hiding in the bushes from just a few broken stripes.” There were and are no tigers in Africa where humans evolved. Why use such a obviously bullshit example? The author automatically discredits themself.
The rest of the article doesn’t get better, often talking in suggestive language like “so the plants know which way is up”. What does know mean in this context? The author implies that there is some knowing consciousness in plants. “They can distinguish self from non-self, stranger from kin.” Oh really? Is this really what they are doing? Or are these maybe just responses to various environmental pressures (which are different if there are plants of the same species around)?
“Plants chat among themselves and with other species. They release volatile organic compounds with a lexicon, Calvo says, of more than 1,700 “words”—allowing them to shout things that a human might translate as “caterpillar incoming” or “*$@#, lawn mower!”” OK, we’ve reached pure anthropomorphism now. I could write the same text about smart home computers communicating with each other suggesting that they are conscious and have feelings. This only distorts the whole discussion of how we could think of plant consciousness differently from animal consciousness. But that’s what the article tried to do in the first place, isn’t it?
“If a plant could respond to sensory information on a one-to-one basis—when the light does x, the plant does y—it would be fair to think of plants as mere automatons, operating without thought, without a point of view. But in real life, that’s never the case. Like all organisms, plants are immersed in dynamic, precarious environments, forced to confront problems with no clear solutions, betting their lives as they go.” OK, so they are much more complex systems than mere “stimulus in, reflex out” sort of system. But why does this conclude anything? They could be highly skilled, adaptable automatons? Like computers.
And then they try to reverse argue the following “If the representational theory of the mind says that plants can’t perform intelligent, cognitive behaviors, and the evidence shows that plants do perform intelligent, cognitive behaviors, maybe it’s time to rethink the theory.” Who said plants can perform intelligent, cognitive behaviors in the first place? The article by actual plant researchers you just dismissed without any arguments claims the opposite of that!
"So maybe we should question the very premise that neurons are needed for cognition at all.” Yes, I’m all up for that. But we need some basis for this discussion and just saying look plants are so cool! doesn’t cut it.
The article then spends a lot of time romanticizing plants like this “By using these flows to guide their movements, plants accomplish all kinds of feats, such as “shade avoidance”—steering clear of over-populated areas”. How is this different from a trained machine though?
“Machines are made—one and done—but living things make themselves, and they have to remake themselves so long as they want to keep living.” Maybe the real revelation is that plants are living beings and machines are not? Have you been defining life after all instead of conscious beings? Because what has been written about plants here certainly applies to fungi, bacteria, archaea and protists in some way or another. Even viruses adapt in some way, don’t they? But it would be much harder to argue for conscious bacteria. It’s probably easier for you to stick to plants.
“You’re organized to have a certain autonomy, and that immediately carves out a world or a domain of relevance.” Thompson calls this “life-mind continuity.” Or as Calvo puts it, echoing the 19th-century psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, “Where there is life there is already mind.”” Oh OK, let’s just define life = mind and we’re done with the discussion altogether.
Well, back to plants: “They don’t have brains, but according to Calvo they have something just as good: complex vascular systems, with networks of connections arranged in layers not unlike a mammalian cortex.” This whole thing reads like someone has never thought much of plants and discovered how fascinating they are. And now they try to prove how cool they are by relating them to humans with some loose facts they picked up. Wait till you learn about how ingenious photosynthesis is and how clever C4 and CAM plants are…
This section “As Calvo sums it up, “They can count to five!”” is just further confusing human behavior with plants. How do you know they count to five and not just use some change in chemical/electrical gradients to determine that enough hairs have been triggered? This is just bullshitting the reader into thinking plants are conscious.
““Clearly,” Thompson says, “plants are self-organizing, self-maintaining, self-regulating, highly adaptive, they engage in complex signaling among each other, within species and across species, and they do that within a framework of multicellularity that’s different from animal life but exhibits all the same things: autonomy, intelligence, adaptivity, sense-making.”” OK, we are past the point where they even try discussing anything in depth and just say how cool plants are, therefore they are conscious. No shit, all life forms (except probably viruses) are self-organizing, self-maintaining, self-regulating, highly adaptive organisms who interact with the world in complex ways. Just because you use some cool sounding words you don’t prove anything.
I’m curious what these people will say when they discover that half the human body is actually non-human cells who also self-organize, self-maintain and self-regulate. The billion consciousnesses of the human body!! We are connected to everything through our uber-consciousness!
“They have no private, conscious worlds locked up inside them. But according to 4E cognitive science, neither do we. “The mistake was to think that cognition was in the head,” Calvo says. “It belongs to the relationship between the organism and its environment.”” This is interesting. So our consciousness is not in our head not even inside us but in our interaction with our environment? Nice philosophical thought experiment but how does this translate to our real world? Not really. Maybe we shouldn’t use personal pronouns altogether and stop thinking of us as individuals because we are not distinct subjects. We are only subjects in the relation to our environment! What?!
The end of the article makes nearly a good point just to dive further into anthropomorphism again: “But more to the point, the plants appeared to me now not as objects, but as subjects—as living, striving beings trying to make it in the world—and I found myself wondering whether they felt lonely in their pots, or panicked when I forgot to water them, or dizzy when I rotated them on the windowsill.” You were so close. Yes, plants are obviously not just lifeless objects!! Who would have thought? Is this the revelation of the article? But why then anthropomorphize them in the same breath? This is sooo frustrating to read!
This whole article is basically just semantics with pseudoscience and some scientific facts about plants sprinkled in.
Oof, what a read :/ I’m very familiar with plants as I’ve studied them for years. Please don’t take this article serious. I wish there was more research communication of how cool plants are and how they function/live. But this article is not the way to go. This is pseudoscience. Most of this is just twisting words to sound nice without any real understanding underneath. The following are my thoughts while I read the article:
Interesting read, although when I stumbled upon this I started to have doubts: “a skill that surely helped on the savannah when we had to recognize a tiger hiding in the bushes from just a few broken stripes.” There were and are no tigers in Africa where humans evolved. Why use such a obviously bullshit example? The author automatically discredits themself.
The rest of the article doesn’t get better, often talking in suggestive language like “so the plants know which way is up”. What does know mean in this context? The author implies that there is some knowing consciousness in plants. “They can distinguish self from non-self, stranger from kin.” Oh really? Is this really what they are doing? Or are these maybe just responses to various environmental pressures (which are different if there are plants of the same species around)?
“Plants chat among themselves and with other species. They release volatile organic compounds with a lexicon, Calvo says, of more than 1,700 “words”—allowing them to shout things that a human might translate as “caterpillar incoming” or “*$@#, lawn mower!”” OK, we’ve reached pure anthropomorphism now. I could write the same text about smart home computers communicating with each other suggesting that they are conscious and have feelings. This only distorts the whole discussion of how we could think of plant consciousness differently from animal consciousness. But that’s what the article tried to do in the first place, isn’t it?
“If a plant could respond to sensory information on a one-to-one basis—when the light does x, the plant does y—it would be fair to think of plants as mere automatons, operating without thought, without a point of view. But in real life, that’s never the case. Like all organisms, plants are immersed in dynamic, precarious environments, forced to confront problems with no clear solutions, betting their lives as they go.” OK, so they are much more complex systems than mere “stimulus in, reflex out” sort of system. But why does this conclude anything? They could be highly skilled, adaptable automatons? Like computers.
And then they try to reverse argue the following “If the representational theory of the mind says that plants can’t perform intelligent, cognitive behaviors, and the evidence shows that plants do perform intelligent, cognitive behaviors, maybe it’s time to rethink the theory.” Who said plants can perform intelligent, cognitive behaviors in the first place? The article by actual plant researchers you just dismissed without any arguments claims the opposite of that!
"So maybe we should question the very premise that neurons are needed for cognition at all.” Yes, I’m all up for that. But we need some basis for this discussion and just saying look plants are so cool! doesn’t cut it.
The article then spends a lot of time romanticizing plants like this “By using these flows to guide their movements, plants accomplish all kinds of feats, such as “shade avoidance”—steering clear of over-populated areas”. How is this different from a trained machine though?
“Machines are made—one and done—but living things make themselves, and they have to remake themselves so long as they want to keep living.” Maybe the real revelation is that plants are living beings and machines are not? Have you been defining life after all instead of conscious beings? Because what has been written about plants here certainly applies to fungi, bacteria, archaea and protists in some way or another. Even viruses adapt in some way, don’t they? But it would be much harder to argue for conscious bacteria. It’s probably easier for you to stick to plants.
“You’re organized to have a certain autonomy, and that immediately carves out a world or a domain of relevance.” Thompson calls this “life-mind continuity.” Or as Calvo puts it, echoing the 19th-century psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, “Where there is life there is already mind.”” Oh OK, let’s just define life = mind and we’re done with the discussion altogether.
Well, back to plants: “They don’t have brains, but according to Calvo they have something just as good: complex vascular systems, with networks of connections arranged in layers not unlike a mammalian cortex.” This whole thing reads like someone has never thought much of plants and discovered how fascinating they are. And now they try to prove how cool they are by relating them to humans with some loose facts they picked up. Wait till you learn about how ingenious photosynthesis is and how clever C4 and CAM plants are…
This section “As Calvo sums it up, “They can count to five!”” is just further confusing human behavior with plants. How do you know they count to five and not just use some change in chemical/electrical gradients to determine that enough hairs have been triggered? This is just bullshitting the reader into thinking plants are conscious.
““Clearly,” Thompson says, “plants are self-organizing, self-maintaining, self-regulating, highly adaptive, they engage in complex signaling among each other, within species and across species, and they do that within a framework of multicellularity that’s different from animal life but exhibits all the same things: autonomy, intelligence, adaptivity, sense-making.”” OK, we are past the point where they even try discussing anything in depth and just say how cool plants are, therefore they are conscious. No shit, all life forms (except probably viruses) are self-organizing, self-maintaining, self-regulating, highly adaptive organisms who interact with the world in complex ways. Just because you use some cool sounding words you don’t prove anything.
I’m curious what these people will say when they discover that half the human body is actually non-human cells who also self-organize, self-maintain and self-regulate. The billion consciousnesses of the human body!! We are connected to everything through our uber-consciousness!
“They have no private, conscious worlds locked up inside them. But according to 4E cognitive science, neither do we. “The mistake was to think that cognition was in the head,” Calvo says. “It belongs to the relationship between the organism and its environment.”” This is interesting. So our consciousness is not in our head not even inside us but in our interaction with our environment? Nice philosophical thought experiment but how does this translate to our real world? Not really. Maybe we shouldn’t use personal pronouns altogether and stop thinking of us as individuals because we are not distinct subjects. We are only subjects in the relation to our environment! What?!
The end of the article makes nearly a good point just to dive further into anthropomorphism again: “But more to the point, the plants appeared to me now not as objects, but as subjects—as living, striving beings trying to make it in the world—and I found myself wondering whether they felt lonely in their pots, or panicked when I forgot to water them, or dizzy when I rotated them on the windowsill.” You were so close. Yes, plants are obviously not just lifeless objects!! Who would have thought? Is this the revelation of the article? But why then anthropomorphize them in the same breath? This is sooo frustrating to read!
This whole article is basically just semantics with pseudoscience and some scientific facts about plants sprinkled in.