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Plants monitor the integrity of their barrier by sensing gas diffusion

spacephysics

At what point will we see that plants are conscious, just in a different manner than animals colloquially?

signa11

you might find this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose quite interesting.

mr jc-bose explored exactly these ideas more than a century ago !

bullfightonmars

Stimulus-response is not consciousness. There is nothing subjective about this mechanical and chemical response to injury.

xelxebar

Good try, plant. We're onto you.

If we're going to agree on anything, I just wish consciousness discussions could agree on some phenomenological referent(s) for the term "consciousness". The word is used in a way that is little more than a sed-replace for elan vital, regaling all discourse to little more than a volley of solipsistic value proclamations IMHO.

stouset

I don't really disagree. But I also can't help but imagine a hyper-advanced alien species thinking the same thing about us due to us lacking some notionally critical (to them) aspect of intelligence/consciousness and paving over the solar system to make room for a hyperspace bypass.

londons_explore

Science hasn't really understood consciousness.

If you don't understand consciousness, how to make it from first principles and how it works, then I don't think you can confidently say "this isn't conscious" about much.

hombre_fatal

We can explain plant behavior through known physical processes though.

We don't need to lean on consciousness nor other mysteries at all. Nor we do have to when a rock changes color as it gets wet.

And without this parsimony, then we could claim that any unexplained mystery underlies any well-understood phenomenon which doesn't sound like much of an epistemic standard.

nemonemo

Wikipedia article about Consciousness opens with an interesting line: "Defining consciousness is challenging; about forty meanings are attributed to the term."

Perhaps "consciousness" is just a poor term to use in a scientific discussion.

danwills

I think it's pretty clear that plants have agency, and maybe that can be regarded as a phenomena that is on the same spectrum as consciousness, just at a lower intensity (and maybe slower too)?

gerdesj

"I think it's pretty clear that plants have agency"

Why (and define agency)?

Plants worry about stimuli such as light and water and not what is on BBC2.

CGMthrowaway

This is hormones - which, in humans, are usually explained as working AGAINST active consciousness (e.g. blinded by lust) rather than as an example of it

bdamm

Consciousness is surely more than just cold calculating antipathy.

morkalork

There's a fun movie "The Creeping Garden" that asks that question about slime mold which can solve mazes but doesn't have any sort of brain.

jazzyjackson

What is art?

bgilroy26

Art is fashion. It's something someone makes on purpose.

CGMthrowaway

Software is fashion

keernan

I find the subject of plant signaling - internal signaling as well as signaling between plants - even between different plant species - to be absolutely fascinating.

Bluestein

It is.-