Plants monitor the integrity of their barrier by sensing gas diffusion
12 comments
·July 5, 2025spacephysics
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)?
bullfightonmars
Stimulus-response is not consciousness. There is nothing subjective about this mechanical and chemical response to injury.
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.
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.
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.
At what point will we see that plants are conscious, just in a different manner than animals colloquially?