weltweit
Well-Known Member
Oh, well so am I.
I just said what plants do to illustrate that what they do seems quite clever but that that is not the same as having consciousness.
Plant consciousness
- Thread starter elbows
- Start date
I just said what plants do to illustrate that what they do seems quite clever but that that is not the same as having consciousness.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
smmudge
i know the smudge is true
Hmm sorry I could have been clearer. I was just using the point that plants don't have consciousness to highlight the problem with the use of the word 'know' in your post there.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Yes, I could also have been clearer.
I said plants know how to follow the sun, when to open etc etc .... I didn't mean "know" in the way a human knows something. Well the plants are triggerred into action because they detect a stimulus of some kind, it is kind of clever, pretty amazing that they do what they do.
I did hear a man, whose opinion I respect, say that humans are unique in having self-conciousness. I have no idea if that's true, but it may be. So, a bee may have conciousness, but it is not thinking, "I am a bee", it is just busy bee-ing/being. Likewise a plant is 'plant-ing', without knowing that it is a plant. Everything is Awareness, without the knowledge of itself as a separate entity. Apparently, to have this self-knowledge is uniquely human.
I read somewhere that a growing lettuce will register stress, if you come near it with a knife with the intent to cut it. I can believe that.
Another interesting article on this subject that I read recently in 'Scientific American'- Daniel Chamovitz- "Do plants think?"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz
I find all of this fascinating, myself.
I read somewhere that a growing lettuce will register stress, if you come near it with a knife with the intent to cut it. I can believe that.
Another interesting article on this subject that I read recently in 'Scientific American'- Daniel Chamovitz- "Do plants think?"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-plants-think-daniel-chamovitz
I find all of this fascinating, myself.
xes
F.O.A.D
If a lettuice can show signs of stress, when being attacked with a knife, would that not show some level of self awareness, in a sort of "I don't want to be cut up" sort of a way. Or in the very least, make it so that the idea is not such an absurd one. And the way that plants can react to certain music, there's got to be a good reason for that, especially as they don't have ears. I know they can convert light waves, maybe they can do something with soundwaves too.
smmudge
i know the smudge is true
I see it as similar to how my body regulates temperature or fights infection or digests food. I don't know how to do any of that stuff, I don't know how to make my body do it; not in the same way that I know how to turn the heating up or book a GP appointment or cook. It's just a series of mindless reactions, 'programmed' that way.
Yetman
Cheesecar Fucksquad #1
I dont believe they are conscious as we are conscious, but sub-conscious in the way that we have similar traits where we just do things without thinking about them (i.e breathe, heart beating etc) but thats still a form of consciousness is it not?
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
no.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I have to say that that article has lots of words in it but manages to say nothing.
While I am at a certain level still 'aware' when I'm asleep - able to wake up when something potentially dangerous happens, what I'm not doing is running a model of existence which I can then experience. There's a good reason why we call this state 'unconsciousness'. Plants don't run any such models of existence that they might then in turn experience from a subjective point of view. In that sense, it is hard to see how they are aware in any way that is more aware than I am when I'm asleep. And they are certainly not self-aware in any meaningful sense.
While I am at a certain level still 'aware' when I'm asleep - able to wake up when something potentially dangerous happens, what I'm not doing is running a model of existence which I can then experience. There's a good reason why we call this state 'unconsciousness'. Plants don't run any such models of existence that they might then in turn experience from a subjective point of view. In that sense, it is hard to see how they are aware in any way that is more aware than I am when I'm asleep. And they are certainly not self-aware in any meaningful sense.
Yetman
Cheesecar Fucksquad #1
Thanks for clearing that up
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Thread title makes me think of the seminal "The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes" by The Very Things.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
Slugist, they may well have very good reasons to cross the path. Did you ask them?
Yes, that's it. In a sense, Conciousness is all there is.
Awareness yes, but not self-awareness. It's similar to someone throwing a punch at you- you don't think "oh, this guy has thrown a punch, I better do something about that"- you just react by blocking. It's not a concious decision; you are not aware of making it. The system automatically defends itself on a level that is below the thinking, self-aware brain- and it's the same for plants. No 'thinking' is involved.
To react to danger or pleasure doesn't imply self-awareness- I'd say the reaction usually precedes cognitive processing. If not always :-D
Anonymous1
unknown member
xes
F.O.A.D
Yes, but without any sensory equipment to tell you of impending danger, how does one react to it? A plant has no ears, yet can react to music, the proverbial lettuice has no eyes, but can react to someone coming at it with a knife. I mean, I could "see" someone out of the corner of my eye, but not really register them, and they could swing a punch which I could dodge, but that's because I can actually see them. A plant has none of this at its disposal, so how can it possibly do the things we're discussing.
The chap in the interview I posted above explains it much better than I can-
"...if we realize that all of plant biology arises from the evolutionary constriction of the “rootedness” that keep plants immobile, then we can start to appreciate the very sophisticated biology going on in leaves and flowers. If you think about it, rootedness is a huge evolutionary constraint. It means that plants can’t escape a bad environment, can’t migrate in the search of food or a mate. So plants had to develop incredibly sensitive and complex sensory mechanisms that would let them survive in ever changing environments. I mean if you’re hungry or thirsty, you can walk to the nearest watering hole (or bar). If you’re hot, you can move north, if you’re looking for a mate, you can go out to a party. But plants are immobile. They need to see where their food is. They need to feel the weather, and they need to smell danger. And then they need to be able to integrate all of this very dynamic and changing information. Just because we don’t see plants moving doesn’t mean that there’s not a very rich and dynamic world going on inside the plant."
Just because plants don't have what we recognise as sensory organs, doesn't mean that they aren't sensing and interacting with their environment.
"...if we realize that all of plant biology arises from the evolutionary constriction of the “rootedness” that keep plants immobile, then we can start to appreciate the very sophisticated biology going on in leaves and flowers. If you think about it, rootedness is a huge evolutionary constraint. It means that plants can’t escape a bad environment, can’t migrate in the search of food or a mate. So plants had to develop incredibly sensitive and complex sensory mechanisms that would let them survive in ever changing environments. I mean if you’re hungry or thirsty, you can walk to the nearest watering hole (or bar). If you’re hot, you can move north, if you’re looking for a mate, you can go out to a party. But plants are immobile. They need to see where their food is. They need to feel the weather, and they need to smell danger. And then they need to be able to integrate all of this very dynamic and changing information. Just because we don’t see plants moving doesn’t mean that there’s not a very rich and dynamic world going on inside the plant."
Just because plants don't have what we recognise as sensory organs, doesn't mean that they aren't sensing and interacting with their environment.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Hmm Im not sure about that. They have to develop mechanisms for coping with such conditions, but the very fact they can't do much to change their circumstances surely means that a number of sensory aspects are of no help. I like Cactuses, they do clever stuff such as doing the unavoidable things that cause loss of moisture at the time of day where the moisture loss will be minimised. But they don't need to 'see where their food is' and they don't need to smell danger, they have their guards against danger permanently activated.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
The thing is - what exactly was it doing?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Of course. But there's a big jump from that to consciousness. Conscious experience needs to have content. Specifically, it is nothing directly to do with interacting with the environment at all - although that is of course its purpose. It is a self-generated representation. It is a model of reality if you like, rather than reality itself. Do plants make representations to themselves? No. In that case, plants are not conscious in the way that we normally mean the word conscious, just as we are not conscious when we are in dreamless sleep.
Nagel asked what it was like to be a bat. I think that is an answerable question. It is a question that has meaning because bats are conscious in the sense above - they do make representations to themselves. They do model reality. But does the question 'what is it like to be a rhododendron?' make any sense? Does it make any more sense than to ask 'what is it like to be in a coma?' or 'what is it like to be dead?', or 'what is it like to be an iPhone?' I don't think so.
That's why in the end that article doesn't say very much. It points out that plants interact with their environment in complex ways. But so what? What does that have to do with consciousness?
fractionMan
Custom Title
wat
mattie
missing in inaction
Some really interesting posts here.
One thing regarding consciousness, I recall a relatively recent experiment where scientists tested some monkeys' (or some primate) decision-making under uncertainty - I think it involved some form of pattern-matching for a reward, with the pattern changing over time. The interesting conclusion was the monkeys would hesitate when the pattern was changed, and they began to show signs of self-doubt, which revealed they were aware they were thinking and not just responding to stimuli. Most significantly to this discussion, they were aware that their mental model was an abstraction of the real world, and that this mental model might not be a perfect fit. This, to my understanding, is not the case with other animals, who will of course abstract a view of the world based upon perceptive senses, but are unaware they are doing this.
I will admit I have not really thought through whether this means my dog was closer to a cabbage or a chimpanzee in terms of mental faculty. I will say she wasn't the brightest, bless her.
One thing regarding consciousness, I recall a relatively recent experiment where scientists tested some monkeys' (or some primate) decision-making under uncertainty - I think it involved some form of pattern-matching for a reward, with the pattern changing over time. The interesting conclusion was the monkeys would hesitate when the pattern was changed, and they began to show signs of self-doubt, which revealed they were aware they were thinking and not just responding to stimuli. Most significantly to this discussion, they were aware that their mental model was an abstraction of the real world, and that this mental model might not be a perfect fit. This, to my understanding, is not the case with other animals, who will of course abstract a view of the world based upon perceptive senses, but are unaware they are doing this.
I will admit I have not really thought through whether this means my dog was closer to a cabbage or a chimpanzee in terms of mental faculty. I will say she wasn't the brightest, bless her.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Well, I think your point above about primates (sounds like apes rather than monkeys, but would be interested to know that this was monkeys - previous research has shown surprisingly little evidence of monkey (as opposed to ape) self- awareness) illustrates an important point: namely that it is possible to be aware without being aware that you are aware. It is possible to know something without knowing that you know it.
Chimp awareness is probably somewhere around that of a 2-3 year old human. They understand that there are other people in the world, and that those others don't necessarily know what they know, but they have difficulty holding in their heads the idea they know and the alternative idea that another knows. They find it possible to tell that another doesn't know something, but far harder to understand that another might have a false belief about something. This might explain one of the more puzzling aspects of chimp behaviour - the absence of active teaching. Another strange absence is the absence of compassion: chimps grieve, but they are not seen to comfort others who are grieving. Again, a little like young children in that regard. Some really interesting work's been done with bonobos, though, and it does seem that with the right stimulation, it is possible to develop an ape's self-awareness beyond that which would occur in the wild.
By contrast, monkey awareness isn't at this level. Their knowledge appears to be very 'domain-specific', meaning that they can't apply something learned in one area and generalise it to other areas. This is a key ability that self-awareness appears to allow - and a great advantage of self-awareness in that it opens up all kinds of opportunities to learn.
And this is probably more or less where your dog is. Very little ability to generalise; very little self-awareness; very little ability to reflect on what she knows. This does not mean she is not conscious. Not at all. But it is a consciousness with little or no inner monologue. If you think about your consciousness, it is far more than just the thoughts you have: you are still aware when you're not thinking. And of course, the thoughts themselves are representations of your thought that you make to yourself. A dog's consciousness just won't contain that aspect, that's all. But it is aware in a very different way from a cabbage. To touch on jazzz's point, no, consciousness is not well understood, but that doesn't mean that it isn't understood at all: for instance, without activity in the thalamus, conscious experience is not possible. However consciousness is generated, it is very much a function of brains.
ETA:
I think this is the right talk, in which one bonobo spontaneously starts drawing symbols. Apologies if it's the wrong one but I can't check at the moment.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
It needs to communicate with its buddies, talk about the weather, if that bumble bee is coming back tommorrow, what there is to eat around here etc ....
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Representation is the key. Is there a model of 'reality' being generated by the organism that the organism takes to be reality, which it uses to respond appropriately to its environment? In plants there simply isn't. There is no need for them to create such representations, and they are unable to do so. In which case, they are not conscious, just as we are not conscious when we are in a dreamless sleep.
There is a theory that such representations became necessary particularly with the evolution of vision. A lot of processing has to go on to create a stable image that we can use - what we experience in our consciousness is far removed from the unstable, incomplete images falling on our retinas. So we can't react usefully to the raw data. We instead use that data to generate an image ourselves. Crucially, this image is of ourselves in our environment. It's no good just creating the image to look at - we need to place ourselves in the image, as the one looking at the image. Plants do not create images for themselves in this way.
I think some posters here (Jazzz, for instance) are being careless about their definition of 'consciousness'.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Definitely. Enormously interesting and difficult questions.
Similar threads
