Natures wonders: Plant 'intelligence' (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 25, 2016, 13:52 (3192 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Another book explains plant intelligence. Note the author helpfully makes the point, lost on some, that we are here discussing intelligence as the use of information, not intelligence as a synonym for consciousness. dhw note! - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160221-plant-science-botany-evolution-mabey-... - I'm afraid my understanding of this whole article is diametrically opposite to yours. First, though, I have emphasized over and over again that intelligence is NOT a synonym for consciousness, let alone for self-consciousness (see below). Consciousness is awareness of the information, and intelligence is not “the use of information” but the ability to use the information. Please reread very carefully the passage you have quoted here: - QUOTE: "What the new botany is suggesting is that plants are sensitive and problem-solving but bypass the need for self-consciousness and brain activity that we assume is necessary for intelligence. People who think this are often accused of being anthropocentric, believing that plants are behaving like humans. The philosopher Daniel Dennett marvelously riposted that critics of this theory are "cerebrocentric," believing intelligent behavior is not possible without the infinitely superior human brain. What the new work shows is that plants, by means we do not yet fully understand, are capable of behaving like intelligent beings. They are capable of storing—and learning from—memories of what happens to them." - David's comment: Note. Per Dennett, the plants are not thinking. - Dennett is attacking people who argue that plants are not intelligent. But as usual you are equating intelligence with consciousness, and consciousness with self-consciousness, and you are misled by your own constantly repeated conviction that organisms without a brain cannot “think”. Nobody here is claiming that plants “think” in the sense of questioning themselves or the universe, but thinking is not confined to philosophy. It is not possible to behave intelligently if (a) you are not conscious of your environment, and (b) you do not have a means of processing the information that comes from your environment. The message derived from Gagliano's experiment is summed up as follows: "The automatic assumption that plants are victims, incapable of learning how to cope with new conditions, is an insult and runs contrary to the new evidence." If plants are sentient, able to remember past experiences, able to solve problems and able to learn how to cope with new conditions, they are intelligent, and their behaviour is the consequence of their intelligent processing of information, which makes you into one of the “cerebrocentric critics” who insult them with your automatic assumptions. You are of course free to do so, but I do not see how you can possibly believe that these researchers are on your side.