Panpsychism Makes a Comeback: denied in plants II (General)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 04, 2019, 00:45 (1756 days ago) @ David Turell

Another similar review:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/these-scientists-don-t-think-plants-think?utm_source...

"The idea that plants might be conscious has found renewed vigour since a 2006 paper heralded the arrival of a new subfield of botany known as plant neurobiology (PN).

"PN researchers have argued that there are parallels between electrical signalling in plants and the nervous systems of animals, and even for a botanical equivalent of the nervous system based around hormones belonging to the auxin class acting like neurotransmitters. They hold that plants have intelligence, intention and can even learn. Some have revived Darwin’s idea that a root tip is a “brain-like command centre”.

"But these ideas have not been received enormously well. Indeed, one of the authors of the current paper was among the many scientists to sign a letter published in 2007 arguing that plant neurobiology was a field without a subject of study: that is, plants simply don’t have neurobiology.

"That author, Lincoln Taiz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, US, along with seven other colleagues from various international institutions, has now published a critical review of the state of play of the field of plant neurobiology. And the title says it all: “Plants neither possess nor require consciousness.”

"Taiz and colleagues survey several problems with PN, from the philosophical to the experimental. They argue that plant behaviour, initiated by internal electrical signalling, which is used, in part, for messaging across the large distances of the organism, are genetically preprogramed.
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"These behaviours have been mistakenly anthropomorphised, understood by projecting human traits on to non-human organisms, by PN researchers. In seeing something human in a plant’s reactions, advocates of PN have erroneously concluded that plants must have intention, intelligence and consciousness. The danger of this, says Taiz, “is that it undermines the objectivity of the researcher”.

"Similarly, they dismiss, or more carefully parse, the significance of a number of key experimental findings in the field, concluding that much of PN’s empirical backing is far more equivocal that advocates admit.

***

“'Recently,” write Taiz and his co-authors, “Todd E. Feinberg and Jon M. Mallatt conducted a broad survey of the anatomical, neurophysiological, behavioural, and evolutionary literature from which they were able to derive a consensus set of principles that allowed them to hypothesise how and when primary consciousness, the most basic type of sensory experience, evolved.”

"Based on their research “Feinberg and Mallatt concluded that the only animals that satisfied their criteria for consciousness were the vertebrates (including fish), arthropods (e.g., insects, crabs), and cephalopods (e.g., octopuses, squids).”

"Plants, notably, do feature on this list.

"This leads Taiz to conclude that “if there are animals that don't have consciousness, then you can be pretty confident that plants, which don't even have neurons – let alone brains – don't have it either.'”

Comment: Same conclusion: consciousness comes with a brain.