Natures wonders: Plant awareness (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 30, 2019, 18:20 (1941 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: This article says plants have a sort of cognition and memory:
https://aeon.co/essays/beyond-the-animal-brain-plants-have-cognitive-capacities-too?utm...

QUOTES: "Plants are not simply organic, passive automata. We now know that they can sense and integrate information about dozens of different environmental variables, and that they use this knowledge to guide flexible, adaptive behaviour.” (dhw’s bold)

"Some theorists worry that concepts such as ‘plant memory’ are nothing but obfuscating metaphors. When we try to apply cognitive theory to plants in a less vague way, they say, it seems that plants are doing something quite unlike animals. Plant mechanisms are complex and fascinating, they agree, but not cognitive. There’s a concern that we’re defining memory so broadly as to be meaningless, or that things such as habituation are not, in themselves, cognitive mechanisms.(DAVID’s bold)

"Of course, it’s a stretch of the imagination to try to think about what thinking might even mean for these organisms, lacking as they do the brain(mind)/body(motor) divide. However, by pushing ourselves, we might end up expanding the concepts – such as ‘memory’, ‘learning’ and ‘thought’ – that initially motivated our enquiry. Having done so, we see that in many cases, talk of plant learning and memory is not just metaphorical, but also matter-of-fact." (dhw’s bold)

DAVID: Metaphor or fact? Note my bolds. As the reader might suspect, I view the epigenetic aspects of this issue as indication that all of this is automatic and built into the genetic instructions in plants, as with cell responses in animals. For me it is all one pattern, since with plants we are the outside looking in as with animal cells. The reason: life was designed by a mind that could plan for the necessary responses.

dhw: It’s always good to hear that there are some experts who disagree with you. (Note my bolds). Thank you. And one can’t help wondering why your always-in-control God “had to” preprogramme or dabble all the different (and especially the extinct) plant and animal responses and adaptations and means of communication for the sole purpose of filling in 3.5 billion years until he specially designed the only thing he wanted to design…

Same old mantra. My view is God in-control chose to evolve and you can't understand why He should be so patient. Since He is eternal, He has all the time He wants. My God has no resemblance to what you imagine as you attempt at non-believing theism