Debunking a myth: plant consciousness
- PDF / 1,012,300 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 56 Downloads / 203 Views
REVIEW
Debunking a myth: plant consciousness Jon Mallatt 1
&
Michael R. Blatt 2 & Andreas Draguhn 3 & David G. Robinson 4 & Lincoln Taiz 5
Received: 27 September 2020 / Accepted: 22 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Claims that plants have conscious experiences have increased in recent years and have received wide coverage, from the popular media to scientific journals. Such claims are misleading and have the potential to misdirect funding and governmental policy decisions. After defining basic, primary consciousness, we provide new arguments against 12 core claims made by the proponents of plant consciousness. Three important new conclusions of our study are (1) plants have not been shown to perform the proactive, anticipatory behaviors associated with consciousness, but only to sense and follow stimulus trails reactively; (2) electrophysiological signaling in plants serves immediate physiological functions rather than integrative-information processing as in nervous systems of animals, giving no indication of plant consciousness; (3) the controversial claim of classical Pavlovian learning in plants, even if correct, is irrelevant because this type of learning does not require consciousness. Finally, we present our own hypothesis, based on two logical assumptions, concerning which organisms possess consciousness. Our first assumption is that affective (emotional) consciousness is marked by an advanced capacity for operant learning about rewards and punishments. Our second assumption is that image-based conscious experience is marked by demonstrably mapped representations of the external environment within the body. Certain animals fit both of these criteria, but plants fit neither. We conclude that claims for plant consciousness are highly speculative and lack sound scientific support. Keywords Plant and animal consciousness . Plant electrophysiology . Proactive behavior . Reciprocal signaling . Classical (Pavlovian) learning . Cell consciousness
Introduction The idea that plants are conscious is increasingly promoted by a vocal handful of botanists (A. Nagel 1997; Calvo 2017; Calvo et al. 2017; Gagliano 2017, 2018; Calvo and Trewavas 2020; Trewavas et al. 2020). This continues despite rebuttals of the claim by mainstream plant biologists (Alpi et al. 2007;
Robinson et al. 2018; Taiz et al. 2019, 2020), and the idea has received widespread coverage in the popular press and media (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/ the-intelligent-plant; https://e360.yale.edu/features/are_trees_ sentient_peter_wohlleben; https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Xm5i53eiMkU; https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/ radiolab/articles/smarty-plants). Proponents of plant
Handling Editor: Peter Nick * Jon Mallatt [email protected]
1
The University of Washington WWAMI Medical Education Program at The University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA
2
Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Biophysics, Bower Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
3
Institute for Physiology and Pathophysiology, Medical Faculty,
Data Loading...
