are plants sentient beings?

Since there is a continuum of linear combinations of attributes to manifest creative intelligence, plants do not stand out more significantly than, for example, people, or neutrons.

However, there is an important nominal difference between those creatures which we would tend to categorize as plants, versus animals. This difference is a superset of the better known and widely discussed biological and biochemical differences.

Plants are 'generative' over shorter time scales than animals. Advanced animals, as a rule, are not generative at all, but are instead, 'regenerative', and over longer time scales.

'Generating' involves a more primitive, uniform and isotropic relationship with the environment that at once 'absorbs' and 'returns', and in a quick and unform manor.

In particular, for plants these temporal cycles are quite short. Also, many plants actually require this ability to shed fruit and seeds in order to survive. And a related consequence, depending on one's definition of death, eating a plant may not kill it, since its roots can remain and regrow.

Humans are 'regenerative', in the sense that they nominally cannot, and do not, return what they absorb from the environment at nearly the same rate and in the same primitive and nearly isotropic fashions. We do not toss babies into the ground for fertilizer or sacrifice to feed the environment for example.

Ours is a more complex form which embodies the generative processes associated with plants at various levels of our biological and biochemical makeup.

This said, the logic of becoming a vegetarian can be found.

Resolved: If one wants, and or needs, to attain a more balanced relationship with nature, changing food habits toward plants is one substantive way to help achieve this end.

 

The human race is split into 2 groups: herbivores and omnivores. In a few years, my group will be eating the other group. Please recruit more herbivores into your group. Omnivorous/ carnivorous land animals do not taste as good as herbivores. Please don't eat meat.

This message brought to you by the Omnivores for Herbivores Foundation.

'We eat everything' O.H.F. president Kharakov.

 

bwaahahahahahaha. mmmmm, vegitarians!

 

yep... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060915870/002-1911565-6779204?v=glance
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of course plants have sentience!

silly

 

i do believe in plant spirits and find some to be excellent teachers. salvia is one, along with ayahuasca. there is definatly a presence felt in teh expirience, i too have encountered the lady salvia, and she is to be respected...disrespect can be costly to the ego.

 

Yes

That's debatable, although I have seen scientific evidence suggesting they do

YES!!! But not because of the way you're thinking - just simply because if it were not for plants, animals would not be able to survive.. they are a vital part of the eco-system, so we need to look after them, so they can look after us

I personally don't think that plants have a conciousness, so I guess i can't really answer this question

 

What bothers me with these arguments is basically:

1 - as a philosophical materialist (or rather a scientifically inclined/sceptical guy, not in the sense of taking science as an omnipotent religion, but in the sense of avoiding unfounded speculations) I am not inclined to mystify and bring forward such ephemeral concepts without serious evidence to back it up with (which doesn't mean I'm against investigating such controversial topics, not at all). Pointing out that, for instance, "cells on the right side of the stem swell with water while those on the left are drained" doesn't prove the existence of consciousness. It does prove that plants are living organisms and that they are capable of exibiting adaptive reactions (words like "intent" or "aspirations" are a bit heavy/biased). Sperm is also a form of life, and it is definitely capable of reacting to the environment on a higher level than a rock is (especially if the spermatozoa found what they were looking for), but I don't think many of you would honestly assert that the "little guys" are conscious of what they're doing. In fact, all internal organs actively react/adapt to the environment/other substances etc., but I don't think my liver has a consciousness of its own (my stomach is an entirely different matter, though…not to draw a more “vulgar” parallel.

2 - Also (in the same vain) why should things be "mystical" in order to be wonderful? In my opinion, though it may seem paradoxical, all these posts proclaiming the existence of consciousness in plants actually show a lack of imagination/insightful perception. Why can't you just admire nature and recognize its wonders without inventing things which don’t seem to be there? There is so much intrinsic beauty in a simple rock and we share so much even though we will never be able to communicate.

That doesn’t mean that I think what we know is all there is, especially concerning the Universe (does the Universe=the World????), so for instance the usual scientific “explanation” of the “Big Bang” (as well as the religious one) is a false explanation, for it tells us nothing about what is probably the biggest problem/poverty of this theory – how did that starting particle appear in the first place…………………Ahhhhh

3 – getting back to plants, being a pacifist and therefore also a vegan (BOO!) my emotional problem with the idea of plants having consciousness is related to the ethical implications. How many of you who are so willing to assert the former are also willing to be morally consistent regarding this - eg. not eating plants, not stepping on grass (I already avoid grass because it somewhat diminishes the chances of stepping on insects, and I don’t want to harm them) etc..(when I was a kid I once broke in two a young tree out of anger, not to mention all the paper I've spent)

Btw, plants would actually “benefit” from everybody following a vegetarian diet because it takes about 10 times more plants to feed meat eaters than to feed vegetarians (this is because a meat eating diet requires an intensive, industrial approach to rearing animals, which means producing even much more plants for those billions of animals to eat – and eventually killing 45 billion non-sea animals every year).
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A review of the book "The secret life of plants":
More New Age Nonsense, November 18, 2004
Reviewer:
John MacDonald "Skeptic" (Denton, TXUnited States) - See all my reviews
If they really were sentient beings, one must wonder if plants are as gullible as the humans that believe this book. If so, plants must be having a jolly good laugh.

Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird based a large part of this book on the work of Cleve Backster, a "scientist" of questionable credentials. Backster's "experiments" on the galvanic skin response of plants, first published in the International Journal of Parapsychology in 1968, have been thoroughly refuted by qualified scientists using proper controls. No duplication of Backster's experiments using genuine scientific methods have ever produced a similar result. But heaven forbid anything as trivial as facts or evidence interfere with new age anthropomorphization.
This book belongs on the "some people will believe anything" shelf alongside faux scientific tomes on crop circles, ESP, spoon bending, astrology, and other pseudo-science nonsense. Readers wishing to better understand the fascinating world of botany would be better advised to spend their money on any number of truly scientific books on plants.

 

Well, that's your problem, not mine.... Haha, just kidding man. Still, you should look into a more ecological approach to looking at things. Rather than just seeing things seperately, see them in groups, systems of interdependencies. You start to wonder where one thing ends and another begins, since nothing exists alone.

I agree, nothing has to be mystical to be beautiful. I never really said anything mystical though. Considering my pantheistic-like outview of things, I don't seperate "material" from "spiritual" which I consider a false duality. That's my personal philosophy though.

Is consciousness mystical? If so, I guess I did say something mystical. But whatever it is, I don't see why a plant, which acts with intent, has clear behavior patterns, and has refined, though different, senses, as well as many having inter-plant communication...I don't see why they are excluded from consciousness while an animal isn't. I see animals as requiring a more complex form of consciousness because of their lifestyle (complex movement, predation, etc) but like I said, being more complex doesn't make you conscious. Where do you draw the line? We all came from the same place, evolutionarily speaking, so did one day consciousness just suddenly come into existance when life seemed "animal enough"? Or "human enough"?

 

a good way to say it, unless someone opens the evolution can of worms, but still, if you change the rhetoric to present tense, who can argue?

 

Kharakov:

Your sadistic sarcasm bothers me.

As no doubt you and I have found out.

Lady Sally is a shining example of why I believe that plants have sentience.

I don't see it as merely inventing things which don't seem to be there. All of our thoughts and (ahem, apparent lack of) imaginations/insights are merely designed to be shared with others to offer new and different viewpoints to expand our minds. Whether or not it is there has no impact on our lives; only our speculation has influence, and I very, very rarely see speculation in this realm of knowledge that leads people to a less healthy lifestyle.

Aside from that, some label me as simple, because I am the kind of person who can sit down in seiza, listen to low volume, mellow, ambient music, and sip green tea, for hours, without getting bored.

I think it is important and healthy to enjoy the simpler things in life. While a rock is both incredibly complex and extremely simple, regardless of its complexity, I still find picking up rocks and throwing them into rivers enjoyable (for longer than most people). Perhaps I just haven't grown up from the third grade mentality yet ...

Bravo for being a vegan, I'd like to say (as a fellow vegan).

However, even with strict ethical implications, people who do not eat plants nor meat do exist. They are called fruitarians, and they eat only the fruit of plants (which does not harm or kill the plant). =)

In my mind, plants are all connected in that they are, essentially, One with the Earth. They provide a source of nutrition for us, and work to keep balance and harmony, and to "weed out" the unnatural through the Earth's self-recovery process (which uses plants, of course).

I believe that plants, while conscious, do not lose their consciousness simply because we eat many of them. I believe that the consciousness of plants stays with the Earth, and as long as the Earth still has a self-recovery process, that consciousness still exists.

 

-Let the plants catch up fer Christs sake! -Eat a fukin cow Man!

 

><>**^^~~ Brocoli HAS the beginnings of a primative nervous system. -Folks should give plants a break and let them catch up evolution wize. -If Broccoli can grow a nervous system than so can a CABBAGE! -If we just LAY OFFA THE VEGATABLES they might ALL have a chance. -But with folks SINGILIN them out and eating them EXCLUSIVELY they may never achieve conciousness. -Give the vegatables a break and let them grow a brain! -Let ALL the plants fallow in the footsteps of the great and noble BROCCOLI and THINK!!!!

 

"Let ALL the plants fallow in the footsteps of the great and noble BROCCOLI and THINK!!!!"

I say, we stop eating animals to give *you* a chance to learn how to spell correctly and think logically. =P