Biologists clash over plant consciousness

[UM-Bot]

For years, scientists have clashed over whether or not plants possess a form of conscious awareness.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/328890/biologists-clash-over-plant-consciousness

[Piney]

We believe that. Everything is part of the Universal Consciousness. That's why Traditional Natives can't wrap vegans around our heads. 

[zep73]

15 minutes ago, Piney said:

That's why Traditional Natives can't wrap vegans around our heads.

Don't even try that. Get a restraining order 

[Piney]

11 minutes ago, sci-nerd said:

Don't even try that. Get a restraining order 

I'm finally home after spending a week at a vegan Buddhist's house.......

I ate a whole roll of liverwurst and half a chicken this morning. 

[the13bats]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

I'm finally home after spending a week at a vegan Buddhist's house.......

I ate a whole roll of liverwurst and half a chicken this morning. 

reminds me of many years back one of the artists i was working with at a club had tried to go vegan, it had been about 3 weeks, one night we worked late so a group of us hungry went to dennys,

john, that is his name started looking at the meun being all wry coy about the lack of vegan choices and how poorly he had been feeling, he says xxxx it, asked the waitress if he could just get a whole chicken, they sold a roasted half chicked, but he stressed he didnt want the sides he wanted a whole damn chicken, she made it happen and we all had a good laugh,  john ate every bite of his dinner.

Edited July 7, 2019 by the13bats
capt typo

[zep73]

6 minutes ago, the13bats said:

reminds me of many years back one of the artists i was working with at a club had tried to go vegan, it had been about 3 weeks, one night we worked late so a group of us hungry went to dennys,

john, that is his name started looking at the meun being all wry coy about the lack of vegan choices and how poorly he had been feeling, he says xxxx it, asked the waitress if he could just get a whole chicken, they sold a roasted half chicked, but he stressed he didnt want the sides he wanted a whole damn chicken, she made it happen and we all had a good laugh,  john ate every bite of his dinner.

Ever since the climate wise has told us to eat less beef, I've been craving for it. It's like chicken has become dull. Every time I order a pizza, I have to have two kinds of beef on it.

[the13bats]

28 minutes ago, sci-nerd said:

Ever since the climate wise has told us to eat less beef, I've been craving for it. It's like chicken has become dull. Every time I order a pizza, I have to have two kinds of beef on it.

i was never a huge beef fan, my oddity is i will crave one thing for a spell say fish, eat fish every day, weeks months then want say beans and rice or whatever,

the only thing i miss about orlando is the nearest India, Mediterranean, Cajun etc food is now 30 miles away unless i cook and the kitchen is mostly defunct in this fixer upper.

[Seti42]

If plants have consciousness, then I guess vegans/vegetarians (who are vegans/vegetarians for moral reasons) have to become breatharians now?

[It's Just An Opinion]

Your body is about 80% water, the earth is about 70%. Remember that your emotions effects water molecules? That's how talking to a plant helps it grow, it's your emotion affecting the water molecules inside it. The same way the accumulated emotions of everyone affect the earth.

This is a bit off topic but, fire is alive based on science's standards to define a living organism. It consumes, and it grows and it spreads. I think there were some other ones but yeh there's that.

My point is; one method doesn't always apply to everything. Sometimes you have to make exceptions.

[ChrLzs]

Say WHAT???  If you read the article carefully, the only person who goes anywhere near making the claim of 'plant consciousness' is Antonio Damasio, who has NO formal training whatsoever in plant biology, and the only quote we see is that he referred to "the feeling of what happens" - with zero context or any indication of what he was talking about.

Then, the article seems to quote several scientists namely Taiz, Gagliano, Feinberg, Mallatt et al - NONE of whom make or support the claim of plant consciousness, and yet they are quoted and made to sound as if they are arguing.

So, the article is completely devoid of anyone making the claim (or any source or any cite), other than those who correctly suggest there is no evidence for plant 'neurology'....

 

Slow news day?  Normally I have a bit of respect for the Guardian, but this 'story' is just a disaster area.

 

[It's Just An Opinion]

Who knows, perhaps plants surpassed the level of human consciousness a very long time ago, at another lifetime somewhere else, and they no longer need a brain to experience life when they choose to reincarnate. If their consciousness is beyond yours, could you perceive it? could primitive man know they were on a planet inside the universe? who knows, maybe some day. 

Maybe they are Transsentient like the forerunners from halo. 

[+and-then]

47 minutes ago, It's Just An Opinion said:

Who knows, perhaps plants surpassed the level of human consciousness a very long time ago, at another lifetime somewhere else, and they no longer need a brain to experience life when they choose to reincarnate. If their consciousness is beyond yours, could you perceive it? could primitive man know they were on a planet inside the universe? who knows, maybe some day. 

Maybe they are Transsentient like the forerunners from halo. 

My head hurts...

[Aspro]

What scientists are involved in this research? Why 

[ChrLzs]

For anyone genuinely interested in the full story, unfettered by journalistic license.... may I suggest here:
https://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385(19)30126-8

In essence, there's a group of fringe-dwelling pseudoscientists who are writing papers for 'ego' journals making silly claims about 'plant neurobiology'.  Quite correctly, other *real* biologists have pointed out that you can't have neurobiology in an organism without a nervous system, so even the name they have chosen for their little niche of science, is completely inapplicable..!  Plants manifestly do NOT have a nervous system, let alone any form of brainlike structure to direct it.  They do have simple chemical and electro-chemical signalling systems, but that does not fit the claims of neurobiology, let alone 'consciousness' (yes, that's how silly the claims are).

If you read that link, you'll see that these pseudoscientists even changed the name of their organisation once the silliness above was pointed out to them.

 

Frankly, it seems clear that this is a tiny group of people arguing about unevidenced, unsupported claims.  It is NOT, as the Guardian claims, a 'big botanical bunfight'....

[Skulduggery]

“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”

—Jack Handey

[SpaceBumZaphod]

From Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

[pallidin]

Now I feel bad about eating my yummy salad mix.

Thanks, just thanks...

In civil disobedience I will now mow my lawn with my teeth.

[Coil]

17 hours ago, Seti42 said:

If plants have consciousness, then I guess vegans/vegetarians (who are vegans/vegetarians for moral reasons) have to become breatharians now?

The difference is that by killing a plant we do not commit such evil if we kill an animal that has a more complex consciousness and body organization, and killing a person is an even greater crime and is punishable by law so the matter is a higher organization of consciousness and the body of creatures.

 

We can also plant plants and trees to replenish what is taken from nature.There are seasonal plants, fruits and berries that can be consumed without feeling guilty for a dead plant.

Plants have a soul but it is less manifested because its means of expression are less developed than in humans.

In the future, man and all living things will switch to the assimilation of energy from the environment so that no one will kill anyone for food as this is the lower law of existence imposed on us by hostile creatures and which has become common or "incentive for survival and development" for us.

The Upanishads say that when a person tried to capture food with the eye, with thought and other organs he did not succeed, only the guts succeeded, so there is so much to do.

As long as a person eats food, he himself will be the mortal food for others and will die, therefore, the immortal creatures of the future will not eat earthly food and will not have a biological body.

On some planets, plants and trees can walk and move anywhere.

 

[Inversion5]

On 7/7/2019 at 12:25 PM, UM-Bot said:

For years, scientists have clashed over whether or not plants possess a form of conscious awareness.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/328890/biologists-clash-over-plant-consciousness

I see consciousness being vaguely defined. So to say plants have no consciousness on a meaning that is not well established is jumping the gun. But the bottom-line is, so what if they are conscious or not? Also, people attach consciousness to some type of moral certitude. You don't mind killing a plant, right? If you move to kill a plant, it wont give a crap, cause it won't dodge you. And maybe it doesn't need to. So you can leave morals out of it. So you can see what I'm doing. I'm attaching it's response (which some say is part of awareness) to being conscious. Based on that, there could be different types of consciousness and a plant is the lowest living form, it never needed to develop a higher level of consciousness because it's evolutionary advantage is that it already took over the earth (just one way of looking at it).

So again, we can understand consciousness if observing choices a plant makes, if at all. So here, an article: https://physicsworld.com/a/is-photosynthesis-quantum-ish/ So both sides agree that it's processes could be more complex, but again, people's standards, on pretty much anything in life is, how useful is it to people? How can we harness it's "power" for our own advantage? Now flip that same thing on us humans - what good is it if we are "conscious?" I mean, our brain's are simply reacting to the environment and we make "choices" on that. Even though a choice could also be simply viewed as a stimulus - chemical and electrical activity invoking a response. Example, all because I see you dodge the ball, does that mean you are really "in there?" Robots can do the same thing. Prove to me that consciousness is important in humans... If not, then why do humans think they are so important in the first place? So consequently, I'm stating that the level of importance equals levels of consciousness (importance is subjective of course). Some people think they are a more complex life form anyway to the person sitting across from them. But as a whole human species, do we think we have consciousness (which implies importance) because we build things, for example? Pft, just stimulus again. Ants build things.

I just thought of this, plant's don't need humans but we need plants. We need their oxygen. So maybe they are providing us their consciousness in the form of oxygen. LoL, I should stop eating "psychedelic" mushrooms/plants My elevated "consciousness" from eating it is making me say oxygen is a form of consciousness.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Inversion5

[Rlyeh]

On ‎8‎/‎07‎/‎2019 at 10:27 AM, It's Just An Opinion said:

Remember that your emotions effects water molecules?

Actually they don't.  "What the beep do we know" was made by lying POS.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Rlyeh

[ChrLzs]

On 08/07/2019 at 10:57 AM, It's Just An Opinion said:

Remember that your emotions effects water molecules?

No, it absolutely 100% doesn't.  Did you know that Dr Emoto, the guy who made these claims, was not a Doctor at all?  That he said "sometimes fantasy is the best way to get a clear picture of reality"?  That the only 'papers' he got 'published' were never peer reviewed, and were posted at the well known laughing stock of a journal, the JSE?  (unlike real science journals, the JSE just publishes anything, if you pay them)  That he was one of very few people *invited* to show his work to James Randi with a view to receiving a $1,000,000 prize if he could prove it?  An offer that he declined?  That "Publishers Weekly" when reviewing a book of his, said it was "mostly incoherent"?

Dr Emoto's work is often raised as an example (of what not to do) when real scientists are teaching students about the Scientific Method, as Emoto's work does *everything* wrong...

[smokeycat]

On 10/07/2019 at 11:18 PM, ChrLzs said:

 That he was one of very few people *invited* to show his work to James Randi...

The magician? 

[Robotic Jew]

On 7/10/2019 at 6:18 PM, ChrLzs said:

No, it absolutely 100% doesn't.  Did you know that Dr Emoto, the guy who made these claims, was not a Doctor at all?  That he said "sometimes fantasy is the best way to get a clear picture of reality"?  That the only 'papers' he got 'published' were never peer reviewed, and were posted at the well known laughing stock of a journal, the JSE?  (unlike real science journals, the JSE just publishes anything, if you pay them)  That he was one of very few people *invited* to show his work to James Randi with a view to receiving a $1,000,000 prize if he could prove it?  An offer that he declined?  That "Publishers Weekly" when reviewing a book of his, said it was "mostly incoherent"?

Dr Emoto's work is often raised as an example (of what not to do) when real scientists are teaching students about the Scientific Method, as Emoto's work does *everything* wrong...

Is his name REALLY Dr. Emoto?? Sounds like a low rent Superman villain.

[lightly]

4 hours ago, Robotic Jew said:

Is his name REALLY Dr. Emoto?? Sounds like a low rent Superman villain.

        .    .  That made my shamrock plant laugh !

[ChrLzs]

9 hours ago, smokeycat said:

The magician? 

.. and investigator and skeptic who could generally spot the cheating of fakers like Uri Geller in an instant.  For many years he offered a prize of $1,000,000 to anyone who could pass a reasonable set of tests to prove their 'powers' or whatever paranormal claim they made.  Those tests were designed by the claimant and then vetted by a more than reasonable panel (not including Randi) and agreed to, all in public view).

Many tried, but ALL failed to pass their own tests....