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Those poor plants (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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[–] 99 points 2 years ago (69 children)

"Know" is a stretch. Plants respond to attack by releasing chemicals (e.g. nettles and grasses), curling or retracting their leaves (e.g. acacia), or by changing their morphology (e.g. holly); but they have no nervous system - let alone a brain - so it's not like you're killing an animal.

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  • [–] 106 points 2 years ago* (24 children)

    Plants having no nervous system is being challenged with the idea that the plant itself is its central nervous system.

    They react to stimulus, they emit sounds (different ones when in “pain”), and communicate with each other.

    They don’t have consciousness in a way we understand

    I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that

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  • [–] 41 points 2 years ago* (19 children)

    It's always funny to me how people eat up the concept of a distrubuted neural network in tech but scoff at the same idea applying to something like a tree or a fungus.

    Pando is the largest organism by area, and the Humungous Fungus is the largest by mass. The idea that those organisms don't "think" in some way is laughable.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (10 children)

    It always seems lime some excuse in a counter response by vеgаns

    The number of times I've responded to them telling them that plants probably process pain in a different way to us has always been shot down by them

    Tell them that brains extremely simplified are just on and off responses to certain stimuli / information just like plants have specific reponsonses to stimuli and computers having 1's and 0's that respond to information

    A mycelium network could be counted as a brain

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    because humans invent things from scratch that nature has already created and optimzed, it's why we're seeing a lot of optimizations on current tech that comes from nature itself.

    It's a really weird problem to have.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago* (17 children)

    We don't know how consciousness works enough to say they don't. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.

    They don't have muscles either, but some plants are known to uproot themselves and fucking move.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, plants aren't stationary. All plants move, just very, very slowly compared to animals. Looking at time lapse videos of vines growing, reaching out for something to grab on to and stuff is pretty neat. They kind of whip around in circles until they feel they've hit something worth grabbing onto.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.

    Hmm sorry but no, there are traits exhibited by conscious entities which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness. This is a nice explainer on consciousness, note that it’s not saying anything about needing a brain to exhibit those traits

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#DesQueWhaFeaCon

    correct me if I am misremembering sth

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    there are traits exhibited by conscious entities which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness.

    Implying we have a way of determining whether an entity is conscious or not. That's the entire point of contention here.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    They have the knowledge and are doing something about it. If other plants can send out this chemical by observing it themselves, that sounds like a reaction from a communication. It may not be cognition like we expect but it is behaving like cognition would. Hard to argue that plants don't know or care of their friends start dying.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I'd argue that knowledge is more than that, otherwise books or state machines could also be said to know things.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    The plants are acquiring information and making an independent change to their status with this information. Books do nothing with knowledge other than communicate it to others. Machines are unable to make independent changes to itself unless programmed to do so.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Lobsters contain 15 nerve clusters called ganglia dispersed throughout their bodies, with a main ganglion located between their eyes. So, according to the logic here whyis it wrong to boil them alive if they don't have a brain?

    For the record, imo it is wrong to boil lobster, crabs, and other crustaceans alive. There is no reason you can't kill them directly before boiling them.

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