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MORG

The sentience or otherwise of plants.

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I'm not sure what general protocol for moving a thread is but if the mods (or anyone else) can think of a more efficient way to separate the discussion on plant sentience in thread "A Sad Site" from the issue of ethical harvest then this is putty in your hands.

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"Plants have no "view". They are not sentient, intentional agents."

How do you know this for sure my friend?

Have you ever read "The secret life of plants" by Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird.

no, but my black current bush did....he raved about it, but I told him he was full of shit.

I find plants to be extremely, acutely aware of what we are thinking and feeling. Some are so good at this, so extremely *sentient*, that they are incomparable healers and teachers with knowledge and awareness far beyond any human capacity
And plants communicate with the earth, who is herself a sentient being with a great capacity for non-verbal communication
and frankly, there was a time when people were adamant that plant communication was impossible, so considering this possibility has been scientifically recognised (i.e. there could be MUCH more undiscovered), is the idea of plant sentience so far fetched?

What do you think?

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I believe plants are one of a group of organisms who most purely demonstrate the reality of evolution via natural selection. Uncomplicated by the power of locomotion, sociality and the associated equirement for a higher-order nervous-system and granted liberation through autotrophy, plants are static gene-stations upon which the effect of their environment is immaculately recorded. The stance of a tree, the spread of its limbs can be rendered completely by abiotic environmental factors like light, water and nutrients while the floral morphology of the individual betrays its genealogical links to identically and similarly formed members of its common lineage.

(In this way I find it elegant that the quintessential visualisation of evolutionary progression is that of the tree.)

This is why I hold that they are unintentional agents and - like the rest of life on this planet - pure passengers of nature, the current manifestation of the unavoidable consequence of natural law.

The short answer: Plants are not sentient because they don't need to be.

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i'm sure the plants could come up with words for us being 'unthinking' if they wanted to... which i imagine they don't cos they prolly have far better things to be doing

we (humans) only know our world as we can understand it and even then we're very wrong or completely wrong about everything, most of the time... depending on whom you ask.

it's like when ppl say "sheep are stupid!"

well i reckon, until you've been a sheep and thought objectively about such a theory, then you have no idea what sheep are and are not.

and anyway what's in a name? through actions alone plants shit on us! :P

x

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pure passengers of nature, the current manifestation of the unavoidable consequence of natural law.

Is that not what WE are? Are WE not sentient?

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I don't know

The biologist in me agrees with Morg - but I can also envision a stripped down, laid-back, and much much slower version of sentience which could potentially arise via intercellular communication within plants.

At EGA Dennis McKenna mentioned an international society for the study of plant intelligence or something similar? I have done a google but I can't find anything on them.

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But the fact is, that any reason that can be said to argue that plants are not sentient, can be used to argue that humans are not either. And any reason that is given to argue FOR the sentience of humans, is also an argument for sentience in plants. Can you think of any argument that does not do this?

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that pretty much happens in every argument, its called taking sides :wink:

It seems if you delve too deep into philosophical viewpoints, then they start to lose any common sense or valuable meaning other than simply blabbing on!

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that pretty much happens in every argument, its called taking sides :wink:

No, you can argue that molten lead is hot because it will quickly boil water. You cannot use the same argument to prove that liquid methane is hot, because it will not boil water.

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Oh, I should also point out that sentience is no reason to be kind to plants. Sentience is the ability to sense one's surrounding, not requiring consciousness or self-awareness. At least that is my interpretation. If a plant is sentient but not conscious, there is no reason to treat it with dignity.

Please correct me if I am wrong in defining sentience in this way. I have not studied much philosophy of mind.

(EDIT: Maybe sentience must include awareness, and therefore consciousness, but not necessarily SELF-awareness. Hopefully someone can clarify)

Edited by ballzac

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Oh, I should also point out that sentience is no reason to be kind to plants. Sentience is the ability to sense one's surrounding, not requiring consciousness or self-awareness.

Actually, you're right. A quick search (www.dictionary.com) and sentient is "1) Having sense perception; conscious. 2) Experiencing sensation or feeling." while the Wikipedia definition provides more philosophical background defining it as general sense perception without the need for awareness or consciousness.

I must say, I was always thinking of sentience on a more "higher-order senses" level and I must concede that plants do have their own capacity for sensation of a kind.

A seedling knows which way is up and down thanks to receptors in its root cells. A seedling detects light and bends towards it. There are many, many more examples of simple systems of environmental sensation in the plant kingdom.

If a plant is sentient but not conscious, there is no reason to treat it with dignity.

Surely if plants were sentient to the level of feeling pain (and I think pain could exist without consciousness) you'd review that comment.

QUOTE(MORG @ Jan 12 2008, 12:09 AM)

pure passengers of nature, the current manifestation of the unavoidable consequence of natural law.

Is that not what WE are? Are WE not sentient?

Exactly right. We are the same passengers of nature however my point is that plants are a more pared-down, uncomplicated, pure example of this in action as they don't require all the hardware we've come to develop and rely on as animals (eg central nervous system).

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i think there is only so much science and human words can explain.

i recommend a high dose of shrooms (where legal of course) and sit underneath a large brugmansia tree to swathe ones opinion on this topic.

but yeah u can prove anything if u really want to. ill keep comuning with my plants the way ialways have. it works for me, my plantsare always healthy and happy and in return they keep me healthy and happy. i believe it to be a symbiotic relationship. i mean if i didnt have plants around me id be radically depressed!

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Surely if plants were sentient to the level of feeling pain (and I think pain could exist without consciousness) you'd review that comment.

How can pain exist without consciousness? If you define pain as simply damage triggering a response, then yes. But why would that be a reason not to damage a plant? If a plant is not conscious of its own 'pain', then why does it matter?

Edited by ballzac

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How can pain exist without consciousness? If you define pain as simply damage triggering a response, then yes. But why would that be a reason not to damage a plant? If a plant is not conscious of its own 'pain', then why does it matter?

Just wanted to add my opinion without reading the rest of the thread... I think plants might have an arcehtypal mind of some kind, and it is especially interesting that pretty much every living thing gets processed by plants and fungi, perhaps they retain some kind of memory? It is not like me to be so esoteric I guess, but that is what I've been thinking about the subject lately (subject to change at anytime).

Okay, thought I better flick through... I'm feeling these two comments "intercellular communication" and "plants communicate with the earth"

Edited by IllegalBrain

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How can pain exist without consciousness? If you define pain as simply damage triggering a response, then yes. But why would that be a reason not to damage a plant? If a plant is not conscious of its own 'pain', then why does it matter?

firstly a quick reply to that, sensory apparatus and awareness will allow for pain sensation, regardless of whether or not the plant can be aware it is aware of it.

...

hmmm this is a headfuck to get into. Trying to speculate on higher order mental capacities such as, not so much sentience (that's been established as meaning nothing more than sensory apparatus), but consciousness itself. I guess the best definition of consciousness (the way we think of it) is awareness of awareness. plants are aware, but are they self aware?

Also who is to say that consciousness is created out of a complicated nervous system.. maybe it is best 'understood' by our mamallian brains, and we are aware we are aware, and the headfuck inspires philosophy about.. things like consciousness and sentience, but who is to say any of these thoughts were ours in the first place. Are we not merely tools for the expression of information/consciousness? ... something about DNA being the language of the universe and it communicating infinitely novel information to itself by the very act of being and exploring itself.

Creation is a choice of what you want to dis-cover, it's all been occluded before, and the totality it seems would be pure information. To guess about higher states of being based on physically collected empirical evidence, rather than follow intuition and the feeling of communication as experienced within these higher states when physical reality means little.. seems a bit backward - a limited understanding of 'reality' and its possibilities.

If we are just 'pure passengers of nature, the current manifestation of the unavoidable consequence of natural law.'

I'd say that consciousness (in the pure intelligence sense) is infused into everything - as demonstrated by the actions of birds/fish, insects or parasites that seem to coordinate their actions on an enormous scale as a collective whole. Either they are acting on 'instinct' [being pure passengers of nature] or they share a collective mind, with its 'own' agency. Either way it seems to me that self-awareness need not be demonstrated by a single individual of the entire organism for there to be a 'self awareness' of the plant, or the molecule, or perhaps a spirit that is neither and created both.

also self awareness does not mean self-agency. I think the more aware we are, the less agency we seem to have. Endless Synchs convince the tripper of 'everything is as it is meant to be' and bliss is experienced.. whoopie! and you think, cool I have no responsibility for my choices I am merely a 'pure passenger of nature' - the question of free-will has to arise, and to me it is answered with a big fat yes=no.. so yes and no. We have freedom of choice, but our choice is influenced by the whole, and the whole is influenced by our choices...

I love the youtube video of an Atheists Nightmare, discussing the design of a banana and how it proves intelligent design. I would agree in a very non fundamentalist christian way by saying yes... there is an intelligence to evolution, it is not a finished design, it is trial and error, and the beauty is in the imperfections. What clicked in my head, with all the hillarious observations of the banana, was.. this whacko might be onto something... that being that evolution has an underpinning intelligence that seems to harmoniously shift our collective direction as the ONE being. Banana - Monkey = complementary, the Orchid that looks like a bee and the bee itself must've evolved co-incidentally. Or this plant is very fucking sentient indeed as it could SEE the shape and patterns of a bee and shift its own appearance accordingly.

also... come to think of it, how self aware are humans, if we still think of ourself as an individual instead of the ONE being?

I like my individuality, not sure about this singularity thing. Ecstacy is cool though, its like coming back home and meeting myself at my own front door and going hey I know you! It's ME!

I wanna see how many more random tangents I can throw in here... let us know if you've made it this far.

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firstly a quick reply to that, sensory apparatus and awareness will allow for pain sensation, regardless of whether or not the plant can be aware it is aware of it.

...

hmmm this is a headfuck to get into. Trying to speculate on higher order mental capacities such as, not so much sentience (that's been established as meaning nothing more than sensory apparatus), but consciousness itself. I guess the best definition of consciousness (the way we think of it) is awareness of awareness. plants are aware, but are they self aware?

Also who is to say that consciousness is created out of a complicated nervous system.. maybe it is best 'understood' by our mamallian brains, and we are aware we are aware, and the headfuck inspires philosophy about.. things like consciousness and sentience, but who is to say any of these thoughts were ours in the first place. Are we not merely tools for the expression of information/consciousness? ... something about DNA being the language of the universe and it communicating infinitely novel information to itself by the very act of being and exploring itself.

Creation is a choice of what you want to dis-cover, it's all been occluded before, and the totality it seems would be pure information. To guess about higher states of being based on physically collected empirical evidence, rather than follow intuition and the feeling of communication as experienced within these higher states when physical reality means little.. seems a bit backward - a limited understanding of 'reality' and its possibilities.

If we are just 'pure passengers of nature, the current manifestation of the unavoidable consequence of natural law.'

I'd say that consciousness (in the pure intelligence sense) is infused into everything - as demonstrated by the actions of birds/fish, insects or parasites that seem to coordinate their actions on an enormous scale as a collective whole. Either they are acting on 'instinct' [being pure passengers of nature] or they share a collective mind, with its 'own' agency. Either way it seems to me that self-awareness need not be demonstrated by a single individual of the entire organism for there to be a 'self awareness' of the plant, or the molecule, or perhaps a spirit that is neither and created both.

also self awareness does not mean self-agency. I think the more aware we are, the less agency we seem to have. Endless Synchs convince the tripper of 'everything is as it is meant to be' and bliss is experienced.. whoopie! and you think, cool I have no responsibility for my choices I am merely a 'pure passenger of nature' - the question of free-will has to arise, and to me it is answered with a big fat yes=no.. so yes and no. We have freedom of choice, but our choice is influenced by the whole, and the whole is influenced by our choices...

I love the youtube video of an Atheists Nightmare, discussing the design of a banana and how it proves intelligent design. I would agree in a very non fundamentalist christian way by saying yes... there is an intelligence to evolution, it is not a finished design, it is trial and error, and the beauty is in the imperfections. What clicked in my head, with all the hillarious observations of the banana, was.. this whacko might be onto something... that being that evolution has an underpinning intelligence that seems to harmoniously shift our collective direction as the ONE being. Banana - Monkey = complementary, the Orchid that looks like a bee and the bee itself must've evolved co-incidentally. Or this plant is very fucking sentient indeed as it could SEE the shape and patterns of a bee and shift its own appearance accordingly.

also... come to think of it, how self aware are humans, if we still think of ourself as an individual instead of the ONE being?

I like my individuality, not sure about this singularity thing. Ecstacy is cool though, its like coming back home and meeting myself at my own front door and going hey I know you! It's ME!

I wanna see how many more random tangents I can throw in here... let us know if you've made it this far.

Didn't the video say the banana was cultivated by humans since ancient times?

But as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the one who was proclaimed among you by us – by me and Silvanus and Timothy – was not “Yes” and “No,” but it has always been “Yes” in him

Receive the word of the Lord brother.

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i agree with ballzac on pain

who gives pain killers to their plants before pruning them?

its not a matter of whether plants can recognise that damage has been done to them. conciousness is required for true pain to exist.

if i block pain receptors from signalling to my brain with an anaesthic i no longer feel pain. my cells will respond to any damage like normal but the pain wont exist as it requires the conciousness observing it. how can pain exist without an observer?

and to get back to sentience i prefer the definition from wikipedia that "Sentience refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness."

the subjectivity requires conciousness.

plants are most likely not conscious. how can we make that assumption? their cells are far to simplistic. leaves are made up of light fixing cells, protective coatings and areas to allow gaseous exchange, stems are mostly pholem and xylem allowing the transfer of nutrients and water respectively, roots also have vascular tissue and cells that allow water and nutrients to be soaked up and facillitate symbiotic relationships with bacteria or fungi.

the neurons animals possess allow massive communication between millions of different cells combining to form a loop of consciousness that can interact with its environment. we dont see any cells that can communicate in an even remotely similar way in plants.

plants are, however, alive and will respond to certain influences. if more nutrients are found in one section of the soil (say near a busted sewer pipe) the roots will grow more in that direction. this is not a concious intelligence, however. it is emergent behaviour that acts in an intelligent manner due to many different cells following certain rules set in place through DNA and therefore seleted for over many generations. read a book called "emergence" or "complexity". its a hot field of topic at the moment and there are plenty of books coming out all the time on it at the moment.

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this is in response to micromegas' post in the other thread.

Plants communicate to animals and insects via sensory stimulation, like smell and form. I guess this is a sort of physical/physiological communication that facilitates reproduction, health and safety, defence etc.

this is a kind of communication. through coevolution an animal associates a smell with a plant that provides it with food. plants that provide more of that smell will then have more of their seeds scattered by the animals that find it more readily. more of this food around now means more animals associated that smell with food. and so the co-evolution occurs. sure, its a type of communication.

Plants perceive the intentions and actions of nearby animals, including humans. They also sense and perceive our emotional states. (see "The Secret Life of Plants" mentioned above for detailed descriptions of scientific experiements if interested)

i disagree with this and am very wary of the secret life of plants as i have read some scathing reviews on the quality of the science and the interpretations of the authors. put it this way, that was uncertain science from the 70s. if plants really could perceive emotional states in the way some people suggest it would be front cover of "nature" material. so where is the current research? where are the peer reviewed journal articles from reputable sources? as there is a black hole in this regard i think its likely that the abilities of plants to perceive our emotions is unlikely at best.

besides think about it logically, how do we perceive emotions? through sight generally, or we can hear it in a persons voice. perhaps we could smell a fart and conclude that they are nervous and other more creative use of the sense but those are the two main mechanisms. plants cant see and they cant hear. they could pick up vibrations in their cells but what mechanism could possibly translate any of those vibrations into some type of response.

could go into this ore but wanna answer all of these points first. perhaps in a future post.

Plants communicate their state of well-being through their appearence and vigor. Just like I communicate sadness with a frown.

yes the world revolves around humans. all these plants are put here for our use and are communicating to us. or perhaps humans are just a bunch of animals that have evolved more advanced intelligence but are equal to all the other organisms from the perspective of the universe.

see when a plant is low on water the cells shrink up and lose their turgidity. this means the leaves and stems will wilt because the structural strengh of the cells is comprimised. what you are saying is plants will wilt to tell you they are pissed off, the world revolves around humans. what im saying is plants will have certain physiological responses to certain problems, like a lack of water or nutrient deficiency and because we can tell it is sick it looks sad from an anthropomorphic viewpoint.

Plants appear to communicate with each other, seeming to be happiest in a community of plants.

okay plants communicate with each other through various chemical messengers etc. but could it be that plants grow well in a community of plants due to symbiotic relationships due to co evolution? what requires these plants to be communicating for them to be growing well? why cant it be due to things we can observe like some plants fixing nitorgen, others attracting pollinators? why is some extra dimension of communication required when all these other processes explain quite easily why these plants are growing together well?

aight im getting sick of typing i will come back to the others later or focus on any rebuttals but i think you get my jist. the human brain tends to anthropomorphise things as a form of pattern recognition which helps us to process complicated data more easily. while being a usefull tool to help navigate yourself through reality i dont think that is what reality really is. we just dont have brains that have evolved enough to process all the data to understand it in its true form enough (though we can break it down into tiny little elements and understand those).

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plants are most likely not conscious. how can we make that assumption? their cells are far to simplistic.

How can we make the assumption they are not? based on assumptions of what a consciousness or 'soul' is in the first place. They do not demonstrate the characteristics of individual identity or agency as individual plants. However maybe this whole ego thing us humans have developed has us in tunnel vision of what sentience is, must it be limited to an individual subjective experience? or could there be shared sentience and collective decisions? In a way I see this as a model for our future state of mind.

I think that the question is less about subjective sentience and more about a collective consciousness of the plant spirit, if it exists, and how this spirit can communicate via less 'sentient' beings, even random coincidences of non-living objects could be thought to be made manifest by a higher intelligence, of which the plant or molecule spirit is a part. Is this arguing the toaster is sentient? no, but there is an intelligence communicating via every element of existence.

As far as we are unaware we are tools behaving as passengers of nature (the intelligence uniting all) when we are aware of awareness our choices are expanded and we can create our own paths, be our own pilots, no longer a passenger, the level of awareness increases ones agency - This flies against what I said before, I now have different thoughts on free-will and would say that with a knowledge of interconnection and determinism comes the ability to transcend that and infuse chaos (novelty) into the order.

Anyway the whole substance ingestion is the vehicle of communication, In this way both the plant and the person learn of their essentially identical identity. Both entities are learning and this flows on into the larger collective also, What prompted any of this interaction in the first place? Intelligence IMHO is merely experienced, we are too egoic if we think any of us created it.

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Well, then, interesting thanks for taking the time to respond in detail Hagakure; El Duderino too...

Seems to me you have a much greater scientific knowledge than me, Hagakure, and for me to discuss along those lines would be to find myself out of my depth. Interestingly, I don't really mind either way what science has to say (although I am listening, I want to know more!), because that's a changing field, I just hope they come up with the best methods of treating and growing plants ethically and sustainability. I do my best to keep up, but I'm more inclined to find out for myself whether plants are sentient or not, in my own way... at some point my mind sort of goes blank, insert personal inquiry here!

Yes, I agree The Secret Life of Plants should be taken with a pinch of salt because it lacks a balancing opinion and gets a little carried away in places. But it is thought provoking, and the suppression of these types of experiments and studies could well be more political and economical than anything. After all, we're not allowed to smoke MJ or drink ayahuasca in our homes, why would the same establishment want experiments heralding the sentience and benevolent properties of plants?

And yet, I think as time goes on East will meet West more and more in the realm of science, and plant shamanism might prove to have a better analytical method that it has been given credit.

But overall I'm not out to convert anyone, least of all become mired in words (which I will inevitably proceed to do!). I appreciate your thoughts because plants do have a physical body that does act in demonstrable 'scientific' ways and that is something I would like to learn more about, because I'm admittedly quite naive in that regard. Yet, equally, I have experienced again and again the ways in which plants communicate ‘energetically’ and more impressively, their unequalled sentience and processes of consciousness. However, my personal experiences change as much as science does (faster, probably) so I may be proved wrong one day...

And yet, the further I go, the more I wish I understood plants better at an energetic level (the level of simply being), because they appear to operate with such a pure and magnificent form of consciousness and radiance I'd rather get down on my knees and have a chat than leaf through the pages of "Nature" magazine. But of course, both have their purpose, and go best together!

Actually, whether plants are sentient or not is really a question at the heart of my ontological framework. When I experienced that they were, I had to rethink my take on life, and in many respects Nihilism was an easier ontology to adhere too. The implications of plant sentience is far reaching, for me, because by giving and inch you have to walk a mile - suddenly there is an energetic continuum within which all sorts of perceptual feats become evident, the physical becomes only one dimension of an infinite cosmos, and intuition and mystery starts to take a vital centre stage.

I don't know how plants are conscious (and here I am talking specifically about the teacher plants and the effects of ingestion, but all plants in general have some awareness), or how they see straight to the essence of who we are and what we need on our path. If i did, I would understand myself far better than I do. Maybe I've misinterpreted the experiences, that's definitely possible. But for clarity, I know who I would like to ask!

Perhaps we think we understand things through the five senses, because that is generally the limit of our experiences, but perhaps there is more going on underneath than is generally witnessed. I pick up TV pictures with my eyes, and the smell of a plant with my nose, but what is it that allows us to feel the beauty of a plant, it's energetic resonance and it's state of being, and how is this so with rocks, mountains, rivers and people? What in fact, is the perception of beauty, or pain, of love? I’ve heard people explain this through neurology etc. but it always leaves me somewhat exasperated. I feel there is a quality in experience that is beyond the material…

Clearly, I don't think about it very logically... or conventionally... but the spirit world takes on a logic of it's own when the burden of proof becomes too heavy to ignore. That is, via one's perceptual experience over time. And here, again, we enter into the infinite world of personal ontology. Those recondite places that belong to the individual alone...

Of course, consensus is good... and the scientific world has a consensus (perhaps) and so does an inner city street, an English classroom and revellers at a rock concert. So in that way the multifaceted reality maintains a stability. But a culture of shamanism or an animist community also has a consensus - that plants are our brothers and sisters in this middle world of creation, with a level of sentience open to experience... and for me, personally, my bigger, wiser brothers and sisters. Actually, more like my teachers...

Had I not seen this first hand this context so removed from my own culture, my head may have snapped apart by now and in fact probably has just a little. This is a slippery slope and you are playing with your mind and semblance of reality here, both physically and spiritually, when you alter your perception over time… and it hasn’t always been beneficial. That's what makes me waffle on trying to articulate something I don't have the words to do!

But yes essentially I think plants are understanding the world around them both through physical mechanisms and also via an amazing consciousness attuned to all sorts of vibrations and frequencies we aren't usually aware of, and connected to a larger ‘Gaia’ mind, a world of unity, purity and oneness where communication and sentience is of a very different order. And I'd say both individual plants, and species of plants, have consciousness... perhaps for each plant there is an archetype that is a storage house for all of it's offspring's collective experience... I have heard this called a Deva, or a henio/jenio, literally, the genius of plant. But anyway…

I don't have a view so much on the human/plant symbiosis at this point because my cosmology and experience are not broad enough, so that's something I'd like to think more about. Seems to me that is connected to a larger theme of God, Gaia mind, cycles of ascension toward a realisation, something way out there that is hidden in the most recondite places of my soul... why is the human mind so amenable to plant consciousness in terms of chemical structures and the like? Why does ayahuasca, mushrooms or san pedro elicit the teaching experience that is does, having such perfect receptors in our physical bodies... why does it facilitate a feeling of unity and oneness with a plant (as well as all that other stuff!)? Purely by accident? Again, the implications of answering this question in one's heart are enormous... and I accept that is could go either way, and there are so many issues here like evolution, accident versus coincidence etc. a Godhead or not etc. and I certainly do not have the answers… but that plant communicate, and the earth as well, has been hard to refute through experience…

So thanks for taking the time to answer and to read. We are surely coming at this from different angle's it's the spirit of learning I'd admire. Truly, I don't mind what people think so long as they take the effort to look after the earth and it’s inhabitants - and one of the most important components of life are our vegetative friends. They have set up, with other elements, a paradise for us… where we can breath and frolic and do all sort of other strange, sad and beautiful things…

Really, overall, the world is a strange place, stranger than we can suppose, and perhaps in the end it's a matter of perception and experience. What rings true for me is not necessarily the truth absolutely, especially not outside the confines of my own perceptions! The one absolute is that there is no absolute, and that in itself is a paradox. So, too, may be the sentience or otherwise of plants!

Sorry about the length, have a great day...

Micro

Edited by Micromegas

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I'm sorry to have lagged behind in this discussion and now there's so much material to catch up on.

It appears clear that the basis for your (Micro and El Duder) position on the sentience of plants springs from your own deep love, respectful relationship and powerful experience with them. Forgive me if I put the wrong words to your position but it's an emotional and subjective stance that is also very private, unobservable and closed to scrutiny.

It just appears to me that your kind of sentience wouldn't exist without a human to complete the circle and interpret the relationship.

Like you Micro, I'm not out to convert anyone and I knew these were the views held by many here. I was prompted into the discussion by what I saw as the potential for justification of wild-harvest based on this feeling/belief and I really think when environmental ethics are involved the argument should be based on those scientific and observable things rather than people's often conflicting spiritual beliefs.

My intention was not to try and remove the magic others see in plants but rather to try and express the magic I see in them from my own different perspective.

Edited by MORG

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How can pain exist without consciousness? If you define pain as simply damage triggering a response, then yes. But why would that be a reason not to damage a plant? If a plant is not conscious of its own 'pain', then why does it matter?

I guess my definition of pain would be a stimulus negative to the receiver with the potential to harm, damage or kill requiring an immediate response. So it probably fits into your first definition and that is why it can exist without consciousness.

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I guess my definition of pain would be a stimulus negative to the receiver with the potential to harm, damage or kill requiring an immediate response. So it probably fits into your first definition and that is why it can exist without consciousness.

But you were using the idea of pain without consciousness as a reason not to harm plants. You still haven't answered my question. If a plant is not aware of it's own 'pain' (because it isn't conscious), then why should we try to avoid hurting it?

My point is that just because there is some physical response that we can define as pain under a certain definition of that word, does not mean that it is immoral to cause said pain if there is no conscious agent that is aware of this pain. With no conscious awareness of pain, said pain does not translate to suffering.

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my experiences in discovering spidergrass via touch colour my ideas on this subject.

i actively looked for confirmation from other people and sometimes appeared to receive it.

at aga i was distributing the mescal beans for the same purpose.there appeared to be a high level of response.the simplest explanation is to liken it to using crystals and that the effect is a light altered state of consciousness.a synthesia of colour/light/feeling/texture.i correctly ided a mirabalis root unintentionally this way.it is my intention to put this up for testing at some future stage.

t s t .

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a lot of material to cover

first off ill bring this in from the other thread

imo

its all god

all reality is sentient

our human chauvinism wires us not to appreciate the sentience of to us alien life forms

wasnt so long ago you had to be white to be human

well that all depends on your definition of sentience.

i like the wiki definition of sentience "refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness". sentience requires some subjectivity. im quite sympathetic to the hindu way of looking at the world as drama or a form of pantheism. if you define everything as god then sure enough, everything you come across is god. but that does not mean that everything has the capacity for subjective thought.

you can, howerver, always broaden up the defination of sentience to include everything. from the wiki article "In Jainism, all the matter is endowed with sentience; there are six degrees of sentience, from one to six. Water, for example, is a sentient being of first order, as it is considered to possess only one sense, that of touch. Man is considered to be sentient being of the sixth order."

while its not the definition i use, im cool with it.

saying that water has some type of conciousness capable of subjective thought, however, i disagree with.

so yeah, once again philosophical discussions get caught up in definitions.

on the subject of pain, im with ballzac. IMO pain requires an observer for it to be pain. if i am not observing the damage done to my body due to my nerves being blocked i am still being damaged but am not feeling pain.

mirco - its late at night and thats a long post. hope you dont mind if i answer it next time i log on.

dude same with your post. i will make one quick comment though

there is a lot of talk about plants communicating with chemicals. i think this comes down to the ego of humans. plants have these chemicals for many reasons including pest defence with peyote being the prime example of that. some chemicals pants make will make us trip, some will kill us, some will provide us with nutrition. they are making these chemicals cause they have been selected for for whatever reason. those defending against predators will naturally be selected fro the plants with the highest doses as the weaker ones get eaten. is the plant talkin specifically to us? IMO no. we just have receptors that have been setup to handle similarly shaped chemicals that get tickled when we ingest these chemicals.

if the plants that make us trip are talking to us specifically then are the poisonous plants saying "fuck you" to all us humans? lets uproot em all the cheeky buggers. in reality, however, they are just developing in strange ways in response to selectionary pressure and are still a vital part of the ecosystem. like all lifeforms are.

if plants are communicating to us specifically then why can we synthesise these compounds in a lab and produce the exact result. who is talking to us then? what about all these compounds sasha has created that arent found in nature. they still have distinct effects upon us and are teachers in different ways.

from my perspective our brains are setup with all these receptors and mechanisms to function. our ability to perceive are world and process it through our conciousness is a very complicated task requiring many chemical messengers. some chemicals look similar to these chemicals and will effect the brain in specific ways. LSD will cause your senses to mix allowing you to see sound, feel colours etc as it acts on the part of the brain responsible for these feelings (forgotten what its called but i got a feeling its just above the back of your neck). people who have had this region removed due to injury or required surgery no longer get any of those responses from lsd.

for me its a case of occams razor. if an aspect isnt required for an explanation of a mechanism or just ad extra complexity when its not required then chop it away. especially if there is no empirical evidence for it.

wpw that last bit ended up being a lot more words than i expected i would write. hopefully it responds to some thoughts in micromegas and dude's posts though so i can write less later.

also may i just add one thing. a member of the board asked, partly in jest, why i hate everyone. im not writing all this because of any animosity towards anyone. i try to keep all my posts focused purely on debating the facts and not sinking into insults and personal attacks. i grow plants, use em and am very fond of many of the concepts surrounding a shamanistic way of living. i am however, very science focused and approach all of these things from a very different perspective to many others. where others see spirits i see insights into my own conciousness, where some see magic rituals i see tools that help induce certain brainstates in a brain that is operating quite differently due to chemical influence. this forum would be boring if everyone thought exactly as i did just as would be boring if everyone thought as you did. im interested in other peoples ideas and hope that other people find some interesting point in my ideas. anyway, let the discussion continue.

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also may i just add one thing. a member of the board asked, partly in jest, why i hate everyone. im not writing all this because of any animosity towards anyone. i try to keep all my posts focused purely on debating the facts and not sinking into insults and personal attacks.

*harrumph* unlike some people *cough* *cough*

Nice post.

Just wanted to add for everyone, I hadn't read the thread that spawned this one, and wasn't aware of the context... the stuff I said before was largely speculation, which I misunderstood the point of this post to be (posted in the Spirituality & Philosophy forum after all, not Pharmacology & Chemistry ;)

I certainly don't think individual plants have consciousness or sentience in the commonly accepted usage of the words.

In a reductionist or materialist framework, of course these kinds of ideas don't make sense, as they can't be tested with humanity's current means... but to me it seems kind of boring to only believe in what can be measured. In some ways I think this discussion is actually about conflicting presuppositional worldviews or approaches to life such as materialist and mystical, reductionist and religionist... hooray! these always make for the most exciting discussions, but be warned they can also get ugly.

Personally, my approach is that I am not a scientist but I value and find great wonder and mystery in the world of scientific discovery, but also that spirituality, religion and philosophy are worthy topics of discussion and whilst in these fields one can hardly expect the same kind of evidence that the scientist demands, one likewise should be ready to test ideas and ideologies against what we know from science, and not blithely accept any appealing but unsubstantiated idea as fact.

Most appealing to me are the scientific-sages who incorporate the scientific worldview into a holistic framework, but they are uncommon like most really desirable things. There are things that I believe science may never be able to teach us because the human mind is too puny and our lives to futile to comprehend them, and yet they exist whether we know of them or not... just like outer space did for 99.9% of Earth's history.

While I can sympathize with a reductionist approach, it's a bit depressing if all we have to hope for is that one day AI's might comprehend the mysteries at the heart of reality while we remain in shadow.

Edited by IllegalBrain

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