Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Tuesday 26 June 2018

Plants can learn and remember, but are they thinking ?

I already went off on something of a rant about consciousness here :
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/1arJX2qaYZb
... but this one is a bit different.

Plants have preferences—their roots move toward water, sensing its acoustic vibes—and defense mechanisms. They also have memories, and can learn from experience. One 2014 experiment, for example, involved dropping potted plants called Mimosa pudicas a short distance. At first, when the plants were dropped, they curled up their leaves defensively. But soon the plants learned that no harm would come to them, and they stopped protecting themselves.

I read the linked paper, which is rather interesting regardless of whether plants can think or not. The researchers also investigated whether the plants would stop their defence mechanism when stimulated in a similar but not identical manner (shaken on a platform instead of being dropped). They don't. Only the behaviour they have learned is safe prevents (or reduces) their leaf-closing. They have to be conditioned through several drops before they stop reacting, but thereafter can repeat this behaviour at least a month after any drops have occurred. They also seem to account for the available light levels, since closing leaves reduces photosynthesis.

What they did not do was really demonstrate if plants learn to do this because they realise the drop is perfectly safe. What I'd want is a control experiment where some plants are deliberately damaged immediately after or during the drop. If the plants are learning to avoid unnecessary defensive responses, they ought to show the standard defensive reaction to the drop (or even an enhanced one) when it causes damage.

Also interesting :

Researchers had arrested plant motion with anesthetics—a new take on a 1902 experiment by biologist and physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who used chloroform to put plants to sleep. The Times wrote that the vegetal response to anesthetics suggests that plants are intelligent. Basically, the article argued that to lose consciousness, one must have consciousness—so if plants seem to lose consciousness under anesthetics, they must, in some way, possess it.

Marder points out that plant cuttings can survive and grow independently. That suggests that if plants do have a self, it is likely dispersed and unconfined, unlike the human sense of self. It’s notable, too, that many scientists and mystics argue that the human feeling of individuality—of being a self within a particular body—is a necessary illusion.

Well, good for them, but I'll never believe it. I'm me, you're you. You're not me and I'm not you. Done.
https://qz.com/1294941/a-debate-over-plant-consciousness-is-forcing-us-to-confront-the-limitations-of-the-human-mind/

7 comments:

  1. Arg, i see this one coming from a mile away, not to soon now, we will have groups contesting for 'Plant Rights' and those will try to get us to stop eating them 8-S

    ReplyDelete
  2. the notion of "me" and "you" is actually a lot less hard and clear than we like to think. not in any kind of mystical sense, but in a neurological sense. We have whole systems in our brain which mimic other humans. We're creatures evolved to live in a particular environment, and that environment is the society of others of our species. Ask any cult leader or military training officer how inviolable human individuality really is.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wilco Roos This restaurant has (or at least had) a menu for breatharians, so people can just inhale vapours instead of cruelly grinding up innocent lil' flowers :
    http://www.lehkahlava.cz/en_projekt.htm
    Won't help though, 'cos even air molecules are conscious if you're a panpsychic. Might as well give up and eat some delicious cuddly animals instead.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is consciousness a byproduct of the neural activity in brain, or is the brain the organ through which consciousness is processed? The answer usually separates the empirical reductionists (consciousness ultimately has a material origin) from the "heretics" (consciousness is a pre-existing condition.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The concepts are so ill defined in so many of these discussions that it just makes the discussions useless. Intelligence, consciousness, etc are different things or can mean different things. The man to read is Thomas Metzinger.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pedro Pereira It depends on what you mean by "concepts." Just kidding.

    ReplyDelete
  7. According to the definition used there, today's AI are conscious because they can adapt and learn from (a controlled set of) experience. And they "loose consciousness" when you pull the plug, so they must have had it before.
    In fact, according to the second one, a cork floating in water is conscious. If you remove it from water, it "loose consciousness" as well!

    ReplyDelete

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