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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/11/2008 10:41:59 AM | The problem is man thinks ego is consciousness which it isn't.
Man unfortunately relies on it as well as the ego of others to name things and put things into prospective, debate and rename and live to own things like opinions, assumptions and beliefs.
Plants do not have an ego so they only experience cause and effect which they do experience as well as event horizons.
Man debates and debases all experiences and tries to change/control cause and effect which has ultimately deviated mankind from our true purpose and caused our species to live and experience life and nature through destroying an debasing it.
The powers that control this are merely warped/selfish egos and they are led by assumptions which are aided and abetted from those among us who are more about selfish desires and material then they are about being alive. They are more ego then spirit and these are those who are elevated within society by the elites as they merely exist and live to rise in wealth, influence and power and essentially become a complete detriment to mankind and nature.
Most would think a plant is dumb but in truth, it is filled with pure wisdom and only knows truth, man is filled with ignorance and lies and will even force other to acept assumption and opinion as fact.
Plants are aware as they are mechanisms which work in unison to defend, to grow, to conserve and to manage living and becoming what it is to be become. However, man, is without any true skill as, he has abandoned nature and life for sake of illusion and lies that feed egos and promote material above spirit, false purpose above true purpose and debasing nature in lieu of guarding and managing the true wealth that is free to all man and beast through the natural cause and effect of all things.
Ego is cancer upon spirituality and is the cause of pollution, strife, war and all that is rotten within the world, we should be quite pleased that we need only deal with the egos of men rather then selfish desires of natures living and being creatures. Man seems to be the predator of all that is worthless like oil and puppets to play roles within sectors of industry within a fake economy that is fed solely through people being ignorant and simple material and ego worshipers.
I wonder if plant life truly knows that man is insane and living in a manner that defeats life an all that provides. We should look for new world leaders within the pant world, likely some wiser forms of life to hold above the rest of us material worshiping consumers of lies and excesses. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/11/2008 6:34:22 PM | >>>what about consciousness of self?
A conciousness conscious of nothing but itself is also a contradiction of terms.
>>>The powers that control this are merely warped/selfish egos and they are led by assumptions
And how much of your beliefs are led by assumption?
>>>I wonder if plant life truly knows that man is insane and living in a manner that defeats life an all that provides. We should look for new world leaders within the pant world, likely some wiser forms of life to hold above the rest of us material worshiping consumers of lies and excesses.
And its crap like this is why I further refuse to accept that plants can have conciousness- because for most people, this isn't an issue of proving plants can think, but moreso an issue of proving than man is weak and we should be ashamed- its nothing more than pseudo-science in an effort to push your new age beliefs.
People try to manipulate other people not because there is supreme evidence that plants have conciousness- they do it because they believe that humans everywhere should be ashamed they do not have the listless desires plants hold- that because man accomplished something, and is proud, that man should be ashamed and you should punish yourself for it. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/11/2008 7:07:10 PM | http://youtube.com/watch?v=-EdNvI9TMA8
(pt 2 is in the menu next to the vid, great interview)
I am sure the above poster has more experience and knowledge then the person being interviewed.
People need to avoid taking on corporate biased opinions of others prior to persnal investigation, do some research and find more then asumption, opinion and rethoric that is ever present within chat forums along with the popular childish insultationz and egoster-bating.
<div class="quote">An expert in the polygraph and biocommunication, Cleve Backster related details of his research into electrical responses in plant life. His studies indicate that plants can sense human intent in a kind of "primary perception" that he compared to ESP. For instance, in experiments with bean sprouts --one group of sprouts was praised, the second group ignored, and the third sent negative thoughts-- the praised group grew much faster, he reported.
An experimenter can influence the results of a study. The studies which showed plants preferred classical music might've been the result of experimenter bias against rock music, he said. Backster's first plant experiment took place in 1966, and he's now spent over 40 years on this type of research, which he conducts out of a former DEA lab in San Diego, in an under-funded fashion.
He also discussed his work with the polygraph, and noted that newer polygraph equipment incorporates the use of a camera in its readouts.
Cleve Backster is the founder of the Backster Research Foundation and currently teaches at the Backster School of Lie-Detection. He is also on the teaching faculty at the California Institute for Human Science and serves on the advisory board at the Institute of HeartMath.
Cleve is an international speaker on the subject of Biocommunication and has been a professional observer of human psycho-physiological tracings since 1948. Since 1966, Cleve has conducted extensive research related to observed electrical responses in plant life and at a cellular level in other living organisms. His research into what has been called "The Backster Effect" has attracted world-wide attention.
June 27th, 2007
http://www.primaryperception.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASI...
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2... | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/11/2008 7:44:05 PM | >>>People need to avoid taking on corporate biased opinions of others prior to persnal investigation, do some research and find more then asumption, opinion and rethoric that is ever present within chat forums along with the popular childish insultationz and egoster-bating.
While other people need to stop putting down all of humanity in an effort to justify their beliefs- if your beliefs are right, then it shouldn't require me to join your faith.
Also, the Television show Mythbusters tried to follow Cleve Backster's experiments. And what did they discover? Thats right- nothing happened. If what he did was scientific, shouldn't it have reproducible results?
Your beliefs have nothing to do with the science, and everything to do with the desire to push an anti-corporate belief- a new age religion belief- a belief that wants me to be ashamed if I am proud of what I know and what I have achieved.
Yours is not a desire for knowledge, but of a desire of ignorance.
CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW A PLANT CAN HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS WITHOUT NERVES OR A BRAIN?
any other arguments are moot. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/11/2008 8:11:44 PM |
CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW A PLANT CAN HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS WITHOUT NERVES OR A BRAIN?
I gather you didn't read the scientific paper I cited. Here's the link again for your benefit:
precedings.nature.com/documents/1429/version/1/files/npre20071429-1.pdf
It's been documented that plants respond to stimuli, react to attack, and communicate with neighboring plants to warn them of those attacks. Those plants, that have not been attacked, respond to the warnings and protect themselves.
Whether this constitutes consciousness or not depends on your definition, and since the way you define things pens and rocks don't even exist, I can see where you may be having some difficulty with this concept.
By the way, did you actually watch the episode of Mythbusters where they experimented with plants? I did, and they indeed duplicated much of the polygraph results previously reported, but not all of them. They officially deemed the myth 'busted', but it was a close call, and certainly a far cry from the 'nothing' you assert.
There are a number of definitions of consciousness. None that I've seen specifically reference nerves and a brain, but you may have other sources. I don't think anyone is asserting that plants are conscious in exactly the same way we are. If they were they'd be weighing in here themselves instead of needing some of us to speak for them.
I've been fortunate to have had more direct personal experience with human perception of plant consciousness than most have, which helps me to reach my conclusions. But there is science to back up what I and others here assert.
You, of course, are free to believe what you wish, but the stridency of your statements is starting to border on the rudeness you claimed not to intend in your initial post. No one is asking you to be ashamed here. We're just trying to engage in rational dialogue about in interesting facet of nature.
Dave | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/11/2008 11:02:56 PM | CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW A PLANT CAN HAVE A CONSCIOUSNESS WITHOUT NERVES OR A BRAIN?
any other arguments are moot.
I'll explain to you how a plant can have a consciousness when you explain to me how a human can have a consciousness. Deal? | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/12/2008 5:05:58 AM | >>>It's been documented that plants respond to stimuli, react to attack, and communicate with neighboring plants to warn them of those attacks. Those plants, that have not been attacked, respond to the warnings and protect themselves.
My heartbeats on its own- I am consciously controlling it? Can I choose to slow it down or speed it up by will alone? No- because it is working completely on instinct- my body knows what needs to be done, and issues commands completely removed from my own thought or will. Is this not what the plant is doing?
Can it choose to communicate to its neighbors for no good reason? Does it react to nothing at all? Is there any sense whatsoever that it is anything more than an instinct, if the only times it does it is when you create the perfect circumstances for it to act that way, rather than it acting that way when it wants to- when it WILLS to?
>>>They officially deemed the myth 'busted', but it was a close call, and certainly a far cry from the 'nothing' you assert.
Sadly, no. I read the Wikipedia article;
The team attempted to reproduce Backster's experiments using a polygraph and an EEG machine. They reproduced the plant experiment and initially got something peculiar as predicted by Backster's work. However, after more carefully controlling the conditions of the experiment to eliminate the possibility of external influence, the plant did not demonstrate any measurable reaction to external stimulus. They were similarly unable to coax any measurable response out of yogurt cultures or white blood cells.
Taken from that context, it seems quite clear what Mr. Backster's results revealed- that his failure to follow experiment controls created a false positive.
However, I am currently in the effort of downloading it....so yea....
Ironically enough, going back to find that mythbusters page opened me up to this page- enjoy;
http://omniverse.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html#115805888566700219
>>>I'll explain to you how a plant can have a consciousness when you explain to me how a human can have a consciousness. Deal?
Lets see what Wikipedia presents;
Julian Jaynes has emphasized that "Consciousness is not the same as cognition and should be sharply distinguished from it. ... The most common error ... is to confuse consciousness with perception." He says, "Mind-space I regard as the primary feature of consciousness. It is the space which you preoptively are 'introspecting on' or 'seeing' at this very moment".
Ned Block divides consciousness into phenomenal consciousness (similar definition to subjective consciousness), which is subjective experience itself (being something), and access consciousness, which refers to the availability of information to processing systems in the brain (being conscious of something).
The tempting question, which was given to me by many: “So, in accordance to your point of view we are unconscious?” has the simple answer: “We are behaving in the way were we are deserved to be named conscious”.
The proximate causes for consciousness, i.e. how consciousness evolved in organisms, was elucidated by John C. Eccles in his paper "Evolution of consciousness." In it, he stated that special anatomical and physical properties of the mammalian cerebral cortex gave rise to consciousness. This is further evidenced by the work of Gerhard Roth, who stated that "Among all features of vertebrate brains, the size of cortex or structures homologous to the mammalian cortex as well as the number of neurons and synapses contained in these structures correlate most clearly with the complexity of cognitive functions including states of consciousness."Roth also states that the high-order consciousness possessed by humans is most likely the result of a very large number of cortical neurons, a prolonged period of ontogenetic plasticity of cortical synapses, and the presence of centers underlying syntactical language.[30]However, it can be assumed that all vertebrates with larger cortex-like structures, particularly those with cortices showing cross-modality information transfer, have awareness about what is going on around them.Self-recognition, being able to recognize one's self in a mirror, requires a large associative, including prefrontal, cortex. The evolution of a special type of prefrontal cortex was the basis for an increased capability for action planning, syntactical language, imitation, and understanding the behavior of others.
I look forward to your response. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/12/2008 8:35:04 AM | ^^^ Hahaha, does this in your mind amount to an explanation of how conscience works?  This is the funniest thing I've read in the forums for months! It's soooooooo Jonathan Swift. Lots of long words, lots of descriptive science talk, but where is the understanding of what MAKES us conscious and how? Cortex you say? Where is the understanding of how cortex works? Funny. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/12/2008 8:43:05 AM | | Plants do have consciousness. They have deep-rooted feelings that stem from this consciousness. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/13/2008 6:14:18 PM |
I wonder if plant life truly knows that man is insane and living in a manner that defeats life an all that provides. We should look for new world leaders within the pant world, likely some wiser forms of life to hold above the rest of us material worshiping consumers of lies and excesses.
Well, Bush is the president... | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/17/2008 11:55:30 AM | Should we start a new thread now called "Does Bush have a conscience?"
LOL! Good idea!
Edit: *notes further irony
LOL! Bush (also a term for plants) and conscience! Good one! | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/17/2008 2:44:34 PM |
Cortex you say? Where is the understanding of how cortex works? Funny.
Indeed, the truth is so complex that it's difficult to think about. There is cognition, which logically doesn't have to involve any kind of conscious experience (the infamous philosophical "zombie" is enough to demonstrate the point) and there is conscious experience, which while strongly correlated with cognition (as far as we know), is little understood. In theory, it's possible to build a full cognitive model of the brain and still not know what consciousness is (just look up a definition of Consciousness in any Psychology textbook and see the author chasing his tail!).
But anyway, we know we are conscious; at least I assume you are, because you can report you are, but there is no way I can know for sure. The same goes for plants, bacteria and rocks. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/19/2008 10:58:42 AM | | ^^^ You know a Cambridge guy when you see one. Are even software engineers that smart over there? :-) Kudos to you. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/19/2008 11:16:22 AM | This is a relivant question. Do they? What defines humans is our ability to form symbols, keep them ad transmit them to other human beings. Language and images.
Other forms of language? Yes. Plants use chemicals to communicate, not only to other plants but also to insects, bees and the like. But are they self awear? Just instinct? As far a we know at the moment it is just pure reaction to the environment. A plant does not name itself, nor writes, not has any form of indicating that it is even alive. So I conclude that plants do not have consciousness as human beings define it. But talk away to them if you feel like it. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/19/2008 12:14:21 PM | | My hibiscus plant says it does. There seems to be a correlation between its talking and my not taking my meds though, so I would say this in inconclusive. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/19/2008 8:31:55 PM | | My plants talk to me about life, you know having roots and branches. I do have to admit that it took me awhile to under tomatish, why those can't learn English is beyond me. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/21/2008 8:50:38 PM | | wvwaterfall, I just wanted to say that I understand 100% as I have had similar experiences. I'm too tired tonight to get into it any further, but I have done a bit of reading on this subject. One thing that I keep in mind is that plants and trees can live without humans, but humans can't live without trees and plants. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/23/2008 10:44:16 PM | Do plants have consciousness? Well, some of them do, some of them don't. It depends very much on their age, whether they're fruit-bearing or man-eating, whether their owners have taught their dogs to talk to the plants (you should see the video where monkeys train dogs to take out the garbage!), and whether the plants have gone through the basic "est" training or not.
My uncle has a cactus and a poppy plant, both that got their basic combat training from a daisy, and he takes them to plant-fights. It's highly illegal in Canada, so he makes a good living on it. People put the their plants in a pit, two at a time, and the plants sing Homerian ballads in ancient Sanksrit. The one who comes out with fewer limbs missing is the winner. Sometimes the plants maul each other to death. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/23/2008 11:00:34 PM | One thing that I keep in mind is that plants and trees can live without humans, but humans can't live without trees and plants.
Absolutely. Much like man can live without stupidity (theoretically speaking) but stupidity cannot live without humans.
Unless you think about it this way: Man is just one of the animal species. Plants will survive with the loss of just one animal species. Much like all animals, including man, will survive if only ONE plant species becomes extinct.
If all animals die, then all plants die, too. If all plants die, not only man will die out, but all other animals.
It's a fallacious reasoning to pit man, which is only one species in the animal kingdom, agains the entire plant kingdom. Pit one species of animals against one species of plants, or all species of animals against all species of plants, and the poster's argument lost its edge.
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If we could agree on one thing, that the evolutionary theory works.
If we accept that, then we accept that mutations bring about changes in offspring that may or may not be an evolutionary advantage.
Plants cannot move, they cannot respond defensively to a harvest combine. Therefore there is no evolutionary advantage in developing a system of sensing mechanisms to see when the combine is approaching.
Since there is no sensing mechanism in plants, there is no evolutionary advantage in their developing a decision-making process when and how to respond to threat.
Since there is no decision-making process, there is no reason to create motivation.
Since there is no motivation, there is no reward for satisfied needs.
Since there is no reward for satisfied needs, there is no need to learn behaviour.
There is no behaviour, there is no feelings, there is no emotions, there is no enjoyment or pain. Therefore it is highly unlikely that thought is born in plants, as is highly unlikely that consciousness is a part of plant life.
While the existence of thought or consciousness or its lack in plants cannot be proven, it is highly reasonable to think that they don't exist in plants. Living things fight for survival, their every expenditure of energy has to be accounted for doing it for survival. Having a conscience or thought is (supposedly, highly probably, but unprovably) energy-consuming. Therefore I suggest that plants do not have thoughts and consciousness, since maintaining those would require energy, and the plant would receive absolutely no return of increased survival success on this investment of spent energy. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/23/2008 11:15:24 PM | I find it curious that so many people take the side of anything and everything that is not humans or humanity.
I noticed that many posters opine that humans are stupid, evil, dysfunctional, unfair, murderous, incapable of understanding, against the grain of nature, and in very many ways humans are totally unworthy of existence.
I challenge those who hold these views or similar ones to it, to put their money where their mouths are, and commit suicide.
This would be a philosophically compelling outcome of their conviction. Since man is incapable of doing anything but destroy other life, violate nature and debase the dignity of all things around him, and since there is no reason or faith that would make anyone believe humans serve any positive purpose, and since therefore they should be exterminated, and since the COMPLAINERS ARE ALSO HUMANS, there is just one logical, moral, and emotionally valid thing for them to do, and that is to march into the sea.
I'd lead the way, but I lack the conviction. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/24/2008 4:54:25 AM | There are those who believe that- only, they share your conviction, and merely promise not to reproduce.
http://www.vhemt.org/ | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/24/2008 6:34:19 AM |
I'll explain to you how a plant can have a consciousness when you explain to me how a human can have a consciousness. Deal?
This is the most potent argument of the day. Or maybe of the month, or maybe of our entire existence on PoF. | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/24/2008 6:13:05 PM | there was a book written by peter tompkins called "the secret life of plants". it talks all about this kind of stuff. sorry if that was already mentioned, i didn't read the whole thread ;)
i think plants have some very rudimentary and primitive type of "consciousness", if only because they are living things and not inanimate rocks. a plant is alive and it has a life force, and that life force is the driving impetus behind everything the plant "does". it's not the DNA... the DNA merely provides the pattern for how that life force will express itself. that's how i see "plant consciousness".
now pass the screaming carrots ;) | |
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| Do plants have consciousness?
Posted: 7/24/2008 6:56:56 PM | >>> there was a book written by peter tompkins called "the secret life of plants". it talks all about this kind of stuff.
Yes, about seven times.
Funny how only a half a dozen scientists seems to think this, and only during the 60's and 70's......
>>> it has a life force
Care to define 'Lifeforce'? Sounds less like science, and more like newage. | |
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