What? No. Plants show problem solving ability and awareness of their surroundings in ways that go far beyond their traditional conception of being inert and and unaware of their environment. Panpsychism is woo woo nonsense. I’m talking about observable light, water, and nutrient seeking behaviors, apparently altruistic chemical signalling of danger, protection of offspring, some kind of communication with neighbors to mediate conflict over resources. You have to zoom way, way out to make it look anything like animal communication but these creatures are aware of their environment and interacting with organisms around them.
Sure those behaviours are observed. But what specifically makes you think consciousness is likely? Obviously we can’t measure consciousness at this point, (or perhaps ever it’s quite unclear) but most people fall somewhere between “brains do it” and the more chauvinistic “human brains do it”.
This isn’t really something you can talk about particularly scientifically, the closest to that is basically that we observe that in humans people report modifications to consciousness if you dick with their brains and we tend to avoid wanting to overcomplicate hypotheses with second order things until necessary. We can then try making comparisons between human brains and non human brains but it’s all very speculative.
You can assume behavioural complexity requires consciousness but it’s pretty vibes based and drawing lines is hard. Most people also seem to not ascribe say complex algorithms, bacterial colonies, or water cycles or whatever consciousness though.
So I’m curious where you fall. Personally I don’t think pan psychism is woo but I don’t subscribe. Stuff just is conscious doesn’t seem any more or less reasonable to me than a lot of other “stuff in this particular arrangement just is conscious” type hypotheses, especially when humans can have all sorts of modifications to their brains and continue to describe being conscious (p zombies???).
I don’t want to bait, I’m genuinely interested although personally consider myself more of a fence sitter on non animal sentience. Suspecting it’s less likely but of course unprovable one way or the other atm.
Everyone seems to use the words differently but in general sentience is accepted as the ability to feel and respond to one’s environment. That implies a thing which is able to feel/be aware often synonymous with consciousness although some people say consciousness is sentience + imagination etc.
I mean it as there being a thing which feels like something to be.
If you mean it otherwise could you please define it? Or if you’re happy to proceed with that definition of consciousness and sentience (which requires consciousness as defined) could you proceed with answering my questions?
What? No. Plants show problem solving ability and awareness of their surroundings in ways that go far beyond their traditional conception of being inert and and unaware of their environment. Panpsychism is woo woo nonsense. I’m talking about observable light, water, and nutrient seeking behaviors, apparently altruistic chemical signalling of danger, protection of offspring, some kind of communication with neighbors to mediate conflict over resources. You have to zoom way, way out to make it look anything like animal communication but these creatures are aware of their environment and interacting with organisms around them.
Sure those behaviours are observed. But what specifically makes you think consciousness is likely? Obviously we can’t measure consciousness at this point, (or perhaps ever it’s quite unclear) but most people fall somewhere between “brains do it” and the more chauvinistic “human brains do it”.
This isn’t really something you can talk about particularly scientifically, the closest to that is basically that we observe that in humans people report modifications to consciousness if you dick with their brains and we tend to avoid wanting to overcomplicate hypotheses with second order things until necessary. We can then try making comparisons between human brains and non human brains but it’s all very speculative.
You can assume behavioural complexity requires consciousness but it’s pretty vibes based and drawing lines is hard. Most people also seem to not ascribe say complex algorithms, bacterial colonies, or water cycles or whatever consciousness though.
So I’m curious where you fall. Personally I don’t think pan psychism is woo but I don’t subscribe. Stuff just is conscious doesn’t seem any more or less reasonable to me than a lot of other “stuff in this particular arrangement just is conscious” type hypotheses, especially when humans can have all sorts of modifications to their brains and continue to describe being conscious (p zombies???).
I don’t want to bait, I’m genuinely interested although personally consider myself more of a fence sitter on non animal sentience. Suspecting it’s less likely but of course unprovable one way or the other atm.
I didn’t say consciousness, I said sentient. They’re distinct concepts. I don’t find consciousness to be an interesting or useful concept.
Everyone seems to use the words differently but in general sentience is accepted as the ability to feel and respond to one’s environment. That implies a thing which is able to feel/be aware often synonymous with consciousness although some people say consciousness is sentience + imagination etc.
I mean it as there being a thing which feels like something to be.
If you mean it otherwise could you please define it? Or if you’re happy to proceed with that definition of consciousness and sentience (which requires consciousness as defined) could you proceed with answering my questions?