Are Plants 'Intelligent'? (theguardian.com) 128
Long-time Slashdot reader Dr_Ish writes: It is not too common for the world of academic philosophy to be changed by a new discovery, or innovation. Perhaps the last time this happened in a major way can be traced back to Turing's famous (1950) "Computational Machinery and Intelligence" paper "Mind," where Turing proposed that computational systems could exhibit mind-like properties. However, it appears to be in the process of happening again.
In a series of recent papers and a book that was published last week, philosopher Prof. Paco Calvo from the University of Murcia, has made a compelling case that plants exhibit cognitive properties, such as memory, planning, intelligence and perhaps even numerical abilities... His book, Calvo, P. with Lawrence, N. "Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence was published in the UK last week. It will appear in North America in March next year.
From the Guardian's review of the book: Calvo writes that intelligence is "not quite as special as we like to think". He argues that it's time to accept that other organisms, even drastically different ones, may be capable of it....
In the course of his book, Calvo describes many experiments that reveal plants' remarkable range, including the way they communicate with others nearby using "chemical talk", a language encoded in about 1,700 volatile organic compounds.... Other studies show that some plants retain a memory of where the sun will rise, in order to turn their leaves towards the first rays. They store this knowledge — an internal model of what the sun is going to do — for several days, even when kept in total darkness. The conclusion must be that they constantly collect information, processing and retaining it in order to "make predictions, learn, and even plan ahead".
In a series of recent papers and a book that was published last week, philosopher Prof. Paco Calvo from the University of Murcia, has made a compelling case that plants exhibit cognitive properties, such as memory, planning, intelligence and perhaps even numerical abilities... His book, Calvo, P. with Lawrence, N. "Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence was published in the UK last week. It will appear in North America in March next year.
From the Guardian's review of the book: Calvo writes that intelligence is "not quite as special as we like to think". He argues that it's time to accept that other organisms, even drastically different ones, may be capable of it....
In the course of his book, Calvo describes many experiments that reveal plants' remarkable range, including the way they communicate with others nearby using "chemical talk", a language encoded in about 1,700 volatile organic compounds.... Other studies show that some plants retain a memory of where the sun will rise, in order to turn their leaves towards the first rays. They store this knowledge — an internal model of what the sun is going to do — for several days, even when kept in total darkness. The conclusion must be that they constantly collect information, processing and retaining it in order to "make predictions, learn, and even plan ahead".
Yes (Score:3, Interesting)
All life is intelligent even if it is not exhibited.
No. (Score:5, Interesting)
A computer can easily be made to retain a memory of where the sun will rise, so it can orient solar-panels to face it.
And yet, computers do not qualify as intelligent by any definition that anyone is using today.
So, that means that such behavior is not sufficient evidence of intelligence, and therefore we cannot conclude from it that plants are intelligent.
I have not read this book, but if the other arguments presented are as specious as this, then I think the author qualifies as "sophist" rather than "philosopher." Any idiot can make a bombastic claim in order to push a book and make money.
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I was merely answering the question posted. Don't really care about the contents of the book.
Computers cannot physically grow and change on their own, nor can they propagate. They only do what they are instructed within the specified operating parameters. Plants on the other hand do all that plus more. They respond to music and voices and some to touch. They will also grow their roots to where they are needed. Just because you can't communicate with it doesn't mean it isn't intelligent.
I feel like eating a
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A lack of proof of non-intelligence is not evidence of intelligence. Nor are any of the other behaviors you described.
It seems clear that you are using the word "intelligent" in a very special and uncommon sense. You have defined it in broad and poetic strokes. In relevant parlance, intelligence is absolutely going to include a capacity for abstract reasoning, the presence of which is not demonstrated by any of the observations
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So choosing self preservation is not intelligent? Don't know about too many suicidal plants.
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There you go again playing the definition game.
In common parlance humans are intelligent but animals are not. If we talk about "intelligent life" we are talking about beings who can do the kinds of things that humans can do, but that other animals cannot do.
When you start talking about the "intelligence" of dogs vs cats, you have just shifted to a different meaning of the word "intelligent." We have to be clear about this, lest we fall into the fallacy of equivocation.
If you talk about the "intelligence"
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It would only make sense that humans would want to compare their own intelligence with what they perceive outside of their own minds. Unfortunately that self bias resistor doesn't fit all circuits. Thinking that we have reached the final definition of something is foolhardy at best because of time and wisdom. Just because something doesn't measure up to our own expectations doesn't mean we understand everything and need no more knowledge.
Maybe we need to divide intelligence into different categories so that
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You may find this [wikipedia.org] useful:
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It agrees with me. Under the plant section it says scientists argue both sides. So it isn't settled and folks are going to think what they want with the facts presented.
We shall agree to disagree as I stand by my hypothesis.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought your hypothesis was "plants are intelligent." If that is the case, the Wikipedia article does not agree with you. It points out that some people agree with you, while others present a compelling counter-argument. That is why I linked the article, to show that this debate about what is and is not intelligent is rife with sloppy use of language, and as the very first line of the article states "Intelligence has been defined in may ways..."
It's just the fallacy of equivocation over and over again. If we erase the distinction between abstract problem-solving and efficient root-growing, we make the word "intelligence" stop being useful. My brain grows. My foot grows. Under any useful meaning of the word, my brain is intelligent but my foot is not. If we instead insist that everything that grows is intelligent, then the word "intelligent" is nothing more than a synonym for the word "alive."
We already have the word "alive." We don't need another word that means "alive." And once we broaden the scope of "intelligent" to mean just that, we will need a new and different word to refer to all those mental abilities that have been observed in humans but not in other forms of life. But that would be dumb, because we already have such a word, and it is "intelligent."
Most importantly, people love to equivocate like this because it would be astounding if it turned out that plants are capable of the high-level abstract reasoning that humans are capable of. That would really be a ground-breaking discovery that would rattle our entire understanding of the world. So, some people want to push that just for the shock value. But that is not remotely what has been demonstrated by the evidence presented. Instead, we have made sloppy use of the word "intelligent" to try and harness that emotional shock-value. Such statements do not shed more light on the discussion, they just throw dust in the air. So, I reject them.
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That is the most beautiful analysis I've seen on Slashdot in a long time. Solid reasoning.
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Thinking that we have reached the final definition of something is foolhardy at best because of time and wisdom.
This doesn't make any sense. Definitions are not things to be discovered. Definitions are just the concepts we have associated with particular words.
That's why arguing that plants are intelligent would necessitate changing the definition of intelligence. I've also heard similar arguments regarding plants and "feeling." Basically, when attacked or presented with certain stressors, some plants will release certain chemicals (I think some might be plant hormones, it's been a while since I read about it). So th
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I will just post this here and you can read it for yourself.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
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The sheep spread the spores/seeds in their poop for more generations of grass to spread and grow. Not exactly stupid. I know humans who aren't that smart.
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No you don't.
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Don't be pedantic, we all know Trump. ;)
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Are you the flippant police? I think not. Now run along as I don't take orders from strangers.
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Grass does not try to escape the ravages of sheep, who pull it out by the roots. Not very "intelligent".
Sheep generally nibble grass, not pull it out by the roots. Grass regrows from it’s roots, so in an area with a mix of plants, grass has a competitive advantage against other plants where sheep are eating them all.
It’s one of the reasons why you mow lawns regularly - gives the grass a competitive advantage against the weeds that are trying to establish themselves.
Cows on the other hand use their tongues to pull up handfuls (tonguefuls?) of grass and some will come up roots and all. Most grass
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Plants on the other hand do all that plus more. They respond to music and voices and some to touch...
I feel like eating a salad now.
Laughed so hard I almost choked! Thanks, I guess... ;-)
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"I want eggs now".
Captain Ed Mercer, The Orville.
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
What about visual processing - would that count as a sign of intelligence (remember, we're talking "intelligence" here, not "sentience")?
Boquila trifoliolata, the Chameleon Vine, was once thought to be a highly variable species, potentially even many subspecies, until it was discovered that it was the same plant just growing in different environments. Leaf sizes, colours, aspect ratios, margin dentation, tips, and a variety of other aspects can vary hugely not only from plant to plant, but between different locations on the plant. It was then discovered that not only do they mimic the plant that they grow on, but if the vine moves from one tree to the next, the leaf style changes to match the new tree. It appears to be an attempt to avoid herbivory.
There have been a variety of theories proposed on how it pulls off this trick, and none has really held up. Some theories have involved sensing chemicals given off by the tree or horizontal gene transfer, but these theories are generally considered dubious - the vine does not need to contact its host and will mimic species from far outside its natural range. More recent experiments show that it will even mimic artificial plastic plants. It's far from settled, but the theory that seems to hold up best is that there's some sort of "visual processing" going on based on the shadows cast on it by the host.
A more familiar plant with "neural processing" is the Venus Flytrap. There's several hairs inside each trap, but touching them will not make the trap close - because random objects could always touch the hairs, and it takes a lot of energy to reset a trap. You have to brush up against any of the hairs (collectively) repeatedly in a rhythmic pattern to trigger the trap, in a manner that resembles an insect. And how does it do this? Each brushing creates a sort of synaptic spike with a characteristic decay, and a chain of synapses with thresholds controls the trap. Very much like our own nervous system (albeit for a relatively simple "insect discernment" task).
I don't think plants are going to be coming up with a universal field theory or anything like that any time soon. But they are pretty amazing beings. Any intelligence is, however, it should be stressed, more akin to that of an octopus. Every part of a plant sort of just does its own thing and "shouts" to the opposite end (primarily) with chemical signals. Axial buds fight with each other "chemically" for top dominance, suppressing each other with auxin. Auxin cows side buds but encourages all the root tips to grow to give them more water so they can grow faster. On the root end, they do the exact inverse with gibberelins - cowing other roots into stopping growth and demanding more growth from all buds to give more sugar. So you get this self-balancing mechanism between root growth and top growth, vertical growth and side growth. A lot of plant hormones come in pairs like that - for example, cytokinin and ABA - the former shouts, "Everything is fine, grow like crazy!" and the latter "Oh my god we're gonna die, hunker down, prepare!!!"
And it's not just like this within plants, but to with other organisms, particularly in the rhizosphere. Plants deliberately nurture this whole microbiota community around them, because, it's kinda funny, plants kind of suck at a key part of their job (getting water and moisture out of the soil). Root hairs may only be a fraction of a cell wide, but they're still far too massive to get into fine cracks to reach tightly-bound water, and they have no way to chemically alter minerals. But fungal hyphae are minuscule and they can secrete acids to "mine" for nutrients (literally carving tunnels into minerals), so plants and mycorrhizal fungi set up a mutualistic "sugar-for-water-and-minerals" bartering system inside the plant's cells (the plant literally rearranges its organnelles to make room for the fungus to grow an arbuscle for exchange). And both fungus and plant have mechanisms to detect if the other is cheating them. Other fungi and bacteria in the r
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*** Getting water and minerals out of the soil
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Some Octopus species are pretty smart, give them a jar with food in it and they will open it. Put them in an aquarium and they'll wait for night and sneak down the hall for a crab dinner and return to their tank looking innocent.
The drawbacks are they're born alone, no teachers, no stories and they live a short time.
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No you do not. Two minute mark. [youtube.com]
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He accidentally touched multiple hairs the first time. The second time he touched two different hairs and pushed the activation levels over the activation threshold before it had decayed.
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A computer can easily be made to retain a memory of where the sun will rise, so it can orient solar-panels to face it.
And yet, computers do not qualify as intelligent by any definition that anyone is using today.
So, that means that such behavior is not sufficient evidence of intelligence, and therefore we cannot conclude from it that plants are intelligent.
Any intelligence that your solar panel robot possesses comes directly from human brains. They are, in fact, an extension of our intelligence and do not have an intelligence of their own other that the one we imposed on it. But you could call it an intelligence nevertheless. It can react to the environment to gain an effect that is good for it (or rather, for its owner).
Also, a typical living cell vastly outintelligences your solar panel arduino. Call me when your controller goes out to forage for resources
"even if it is not exhibited" (Score:2)
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"Any argument that makes itself unfalsifiable is bullshit."
Like this one?
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You purposefully made your argument support intelligence whether it's exhibited or not, unfalsifiable.
My argument is falsifiable. Simply provide an argument that makes itself unfalsifiable that isn't bullshit.
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God cannot tell a lie.
Satisfied?
How about the wind blows.
I could probably do this all night.
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Falsifiable.
"Thou shalt not kill."
“If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him.”
Falsifiable.
It does not blow inside a closed, still warehouse.
No doubt just as effectively.
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Um, really?
It wouldn't be wind inside a closed space. If it is wind it is blowing. Turn on a fan and you will now have wind and it will blow.
It is ok to be wrong sometimes. I forgive you.
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You do realize those sentences contradict. Self-forgiveness is a thing to be practiced as well.
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The proper translation is "Thou shalt not murder", there are many types of killing that are allowed, and it was an improper translation that gave us kill instead of murder in the commandment.
https://www.quora.com/If-the-B... [quora.com]
(I am sure there are better sources, I just don't feel like looking for a better one, this one gives multiple people explaining it.)
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Any set of molecules that organizes itself into life is clearly doing some long term "planning". Of course some planning is easy enough to do with basic physics. "Remembering" is trivial; spin the water in the cup and it remembers to keep swirling after you put it down, maybe that only seems intelligent that plants have something similar because it's slow motion. So an LC circuit is just dumb electronics but a biological entity that acts the same way is "intelligent"? Is it really planning, which some fe
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Well the spinning electrons making up the outer atom structure would lead one to believe something alive is going on, but I'm not sure movement defines life.
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I think it is something like, life extracts energy from its environment, grows and reproduces. A virus is not considered alive, little well a rock.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
So are vegans cold blooded murderers?
Spread the seeds, eat the plants. (Score:2)
Humans are the best spreaders of seeds.
Re: Spread the seeds, eat the plants. (Score:2)
But what if they have defenses against being eaten? Like thorns on blackberry bushes, or caspiacin in peppers.
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I think that the thorns on blackberry bushes are really about protecting the bushes, not the fruit. Fruit is made to be eaten after all.
For large definitions of intelligence, yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Compared to a large portion of people in this country, yes.
Compared to an orangutan, no.
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Well, given that the average person is about as intelligent as a vegetable when it comes to important decisions...
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Compared to an orangutan, no.
Leave Trump out of this!
Plants live on a different time scale dimension (Score:5, Interesting)
If you watch plants in timelapse videos you can see they show much different perceived behavior than we can see if we simply watch them from day to day. Things like cucumber plants reach tendrils and grow to grasp their trellis. Plants can and do move, entire forests migrate across regions as climate and conditions change. We perceived the trees on the other side of the forest as different, but the reality is the whole forest is a collective cooperative organism that operates on much grander timescales than we live.
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Your heart is a complex organism that communicates with the rest of the body through hormones and even nerves. But we don't typically attribute intelligence to a heart.
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No they don't. The trailing edge dies out as the new edge grows. The plants on the trailing edge don't move anywhere.
And here you were, lecturing others about perceiving plants/time.
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Like "intelligence", here you've sort of redefined "reach" as if the growth was consciously directed. It's not [youtu.be].
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Having behavior doesn't mean having intelligence.
That's it. That's the comment.
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Plants can and do move, entire forests migrate across regions as climate and conditions change.
That's like saying houses are intelligent because the ones on one side of the city are being demolished while a new building is going on up on the other side "moving" the city.
I get what you're trying to say with the rest of your post, but your forest example is not at all relevant. Tree's aren't pulling up their skirts and running away from the climate.
Sentient beings (Score:2)
Some chose to not eat animals because they are sentient beings. But now if plants are also sentient, things will get more complicated. Perhaps eating yeasts would be fine?
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Some chose to not eat animals because they are sentient beings.
Some won't eat anything with a face because they can imagine it looking at them. We call them "weaklings" because they don't get enough protein.
See Douglas Adams for the solution (Score:2)
I guess we finally need that animal that wants to be eaten and is able to clearly communicate that.
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com... [fandom.com]
Reminds me of the novel "Semiosis" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Plants have just really good automation. But, as computers, plants have no idea what is going on.
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This. I obviously haven't RTFB, but nothing mentioned in the links can't be fully explained by a physical-chemical stimulus-response system that evolved over many, many millions of years. Plants that move to follow the sun are not intelligent. It's a chemical reaction that has been selected for because it is beneficial to the plant. And yeah, if the chemical system has feedbacks that cause it to recur over multiple days, that is the same principle. Plants cannot selectively respond to stimuli. They cannot d
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Yeah, Calvo seems to being up all this as evidence that they may be intelligent, but I never saw how he makes that connection other than some hand wavy "you should throw away your zoo-centric preconceptions." Of course, that may not have come through in the book review.
Still, it may be an entertaining read if nothing else but to learn about all the amazing things plants can do, even if you don't necessarily subscript to the author's ultimate conclusion about "intelligence". I've enjoyed a lot of documenta
Re: Nope (Score:2)
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He is right that some humans have no effective intelligence. He is incorrect in assuming that is all of them.
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I have some idea about what is going on. You may just be a p-zombie...
Seriously, grow some stuff (I have tomatoes and green onion at this time) and you can see there is very good automation but absolutely no clue what is going on there.
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Thats a fairly arogant pov if youre somehow implying humans do know what is going on. We love make measurements and then pat ourselves on the back for them, yet have no idea what the universe holds.
Clearly anything short of omniscience is unintelligent. /s
Far too many humans confuse the word "intelligence" with a compliment or a moral judgement. We think that intelligence is getting the right answer or knowing many things. This colloquial sense of the word is only relevant when comparing humans to other humans. Claiming that plants lack intelligence can only be "arrogant" if you make the error of viewing intelligence through this lens. While there have been many attempts to define what we mean when we
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There's other intelligence tests such as the mirror test, something that few animals pass. And even in people, there is a fair amount of emotion rather then logic applied to some problems.
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Thats a fairly arogant pov if youre somehow implying humans do know what is going on.
We might not know what is going on. But no one has shown how to model a human mind from a stimulus/response system (which is what seems to be going on with plants).
In fact we have some evidence that the human brain is not just a stimulus/response system.
What is intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
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I consider sentience is a prerequisite of intelligence, with one test of sentience being able to make trust judgements.
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We have lots of good definitions. The problem is, it's very difficult to come up with a good definition that makes us, and only us, intelligent.
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We have lots of good definitions. The problem is, it's very difficult to come up with a good definition that makes us, and only us, intelligent.
Few people are trying to do that. Most people would agree that animals are intelligent, for example.
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Maybe. I bet you'd find a lot of argument against it here. It's also fairly difficult to come up with a definition by which we and our favourite animals are intelligent and that's it. You end up with some pretty wishy washy goalposts that you have to keep moving.
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In the case of ants, it's more complex as you have supercolonies where data is passed from one colony to neighbouring colonies. This can stretch over thousands of miles. Even if an individual ant colony is no more sentient than an individual neuron, and even if the colonies as a whole were reacting purely mechanistically, there may still be sentience exhibited.
(The human brain is just a machine. Sentience is now thought of as an emergent phenomenon from that machine so in a sense is an effect of the brain r
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noun form of sentient
sentient
able to perceive or feel things:
That's not much of an accolade as a euglena can do that. Euglenas don't have brains so the brain is not the source of sentience.
More intelligent than most AI solutions (Score:2)
AI solutions can learn something from plants!
A rhododendron... (Score:2)
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It could happen. If you go first and fail to adjust the clock on your move. You'd run out of time.
more proof of sentience ? (Score:3)
from the Wiki:
"The Secret Life of Plants (1973) is a book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. The book documents controversial experiments that claim to reveal unusual phenomena regarding plants such as plant sentience, discovered through experimentation."
Mr. Tompkins attached lie detectors to plants and discovered that they respond to stimuli, such as burning them with a cigaret. He later discovered that torturing one plant caused a nearby plant to respond in sympathy just as though it had been tortured. Other stuff happened too.
I thought the book was fascinating but without social media it failed to make a strong impression on the public. An update today could be a hit.
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That anyone values whether things are a 'hit' or not on social media indicates a level of intelligence, just not plant intelligence.
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Reports are that the experiments couldn't be reproduced [wikipedia.org].
Are Plants 'Intelligent'? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There is no commonly accepted good definition of intelligence.
FWIW, IMO plants are intelligent in precisely the same sense as the human immune system is. And to make that a bit more reasonable I should point out that there's a bunch of evidence that neural tissue evolved from the same cell line that evolved into the immune system, and they retain many shared features. So that's not exactly a "no".
Well... (Score:2)
...they're certainly smarter than some politicians.
Please stop. (Score:3)
If they're intelligent, why are you torturing those poor plants to extract information from them?
are we intelligent? (Score:2)
We all Know What Plants Crave (Score:2)
Re:I bet a plant could run the USA better. (Score:4, Informative)
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No, it's like saying they only eat eggs because it would be cruel to eat chicken meat.
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You jest. However, the "basis" for belief that one should not eat vegetables (or animals) predates this and can be found in such religions as Jainism [wikipedia.org] (some of whom practiced frutariansim [wikipedia.org]).
The simple truth is that humans do not need scientific facts to justify their moral positions. They are quite content to allow religion, superstition, or anxiety do that for them. The human brain is quite capable of internalizing all kinds of crazy moral codes, without any help from scientific data.
From a scientific per
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Cancel culture haters be hating on the debt cancellation, while trying to cancel the election and democracy at the same time.