Are plants conscious?

birch said:
but i wonder if there is a difference between plantlife where some plants are more conscious than others. for instance, if trees are more conscious than mushroom or grass etc.
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Mushrooms (fungi) aren't plants or animals, they are their own thing.
 
iceaura said:
Maximum lifespan of any insect is something like 25 years. Median would be closer to 25 days. So no exceptions there.
And quite limited consciousness - not zero, maybe, but not given to reflection.

Meanwhile, we seem to be revisiting the long-defunct billiard ball model of bottom-up preset mechanical fate. As if substrate determined pattern, ever.

One can't help but speculate that in such a view the difference in consciousness between a plant and a person would be largely illusion - the one with no more freedom of choice than the other, would imply no actual role for consciousness.
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Does it matter? What role or utility do you see between human consciousness and other forms of consciousness?

Is the ultimate purpose continuity of the individual or continuity of the species? Is there any purpose at all, other than a mathematical contuinity caused by dynamic change?
 
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But this may be more useful than a bad joke. The following is a defense of the Hameroff-Penrose concept of micro tubular consciousness as far down as in single cell organisms.
 
spidergoat said:
So, you claim some scientists have a conclusion about the non-physical and are looking for evidence to prove it?
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What would evidence of the "non-physical" in the physical look like? .... aside from a model of the physical that cannot adequately analyse everything before us ...

No, I am not talking about scientists proving what is already apparent. I am talking about scientists including dualistic approaches into their work (such as abandoning the "brainless" model if fatigue to increase athletic performance )

Those aren't scientists! Because science doesn't work like that.
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Well if they are scientists, and its working, a more obvious angle is that your ideas of science are constrained by ideology.
 
iceaura said:
We have clearly demonstrated the synthesis of a living being from non-living chemicals, as a routine event in the world around us.
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And it is routinely called reproduction.
Attempts to further synthesize the process (ie introduce artificial/man made/synthetic catalysts that take the process out of its natural context) are limited to synthesizing the chemicals life utilizes, as it goes about its natural process of reproducing.
So in all cases, the process is limited, contained and performed by the natural processes of reproduction. As such, there remains a clear distinction between synthesizing the chemicals life utilizes, and synthesizing life itself.


I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean.
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It means everything has a material cause, even if you want to obfuscate things through the vagueries of "emergence".

Clearly many patterns emergent from substrates have properties, features, qualities, etc, that their substrates do not possess -
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Some more clearly than others.

that's a general truth of patterns and substrates. Quarks do not burn. Water molecules do not freeze. Chitin does not buzz, bite, or fly. Neurons do not think.
We can get very precise when we want to talk about when a collection of quarks start to burn (you can talk about a water molecule being frozen, so that doesn't hold ... you would probably have to drive the definition down closer to the quark level), but lose practically all points of reference when you want to say when chitin starts to buzz or neurons start to think. There is not a radical departure into controversy amongst physicists when you want to talk about emergence giving rise to things burning or freezing. Introduce consciousness however and you will be lucky to get even two to agree.
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Musika said:
And it is routinely called reproduction.
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This is the very thing we are trying to achieve. If nature can do it, we should be able to, except no one knows the exact circumstances when the first reproducing polimer occurred. It took the earth about 4 billion years, why should we expect to just throw a few chemicals together and expect self replication. The Miller-Yuri experiment shows that molecules can be formed by the thousands in a very short time, but which is far too many, to learn much more than that chemicals are easily formed.

Hazen called the ideal condition as the "bottleneck ", i.e. a rare event when all conditions were just right.
But then he estimates that the earth has performed some 2 trillion, quadrillion, quadrillion, quadrillion (natural) chemical experiments during it's lifetime and changes, one of which (or perhaps even several times) hit the right combination under the right conditions.
Not easy to duplicate in a lab.....:)

But on his back-0f-the envelope notes he also does not exclude the possibility that "reproduction" might form in several different ways. He cited self-organization, surface organization, black smokers, and the formation of RNA all having the potential to form life, even as it may not necessarily be human. That would set an unwarranted limitation on the definition of "living organisms"

According to him, life (reproduction and evolution) has a high probability of occurring on other cinderella planets throughout the universe. The combinatory richness and numbers of universal chemical reactions is immeasurable. If there are other "earths" out there, some form of life is likely to exist there as well.
 
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Write4U said:
According to him, life (reproduction and evolution) has a high probability of occurring on other cinderella planets throughout the universe. The combinatory richness and numbers of universal chemical reactions is immeasurable.
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i am fairly convinced that for the creation of life there must be a moon that creates tidal movement.
no flow no life.
 
RainbowSingularity said:
i am fairly convinced that for the creation of life there must be a moon that creates tidal movement.
no flow no life.
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Perhaps you're right, but I myself cannot see that as absolute necessity for creation of life on earth. The very impact of Theia may have been responsible for the right condition, but such events are not exclusive to earth.
But, it is noteworthy that event did occur some 4.5 billion years ago.
The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Big Splash, or the Theia Impact suggests that the Moon formed out of the debris left over from a collision between Earth and an astronomical body the size of Mars, approximately 4.5 billion years ago, in the Hadean eon; about 20 to 100 million years after the solar system coalesced.[1] The colliding body is sometimes called Theia, from the name of the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon.[2] Analysis of lunar rocks, published in a 2016 report, suggests that the impact may have been a direct hit, causing a thorough mixing of both parent bodies.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant-impact_hypothesis

And a mixing of chemicals, and then we get to panspermia, which IMO, increases the probability that life may have formed elswhere. The Universe is a big place.
 
Write4U said:
Perhaps you're right, but I myself cannot see that as absolute necessity for creation of life on earth. The very impact of Theia may have been responsible for the right condition, but such events are not exclusive to earth.
But, it is noteworthy that event did occur some 4.5 billion years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant-impact_hypothesis

And a mixing of chemicals, and then we get to panspermia, which IMO, increases the probability that life may have formed elswhere. The Universe is a big place.
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they still havent figured out how the water got here have they ?

P.S edit above ... clarification specificity...
life in the forms that we acknoledge animals, i.e fish birds reptiles mamals etc...
i share the opinion that life is dominantin the known universe in microbial form.
getting it to walk and talk and build rocket ships however.. requires a few extra things.
thats where i place my current opinion that a tidal wash process is required.
something that creates long term movement.
like putting all the ingrediants for a cake in a box and expecting it to make its self into a cake.
no mixing = no cake !
no baking = no cake !
 
Musika said:
What would evidence of the "non-physical" in the physical look like? .... aside from a model of the physical that cannot adequately analyse everything before us ...
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When you refer to "dualism" are you referring to substance dualism, or property dualism?
Most, I would imagine, when they hear the term "dualism" would assume that you are referring to substance dualism, but I suspect that this is not the case, so clarification would be welcome.
Otherwise you might create considerable confusion.
No, I am not talking about scientists proving what is already apparent.
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What is already apparent?
You do have a habit of simply asserting that things are apparent, or self-evident, without ever offering anything other than a rather glib notion to what you are alluding.
I am talking about scientists including dualistic approaches into their work (such as abandoning the "brainless" model if fatigue to increase athletic performance )
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I am assuming by using the term "scientists" and "dualistic approaches" in the same sentence that you are referring to property dualism?
Well if they are scientists, and its working, a more obvious angle is that your ideas of science are constrained by ideology.
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This is yet another example of where, rather than offer any actual example so that people can understand your point better, you simply claim that there are examples.
This really is not particularly helpful.
 
Musika said:
And it is routinely called reproduction.
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Yes.
So any mention of bacterial reproduction - at least - is referring to the synthesis and arrangement, by a bacterium, of all the chemicals that make up another bacterium.
That's how they reproduce.
Musika said:
So in all cases, the process is limited, contained and performed by the natural processes of reproduction.
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The process is not "limited, contained, and performed" by itself. The syntheses involved are the natural processes of reproduction in bacteria.
It would be the other way around, if anything. The reproduction is limited by the circumstances and requirements of the necessary chemical synthesis, which the bacterium may or may not engage in. The bacterium, on the other hand, is normally undertaking all kinds of syntheses other than those involved in the reproduction.
 
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RainbowSingularity said:
they still havent figured out how the water got here have they ?
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Perhaps Theia was a frozen ball of ice? There is a lot of hydrogen in the universe. It's the most abundant element in the universe and was formed very early in the life of the universe. There is your water and even without the moon we'd have tides caused by the sun's gravity.
 
Write4U said:
Perhaps Theia was a frozen ball of ice? There is a lot of hydrogen in the universe. It's the most abundant element in the universe and was formed very early in the life of the universe. There is your water and even without the moon we'd have tides caused by the sun's gravity.
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can water coalesce ?
maybe earth was a molten lump centre (got hit-up by Theia) turned into gasious super baby giant which slowly cooled and gravitated the coalescent water to its surface over several million years...
but... how is oxygen created ?
it is not an element created by stars is it ?
 
RainbowSingularity said:
can water coalesce ?
maybe earth was a molten lump centre (got hit-up by Theia) turned into gasious super baby giant which slowly cooled and gravitated the coalescent water to its surface over several million years...
but... how is oxygen created ?
it is not an element created by stars is it ?
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As I understand it, some chemical reactions produce free oxygen
Initial Sources
Earth’s atmosphere didn’t originally contain oxygen. Manganese oxidation, a chemical reaction, is thought to have been the original source of atmospheric oxygen. A group of aquatic organisms known as cyanobacteria were the first to produce oxygen through photosynthesis, however......
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https://www.livescience.com/5515-earth-oxygen.html

IMO, the fundamental building blocks of physical existence is of a chemical nature.
The Table of Elements may be incomplete but when we look down at nano scales of matter we find only chemicals and chemicals interact with consistent mathematical precision, given the same environmental conditions, which allow for symmetrical complexity in all physical things.

But speaking of consciousness, I just saw a remarkable NOVA presentation on Butterflies, a surface species alien to humans, just as the cuttlefish is an aquatic alien to humans, just as life around Black smokers is unique from all other life on earth.

I watched and marveled at the mathematical complexity of metamorphosis and the short but breathtaking life of this remarkable expression of evolution. A true NOVA quality presentation.

 
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