auraithx

Lemmy won’t like the answer but it’s decentralised anonymous ID (proof of personhood).

I was using "chemical" as a shorthand for simple, automatic biological triggers to contrast them against complex, integrated networking.

i.e, for a Venus fly trap, a trigger (like a fly touching a hair) releases chemicals (ions like Calcium) that cause an electrical wave. This wave forces water to move quickly out of cells (turgor pressure), making the leaf collapse shut.

Consciousness is measurable because it’s not just that simple chemical reflex. It is the complex electrical buildup (readiness potential) in the brain's cortex that happens before the action.

Those paragraphs outlined the evidence which explain why it’s as improbable as any other nonsense statement.

We also can't know "for certain" that a rock isn't screaming silently, or that there isn't a china teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. Science doesn't deal in absolute certainties; it deals in probabilities based on evidence. There is zero evidence for plant consciousness and massive evidence against it.

Consciousness, as far as we observe it in the entire animal kingdom, is an emergent property of a centralized nervous system processing information. Plants lack neurons, a brain, or any substrate capable of integrating information into a unified experience.

Claiming a plant might be conscious is like claiming a calculator might be running Call of Duty. It’s not that we "don't know", it's that the hardware simply cannot run that software.

Evolutionarily, consciousness (and specifically the ability to feel pain or fear) is a mechanism to trigger escape or avoidance. Since plants are sessile (they cannot move), developing a complex, energy-expensive system to "feel" damage would be a massive evolutionary disadvantage. Why would nature select for an organism that can feel being eaten but do absolutely nothing about it?

Your definition of consciousness as any "internal state correlating to external state" is functionally too broad; by this metric, a mercury thermometer possesses a "world model" and is therefore conscious, which renders the term useless for distinguishing complex biology from simple causality. Phenomena like crown shyness are better explained by mechanical feedback loops, essentially biological if/then statements based on light and abrasion, rather than a self-aware "sense of self." A true "thought" or "world model" requires the capacity for "offline" simulation (counterfactuals) decoupled from immediate sensory input, whereas plants are entirely reactive ("online") and current AI lacks continuous internal state. Ultimately, you are conflating reception (reflexive data intake) with perception (integrated awareness), failing to distinguish between the mechanism of a map and the subjective experience of the territory.

Complex, integrated electrical patterns rather than just the presence of a specific chemical.

The measure of electrical activity in the motor cortex (visible via EEG) that builds up milliseconds before a person makes a conscious, voluntary movement. It’s distinct from the sharp spike of a reflex.

If the action originates from the Prefrontal Cortex (executive function/planning), it’s generally considered "conscious effort." If the signal bypasses the cortex and stays in the brainstem or spinal cord, it’s a reflex.

Sounds like anthropomorphism to me.

The decision would be made by measurable neurological means not chemical ones.

Aware means it has a sense of self. They are circular because we use these words to define how that is perceived.

Plants do not act deliberately when they do anything, because they do not have a sense of self and are not conscious.

If you don’t think plants have thoughts then you agree they are not conscious.

Yes.

Carnivores can digest plant matter too, and herbivores can digest meat.

Omnivore is a behavioural classification mostly. It means an animal (or person) that eats both plants and animals for energy.

So vegans are herbivores in practice, even though as a species humans are practicing omnivores.

The line is it being a conscious effort.

Reflexes weren’t a conscious effort.