[hathawsh]

The word "consciousness" has important connotations that are not captured by the generic definition. As others noted, an air conditioner with a built in thermostat can fit the generic definition of consciousness.

When I say an entity is conscious, I mean to say it not only has the ability to react to stimuli, but it can also abstractly choose how to react. It can rewire its own reactions, not just in a Pavlovian sense, but it can also develop internal thought frameworks and route its reactions through the frameworks it prefers.

The only mechanism plants have for improving the way they react to their environment is biological evolution. You could call that mechanism a type of consciousness, but in doing so you would have to treat the species as the conscious entity, not the individual plant; individual plants are like passing thoughts.

Thus I don't think individual plants are conscious unless they have some way to improve their reaction to their environment outside of biological evolution.

[xkcd-sucks]

Plants engage actively with their environment, and communicate with other plants. Usually by secreting some kind of chemical ("secondary metabolite"), which makes sense given they don't move very fast.

Things that don't move very fast are at an advantage where energy efficiency is important. The general trend is that low-energy things modify their environment chemically and high-energy things modify their environment mechanically. Compare the diversity of human-discovered secondary metabolites from plants/fungi (low power), insects/reptiles/amphibians (medium power), mammals/birds (high power)

https://www.mpg.de/15791/Plants_and_environment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_communication

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b23/df2807a0fb8e77c4922377...

[hathawsh]

Plant communication is certainly fascinating, but I wouldn't call it a sign of consciousness. Isn't it just another reaction to stimuli?

I can imagine an experiment where some plants are placed in an environment where the communication chemical they secrete interacts with a gas in the air, slowly poisoning the plants. Would the plants adapt by changing their own behavior, or would some later generation survive due to a mutation? If they changed their own behavior, that might point toward a kind of individual consciousness.

[xkcd-sucks]

Us humans are kind of undergoing that experiment right now with climate change and everything else, and even with the strategies available to us it is unclear whether humans will survive the coming hundreds of years :)

From a philosophical standpoint, and considering the spirit rather than the details: Is this hypothetical experiment just giving plants a challenge at them which they're too dumb or helpless to solve?

It seems there are plenty of analogous challenges which humans alone or in groups are unequipped to deal with.

Is any "challenge" humans respond to not a homeostatic correction, like if everything were perfectly perfect for a person would they do anything different at all? Considering also the homeostases we're built to maintain "just because", like novelty vs boredom.

If a thing "decided" to change its reproductive rate, or selected different sexual partners based on environmental conditions, is this necessarily a phenomenon unconnected to individual agency? Humans do this too.

Developmental neuroscience strongly supports the claim that physical brain architecture requires environmental stimuli, and psychology strongly supports the importance of "nurture" contributing to a person's "self". Do these stimulus responses have no bearing on consciousness?

If your conscious experience suddenly became transferred to a tree, and a lumberjack came to cut you down, how could you convince them you're conscious using the behaviors available to you?

Consider a conscious alien unfamiliar with human society, or a Stone age tribesperson who somehow doesn't embody human cognitive biases like assuming consciousness of things that look like them. If they observe a financial services office for a few hours, do they think the workers are modifying the environment in an individually considered manner?

If plants and humans were both considered by definition to be conscious, would life change?

[Retric]

The medical definition of conciseness includes things like responding to bright light by constructing the iris. It’s not high on the scale, but it’s very much part of the current definition in active usage. So, in practice it’s useful have level of consciousness and as such the minimum can be extremely low without becoming less meaningful.

More importantly as we understand more about the brain we may eventually understand how everything works. Any definition that would then exclude humans as conscious becomes irrelevant.

[bane]

> The medical definition of conciseness includes things like responding to bright light by constructing the iris.

Which has an interesting parallel with many plant's ability to rotate the face of their leaves towards the current position of the sun.

[hndamien]

Mimosa Pudica and the Venus Fly Trap respond even faster (in iris response like times).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTcVNyOhUc

[hathawsh]

That's a very helpful clarification. Thanks!

[ebg13]

It sounds like you're starting from an assumption that thoughts are somehow inherently different from responses. But we don't actually know if they are. Nothing that we've ever learned about how brains work has ever shown that choices, really all thoughts, are anything other than automatic. Our behaviors are tremendously complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that we have free will.

So the question shouldn't be whether we can adapt in ways that plants can't but rather what degree of adaptability feels sufficiently thoughtful to our meat computers.

[loup-vaillant]

> Our behaviors are tremendously complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that we have free will.

If by "free will", you do mean what I think you mean, it would be very surprising we have it. It would basically imply dualism, which I have dismissed a long time ago.

Of course our thoughts are entirely automatic. They're physical processes like any other. It would still be nice to understand their structure. I for one would be thrilled to learn how choices actually happen.

[ppm34]

How does an electron decide where to go in the dual hole experiment?

[loup-vaillant]

Like the double slit experiment with a photon, or the semi-transparent mirror?

Simple: it goes both ways. Then decoherence happens, the universe splits in half, and we experience being in either one of those halves. What we observe is but a glimpse of what actually happen. We don't have access to the other side (split universes don't communicate with each other, contrary to what much sci-fi material describes).

That may sound weird, but the alternative (that half the amplitude is "not real", or that it "collapses" (in a way that is non-local, that is, exceeds the speed of light), is even weirder.

Or you could just refuse to answer the question, and stick to "this equations mean I should observe this with those statistics".

[naasking]

> When I say an entity is conscious, I mean to say it not only has the ability to react to stimuli, but it can also abstractly choose how to react. It can rewire its own reactions, not just in a Pavlovian sense, but it can also develop internal thought frameworks and route its reactions through the frameworks it prefers.

These are just reactions with a memory component. This would include any computers, and so is too broad. I think consciousness will end up being a specific type of information process, with certain properties including those you describe, but it must have more properties and so be more specific than what you outline.

[andrei_says_]

Also if you unpack “prefers”, there’s nothing there which is not based on current biochemistry, genetic make up, instinctive responses, conditioning, trauma and experiences until a fraction of a second ago, and environment.

Saying this because the definition seems to beer toward “free will”.

[DonaldFisk]

David Chalmers discusses the consciousness of theromostats here: http://consc.net/notes/lloyd-comments.html

[lottin]

I tend to agree, but at the same time an entity capable of choosing how to react would violate the law of cause and effect. So, can conscious beings really choose how to react, or is consciousness just the illusion that we can make choices?

[hathawsh]

I'm not sure I understand the question. You might be right if there is no passage of time, but thanks to time, the effect of one instant can be a cause in the next instant. The choice of reaction develops with time.

[matt-attack]

I feel like evolution of a species is way too simple a process to claim it has a conscience. I believe if you simply combine variations (from either mutations or cross-breeding) along with “survival of the fittest” you essentially get evolution. There’s nothing more magical happening. Each of those processes is extremely boring and entirely mechanical.

[dTal]

Gee, under that definition I'm not sure I'm conscious!

[hathawsh]

What I described matches the Disney/Pixar movie Inside Out, which most people readily identify with. :-)