[Brian_K_White]

You can not make the same argument just as well about human behavior.

You can observe that a human and a record player can both say "hello", but you can not make the argument from that that there is no way to disprove that a record player might wish to express a greeting to a fellow being.

A simple process can duplicate the outward appearance and effect of a complex one (an mp3 player can talk), and a complex process can duplicate the outward appearance and effect of a simple one (a human can crank a drive shaft), and neither of these means that one might just as well be the other. They don't mean anything at all by themselves either for proving or disproving.

Humans reacting to stimuli in largely similar ways to a plant, or even plain physical process like water filling a vessel or diffusion, neither proves nor disproves, nor even merely implies or suggests, nor even merely opens any doors to any room for doubts about anything.

It could be that there is no fundamental difference between a human and a plant and a toaster, but this observation about similar behavior provides nothing towards the argument.

[Etheryte]

Perhaps it's easier to explain what I mean by turning it around. Every point you've just brought up can be made for plants in the same way. Humans are not special in the animal kingdom, we're just dominant in this era. Other species held that role in the past and other species still will do so in the future.

[Bluestein]

Chinese room, etc., etc. ...

[TeMPOraL]

Yes, Chinese room is a well-known way of building up a system that's capable of understanding something from parts that individually are not (even though it was formulated in an attempt to prove the opposite).

I find some irony in the mention of elan vital upthread - on the one hand, most people here wouldn't let themselves be caught dead believing in elan vital, but then switch to any thread discussing AI, or even cognition in animals (or plants, like here), and suddenly vitalism becomes the mainstream position once again.