You act so sure, yet your own post betrays that you know it’s not based on current evidence (“waiting for the day…”).
In a world where conserving nature is simultaneously increasingly difficult and increasingly important, I don’t mind a bit of artistic license when it comes to descriptions of plant life if it leads to more awareness and more people thinking twice about plants and how we treat natural ecosystems.
Obviously there’s a balance to be struck though.
Is that founded on a basis of scientific fact, or Human Superiority Complex?
Opposable thumbs mean we have the ability to use smarts, so genetics walked the path to consciousness over many generations. A smarter horse is fine and all but not that beneficial. Being faster or stronger or sexier is probably better. Same with a plant: get more nutrients or sunlight. There are cheaper ways than being smart to do that.
I can agree that there is no genetic benefit to being able to move at the speed animals move, because that's not how plants obtain food or avoid being eaten. Thus no need for nerves or a CNS to coordinate movement.
Also why would a smart (or conscious) plant not have eventually learned to use some of that to do something that improves survivability. Like strike out, or hide down, or anything more than "somewhat grow towards the light or nutrients over time".
It's a nice fun exercise to argue with people while imbibing your drug of choice, but it's utterly unlinked to anything else we see in nature. We're not idiots, we would have seen evidence by now.
It is almost certainly the same for all animals with a brain.
Given the fact that plants have no brain it is a reasonable assumption they have no consciousness. It may be wrong, but given all evidence it is, so far, the best assumption.
We usually call assumptions based on our best current understanding scientific facts.
Recall that most plants avoid building single-purpose organs, as the odds that 70-80% of the plant gets eaten are high. Plants have evolved to survive massive loss of body parts.
I've read some studies on plant consciousness which shows that plant awareness can be turned off with anesthetics
Why would it be reasonable to expect they have any consciousness? What would plants do with such a consciousness that they’re wasting scarce energy on both operating and building the biological structures to maintain consciousness? They can’t move. They can’t take active actions. Why would they develop a consciousness that does nothing but makes them aware of their implementing doom without allowing them to act on it?
> Recall that most plants avoid building single-purpose organs, as the odds that 70-80% of the plant gets eaten are high. Plants have evolved to survive massive loss of body parts.
You know what would be really useful to evolve to survive the loss of body parts? Not suffering and feeling pain when you do, or even being aware that you just did. Especially when not being mobile in anyways you can’t do anything about it.
> I've read some studies on plant consciousness which shows that plant awareness can be turned off with anesthetics
Citation needed.
Actually I’ll make it even easier. Start with studies that show plant awareness in the first place, before you show studies showing it can be switched off.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40626-023-00304-1
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8052216/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00796...
https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article/139/4/514/657382...
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40626-024-00345-0
They just do all that at a much slower time scale than you're used to in your consciousness. I wouldn't totally discount plants having some form of consciousness at lower frequency.
Not very convincing, there are chemistry-based explanations for why humans have behavior as well.
> that they can’t process sensory input
You just said they do (*-tropism).
> the lack of subjective experience
How do you know what its like to be a plant?
Also, considering they’re rooted to the ground and cannot move there is no evolutionary advantage to sentience (and actually there are massive disadvantages since it will use energy for sentience which serves no purpose). Now, just because there isn’t an evolutionary advantage, or even if it’s an evolutionary disadvantage to a property doesn’t automatically mean it doesn’t exist, but given that there’s no other reason to believe it does exist this is just another piece of the puzzle that shows it doesn’t even need to exist.
How so?