Are Your Cells Conscious?

Ginsburg,; Jablonka,

doi:10.5406/amerjpsyc.133.1.0117

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…After stating that consciousness arose in the first, prokaryotic, cells, Baluska and Reber ( 2019 ) write, “whatever mechanisms [for sentience] operate at the level of prokaryotes will carry on their functions in eukaryotes and multicellular organisms [because] a basic principle of evolutionary biology is that adaptive forms and functions, once established are rarely jettisoned…” Apart from the fact that their “basic principle” is incorrect because evolutionary loss of traits is common (Bleidorn 2007 ; Ellers et al 2012 ; Futuyma and Kirkpatrick 2017 ), the claim that all cells are conscious necessarily means that all human cells are conscious, never having lost their prokaryote-based consciousness. However, the fact that only brain injuries diminish human consciousness, whereas the loss of our somatic cells does not, is evidence against this idea (also see Ginsburg and Jablonka 2020 , 2021 ).…”

Section: Claims For Plant Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debunking a myth: plant consciousness

et al. 2020

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Claims that plants have conscious experiences have increased in recent years and have received wide coverage, from the popular media to scientific journals. Such claims are misleading and have the potential to misdirect funding and governmental policy decisions. After defining basic, primary consciousness, we provide new arguments against 12 core claims made by the proponents of plant consciousness. Three important new conclusions of our study are (1) plants have not been shown to perform the proactive, anticipatory behaviors associated with consciousness, but only to sense and follow stimulus trails reactively; (2) electrophysiological signaling in plants serves immediate physiological functions rather than integrative-information processing as in nervous systems of animals, giving no indication of plant consciousness; (3) the controversial claim of classical Pavlovian learning in plants, even if correct, is irrelevant because this type of learning does not require consciousness. Finally, we present our own hypothesis, based on two logical assumptions, concerning which organisms possess consciousness. Our first assumption is that affective (emotional) consciousness is marked by an advanced capacity for operant learning about rewards and punishments. Our second assumption is that image-based conscious experience is marked by demonstrably mapped representations of the external environment within the body. Certain animals fit both of these criteria, but plants fit neither. We conclude that claims for plant consciousness are highly speculative and lack sound scientific support.

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Section: Claims For Plant Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%