Decision Making in Plants: A Rooted Perspective

Abstract

This article discusses the possibility of plant decision making. We contend that recent work on bacteria provides a pertinent perspective for thinking about whether plants make choices. Specifically, the analogy between certain patterns of plant behaviour and apparent decision making in bacteria provides principled grounds for attributing decision making to the former. Though decision making is our focus, the discussion has implications for the wider issue of whether and why plants (and non-neural organisms more generally) are appropriate targets for cognitive abilities. Moreover, decision making is especially relevant to the issue of plant intelligence as it is commonly taken to be characteristic of cognition.

The potential of plant action potentials

“…. Indeed, decision-making is an active area of research, as noted by Huang et al (2021), and some emerging models of plant decision-making implicate action potentials as a crucial element in the electrical signalling component of plant decision-making (e.g., Volkov, 2017;Parise et al, 2021; for related discussion see Lee et al, 2023). The takeaway lesson is that acknowledging plant APs motivates an appeal to consider plants as experimental organisms.…”

Biomimetic Epistemology

“…The droplets simply roll off, as they do in the case of biomimetic reproductions of lotus leaves, without any biological cognition being involved. The lotus plant may be cognizing in other respects (Calvo 2016), for example, as regards the detection of sunlight and nutrients or in making "decisions" related to root growth (Lee et al 2023), but the lotus effect from which humans allegedly learn does not involve any cognition and so cannot embody any knowing how. If this objection were valid, it would greatly reduce the scope of biomimetic epistemology, for a great many functional biological traits of interest to human designers would not actually embody any knowing how.…”

Plant Signaling, Behavior and Communication

“…Facing a constantly changing environment and, at the same time, interacting with other plant species through a sophisticated communication system may require that, at some point, plants are challenged to make choices to ensure survival. Lee et al [ 18 ] bring such exciting possibilities, suggesting that decision making is especially relevant to the issue of plant intelligence as it is commonly taken to be characteristic of cognition. As a matter of evidence, Wang et al [ 19 ] present the case of pea plants searching for support and likely making choices between different possibilities, showing distinct preference for their support.…”