Zoocentrism in the weeds? Cultivating plant models for cognitive yield

Abstract

It remains at best controversial to claim, non-figuratively, that plants are cognitive agents. At the same time, it is taken as trivially true that many (if not all) animals are cognitive agents, arguably through an implicit or explicit appeal to natural science. Yet, any given definition of cognition implicates at least some further processes, such as perception, action, memory, and learning, which must be observed either behaviorally, psychologically, neuronally, or otherwise physiologically. Crucially, however, for such observations to be intelligible, they must be counted as evidence for some model. These models in turn point to homologies of physiology and behavior that facilitate the attribution of cognition to some non-human animals. But, if one is dealing with a model of animal cognition, it is tautological that only animals can provide evidence, and absurd to claim that plants can. The more substantive claim that, given a general model of cognition, only animals but not plants can provide evidence, must be evaluated on its merits. As evidence mounts that plants meet established criteria of cognition, from physiology to behavior, they continue to be denied entry into the cognitive club. We trace this exclusionary tendency back to Aristotle, and attempt to counter it by drawing on the philosophy of modelling and a range of findings from plant science. Our argument illustrates how a difference in degree between plant and animals is typically mistaken for a difference in kind.

Enacting Plant-Inspired Robotics

“…Research in plant intelligence, for instance, indicates the distributed nature of control, where adaptive responsibility is shared between local responses, internal long-distance signaling mechanisms, the material properties of organs, and the dynamics of bodyenvironment interactions (recalling the "principle of ecological balance, " Pfeifer and Scheier, 1999). More fully plant-like robots will exploit similar means for adaptive behavior through principles of the smart embodiment such as sensorimotor coupling with soft bodies, and decentralized control (Linson and Calvo, 2020;Calvo and Trewavas, 2021).…”

“…Our discussion has explored a two-way relationship between enactivism and the design of more plant-like robots. Enactivism helps us attend to the possibility of looking to plants and other non-zoological sources of inspiration, emphasizing the coupling of adaptive morphology with strong autonomy across the tree of life, while the practical success of plant-inspired robots reinforces a postcognitivist perspective (Heras-Escribano, 2019) on the diverse forms intelligence can take (Linson and Calvo, 2020).…”

Anaesthetics and plants: from sensory systems to cognition-based adaptive behaviour

“…Ever since Aristotle placed plants outside the realm of sensitive organisms due to their immobility and apparent lack of sensation, plants have been considered somewhere in between living and non-living systems (Lindsay 1876 ; Ingensiep 2001 ; Mesaroș 2014 ; Linson and Calvo 2020 ). Immanuel Kant considered plants close to inorganic minerals due to their apparently senseless nature (Ingensiep 2001 , p. 310).…”

“…This follows from Darwinian evolution, in which all organisms, extinct and current, are part of the same evolutionary systems and utilise the same biological life principles. Of course, there are significant differences in these fundamental attributes between different types of organisms, but organism-specific versions are present in all organisms (Bernard 1878 ; Baluška and Mancuso 2009 , 2020a , b ; Baluška and Levin 2016 ; Linson and Calvo 2020 ; Reber and Baluška 2020 ). If we continue to maintain a Darwinian evolutionary position (Eisenstein et al 2016 ), we must expect that all organisms rely on these faculties.…”

Consciousness and cognition in plants

“…Cognition and consciousness are standardly thought of as exclusive to some locomoting animals. Yet locomotion appears to be uninformative as a way to draw a plant/animal dividing cognitive line (Linson & Calvo, 2020). To begin with, locomoting and nonlocomoting organisms resort to different strategies to achieve their own ends, these differences being caused by their contingent and differing energy demands.…”