The Intelligence of Plants: A New Narrative? Notes on a Contemporary Cultural Phenomenon - preprint original manuscript (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pulse, 2021
Taking up Michael Marder's "object of psychoanalysis, wherein we might detect a vegetal approach to the psyche," 2 and Timothy Morton's dark ecology, which traces the twisted loops of agrilogistics, this article proposes an ecopsychological approach to the expression of plant soul as the very constitution of human subjectivity. Examining Richard Linklater's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, which demonstrates the pretty blue Mors ontologica's insidious plant agency to cleave the somatic human spirit, and Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, wherein cinematic plant-thinking demands temporal distortions that render the human uncanny, this article positions the plant as the primary mover, the animating force and manifestation of human desire and its expression.
I, Plant: Sterelny’s "Thought in a hostile world" and plant cognition (2016)
Contemporary plant biologists take seriously the notion of plant cognition or intelligence (Gross 2016; Trewavas 2016), yet there is still no consensus on how these abilities are to be described (e.g., Calvo 2016). Most contentious has been the formulation of the intelligent behaviour of plants as ‘neurological’ (ibid; Alpi et al. 2007). I argue that there is no consensus because there is yet to be a principled way to distinguish between the adaptive behaviours plants display (Cvrčková et al. 2009, 395). What are needed to settle this matter are principled distinctions for the kinds of behaviour attributed to plants. This can be achieved by the application of criteria that generally delineate the cognitive, and that discriminate between kinds of cognitive abilities. To this end, I use an evolutionary taxonomy of cognitive control developed by Kim Sterelny (2003) to establish principled grounds upon which the plant cognition debate can be resolved.
Language matters Commentary on Segundo-Ortin & Calvo on Plant Sentience
Animal Sentience, 2023
The term sentience tends to be associated with affective valence along with affectively neutral sensory states. In the absence of evidence for affectively laden states in plants, the use of the term sentience in the exploration of plant sensory and behavioral complexity is misleading and ethically problematic for its potential to trivialize animal sentience.
The Stories Plants Tell [Front Matter]
Narrative Culture, 2023
The special issue fits into the larger frame of a recent “vegetal turn” within the humanities that has long been used to find plants marginal, mute, or symbolic supplements to human stories. The articles as well as the interview of this special issue, therefore, aim to contest narrative as an anthropocentric proper and delineate current theories, methods, and challenges of conceiving plants as both storytellers and storied matter. The contributions collected in this issue (by Laura A. Forster, Michael Marder, Natasha Myers, Solvejg Nitzke, Darya Tsymbalyuk) explore forms of vegetal creativity and narrativity. The online version can be found here: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/narrative/vol10/iss2/
Plant intentionality and the phenomenological framework of plant intelligence
Plant Signaling & Behavior, 2012
T his article aims to bridge phenomenology and the study of plant intelligence with the view to enriching both disciplines. Besides considering the world from the perspective of sessile organisms, it would be necessary, in keeping with the phenomenological framework, to rethink (1) the meaning of being-sessile and being-in-a-place; (2) the concepts of sentience and attention; (3) how aboveground and underground environments appear to plants; (4) the significance of modular development for our understanding of intelligence; and (5) the concept of communication within and between plants and plant tissues. What emerges from these discussions is the image of a mind embodied in plant life. "It is utterly impossible for human reason […] to hope to understand the generation even of a blade of grass from mere mechanical causes."-Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 77
Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae
Juicy fruit, healthy vegetables, herbs for all the ailments, delightful flowers, a shelter under the spreading branches of an old tree - can plants be something more for man, and can they be even equal to him? Where is their place in the world, which is dominated by man and his helpers - animals? This article leads the reader through the thoughts and beliefs of ancient peoples, showing their respect for everything that lives until the modern times, when scientists try to relate the definition of intelligence and consciousness to plants. Myths from various parts of the globe, illustrate how important a role plants had in the past, that they were much more than food, medicine, or refuge. Since the beginning of time, without new technologies, people felt the power of nature and respected the otherness of creatures, wandering with them, step by step, with fear and awe. Plants, though “immobilised”, could create, and decided on the world’s fate, and were messengers between men and other ...
Gardens and Landscapes of Portugal
Plants have always represented an important source for acquiring natural knowledge for both practical and theoretical purposes. Together with their habitat of growing whether in cultivated gardens or in wild environments, they provided interesting keys to investigate and interpret nature. If in the Middle Ages plants were primarily subjects of medical and pharmacological interest, in Early Modernity the approach to the vegetal world gained a more
In this paper, I discuss to what extent plants can and should be considered as persons, in philosophical as well as physiological terms. My aim is similar to that of animal activists who claim a parallel status for nonhuman creatures, particularly primates and other mammals. I first outline conceptual understandings and practiced engagements with personhood, as derived from work in the arts and humanities, and the social and natural sciences, as well as from pieces in popular, industrial and professional media publications. I then draw upon the research of plant scientists, scholars and advocates to assess and ultimately argue in favor of plants being granted a form of personhood. I conclude my intervention by raising a number of ethical and legal issues that such a radical shift in thinking and acting would elicit for members of modern industrialized societies, and provide some possible solutions that would necessarily be both metaphysical and practical in nature. My overall purpose is to present an enhanced understanding of place by blurring the line between the categories of habitant and habitat, and to highlight new insights into the nature of plants, the most populous and critical consumers of water on the planet, and the hardiest and most productive agents of climate, in an effort to view them less as resources to be exploited and more as fellow creatures to be understood, accommodated and respected.