The comparable worth issue

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Plants have preferences—their roots move toward water, sensing its acoustic vibrations—and defense mechanisms. They also have memories and can learn from experience. A 2014 experiment, for example, involved dropping potted plants called Mimosas pudicas a short distance away. At first, when the plants were dropped, they curled up their leaves defensively. But soon the plants learned that no harm would come to them, and they stopped protecting themselves.

But does any of this qualify as consciousness? The answer to that question seems to depend largely on linguistics, rather than science: how humans choose to define our conceptions of self and intelligence.

Plant biotechnologist Devang Mehta, for example, says the answer to the question of whether plants are conscious “is an unqualified no.” In a February article for Massive Science titled, “Plants Are Not whatsapp group philippines Conscious, Whether You Sedate Them or Not,” he vehemently opposes the notion that plants can be conscious or intelligent.



Mehta was responding to a New York Times story (paywall) about a 2017 study in the Annals of Botany. The researchers had stopped plants from moving with anesthetics — a remake of a 1902 experiment by biologist and physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who used chloroform to put plants to sleep. The Times wrote that the plant response to anesthetics suggests that plants are intelligent. Basically, the article argued that in order to lose consciousness, one must have consciousness — so if plants appear to lose consciousness under anesthetics, they must, somehow, possess it.

The Grey Lady was making a big leap when she suggested that plants that respond to anesthetics indicate intelligence, according to Mehta. He explains: