Citation
Birch, Jonathan (2023) Disentangling sentience from developmental plasticity. Animal Sentience 33(20)
Thread
Miguel Segundo-Ortin and Paco Calvo, Plant sentience? Between romanticism and denial: Science
Abstract
Plants, like animals, display remarkable developmental plasticity, inviting the metaphorical use of terms like “decision” and “choice”. In the animal case, this is not taken to be evidence of sentience, because sentience is a complex product of development, not something that guides it. We should apply the same standards when evaluating the evidence in plants. It is hard to overstate the contrast with the case of invertebrates such as octopuses, where pain markers that were originally developed for use in mammals have been clearly demonstrated and plausible neural substrates for sentience have been identified.
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DOI
10.51291/2377-7478.1812
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Cognitive Neuroscience Commons, Evolution Commons, Philosophy of Mind Commons, Plant Sciences Commons