3 ms·
But you would have to redefine pain to ignore the experience aspect. And that would be a completely different phenomenona. Yes it may share the same mechanism
by 7952 5y ago
But you would have to redefine pain to ignore the experience aspect. And that would be a completely different phenomenona. Yes it may share the same mechanism, but so what?
Plants are immobile. The only mechanism they have for moving about is relatively slow and lacks agency. They can grow in a particular direction, send out a clone,or use reproduction. A hormonal reaction to external stimuli could trigger that kind of behaviour. But what advantage would there be in having a consciousness? A chicken on the other had can run away. It can hide. It can learn to avoid damaging itself. Pain has an advantage.
- nicoburns 5y ago> But you would have to redefine pain to ignore the experience aspect No, it's the opposite. Plants clearly don't have the reactive aspect, but we have no idea whether they have the experience aspect, because we have no idea what causes experience or how it works. We also don't know that consciousness provides an advantage to animals. We associate consciousness with intelligent response. But it may well be possible to have intelligent response without consciousness (e.g. like computers, although technically we can't be sure that they don't have consciousness either)
- 7952 5y agoAn intelligent response without consciousness is different to an intelligent response with consciousness. That is the re-definition. We can speculate that the full human experience of pain may exist in the absence of a brain. And we can estimate the probability of that being the case in plants. Do you really think that probability is high? Also, plants can and do react to damage and even touch.