Thread: Do Plants Dream?

Cool article! Of course senses don't mean consciousness, so there is no need for the vegans to starve themselves to death quite yet.

I try to avoid basing my views on the consciousness related fields such as dreams on scientific findings... it feels like chopping wood with a coffemachine to me.. It's not what it was made for... ( Don't get me wrong though. I love science, actually studying molecular biology)

Anyhoo. I enjoyed your line of thought at the end there.

Of course this is a really complex field, and please don't take my opinion seriously.. But I don't think consciousness in plants is something that would arise and become common as a result of natural selection.

Thats because of how natural selection works.

1: Far more complex tasks than what plants exibit can be explained in terms of genetics alone.

2: Every task you assign to a nervous system consumes a ton of energy. So if an organism only performs very simple tasks as set reactions to stimuli I would think that automation is more cost effective..

Every trait or gene that is subject to natural selection must have greater benefits than cost. Dreaming and consciousness if viewed as a result of chemical energies would need to have a greater benefit than cost. If not a conscious plant would be wasting energy that could be spent survival and reproduction. I don't see how that would be the case in plants.

Again. Not saying they aren't conscious. Just that it doesn't make sense, as far as I can tell, for that consciousness to have started as a result of evolution.

In a way I feel like my response is a waste of time... Logic games are bound to be flawed if we include flawed premises, or fail to take into account all relevant premises. I am not very confident in my logic here.

But! It was still fun to write haha!