Plants also have consciousness and cognition
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Ethnobotany is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science that deals with the use and perception of plant species within one or more human societies. Consequently, it is linked to the geopolitical and cultural situation of the latter, denoting historical events, customs, customs and linguistic forms that are often important for reconstructing their origin and provenance.
Ethnobotany often weaves relationships with other sciences: ethnobiology, ethnopharmacology and ethnomedicine, agro-ecology and human ecology, studies on bio-cultural diversity; ethnolinguistics. From the nineties onwards, ethnobotany emerges, especially in the North American panorama, as a science that finds certain spaces in the academic field and which places the fulcrum of its research in rigorous studies on bio-cultural diversities and on the complex plant-society relationship systems human.
In particular, the quantitative and socio-anthropological aspects of these relationships are those on which the attention of the scientific community is nowadays focused. The study Consciousness and cognition in plants, published in the Wiley interdisciplinary reviews.
Cognitive science, explained: "Unlike animal behavior, behavior in plants is traditionally assumed to be completely determined either genetically or environmentally. Under this assumption, plants are usually considered to be noncognitive organisms.
This view nonetheless clashes with a growing body of empirical research that shows that many sophisticated cognitive capabilities traditionally assumed to be exclusive to animals are exhibited by plants too. Yet, if plants can be considered cognitive, even in a minimal sense, can they also be considered conscious?Some authors defend that the quest for plant consciousness is worth pursuing, under the premise that sentience can play a role in facilitating plant's sophisticated behavior.The goal of this article is not to provide a positive argument for plant cognition and consciousness, but to invite a constructive, empirically informed debate about it.
After reviewing the empirical literature concerning plant cognition, we introduce the reader to the emerging field of pl ant neurobiology. Research on plant electrical and chemical signaling can help shed light into the biological bases for plant sentience.
To conclude, we shall present a series of approaches to scientifically investigate plant consciousness. In sum, we invite the reader to consider the idea that if consciousness boils down to some form of biological adaptation, we should not exclude a priori the possibility that plants have evolved their own phenomenal experience of the world."