Digital Commons Network^™

Cognition Is Not Evidence Of Sentience, Tom Bennett

Animal Sentience

The ability of plants to detect their environment, including other organisms within that environment, is unquestioned. The ability of plants to differentially process, integrate and respond to complex combinations of environmental information could perhaps be described as cognition. But no amount of evidence for cognitive abilities in plants equates to evidence for plant sentience. Nor is plant sentience required to understand or interpret the behaviour of plants in their environment.

Do Plants Have The Cognitive Complexity For Sentience?, Ricard V. Solé

Animal Sentience

Are plants sentient? Like other aspects of the cognitive potential of plants, this is a controversial issue, often driven by analogies and seldom supported on solid theoretical grounds. Sentience is understood in cognitive sciences as the capacity to feel. I suggest that because of plants’ evolved adaptations to morphological plasticity, sessile nature and ecological constraints, they are unlikely to have the requisite cognitive complexity for sentience.

How Can Meat Consumption Be Both Increasing And Decreasing?, Harold A. Herzog

Herzog - Dietary Issues

The percentage of Americans who do not eat meat has doubled in the past two decades. Per capita meat consumption in the U.S., though, has not changed in decades and remains among the highest in the world. The moralization-polarization effect explains this paradox. Cognitive dissonance may induce some people to eat less meat but others to eat more.

Wild Birds: Human & Animal Welfare, Environment, And Global Sustainability, Janice H. Cox Mba

WellBeing News

Birds provide many ecosystem services and contribute to human well-being, but their numbers are falling worldwide.

Animal Agriculture Is The Missing Piece In Climate Change Media Coverage, Coni Arévalo, Jo Anderson

Agriculture

For many years now, climate researchers have been warning that the world can’t meet its Paris Agreement climate goals of limiting global warming to 1.5°C without reducing meat consumption. Multiple studies have affirmed that between 11.1 and 19.6% of global emissions come from meat and dairy production, and leading global food and climate agencies are also in agreement, recommending that people, particularly those in the Global North, reduce meat consumption in favor of a plant-rich diet.

The effects of animal agriculture on the environment and climate are vast: It is a leading cause of deforestation, it’s responsible …

Sensing Is A Far Cry From Sentience, Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio

Animal Sentience

The hypothesis that plants might be sentient confuses the notion of sentience (or consciousness) with that of sensing. Sentience/consciousness implies feeling, experience, and subjectivity. Sensing does not. Plants can sense/detect and even respond appropriately in the absence of any sentience/consciousness.

What If Plants Compute?, Jordi Vallverdú

Animal Sentience

The unexpended cognitive capacities of plants suggest the possibility of combining them with advances in computation. It is important to explore such a new field of research despite the incompleteness of the empirical support for it.

Plant Sentience: The Burden Of Proof, Jon Mallatt, David G. Robinson, Michael R. Blatt, Andreas Draguhn, Lincoln Taiz

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo’s (2023) target article takes a less speculative and more evidence-based approach to plant sentience than did previous works promoting that idea. However, it retains many of the idea’s longstanding difficulties such as starting from a false dichotomy (plants must be either hardwired or sentient), not accepting the full burden of proof for an extraordinary claim, confusingly redefining accepted cognitive terms, implying cell consciousness, not adopting the most parsimonious explanations for plant behaviors, and downplaying all the counterevidence. We advise rectifying these problems before plant sentience can become a full-fledged scientific domain.

Plant Sentience: A Hypothesis Based On Shaky Premises, Carel Ten Cate

Animal Sentience

Plants may produce fascinating behavioural phenomena for which the label ‘cognitive process’ may be applicable, at least by some definitions. Segundo-Ortin & Calvo (2023) base their hypothesis that plants might be sentient on the premise of demonstrated presence of cognitive complexity. However, the way phenomena are ascribed, and how the term ‘cognitive’ is used by Segundo-Ortin & Calvo, deviates from the common practice in studies of animal cognition, implying greater complexity than seems justified. It thus provides a questionable basis for attributing sentience to plants.

Plant Sentience: "Feeling" Or Biological Automatism?, Andrea Mastinu

Animal Sentience

Sentience refers to the ability of an organism to have subjective experiences such as sensations, emotions and awareness. Whereas some animals, including humans, are widely recognized as sentient, the question of whether plants are sentient is still debated among scientists, philosophers, and ethicists. Over the past 20 years, many scientists such as Trewavas, Baluška, Mancuso, Gagliano, and Calvo have reported interesting discussions about memory, behavior, communication, and intelligence in plants. However, the reported conclusions have not convinced the entire scientific community. In this commentary, I would like to focus on two critical aspects related to sentience: cognition and emotion

Plant Sentience: Bias And Promise, Sidney Carls-Diamante

Animal Sentience

Whichever side of the debate one chooses, plant sentience is a fertile research area that challenges received views and assumptions, generates novel insights, and suggests new ways that felt states might arise. My commentary discusses methodological and philosophical implications.

The Socialization Of Willie B. - Part 2, Terry Maple

Tales of WellBeing

This tale is the second in a three-part series about Willie B., Atlanta’s iconic ape and one of the most famous gorillas in the world.

From Animal To Plant Sentience: Is There Credible Evidence?, Leonard Dung

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo argue that plants have a surprisingly varied and complex behavioral repertoire. Which of these behavioral capacities are credible indicators of sentience? If we use the standards of evidence common in discussions of animal sentience, the behavioral capacities reviewed are insufficient evidence of sentience. Even if some putative indicators of animal sentience are present in plants, it is not clear whether what we should conclude is that plants are sentient or that those indicators are inadequate.

Sentience: Back To The Science From The Words, David A. Booth

Animal Sentience

Contributors to this discussion acknowledge ambiguities in the terms used, including ‘feelings’, ‘behavior’, ‘cognition’ and ‘sentience’ itself. Yet they continue to use such words without reference to scientific criteria established by experimental psychology.

Stress: An Adaptive Problem Common To Plant And Animal Science, Özlem Yilmaz

Animal Sentience

It is very hard to determine whether plants have “felt states,” but they do have specific states, such as stress, that depend on sensory input from their environment. Plants do not have neurons or brains, but they do have xylem and phloem, as well as many signalling molecules that are dynamically distributed in their bodies, enabling them to produce systemic responses to environmental stimuli. One common topic in plant and animal science that may or may not prove to involve sentience but that does involve the same molecules is stress.

Plants Lack The Functional Neurotransmitters And Signaling Pathways Required For Sentience In Animals, David G. Robinson, Michael R. Blatt, Andreas Draguhn, Lincoln Taiz, Jon Mallatt

Animal Sentience

We cannot agree with Segundo-Ortin and Calvo that plants are sentient organisms. We have critically examined several aspects of their target article, and find their claims are not supported by the published evidence. We address these claims in sections on whether plants have a ‘neurobiology’ analogous to that of animal nervous systems, including neurotransmitters and synaptic receptors that respond to anesthetics; and whether plant signaling resembles neural transmission. For the latter, we especially consider the unique way plants signal their responses to wounding. Although the plant vascular system has been compared to the animal nervous system, animal blood vessels would …

What Can Plant Science Learn From Animal Nervous Systems?, Luiz Pessoa

Animal Sentience

I welcome Segundo-Ortin & Calvo’s (2023) call for a rigorous science of plant behavior and physiology. My commentary addresses three points drawn from the literature on animal brains that could help elucidate the possibility of cognition and sentience in plants: (1) the presumed requirement of a centralized brain; (2) centralization of control versus heterarchical organization; and (3) connecting plant research with research on animal nervous systems.

Plant Sentience And The Case For Ethical Veganism, Josh Milburn

Animal Sentience

Does the possibility of plant sentience pose a problem for ethical veganism? It has not yet been demonstrated that plants are sentient (i.e., that they can feel). Moreover, even if it were demonstrated that plants could feel, it would also have to be demonstrated that they can feel the affectively “valenced” feelings that are ethically significant, such as pain and fear, rather than just neutral sensations such as darker/lighter, or wetter/drier. Finally, if plants could feel valenced feelings, veganism would likely still be the ethical option, on the principle of causing the least harm.

Plants Detect And Adapt, But Do Not Feel, Paul C. Struik

Animal Sentience

Plant sentience is a hot topic in scientific and popular media. There are moral reasons to respect both the service of plants to humanity and their natural integrity as creatures playing their own significant role in a complex ecosystem. However, to infer that plants have certain cognitive capacities that are present also in certain human and nonhuman animals calls for scientific rigor beyond mere analogy. The unique capacities of plants identified by Segundo-Ortin & Calvo are not necessarily linked to sentience. Nor is it likely that sentience is an evolutionary trait that is present to some extent in all living …

Questions About Sentience Are Not Scientific But Cultural, Yoram Gutfreund

Animal Sentience

Abstract: The findings of complex cognitive-like behaviours in plants are surprising and exciting. However, they do not provide a scientific reason for ascribing sentience to plants. The target article, in trying to provide evidence for sentience in plants, exposes the weakness of the science of animal consciousness in general. In this commentary, I try to explain why the scientific method is incapable of resolving the question of which organisms or systems are sentient.

Comparing U.S. Groups’ Openness To Pro-Animal Actions, Jo Anderson, Zach Wulderk

USA

As animal advocates know, an outreach tactic that is successful with one person will not necessarily be successful with all people. Advocates rarely launch campaigns with no idea of who will be seeing their ‘asks’ (i.e., requests for pro-animal actions). Even in the case of passive tactics such as billboards, advocates may know who frequents that part of the city. For example, they may be near a university, meaning their audience will include a high proportion of students. The United States public is diverse and groups of people can differ greatly in their opinions. Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, …

What Do Pet Owners Believe About Dog And Cat Emotions?, Harold Herzog

Herzog - Companion Animal Issues

While some philosophers disagree, most dog and cat owners know their pets experience emotions. Researchers recently asked pet owners about the number and types of emotions they observed in their cats and dogs. There were significant individual differences in the degree to which owners thought their pets experienced emotions.

One Health: A Public Health Solution Or Slogan?, Andrew N. Rowan

WellBeing News

One Medicine has now morphed into One Health, but the concept has yet to be wholeheartedly embraced by the medical profession. In 2008, a Commentary in the American Journal of Medicine noted that medical schools, unlike veterinary schools, typically do not emphasize the ecology of zoonotic pathogens despite the estimated 60% of human diseases (and 75% of emerging diseases) originating in animals. The situation may be changing.

Reducing Deaths And Anxiety: Why Trees Should Be Cause Célèbre For Our Health And Well-Being, Philip Lymbery

WellBeing News

Preserving trees is increasingly recognized as hugely important for our future happiness and well-being. Concerned citizens can play a significant role in looking after our natural heritage trees by being their eyes and ears, looking out for their best interests and thereby creating conditions for a better future at both local and global levels.

"Justice For Animals: Our Collective Responsibility" By Martha C Nussbaum, Andrew Rowan

Tales of WellBeing

Andrew Rowan reviews author Martha Nussbaum’s book “Justice for Animals,” which describes why & how animals might be the beneficiaries of human justice.

Coping With Captivity: The Tragic Journey Of Willie B., Terry Maple

Tales of WellBeing

This tale is the first in a three-part series about Willie B., Atlanta’s iconic ape and one of the most famous gorillas in the world.

Are Humans Superior To Other Animals?, Harold Herzog

Herzog - Companion Animal Issues

Many nonhuman animals exhibit behaviors that vastly exceed human capacities.
Imitation and social learning occur in species ranging from honey bees to chimpanzees. The evolution of our special capacity to use symbolic language to transmit knowledge made cumulative culture a uniquely human phenomenon.

What Happened To Plant-Based Meat?, Lewis Bollard

General – Farm Animal Issues

This article analyzes the rise and recent stagnation of plant-based meat, exploring market trends, consumer perceptions, challenges, and potential pathways for future growth.

Insentient “Cognition”?, Stevan Harnad

Animal Sentience

A sentient state is a state that it feels like something to be in. Cows have them, cars don’t. Cognitive capacities are a subset of behavioral capacities. Not all behavioral capacities are cognitive (but the distinction is fuzzy). Might the difference have something to do with whether the behaver is sentient?

Unveiling The Nexus: The Interdependence Of Animal Welfare, Environment & Sustainable Development, World Federation For Animals (Wfa)

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

On 2 March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted the Animal Welfare - Environment - Sustainable Development Nexus Resolution. In this resolution, UNEA acknowledged that "animal welfare can contribute to addressing environmental challenges". UNEA further acknowledged animal welfare's contribution to "promoting the One Health approach and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals." To understand these links, UNEA requested the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to analyse and produce a report for the next convening of UNEA on the nexus between animal welfare, the environment, and sustainable development. "Unveiling the Nexus: The interdependence of animal welfare, environment & sustainable development" illuminates the …