For consciousness to emerge, an organism requires a massive degree of centralised structural, organisational, and functional complexity. This paper builds on the “threshold brain” framework established by neuroscientists, which maps out the absolute minimum neural machinery needed for subjective experience. Animals possess centralised nervous systems designed to integrate disparate sensory streams into a single, unified perspective. Because plants have a decentralised, structurally simple organisation completely devoid of neurons or brains, the authors note that the likelihood of them possessing consciousness is “effectively nil.” Their behaviors are hardwired, genetic reflexes, not conscious choices.
We don’t have absolute proof of many things in science, we have large bodies of evidence that require equal amounts of evidence to support alternative hypotheses. For example, we haven’t absolute proof of the theory of evolution but no one serious would doubt it without ignoring the entire global fossil and genetic record.
We haven’t fundamentally proven that consciousness requires a brain, but every piece of empirical evidence we have links subjective awareness, like feeling pain or fear, to centralised neural processing. If we abandon that baseline, we lose any objective way to measure it.
It’s not circular reasoning; it’s inductive reasoning based on empirical observation.
We didn’t just sit in a room and arbitrarily decide ‘only animals get to be conscious.’ Instead, science looked at how consciousness actually behaves. We know from centuries of medical and neurobiological data that if you damage, anesthetise, or remove centralised neural networks, consciousness vanishes, even while the rest of the body’s cells remain alive and chemically responding to stimuli.
Furthermore, this baseline doesn’t just limit consciousness to mammals like us. Science actively recognizes consciousness in octopuses, which are invertebrates with a radically different, alien brain structure.
you can’t prove that something isn’t conscious, so you can’t know that there aren’t conscious rocks or gas clouds or whatever. but by defining consciousness in a way that precludes anything except animals, we have precluded ever discovering consciousness in non-animals, and therefore precluded other ways of being conscious from study.
You’re completely right that we can’t prove a negative. I can’t prove that rocks, gas clouds, or a laptop don’t have some silent, invisible consciousness. But in science, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not on everyone else to disprove it.
Your claim that our definition ‘precludes discovering consciousness in non-animals’ isn’t accurate. Science isn’t biased against non-animals; it is biased toward highly integrated systems.
The baseline for consciousness isn’t ‘it must be made of animal meat.’ The baseline is ‘it must possess an architectural framework capable of integrating disparate data into a single, unified internal state.’
the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not on everyone else to disprove it.
right. and you’re claiming that consciousness requires some particular traits. all we really know is that observed consciousness has always accompanied these highly integrated systems, but we don’t know that it requires it. we also don’t know that, for instance, rhyzomes aren’t sufficiently complex even in such a definition.
ultimately, the truth is we don’t know. so we can’t base our decisions, ethical or practical decisions, on an unknown.
Saying ‘we don’t know for sure, so we can’t make decisions’ is a recipe for total practical and ethical paralysis. Science never deals in 100% absolute certainty; it deals in overwhelming probability based on empirical data.
While rhizomes are fascinating, structurally complex communication systems, they do not meet the definition of information integration. There is a profound functional difference between a network that distributes information and a system that integrates it.
We have an absolute mountain of neurological, chemical, and behavioral evidence that animals experience conscious pain and suffering. We have zero empirical evidence that plants do.
If we treat the high-probability suffering of a dog and the zero-evidence, purely speculative ‘suffering’ of a carrot as ethically equal because ‘the truth is we don’t know,’ then ethics becomes meaningless. We would be frozen in place, unable to eat a plant or walk on grass out of fear that it might be conscious.
We prioritise animal welfare over plant welfare because that is where the evidence of suffering actually exists.
this assumes we have already agreed what consciousness means. each paper so far begins with a relative goal that was agreed within that pod of what they are treating as ‘consiousness’
which is very much still open to interpretation depending on which school of thought that you, with your own set of beliefs, will decide to go with on whichever paper will support it.
it doesnt prove consciousness. it just argues a belief of an idea around consciousness.
It sets out a framework for levels of consciousness and implies that plants are way below that threshold.
Even if we go outside mainstream scientific understanding and near universal intuition and accept plants as conscious, this paper (and others if you did some cursory research on a subject you seem to care so deeply about) would still point to plants being considered less conscious than animals.
My job isn’t too prove your “maybe” or validate your imaginary thinking. I owe you no such research. Indicating as if i had any such obligation is just more emotional manipulation.
I refuse to be moved by any such manipulation.
And that’s the problem I have with the current idea of vegan behaviors .
Sure, it’s all Ok to act in absolutes around consciousness while you eat plants. Every other sector of science is operating in doubts until your eating plants. You can’t have it both ways. That is absolute bullshit.
Plants neither possess nor require consciousness.
For consciousness to emerge, an organism requires a massive degree of centralised structural, organisational, and functional complexity. This paper builds on the “threshold brain” framework established by neuroscientists, which maps out the absolute minimum neural machinery needed for subjective experience. Animals possess centralised nervous systems designed to integrate disparate sensory streams into a single, unified perspective. Because plants have a decentralised, structurally simple organisation completely devoid of neurons or brains, the authors note that the likelihood of them possessing consciousness is “effectively nil.” Their behaviors are hardwired, genetic reflexes, not conscious choices.
this is not conclusively proven
We don’t have absolute proof of many things in science, we have large bodies of evidence that require equal amounts of evidence to support alternative hypotheses. For example, we haven’t absolute proof of the theory of evolution but no one serious would doubt it without ignoring the entire global fossil and genetic record.
We haven’t fundamentally proven that consciousness requires a brain, but every piece of empirical evidence we have links subjective awareness, like feeling pain or fear, to centralised neural processing. If we abandon that baseline, we lose any objective way to measure it.
this is just circular reasoning that excludes anything that isn’t an animal from having consciousness.
It’s not circular reasoning; it’s inductive reasoning based on empirical observation.
We didn’t just sit in a room and arbitrarily decide ‘only animals get to be conscious.’ Instead, science looked at how consciousness actually behaves. We know from centuries of medical and neurobiological data that if you damage, anesthetise, or remove centralised neural networks, consciousness vanishes, even while the rest of the body’s cells remain alive and chemically responding to stimuli.
Furthermore, this baseline doesn’t just limit consciousness to mammals like us. Science actively recognizes consciousness in octopuses, which are invertebrates with a radically different, alien brain structure.
you can’t prove that something isn’t conscious, so you can’t know that there aren’t conscious rocks or gas clouds or whatever. but by defining consciousness in a way that precludes anything except animals, we have precluded ever discovering consciousness in non-animals, and therefore precluded other ways of being conscious from study.
You’re completely right that we can’t prove a negative. I can’t prove that rocks, gas clouds, or a laptop don’t have some silent, invisible consciousness. But in science, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not on everyone else to disprove it.
Your claim that our definition ‘precludes discovering consciousness in non-animals’ isn’t accurate. Science isn’t biased against non-animals; it is biased toward highly integrated systems.
The baseline for consciousness isn’t ‘it must be made of animal meat.’ The baseline is ‘it must possess an architectural framework capable of integrating disparate data into a single, unified internal state.’
right. and you’re claiming that consciousness requires some particular traits. all we really know is that observed consciousness has always accompanied these highly integrated systems, but we don’t know that it requires it. we also don’t know that, for instance, rhyzomes aren’t sufficiently complex even in such a definition.
ultimately, the truth is we don’t know. so we can’t base our decisions, ethical or practical decisions, on an unknown.
Saying ‘we don’t know for sure, so we can’t make decisions’ is a recipe for total practical and ethical paralysis. Science never deals in 100% absolute certainty; it deals in overwhelming probability based on empirical data.
While rhizomes are fascinating, structurally complex communication systems, they do not meet the definition of information integration. There is a profound functional difference between a network that distributes information and a system that integrates it.
We have an absolute mountain of neurological, chemical, and behavioral evidence that animals experience conscious pain and suffering. We have zero empirical evidence that plants do.
If we treat the high-probability suffering of a dog and the zero-evidence, purely speculative ‘suffering’ of a carrot as ethically equal because ‘the truth is we don’t know,’ then ethics becomes meaningless. We would be frozen in place, unable to eat a plant or walk on grass out of fear that it might be conscious.
We prioritise animal welfare over plant welfare because that is where the evidence of suffering actually exists.
this assumes we have already agreed what consciousness means. each paper so far begins with a relative goal that was agreed within that pod of what they are treating as ‘consiousness’
which is very much still open to interpretation depending on which school of thought that you, with your own set of beliefs, will decide to go with on whichever paper will support it.
it doesnt prove consciousness. it just argues a belief of an idea around consciousness.
It sets out a framework for levels of consciousness and implies that plants are way below that threshold.
Even if we go outside mainstream scientific understanding and near universal intuition and accept plants as conscious, this paper (and others if you did some cursory research on a subject you seem to care so deeply about) would still point to plants being considered less conscious than animals.
“implies”
You said so yourself.
My job isn’t too prove your “maybe” or validate your imaginary thinking. I owe you no such research. Indicating as if i had any such obligation is just more emotional manipulation.
I refuse to be moved by any such manipulation.
And that’s the problem I have with the current idea of vegan behaviors .
Sure, it’s all Ok to act in absolutes around consciousness while you eat plants. Every other sector of science is operating in doubts until your eating plants. You can’t have it both ways. That is absolute bullshit.
So you have no idea how scientific evidence works.
Neither do you.
In simple terms you can understand: I do not agree on their definition of consciousness.
The paper became irrelevant as a point for us to agree on anything after that.
Want to disagree on fairy tales of sky daddies? It would be just as concrete at this point.
It builds on a framework which defines what the minimum threshold for what neuroscientists can consider consciousness is.
Tell that to the humans that were born with very little brain matter to live a full life.
Neuroscience holds little over jellyfish, starfish and sea cucumbers which have no brain.
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