Plant and Animal Awareness

Why this post

In one WhatsApp group where I am a member, there were some messages if plants can feel, have consciousness etc. That got me thinking about how different my views were on that subject compared to some others in the group. I am writing this post to share with the readers of this post, my views on the issues raised there.

Do plants feel pain

The questions arose based on the HowStuffWorks article "Do plants feel pain?" This is what Wikipedia says about pain in plants in the section on Non-humans. As for plants, their ability to feel physical pain is at present a question beyond scientific reach, since no mechanism is known by which they could have such a feeling. There are no known nociceptors in groups such as plants. Nociceptor is a sensory receptor for painful stimuli. The following image "Mechanism of nociceptive pain" taken from Wikipedia illustrates this.

When Plants Say "Ouch"

The HowStuffWorks article pointed to a Deutsche Welle article "When Plants Say 'Ouch'" to imply that plants feel pain. This article arbitrarily uses emotional terms like whimper, squeal, feeling, and "cries out" etc without any direct mapping of such feelings to the actions carried out on the plants. Release of different proportion of ethylene gas from the plant in no way can be associated with an emotional stress such as pain. One of the conclusions of the article was "Scientists using the acoustic-ethylene method have not succeeded in proving that plants have feelings - which may come as a disappointment to plant-lovers - the chemical voices of flora allows them to distinguish between healthy and sick plants".

Do Plants have consciousness

One member of the group supplemented the plants have feelings idea, with the idea that consciousness is present outside nervous systems and wanted to research to be done on consciousness citing his personal experience with acupuncture.

The dictionary definition of consciousness is:

1. The state of being aware and responsive to one's surroundings.

2. A person's awareness or perception of something.

Today we are learning about self contained devices like Internet of Things (IOT). According to definition 1, IOTs and other similar Artificial Intelligence objects have consciousness because they too respond to surroundings that they can comprehend. However, what we are more concerned about is a living being's awareness. Is the plant a living being or a thing? Can a plant be aware or perceive something?

Plants and animal bodies consist of cells. I would call a cell as a designed self contained building block like IOT used to build living bodies. The cell of a plant is different from the cell of an animal. Check "Plant Cell vs Animal Cell" for a brief comparison.

What is the purpose of plants? The purpose of plants, it seems, is to convert the abundant solar energy to other forms of life energy through the process of photosynthesis. All forms of energy available on the Earth, has in some form or the other, originated from the energy received from the Sun. Plants have the capability to convert solar energy to stored energy forms like fruit etc. that others consume to get energy for their bodies.  Do the plant cells have conscious awareness? It is my thinking no. Like an IOT they function autonomously according to the purpose they are designed for.

In case of animals one can see something different from plants. The animal body houses some sort of conscious life, which is called as soul. When this soul life leaves the body at death, the body is designed to decay and self destruct. You can take plants and graft them into other plants, but you cannot take part of an animal body and graft it to another animal. For awareness to be there, a soul must be present in the body because the seat of awareness is in the soul and not in the body. So, I assert that plants do not have this type of soul consciousness which is limited to animals alone.

Food Hierarchy

Next questions arose, if plants have feelings and consciousness, how can we consume them without violating their rights etc.

Lot of discussions were also around the intention of nature for plants, animals etc. I find it rather amusing that people would give lot of personal qualities to impersonal nature and are not willing to accept the possibility of an Intelligent Creator with personality. I have discussed about this in a five year old post "Mother Nature and Father God".

The mission of the Creator for the fish of the sea and birds of the air was "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. (Genesis: 1:22)"

The mission for land animals and mankind was "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subjugate it [putting it under your power]; and rule over (dominate) the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living thing that moves upon the earth. (Genesis: 1:28)"

All living beings are designed to consume food to sustain life and grow and spread over the earth. The food hierarchy given to mankind specified "I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the entire earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to all the animals on the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that moves on the ground—to everything in which there is the breath of life—I have given every green plant for food (Genesis 1:29-30)"

We have a very large universe with billions of galaxies and life as we know is present only on this tiny speck of planet Earth. All fiction books and movies only imagine possibility of things and nothing has been proved about any physical life elsewhere.

Conclusion

The earth is stocked with all resources that the life forms living on it need. The self sustaining mechanisms in it are wonderfully designed to sustain one another for ages.

It is my affirmation that the theory of evolution as the name suggests is just a theory and it has not been proved. The only reality is the intelligent design of the universe. If there is a personal God who created you then He has authority over you as a creator similar to the way parents have authority over their children. Mankind just does not want to accept such an authority and hence comes out with all types of alternate thinking like evolution with all types of fake artifacts. Had there been no intelligent design nothing on earth would function in predictable way to which we are accustomed to.