Animal Sentience 2023.

XXX: Burgos & Castañeda on Segundo-Or�n & Calvo on Plant Sentience

Plant Sen�ence: Another Hypothesis worth Pursuing

Commentary on Segundo-Or�n & Calvo on Plant Sentience

José E. Burgos & Giselle M. Castañeda 1 0F

University of Guadalajara
Abstract: Segundo-Or�n and Calvo invite readers to consider seriously the hypothesis that plants
have phenomenal consciousness or sen�ence. Their case is strongly evidence-based, giving
abundant behavioral evidence to support their hypothesis. While the hypothesis seems crazy to
many, there is a crazier hypothesis, namely, panpsychism, according to which everything is sen�ent.
We discuss this hypothesis to raise a number of philosophical issues about the authors’ proposal.

José E. Burgos Full Professor, Center for Studies and Inves�ga�ons

in Behavior at the University of Guadalajara. His scien�fic research
focuses on neural network modeling of condi�oning and tes�ng
its predic�ons with animals. He also works on the philosophy of
mind and the philosophy of science applied to psychology.
Website

Giselle M. Castañeda Ph.D. student, Behavior Science Program,

Center for Behavioral Studies and Inves�ga�ons, University of
Guadalajara. Her research focuses on neural network modeling of
condi�oning, compara�ve psychology, and Pavlovian condi�oning
in plants.

Total word count: 2455. Word count for main text only: 1953

In their target paper, Segundo-Or�n and Calvo (2023; The Authors, henceforth) cordially
invite readers to consider seriously the possibility that plants, like animals (human and
nonhuman), have phenomenal consciousness (subjec�ve qualita�ve experiences or
“sen�ence,” as opposed to access consciousness; see Block, 1995, for this important but
o�en overlooked dis�nc�on). We gladly accept the invita�on. The Authors summarize
abundant behavioral evidence they take as indica�ve of sen�ence in plants (and other
allegedly, but less controversially, sen�ent beings), such as communica�on, decision-
making, and learning, among others. This behavioral evidence is fascina�ng in and of itself
in various ways, and certainly adds to our understanding of plants (aside from
methodological issues of experimental control and such). This much is clear. Exactly what it
means vis-à-vis sen�ence is a far more complicated mater. We cannot do it jus�ce in a short
commentary like the present one, so we will give a few sugges�ons for further reflec�on.

1
The authors order is just alphabe�cal by last name, not by the extent of their contribu�on. Both authors
contributed equally to this wri�ng.
 Animal Sentience 2023.XXX: Burgos & Castañeda on Segundo-Or�n & Calvo on Plant Sentience

This evidence prompts various ques�ons to The Authors: Are all these behaviors
equally significant as indicators of sen�ence? If not, which ones are more significant and
why? If yes, are all of them necessary, or just some percentage warrants inferring sen�ence?
Whatever their answers, many if not most readers are likely to regard the idea of plant
sen�ence as crazy, but that’s alright. Part of science’s cri�cal chi is to make others cringe at
crazy ideas. According to Dyson (1958), Neils Bohr (1885-1962) once told Wolfgang Pauli
“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The ques�on which divides us is whether it is
crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy
enough 2” (p. 88). The hypothesis of plant sen�ence seems crazy, but is it crazy enough? It
1F

surely sounds crazier than the hypothesis of fish sen�ence (craziness is rela�ve); but,
whether we are willing to contemplate crazier hypotheses depends on how far we are
willing to go in our conceptual, theore�cal, and methodological reveries. If we go far enough
(and we don’t mind doing this), the idea is not that crazy. There’s no such thing as going too
far, if we are sufficiently cautious and intelligible to foster construc�ve discussion, in the
interest of the open-mindedness that scien�fic progress needs. In principle, any conjecture,
hypothesis, theory, or model is worth pursuing, as long as it gives something back, however
small.
In this construc�ve, posi�ve spirit, we find the authors’ case intriguing and deserving
of careful aten�on. In a commentary to a related target paper (Woodruff, 2017), one of us
(Burgos, 2017) took the same epistemic a�tude towards the hypothesis of fish sen�ence,
albeit cau�ously so. The Authors are very cau�ous too, which we appreciate. Our cau�on
crucially includes philosophical considera�ons, as it did in that commentary. As we see it,
the topic of plant sen�ence takes us into a vast philosophical realm of resources ripe for the
picking, with great poten�al to clarify and expand our thinking about the topic. All the
philosophical themes visited in that commentary apply here, but we will not rehearse them.
Nor can we honor the intricacies of the ones we focus on here. The specific main message
then and now is that the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science could help us
coxswain sen�ence’s deep raging seas.
We sail off by poin�ng out that the plant sen�ence hypothesis is not “crazy enough
to have a chance to be correct,” if we are to take Bohr’s words seriously (why shouldn’t we?).
There is an alterna�ve, crazier hypothesis (or rather a family of hypotheses), namely,
panpsychism. According to this hypothesis, everything is sen�ent, not just all animals and
plants, but also viruses, bacteria, single cells, even inorganic objects like tables, chairs, hats,
rocks, computers, and doorknobs. Subatomic par�cles like electrons too are sen�ent.
Panpsychism thus entails and, to this extent, makes plant sen�ence unsurprising.
Panpsychism sounds like unscien�fic New Age BS, and, admitedly, many, perhaps most
expressions of it are precisely that. S�ll, as The Authors acknowledge, “There is no principled
reason to deny that radically different neural structures could give rise to felt states” (p. 2).
Likewise, there is no principled reason to deny that radically different entities like electrons
could be sen�ent too, although there is no principled reason to accept it either. Quite a

2
Those obsessed with Popperian falsifica�onism should heed these words, as on this methodology, the
bolder (i.e., less probable) a conjecture, the more falsifiable and, hence, scien�fic it will be.
 Animal Sentience 2023.XXX: Burgos & Castañeda on Segundo-Or�n & Calvo on Plant Sentience

pickle, like the paradox of Buridan’s Ass, but as Burgos (2017) pointed out, we can avoid it
by heeding Laudan’s (1977) talk of pursuit as a ra�onal midway between acceptance and
rejec�on; hence the term ‘pursuing’ in our �tle.
The panpsychism hypothesis, then, is equally worth pursuing in this sense of the
term, if formulated sufficiently intelligibly to allow for frui�ul discussion. Goff (2017) has
propounded what may well be the most intelligible ar�cula�on thus far in what he calls
“cons�tu�ve panpsychism” (CP), a form of Russellian monism he sees as “our best hope for
finding a place in nature for consciousness” (p. 164) 3. His hope hinges on what he argues to
2F

be CP’s “capacity to reconcile the causal efficacy of human and animal feelings and
emo�ons with micro-level causal closure” (p. 163, emphasis added; see also p. 170 for a
compelling rejec�on of the craziness argument against his CP). This claim raises the issue of
mental causa�on, which is too extensive for us to delve into here. We will only say that The
Authors’ stance on it is far from clear, if at all. Specifically, how do they conceive of the
sen�ence-behavior rela�on? Do they assume that sen�ence causes certain behaviors? If
yes, how is it supposed to work? These are exceedingly difficult, s�ll unresolved issues, so
we do not expect The Authors to resolve them, but it would be illumina�ng if they said
something about this issue. Goff’s nonnego�able “fundamental axiom” in his ar�cula�on of
CP is the “Consciousness Constraint” (p. 4): “Any adequate theory of reality must entail that
at least some phenomenal concepts are sa�sfied. (A concept is sa�sfied when it truly
corresponds to reality,...).” He argues CP does the job.
Goff (2017) does not argue that electron sen�ence is anything like animal, plant, or
even table sen�ence, but rather that “there are more or less complex forms of
consciousness.” This conjecture is different from this one: Sen�ence comes in different
degrees (P. Goff, personal communica�on, May 25, 2023), but the difference is very subtle.
The second conjecture is found in some current theories of consciousness (e.g., Tononi,
2004, also compa�ble with panpsychism), and was foretold by Darwin (1871): “The
difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of
degree and not of kind” (p. 105). Thus, electron sen�ence is simpler than plant sen�ence,
which in turn is simpler than ant sen�ence, which in turn... You get the idea. It is precisely
this idea that provides a ra�onale for CP: Simpler sen�ent en��es combine to form more
complex sen�ent en��es. In this way, Goff (2017) suggests a unified picture of physical
reality inclusive of sen�ence, as an alterna�ve to at least dualism and physicalism. We also
see it as a beter alterna�ve to emergen�sm, which seems to be The Authors’ view (e.g.,
“sen�ence emerged as an inherent feature of the first life-forms,” p. 3, emphasis added).
Emergen�sm, however, has a harder �me answering the ques�on of how “the water of the
physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness” (McGinn, 1989). As we understand

3
But he (P. Goff, personal communica�on, May 25, 2023) clarified: “I'm also not necessarily commited to CP.
I'm somewhat open-minded but am more inclined to the emergen�st posi�on.” We adopt his open-minded
a�tude here as the most sensible in regards to sen�ence.
 Animal Sentience 2023.XXX: Burgos & Castañeda on Segundo-Or�n & Calvo on Plant Sentience

CP, it does a beter job: It’s all a mix of water and different concentrations of wine 4. Micro-3F

sen�ence (highy diluted wine) begets macro-sen�ence (highly concentrated wine).

Goff (2017) also admits that there is no “hard experimental proof” (p. 170) of
electron sen�ence, by which he means that “Third-person observa�on and experiment do
not give us grounds for thinking that electrons have consciousness” (p. 6). He addresses this
issue, sugges�ng that science is not just, or even mainly, about evidence, but also and
equally importantly, intelligibility (conceptual clarity and precision, parsimony, unifying
explanatory power), wherein CP’s forte lies. Such emphasis on conceptual-logical integrity
might be a deal-breaker for The Authors, whose proposal seems more strongly evidence-
based than anything else. They thus are likely to ask for evidence of electron sen�ence. Do
electrons display the aforemen�oned behaviors The Authors take as indicators of
sen�ence? So far, there is no evidence for an affirma�ve answer, although there is some
evidence of Pavlovian condi�oning (one behavioral indicator of sen�ence, according to The
Authors, p. 10) in certain inorganic materials like liquid crystal networks (Zeng et al., 2020),
and polymer-based so� robots (Broer, 2020). But does it mean that electrons are insen�ent?
Not necessarily.
The larger epistemological issue at hand here is the logic of evidential support. The
Authors’ logic in this regard appeals to “reasoning by analogy” (p. 2), which infers
‘unobservable’ similari�es between inner processes from ‘observable’ behavioral
similari�es. This reasoning, though, relies on the observable-unobservable dis�nc�on,
which is too unintelligible to be of much use (see Burgos, 2021 for a recent cri�que), and it
is uterly unnecessary. We thus suggest abandoning it altogether in discussions about
whether something is sen�ent (or about anything else, for that mater). When we do this,
the methodological issue becomes how to justify inference from a type of process (behavior)
to another, seemingly radically different type of process (sen�ence), regardless of whether
either one is ‘observable’ or ‘unobservable.’
As philosophers of mind know well, the appeal to analogy is one tradi�onal solu�on
to the problem of other minds, that is, how do we jus�fy our belief in the existence of minds
other than ours? This problem arises even within the human species (forget about fish,
plants, and electrons!). First suggested by Mill (1872), the argument from analogy has been
largely abandoned in the philosophy of mind, for good reasons. One is underdetermina�on:
Behavioral similari�es do not entail mental similari�es, nor vice versa (unless we iden�fy
mind with behavior, as Rachlin, 2014, did in his teleological behaviorism). Another is a
poten�al tension with the analogy’s own induc�ve character: The best evidence one has of
sen�ence is one’s own sen�ence, but a single case does not warrant a strong induc�ve
inference. Even the epistemic status of such evidence has been ques�oned: How do we
know our sen�ence causes our behavior? (See Malcolm, 1958), which leads to the problem
of self-knowledge.

4
“My most recent paper defends a kind of hybrid of the cons�tu�ve and emergen�st posi�ons. ... However, I
discuss both in my book, and so I think it'd be fine for you to argue that CP is the beter posi�on for the
reasons you give” (P. Goff, personal communica�on, May 25, 2023).
 Animal Sentience 2023.XXX: Burgos & Castañeda on Segundo-Or�n & Calvo on Plant Sentience

For these reasons, we suggest The Authors not to put all their eggs in the analogy
basket. There is another solu�on to the problem of other minds, namely, inference to the
best explanation (see Lipton, 2004, for a thorough introduc�on). On this form of inference,
sen�ence could be considered as the loveliest (most poten�ally understanding-conducive)
explana�on of certain behaviors. A third solu�on is to view other minds as theoretical
entities, as an�cipated by Premack and Woodruff’s (1978) highly influen�al paper. All these
alterna�ves, of course, suffer from important issues, so we are not necessarily rejec�ng The
Authors’ appeal to analogy outright. We are just giving them alterna�ves to keep their
op�ons open.

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