On Monday, we watched a Cornell University evolutionary biologist show — with Cornell’s apparent support — that the goldenrod plant is intelligent. This points to the rise of panpsychism (everything is conscious*) in mainstream science.
The current shift towards panpsychism was perhaps inevitable. Some other recent science news provides a little background.
Dr. Chimp is on
We were told last week that wild chimpanzees seek out medicinal plants to treat illness and injury:
The results suggest that chimpanzees require specific plants for their medicinal effects. The study is one of the first to provide behavioral and pharmacological evidence of medicinal benefits to wild chimpanzees from feeding on bark and dead wood…
In this paper, we demonstrate how watching and learning from our primate cousins can accelerate the discovery of new drugs, while also highlighting the importance of protecting our forest pharmacies.
PLOS. “Wild chimpanzees seek medicinal plants to treat illness and injury.” ScienceDaily, 20 June 2024. The paper is open access.
In fact, the tendency of animals to seek relief from pain (zoopharmacology) it has been known since ancient times and we humans have been adding that knowledge to our stock ever since.
Butterflies and ants do this too
However, our ancestors probably he didn’t know that even butterflies are self-healing. They probably wouldn’t have been surprised in principle, but, outside of focused research labs, we learn more from life forms that are more like us.
But a question arises: If chimpanzees self-medicate because they are sentient and self-aware (and long-lived), how do butterflies manage to self-medicate?
On Tuesday we also learned that ants treat each other’s wounds:
Saving lives through surgery is no longer exclusive to humans. Scientists now detail how Florida carpenter ants, a common, brown species native to its namesake, selectively treat injured limbs of nestmates—either by cleaning the wound or by amputation. When experimentally testing the effectiveness of these ‘treatments’, not only did they aid in recovery, but the research team found that the ants’ choice of care suited the type of injury presented to them.
Mobile press. (2024, July 2). An ant that selectively amputates infected limbs of wounded sisters. ScienceDaily. The paper is open access.
The same question arises as with butterflies: Ants probably benefit from a hive mind, but is there evidence that that hive mind is conscious compared to that of a computer? If not, how is knowledge of healing techniques acquired, preserved and transmitted?
Not even algae?
We also learned Tuesday that algae — photosynthetic life forms that aren’t plants — “listen” to their environment:
Plants have long been known to release chemicals to respond to stress and transmit information to their neighbors. A team of scientists from the Bigelow Laboratory have shown that glaucophytes, a small group of single-celled algae distantly related to plants, appear to have the same propensity for chemical communication. This suggests that the ability to use chemical cues in this way may not be unique to complex life as once thought, but evolved further up the tree of life.
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. “Study illuminates cues algae use to ‘hear’ their environment,” ScienceDaily, 2 Jul 2024. Paper open.
So no, algae were not found to heal themselves or others – but they Were found to listen and report. Again, is this a form of consciousness?
The “illusion” phase is over
No wonder science writer John Horgan thinks Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett (1942–2024) may be the end of an era, one characterized by an insistence that HUMAN the mind is an illusion – and also, in Horgan’s words, “ultra-materialistic, ultra-Darwinian, creepy, know-it-all scientific”.
Today, we can hardly keep up with all the “minds” for which some kind of claim can be made. No question is answered by pretending it’s all an illusion.
Panpsychism is, as mentioned in previous posts, a form of naturalism (nature is all that exists). But unlike Dennett’s eliminative naturalism, he treats consciousness in all nature as real, not illusory.
The main weakness of panpsychism
But panpsychists will encounter difficulties when they try to place human consciousness on a simple continuum with animal consciousness, as any naturalist must. An idea of the problem can be gleaned from the passage above about ant doctors: “Saving life through surgery is no longer exclusive to humans.”
Well, amputation was never exclusive to humans! What IS exclusive to humans is the ability for reason that enables us to observe the world around us and choose methods that work, whether for reattaching limbs or moon bases. Panpsychism will face the same problem as eliminative naturalism if it claims a continuum where there is in fact a gap. More on that later.
- Note: Some panpsychists believe that consciousness permeates the entire universe; others believe it is found only in life forms.