Citation

Author Website

Minimal Intelligence Lab

Commentary Type

Invited Commentary

Thread

Arthur S. Reber, Caterpillars, consciousness and the origins of mind

Abstract

According to Reber (2016), subjectivity springs from primitive life itself. Granting his non-neurocentric stance, I shall try to show that his framework falls prey to zoocentric preconceptions that divest certain non-animal life-forms of mentality. There is no reason to exclude the possibility that plants have evolved different structures that underlie their own subjective experiences, all according to Reber’s model. It is the degree of phenotypic flexibility and integration that we observe in the behavioral repertoire of plants that may end up supporting their capacity for subjective experience. This remains an open empirical question.

Author Biography

Paco Calvo, Professor of Philosophy of Science, Minimal Intelligence Lab, University of Murcia, does research on the philosophy of plant neurobiology, ecological psychology and embodied cognitive science. He is currently writing a book on Plant Cognition.

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1298