Patricia Churchland recently gave a talk in the “Expand Your Mind: Getting a Grasp on Consciousness” conference organized by MIT. She made a very interesting point that I would like to share with my readers here. The basic question is – why don’t plants have a consciousness? We know they don’t simply because they don’t have a central nervous system like a brain that would organize stimulus and respond to it.

The crux of the issue that Ms. Churchland was making, was that all sensory perception and even consciousness itself is because we can “move from point A to point B”. Without that ability to move, there is simply no use in having a consciousness. That makes sense. If you approach to cut a plant down, the plant can’t defend itself using any thought process either deliberate or instinctive. Therefore, it would be meaningless for a plant to have pain as it would not confer any sort of survival advantage.

It’s interesting to note that sensations are only given to organisms that can move lending weight to this idea. It leads us a fairly depressing conclusion though. There is no conception of beauty or art for it’s own sake. Sensory perception and all the associated sentiment that goes with it, somewhere down the line came into existence because they helped us essentially perform better at one of the four “F” – Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, and well, you know….Reproduction!

Somewhat depressing isn’t it?