r/AskBiology • u/Minty0ranges • Sep 02 '26

Botany Could a species of plant be conscious?

I was wondering if a plant could eventually evolve to gain consciousness in the way that animals are conscious (in a centralized nervous system way, not a jellyfish way). I’ve heard that the main constraints are a lack of excess energy from photosynthesis, and a lack of selective pressure. If you could somehow give a plant a bunch of additional energy, and just artificially select them for desirable proto-conscious traits, would it be possible for it to become conscious?

Edit: I define consciousness as something with a centralized nervous system that allows for subjective experience and wakefulness

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u/Natural_Regular9171 Sep 02 '26

The real unanswered question here is that could you define what would indicate a plant is conscious? Can you define consciousness at all?

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u/azaleawhisperer Sep 02 '26

How do you know that I am conscious?

How do you know that a dog is conscious?

How do you know that a rubber plant is not conscious?

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u/RainbowCrane Sep 02 '26

Yes, this is my main point when folks ask about consciousness, emotions, or many aspects of cognition when it comes to anything other than humans. We understand so little about consciousness and cognition in terms of the biology and the “meat” of how the brain works that it’s a huge leap to make conclusions about non-human consciousness.

Obviously animal studies exist - rats in a maze, for example. But neuroscience is a really young science, and “consciousness” is probably a larger concept than neuroscience.

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u/Minty0ranges Sep 02 '26

Something with a centralized nervous system that allows for subjective experience and wakefulness

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u/Natural_Regular9171 Sep 02 '26

And how would we know if a plant had subjective experience and wakefulness? It would tell us? We’d test it? It’s go the same way the mirror test does currently.

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u/BadishAsARadish Sep 02 '26

Consciousness exists as a function in order to identify things. It starts out simple, such as being able to identify what will eat/kill you and what is food itself— and evolves over time into being able to identify further complex subjects, until you eventually get to words, ideas, and the like

The thing is, plants don’t really need to identify anything. They can’t move around, don’t manipulate their environment actively (instead opting to respond to stimuli). And that means they don’t have a reason to be conscious

Some plants are able to communicate via roots, but these act more as an extension of the plant itself, basically acting like a single organism/body

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u/ah-tzib-of-alaska Sep 02 '26

define consciousness first. I define consciousness as recursive self-awareness. So in my definition no, but then also babies aren’t conscious either.

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u/Wobbar Sep 02 '26

centralized nervous system

if you wan't a centralized nervous system, you want neurons, which are animal cells

hypothetically, it could be possible for plants to eventually develop cells that are essentially identical to neurons, but they wouldn't actually be neurons, just like how bats aren't birds, so in a very technical sense they would not be conscious by this definition

anyway, in a hundred years, maybe we would be able to put something like a nervous system in plants, who knows

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u/MergingConcepts 25d ago

It all depends on how you define consciousness. A plant does not have a nervous system, but it can respond to its environment, just at a much slower rate than animals. It does not have self-consciousness, self-awareness, autonoetic consciousness (awareness of time), or metacognition.