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SUMMARY:Understanding the Challenges of Plant Science: Reflections from the
  Outside-In
DESCRIPTION:The investigation of plant intelligence and sentience is here t
 o stay. And yet\, despite the growing body of literature on the subject\, 
 we appear not to be making headway. Controversies over plant intelligent b
 ehavior and consciousness are part of a long botanical tradition. But thin
 gs are only getting worse in today’s academic culture of “fast science
 ”. The result is a lack of a common language and subsequent misunderstan
 dings and misdiagnoses. Many findings that have gripped the public’s ima
 gination are proving difficult to replicate. I will illustrate how the exp
 erimental evidence on plant perception and learning brings a mixed bag of 
 both supportive and inconclusive results. Doing better calls for placing t
 he discussion outside of old and sterile battles\, allowing for alternativ
 e frameworks of thinking. Doing better calls for the inclusion of countera
 rguments and adversarial collaboration\; for respecting the guiding role t
 hat complementary\, rather than competing\, models and theoretical framewo
 rks can play. Doing better calls for “slow science” and\, echoing Ludw
 ik Fleck\, for the nourishment of social interactions in both the plant an
 d cognitive science communities. The goal of this talk is not to claim tha
 t plants are intelligent or that plant sentience (if it exists) is of the 
 same kind as human consciousness. Neither taking for granted that plants a
 re intelligent and/or sentient\, nor dismissing the possibility that they 
 are\, I shall argue that the time is ripe to cast the problem in a scienti
 fically tractable manner. The goal is to invite constructive debate\, and 
 to scrutinize established objections and thinking vetoes to better underst
 and the challenges of plant science. Paco Calvo is a Professor of Philosop
 hy of Science\, and Principal Investigator of MINTLab (Minimal Intelligenc
 e Lab) at the University of Murcia (Spain). He specialized in the philosop
 hy of cognitive science courtesy of a Fulbright scholarship in the late 19
 90s (University of California\, San Diego)\, and received a PhD in Philoso
 phy from the University of Glasgow (UK) in 2000. His research interests ra
 nge broadly within the cognitive sciences\, with special emphasis on ecolo
 gical psychology\, embodied cognitive science\, and plant intelligence. 
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20201002T161500
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20201002T180000
LOCATION:Schmelzbergstrasse 25 25\, Zürich (Schweiz) 
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DESCRIPTION:Understanding the Challenges of Plant Science: Reflections from
  the Outside-In
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