human exceptionalism
If apes are people, we aren’t (but that’s the point, right?)
Believing elephants into personhood
Apes and humans: How did science get so detached from reality?
Why do plant scientists need to tell the world that plants are NOT conscious?
You didn’t think plants were conscious, did you? Did you really think salad is murder? Yet telling us that plants are not conscious is the gist of a recently published major paper in Trends in Plant Science. (open access) Part of the background to the “plants think like people” movement in science, which they oppose, is that we have learned over the years that plants communicate a lot. The other part is refusal to acknowledge that humans are exceptional. Quite simply, the need to see humans as equivalent to animals has now spread to the need to see us as equivalent to plants. We can expect many more such conundrums. They will result in further declarations in science journals that Read More ›