Pain and vegetation

[Alistar]

[size=200]So do plants feel pain or do they not? This is the question.[/size]

[WarChild]

Dunno I’m not a plant

[AndyBa]

I think plants don’t feel pain cause they don’t have the ability to avoid it. Thus pain is not necessary for plants.

[Sergio]

Here is the link about this:
skepdic.com/plants.html

[WarChild]

I think plants don’t feel pain cause they don’t have the ability to avoid it.

Any life form has the ability to avoid pain. That happens when it dies

[AndyBa]

Well… animals need pain to stay longer alive… Pain is a very effective signal of danger to body integrity and life.
And animals can avoid pain and stay alife. i.e. if you will try to harm an animal it will try to run.
Plants can’t do it so they don’t need pain and suffering.

[WarChild]

Well… animals need pain to stay longer alive…

This looks like masochism

i.e. if you will try to harm an animal it will try to run.

… or to harm you

Plants can’t do it so they don’t need pain and suffering.

Plants can’t do what? Run or harm back?

[AndyBa]

Plants can’t do what? Run or harm back?

Both…

[WarChild]

Well, there are insect-eating plants.

[Sergio]

Well, there are insect-eating plants.

There plants are more like traps.

[Devo]

Since animals have no nervous system or brain, I think we can deduce that they do not feel pain. In anything that feels pain, there is a reaction to the pain. When you cut a leave of grass, it does not squirm about. Of course skeptics will always say you can’t possibly know, but we do have reasonable doubt on our side.

[AndyBa]

Since animals have no nervous system or brain

You meant plants, didn’t you?

[cfRedtwin]

I remember a study where they studied a plant’s electrical activity before and after they were abused. When the abuser later returned to the area, the plants seemed to be highly disturbed by his presence.

[Sergio]

I remember a study where they studied a plant’s electrical activity before and after they were abused. When the abuser later returned to the area, the plants seemed to be highly disturbed by his presence.

Scientists have no evidence that plants can recognize abuser, or have other feelings, read more here: skepdic.com/plants.html

[BigBecka]

First off, the things I’m about to quote here are not well-recognised scientific sources, and I know very little about botany - but I think it’s interesting

I got the following from
cogreslab.co.uk/plants.asp

Telepathic Plants
It is now established that different light frequencies have a fundamental effect on photosynthesis rates. This must pave the way for the heresy that plants can distinguish between these frequencies or between others outside the visible part of the EM spectrum, and therefore the rudiments of communication are available to them. If one’s feet are scarcely on firm terra scientifica at this point then the claims made by Cleveland Backster, a foremost US lie detector examiner, lift them off its surface! Backster used his polygraph lie detector on a house plant Dracaena massangeana and found its needle varied when he put into his mind the intention to dip its leaves into a hot cup of coffee. His subsequent investigations, covering over 25 plant types, were eventually published in 1968 with the title “Evidence of primary perception in plant life” in the Intl. Journal of Parapsychology, of which some 7000 reprints were requested. One has to ask whether he was influencing the polygraph directly himself, and the plant may simply have been a passive amplifying receiver.

Replication and scepticism being the twin cornerstones of good science, it was not long before others tried to see if there was anything in Backster’s astounding claim. Among these was Pierre Paul Sauvin, a New Jersey electronics engineer, who later claimed to have instrumented a small plant to control an electric train set’s direction, using philodendron as his model. Like Backster and Gurwitsch he found that plants reacted most strongly to the death of living cells in their environment, and even most consistently to the death of human cells. The effect appeared to be observable even over large distances. Hans Berger, whose lifelong ambition was to find a physical basis for telepathy, would have been proud of him.

Another plant sensitivity investigator was Marcel Vogel. Vogel developed a passion for bioluminescence in the 1950s, and built up a company Vogel Luminescence, which developed the red colour seen on TV screens, fluorescent crayons, a black light inspection kit for tracing rodent pathways, and then soldthe firm to IBM to concentrate on research into liquid crystal systems and optoelectrical devices. His book Luminescence in liquids and solids and their practical application was almost a standard textbook at the time.

From this fairly down to earth background Vogel was enticed into researching Backster’s claims. He too found that he could influence the plant at a distance, even upto eight miles away. He concluded eventually that

“A Life Force or Cosmic energy surrounding all living things is shareable among plants, animals and humans. Through such sharing a person and a plant become one! This oneness makes possible a sensitivity allowing plant and man not only to intercommunicate, but to record these communications via the plant on a moving chart”.

Out of many I select one particular research group involved in these bizarre experiments, Randall Fontes and Robert Swanson from California, that easeful acceptor of unusual ideas. At Stanford Research Institute they collaborated with Dr. Hal Puthoff, a physicist, to discover an electric potential travelling from cell to cell in the philodendron. This is actually not surprising in view of the communicating gap junctions which are known to exist between cells in most multicellular creatures. The big question is whether these potentials can also act at a distance when chemical communication is made impossible.

The article goes on to describe further experiments that have been done.

[AndyBa]

I also read about many experiments with plants.
But none of them could be repeated by other scientist who used placebo proof control.

[meign]

Our consciousness is intimately connected to our brain and nervous system. By the term “consciousness”, I am referring to the ability to feel sensations such as pain, suffering, and a desire to live. Once a person is brain dead, he is no longer able to feel such sensations. Therefore, since plants do not possess anything even remotely resembling a nervous system, I believe it is extremely unlikely that plants can feel pain or suffering.