Can plants feel?

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I'd heard some people say that plants are capable of feeling. I'd say that plants have about as much a chance of being able to feel as streetlights or lawn mowers have.

They don't have a central nervous system.

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They do As we say in Poland - miej sumienie - jedz kamienie which means have a conscience - eat stones

Yeah. Plants don't feel. People that say they do will argue that a central nervous system is not necessary for feeling, but if it is somehow possible to feel without one, what's stopping streetlights and lawn mowers from being able to feel?

I think they can feel.

Interesting question. Historically, in western culture, plants have often been viewed in a manner much akin to objects rather than life forms, without much depth to them. However over the past few decades, it's been discovered that while plants don't have a nervous system in the sense that most animals do, they do have a system that allows communication...and rather rapid communication, between cells throughout the plant. Plants react to various forms of stimulus such as light, touch, sound, gravity, temperature, and moisture. They have defense mechanisms; for example, acacias can become poisonous when stressed by over grazing, and plants even "sleep", and they can be "sedated" with many of the same volatile compounds used to sedate a human. They also contain a number of compounds akin to endorphins, which our brains release to blunt things like pain.

But do they feel? Are they sentient? Or are the just collections of cells without a "soul"?

Personally I'm inclined to say the latter, but then again, I don't really know and I could be very wrong. They have vastly different lives than most animals do. With the exception of growing, they are sedentary. They grow where they land and start to take root as seeds without animal intervention, so a plant's mission objective is to survive in that spot, and the collimation of their evolution is centered around that one thing.

What would the nature of sentience be under such a situation? I don't think it's anything a human can comprehend.

A nervous system, as far as we know, is necessary for sentience, however it doesn't have to be a centralized one. Centralized just means the neurons are packed in close proximity to one another but this does not need to be the case. Neurons could be spread out and still connected such that they function as a single brain.

Plants don't have neurons. They have somewhat analog structures that allow them to respond to their environment in ways conducive to their survival.

Touch sensitive plant
Venus Fly Trap

Granted this is probably similar to the touch sensitive skin on certain human body parts.

It must be pretty bad for plants if they're able to feel pain. They can't move around to get away from it.

Nasty vegetarians inflicting all that pain

I'm an omnivore, so I eat plants, too. It would suck if everyone decided we shouldn't eat them either because they're alive.

Or that we shouldn't try to kill harmful bacteria, or mildew, or athlete's foot fungus!

One of the reasons we feel pain in the way we do, is to provoke us to attempt to escape the pain causing stimulous or at least alert our fellow humans that we are in need of assistance.

Plants have evolved to be sedentary and their fellow plants can't render physical assistance, so I think it's unlikely that, if they were sentient, they would feel pain in the way we do. Additionally, plants can survive physical trauma that many animals can't. For example, a tree can lose a branch to a chain saw and be fine but most animals will bleed to death or die of infection if they lose a limb in a traumatic manner.

Some trees, however, cannot survive if they lose too many leaves, with the exception of losing leave naturally for winter, during which time they "hibernate". Trees try to avoid losing too many leaves by growing tall such that they can't easily be reached by grazing animals, and by producing toxins.

Other trees, however, you can cut the whole thing down and the stump or root stock will start growing new shoots. This evolutionary adaption was exploited by Europeans to create managed woods of trees that produce straight branches (for poles) in a method called "coppicing".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_per ... paranormal)

How can we ever know without the ability to ask them directly?

Actually....

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