Plant Sentience, Semantics, and the Emergentist Dilemma

Recent arguments in plant biology that claim to be uncovering the scientific basis for sentience in plants are grounded on assumptions that have not been sufficiently scrutinized. This paper focuses on two assumptions in particular â–” the semantic assumption that psychological predicates are non-rigid and hence can be extended to plants, and the assumption that Darwinian gradualism is inconsistent with consciousness emerging at a specific place on the phylogenetic tree. We interrogate both assumptions, advocating that a careful semantic analysis of psychological predicates does not warrant their extension to plants on the available evidence, and that gradualism and emergentism, properly construed, are not inconsistent