Decision Making in Plants: A Rooted Perspective

Abstract

This article discusses the possibility of plant decision making. We contend that recent work on bacteria provides a pertinent perspective for thinking about whether plants make choices. Specifically, the analogy between certain patterns of plant behaviour and apparent decision making in bacteria provides principled grounds for attributing decision making to the former. Though decision making is our focus, the discussion has implications for the wider issue of whether and why plants (and non-neural organisms more generally) are appropriate targets for cognitive abilities. Moreover, decision making is especially relevant to the issue of plant intelligence as it is commonly taken to be characteristic of cognition.

Keywords: bacteria; decision making; intelligence; plant behaviour.