Vinciane Despret, Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau

From Plant Behavior to Plant Intelligence?

“…This is why reductionist behaviorism has for a long time avoided the observation of complex animal behavior. Since it refuses to associate behaviors with the elaborate cognitive capacities which result from a reflection and decision process, reductionism denies itself the means to examine such hypotheses and to create apparatus to test them (Despret, 2009). Strict behaviorism no longer reigns in animal ethology.…”

“…First, it leads to a critical shift in traditional metaphysical and scientific thought patterns. For instance, because it assumed animals had no psyche, radical behaviorism was not able to formulate hypotheses and to develop experimental apparatus to test animal cognition efficiently (Dennett, 1983;Despret, 2009). Likewise, because we thought that animals were reducible to insensible machines -or, more recently, that a piglet did not really suffer when we cut its tail -we avoided all ethical reflections on the subject.…”

“…But can we posit and study plant behavior as exclusively biological -as involving no "psyche" or cognitive skills whatsoever? In recent years, an explanatory pluralism favoring a kind of animal psychism developed in response to mechanistic behaviorism (Despret, 2002(Despret, , 2009(Despret, , 2014Burgat, 2006Burgat, , 2010. A situated inquiry into the related phenomena and controversies should tell us whether it is possible and legitimate to extend this interpretation to plants.…”