It is worth considering whether plants have minds and—most important for morality—whether they are capable of suffering. Ancient mystics and modern hippies alike have long held that trees have minds. By some measures, plants have agency and perhaps even experience, but we usually fail to attribute them mind because their behaviors mainly occur in slow motion.

We do see glimpses of mind in especially fast species of plants. Venus flytraps will snap shut on unsuspecting insects and then slowly digest them, in an apparent feat of carnivorous cunning. With slower-acting plants we often see mind when their movements are captured in time-lapse films: flowers springing open and slamming shut, leaves clamoring for the sun as it traverses the sky, or vines encircling hapless trees in their quest for height. Seen in everyday slow motion, however, plants seem to lack mind because they take so long to respond to their environment.

Curiously, it’s also hard for us to see intelligence in things that move very quickly, to track the logic of darting dragonflies or scurrying cockroaches. Both very slow and very fast animals are seen to have little mind, and human-speeded animals like dogs and cats are seen to have the most mind.

This makes evolutionary sense, as potential predators and prey are all creatures moving at roughly our speed, and so it pays to understand their intentions and feelings. In the modern world, we seldom have to worry about catching deer and evading wolves, but timescale anthropomorphism stays with us.

People are anthropocentric beyond the scale of time, with any similarities to humans increasing perceived mind. We expect minds to be like us.

Dan Wegner & Kurt Gray, Mind Club