[msarchet]

It reads to me as: Here is a list of examples of things that plants do that would imply some kind of decision making process. When we anesthetize them they lose those abilities, is that something that tells us they have consciousness.

Secondarily, one can make the argument that due to the fact that you have a nervous system in your arm and your brain loses the signals from that system, in some way you have lost part of your consciousness when you are anesthetized. Since at it's core consciousness is just an awareness of what is happening to you.

Thirdly, whose to say if plants are conscious that their roots don't function in some way as their brain.

[colanderman]

My understanding of the traditional definition of consciousness is explicitly not the simple stimulus/response you imply it is, but rather, meta-awareness or control over the stimulus/response system.

That is, I am conscious of my arm if and only if I am aware of the stimulus/response process taking place (or not, as it were). Whereas, there are plenty of processes in the body of which one is not typically conscious (e.g. heartbeat, digestion, anything occuring during sleep or coma).

To claim that you suffer partial loss of consciousness when your arm is anesthetized implies that when asleep, you are not fully unconscious, because your arm still responds to stimuli. This is contrary to almost every definition of consciousness I've heard, and sounds more like a definition of responsiveness.

The model of plants wherein all stimuli/response processes are unconscious I claim is not invalidated by the experiment in the article.