Had a few difficulties with tech stuff today (it’s obvious that Mercury is still in Retrograde!), hence why there are two videos. Commentary on Michael Marder’s Keynote, Emily Dickinson Plant-Thinker from the Thinking with Plants and Fungi Conference 2025 by Harvard Divinity School Resources mentioned: Commentary about Emily Dickinson within Naturally Conscious Community: LIVE Plant Consciousness Commentary every Friday Join me live each week for Plant Consciousness Commentary as we explore the edge where plant intelligence meets human evolution and ecological intimacy. Livestreams are every Friday on Youtube. Want To Go Deeper? Join the Naturally Conscious Community®, the online ecosystem for reawakening human-plant kinship. >> JOIN HERE << Get to Know

What if cities weren’t humanity’s triumph over nature, but love letters to it? In this Plant Consciousness Commentary, I reflect on philosopher Emanuele Coccia’s daring keynote, “How to Make Cities with Plants.” Coccia doesn’t just reframe urbanism—he roots it in a story of interspecies intimacy. According to him, cities didn’t arise from engineering genius alone—they are the cultural children of our entanglement with plants. That reframe changed everything for me. Rather than evolving with our vegetal kin, we’ve often chased them with control, not collaboration. Our cities mirror a romantic phase gone wrong—infatuation without integration. What would it mean to grow through this relationship, to graft new ways of living, designing,

With ~90 editions of Plant Consciousness Commentary, I press pause on the usual science-in-real-time routine and ask you to steer the microscope. Do you still enjoy watching me dissect research live, footnote by footnote? Would a pre-digested roundup serve you better or should we switch to “by-request” deep-dives when a new paper drops?  Spend a few minutes with the replay, then drop your thoughts below: What format sparks the most insight, curiosity, and practical action for your plant-centered life and work?  Your feedback will shape the future of this series. 🌱 Commentary about plant sentience within Naturally Conscious Community: LIVE Plant Consciousness Commentary every Friday Where we explore all things plant neurobiology, plant cognition, plant intelligence, plant

In this final two-part commentary, we close out our deep dive into “Plant Sentience? Between Romanticism and Denial” by Segundo-Ortin and Calvo by exploring their response to the responses—yes, a true meta-moment in the world of plant consciousness! Across seven sessions, we’ve journeyed through scientific nuance, philosophical tension, and the vast middle ground between wonder and skepticism. In these concluding conversations, I unpack Calvo and Segundo-Ortin’s clarifications, rebuttals, and expansions in “Plant Sentience Revisited: Sifting through the Thicket of Perspectives.” This is where it all comes together: What are we really talking about when we talk about plant sentience? How do we move beyond binary thinking? And what does it mean

In this session, we explore the last set of replies to Segundo-Ortin & Calvo’s paper on plant sentience, diving into perspectives that, while not fully embracing plant sentience yet, leave the door wide open for future recognition. Some argue that all living beings are sentient in some form, while others suggest that plants exhibit behaviors analogous to human sentience and should be acknowledged as such. Others still believe the right models simply haven’t been developed to measure plant sentience effectively. From discussions on panpsychism to refining our methods for detecting sentience, this session uncovers the fascinating intersection of science, philosophy, and the evolution of thought around plant intelligence. As the debate

In this session, we explored another round of scientific critiques against plant sentience, revealing scientific resistance or a recurring pattern—if plants aren’t like animals, they must not be sentient. But is this the right way to approach the question? One paper challenged this thinking, suggesting that plant sentience might exist on a completely different timescale and sensory framework—one we simply don’t yet know how to measure. But the others? They dismissed plant experiments outright, arguing that methodologies based on animal cognition don’t work (which raises the real question: why aren’t we developing methods that do?). And then there was the final paper—the most jarring of all. It openly warned that acknowledging too many beings as