Minds Without Brains

Is it correct to say that plants forage for light, or that they actively avoid shade? Should we say that plants decide where to send out their roots, that they know that they should send roots down into the ground and stems up toward the sky? Is the plasticity and growth of plants to be compared with the free movement and action of animals? These are interesting and important questions that deserve our attention. I won't comment on them any further here other than to notice that if plants have minds, then perhaps they show that you don't need a brain to have a mind, and that's a strange and exciting possibility.

--Alva Noë, writing here