ABSTRACT
Plants grow and bend towards light. Their roots grow into the ground, while their shoots grow up, out of the soil. Since plants are autopoietic-and-adaptive, Enactivism also provides support for thinking that plants have minds—or, if we want to be cautious, proto-minds or minimal minds. Photosynthesis is the main means by which our magnolia, like all plants, created energy, converting water and carbon dioxide, in the presence of sunlight, into glucose, with oxygen as a byproduct. By highlighting the connection between autopoiesis-and-adaptivity and the 'disclosure' of an umwelt, a world of meaning, more than mere space, Enactivism makes it plausible that plants and other organisms have minds. This is a substantial and welcome advance beyond what should be regarded as a thoughtless dogma in mainstream cognitive science and mainstream philosophy of mind, the idea that mind has nothing to do with life, as if it is just an inexplicable and uninteresting accident that only living things have minds.
