Upcoming: Do Plants Talk Back? Only If We Learn to Listen, with Paco Calvo

Lina Botero/FILBo 2024

June 14 2025, 16:00 GMT/ 12:00 EST/ 9:00 PST (4pm GMT/ 12 pm EST/ 9am PST)

Do Plants Talk Back? Only If We Learn to Listen

What counts as communication? Who gets to be considered intelligent? And why do we assume that meaningful interaction ends where nervous systems do?

In this talk, Professor Paco Calvo invites a radical shift in perspective—away from the animal-centric models that dominate our understanding of cognition and communication—to explore what plants might be telling us, and why we’ve been so bad at listening. Drawing on recent research in plant behaviour, bioelectric signaling, and adaptive decision-making, Paco will present evidence suggesting that plants are far from passive green backgrounds. Instead, they respond to cues, anticipate events, share resources, and exhibit forms of sensitivity that challenge conventional cognitive boundaries. 

But if plants do “talk back,” they do so on terms radically different from ours—slow, decentralized, and embodied in growth and movement rather than sound or gesture. Understanding this requires more than just new tools. It demands a new attitude; one that suspends our need to be the center of the conversation. Interspecies communication isn’t just about extending our models to other creatures. It’s about unlearning the habits that keep us from hearing what’s already being said.

About the speaker

Paco Calvo is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Murcia, Spain, where he directs the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab). His research explores the intersection of plant behaviour, ecological psychology, and the philosophy of mind, with a focus on non-neural forms of cognition. He is one of the leading voices in the emerging field of plant intelligence, and the author of Planta Sapiens (2023, New York, WW Norton), an internationally acclaimed book that asks us to rethink what it means to think, and who gets to do it. The book has been translated into numerous languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, reflecting its global reach and impact. Paco’s work combines rigorous experimentation with conceptual analysis, pushing the boundaries of how we define cognition and sentience in living systems. He is particularly interested in the overall implications of de-centering the animal perspective, and in developing frameworks for interspecies understanding that go beyond anthropomorphic assumptions.

This talk will be hosted on Zoom, please register below to receive a calendar invitation including link to join.