If you look through a microscope you’ll notice the only major difference between the nervous system and other tissues is that the nervous system exhibits network connectivity. Cells in tissues are usually arranged in such a way that they only connect to their nearest neighbor. Many tissues exhibit electrical activity, communication between cells, coordinated activity, etc, in the same way as neurons. If networks of neurons can be said to be performing computations then so can other tissues. I’m not familar with the biology of trees but I don’t see why they couldn’t be said to be ‘thinking’ if we’re going to equate thinking with computation.
If you look through a microscope you’ll notice the only major difference between the nervous system and other tissues is that the nervous system exhibits network connectivity. Cells in tissues are usually arranged in such a way that they only connect to their nearest neighbor. Many tissues exhibit electrical activity, communication between cells, coordinated activity, etc, in the same way as neurons. If networks of neurons can be said to be performing computations then so can other tissues. I’m not familar with the biology of trees but I don’t see why they couldn’t be said to be ‘thinking’ if we’re going to equate thinking with computation.