ANTHROMORPHIZING TREES. Alva Noe is a philosopher and recognizes the problems that arise from imagining trees as thinking. He says: “I suspect Wohlleben knows that it may be possible to explain what trees do and how they interact without attributing to them anything like thought or agency. What he’s calling communication is the effect of chemicals in one organism on a neighboring organism…”
Yet Wohlleben speaks of trees as if they were human: “When you know that trees experience pain and have memories and that tree parents live together with their children…” and “Why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors?”