But yes, I've seen people suggest that photo-receptivity amounts to consciousness, that amoeba can feel sensation, that the human genome is complex and can be reasonably assumed to host its own form of consciousness, and that chemical exchanges between plants amounts to full fledged communication, without any limiting qualifications.
>"chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication"" - without context it may have been a perfectly reasonable supposition.
Perhaps I can add your endorsement of this view to the list, and we can later see if your view is brushed off belonging to a small minority of nutters.
As for "Perhaps I can add your endorsement of this view to the list..." please be careful. Communication requires an exchange of information. If the exchange is in the form of chemicals, that's fine as communication is happening via chemical exchange. But whether chemical exchange alone IS communication is a philosophical question[1]. All I'm saying is that you may be misrepresnting or misunderstanding other people's stated position. Again, without links to read I can't judge.
[1] I'd say yes it is but am open to being shown wrong. It probably depends on whether you believe conscious intent is required. I say no, others may say yes, it is needed.
"chemical exchanges between roots to full fledged "communication"" - without context it may have been a perfectly reasonable supposition.
"open ended musing about the gaia hypothesis" - hard to tell if it's a few or endemic without examples