5 ms·

So plants don’t have feelings and animals do? That’s what I used to believe, but then I read this article: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/giant-viruses-

by cko 9y ago

So plants don’t have feelings and animals do? That’s what I used to believe, but then I read this article: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/giant-viruses-found-austrian-sewage-fuel-debate-over-potential-fourth-domain-life http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/giant-viruses-found-a... This got me thinking... How do we determine which organisms feel pain? Presence of a central nervous system? What about jellyfish or octopi or lobsters? Kingdom animalia? Why not bacteria or plants? They reproduce and have some sort of consciousness. Plants bend towards sunlight. I used to consider myself Buddhist so I still don’t kill any living beings as a habit... not even mosquitos. But now that I think about it, I have no problems killing bacteria or viruses. I consume a lot of pea protein powder - mainly for aesthetic reasons - am I being unethical?

WorldMaker 9y ago
It's not a great solution, but it's the one that mostly sort of works for me: I tend to think of the evolutionary divergence tree as a bit of a family tree. I absolutely would never eat our brothers/sisters in the hominids and apes/chimpanzees. I've been growing increasingly concerned about our relationships with and our eating of our first cousins, the other mammals (pigs, cows, etc). I'm less concerned about our second/third cousins the avian dinosaurs (chicken, turkey), and fish/crustaceans. I don't worry about distant cousins in the plants, and fungi families. Bacteria, viruses, insects are pretty far removed from us on the evolutionary family tree. It's certainly complicated to think of it as a moral spectrum, with no easy/black-and-white answers, but that certainly seems to be the case. At some point I suppose you just have to make rules of thumb, and live with what makes you most comfortable/happy as best you see fit. Minimizing others' suffering is certainly a lofty goal, just don't mistake the perfect of "eliminate all suffering" with the good of "eliminate what suffering I can as best I am able".
- cko 9y ago
  I think that’s the conclusion I ultimately reached. At one point I have to choose my principles, or rules of thumb, and realize that objectively, they’re going to be arbitrary, and intimately connected to my own set of circumstances most of which I had no control over.

by cko 9y ago

WorldMaker 9y ago

It's not a great solution, but it's the one that mostly sort of works for me: I tend to think of the evolutionary divergence tree as a bit of a family tree. I absolutely would never eat our brothers/sisters in the hominids and apes/chimpanzees. I've been growing increasingly concerned about our relationships with and our eating of our first cousins, the other mammals (pigs, cows, etc). I'm less concerned about our second/third cousins the avian dinosaurs (chicken, turkey), and fish/crustaceans. I don't worry about distant cousins in the plants, and fungi families. Bacteria, viruses, insects are pretty far removed from us on the evolutionary family tree. It's certainly complicated to think of it as a moral spectrum, with no easy/black-and-white answers, but that certainly seems to be the case. At some point I suppose you just have to make rules of thumb, and live with what makes you most comfortable/happy as best you see fit. Minimizing others' suffering is certainly a lofty goal, just don't mistake the perfect of "eliminate all suffering" with the good of "eliminate what suffering I can as best I am able".

cko 9y ago
I think that’s the conclusion I ultimately reached. At one point I have to choose my principles, or rules of thumb, and realize that objectively, they’re going to be arbitrary, and intimately connected to my own set of circumstances most of which I had no control over.