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Ok, but what if plants are sentient? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natur
by bena 8y ago
Ok, but what if plants are sentient?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering...
What if survival depends on suffering to some degree?
- trentmb 8y agoLess energy loss? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer...
- bena 8y agoSo you subscribe to a more utilitarian view of ethics? "I'm sorry we're raising you and your species for consumption, but it's more efficient, so you gotta go".
- CuriouslyC 8y agoSuffering is something things do while they're alive. Just because you end something's life doesn't mean you necessarily caused suffering.
- coaxial 8y agoI guess you haven't looked much into how 99% of "farm" animals are raised.
- CuriouslyC 8y agoI am very aware of our current agricultural practices. The stupid things we do now have no bearing on what is possible.
- yesenadam 8y agoLet me guess, you eat animals.
- uxcolumbo 8y agoThanks for that link. I should have phrased the question slightly differently. It's more around whether animals (e.g. vertebrates) can suffer and experience pain like we do. The answer is yes - that's why we use animals in pain research and that's why a pig or cow screams when it's cut with a knife for example. Even fish feel pain [0]. Plants react to stimuli - but plants don't have a nervous system, they don't have nociceptors (neurons responding to life threatening signals) to experience and feel pain, they don't have any means to 'escape pain', e.g. running away from danger. [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain-180967764/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain...
- bena 8y agoNo problem. It's a thought that's been consistently nagging me for a while. It kind of throws a lot of things for loops. For instance, you make a point of specifying you're considering whether things can suffer and experience pain like we do. Why is that the delineating factor here? We don't really understand intelligence of consciousness and we've been basing our measures of both on the only instance where we're relatively confident exists. We think, therefore we are. But what if we're wrong. What if our way isn't the only way to be intelligent, to be sentient. Why must they experience pain the way we do in order to be afforded protection? If we're just privileging our type of sentience over others, we're just drawing a different line. And always when someone draws a line, I ask, why there?
- mercer 8y agoI suppose the most inclusive line would be drawn at the point of our own survival. So at the very least we'd eat plants until we figure out some alternative that doesn't 'kill' plants. From there on it's a tough one though...
- bena 8y agoOk, but what gives you more of a right to survival than the plants you kill? If anything, plants are the most benign entities on the planet, they're the only beings capable of producing their own food. These are hard questions, I don't expect anyone to have the answers.