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> Just because we cannot read them and interpret their emotions doesn't mean they don't feel love, comfort, fear, amusement or terror. What makes us so confide

> Just because we cannot read them and interpret their emotions doesn't mean they don't feel love, comfort, fear, amusement or terror. What makes us so confident that plants don't also meet this criteria? Can lab grown algae burgers feel love? How would we know? I'm not trying to argue that we should stop eating everything. But I'm not sure how we'd draw a line between some/all animals and other things that are even harder to read. I'm genuinely curious where we'd draw a line.

claudiawerner 7y ago
The line drawn by many vegetarians and vegans is a lack of a central nervous system - but even they admit this is arbitrary.
- gbjw 7y ago
  To add to this, there is also another line you can draw: do not eat anything which requires killing (not just harvesting from) another living thing. This is basically the line drawn by Jain vegetarians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism). This allows one to eat milk and dairy but does not allow one to eat root vegetables that require you to kill the entire organism to eat it (and potentially other living beings that live in the soil).
  - vinay427 7y ago
    Milk and dairy really don't fit this criterion in any major civilization today. Animals are definitely killed even if they're not consuming them.
  - bdamm 7y ago
    It's very odd to me that not eating mushrooms is part of Jain vegetarianism. If ever there was a case of a fruit that did no harm to harvest, it is your typical farmed mushroom and even many wild ones.
  - megaremote 7y ago
    I wonder if they can eat the leg of an animal then? Like the joke about the farmer and his favourite pig.
- Falling3 7y ago
  It's not arbitrary; it's based on our best guess of the minimum requirements for sentience.
nessus42 7y ago
> What makes us so confident that plants don't also meet this criteria? Can lab grown algae burgers feel love? How would we know? When it comes to issues of consciousness, I'm loathe to make any strong claims, since I don't think that phenomenal consciousness is amenable to scientific inquiry due to its innately subjective nature. E.g., for all I know, it might feel like something to be a rock. Though I doubt it. Likewise for plants, I would hypothesize that feeling things consciously requires complex information processing. E.g., such as is done in the brains of many animals. Plants certainly process information to some degree, but the degree to which they do so would seem to pale compared to the amount of information processing performed by even the simplest animals that have brains.
howlin 7y ago
"What makes us so confident that plants don't also meet this criteria?" Brains or other possible organs for processing information are metabolically expensive to operate and entropically expensive to maintain the genetics required to build them. If there is no evolutionary advantage for plants to have sensations and emotions, they will not evolve the machinery required to have them.

claudiawerner 7y ago

The line drawn by many vegetarians and vegans is a lack of a central nervous system - but even they admit this is arbitrary.

gbjw 7y ago
To add to this, there is also another line you can draw: do not eat anything which requires killing (not just harvesting from) another living thing. This is basically the line drawn by Jain vegetarians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism). This allows one to eat milk and dairy but does not allow one to eat root vegetables that require you to kill the entire organism to eat it (and potentially other living beings that live in the soil).
- vinay427 7y ago
  Milk and dairy really don't fit this criterion in any major civilization today. Animals are definitely killed even if they're not consuming them.
- bdamm 7y ago
  It's very odd to me that not eating mushrooms is part of Jain vegetarianism. If ever there was a case of a fruit that did no harm to harvest, it is your typical farmed mushroom and even many wild ones.
- megaremote 7y ago
  I wonder if they can eat the leg of an animal then? Like the joke about the farmer and his favourite pig.
Falling3 7y ago
It's not arbitrary; it's based on our best guess of the minimum requirements for sentience.

nessus42 7y ago

> What makes us so confident that plants don't also meet this criteria? Can lab grown algae burgers feel love? How would we know? When it comes to issues of consciousness, I'm loathe to make any strong claims, since I don't think that phenomenal consciousness is amenable to scientific inquiry due to its innately subjective nature. E.g., for all I know, it might feel like something to be a rock. Though I doubt it. Likewise for plants, I would hypothesize that feeling things consciously requires complex information processing. E.g., such as is done in the brains of many animals. Plants certainly process information to some degree, but the degree to which they do so would seem to pale compared to the amount of information processing performed by even the simplest animals that have brains.

howlin 7y ago

"What makes us so confident that plants don't also meet this criteria?" Brains or other possible organs for processing information are metabolically expensive to operate and entropically expensive to maintain the genetics required to build them. If there is no evolutionary advantage for plants to have sensations and emotions, they will not evolve the machinery required to have them.