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> Fortunately, this work may go faster than anesthetic research in animals. There are fewer ethical issues surrounding plant research, so more studies can be do
by scarmig 6y ago
> Fortunately, this work may go faster than anesthetic research in animals. There are fewer ethical issues surrounding plant research, so more studies can be done.
Are there fewer ethical issues in plants than animals? Or might we just know less about plant sentience than we think we do?
- TaupeRanger 6y agoThe former. Suffering appears to require a nervous system. So in the absence of one we have no more reason to assume plant-suffering than bacteria-suffering, and we lay waste to countless billions of those without blinking.
- science4sail 6y ago> So in the absence of one we have no more reason to assume plant-suffering than bacteria-suffering, and we lay waste to countless billions of those without blinking. To play devil's advocate (panpsychist's advocate?), how do we know that we aren't causing immense bacterial suffering each day? Your argument mainly appears to be a pragmatic decision to assume that suffering doesn't exist unless it's obviously apparent to our monkey brains.
- TaupeRanger 6y agoYes, the ethical decision of mowing your grass or taking antibiotics to treat infection is pragmatic in some sense.
- coldtea 6y ago>Are there fewer ethical issues in plants than animals? Yes. There are no ethical issues in plants. Nobody gives a flying ducks about individual plants wellbeing... (not the same as environment and plants ecosystems in general).
- earthboundkid 6y agoI disagree. Plucking the leaf off of a tree for no reason is immoral. (Not as bad as a lot of things, but immoral on an absolute scale.)
- djsumdog 6y agoI pull off pine needles when I walk in the forest so I can crush them and put them up to my nose and smell the fresh pine. Would you consider that immoral?
- earthboundkid 6y agoIf you have a reason, it’s probably fine.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 6y agoImmoral implies some moral issue at stake. What exactly is the moral issue? Who is the moral agent that is suffering? Do autumn leaves falling off of the trees constitute suffering or self-inflicted harm too? (Never the mind that morality is culturally constructed, and there's no agreed upon universal one, not even for things like murder, theft, or incest).
- earthboundkid 6y agolol you don’t think it’s bad if you’re murdered. haha, good luck operationalizing that