6 ms·
What are we supposed to eat?
by f6v 5y ago
What are we supposed to eat?
- dennis_jeeves 5y agoValid question only for a person who is vegan for 'ethical' reasons, who believes that some how plants are exempt from pain and suffering.
- pell 5y agoPlants don't have a central nervous system or a brain. What science generally understands under pain and suffering plants simply don't have.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago>Plants don't have a central nervous system or a brain. So? does that automatically imply that it does not feel pain? >What science generally understands under pain and suffering plants simply don't have. Listen, I don't buy the science say this and science say that kind of arguments. ANY living being ( assuming we can settle for what can be called 'alive') will have a mechanism for self preservation, pain is one of them. The onus is on 'science' or people to prove otherwise.
- OlleTO 5y agoIf we think about the function of pain from an evolutionary perspective its basically to encourage, well, not doing whatever is causing you pain (e.g. touching sharp objects, standing close to a fire) or provide motivation to fight or flee (e.g. if I am being attacked by a bobcat). Neither of these are applicable to plants, so there doesn't seem to be any evolutionary reason to evolve pain receptors.
- dennis_jeeves 5y agoAssuming that I did not misunderstand you, while fight or flee does not exist in plants in the same sense as animals they do react by producing chemicals/sap etc. that works as a defense. So it's more 'fight', but a chemical warfare at that.
- henearkr 5y agoThe tomato needs to be eaten to disseminate its seeds in feces. (Maybe not by insects though.)
- dennis_jeeves 5y agoAh, I replied to another comment along similar lines, so you are correct. Plucking a ripe tomato will most likely set of a little 'orgasm' in the plant, while eating a tomato will most likely set of a thundering earth shattering 'orgasm' in the tomato :)
- f6v 5y agoWe’ve been forcefully breeding plants and selecting traits WE desire for millennia. It’s time to stop and think.
- henearkr 5y agoSorry, I did not really see the point you try to make. The fact that fruits need to be eaten to perpetuate the species is not linked to the existence of humans. Birds, mammals, many species disseminate seeds.
- staticman2 5y agoPain is a subjective experience. It requires a self to feel it. No central nervous system does imply no mind to feel pain. If you were to scoop my brain out of my body and keep my lower body alive below the neck the nervous system would not feel pain as there is no mind to feel it.
- nicoburns 5y agoHow do you know that? Science has no idea how the brain produces consciousness (and therefore strong basis to claim that other entities don't). There might be all sorts of selves that you simply can't observe.
- staticman2 5y agoWe don't know how the brain produces consciousness but we have a good idea from observing people suffering brain damage from accidents how a functional brain is directly linked to consciousness. Science can't prove the world is not the dream of a giant turtle- so technically I can't "know" anything- so asking "how can you know that?" Is kind of a boring line of questioning. It has no answer other than "Well I guess technically I can't know that, or anything," But that doesn't mean turtle dreams are going to get equal weight with our empirical models of the world.
- ineedasername 5y agoThere might be all sorts of selves that you simply can't observe. Or there could be none besides those with a CNS. Science may have a long way to go on understanding minds, but speculation on other sorts of minds entirely is still within the realm of science fiction. So, if you're going to assert something like a conscious experience by plants then you should understand that you are taking it as an article of faith.
- nicoburns 5y agoBut science has no way to observe consciousness even in those entities with central nervous systems, not even humans. The inference of consciousness is entirely based on observed behaviours being similar. I'm not asserting that plants have consciousness. But I am suggesting that we ought not to completely dismiss the idea.
- ineedasername 5y agoThe onus is never on other scientists to prove an assertion false if it is made without evidence. The initial burden is always on the person making the initial claim. You can play semantics with the word "pain" all you want, but the biological differences between what we call pain as experienced by humans and the stimuli response from plants are sufficiently different to surpass a difference of degree and make it a difference of kind. You need a word besides "pain", or the onus is on you to demonstrate the appropriateness of that term when you are using it so far outside its normal context.
- dennis_jeeves 5y ago>You need a word besides "pain", That is indeed fair enough to ask for a different term. If one were to discuss technicalities then you are spot on. But I think we have digressed, the post that I responded to, was along lines of ( paraphrasing but not exact words) : It is somehow ok to eat plants but not animals, because they are different. I was taking an exception to that line of reasoning.
- shakna 5y ago> Plants don't have a central nervous system or a brain. What science generally understands under pain and suffering plants simply don't have. Quite a number actually do have nervous systems [0], using neurotransmitters that have actually been found in mammals. They respond to wounding, both with efforts to repair it, and with chemical deterrents to the cause. Now, that isn't to say that they necessarily have pain and suffering, but it wouldn't be surprising to learn that some plants possess that capability. [0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6407/1068 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6407/1068
- ben_w 5y agoCentral nervous system is a particular type of nervous system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_nervous_system Jellyfish have a nervous system but not a CNS. I have no idea where the ethical line ought to be here, but if plants have meaningful capacity to suffer then it’s also likely that PETA should be campaigning to limit the mistreatment of even the tiny AI we make while doing MOOCs on the basics of machine learning.
- ineedasername 5y agoI once ran a t-test that screamed when it wasn't statistically significant. It went on to argue with me about data points it thought were outliers that should be removed.
- nicoburns 5y agoScience generally doesn't understand pain or any other conscious experience.
- nkozyra 5y agoTypically this is where fruitarians would come in, but if the fruit feels pain we're all out of options.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lr4444lr 5y agoBreatharians will triumph at last.
- dennis_jeeves 5y agoUntil they learn that the nano-consciousness exists in the air molecules...
- nicoburns 5y ago> Breatharians Is that another word for plants?
- f6v 5y agoWe should not forget that billions of living things died in the oxidation holocaust so that breatharians could breath.
- dennis_jeeves 5y agoUnlikely, unless the fruit is raw. Some ripe fruits are most likely meant to be eaten because that's the mechanism that plants have evolved to disperse seeds, so it would actually be "rewarding" for the plant. Perhaps it would be similar to a little orgasm. Now a raw fruit will most likely feel pain.
- vnchr 5y agoImpossible Carrots and Beyond Broccoli
- ineedasername 5y agoBoth made from re-textured protein derived from cows.
- cf499 5y agoThe only morally sound answer to that question is "anything or nothing" because any other choice implies that you have to justify why one organism is more worthy of life than another. Am I wrong or just not fun at parties? :D
- awb 5y agoThere are many moral ways to eat I can think of: 1) Eat anything your body can consume safely 2) Only eat things without brains 3) Only eat things you hunt/harvest/prepare yourself 4) Only eat animals that are already dead 5) Only eat plants and animals that are invasive or over populated And the list goes on. Some are easier than others, but I don’t see the moral dilemma in maintaining a certain diet outside of “anything or nothing”.
- cf499 5y agoMy point was that there is no list that anyone can make that lets you sidestep the unpleasant fact that you have to kill something to eat (each of your 5 points involve taking the life of something else. Even eating roadkill implies killing bacteria and parasites). On top of that, you'll never know if the thing you killed felt pain so any choice you make is ultimately arbitrary. I'm not saying I feel good about this bleak conclusion but I'd rather be honest about it. My dinner deserves to know that it wasn't an easy choice!
- ineedasername 5y agoMy dinner deserves to know that it wasn't an easy choice I hope my dinner knows how delicious it is before I eat it. I would tell it if I could. Although that could get pretty awkward if it's something I don't like much: "Listen, can we just agree that neither of us is really going to like what is about to happen?"
- ineedasername 5y agoOnly eat animals that are already dead That's pretty much the only way I eat animals. It may be anecdotal, but supermarkets near me sell all of their meat pre-killed in neat little packages. I've never had to grind the beef off of a live cow to get my burger meat. Lobsters are an exception to that rule, but still generally seem dead by the time people eat them.
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago“A green salad?” said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur. “Are you going to tell me,” said Arthur, “that I shouldn’t have green salad?” “Well,” said the animal, “I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.” - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- selimthegrim 5y agoSomeone needs to poll them about Plantasia.
- hprotagonist 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism