7 ms·

What about killing plants (ending a life prematurely)?

• __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  It's pretty easy to find examples outside of the animal kingdom where an organism's lifecycle depends on it being eaten at some point. So far as I know, there are no animals with this property. Also, it's clearer to us (since we're animals) what sorts of events count as ending another animal's life. Elsewhere it's trickier (Is a field of grass one life, or is a blade of grass one life? How should mycelial networks be counted? etc). For these reasons, I think it's that applying different logic to different kingdoms is a fairly defensible move.
  • soperj 5y ago
    I disagree. What organism are you talking about exactly? Any plant I can think of doesn't require being eaten to live.
    • throwaway09223 5y ago
      The lifecycle of an organism includes reproduction and propagation. Many plants have evolved specifically around being eaten by other animals.
      • soperj 5y ago
        >The lifecycle of an organism includes reproduction and propagation. No, that would be different organisms.
    • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      Anything that bears fruit is relying on an animal to come by and eat that fruit so that the seeds will be spread (either because the pit is hard to eat and the animal drops it, or because the seeds survive the animal's digestive tract). There are also several fungi and protozoans who migrate between the digestive tracts of animals that eat each other (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii for instance). I'm not enough of a biologist to defend the point especially well, but doesn't it make sense that one would use different types of reasoning to manage relationships with different types of life?
      • soperj 5y ago
        > Anything that bears fruit is relying on an animal to come by and eat that fruit so that the seeds will be spread (either because the pit is hard to eat and the animal drops it, or because the seeds survive the animal's digestive tract). Right, but that's not the plant, that's the fruit. If you eat the plant itself, it's dead. Same as a cow.
        • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
          The example that I had in mind with the original comment was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Lifecycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Lifecycle I'll grant that no plants come to mind that have a niche that requires them to be wholly eaten, but I still think that deciding whether to eat a plant requires totally different logic than deciding whether to eat an animal. So what's your position? Are you here to suggest that "we shouldn't eat animals" is absurd by equating it to "we shouldn't eat plants?" Or are you a vegan looking to take it a step further by not eating plants that have to die in order for you to eat them? Because I'd like to hear more about somebody who sincerely held that belief.
          • soperj 5y ago
            You mean Fruitarians? They certainly exist. I do enjoy how you seem to think that it's inconceivable. HN Favourite Steve Jobs was once a Fruitarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism I just don't understand how you can have a moral outrage to killing one thing but not another. People seem to do a little dance about plants being not as alive as animals to justify it, but it doesn't make sense to me.
  • kemiller 5y ago
    Fruit is generally evolved to be eaten as a seed-dispersal and -fertilization technique. Not sure about other parts of the plant.
  • zeven7 5y ago
    > It's pretty easy to find examples outside of the animal kingdom where an organism's lifecycle depends on it being eaten at some point. So far as I know, there are no animals with this property. There are parasites for which being eaten is a part of their life cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum Black widow spiders are so named because the females eat their mates. Some spider mothers become food for their own children. Not to mention that (while not exactly what you asked for, but I think it's important to recognize) carnivores kill other species as a means of survival, and even their own species at times. Wild wolves cannot feed their pups without killing other animals. Death is common in nature.
    • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      I thought of the parasite angle later, touche. But the parasite survives the transition between hosts, so it doesn't really count from an "end a life" perspective. The spider thing is interesting though. It would seem that being eaten by her children is an adaptation, not just an unfortunate consequence of harsh reality. The strategy appears to be: give my nutrients to my offspring, for they carry a part of me, and the survival of that part is more important than the rest. Given that most of the cells in a human body are passengers, and not cells with human DNA in their nucleus (if they have nuclei at all), it seems pretty likely that something, somewhere, is making the same kind of sacrifice, and using a hungry human as the vehicle. And I think that ending a life on those terms falls in a different domain--both from an ethics perspective, and from a "how adversarial of an environment do you want to create for yourself"-perspective, than mere predation. Strategies of that sort are more popular outside of the animal kingdom than in it (I think), which I think justifies a "different rules for different things" approach.
  • com2kid 5y ago
    > So far as I know, there are no animals with this property. Ultimately, many grazing animals have their property. If their numbers grow too large from lack of predators, they'll consume all available food and then starve en-masse.
    • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      Yeah, but starving en-masse isn't some kind of adaptation that they've developed in order to survive. I was thinking more about plants whose seeds germinate in the digestive tract of an animal.
• CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  Plants are alive, in that they reproduce and react to stimulus, but I don't have any reason to suspect them of awareness, feelings, thoughts, or desires. Everyone's morals here will be different, but I have to eat something, and I'll choose to eat a lettuce over a puppy any day.
  • soperj 5y ago
    > I don't have any reason to suspect them of awareness, feelings, thoughts, or desires. I don't have any reason to suspect that they don't.
    • yboris 5y ago
      Do you suspect rocks have conscious experiences? With animals there's a clear connection: they have brains and brains is clearly the part that enables us humans to have conscious experiences. The burden of proof of the claim "plants are conscious" is on you.
      • soperj 5y ago
        >brains is clearly the part that enables us humans to have conscious experiences I didn't claim that plants were conscious, and we have no idea what causes the conscious experience. I personally wouldn't say that all humans actually experience consciousness. So no, no clear connection, and no burden either.
• WorkLobster 5y ago
  This question seems to be becoming more popular lately. My own understanding is that most people are apprehensive about killing because it involves denying another being self-actualisation and/or causing its suffering, both of which by our current understanding seem to require a central nervous system. I would also add though that if you want to minimize plant death, the best course of action is to stop eating meat and animal products and aim for a plant-based diet, since (by thermodynamics!) the number of plants needed to feed these animals vastly outstrips what would deliver the same amount of nutrients to a human eating them directly.
  • Ekaros 5y ago
    Actually deeply thinking of plant lifecycle and morality of it all is interesting question. Is it morally more wrong to feed grass to cow after it has shed its seed than to eat fruits and prevent their seeds from spreading? Clearly in first case plant is already dying, but has done it's life and procreation. On other hand later case is clear exploitation comparable to abortion.
    • christkv 5y ago
      I mean fruit exist to be eaten so the seeds can be shat out somewhere else. It’s part of the reproductive cycle for many plants.
      • Ekaros 5y ago
        Probably should have been clearer about us eating them and shitting in toilet where it ends up in sewage treatment with no chances of ever sprouting...
  • soperj 5y ago
    Generally grazers don't kill plants though, they eat grasses that continue to grow.
    • tkzed49 5y ago
• numpad0 5y ago
  Easy way I found is to admit the fact that we kill a lot of life just to live a day, and hope it was/is/will be worth it. Else I might kill myself, except it is not allowed by my animal programming, which is out of my control, so I go back to that hoping phase. I also wonder what’s the problem with killing sentient animals while we also kill fellow humans when “necessary”. We kill for our little ego, so let’s just keep fingers crossed that the sacrifices we force are worth something. Maybe this is a bit Buddhism centric but it takes off my mental loads a bit.
• Forbo 5y ago
  Feeding animals for slaughter requires an order of magnitude more plant destruction, simply for the fact that you're passing those plants through another trophic level. If humans were to eat the soy that is typically used for feed, that would be a massive amount of harm reduction if you want to take into account the idea of "plant suffering".
  • soperj 5y ago
    >Feeding animals for slaughter requires It doesn't require it at all.
    • Forbo 5y ago
      Sorry, can you expound on this?
      • soperj 5y ago
        Most grazers don't actually destroy anything. They eat a bit of the plant not the entire thing.
        • __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
          Fobo's point wasn't about which parts of the plant get destroyed, it was just about how much food you have to put into a cow in order to get different food out of a cow. It's a lossy conversion.
          • Forbo 5y ago
            Additionally, lots of factory farmed beef doesn't involve grazing. Instead they feed them corn and soy. Factory farming makes up 98.66% of meat production comes from factory farms. 70.4% of beef comes from factory farms. https://sentientmedia.org/factory-farms/ https://sentientmedia.org/factory-farms/
• swader999 5y ago
  And along those lines, what if we only slaughtered animals for food consumption right at the end of their natural life? Would that not satisfy the morality issues?
  • steve_adams_86 5y ago
    This is done with dairy cows somewhere (I can't recall) but I found it nice in a sense. They put a lot of care into making the dairy cows' lives good by giving them pasture, caring for them, and having relatively low expectations for their output. There are still inherent issues with dairy, such as forced impregnation and abduction and murder of the offspring, so it isn't great no matter how you slice it. But if we're to compare dairy operations, this one was pretty good I guess. When the cows stopped producing much milk, they had some way of pasturing them for around 2 years before they'd then slaughter them for meat. In total the cows had quite long and low pressure lives. The dairy and meat was very expensive, though. I think that's the realistic outcome of treating animals more morally. It isn't cheap.