ROCHESTER, MN—Hailing it as the best-tasting and most satisfying such product on the market, vegetarian food manufacturer Greenwood Farms unveiled a more realistic meat substitute Friday made from soy raised in brutally cruel conditions.
Now I’m curious if plants have enough complexity to their internal experience for it to be possible to be cruel to them or not. One is used to thinking of them as basically inanimate apart from that they grow, but some of them can sort of communicate with other plants in certain ways can’t they?
There is not really strong evidence of plant sentience. Here’s one paper looking at it:
A. Plants do not show proactive behavior.
B. Classical learning does not indicate consciousness, so reports of such learning in plants are irrelevant.
C. The considerable differences between the electrical signals in plants and the animal nervous system speak against a functional equivalence. Unlike in animals, the action potentials of plants have many physiological roles that involve Ca2+ signaling and osmotic control; and plants’ variable potentials have properties that preclude any conscious perception of wounding as pain.
D. In plants, no evidence exists of reciprocal (recurrent) electrical signaling for integrating information, which is a prerequisite for consciousness.
E. Most proponents of plant consciousness also say that all cells are conscious, a speculative theory plagued with counterevidence.
Though something interesting and perhaps counter intuitive to note is that even if we realized plants were sentient, a plant-based diet actually involved killing fewer plants due to the lessened need to grow feed (of which most of the energy is lost)
The issue is we as of yet still have no falsifiable or rigorous measurable definition of consciousness. So any reference to something consciousness isn’t doesn’t make a strong case.
I don’t think plants have a conventional consciousness, but I don’t think this study found evidence of something it can’t even structure a good definition of.
Let’s say that plants do have some kind of sentience, which is probably very limited due to the evidence we do have. Animals still have more advanced sentience that is closer to our own so it would still be the lesser evil to eat plants. Like why would you eat other people or chimps when there are other options available?
It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to be able to say that plants suffer the same way as animals. I know you’re not saying this, but you do hear stuff like this based on this premise.
Check out the Joe Rogan episode with Paul Stamets on how fungi allow trees in a forest to exchange nutrients. Dunno if that is classed as “communication” but it still blew my mind.
It was the first Rogan episode I saw and the only good one as it turned out.
First you say it’s OK to be cruel to one life form because it’s less intelligent, it’s not long before that extends to disabled people. It might sound like hyperbole, but never underestimate the internet’s capacity to steer the ship towards nazi germany when given the chance.
You can’t eat anything in the modern world without killing animals. A combine harvester harvests wheat and mice. A hundred meat eaters are responsible for a single cow death, and the cow lived on marginal land, drinking from streams - you couldn’t grow other food on the land (sure some are grown on perfect fertile land, they don’t need to be)
Not saying I’m a meat eater, I don’t care about mice, but there’s blood on all our hands
Statistically, that cow had a short and miserable life in a factory farm before being killed at a small fraction of their potential lifespan. They were fed a grain-based diet that caused far more mice deaths than it would have to use the land to grow crops to feed humans directly.
Even in the situation you’ve presented, which again is an exceedingly small percentage (<10% globally, <1% in the US), land is being used which could be rewilded to promote biodiversity. The cow in question is still contributing to GHG emissions and will again be killed around 16 months of age.
Of course, but livestock require even more agriculture to maintain than the same caloric/protein intake of plant based. So if the choice is 50 animals or 100 animals then the choice is easy.
Well, the first step to this question is the ever infuriating “define cruelty”. It’s easy enough with complex vertebrates who have evolved to socially signal pain, which is almost everything we eat. It’s even easy to extend it to complex vertebrates which hide pain. But it’s hard enough to rigorously say whether something like an invertebrate insect or crustacean even feels pain at all. They certainly have pain responses, but is the qualia of that response in theory internal space recognizable?
It’s not an easy question to approach, but it is an important one broadly.
They are living things. We shouldn’t seek to deliberately cause pain if possible. While I like how stuff like bonsai trees look, I also feel a bit bad for them, wired and snipped in so many places and forced to be grown unnaturally small.
Or people who deliberately carve graffiti into trees with a knife.
Plants and trees have interestingly complex communication networks. We barely understand their microfauna and underground microbiomes that allow forests to grow much healthier and disease-resistant than our backyards. I have a funny feeling we know a lot less than we think we know, like when scientists discovered that babies can actually feel pain, or that dogs realize when they are treated unfairly. Stuff discovered within our lifetimes, lol.
They can detect tissue damage and grow away from the source. So being physically cruel to a plant would definitely affect its growth. And yes, they can also share some types of information and resources with their neighbours.
Now I’m curious if plants have enough complexity to their internal experience for it to be possible to be cruel to them or not. One is used to thinking of them as basically inanimate apart from that they grow, but some of them can sort of communicate with other plants in certain ways can’t they?
There is not really strong evidence of plant sentience. Here’s one paper looking at it:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8052213/
Though something interesting and perhaps counter intuitive to note is that even if we realized plants were sentient, a plant-based diet actually involved killing fewer plants due to the lessened need to grow feed (of which most of the energy is lost)
I love this phrasing
Academic writing is usually dry, but every once in a while you run into something like that which changes your perspective on how to roast an idea
The issue is we as of yet still have no falsifiable or rigorous measurable definition of consciousness. So any reference to something consciousness isn’t doesn’t make a strong case.
I don’t think plants have a conventional consciousness, but I don’t think this study found evidence of something it can’t even structure a good definition of.
Came here for lol’s and am now reading academic journals
I live for and love this nonsense
I have more fun imagining the scientists trying to teach plants anything.
Let’s say that plants do have some kind of sentience, which is probably very limited due to the evidence we do have. Animals still have more advanced sentience that is closer to our own so it would still be the lesser evil to eat plants. Like why would you eat other people or chimps when there are other options available?
It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to be able to say that plants suffer the same way as animals. I know you’re not saying this, but you do hear stuff like this based on this premise.
Check out the Joe Rogan episode with Paul Stamets on how fungi allow trees in a forest to exchange nutrients. Dunno if that is classed as “communication” but it still blew my mind.
It was the first Rogan episode I saw and the only good one as it turned out.
Measuring levels of sentience in the context of what’s OK to do to it is an extremely dangerous road to be taking that always ends in eugenics.
Uh, what?
First you say it’s OK to be cruel to one life form because it’s less intelligent, it’s not long before that extends to disabled people. It might sound like hyperbole, but never underestimate the internet’s capacity to steer the ship towards nazi germany when given the chance.
Who said anything about intelligence?
That has nothing to do with being disabled, as people with disabilities still sense the world
You can’t eat anything in the modern world without killing animals. A combine harvester harvests wheat and mice. A hundred meat eaters are responsible for a single cow death, and the cow lived on marginal land, drinking from streams - you couldn’t grow other food on the land (sure some are grown on perfect fertile land, they don’t need to be)
Not saying I’m a meat eater, I don’t care about mice, but there’s blood on all our hands
Statistically, that cow had a short and miserable life in a factory farm before being killed at a small fraction of their potential lifespan. They were fed a grain-based diet that caused far more mice deaths than it would have to use the land to grow crops to feed humans directly.
Even in the situation you’ve presented, which again is an exceedingly small percentage (<10% globally, <1% in the US), land is being used which could be rewilded to promote biodiversity. The cow in question is still contributing to GHG emissions and will again be killed around 16 months of age.
A quick google gave me
So maybe you should revisit the idea of ‘marginal land’ that ‘couldn’t grow other food’
Of course, but livestock require even more agriculture to maintain than the same caloric/protein intake of plant based. So if the choice is 50 animals or 100 animals then the choice is easy.
Well, the first step to this question is the ever infuriating “define cruelty”. It’s easy enough with complex vertebrates who have evolved to socially signal pain, which is almost everything we eat. It’s even easy to extend it to complex vertebrates which hide pain. But it’s hard enough to rigorously say whether something like an invertebrate insect or crustacean even feels pain at all. They certainly have pain responses, but is the qualia of that response in theory internal space recognizable?
It’s not an easy question to approach, but it is an important one broadly.
They are living things. We shouldn’t seek to deliberately cause pain if possible. While I like how stuff like bonsai trees look, I also feel a bit bad for them, wired and snipped in so many places and forced to be grown unnaturally small.
Or people who deliberately carve graffiti into trees with a knife.
Plants and trees have interestingly complex communication networks. We barely understand their microfauna and underground microbiomes that allow forests to grow much healthier and disease-resistant than our backyards. I have a funny feeling we know a lot less than we think we know, like when scientists discovered that babies can actually feel pain, or that dogs realize when they are treated unfairly. Stuff discovered within our lifetimes, lol.
Long answer: Yes, with an “if”.
Short answer No, with a “but”.
They can detect tissue damage and grow away from the source. So being physically cruel to a plant would definitely affect its growth. And yes, they can also share some types of information and resources with their neighbours.