If plants could feel pain would it be immoral to eat?
We omnivores can only eat two things, plants and animals. Many animals can feel pain, but plants cannot. Suppose this weren't true, suppose everything in animal and plant kingdom could feel pain. Chopping up the head of an iceberg lettuce would feel as painful to iceberg lettuce as how decapitating an elephant feels to that elephant. Preparing a vegetarian meal would cause a tremendous amount of pain to the vegetables and grains involved. In order for a person to eat he or she inevitably need to cause a lot of pain.
One of the reasons why some people don't eat animals is because animals can feel pain. They believe that it's immoral to cause a sentient creature a great deal of pain. But if causing pain were inevitable, as it was in thought experiment, we would have no choice but to be immoral. Everyone has to eat. Would we have no choice but to be immoral? Many believe morality involves choice.
I see four possible responses to this thought experiment.
1. It's immoral to cause pain to sentient organisms, full stop. (This would imply that it is possible for someone in principle to act immorally even if he or she had no choice. In the thought experiment preparing food causes pain to all organisms involved, and it's immoral, but you you've got to eat to survive.)
2. It's not immoral to cause pain to organisms. (The thought experiment presents no problems.)
3. It only immoral to cause pain to innocent organisms when there are viable alternatives. (In the case of the thought experiment you have no choice but cause pain, so you are not guilty of being immoral. In real life there are other options).
4. The thought experiment is bogus. (You may think there's something wrong with the thought experiment.)
What's your response?
One of the reasons why some people don't eat animals is because animals can feel pain. They believe that it's immoral to cause a sentient creature a great deal of pain. But if causing pain were inevitable, as it was in thought experiment, we would have no choice but to be immoral. Everyone has to eat. Would we have no choice but to be immoral? Many believe morality involves choice.
I see four possible responses to this thought experiment.
1. It's immoral to cause pain to sentient organisms, full stop. (This would imply that it is possible for someone in principle to act immorally even if he or she had no choice. In the thought experiment preparing food causes pain to all organisms involved, and it's immoral, but you you've got to eat to survive.)
2. It's not immoral to cause pain to organisms. (The thought experiment presents no problems.)
3. It only immoral to cause pain to innocent organisms when there are viable alternatives. (In the case of the thought experiment you have no choice but cause pain, so you are not guilty of being immoral. In real life there are other options).
4. The thought experiment is bogus. (You may think there's something wrong with the thought experiment.)
What's your response?
Comments (103)
But animals already can feel, and we eat them, and have done for millions of years. So either you're suggesting a form of ethical realism, but with moral facts that we have only just noticed (in which case you'd need to make a case for these being so before you could hope to answer your question), or a form of ethical relativism, in which case the question as to the morality of eating plants in this scenario is unanswerable.
There´s no harvest without suffering. We do not need to discover pain in plants; growing vegetables and fruit for food means an inmense amount of suffering, killing and expelling animals from the places where they can feed and reproduce: birds, snails, all kind of insects, frogs, moles and other small mammals, reptiles. Even the most organic farm has to do away with many of them, and that implies who knows how many little tragedies for these beings that, it has been proved, experience fear and pain subjectively.
Fortunately, most of those animals are not potential pets so vegans don´t give a shit about them; otherwise they´d all have to commit suicide.
Personally, I have adapted my own garden to maximize the presence of birds and invertebrates. I´m especially fond of spiders, and I have been able to spot 20 different species so far in my small garden (not all of them resident, as spiders can fly long distances).
Ought implies can. We need to eat to live. The question is how do we reduce harm as much as possible while doing so. Eating only plants caused both fewer animal deaths as well as flora deaths. That is because the animals you eat have to be fed many times the amount of plant matter you would have to eat to make up the nutritional difference of avoiding animal consumption.
But the whole question relies on a big if. Plants don't have brains or nervous systems, which are the only way we currently know to experience...anything.
The head of iceberg lettuce deserves whatever it gets. Awful stuff. At least kill for better results: Romaine, cabbage, spinach...
1. Pain
2. Death
Between the two above there's a gradation as in a little pain is better than death and, occasionally, death is better than a whole lot of pain.
As you can see the preference between the two depends on the situation.
To peg morality on pain is worthy in that one is being greater than yourself - transcending the ego. Vegetarians and vegans have reached that stage.
However, to associate morality with life itself is an even greater feat - one identifies oneself with ALL that is living. Life, in and of itself, has value. The awareness of needing to protect the environment is this stage. Quite oddly some eco-crusaders may be non-vegetarian.
So, it's all stages of expanding awareness. We begin with ourselves - not killing each other. Then we begin to feel for animals - we become vegetarians. This is followed by recognizing the value of the eco-system - we become environmentally friendly.
I guess this is a transition phase and it's a tangled mess. Like a good doctor, sometimes the best policy is wait and watch. Personally I'm hoping for the patient (humanity) to make good progress. Life is of value in and of itself.
Where, in this process of expanded awareness, does rational thinking play a part? Or is it all feelings and emotions? Because without rational and experimental efforts, there is no ethical behaviour.
Personally, I care about Life; surely less than other people, but I do my bit. I love farm animals, and that is why I try to eat them all; except for goats and cows that I only like for the milk. I just don´t want them to disappear, not even already endangered local varieties. I also support bullfighting, even if I don´t like corridas, because I understood rationally that without bull fighting there are no lidia bulls. And the places where these amazing animals live would be under much greater pressure to be full of houses.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_HIQnVtu5ng8/S4WD45OaufI/AAAAAAAAA0M/-n3UcUAOJOU/s640/Veletos.jpg
It might be immoral, but, imagining it, my initial response is that it would be funny as fuck. I'm laughing just thinking about it.
I'm not even sure what your point is.
Yes, you're right. The way I see it, rationality always needs a starting point and that has to be agreed by consensus if we're to see eye to eye at all.
That starting position, in this case, is emotion - our fear of pain and death and their natural result, appreciation of freedom from pain and life.
I don't know how to explain this movement of our moral nature. We can describe it though; as a growth of our ego-boundary. Our self - the ego - was once only our person (like a solitary tiger). Then came the family (like a pride of lions). Society (like bees) followed. If I'm correct, the last stage is when the ego identifies itself with all life.
These stages are all reasoned positions, from the shared fear and appreciation of pain/death and joy/life respectively.
What plant can count on not being consumed by either an animal, an insect, a fungus, or bacteria? None that I can think of.
Will the dietary moralists please clear out of the dining room, and once you are outside, keep walking. I don't care what you say! The next time I get a chance (maybe tonight!) I plan on eating oysters so fresh they will still be alive when I tip them out of their pearly shells. Exquisite!
At the Feast of Life we eat, we grow and we die. Even predatory primates are occasionally privileged to be featured on the menu. Wade in the water and get snatched by an alligator, pulled to the bottom of the swamp; left there to cure for a few days; then the alligator's delectation begins. It's not a crime against nature. It IS nature.
As morally sensitive as I am, I am not outside of nature, and neither are you. Human animals do what we do because we are what we are. You stick with your organic fair traded watercress and cucumber sandwich on gluten free, fat free, sugar free, salt free, artificially leavened wafer and just sit there and glow with vegan virtue. I'll have roast pork, potatoes, broccoli, and beer and glow with pleasure. I'm having dessert, too -- and you can't have any of it. So there!
Our Edenic Existence has long since passed, of course. Our behavior long since began to range far beyond the borders of the innocently natural world. We developed technics of various kind which extended our reach way beyond our grasp. We became more dangerous to one another; we developed unnatural behaviors like religion in which we sacrificed members of the tribe to appease a god. We played with fire and got burned. We sometimes killed our own kind when they disagreed with us (that is to say, became disagreeable). We discovered we could be really awful, pairing predatory instincts with devious demonic cognition the way we do. We try to overlay our devil selves with higher morality to keep life from becoming too bad. We try. We try.
Just like with technology, morality provides us yet another opportunity to carry things to excess. It's not enough that we actually behave fairly well toward each other. Some of us feel obligated to impose our ideas of higher morality on behavior which is actually pretty natural, normal, and nice. Like sex; like eating meat, like drinking fermented beer and gin; smoking some vegetable matter perchance to dream a little.
I like sex, meat, beer, drugs, all that. You don't? Fine. Go home and have a glass of warm water. Or take a cold shower. Just leave me, my pork chop, and bottle of beer alone.
Maybe then this is not the thread for you and you should stick to commenting on threads you actually care about/have an open mind about.
Guess that means killing babies and lynching black people is free game!
No. It's perfectly appropriate to reject the validity of a discussion.
Humans are as much a part of the web of life on earth as any other creature. All creatures are engaged in a continual processing of other life forms into their own. We have no more choice about consuming other life forms than any other creature.
There has to be a choice before morality can come into play. We don't have any choice about eating plants directly or indirectly, so it can't be a moral issue--any more than drinking water or breathing can be moral issues. There is no choice there.
In an industrialized world rife with choices which have existential consequences, food choices are just one more moral issue among many. Population, resource consumption (all kinds), and global warming make most of our lifestyle choices unsustainable. Using gasoline in a private car, electricity generated with coal, heating and cooling, irrigating crops, flying, etc. are all choices with significant negative consequences.
Pulling one issue out, say the morality of flying when a bus or train would place a far smaller burden on the environment (or maybe just traveling around at all), would make for a nice heated moral shooting match, but, after all, flying is just one piece among many. Pumping water out of the Colorado River, lifting it over a mountain range, and keeping Phoenix, AZ, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles alive, is a frightful burden on the world environment -- and that's just resource wasting population center among many. It's another moral choice.
What I am saying, is in that in The Big Picture, our individual capacity to make significant moral choices is rapidly becoming limited. Not eating meat is a good moral choice, the benefit of which might very well be negated by other moral choices. A car-driving, large house dwelling, frequent flying vegetarian is accomplishing no more net good than a bus-riding, small house dwelling, never flying carnivore.
That's clearly wrong, since some if us do choose not to.
Also, you already admitted to just being a troll.
If a plant were asked, would it consent in principle to being plucked, shredded, and then masticated, even boiled or parched first? How do you know? Maybe an unheard scream is all they can manage.
As has been previously stated, they don't have nervous systems or brains, and so are incapable of thought or feeling.
Don't troll me, young whippersnapper!
What I said was we have no choice about consuming "other life forms" which includes what fruitarians, vegans, and finally, omnivores eat. Other life forms like spinach, oysters, cows, and termites.
What I said you may not like, but disagreeing with you a troll does not me make.
You said:
Quoting Bitter Crank
So clearly you're not interested in actual discussion.
Quoting RosettaStoned
Those statements contain absolutely contradictory metaethical positions.
So, that was your evidence of trolling. What you took to be trolling was hyperbole. Any sort of off-beat humor is difficult in on-line communications because there are no expressions, gestures, voice, etc. which would aid the receiver in interpreting how serious a given sentence was intended. And then there are literalists who take everything at face value.
So by my fault, by my most grievous fault... grovel, grovel, grovel.
If you don't believe in morality, you don't believe in rights either.
And, I agree, the universe doesn't give a hoot what we do to each other. But we are moral creatures. But just because humans make morality doesn't mean it's random, illogical, or whatever you want it to be on whatever whim you have.
You assume order to things gives them meaning. Just because we have been evolutionary selected to be more likely to care for one another does not mean the Universe then bends itself to require things to care for one another. While I do believe in morality and rights, that does not mean I recognize them to be real. I know they are made up, but I like them. Why do you think people become so attached to fictional characters? Similar reasons, they find them favorable, despite the fact that they don't exist.
And that's the end of it. We don't get any of our laws from the universe. Never mind about conservation of energy, gravity, momentum and all that. I'm talking about Hammurabi-type law, canon law, common law, and so forth.
So, the only law that matters in court is human-made law, and human-made law sort of frowns on killing babies and raping women (officially, at least)--especially when our ox is the one gored, so to speak. Every now and then there is a regrettable outbreak of arson, rape, and bloody murder by the good side (we expect it from the other side) which requires some fairly stern due process.
That is a contradictory statement. But whatever. You admit to believing in morality, and we should be discussing the actual topic at hand and not your metaethical ruminations.
We need to stop eating meat to save the planet--yes, that includes plants.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/17/scientists-call-global-agricultural-revolution-and-planetary-health-diet-save-lives
In the end, Julius Caesar said it best: Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
"People gladly believe what they wish to."
My own version of that is this: Belief is convenient.
My point was that we have a choice about which ones we eat.
We need to be more careful about what we eat. We're killing the planet and ourselves on top of all the animals we needlessly murder.
Life is a struggle. We can't just live, we have needs to fulfill or else we die. It's sad in a sense, but then again maybe it is the struggle and the ephemerality of it all that makes joy possible. When one's needs are all fulfilled effortlessly life becomes colorless, and constancy is death.
However, the more I think about this problem, the more it becomes apparent to me that life needs to consume other life in order to live. One may eat plants under the assumption that they do not feel pain, but this isn't certain at all.
It seems that somehow one needs to reconcile the fact that one's existence almost inescapably causes suffering to other living beings, whether they be animals, plants or other humans. I think this is quite a challenge.
Yes, either it's possible to live without eating any other being in a way we haven't found yet, or we have to cause suffering to other beings to live. Or we may find solace in believing that death is a liberation rather than suffering. But then the question becomes why not liberate oneself?
Or we can have the usual cop-out that since we can't know might as well believe what we want and keep living without pondering, blinding ourselves in a way. Live worry-free blinding ourselves to the suffering we cause.
It's all a strange show.
Yes, but how much suffering is still something we can control. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater and saying "might as well cause more, even though I could cause less, because I have to cause some" is just illogical.
But how do you know whether eating an apple from a tree doesn't cause immense suffering to the tree? If you don't know how other beings suffer, how do you know how you can cause less suffering?
It's not clear how a tree could feel pain. It's pretty unlikely that it can. It's so unlikely, that it's safe to say it can't.
It is clear that a cow can feel pain.
Also consider that fewer plants are killed in the process of feeding vegans than omnis cause of the plants used to feed the animals they eat.
How can you attach any probability to it? How would you know that a brain is required to feel?
I know that life forms with brains feel pain.
I have no proof whatsoever that life forms without brains feel pain.
I have to go with what I know over what I can only make vague guesses about.
And even if brainless life forms felt pain, avoiding animal products protects more of them too, so the sum total of suffering is less.
You just know that you feel pain, and you know that other beings with brains appear to feel pain but you have no proof that they do feel pain either. And the fact you wouldn't know how a life form without a brain could feel pain has no bearing on the likelihood that it does feel pain. And then you wouldn't know whether a plant suffers much more than an animal, so you couldn't tell whether you cause more suffering by killing one plant or a thousand animals.
Many animals need plants to survive, and plants need light to survive, and supposedly photons can be converted into matter and photons never die, maybe we could devise a way to feed ourselves with light, but then the Earth is a limited space so we can't multiply indefinitely, unless we go out and explore other worlds, and then who knows what's next...
Myself I'm not happy with killing neither animals nor plants to survive, but then if I don't survive I can't find a solution and then others will just keep killing both animals and plants, I guess that's one way to rationalize it...
I guess we can't solve a problem without believing it can be solved. We tend to limit ourselves with what the 'laws' of physics say, but then maybe these laws are limits we impose to ourselves. We tend to be very fatalistic, believing that things can't be changed, but do we really try?
You're entirely ignoring the fact that the total sum of suffering is less if you don't kill animals for food.
And your hypotheticals are just silly. We have to go on what we know. You can pretend to be all cynical about it, and pretend that you question how much we can know about the inner lives of anyone but ourselves, but in reality, we acknowledge that others feel pain.
We can locate where in the brain pain is processed. We know the biological function and process of pain. It's not some huge mystery.
And just to reiterate, so you don't forget: fewer plants AND animals die and suffer when you avoid eating the latter.
Quoting leo
Vegans try. It's the stubborn omnis who want to posit that plants have feelings to and therefore lets slit pig's necks who don't want to change a darn thing about the status quo.
In any case, why should pain be the determinant of the ethics of one's use of another's tissues? Isn't it the use that should be questioned, and not the outcomes? How about consent in principle? Would animals object to our killing them for food and leather if they could do so in a way we can appreciate? Is it that because plants don't appear to object that we can safely infer they are edible ethically? If the latter, then one must subscribe to a teleological orientation to such things and not to a deontic approach.
FEWER PLANTS DIE WHEN YOU AVOID ANIMAL PRODUCTS.
Jeez.
And THAT makes eating them more ethical? LOL!
Obviously.
If you have to kill 100 innocent people or 50 innocent people, but you have to kill some, it's obvious to anyone with a brain that killing 50 is better.
What basis of superiority are you using?
Plants can't reason and humans can.
Okay, so eating a human infant is fine then?
How about the severely mentally disabled?
How about people in comas?
Or just anyone who is in deep sleep?
And does that mean smart people are more valuable than not so smart ones? Does that mean the Mensa people can cannibalize the rest of us now?
Of course not.
See A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.
Then the ability to reason is actually not your basis for assigning worth.
Luckily that's satire.
Hi everyone, I would like to share a thought to this conversation. I think plants have been objecting our human actions, and even animals actions by growing thorns, releasing foul odors, poisoning our immune systems such as some chile peppers are spicy to us as a defense mechanism. Most of all of our seeds that grow into plants, contain fibers with developed chemicals similar to our brain. Which is probaly why we improve our health when we consume some natural plants in moderation. They may not have pain receptors as humans do but they are trying to defend their chance for survival by learning to improve their immune systems to fight off microbes, parasites, diseases, and the ones that eat them. They release oxygen for the air we breathe and some can only be grown in certain locations. Plants may be more useful than we might think such as the Greek etymology neuron is anything of a fibrous nature.
Thank you, I believe it is immoral to eat plants if they can feel pain which they do if it is risking their chance for survival shown in their defense against us and nature.
If we follow your assumption that the more animals live the more plants die, then if you wanted to reduce the total sum of suffering over time you could kill all animals once and for all. Why don't you do that? Being a vegan makes little difference.
Quoting NKBJ
What you don't get, is that "plants do not feel pain" is not a logical consequence of "an animal's apparent experience of pain is correlated with the detection with some instrument of some activity in some area of its brain"
Quoting NKBJ
Why do you assume people who wonder whether plants feel pain are barbarians who enjoy slitting pig's throats?
You're misunderstanding the entire concept. We have to eat. Some things will have to die in order to fulfill that need. Veganism is the choice to reduce the suffering caused by that need.
Also, if we killed all animals, the ecosystem would go totally out of wack and we'd likely hurt such a great number of plants in the process so as to make the whole thing cause more suffering than just leaving it be.
Quoting leo
We can only act on the basis of things we know or can be relatively certain of. We KNOW that animals feel pain. We don't know that plants do, and we have no good evidence to suggest that they might.
Just like why I don't go to church on Sunday: I know I can spend that time productively elsewhere, and I'm pretty certain that church is a waste of time, even though I don't have hard evidence I won't be going to hell, the lack of evidence in favor of that conclusion is enough.
Quoting leo
I don't. I do assume omnis who want to say "but plants though" really do just want to barbarically enjoy the result of slitting a pig's throat though.
It's a fun thought experiment, but it's fairly obvious that no one seriously thinks eating a carrot is the moral equivalent of beheading a kitten.
For your entertainment:
https://yourveganfallacyis.com/files/fallacy/media/tumblr_n7j4mxj7jj1tzue9go1_1280.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/a1/d0/e9a1d0e7ee88baa6ba7f18e149d34ea1.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/00/33/780033d484a24cc54cf24daa80ad9fce.jpg
They are using defense mechanisms to protect their existence, they do not have pain receptors to have them learn their environment but they are trying to send foul odors, poisonous toxins and developing spines to avoid us and nature. It is immoral to abuse the consumption of plants as it is immoral to abuse the consumption of animals. We know animals feel pain from their reactions, and behaviors of vocalizing or trying to clean or hide injuries, while plants are under attack of microbes, parasites, and being somewhat defenseless in the food chain for our ecosystem. They are adapting to learn how to defend and survive.
as long as you have fat you dont need to eat to live. You need fluids.
However, I think meat has certain enzymes we have adapted to utilize in our bodies throughout history and I give people support that want to improve their health but that requires conditioning and practicing to change their sensitivity to certain resources of food. It is not immediate. Thank you.
They're not consciously doing any of that. You can't describe the chemical reactions of a plant, or the physical attributes thereof as a plant "trying" to do anything. Anymore than water "tries" to become ice with certain temperatures.
Excellent point I agree that can never be proven but their existence is seen as they have adapted through harsh environments, teaming up with fungi and using our carbon dioxide for their chemical processes. When we eat meat we are consuming the plant properties that has allowed that animal to live so the source the plants always has been. To me that's a conscious effort for survival.
Yes it is. Humans have the potential for reason and use reason. Therefore, humans deal with each other according to individual rights. We respect each other's property. We respect each other's lives. Humans who don't, are considered criminals and are thrown in jail. Animals and plants don't have the capacity to understand or value individual rights, which means we are allowed to eat them.
Not all humans do though.
So either you need to assert that there is something besides reason to which we tie worth, or that we are allowed to eat those non-reasoning humans.
Yeah, that's why we throw them in jail or they become homeless.
What's conscious about it?
Evolution is a process of trial and error. Mutations happen by accident and some mutations happen to be helpful in procreation, while others are not. Someday a plant accidentally grew thorn-like things, it happened to survive because it didn't get eaten, and so it reproduced more, and so on.
We throw people with severe mental disabilities in jail?
Zika babies all go to jail now?
I didn't say that.
Those are people who are unable to reason. So on what basis do you assign them worth?
The potential for reason.
Mentally disabled people don't have that either.
We don't eat them though because they are human and have human rights.
So you're not actually assigning worth on the basis of reason, but on the basis of the arbitrary distinction of species. Human chauvinism is what that's called.
So that means you're also against abortions in all cases.
I'll explain to you through formal logic where your reasoning falls flat.
Your argument is:
If you have the potential to reason then you deserve rights.
Some humans have the potential to reason.
Therefore all humans deserve rights.
If your argument is valid, then we should be able to replace those terms with others.
The standard form looks like this:
If P then R.
Some H have P.
Therefore all H have R.
Let's see:
If you are a cat then you are a feline.
Some mammals are cats.
Therefore all mammals are felines.
Or:
If you are a thief then you are a criminal.
Some black people are thieves.
Therefore all black people are criminals.
With any luck, this should show you that you need to rethink your position/argument.
I know I'm wrong; I just couldn't think of an argument to justify eating plants. I guess there is no logical reason to eat or not eat plants. You can eat them or not eat them. It really doesn't matter. Especially since we already eat animals and they feel pain, there shouldn't be a problem with eating plants if they feel pain.
I don't really find this question interesting or really matters all that much anyway, so I won't be commenting in this discussion anymore.
Mutations is a good word to describe how our immune systems identify different virus and bacteria to help our survival. I think it happened to survive from what the species has learned which allows more reproduction. I'm not understanding where an accident has helped us survive more than plants? I see where our subconscious involves bodies are exposed to the environment and we I.d. threats, plants are exposed to the environment and i.d. threats so we are not as conscious as I might even think.
Two things:
Animals feel pain and plants don't.
We have to eat plants and we don't have to eat animals.
This suggests that whilst it may be immoral to cause suffering unnecessarily, causing suffering necessarily is not immoral when the result of that suffering obtains our own continued existence.
If the suffering entailed by providing human food is not morally bad and plants suffer, then it shouldn't really matter what I eat, plants or animals since suffering entails in all cases. Put this way, ethical veganism sounds like the logical terminus of a reductio ad absurdum instead of a reasoned position.
Except that, once again, you can't just say "some suffering is involved in my diet" and conclude that "therefore it doesn't matter how much suffering is involved in my diet."
That logical leap is the real reductio ad absurdum, and it's not the vegans making it.
Of course, it's easy to get people to agree that causing suffering is wrong, and most ethical vegan arguments slip this in at the top as an unchallengeable premise, but upon examination it's not true in this absolute formulation. What we should be saying is that causing suffering may be wrong.
If we accept that causing suffering may be wrong then arguments turn on the degree of suffering, its qualitative and comparative nature in different living organisms and its effect on the agent of the suffering. Thus, we can still minimise suffering and condemn sadism, but accept that some is the inevitable corollary of existence.
Unfortunately, no non-anthropocentric ranking of suffering exists. The claim that one kingdom suffers more that another is merely vegan doctrine. All anyone can confidently claim is that eating entails suffering. Also, their dogmatic devotion to an anthropocentric hierarchy of suffering and their childish assumption that all suffering must be wrong calls into question the right of vegans to use the term 'ethical' to describe themselves since it would more truthful for adherents to describe themselves as 'faith' vegans.
Regardless of my alimentary preferences, it seems quite likely that the suffering entailed in keeping me fed is far greater than the suffering that would be caused by me starving to death. However, since I don't believe that causing suffering is wrong per se. I can forgive myself for not being able to photosynthesise and find no need to reject entire taxa as potential sustenance.
Causing unnecessary suffering is wrong.
Killing animals is unnecessary and does cause suffering.
Killing plants might cause suffering, but is necessary.
Quoting Txastopher
We must of course evaluate everything from a human perspective. That does not mean, however, that our conclusions are wrong. Scientific inquiry, evolutionary theory, and just being an observer of animal behavior lead to the conclusion that animals can suffer.
Science: we know what mechanisms in the human body cause suffering and pleasure. We know that animals like mammals, birds, and reptiles share these same mechanisms.
Evolutionary theory: traits found in one species will exist in other species, especially if they have evolutionary advantages. The advantages of feeling pain and pleasure are pretty obvious.
Observation: if I kick my dog (Hypothetical. I would never actually kick my dog. She's a sweetums.) she will yelp and cower and run away. If I kick a pig, it will squeal and try to either get away or might try to bite back.
All this taken together leads to the pretty darn obvious conclusion that animals suffer. We have no such comprehensive evidence available where plants are concerned.
I would like to add, that it is only when veganism is brought up that anyone ever doubts kicking a dog or other animal is worse than picking a daisy.
Quoting Txastopher
Vegans photosynthesize? What? OMG, what is this amazing superpower I've suddenly acquired without even noticing?!
(Fun fact, we do actually photosynthesize vitamin D.)
The thing is, you can't prove being a vegan causes less suffering, whatever proof you come up with will be based on some untestable belief. Sure most people react more strongly to an animal being killed than a plant, and animals resemble us more than plants, but that's no proof. You don't know how much each being suffers, you just speculate based on your own beliefs and experience of the world. You're just trying to push your untestable beliefs, someone with different untestable beliefs would reach a different conclusion. Your own beliefs lead you to assume that we have no 'good' evidence plants feel pain, pick different beliefs and there's a lot you might interpret as evidence.
What it all boils down to is that seeing animals apparently suffer makes you suffer, but you get no such reaction with plants, so you feel better about yourself by killing only plants, and you want to force others to do the same as you. This way you have of categorizing people as 'vegans' or 'omnis' as if what they eat was their whole defining feature, and attempting to convert the latter into the former.
There is a lot we used to 'know' in the past, and today we 'know' things totally different that have replaced what we used to 'know'. What we 'know' is in great part a product of the shared beliefs of the time we live in. I'm sure there is a lot we 'know' now that will be replaced by something very different in the future.
You believe you cause less suffering by eating only plants, but really you don't know. We just shape the world based on what we believe, maybe we commit atrocities on a daily basis and we don't notice it, because to see them as atrocities we would need to have different beliefs.
Myself I don't enjoy suffering, I don't enjoy seeing others suffer, so the uncertainty about what other beings feel is a bit unsettling. If I really convinced myself that plants do feel it wouldn't take much for me to react as strongly to plants being killed than animals. People who have zero empathy towards animals often simply believe that they feel nothing. If you believe some human is going to kill you, you wouldn't care about his feelings and would probably kill him first if you believed that was the way to save yourself. We have empathy to others as long as we don't see them as a threat, or as long as we see them as being alike to us. But in the end it's really a competition for survival. We pick what we want to live and what we want to kill, and then the world gets shaped accordingly. When I focus on the suffering of others, I find it hard to find any comforting thought in all this, unless one turns to spirituality.
Look, if you want to base your diet on an intuitive anthropomorphic ranking of suffering, go ahead. However, you are presenting 'ethical' veganism as a rigorous philosophy, which, as has been shown, it definitely is not. the adjective 'ethical' in 'ethical' veganism affirms moral superiority based on logic and evidence and implies a normativism that proceeds directly from the canon of western thought. A more correct term would be 'faith' vegan since such a large part of vegan morality is based on speciesist intuitions about the subjective experience of living things.
In short:
And here we see your inability to think clearly about the issue. This whole forum is designed to discuss ideas. This thread is discussing ideas related to diet and morality. Saying that my position is any more proselytizing than yours or any other position about morality on this entire forum is just stupid and biased.
It's just a way to dismiss the argument out of hand. And this stubborn attitude can be shown here:
Quoting Txastopher
I listed much more than intuition as evidence.
But I'm afraid it's clear you don't WANT the conclusion to be true, so you'll say just about anything to make yourself believe that it isn't.
Neuroscience is untestable? Nope.
All the science, all the evidence, all the actual tested research points to the ability to suffer in mammals, reptiles, and birds. And it does not point to plants suffering.
I'm sorry you don't want to believe it, but your refusal to believe the facts according to our best current understanding of the world is about as rational as questioning that the earth is a sphere, or that Ancient Egypt existed.
Look, what is convincing on Instagram is not necessarily convincing on a philosophy forum populated with (mostly) thoughtful adults.
Good luck with your post hoc rationalisation of your chosen dogma. You've clearly convinced
yourself. Unfortunately, you haven't convinced anyone else, which suggests two things:
Maybe you should stick to venting on social media.
Nice attempt to save face on your way out, but it's pretty obvious you just don't know how to defend your position in light of the facts.
Anyways as days have gone on I've been thinking plants are grown from a stem that branches into roots and extend looking for resources like nutrients and water. Any living thing that pulls on the plant to release it from the soil is ripping fibers and thus the plant species is separated from its source to live. I now compare this idea to a mammals brain stem being damaged in which we will eventually die from being unable to breathe and maintain blood flow to organs leading to your body to not feel any pain, and release hormones to numb and stay alive.
Another example is when I buy flowers they will only stay healthy for a short amount of time in water, so plants are dying when gathered or used as food. They will not feel pain. I dont believe it is immoral anymore.
You do realize you are arguing against morality or ethics existing as anything other than mere feelings and preferences? That you are a human and deserve certain rights is based on an "untestable belief", namely that you are in fact like me. If I feel that this isn't the case, I should not worry about the consequences my actions have for you.
This is a self defeating attitude in practice because you have an interest in being treated like a human by others. You do not, yourself, want to be subject to random whims of preference. If, hypothetically, an alien race catalogued life on earth and categorized which species can be freely consumed and which cannot, you would have an interest that this is done according to the best evidence available to those aliens. You would not want them to choose at random.
The problem is not the supposition that similar beings have similar experiences, but rather the supposition that the more dissimilar to me the lesser the ability to suffer. Why should the human be at the acme of a hierarchy of suffering?
You are oversimplifying the argument if you reduce it to a pyramid of suffering with humans at the top.
If you want to make moral judgements, the first step is to figure out what organisms or enties in general should be considered as moral subjects. You can only do that by making a decision based on the immanent, that is observable, attributes of the entities around you.
Whether or not you hold that there is more than one type of moral subject or whether moral considerations can apply to entities that are not subjects, you are going to have to base your categories on available evidence. This is necessarily anthropocentric, since the human perspective is all we are privy to. That doesn't make it arbitrary though.
If you argue that empirical evidence is an insufficient basis for moral judgments, moral judgements are impossible. To use an example: we assume, based on available evidence, that humans can be rendered unconscious by injecting certain substances, and in that state don't feel pain. It would be absurd to argue that because we don't have access to their internal perspective while the drugs are in effect, they might feel terrible pain and therefore such procedures are immoral.
I'm not doing this, vegans are.
Well, killing 100 people would lower the population more, and we would have to kill less animals AND plants because of less mouths to feed overall. So killing the greater number of people is, in this situation, the "correct" choice. Through this logic, we should start killing loads of people, as it would inhibit the amount of animals and plants killed overall, and would create more space for both of these to procreate. Perhaps only brainless fools would choose to kill 50 people?
I don't think that's an apt comparison. In one scenario you're being forced to choose between two active actions. In the other, you'd be choosing mass killing instead of a countless number of other possible solutions, all in order to potentially avoid potential further deaths that would not directly be caused by your inaction.
Also, I will say that traits like human intellect and potential can be tie-breakers in extreme situations. Like, if you have to choose between killing a criminal nazi and a law-abiding peacenik, you should choose the former. But that doesn't mean you should go out and kill criminal nazis under normal conditions.
"After five or six drops, the plants would stop responding, as if they'd learned to tune out the stimulus as irrelevent," Pollan says. "This is a very important part of learning — to learn what you can safely ignore in your environment."'[/i]
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants
I'm a veggie so I was quite shocked reading this. Guess we humans need inbuilt solar panels for an ethical energy source.
That's interesting, but really not the same as learning.