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We don’t know enough about consciousness to know how it works in ourselves; for all we know, plants are conscious too just using different anatomy and mechanisms.
Well no, we might not know how consciousness works exactly, but it’s pretty safe to say that it has something to do with brains. And given that we can say that animals, especially the ones we tend to eat, most certainly are conscious, or more importantly, capable of suffering, it certainly is a reasonable approach to eat plant based instead of animal based, if you want to reduce the suffering you cause.
I’m willing to accept that there might be an experience of being a tree. My food choices aim at the lowest levels of potential consciousness. I am certain that a cow is a conscious being.
Vegans, amirite???
Very obvious bait post.
Plants are not sentient. Animals are.
All living organisms show basic reaction to external stimuli. Plants follow that. That does not indicate sentience.
Animals have significantly more intelligence than that. They form bonds, form relationships, mourn, and so on.
No living being except probably photosynthesis driven plankton can live entirely without consuming anything alive.
Recent studies actually show the opposite of “no sentience”. Plants communicate with each other, even across different species and kingdoms. That means certain animals for example can understand signals from plants better than they understand us.
And that’s just communication. The world of life on earth is so much more than the naive human way of thinking. In fact, it’s likely we’ve already encountered multiple different life forms from space already, and we just have no way to know yet.
So please. Jump off the high horse, take off your hat, and acknowledge that the food on your plate has had a very diverse, colorful life. You can still choose not to eat animals. Just like I choose not to eat dogs and cats, some people see them no different to cows, pigs, and plants.
It’s all just nutrients. So respect it.
Edit: Here’s an example of how much we understand what dogs see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf4k0VgCQjg
A pretty detailed discussion on the topic:
https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1772&context=animsent
All living beings are capable of responding to external stimuli, both active and reactive. They are capable of basic friend/foe recognition. They are capable of adapting. These are just basic aspects of literally being alive. Even an amoeba can do these things to some extent or the other.
But does that put a turnip at the same level as a dog? It doesn’t in my books.
I’m not any high horse. The field is in it’s very nascent stages. But the evidence so far isn’t supporting the notion. We don’t live in Pandora.
This post is clearly trying to ruffle some feathers.
At some point it just comes down to ethics.
Is a turnip as complex lifeform as a dog? Of course not, not that we know of anyhow.
Should we still disregard it as a living being? No.
Just like we don’t disregard heavily disabled humans. Or abandon heavily disabled pets.
Plants may be however complex lifeforms, but to claim they’re simply piles of lifeless mush is to disregard any science progress of the past 100-200 years.
I’m not saying the OG is/isn’t bait, I’m saying humans need to be less narrow minded, and more open to discussion regarding these kinds of things.
I never disregarded anything as a living being!!
I never said plants were lifeless!!!
That’s what I’ve been emphasising so far over and over.
There’s a distinction between being alive and being sentient.
All sentient beings are alive, but all alive beings aren’t sentient.
Plants show all the evidence of being alive, but so far we have no evidence of them being sentient.
Disabled humans are humans all the same. So that’s not a fair comparison. (At least in my mind it’s very clear).
It’s all just about what you consider “conscious” to be. To be alive, to me, is to be conscious.
One might raise the couple issues with that, and to an extent, they have a point. Such as completely comatose people.
We’ve recently discovered comatose people are conscious, and are working on ways for them to communicate.
What about people who are kept “alive” only by machines, with no brain activity? I’d consider that person dead. It’s only that his organs are being kept stable, in the event he can be recovered, or until the organs get donated.
Would’ve appreciated some links to the recent studies referred here.
And that’s very basic level of communication. I’m not sure we can really compare it higher life forms.
Fungi are an entirely different ballgame. They are way too different from both animal and plants.
I’ll try to find the papers to reference them proper, but take that with a grain of salt, because I’ll probably forget or fail to do so.
And yeah, the ones I’ve linked so far are very surface level, but it does however prove the existence of something that isn’t all too well understood yet, much less known of by a overwhelming majority.
So I try to spread awareness to it. Better if I had the links, I agree, but alas.
The devastation caused by vegan diets is still being figured out but there’s no question that it’s absolutely horrific for the ecosystem as insects are destroyed en masse to serve the needs of the industry.
No one wants to talk about what that does to the web of life depending on it though. It’s buried just like we see with the health impacts of the plant based meats.
Eat food locally grown and limit your meat consumption. Things aren’t as complicated as the media and food industry try to make it seem.
it’s absolutely horrific for the ecosystem as insects are destroyed en masse to serve the needs of the industry.
Don’t livestock consume just as much, if not more, plant matter to support the meat industry as humans would? Sort of a diminish caloric returns, since those calories have to support the life of the meat-creature which then has to support the life of the omnivore?
I would think that vegan diets would be a net-benefit in terms of pesticide and fertilizer use, and that plant-based diets would be more sustainable.
But I’m uneducated in this and haven’t done sufficient research.
