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Is it not also possible to have a level of respect for plants that is based not in trying to decide whether they are 'equal' to animals, but just that they are different? I tend to work with the logic: - It would be great if I could just survive on air, thus not having to damage or kill any other living being - This is not possible; I must eat something to survive - I can survive and thrive without eating other animals and their secretions So, I eat plants. But I can still have a relationship with them that feels (and yes, I realise this slippery subjective slope) less exploitative and damaging. I harvest plants from the wild, I plant seeds and allow the plant grow through as much of its life as possible before taking it, and so on. I respect plants to the level that I will go out of my way to not step on ones that can't tolerate foot traffic. I also respect them enough to base a large part of my life to understanding them, how to cultivate them and how to survive by them. In fact it's one of the things that frustrates me about vegans - we are usually much more obssessed with animals than plants, even though we have vowed to make the former a much less significant part of our lives. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we can still recognise that plants are alive, and there's the interesting idea that they have abilities such as communication. But this doesn't mean that the kind of moral consideration we afford them has to be directly comparable with that we afford to other animals.
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Oct 19, 2022 18:55
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DrBox posted:I understand the respect idea and wanting to not damage or destroy things of interest. I think that is separate thing from moral consideration though. When a mountaintop is blown up for coal mining or an ancient tree is cut down that generates strong emotions. We want to preserve beauty and wonder, but we do not have to grant a mountain moral consideration in order to have that respect or reverence for something in nature. On a smaller level I project a lot of feelings and emotions on my car. I love that car and would not want to see it smashed. I worry about it when it's parked outside. None of this concern is generated out of a fear that the car can actually suffer or experience the harm. Vegans are obsessed with animals because they are the victims. It makes sense for them to take center stage in the conversation. I don't want to derail the thread too much, and I don't want to go too 'woo', but I actually think I do need to morally consider plants and that it is possible to have a meaningful relationship with them. That might be a bit to out there for this thread, but at least consider it this way: if I'm out for a run and I notice too late that I'm about to step on either a stone with one foot or a plant with another, I'd obviously choose the stone (granted, the stone is unlikely to be damaged anyway, but hopefully the point still carries!). Enter, let's say, a snail into the mix, and I choose to step on the plant rather than the snail. So animals still get the highest moral consideration, but there is at least some moral weight to the plant. Equally, if I'm picking nettle leaves, I cut off the minimal amount that I will actually use rather than rip the whole plant up. There's not really any practical reason for this, because even from a sustainability point of view it's unlikely that me pulling up the whole plant will really damage this local population. To bring it back to the point of the thread, though, it's still true that the more sentience/moral consideration/whatever we want to assign to plants, the fewer animals we should eat!
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Oct 20, 2022 22:40
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Colonel Cool posted:While this is probably true, couldn't it just be the fact that having plants growing is a pleasant thing and you'd like to avoid damaging pleasant things if possible? If given a choice between damaging a dandelion, and damaging a neighbor's ornamental rock garden I'd definitely damage the plant in that scenario. Yeah of course, this could be part of the motivation, and perhaps it's wishful thinking but it's not the primary one for me. For example, I find daffodils pretty unattractive and uninteresting, but I'd happily wreck a much more attractive rock garden, piece of artwork etc., than the daffodil, because I afford the latter a higher moral value.
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Oct 21, 2022 19:18
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DrBox posted:You would preserve a daffodil over a unique valuable painting or sculpture? OK so the artwork was maybe a bad example from me - I was suggesting more that if it was, say, a nice painting of a daffodil, I would choose to destroy the painting of a daffodil, which implies that there is some moral value to plants. I think it gets messier when talking about more culturally loaded works of art, because then there might be something more to it. Re: Tolstoy, I'm a big fan of his writing, and it's interesting but frustrating to see how his idea of 'bearing witness' has been utilised by sections of the animal rights movement (Save in particular) to motivate their actions. The frustrating part comes because Tolstoy was very specifically saying that in bearing witness to the most horrific acts we should be spurred into action to stop them, whereas I feel that Save is stuck just in some kind of 'bear witness loop'. Anyway, possibly another derail into the route of what vegans can do beyond abstention from animal products, so feel free to discount it.
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Oct 21, 2022 21:57
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