“Know” is a stretch. Plants respond to attack by releasing chemicals (e.g. nettles and grasses), curling or retracting their leaves (e.g. acacia), or by changing their morphology (e.g. holly); but they have no nervous system - let alone a brain - so it’s not like you’re killing an animal.
Plants having no nervous system is being challenged with the idea that the plant itself is its central nervous system.
They react to stimulus, they emit sounds (different ones when in “pain”), and communicate with each other.
They don’t have consciousness in a way we understand
I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that
It’s always funny to me how people eat up the concept of a distrubuted neural network in tech but scoff at the same idea applying to something like a tree or a fungus.
Pando is the largest organism by area, and the Humungous Fungus is the largest by mass. The idea that those organisms don’t “think” in some way is laughable.
“In some way” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting there. … although in the general sense, agreed.
Especially given how many outright wrong or otherwise assinine conclusions some “thinking” animals come to… Perhaps communicative consciousness is overrated on the intelligence scale.
It always seems lime some excuse in a counter response by vеgаns
The number of times I’ve responded to them telling them that plants probably process pain in a different way to us has always been shot down by them
Tell them that brains extremely simplified are just on and off responses to certain stimuli / information just like plants have specific reponsonses to stimuli and computers having 1’s and 0’s that respond to information
A mycelium network could be counted as a brain
You should read the book “entangled life” if you haven’t already. It’s fascinating.
because humans invent things from scratch that nature has already created and optimzed, it’s why we’re seeing a lot of optimizations on current tech that comes from nature itself.
It’s a really weird problem to have.
I dont mean this as a “dunk” but more of a how neat is that
It’s truly shameful that disclaimers like these feel necessary in this age of shitting on everyone else online. Lemmy users suck too.
We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.
They don’t have muscles either, but some plants are known to uproot themselves and fucking move.
Yeah, plants aren’t stationary. All plants move, just very, very slowly compared to animals. Looking at time lapse videos of vines growing, reaching out for something to grab on to and stuff is pretty neat. They kind of whip around in circles until they feel they’ve hit something worth grabbing onto.
Banana plants for one.
We don’t know how consciousness works enough to say they don’t. Having a brain and/or nervous system might not be necessary.
Hmm sorry but no, there are traits exhibited by conscious entities which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness. This is a nice explainer on consciousness, note that it’s not saying anything about needing a brain to exhibit those traits
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#DesQueWhaFeaCon
correct me if I am misremembering sth
How will we ever know for sure if plants have their own form of consciousness that doesn’t follow a list of requirements that’s based on animals, or can feel pain.
which we don’t observe in those which lack consciousness.
See what you did there? You assume a priori which entities lack consciousness, and then motivate this by claiming they lack traits that can be observed in conscious entities. That is very neatly circular.
They have the knowledge and are doing something about it. If other plants can send out this chemical by observing it themselves, that sounds like a reaction from a communication. It may not be cognition like we expect but it is behaving like cognition would. Hard to argue that plants don’t know or care of their friends start dying.
I’d argue that knowledge is more than that, otherwise books or state machines could also be said to know things.
I don’t care what a plant thinks of me; it won’t change the dynamic that I’m motivated and it’s prey.
My point is that plants “think” but do so differently than meat bags. Plant cognition is more like a series of low level chemical reactions that look like thinking, but so does brain chemical squirts if we look close enough. So plants may actually be thinking using mechanisms which don’t rely on complex brain architecture because it has another method of processing that thought. Probably across the whole structure but the process is really inefficient so it takes a long time to finish compute.
Like if a super computer made the judgement of a calculator - they are both crunching numbers but there is an order of magnitude difference in how fast the answer is found. Maybe a plant has low bus speeds and crappy compute limited to simple threaded operations.
Lobsters contain 15 nerve clusters called ganglia dispersed throughout their bodies, with a main ganglion located between their eyes. So, according to the logic here whyis it wrong to boil them alive if they don’t have a brain?
For the record, imo it is wrong to boil lobster, crabs, and other crustaceans alive. There is no reason you can’t kill them directly before boiling them.
Some of them eat oysters, or so I’m told. They lack a brain and centralised nervous system.
One of my exes is very strictly vegetarian and will eat oysters. Oysters lack the capacity to consciously be aware of themselves or the environment, effectively they’re a water pump made out of meat, and they’re one of the most sustainable foods we can make leading to less planetary harm than a lot of plant crops even. It’s definitely a controversial opinion though
If it helps give context, various … factions? (I’m not sure the best word here) consider honey OK and others do not. You can research that more if you want to get an idea of what some vegans might think.
Vegans don’t really have factions. Every single one is an individual with their own values.
Lemmyworld admins be like
Carnivores eat animals that eat a lot more plants than humans could ever eat.
That’s why I only eat baby animals. They only drink milk, which hurts no one.
Let’s assume for a moment that somehow your salad was conscious. That’s an even bigger reason not to eat an animal that has to be fed on plants for a long time.
Or maybe its just a fundamental fact of life that something has to die in order for you to live and virtue signaling about the degree to which you participate in that death is a pointless exercise.
Ah yes, the old “I accidentally stepped on a fly, might as well exterminate the whole biosphere” defense
These arguments are exactly why people hate vegans. It’s nonsense.
Not only do you jump to an insane straw man. You showcase that you ignore a clear increasing contradiction around your world view and choose reactionary nothing.
If you care about life realize the harder question. If you care about the environment realize clear inefficiencues. Currently, you showcase nothing more than crude thoughtlessness.
This logic doesn’t make sense in any other context. Like, if I say we should try to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere, you could point out that emitting CO2 is a fundamental part of human life, so something something virtue signaling blah blah blah. Just because something is unavoidable to a certain degree doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minimize it.
unless the point is that consciousness is not a disqualifying trait to become food
Well a salad is made of cells that have responses to certain stimuli
The brain if you where to go and simplify it down to its most very basic layer is just responses to stimili
The brain is a collection of responses to stimuli that together create a kind of network that can respond to stimuli in complex ways
Plants are a collection of cells that respond to stimuli
So they very well will likely to be conscious on some level
The above comment is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning. The Code of Hammurabi is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning.
So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.
So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.
i think statistically it would be insignificant based on the sheer amount of written material out there, so it should actually be a function of how long the work is, plus how long it’s been around for, the longer it is, and the longer its been around for, the more complete of a historical document we have.
Everybody needs to eat stuff. And if it is about reducing pain and having a better climate impact, you should plants all the way. A cow eats 50 times the amount of plants that it gives back in meat.
The cow meat is already there, in the store. Individual choices do not affect the climate. It is disrespectful to not consume it.
Can’t, don’t really have the space for it, but you want to see my chickens and my ducks? Heck, you can have a picture of my dog, but I ain’t eating that.
