There is evidence that plants have some form of sentience. They react to their environment and stimuli, and communicate with each other. We honestly shouldn’t be eating anything that was previously alive.
Not saying it’s the case here, but I’ve never heard this argument raised in good faith, like by someone who is interested in reducing the amount of suffering caused by humans to non-humans. It’s always brought up as some thought-terminating catch-22 device to just keep doing wtf ever you want to do anyway.
I am genuinely curious what you think we should do with this information, though. Like how has it influenced your own actions?
I think my takeaway is that morality arguments for veganism based on subjective perceptions of sentience or suffering are not persuasive.
Many farms provide far better lives for animals than they would have in the wild. Many livestock species are far more successful and widespread because we eat them. Furthermore, if everyone was to become vegan, some livestock species would go extinct without human care. Do those who insist everyone should be vegan because animals are sentient and suffer think that we should just genocide the livestock?
Morality arguments totally depend on the perspective. I happen to agree with vegans on many points, but if your prime argument is moral, then yes I expect everyone to do wtf they want. Everyone’s morals are different.
Unless you are recommending synthesizing food from base chemicals, there isn’t another option. All life, excepting that which can photosynthesize, consumes other life for energy and materials.
The best we can do is mitigate suffering and environmental harm - factory farming is abhorrent - but until we have the Star Trek replicator pumping out TV dinners from the ether, we have to eat something.
We are animals and part of the food web, there is nothing innately immoral about eating any other part of the food web to sustain ourselves.
There’s certainly stupid ways to sustain ourselves, such as practices that unsustainably harm the environment like factory farming, or practices that would spur other life forms to harm us, like eating other humans.
But my main point is that “sentience” is a really vague term that can’t be objectively measured.
I saw your comments further down but I want to reply here because some people do sometimes make this argument in seriousness:
Like others said, if I could get all my nutritional needs met synthetically and/or photosynthetically (and still be healthy) I would be happy to. But as it stands, going entirely plant-based is the best and most practical way to minimize harm to all life - including plants. To consume animals you need to raise them, and it takes significantly more plants to raise an animal for food than it takes to eat the plants directly.
There is evidence that plants have some form of sentience. They react to their environment and stimuli, and communicate with each other. We honestly shouldn’t be eating anything that was previously alive.
Not saying it’s the case here, but I’ve never heard this argument raised in good faith, like by someone who is interested in reducing the amount of suffering caused by humans to non-humans. It’s always brought up as some thought-terminating catch-22 device to just keep doing wtf ever you want to do anyway.
I am genuinely curious what you think we should do with this information, though. Like how has it influenced your own actions?
I think my takeaway is that morality arguments for veganism based on subjective perceptions of sentience or suffering are not persuasive.
Many farms provide far better lives for animals than they would have in the wild. Many livestock species are far more successful and widespread because we eat them. Furthermore, if everyone was to become vegan, some livestock species would go extinct without human care. Do those who insist everyone should be vegan because animals are sentient and suffer think that we should just genocide the livestock?
Morality arguments totally depend on the perspective. I happen to agree with vegans on many points, but if your prime argument is moral, then yes I expect everyone to do wtf they want. Everyone’s morals are different.
Unless you are recommending synthesizing food from base chemicals, there isn’t another option. All life, excepting that which can photosynthesize, consumes other life for energy and materials.
The best we can do is mitigate suffering and environmental harm - factory farming is abhorrent - but until we have the Star Trek replicator pumping out TV dinners from the ether, we have to eat something.
Damn I thought my sarcasm was obvious.
We are animals and part of the food web, there is nothing innately immoral about eating any other part of the food web to sustain ourselves.
There’s certainly stupid ways to sustain ourselves, such as practices that unsustainably harm the environment like factory farming, or practices that would spur other life forms to harm us, like eating other humans.
But my main point is that “sentience” is a really vague term that can’t be objectively measured.
I saw your comments further down but I want to reply here because some people do sometimes make this argument in seriousness:
Like others said, if I could get all my nutritional needs met synthetically and/or photosynthetically (and still be healthy) I would be happy to. But as it stands, going entirely plant-based is the best and most practical way to minimize harm to all life - including plants. To consume animals you need to raise them, and it takes significantly more plants to raise an animal for food than it takes to eat the plants directly.
Salad is murder!