In my view plants can “feel pain”. If you break a wig off a branch the tree will react to it, start trying to heal the damage, sometimes redirect growth to other branches that weren’t damaged. If you cut through its bark it will send coagulants to stop the sap loss, then try to regenerate the tissues. Basically if you damage a part of it it reacts in different ways to mitigate or avoid it, which is fundamentally what pain is.
I won’t claim they can think but I also wouldn’t dismiss that right away. Of course this strongly depends on what we mean by “thinking” but if you believe that individual ants can think, some plants are not that far behind in terms of decision-making.
All that said, veganism is still obviously correct within that framework, because eating animal products causes more suffering even to plants then just eating plants directly.
In my view plants can “feel pain”. If you break a wig off a branch the tree will react to it, start trying to heal the damage, sometimes redirect growth to other branches that weren’t damaged. If you cut through its bark it will send coagulants to stop the sap loss, then try to regenerate the tissues. Basically if you damage a part of it it reacts in different ways to mitigate or avoid it, which is fundamentally what pain is.
I won’t claim they can think but I also wouldn’t dismiss that right away. Of course this strongly depends on what we mean by “thinking” but if you believe that individual ants can think, some plants are not that far behind in terms of decision-making.
All that said, veganism is still obviously correct within that framework, because eating animal products causes more suffering even to plants then just eating plants directly.