Philosophical Vegan Forum

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2024 12:50 pmThe way your post is relevant is in bringing up food alternatives that don't increase conventionally farmed land, so let's stick to that.
The point on algae is interesting in terms of limiting wild animal suffering in fields of large vascular plants.

VEGAN HACKTIVISTS wrote:Hi there,

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With compassion,

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plant wrote: ↑Sun Jun 30, 2024 12:19 am Thank you for your critical response.

I didn't intend to bring up plant sentience in this topic, but it is simply the case the some people strongly believe that animals are sentient and should be protected, and help to do so through veganism, and equally so, there are some people who believe that plants can be sentient to, in gradations, with for example an Oak tree with a massive root system having quite a different sentience-experience than a blade of grass.

Forestry professor Suzanne Simard for example, argues that trees have a complex social life and discovered that in forests there are so called "Mother Trees" in which wisdom of the forest accumulates, which she uses as an argument for more careful forestry.

[...]

With regard your remark about plant sentience being nonsense. Since you are making your remarks in this topic, I will quickly reply to them, while having noticed your invitation for a dedicated discussion of the subject.

Within the scope of common sense I would argue that the simplest biological cell is sentient, as the word sentience is fundamentally derived from (intelligently-so) sensing (the world around an individual), in such a way that it is not a 'technocratic mechanism'.

As for the status quo of science. It can shift (think about the Paradigm Shift theory by Robert Kuhn), and philosophy shouldn't be limited by dogma, in my opinion. Philosophy should be the most open field of all, a philosopher on another forum once argued:

On the absurd hegemony of science wrote:All this means that when science makes its moves to "say" what the world is, it is only right within the scope of its field. But philosophy, which is the most open field, has no business yielding to this any more than to knitting "science" or masonry. Philosophy is all inclusive theory, and the attempt to fit such a thing into a scientific paradigm is simply perverse.

Science: know your place! It is not philosophy.

A recent study showed that biological cells 'sense' their world (intelligently) in order to explore it. This is evidence in my opinion that (gradations of) sentience are applicable at the root of life itself.

(2017) Cells sense their environment to explore it
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 125821.htm

Those tiny cells combined facilitate consciousness (sentience) in animals and humans. As in the saying "The sum is more than its parts", what is actually the case is that the fundamental source of sensing in biological cells, is also the fundamental force behind them combined (the force that explains the binding problem in philosophy). Thus consciousness is as it were that force directly, a force beyond all the cells combined, by being fundamental to all the individual cells AND to those cells combined.

So this would be the basis for the idea that plants are to be considered sentient, with respect for gradations of sentience and humans obviously having a different sentience intensity experience than for example a rodent.