Philosophical Vegan Forum

Humane Hominid wrote:That said, I will offer an olive branch and snip my original reply to include only my direct response to your hypothetical:

there is no evidence that plants are sentient and feel pain. Evolutionarily speaking, it would make no sense for them to do so, and at the biochemical level, their cellular communication pathways are far too slow to have the processing power of even the simplest animal.

Thus, I find the hypothetical uninteresting.

That was my point. Your response was "plants don't feel pain". Thus all you did was say "your hypothetical is..... hypothetical.". Why come and post in the thread if your whole intention was just to tell me that you don't like hypotheticals, that my hypothetical is hypothetical, and that my use of the word hypothetical doesn't fit one of the definitions of hypothetical?

In response to your other post:
It wasn't snark, it was frustration. I was saying "what did I do to get this kind of response?". Twizlby's reply was most certainly not in a "reasoned tone of good faith", he was comparing my question to "step on a crack break your mom's back" and "eating koala diarrhea for god". Then proceeding to do what you did, telling me that my hypothetical is hypothetical... Plus, as you can see from his other posts, my analysis of his tone was obviously correct, so my response to his post wasn't unjustified. Though 2 wrongs don't make a right, so I shouldn't have replied that way. VA's response just got lumped in because I was annoyed and it had a slight resemblance. Which you'll also note that I apologized one or 2 posts down from that.

I just don't understand the assumption that I'm going for a "gotcha", seeing as the only one I could even possibly get would be:
"HA! That means if we ever discover that plants are sentient, then your dietary habits don't have any moral basis! I mean, you could still do it if you want, or for health reasons, and it's based on a hypothetical situation that doesn't have any evidence. BUT GOTCHA..... right?"

I have a friend who is vegetarian just because she doesn't like meat, she doesn't care if other people eat it. And another friend who doesn't drink soda, simply because he doesn't like the taste/feel of carbonation in his drinks. The fact that neither of them use a moral/medical/health reason doesn't make their choice any less valid or anything.

However, if you want to continue arguing, then I'll have to owe you, because I don't want this thread to get locked over this (assuming it doesn't get locked after this reply).

I just thought of 2 other questions I could start threads about but after this, I'm not sure if I'm curious enough lol.

TheThinkingThinker wrote: Why come and post in the thread if your whole intention was just to tell me that you don't like hypotheticals, that my hypothetical is hypothetical, and that my use of the word hypothetical doesn't fit one of the definitions of hypothetical?

Because we know from experience how this is going to end. Usually, like this:

I just don't understand the assumption that I'm going for a "gotcha", seeing as the only one I could even possibly get would be:
"HA! That means if we ever discover that plants are sentient, then your dietary habits don't have any moral basis! I mean, you could still do it if you want, or for health reasons, and it's based on a hypothetical situation that doesn't have any evidence. BUT GOTCHA..... right?"

Attempts to engage vegans in "hypotheticals" almost always turn out to be a smokescreen hiding an effort to somehow prove that our ideas have no genuine moral basis.

That is why I pointed out that the hypothetical itself probably isn't worth considering. As a skeptic and scientist-in-training, I prefer to ground my ethics on actual evidence wherever possible. If there's no evidence for an idea, we are justified in simply ignoring it.

And the question of whether plants feel pain isn't an area of scientific ambiguity. That they don't is as well-established as anything in science can be. We know what pain is, at the level of physio-chemistry, and plants possess none of the adaptations we'd expect to find. As non-ambulatory life forms with no ability to run away from pain, a pain response would serve no evolutionary purpose for plants. So, a hypothetical with no basis in the real world teaches us nothing. It's therefore pointless.

Saying so isn't personal, and it doesn't come from a place of being offended. It's no different from an astrophysicist pointing out that astrology teaches us nothing about supernovae, or from a chemist saying alchemy couldn't have predicted electron orbitals. There comes a point where useless ideas simply have to be abandoned in favor of ones that actually teach us something.

That's all that happened here.

Humane Hominid wrote:So, a hypothetical with no basis in the real world teaches us nothing. It's therefore pointless.

Not everything has to teach us something or have a point. I.e. plenty of movies/video games/books/activities etc. Maybe you and I would disagree on this, but I don't think there's any problem with something being done solely for interest or entertainment. On top of that, I never said that this has a specific point or anything legitimate to teach anyone.

Besides all that, I learned some other people's points of view, and that they would still be vegan and why. I enjoy learning about other people and their various views and thoughts/thought processes since everyone is different. So while this may not have taught anyone anything practical, I learned things about several different people.

Humane Hominid wrote:Because we know from experience how this is going to end. Usually, like this:

I just don't understand the assumption that I'm going for a "gotcha", seeing as the only one I could even possibly get would be:
"HA! That means if we ever discover that plants are sentient, then your dietary habits don't have any moral basis! I mean, you could still do it if you want, or for health reasons, and it's based on a hypothetical situation that doesn't have any evidence. BUT GOTCHA..... right?"

Attempts to engage vegans in "hypotheticals" almost always turn out to be a smokescreen hiding an effort to somehow prove that our ideas have no genuine moral basis.

But there's 3 problems here. 1) It didn't, and won't end like that. 2) You just basically said that you came here just to antagonize me based strictly on assumptions of previous experience with completely different people. and 3) I think you misread my "gotcha". I was making the point that even the best-case scenario (if that was actually my intention) would have a major "if" in it and based on 0 evidence, therefore useless from the start. That's why I'm saying I don't understand the accusations, because there isn't actually anything of any value for me to go for even if you guys were correct. It's like trying to stop someone from stealing a handful of sand from the Sahara, nobody would lose or gain anything.

Hi Thinker,

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party here.

OK, so I read all of the posts here (took a while)


First, I want to try to give you some insight into why the discussion devolved, as it did.

There's an inherent difference in knowledge levels- which is totally not your fault.

Vegans, and particularly skeptically minded vegans, spend a lot of time examining what sentience is- half the vegans here are studied enough that we could write a thesis on it- we are in a privileged position on this.

Just as you've probably argued with theists hundreds of times about scripture, we've argued with people hundreds of times on this.
It's not because we're more intelligent than you are- we've just spent a lot of time on it.

So, something that may seem reasonable to you, given above average knowledge on the subject (and I'm sure your knowledge is above average), none-the-less comes across to some of us as almost insultingly ignorant- and that's why (despite your good intentions) some of us have seemed a little insulted.


The best analogy is a "true agnostic" presenting to positive atheists the hypothetical that the god of the Christian Bible, while unlikely, could possibly be real.

(making a few minor assumptions here)
Let's say you know that not to be the case, because the very notion is incoherent- due to the contradictory nature of the Bible, and its portrayal of YHWH, it's not even a possibility. Maybe something "god-like" in some regard could be real, but to even begin to discuss it would require a coherent definition that the Bible does not provide-- the impossible nature of the definition in question precludes that particular god from being real.


You have said a few times, while you know it's unlikely and you don't believe plants are sentient, that it's "possible"

And that's the problem.

Impossible things are, by definition, not possible.

"It's possible" is an assertion in this case, which gives undue merit to the notion; just as saying the god of the Bible is possible gives undue merit to the consistency of the Bible.

In humoring the "possibility" of the god of the bible being real, I would have to imagine a universe in which logic doesn't function, and contradictions are valid. In which case, it would be equally true that I'm a flying cucumber.
Some hypotheticals just don't have enough basis in reality to be coherently imagined.

If plants were shown to be sentient, whoever did it would win the million dollar prize, and I (along with most here) would cease to be atheists and adopt a new-found belief in the supernatural. We would probably start worshiping plants, having demonstrated this supernatural power, they would clearly be gods.

It's that extreme.

I know from your position, that seems silly. "why can't you just imagine it?"
For the same reason I can't imagine the god of the Bible is real- I've read it, and it's incoherent.

The vast majority of *animals* aren't even sentient (that is, organisms of the animal kingdom- most of them are invisible to the naked eye).
Macro fauna are pretty mostly all sentient (with exceptions), but represent a very small subsection of the animal kingdom.
Sentience is a product of higher intelligence; not merely the ability to react.

Sentience in plants would be of an essentially supernatural nature; and it's very hard to imagine how society would respond to that. Biology would be turned upside down. Evolution would be proven false. Souls would be definitively proven to be true in some capacity. Something very major in the fabric of the universe would have to give.

I mean, who cares how vegans respond- proof of the supernatural would be world-altering.

I hope that helps give you a little insight into our responses here.
I know from an outsider's perspective, we must seem incredibly short sighted, lacking in imagination, and generally curmudgeonly- sorry about that.


EDIT:

There are woo-woo types who believe everything is magically sentient (including bacteria, rocks, water*, etc.). Those responses might be relevant to your query.
The typical woo-woo reaction is fruitarianism of some kind, which involves eating only fruit which falls from the plant, and some times breatharianism**- neither of which can be generally advised (both of which are dangerous), and neither of which have anything to do with ethical veganism or animal rights/welfare.

*Which is apparently why homeopathy is supposed to work, because molecules are sentient beings (they aren't, and it doesn't work)
**Most of them are liars, a small subset of 'successful' breatharians may actually be sleep walkers, who unknowingly eat in their sleep from fully stocked refrigerators and pantries (the food belonging to a spouse or other cohabitator). They think their poop is caused by elimination of toxins, or backed up stool from decades of a bad diet (naturally, violating the conservation of mass is not a concern for them, and doesn't raise any red flags at all).

This is the kind of thing that results from irrational thinking- like the idea that everything is sentient.