They mention that sedating bacteria can cause them to “pause” as well. Are bacteria considered conscious?
Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
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Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#12Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.
Now we can't eat plants or animals. Sounds like a killer way to lose weight!
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#13Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#14Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.
My favorite only half joking comment on vegitarianism is "So you're saying that you are racist against plants?" [0] 0. The pedant in me says kingdomist.
When someone says they're a "vegetarian" but eat fish" I always think, "ah, it's the IQ school of vegetarianism: you'll eat anything you think is as smart as asparagus."
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#15Is the planet conscious but on a time scale that we are out-of-touch with? Plants are just an order of magnitude quicker to react but still much slower than needed to make us care. The truth is, we associate speed with intelligence, it's natural for us. We even have the word "slow" to mean stupid. It's possible we will eventually have a super intelligence able to craftily manipulate matter at the highest ability -- b…
I think we might just have to, out of philosophical desperation, define "murder" as a set containing A. the irreversible termination of any economically useful self-directing information processor and B. acts that desensitize our inborn resistance to doing A. The first covers not killing other healthy adults/sentient robots, and the second covers not abusing animals or euthanizing anybody. As far as my gut says that'…
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Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#16Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.
We have known for years that plants give off a pulse ("scream") when assaulted, communicate chemically etc. I have said for years that the idea that eating plants is morally superior because they aren't sentient is basically speciesist, for lack of a better word.
Well, I would argue that eating animals is morally superior to cannibalism :)
So why can't eating plants be morally superior to eat animals.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#17Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#18Great, they’ve ruined vegetarianism.
Even if you believe that plants are conscious eating plants instead of animals is still more ethical because it takes around 7kg of plant feed to produce 1kg of meat. So you’re responsible for the death of the animal and all the plants it ate.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have known for years that plants give off a pulse ("scream") when assaulted, communicate chemically etc. I have said for years that the idea that eating plants is morally superior because they aren't sentient is basically speciesist, for lack of a better word.
Well, I would argue that eating animals is morally superior to cannibalism :) So why can't eating plants be morally superior to eat animals.
I would argue that there are lots of valid reasons to eat lower on the food chain, many of which can be framed as having a moral impetus. But the idea that it is morally superior based on plants being stupid is repugnant to me. It opens the door on questions like "So, is it okay to eat mentally retarded people?"
Some moral arguments I can agree with:
A mostly plant based diet is less resource intensive. Since most wars are about scarcity of resources, eating less meat is voting against war in a tangible way. It is about promoting peace globally.
There are health benefits to eating less meat.
Meat is very water intensive. Water shortages are a big deal globally at the moment.
There are no doubt others. Just quick and dirty off the cuff thoughts.
Re: Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?
#20> “Plants are not just robotic, stimulus-response devices,” said Frantisek Baluska
I don't see how this follows from the finding that sedatives can prevent plants from responding to stimuli. It just means that there's a shared mechanism behind plants' responses and animals' responses, which wouldn't be overly surprising.
Of course, that doesn't mean that plants don't have a lot more going on than we usually realise, just because it happens at timescales so much longer than ours. There's all sorts of cool stuff happening in rainforests with cooperation/competition between plants.