Sedate a Plant, and It Seems to Lose Consciousness. Is It Conscious?

Post by cageface » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

smaddox wrote: post #77

cageface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That depends on how much plant feed you need to consume to offset the calories and nutrition from 1kg of meat. This will, of course, depend on the plant and the meat, but I'm sure you could make some reasonable assumptions. I've never done the math, but would be interested to hear if anyone has.

Post by pygy_ » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 9:10 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #95

acct1771 wrote: post #58

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Some make the "minimally conscious" argument about the animals we use as food sources now. Wonder how deep that rabbit hole will be in 100 years.

As deep as it needs to be to allow people to accept lab grown meat. The equivalent of conscientious vegetarians of the future may be those that only eat lab grown human meat, of their own grown cells. Me-steak is the meat of the future. Of course, genetics probably means some of us taste better than others...

Post by glenstein » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 9:28 AM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #101

glenstein wrote: post #100

Complex exchange of information and response to your environment is fascinating, and should be appreciated. But if we're calling that consciousness, we've watered down the term to the point that it's just a loose metaphor for virtually any kind of complex biological mechanisms. This really shouldn't even be a debate. It's the special kind of wrong that ought to be embarrassing, like when people equate consciousness t…

Provided there are single cell organisms with eyes[1], and transcription factors form DNA-based activation/inhibition networks conceptually indistinguishable from neuronal networks, debating whether plants have subjective experience ("a view from the inside" doesn't necessarily implies visual information) is totally on the table. Whether those organisms experience anything we can relate to is another matter though. […

Post by mikro2nd » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 9:41 AM UTC

glenstein wrote: post #106

pygy_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided there are single cell organisms with eyes[1], and transcription factors form DNA-based activation/inhibition networks conceptually indistinguishable from neuronal networks, debating whether plants have subjective experience ("a view from the inside" doesn't necessarily implies visual information) is totally on the table. Whether those organisms experience anything we can relate to is another matter though. […

Photoreceptivity isn't consciousness. "View from the inside" wasn't a mere reference to vision. And I would hope that the structural differences between DNA and brains are clear enough that they wouldn't have to be debated in a serious conversation.

Post by red75prime » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 9:48 AM UTC

Franciscouzo wrote: post #37

taneq wrote: post #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,…

For all I care humans are "just robotic, stimulus-response devices".