Where's an Environmentalist when you need one

[SuburbanFarmer]

( He must’ve gotten friend-zoned)

[heydaralon]

Not sure why early humans or animals would need to indoctrinate a hatred of other species. Animals eat meat because if they didn't they would die, just like earlier humans. That's their justification, more or less. Then again even primitive humans created pretexts for killing animals, tying up the act of killing with a divine sacrifice, or pretending that the animal itself gave its flesh to the hunter. Clearly an indication of some sense of guilt.

Modern humans however have little in the way of survival justification when it comes to killing animals, therefore actively hating animals, denying that they have "souls" or that their feelings matter makes it easier to partake in their flesh. It's simple psychology, really. Denying the personhood of the being that you're harming makes it easier to harm it.

why is it ok to eat living plants that can sense their environment and communicate with one (and possibly engage in primitive social cooperation by distributing nutrients to weaker plants nearby) another then? Where is the cutoff between something you can and can't eat?

[Fife]

4 point today was 128 lbs field dressed. Not bad; broke the seal on the freezer at least.

[JohnDonne]

Wasn't Hitler a vegan, though?

Yeah but he was indoctrinated by his parents at a young age to demonize and hate plants tho, which are living btw. What is the cutoff? Like, I've read plants will send signals out to other plants when they are under duress. Surely that is some form of very very rudimentary thinking right? What if in 20 years we find out that plants can feel pain when we cut them and eat their offspring?

It's a complicated question, it has to do with plants not being physiologically analogous to other beings that display sentience, the fact that plants show no analogous expression of sentience, the fact that they lack known causal structures (brains) for sentience, nor is there any analogous potential causal structure in them to theorize about. You could say they might be sentient, I could also say my eyebrows might be sentient based on the same evidence. It's not really a comparable study to animals, nobody in philosophy seriously thinks plants have sentience, though many philosophers that study sentience admit that animals do.

Think about it this way, NPCs in video games do many things that are signs of sentience, yet nobody thinks they are. The reason? They don't have causal structures.

[Speaker to Animals]

Not sure why early humans or animals would need to indoctrinate a hatred of other species. Animals eat meat because if they didn't they would die, just like earlier humans. That's their justification, more or less. Then again even primitive humans created pretexts for killing animals, tying up the act of killing with a divine sacrifice, or pretending that the animal itself gave its flesh to the hunter. Clearly an indication of some sense of guilt.

Modern humans however have little in the way of survival justification when it comes to killing animals, therefore actively hating animals, denying that they have "souls" or that their feelings matter makes it easier to partake in their flesh. It's simple psychology, really. Denying the personhood of the being that you're harming makes it easier to harm it.

Our justification is simple: we are animals too, and the human diet is omnivorous, which is why vegans so often look terrible. Eat a proper diet for your species.

[Speaker to Animals]

4 point today was 128 lbs field dressed. Not bad; broke the seal on the freezer at least.

You are doing this just to taunt Carlus.

[JohnDonne]

Not sure why early humans or animals would need to indoctrinate a hatred of other species. Animals eat meat because if they didn't they would die, just like earlier humans. That's their justification, more or less. Then again even primitive humans created pretexts for killing animals, tying up the act of killing with a divine sacrifice, or pretending that the animal itself gave its flesh to the hunter. Clearly an indication of some sense of guilt.

Modern humans however have little in the way of survival justification when it comes to killing animals, therefore actively hating animals, denying that they have "souls" or that their feelings matter makes it easier to partake in their flesh. It's simple psychology, really. Denying the personhood of the being that you're harming makes it easier to harm it.

Our justification is simple: we are animals too, and the human diet is omnivorous, which is why vegans so often look terrible. Eat a proper diet for your species.

Sure, if that's your justification then why all the contempt and hatred and ridicule and pain minimization at the animal's expense?

[heydaralon]

Wasn't Hitler a vegan, though?

Yeah but he was indoctrinated by his parents at a young age to demonize and hate plants tho, which are living btw. What is the cutoff? Like, I've read plants will send signals out to other plants when they are under duress. Surely that is some form of very very rudimentary thinking right? What if in 20 years we find out that plants can feel pain when we cut them and eat their offspring?

It's a complicated question, it has to do with plants not being physiologically analogous to other beings that display sentience, the fact that plants show no analogous expression of sentience, the fact that they lack known causal structures (brains) for sentience, nor is there any analogous potential causal structure in them to theorize about. You could say they might be sentient, I could also say my eyebrows might be sentient based on the same evidence. It's not really a comparable study to animals, nobody in philosophy seriously thinks plants have sentience, though many philosophers that study sentience admit that animals do.

It sounds like you are setting an arbitrary anatomical distinction to make your belief system tenable. Again, if plants are capable of sending chemicals to communicate with one another, and physically move their roots toward water, if they can physically move their leaves and branches in a defensive posture, this all points to some form of feeling and a very basic sentience. Shit, I read somewhere that scientists used chloform (more like bore-a-form) to put plants to sleep in the early 20th century. You can look up a video of someone doing this to a venus flytrap. There are some scientists that say this indicates a form of consciousness. If eating animals is wrong, then you shouldn't be able to eat plants for the same reason.

[Speaker to Animals]

Not sure why early humans or animals would need to indoctrinate a hatred of other species. Animals eat meat because if they didn't they would die, just like earlier humans. That's their justification, more or less. Then again even primitive humans created pretexts for killing animals, tying up the act of killing with a divine sacrifice, or pretending that the animal itself gave its flesh to the hunter. Clearly an indication of some sense of guilt.

Modern humans however have little in the way of survival justification when it comes to killing animals, therefore actively hating animals, denying that they have "souls" or that their feelings matter makes it easier to partake in their flesh. It's simple psychology, really. Denying the personhood of the being that you're harming makes it easier to harm it.

Our justification is simple: we are animals too, and the human diet is omnivorous, which is why vegans so often look terrible. Eat a proper diet for your species.

Sure, if that's your justification then why all the contempt and hatred and ridicule and pain minimization at the animal's expense?

Can you rephrase that in a coherent sentence?

[JohnDonne]

Yeah but he was indoctrinated by his parents at a young age to demonize and hate plants tho, which are living btw. What is the cutoff? Like, I've read plants will send signals out to other plants when they are under duress. Surely that is some form of very very rudimentary thinking right? What if in 20 years we find out that plants can feel pain when we cut them and eat their offspring?

It's a complicated question, it has to do with plants not being physiologically analogous to other beings that display sentience, the fact that plants show no analogous expression of sentience, the fact that they lack known causal structures (brains) for sentience, nor is there any analogous potential causal structure in them to theorize about. You could say they might be sentient, I could also say my eyebrows might be sentient based on the same evidence. It's not really a comparable study to animals, nobody in philosophy seriously thinks plants have sentience, though many philosophers that study sentience admit that animals do.

It sounds like you are setting an arbitrary anatomical distinction to make your belief system tenable. Again, if plants are capable of sending chemicals to communicate with one another, and physically move their roots toward water, if they can physically move their leaves and branches in a defensive posture, this all points to some form of feeling and a very basic sentience. Shit, I read somewhere that scientists used chloform (more like bore-a-form) to put plants to sleep in the early 20th century. You can look up a video of someone doing this to a venus flytrap. There are some scientists that say this indicates a form of consciousness. If eating animals is wrong, then you shouldn't be able to eat plants for the same reason.

It’s not arbitrary, it’s how we establish consciousness in anything, including ourselves, you’re using the same standard of analogous evidence to talk about the plant being “put to sleep.” It’s just there’s not anywhere near as much of that analogous evidence in the case of plants as the case for animals. A brain dead comatose patient’s body on life support may display similar chemical and. hormonal activity as the plant, you wouldn’t call that body “conscious” necessarily.