In animal rights philosophy, sentience means that animals have the ability to experience pleasure and pain. They feel pain, therefore killing and eating them is wrong. The problem is that scientists consider plants to be sentient too, since they can feel, touch, taste, smell, and respond to their environments.
Indeed, the biochemical pathways are different, but that's true of every living thing: a daffodil is not quite a venus fly trap is not quite a honey bee is not quite a goldfish is not quite an octopus is not quite alligator is not quite a monkey is not quite a human. All life (plant and animal) varies in fundamental biochemistry. The point is that plants and animals have fundamental biochemistry, and are sentient. If an animal is sentient, wrong to hurt; if a plant is sentient, wrong to hurt. Clearly, under this ethical model, we have nothing to eat.
Some vegans argue that plants are not sentient, but that would never fly with a scientist. Smarter vegans argue that plants are sentient but still unconscious, which is true, but takes the issue away from sensation and into complex neurological thought, which is just an attempt to confuse the topic. The best vegan rebuttal I found:
Even if it’s true that plants are the most sentient life on Earth, veganism would still be the minimum standard of decency. This follows from the simple fact that animals are reverse protein factories, consuming multiple times the protein in plant food that they produce in protein from their flesh and bodily fluids.
Of course, this is nonsense on multiple levels. First, animals are not just made out of protein. Second, a harmonious biotic community requires inconsistent "factories" to maintain the circle of life. Third, if animals are 'wasting' the essence of life, then the ethical thing would be to kill the animals. Clearly, this argument is flawed.
As for the idea that plants are less sentient than animals? This statement would be due to identification bias; in essence, we confuse their consciousness with their sentience and conclude that plants don't appear to be as sentient as we are. But looks can be deceiving. According to the Human Genome Project, we have about 25,000 genes -- the rice grain has twice that. Truth is: as lifeforms, we didn't evolve more. We evolved differently. Plant species exhibit vast diversity and powerful sophistication in response to and engagement with their natural environments. They can smell smoke, see sunlight, and -- you guessed it -- feel a limb get ripped off.
Pain and sentience are incomplete arenas to conduct a moral discourse. We need big picture morality, one that takes into account the health of the biotic community, weighs opportunity costs, and questions underlying assumptions.
Must see video:
Ha! The vegan mystique must have been in the air today. I wrote about this from a little different angle.
ReplyDeleteI haven't hashed out the entirety of the moral philosophy, but tend to think the political philosophy (subjectively imposed reduction of omnivores' freedom) precludes the need for a robust moral philosophy. It also seems problematic to enter into a system of moralization - in which most of the participants (non-human animals) don't give a fuck about what we think about their eating habits - with a straight face.
In other words, I agree.
Great point Andrew. Even John Durant got into it today about vegans! Unlike other paleo peeps, I'm trying to build a bridge to veganism rather than make an opponent. Ultimately, we all agree on the topic of social justice and environmental restoration. Just a matter of getting the facts out there and accepting some (dark) truths about reality.
ReplyDeleteYup, and there's nothing about cooperating with vegans on aligned issues that's a deal-breaker for paleo folks. That's a little hazier from the vegan perspective as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI touched on that a little in my post. So many vegans talk a good game about being anti-CAFOs, etc., but are actually just making that argument because it's more politically feasible than their moral conviction to rid the world of omnivores. For moral vegans, their underlying beliefs often still preclude cooperating with anyone they judge to be evil (i.e. all meat eaters).
That isn't to say that all vegans fall into that category, it just adds a bit of swimming upstream.