Submitted by I-Am-Polaris t3_yf9awq in Showerthoughts
CopsaLau t1_iu2dhsl wrote
But it’s a more intelligent life with emotional connections, now how do you feel about it?
This is why I exclusively eat turduckenporbeelambish
electricwagon t1_iu2ovvz wrote
I've seen a chicken eat shit out of another chickens cloaca. So they can't be dumb because nobody would do that unless they had a very well thought out reason to eat shit out it's great aunt's unihole.
CopsaLau t1_iu2t6w1 wrote
You’re right, that’s a pretty damn big brain move
Dogzilla66 t1_iu2gfzp wrote
So there’s a line somewhere, on the other side of which is guilt-free meat? Is it an oyster? Lobster? Pigeon? Shrimp? Octopus? Dog? And why does eating plants get a pass? There’s as good a reason to think a houseplant is as self aware as there is for say a lobster.
I don’t have any answers, just find this question fascinating
CopsaLau t1_iu2lusp wrote
I think we should start a diet of consuming exclusively carnivorous plants. We can call it the “literally nobody approved of this” diet and somehow manage to piss everyone off! Lol
Dogzilla66 t1_iu305rj wrote
But only after ritually feeding some part of yourself to the carnivorous plant. And we could compete on how hardcore committed we are by how much of ourselves we fed to the plants we’re eating
CopsaLau t1_iu3z4jt wrote
That’s just auto cannibalism with extra steps!
Dogzilla66 t1_iu4orxh wrote
You say that like it’s a bad thing
CousinDerylHickson t1_iu33794 wrote
I think you could infer the morality based on the organism's response to external stimuli. Like if you were to hold something down and it actively attempts to flee, then you could infer that it probably feels something that drives it to try and live, so maybe it might be morally wrong to kill something that maybe feels like it wants to live.
Dogzilla66 t1_iu350oa wrote
In the entire history of life, do you think there’s ever been an organism that doesn’t want to live?
CousinDerylHickson t1_iu35gu7 wrote
Well I think things like plants probably dont care on an emotional level, since it seems like all of their responses to external factors could be explained by simpler chemical mechanisms happening naturally. And ya, i agree that most animals seem like they want to live.
Dogzilla66 t1_iu3t1gn wrote
I’m not sure about plants, either. Their reactions might just be at a slower rate. Check this out:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/plants-defense-mechanism
CousinDerylHickson t1_iu4oy4x wrote
But I'd say the plant response is still a simpler mechanism than an animals flight or fight response, with many animals actually having a complex nervous system to choose a response and to actually be able to perform the (I'd say) more complicated response. Like for a plant, if it senses any damage, it would probably respond in the same fashion for the most part for all damage done, whereas lots of animals when damaged will consider many factors and their variance, like the amount of damage, the mode of damage, and how much danger it is still in (at least we can infer from how they respond to variances in the parameters), which will subsequently change its potentially complex response (like place foot here, balance, activate muscle fibers to move in a particular chosen direction, avoid obstacles, etc), which itself could be highly varying. I'd say this complexity in an animal's decision making makes it more likely that animals have feelings compared to plants, which while they may send out signals similar to ours in response to damage, they dont seem to be complex enough to make varying decisions based on those signals (which in animals would probably be interpreted as feelings).
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments