Exploring Identity and Neurodiversity

I just enjoy living as part of a multi-species household, cat's, dogs, hens and humans, we all have our different needs and requirements, I could add plants into that mix too.

TheCatWoman said:

I could add plants into that mix too.

If you start to research into plants and their feelings, there are some startling results being discovered.

https://www.bbcearth.com/news/plants-have-feelings-too

The feelings are more primitive than what we feel but are real all the same.

Worse still:

https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/24473/20191218/a-group-of-scientists-suggest-that-plants-feel-pain.htm

Last year, another study found that some plants registered pain after their leaves were touched and plucked, which eventually caused the release of foul-tasting chemicals across the leaves.

If meat is murder then is grass cutting mass murder? In the light of the above, actually legitimate questions.

Sometimes you just have to shut out some facts and try to live in ignorance.

Plants have no nervous system or focal point such as a brain. With nowhere to feel pain it is hard to say they feel anything. Feelings are much more complicated.

Sensing and feeling are not the same. My eyes sense light, but I see with my brain.

You have reflex actions, like with you knee, that do not involve your brain. You  don't feel it till after you've moved. Indeed reflexes work even if the spinal cord is broken and no message gets to the brain, in which you feel nothing.

If I stab my finger with a pin it is my brain that experiences something. I get bleeding, clotting, some swelling, histamine, immune responses regardless. Take pain killers or cut the nerve and it all still works. So the local response is separate from the experience.

The plant's chemical responses to stimuli cause various cellular functions to be switched on or off. Vascular plants obviously have a mechanism to signal to more than the neighbouring cells. But a chemical in the sap, like a hormone in the blood, does not generate any feeling directly.

Insomuch as individual cells can respond, then they are the same as any living thing, but a single cell does not seem to have a mechanism to feel anything.

Is cutting the grass murder? Not really. You don't kill the grass. Grass has evolved to be eaten and the blades grow from the bottom. 

I didn't say the grass likes it or that it is optimal, I just said it wasn't murder as it does not die. It is adapted to cope.

I could argue that using the word 'pain' is human, mammal or animal centric. It has certain higher level implications beyond a chemical response to a stimulus, in my opinion.

You could say  plants can trigger an adaptive response that shifts resources away from the optimum for growing and reproducing quickly to one of defence. But I am unconvinced it is really 'pain'.

But if you grow them in small pots, or close together, or with limited water, light or food, or under different temperatures, you also get adaptive behaviour.

Stuart333 said:

Plants have no nervous system or focal point such as a brain. With nowhere to feel pain it is hard to say they feel anything.

That is puting it in a very species centric way. 

Awareness is not necessarily the same as sentience. It was clearly shown by the research I linked to that when plants are harmed, the exhibit what is effectively a pain response.

You could also argue that insects have much simpler processing units (I doubt they are analogus to human brains) so would they also not "feel" anything.

How about fungus? It is a massively more complex thing than a simple plant, can connect whole hosts of bodies and achieve control over insect brains for example.

Just because we don't see it as analogous to our minds, does not mean these things cannot be afforded the same consideration.

As TheCatWoman says, we have to make a decision at what point in the hierarchy we chose to begin consuming the beings in order to survive.

Stuart333 said:

Grass has evolved to be eaten

You could equally argue that some groups of people have evolved to be slaves and have lots of kids to replace those who get taken. It is a survival tactic in response to an environmental threat but it does not mean that grass does not suffer.

Stuart333 said:

Plants have no nervous system or focal point such as a brain. With nowhere to feel pain it is hard to say they feel anything.

That is puting it in a very species centric way. 

Awareness is not necessarily the same as sentience. It was clearly shown by the research I linked to that when plants are harmed, the exhibit what is effectively a pain response.

You could also argue that insects have much simpler processing units (I doubt they are analogus to human brains) so would they also not "feel" anything.

How about fungus? It is a massively more complex thing than a simple plant, can connect whole hosts of bodies and achieve control over insect brains for example.

Just because we don't see it as analogous to our minds, does not mean these things cannot be afforded the same consideration.

As TheCatWoman says, we have to make a decision at what point in the hierarchy we chose to begin consuming the beings in order to survive.

Stuart333 said:

Grass has evolved to be eaten

You could equally argue that some groups of people have evolved to be slaves and have lots of kids to replace those who get taken. It is a survival tactic in response to an environmental threat but it does not mean that grass does not suffer.

I didn't say the grass likes it or that it is optimal, I just said it wasn't murder as it does not die. It is adapted to cope.

I could argue that using the word 'pain' is human, mammal or animal centric. It has certain higher level implications beyond a chemical response to a stimulus, in my opinion.

You could say  plants can trigger an adaptive response that shifts resources away from the optimum for growing and reproducing quickly to one of defence. But I am unconvinced it is really 'pain'.

But if you grow them in small pots, or close together, or with limited water, light or food, or under different temperatures, you also get adaptive behaviour.