> But that doesn't keep me from recognizing the ethical issues with killing and controlling other beings to survive.
We don't undergo photosynthesis, so fundamentally we have to kill and eat other beings to survive. Plants are other living beings too. And a revolution is underway in learning about plant intelligence -- while not a nervous system, trees communicate with each other and share resources. [1]
My primary reason for trying to eat less meat is the environmental harms -- not the individual rights of animals -- as I think might eventually find ourselves in a place where we recognize that we cannot escape denying the rights of another organism (plants included) for our own nourishment given that we aren't photosynthesizers. Unless we become fruitarians and only eat fruit that naturally falls from the tree -- but obviously that is ludicrous.
Plants are not beings under any standard usage of the word. While plants certainly communicate and show some level of computational processing, there is no evidence they have subjective experiences. There is a very clearly line to be drawn between plants and animals.
And if that's not a compelling enough counterargument, there are two additional issues with trying to conflate plants and animals in this context. First, it takes far more plants to support an omnivorous diet than a plant-based diet. Second, many plant-based products are obtainable without having to harm the plant.
People made this exact same "no evidence" argument about animals for years, and many still believe it. The fact is we don't know enough about how plants or animals experience life to be sure of anything.
People made the claim _while_ ignoring the evidence. And as I went on to argue, if you really want to play it safe and assume plant sentience, you would still adopt a plant-based diet.
>People made the claim _while_ ignoring the evidence. And as I went on to argue, if you really want to play it safe and assume plant sentience, you would still adopt a plant-based diet.
People would still adopt a plant-based diet because there is no other alternative right now. Purely lab-synthesized food that does not involve cultivation of any other organization is still a long way off from reaching any kind of scale for mass consumption.
> Purely lab-synthesized food that does not involve cultivation of any other organization is still a long way off from reaching any kind of scale for mass consumption.
I don't disagree, but I don't see how that's relevant to my point.
I think you should be careful of our heritage of narcissism here. Historically, ethical protections are extended to anybody sufficiently like the speaker's in-group, and denied outside it. You're making an identical argument here. There are always lines to be drawn, and they're almost always the ones convenient for the speaker.
> We don't undergo photosynthesis, so fundamentally we have to kill and eat other beings to survive.
Currently that's true. But it's not an essential property of the universe. Yesterday's ludicrous may be tomorrow's normal. Thus my mention of Star Trek's replicator. Imagining those were common helps make clear the ethical tradeoffs.
If everybody were used to getting any food they wanted from a magic box, then what would we think of people who insisted on doing it the old way? A guy who spent months raising animals just to murder and consume them would certainly hear about it.
A person who had a vegetable garden might just be seen as a quirky hobbyist, or he might be seen as a person doing something weird and gross, the way many Americans feel about somebody who eats organ meat or dog. They might even be seen as heretical; many religions see life as sacred, after all. And if they did it at modern, industrial scale where they destroyed square miles of ecosystem? Perhaps it would be seen as historical reenactment, or perhaps it would be taken as a sign of severe mental health problems.
As I said, I'm an omnivore. But I try to be an honest, self-aware one. I just dismembered a turkey, ripping joints apart and rending flesh from bone. I'll enjoy the meal, but I'm aware of the horror, too. That's the deal with evolution and being part of a species that is early on in the self-uplift process.
We don't undergo photosynthesis, so fundamentally we have to kill and eat other beings to survive. Plants are other living beings too. And a revolution is underway in learning about plant intelligence -- while not a nervous system, trees communicate with each other and share resources. [1]
My primary reason for trying to eat less meat is the environmental harms -- not the individual rights of animals -- as I think might eventually find ourselves in a place where we recognize that we cannot escape denying the rights of another organism (plants included) for our own nourishment given that we aren't photosynthesizers. Unless we become fruitarians and only eat fruit that naturally falls from the tree -- but obviously that is ludicrous.
[1] https://mothertreeproject.org/about-mother-trees/