Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sy Borg]

Either all life forms are biological machines or none are. No machine even comes close to the complexity and sensitivity of living things.

QUOTE>
"The human body is a machine which winds itself up, a living picture of perpetual motion."
(p. 7)

"To be a machine and to feel, to think and to be able to distinguish right from wrong, like blue from yellow—in a word to be born with intelligence and a sure instinct for morality and to be only an animal—are thus things which are no more contradictory than to be an ape or a parrot and to be able to give oneself pleasure."
(p. 35)

(La Mettrie, Julien Offray de. "Machine Man." 1748. In Machine Man and Other Writings, translated and edited by Ann Thomson, 1-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.)
<QUOTE

The machine analogy is popular because it lends the imposing complexity of biology the illusion of being graspable. The machine analogy is a tool. A means of mapping rather than the territory.

[Pattern-chaser]

Conscious plants don't stop us eating. We already eat conscious animals, and so do most other living things in our world. If the possibility of conscious plants causes humans to have greater respect for the other living things we eat, and the environment in which we live, so much the better.

[psyreporter]

Conscious plants don't stop us eating. We already eat conscious animals, and so do most other living things in our world. If the possibility of conscious plants causes humans to have greater respect for the other living things we eat, and the environment in which we live, so much the better.

What do you think of the quote of Henry David Thoreau?

"Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."

Do you believe that he is right and that a greater capacity for moral/ethical consideration will naturally result in abolishing barbaric forms of eating, such as eating animals?

What about plants, when it is discovered that they posses 'meaningful experience'?

The discovery of cells in the root system of plants that function similar to brain neurons in animals, is a fact. It is also a fact that many neurotransmitters that are found in the human brain, and of which it is assumed that they are crucial for conscious experience in animals, are present in the root system of plants. And it is a fact that some bigger trees have more 'neuron'-like cells than a human brain.

At question would be: why would one consider the discovered physiology meaningless and consider it justified to maintain a view that plants are machine like automata that cannot possibly have conscious experience?

I do not see a ground to argue that plants are not likely to posses of meaningful experience when considering the recent discoveries of plant physiology that may potentially facilitate such an experience.

[psyreporter]

The machine analogy is popular because it lends the imposing complexity of biology the illusion of being graspable. The machine analogy is a tool. A means of mapping rather than the territory.

The machine analogy has grave consequences because it removes the factor 'meaningfulness' from plant life.

The modern trend (officially named 'revolution in science', synthetic biology or eugenics on Nature) is to 'remake life' and to transform plant life into an engineering endeavor of which the human has (or will achieve) full mastery.

When meaning is applicable to plant life, such an endeavor could be disastrous for concepts such as 'vitality of Nature'.

[Belindi]

Conscious plants don't stop us eating. We already eat conscious animals, and so do most other living things in our world. If the possibility of conscious plants causes humans to have greater respect for the other living things we eat, and the environment in which we live, so much the better.

I fully endorse what you are saying and I wonder if there are any signs of popular consciousness that we should extend moral rights to plants .

Soon the UK will outlaw peat based compost.

People are generally outraged by vandalism against trees and wild flowers.

Brazilian Bolsonaro and his rain forest destruction is being punished by British supermarkets' withdrawing their custom.

I have sneakily planted two oaks where I hope they will flourish at least until they are very big trees.

[Sy Borg]

The machine analogy is popular because it lends the imposing complexity of biology the illusion of being graspable. The machine analogy is a tool. A means of mapping rather than the territory.

The machine analogy has grave consequences because it removes the factor 'meaningfulness' from plant life.

The modern trend (officially named 'revolution in science', synthetic biology or eugenics on Nature) is to 'remake life' and to transform plant life into an engineering endeavor of which the human has (or will achieve) full mastery.

When meaning is applicable to plant life, such an endeavor could be disastrous for concepts such as 'vitality of Nature'.

The machine analogy essentially cartoonises life, treating it was a weak, sketchy version of it's reality.

[Pattern-chaser]

Conscious plants don't stop us eating. We already eat conscious animals, and so do most other living things in our world. If the possibility of conscious plants causes humans to have greater respect for the other living things we eat, and the environment in which we live, so much the better.

What do you think of the quote of Henry David Thoreau?

"Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."

Do you believe that he is right and that a greater capacity for moral/ethical consideration will naturally result in abolishing barbaric forms of eating, such as eating animals?

My personal feeling is that there is little point in complaining about the eating of other living creatures when most living creatures do this, and always have done this, to survive. It is a fact of the world, and to complain about it is to complain about the sun being too bright, or too dim. It just is.

What about plants, when it is discovered that they possess 'meaningful experience'?

[As above.]

[Sculptor1]

Recent scientific discoveries increasingly indicate that plants are intelligent creatures that can "talk" to animals, including humans. Plants may even be capable of interspecies "love" (i.e. the forming of meaningful relationships in real-time).

There is not a single plant as smart as a pig, and I love a good hand of pork with all the trimmings with the skin done to a crisp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwDdYrFpAUo
There is not better meal to be had anywhere on the planet.

As Ongka says; "You have to have pigs for whatever you want to do"
Time:8:22 following
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyQ8rW25Iy8
If you don't have pigs you are a rubbish man.

[Sy Borg]

Ideally, the pig should be tortured for an extended period, filled with growth hormones, and live in its own excrement so the growers can add lots of lovely antibiotics.

Mmm mmm.

[Steve3007]

Most of us accept without any issues the treatment of relatively complex and sentient non-human animals as in the picture posted by Greta above (as long as we don't have to be offended by seeing pictures like that too often), yet we get outraged when a man sits on a dead horse (yes, I'm still banging on about that). Obviously this is hardly an original observation, but we're funny creatures aren't we.

I've eaten plenty of pork myself during my lifetime. I haven't eaten it for a long time, but my son likes bacon (who doesn't? I bet even pigs would like it) and I have been known to buy it and cook it for him. So I'm one of those funny creatures.

[Steve3007]

My personal feeling is that there is little point in complaining about the eating of other living creatures when most living creatures do this, and always have done this, to survive. It is a fact of the world, and to complain about it is to complain about the sun being too bright, or too dim. It just is.

This might seem like an obvious point, but the sun doesn't have a brightness control. Our diet does. We can choose what we eat. Sculptor1, for example, has pointed out several times that he likes to eat meat and doesn't have a very high opinion of the kinds of foods he imagines vegans to eat. Fair enough. But that is a choice.

I know from personal experience as a weak-willed, part-time, on-off vegetarian and from experience with more strong-willed full-time vegetarians and vegans among my family and friends (a growing proportion, it seems) that taking part in the treatment of non-human animals the way we do in order to maximize their food output is a choice. We do it for no other reason than that we like their taste and regard the resultant epidemics of over-eating related health problems as a price worth paying for that. I don't think we should pretend otherwise. I think we should be honest and say: I am willing for other animals to live lives of misery because I enjoy the taste of their flesh, not because of any argument as to what is or is not the natural way of things.

[Belindi]

Sy Borg, I hope that is an old picture of pigs being tortured.Several years ago i saw a similar picture on Facebook, and vowed never to buy pig products again. It is not inordinately difficult to do.I agree bacon is the hardest.

Food is too cheap. We should be spending more money on food and less on air travel and hardware.

[Steve3007]

Food is too cheap.

Yes, meat particularly. Like a lot of things it's artificially cheap in the sense that the economics of it treat certain things as cost-free. The trouble is, it's very difficult to fight against economics, particularly when it's global. If you tell a poor hard working family that food (or specifically meat) is artificially cheap they'll probably, quite reasonably, fight back against that.

[Steve3007]

Post-Brexit, there's been much talk on the News of the attempt at a UK/Australia trade deal and the "tsunami of cheap Australian beef" that we'll apparently soon be facing. Interesting image.

[Steve3007]

Sy Borg, I hope that is an old picture of pigs being tortured. Several years ago i saw a similar picture on Facebook, and vowed never to buy pig products again. It is not inordinately difficult to do. I agree bacon is the hardest.

Out of interest, I did a quick search. The source below seems to suggest that that image is of pigs in gestation crates. In the US, at least, these crates are apparently about 2 feet wide by 7 feet long. I guess that looks about what they are in that picture.

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-use ... terhouses/

Of course, I haven't yet verified the descriptions from the above source, which some people will say is partisan. It could all be fiction. Pigs on US farms might in reality live wild and free.