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

[Belindi]

Do you believe that the Solar system should be allocated moral status? If so, what would be the ground for that?

Yes, but mostly as an attitude of respect towards it. The Solar System and the Galaxy are become more important now that man has left a lot of his rubbish beyond the stratosphere.

Are you really calling here for respect for the Solar System, or are you rather calling for treating the Solar System in a way that respects future sentient users and inhabitants of it? In which case, the Solar System is not really being granted moral status; it is the users and inhabitants who are granted moral status. For myself, I can't see that there is any sense in granting moral status to anything that isn't sentient; it would be committing a kind of pathetic fallacy, like worshipping a carved block of wood.

We differ as to what 'moral status' means. Once that a consciousness has brought an animate or inanimate entity out of the unknown into the world that entity is worthy of respect as part of the furniture of that consciousness if the entity is inanimate , and also as a consciousness all of its own if animate.

or are you rather calling for treating the Solar System in a way that respects future sentient users and inhabitants of it?

is not respect it's expediency.

I hesitate to mention old legends and myths as some people won't pick out the meaning from the narrative. But Adam in Genesis named all the things whereupon they became differentiated entities. That is what consciousness does. Nature-or-God made the undifferentiated ground of being , and conscious living beings brought differentiated entities such as the Solar System into being. Differentiated entities are actual human experience, and a man's experience is what a man is.

[Consul]

The term "nociception" refers to the neural processes of encoding and processing noxious stimuli, and the question is whether pain perception and pain behavior necessarily include subjective feelings of pain. Noxious stimuli are harmful to an organism, but isn't it possible for an organism to perceive and react to what is harmful to it without feeling any pain? When an animal is exposed to a noxious stimulus and displays avoidance behavior, is this behavior impossible without a subjective pain experience?

I am not sure that it's possible for stimuli to induce a strong response without an accompanying experience, though not necessarily pain. Probably not pain as we know it. But there may well be some subjective experience happening.

If it's not "pain as we know it", then it's not pain, because the meaning of "pain" is fixed first-personally with reference to the unpleasant bodily sensations we call pain; so an experience quite unlike what we call pain isn't pain. But when we ask whether e.g. fish can feel pain, we do ask whether they can feel something similar to human pain, don't we?

[Consul]

Do plants deserve a moral status as animal? No, they deserve the status of life form capable of suffering and our respect.

There's no suffering (in the psychological sense) without subjective experience, and plants aren't subjects of experience; so they cannot suffer.

[popeye1945]

Do plants deserve a moral status as animal? No, they deserve the status of life form capable of suffering and our respect.

There's no suffering (in the psychological sense) without subjective experience, and plants aren't subjects of experience; so they cannot suffer.

Hi Consul,
I somehow doubt the validity of that statement. A forest functions as a community and it has been shown that an unhealthy tree or even a tree which has been cut down leaving its root system intact, is care for by the other trees in feeding it to keep it alive over long periods of time.

[Consul]

There's no suffering (in the psychological sense) without subjective experience, and plants aren't subjects of experience; so they cannot suffer.

Hi Consul,
I somehow doubt the validity of that statement. A forest functions as a community and it has been shown that an unhealthy tree or even a tree which has been cut down leaving its root system intact, is care for by the other trees in feeding it to keep it alive over long periods of time.

There may be ecosystemic interactions between the trees of a forest, and trees are living organisms that try to stay alive; but there is no subjective sentience involved.

[popeye1945]

Consul,
You cannot possibly know that. If you have any evidence to substantiate that statement I am all ears.

[Consul]

Consul,
You cannot possibly know that. If you have any evidence to substantiate that statement I am all ears.

Where there is consciousness, there must be a specific physical/physiological organ of consciousness; and the only plausible assumption in the light of our total scientific knowledge of living nature is that the brains of animals are the natural organs of consciousness. There are neither central nervous systems nor nervous systems at all in plants, so there are very good reasons to disbelieve in plant consciousness.

[Sy Borg]

Food for thought (sic). Fruits communicate to their parent parent plants with electrical signals when they are being eaten by caterpillars, which then secrete hydrogen peroxide to deter further damage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL9Ohltl6uk

Sessile organisms seemingly don't need brains, suggesting that the main point of brains is to position an organism in an optimal place at any given time. So sessile sensing would relate to immediate mechanical, chemical, electrical, thermal and light affects rather than sensing at a distance like active organisms.

I won't make claims about conscious experience one way or another because tomatoes are even harder to fully empathise with than bats.

[Consul]

Food for thought (sic). Fruits communicate to their parent parent plants with electrical signals when they are being eaten by caterpillars, which then secrete hydrogen peroxide to deter further damage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL9Ohltl6uk

Sessile organisms seemingly don't need brains, suggesting that the main point of brains is to position an organism in an optimal place at any given time. So sessile sensing would relate to immediate mechanical, chemical, electrical, thermal and light affects rather than sensing at a distance like active organisms.

I won't make claims about conscious experience one way or another because tomatoes are even harder to fully empathise with than bats.

Why should signaling processes in and between plants have anything to do with phenomenal consciousness?
There are several levels of evolutionary development between nonconscious biological information-processing and conscious biological information-processing.

"Throughout their life, bacteria interact with their surroundings by exchanging information with other cells, by exploring optimal growth conditions, and by sensing and responding to environmental stress. Thus, the signaling network of bacteria is a complex and indispensable aspect of bacterial life."

(Krämer, Reinhard, and Kirsten Jung, eds. Bacterial Signaling. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2010. p. xix)

Fine, but it by no means follows that phenomenal consciousness is part of bacterial life.

[Sy Borg]

Food for thought (sic). Fruits communicate to their parent parent plants with electrical signals when they are being eaten by caterpillars, which then secrete hydrogen peroxide to deter further damage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL9Ohltl6uk

Sessile organisms seemingly don't need brains, suggesting that the main point of brains is to position an organism in an optimal place at any given time. So sessile sensing would relate to immediate mechanical, chemical, electrical, thermal and light affects rather than sensing at a distance like active organisms.

I won't make claims about conscious experience one way or another because tomatoes are even harder to fully empathise with than bats.

Why should signaling processes in and between plants have anything to do with phenomenal consciousness?
There are several levels of evolutionary development between nonconscious biological information-processing and conscious biological information-processing.

"Throughout their life, bacteria interact with their surroundings by exchanging information with other cells, by exploring optimal growth conditions, and by sensing and responding to environmental stress. Thus, the signaling network of bacteria is a complex and indispensable aspect of bacterial life."

(Krämer, Reinhard, and Kirsten Jung, eds. Bacterial Signaling. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2010. p. xix)

Fine, but it by no means follows that phenomenal consciousness is part of bacterial life.

Nor does it prove that bacteria and plants are entirely subjectively inert, as if they were mobile rocks.

As you know, I am not convinced that the usual on/off brain-centric assumptions about consciousness are as conclusive as backers claim. I still think there's a decent chance that consciousness will be found to be graded rather than strictly divided.

Electrical signalling within plants (as per the example, not between plants, which is another story) is analogous to sensory processes in animals. Sense, send electrical signals, respond. In this case, the "brain" of a plant lies in its roots. As I say, plant complexity is still being unravelled and, the more we learn, the more that old assumptions to fall away.

So that more militant posters won't charge in, shouting "preposterous!", I suppose I have clarify that theoretical plant consciousness is the same as that of animals (which is as obvious as can be), just that I am not convinced that plants are entirely lacking in subjectively.

[Pattern-chaser]

Where there is consciousness, there must be a specific physical/physiological organ of consciousness...

One thread of this investigation is to determine whether consciousness might be possible without a human brain. Here you assert that it is not. Such a significant assertion must be associated with something to back it up, maybe some evidence, or some logically-argued theory? Where is that backup, please?

[Consul]

Where there is consciousness, there must be a specific physical/physiological organ of consciousness...

One thread of this investigation is to determine whether consciousness might be possible without a human brain. Here you assert that it is not.

I didn't say human brains are naturally necessary for consciousness—I said animal brains are!

[Consul]

Nor does it prove that bacteria and plants are entirely subjectively inert, as if they were mobile rocks.

Bacteria are like rocks with regard to P-consciousness, because they both lack it; but they are quite unlike rocks in many other respects, since they are living organisms and rocks are not.

"Living and non-living entities are strikingly different..."

(Pross, Addy. What is Life? How Chemistry becomes Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. p. 1)

As you know, I am not convinced that the usual on/off brain-centric assumptions about consciousness are as conclusive as backers claim. I still think there's a decent chance that consciousness will be found to be graded rather than strictly divided.

As far as phenomenal consciousness is concerned (as opposed to transitive, perceptual consciousness and intransitive creature consciousness or wakefulness), we have no coherently intelligible concept of nonbinary degrees of it. There are no "half-experiences". There are experiences of which its subject is only dimly aware, but even in these cases there is definitely some experiential content or other. And to call someone "half-conscious" is to say that their degree or level of wakefulness, alertness, or responsiveness is very low, so "half-consciousness" refers to intransitive creature consciousness and not to phenomenal consciousness.

Electrical signalling within plants (as per the example, not between plants, which is another story) is analogous to sensory processes in animals. Sense, send electrical signals, respond. In this case, the "brain" of a plant lies in its roots. As I say, plant complexity is still being unravelled and, the more we learn, the more that old assumptions to fall away.

The analogy is that there is electrial signaling both in plants and in (phenomenally) conscious animals; but this fact doesn't give us any reasons to jump to the conclusion that plants are or can be (phenomenally) conscious too, because it's a long evolutionary way from the nonconscious/noncognitive processing of asemantic signal-information to the semantic information-processing involved in cognition and P-consciousness.

See the figure in this post of mine: viewtopic.php?p=389721#p389721

[Consul]

The analogy is that there is electrial signaling both in plants and in (phenomenally) conscious animals; but this fact doesn't give us any reasons to jump to the conclusion that plants are or can be (phenomenally) conscious too, because it's a long evolutionary way from the nonconscious/noncognitive processing of asemantic signal-information to the semantic information-processing involved in cognition and P-consciousness.

See the figure in this post of mine: viewtopic.php?p=389721#p389721

There are four levels of information-processing:

1. technological information-processing (artificial)
2. biological information-processing (natural)
3. neurological information-processing (natural)
4. psychological information-processing (natural)

Genuine cognition and P-consciousness presuppose and depend on levels 2+3, but they are realized only on level 4!

[Pattern-chaser]

Where there is consciousness, there must be a specific physical/physiological organ of consciousness...

One thread of this investigation is to determine whether consciousness might be possible without a human brain. Here you assert that it is not.

I didn't say human brains are naturally necessary for consciousness—I said animal brains are!

OK, but my question still stands:

Such a significant assertion must be associated with something to back it up, maybe some evidence, or some logically-argued theory? Where is that backup, please?