I am new to this forum and I wanted to ask a question regarding plant morality or ethics.
I was just banned for asking this question on veganforum.org. I am aware that the question is sensitive for vegans however I believe that it is important that the question is addressed.
Recent scientific discoveries increasingly indicate that plants are intelligent beings that can 'talk' to animals, including humans. Plants may even be capable of "love" (i.e., forming meaningful relationships).
Plants can see, hear and smell – and respond
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170109 ... nd-respondPlants, according to professor Jack C Schultz, "are just very slow animals".
This is not a misunderstanding of basic biology. Schultz is a professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and has spent four decades investigating the interactions between plants and insects. He knows his stuff.
(2019) Flowers are talking to animals—and humans are just starting to listen
https://qz.com/1522637/humans-are-learn ... d-animals/Scientists increasingly believe that trees and plants communicate with each other, various living things, and the environment. Now there’s additional evidence thanks to a new study on “natural language”. Researchers from three Tel-Aviv University schools—plant sciences and food security, zoology, and mechanical engineering—collaborated on a study that measures how evening primroses, or Oenothera drummondii, respond to sound.
(2018) A debate over plant consciousness
https://qz.com/1294941/a-debate-over-pl ... uman-mind/Evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano insists that plants are intelligent, and she’s not speaking metaphorically. “My work is not about metaphors at all,” Gagliano tells Forbes. “When I talk about learning, I mean learning. When I talk about memory, I mean memory.”
Gagliano’s behavioral experiments on plants suggest that—while plants don’t have a central nervous system or a brain—they behave like intelligent beings.
Gagliano, who began her career as a marine scientist, says her work with plants triggered a profound epiphany. “The main realization for me wasn’t the fact that plants themselves must be something more than we give them credit for, but what if everything around us is much more than we give it credit for, whether it’s animal, plant, bacteria, whatever.”
New York Times: Do Plants Have Something To Say?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/styl ... -talk.html
Plants display moral behavior. When their mycelial network has developed, plants instruct their fellow plants where to grow to avoid a fight for sunlight. Plants also transfer food to their neighbors when they are deficient. Baby trees are fed so that they can grow in sunlight.
(2018) Trees Talk to Each Other in a Language We Can Learn
https://upliftconnect.com/trees-talk-to ... can-learn/Science had always believed that trees competed with each other for carbon, sunlight, water and nutrients.
Ecology professor Suzanne Simard’s groundbreaking work shows that trees are interdependent and cooperative, in fact they are immersed in deep relationships with each other.
Plants that are far apart can, in some cases, exchange nutrients through the fungal network that links them underground. In temperate forests, young trees benefit from the ability of older (and taller) trees to reach sunlight; so much so that up to 40% of their carbon can come from the photosynthesis of their adult neighbors through the broad web of fungal wood.
(2018) Mother trees transfer wisdom through mycelium network
Philosopher: Plants are sentient beings that should be eaten with respectEcology professor Suzanne Simard’s research has important environmental implications for the destruction of our forests. She says that when mother trees are injured or dying, they send their wisdom onto the next generation, but they can’t do this is if they are all wiped out at the same time. She hopes that her research will change the way we practice forestry.
Prof. Simard says trees have a sophisticated and interconnected social network existing underground.
A world of infinite, biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate, and allow the forest to behave as if it’s a single organism.
Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery: trees talk, communicating often and over vast distances. Trees are social creatures that are much more like humans that you may think.
Philosopher Michael Marder, a research professor at the University of the Basque Country, has called for “more respectful treatment of the flora” through his books Plant-Thinking and the forthcoming The Philosopher’s Plant.
His claim that a plant is an “intelligent, social, complex being” has been contested by some biologists, but a stronger reaction has come from animal-rights activists who fear their cause is undermined by extending a duty of respect to plants.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/unth ... -1.1965980
I have noticed that this information does not find ground by many people, the reason being that vegans are naturally inclined to suppress the information out of fear that their food plate becomes emptied further, or out of fear that they have been doing harm to conscious creatures.
Recent scientific studies show that plants physically have what is needed for consciousness.
The root system of plants contains many neurotransmitters that are also present in the human brain, including dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and histamine. Recent discoveries indicate that the root system of plants can grow many billions of cells at the tips of the roots that function in the same way as brain neurons. For some plants, it would result in a number of neurons that rival those of the human brain.
Recent surprising similarities between plant cells and neurons
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884105/
Neurotransmitters, neuroregulators and neurotoxins in the life of plants
Recent evidence has shown that neurologically active compounds play an important role in the physiology of higher plants.
https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pd ... 41/P06-034
Plants signal stress like animals do: with neurotransmitters
https://www.zmescience.com/science/biol ... r-0425634/
Perhaps it is a scientific indication that plants can physically have what is required for intelligence.
The studies cited are from quite recent. It seems that much is still unknown about plants and their physiology. Interestingly, it was only very recently discovered that cells in the hairs on the roots of plants function similarly to brain neurons in animals.
(2014) New research on plant intelligence
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/ ... out-plantsHow plants sense and react is still somewhat unknown. Plants have a system for sending electrical signals and even produce neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin and other chemicals the human brain uses to send signals.
"We don't know why they have them, whether this was just conserved through evolution or if it performs some sort of information processing function. We don't know. There's a lot we don't know," Pollan says.
As for a practical example. Glacier mice (moss balls) may provide an example of intelligent plant behavior. They live on the ice and move by rolling. Scientists recently (2020) discovered that they move in herds across the ice.
(2020) Herds of moss balls mysteriously roam the North Pole together
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180975019/The moss is not propelled by a slope, the wind or the sun, but the group moves in sync.
The glacier moss balls move together across the ice. Bartholomaus compares this to a school of fish or a flock of birds.
Bartholomaus said he hopes future generations will one day "sort out these great mysteries."
It seems to me that there is a basis for considering plant morality or ethics.
Importance of question
The question I wanted to ask in this forum: Given the evidence that plants are social animals that network and communicate with other plants through their roots, is it morally justified to genetically engineer them as if they are meaningless humps of matter?
Big Pharma as an industry is already investing more than $1 trillion USD per year in synthetic biology (1000 billion USD per year).
Biotechnology is already a bigger business than many people realize. Rob Carlson of Bioeconomy Capital, an investment company, calculates that money made from creatures which have been genetically engineered accounted for about 2% of American GDP in 2017.
(2019) Big pharma raises bet on biotech as frontier for growth
https://www.ft.com/content/80a21ca2-136 ... f78404524e
An article in The Economist provides an indication that synthetic biology is an unguided practice, primarily driven by the short term self interest of companies.
Remaking life means automating biology
Those given to grand statements about the future often proclaim this to be the century of biology in the same way that the 20th century was that of physics and the 19th century was that of chemistry. ...
Humans have been turning biology to their own purposes for more than 10,000 years. ...
Reprogramming nature is extremely convoluted, having evolved with no intention or guidance. But if you could synthesize nature, life could be transformed into something more amenable to an engineering approach, with well defined standard parts.
It may be important that the issue described above, in which vegans turn a blind eye to plant well being, is addressed to prevent a potential disaster for nature/plant life on earth.
My personal motivation to address the issue is not emotional or ideological. The true inspiration and motivation to consider plant morality is not a white lie on behalf of a justifiable concern about humanity’s continuing ecological degradation of the biosphere. It is clearly the argument that purpose may be vital for nature to prosper.
The idea that plants are a meaningless hump of matter does not seem plausible.
The multi-trillion USD synthetic biology revolution, primarily driven by the empirical essence of science, reduces plants to meaningless humps of matter that can be 'done better' by a company.
How can empirical science possibly provide argumentative resistance for the claim that plant life is meaningless?
Can a plant be 'done'? Can empirical science answer that question? Can empirical science study the essence of a plant?
Vitality of nature - the fundament of human life - is the motive to address plant morality. A purposeful food source may be a stronger foundation for humanity.
Questions
1) Do plants deserve moral consideration on par with that of animals?
2) What are the implications when plants are given a moral status similar to that of animals?
Thanks for the comments!
