To answer the question of whether or not plants deserve rights (in light of them having senses/possibly feeling pain as I blogged about earlier), we must first ask what it is that defines whether or not something has rights, be it as a moral agent or as a moral patient. I'm going to firstly rule out that anything nonliving has status on the grounds that to have a moral status, you would need interests which could be fulfilled and so you'd need wants and desires. A nonliving object has no desire to "live" and it can't do/have anything to ensure that it carries on existing. Hence it does not have what I have read to be termed "autonomous goodness". Even the most basic living creature has autonomous goodness as it is in its interest to continue living (unless, that is, it is living a life of continued suffering with no pleasure whatsoever). Now, a plant, being living, has at least that.
But the fact is, we've got to eat something to survive and a life without killing is impossible- every time you breathe in, you are killing bacteria. Your immune system has probably destroyed many-a-microbe and the mass of the cells which die every year via apoptosis adds up to your the same mass as your entire body mass. We must therefore establish a hierarchy of moral patients, and I think that there are two ways of doing so. The first is by the amount a living being can experience in terms of pleasure and pain and the second is whether or not a being is sapient and autonomous. The latter probably links into the former because being able to choose your actions and distinguish yourself as independent adds to your quality of life.
Now, I haven't seen anything to suggest that plants are sentient; I mean, I don't even know if animals are and plants seem to be a lot simpler, so on those grounds, I don't believe that plants are entitled to a high moral status. However, now that it has been established that they do have senses, I can deduce that they do feel at least some degree of pleasure and pain which does raise them up on my imaginary hierarchy. Then again, if their nervous system is not as developed as that of animals, the degree of pain which they would feel would not reach the degree that animals do hence they are not as deserving of the title of "moral patient".
In other words, assume that the suffering I inflict is "2". The suffering that a plant can feel is hypothetically "2" and an animal "4". 2+2=4 and 2+4=6, with the latter being higher. Therefore, it is less desireable to inflict pain on the latter (namely the animal).
I think that maybe something that makes life worth living is whether or not you have a future; whether or not you have a way in which you can better yourself and your situation. Plants do not have this (the poor things are rooted to the ground!) but animals can migrate, they can reproduce and so on. Ignoring determinism, this indicates that animals (when I refer to animals, I'm referring to mammalian animals- sheep, cows and so on- namely the kind that we eat) can get more pleasure out of life. On the other hand, I don't know if animals deliberately migrate because they want to secure a better future for themselves. I doubt this, though am by no means sure, and if it is the case, then it slightly drowns out my previous argument about the animals being able to get more pleasure out of life.
As I said, we must eat something in order to survive and in terms of the food chain, it's more efficient to eat a plant than an animal:
I know about fruitarians but I find it extrememly doubtful that you'd be able to get everything you needed from a diet consisting of fruits and nuts. Unless, that is, you turned to vitamin supplements and the like but surely even they would be packaged with paper (which comes from trees)?
For anyone skim reading, you're not actually missing much. The information I have on how developed both plants and animals are is nowhere near enough for a decent conclusion to be drawn. But for now, plants as far as I know are not conscious, thence are not moral patients.
Picture from here.
No comments:
Post a Comment