Far more animals than previously thought likely have consciousness, top scientists say in a new declaration — including fish, lobsters and octopus.
Bees play by rolling wooden balls — apparently for fun. The cleaner wrasse fish appears to recognize its own visage in an underwater mirror. Octopuses seem to react to anesthetic drugs and will avoid settings where they likely experienced past pain.
All three of these discoveries came in the last five years — indications that the more scientists test animals, the more they find that many species may have inner lives and be sentient. A surprising range of creatures have shown evidence of conscious thought or experience, including insects, fish and some crustaceans.
That has prompted a group of top researchers on animal cognition to publish a new pronouncement that they hope will transform how scientists and society view — and care — for animals.
Nearly 40 researchers signed “The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness,” which was first presented at a conference at New York University on Friday morning. It marks a pivotal moment, as a flood of research on animal cognition collides with debates over how various species ought to be treated.
If it ever comes out that plants are sentient and feel pain my moral compass is going to have a bad day.
I’m not even a vegetarian … but I have tried to eat less meat in recent years, in part because of the cruelty.
I’d say eating plants would still be the lesser of two evils in that case. Animals we kill for food also eat plants, so from a pure quantity of suffering, it’s better to not have the middleman there.
But some animals we eat are carnivores, like most wild-caught fish. In which case, killing them reduces the total amount of suffering. Same reasoning as the trolley problem.
Even that’s a bit more complex, without predators many species massively overbreed, leading to mass starvation
That wouldn’t apply to ecosystems where the predator is invasive, for example the lionfish in the Caribbean (which happens to be delicious).
Furthermore, if there is concern for a population explosion then one could also kill and eat the predator’s prey, provided you eat fewer than the predator would have eaten.
We, as omnivores, have a choice. The carnivores do not. I’d rather not cause more suffering than I have to (since I have that choice) even if there was the potential that it could possibly decrease overall suffering.
I will not go into other problems with fish specifically since it’s not on-topic.
Whereas I choose to cause suffering if I expect it will reduce greater suffering, including killing animals if necessary.
Everyone has their own approach to the trolley problem.
Do note that this whole thing is based on the hypothetical of plants being capable of experiencing pain. In reality, they do not possess a nervous system to enable that.
Of course I’d choose to kill an animal if the alternative was getting injured or killed (or starving in some extreme survival situation), but in day-to-day life, I do not see the need to do that.
If the only way to stop a school shooter were to kill them, I think most people would do so even if they were not personally threatened.
And many people, including myself, think it is moral to kill even an innocent person if necessary to prevent the death of a greater number of people. That’s the trolley problem in a nutshell.
But if I’m willing to kill a person in order to prevent them from killing other people, then I should also be willing to kill a fish in order to prevent it from killing other fish.
Finally, the argument for nonhuman sentience does not turn on the presence or absence of neurons. That would just be a cellular version of speciesism, and it inexplicably eliminates the possibility of sentience in extraterrestrials or machines.
The argument in the OP is based on behaviors, like recognizing self vs nonself, avoiding noxious stimuli, creative problem-solving, etc. Plants do many of these things too, just on longer timescales.
Welllllll… What if you found out that every time you cut into a plant, it let out a high pitched scream that humans can’t hear?
https://www.sciencealert.com/plants-really-do-scream-out-loud-we-just-never-heard-it-until-now
Yeah the fresh cut grass smell is actually a call to aid. They “think” the damage is caused by herbivorous insects, so they release chemicals to attract carnivorous insects to come and kill the other insects.
Plants probably qualify for a separate category of low sentience. If you’ve grown plants you know they’ll turn towards the sun, and you need to move them around a bit to make sure they don’t end up with a prominent lean. Some plants will use their tendrils to wrap around a trellis for extra support.
I don’t think we can qualify these actions on the same level of sentience as animals, but there is certainly something there. All living things probably have some degree of this, since they react to stimulus with chemical signaling. That’s not terribly different from what we do.
Im pretty sure i have read articles about study finding that show certain trees can communicate distress via pheromones or something when under attack by insects that strip their leaves and some plants give off a very faint ‘noise’ when they are dehydrated or distressed.
Plants are autotrophs in that they create their own energy from the sun with the help of microbes in soils to supply nutrients to enable plants to do so.
Imo, the closer we can descend on the food chain to autotrophic nutrition, the better for all.
Of course, all of this has to be taken in balance. There needs to be a healthy discussion between domesticated and wilded lands.
But much research has been published showing that if the world moved to primarily plant-based/vegan/herbivore/autotrophic diets, then we’d quickly move to living inside of our planet’s boundaries which we aren’t now. Think about rewilding corn fields or wheat fields or soy fields and still having enough food left over to feed the entire population.
#govegan
Me too. I still eat cheese but no more meats. Regardless of the sentient thing, it’s good for you to not eat meat.
Considering how pain is a trigger for an animal’s fight or flight response, and considering plants can neither fight nor flee, it would seem like a cruel cosmic joke for plants to feel pain. What purpose would it serve, evolutionary speaking?
No idea; though I think a consciousness could be independent of whether or not something feels pain. For instance, there are people that don’t feel pain but they’re very much conscious and killing them wouldn’t be any more just simply because they don’t feel pain.