Political Crossfire Forums

[Selfish_Meme]

Whats the difference between eating an animal and a plant? Both are sentient because they feel. You are just practising speciation.

While I do think there is no need to treat animals badly just because we eat them. Health reasons is one of the best reasonsfor not eating animals. The majority of people could afford to eat more vegetable matter, but that doesn't mean thats all we should eat.

Our gut evolved to deal with many types of food because we were opportunistic. We ate whatever there was around. This should not affect our morals, because the fact is we kill something whether it be animal or vegetable to live.

[Canada_Rocks]

Plants aren't sentient.

[Selfish_Meme]

Gogo Yubari wrote: Plants aren't sentient.

sentient

/sensh’nt/

• adjective able to perceive or feel things.

— DERIVATIVES sentience noun sentiently adverb.

— ORIGIN from Latin sentire ‘to feel’.

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&freesearch=sentient&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=exact

2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sentient

Quote: It is doubtful that plants feel in the same manner as humans. It is true that they do not have a nervous system. However, they do respond to experienced stimuli. These responses are call tropisms.
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/newsletters/hortupdate/julaug01/art5jul.html

Quote: His research in plant stimuli were pioneering, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals. He therefore found a parallelism between animal and plant tissues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose

I think its obvious that plants do feel and experience stimuli so therefore can be considered sentient.

They are biological tissue the same as humans and animals, some plants have a high corelation of genes with humans even. Some are much more complex genetically.

As I said vegetarians are just practising speciation, there is no moral superiority to not eating animals.

[revolution_reversal]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Gogo Yubari wrote: Plants aren't sentient.

sentient

/sensh’nt/

• adjective able to perceive or feel things.

— DERIVATIVES sentience noun sentiently adverb.

— ORIGIN from Latin sentire ‘to feel’.

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&freesearch=sentient&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=exact

2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sentient

Quote: It is doubtful that plants feel in the same manner as humans. It is true that they do not have a nervous system. However, they do respond to experienced stimuli. These responses are call tropisms.
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/newsletters/hortupdate/julaug01/art5jul.html

Quote: His research in plant stimuli were pioneering, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals. He therefore found a parallelism between animal and plant tissues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose

I think its obvious that plants do feel and experience stimuli so therefore can be considered sentient.

They are biological tissue the same as humans and animals, some plants have a high corelation of genes with humans even. Some are much more complex genetically.

As I said vegetarians are just practising speciation, there is no moral superiority to not eating animals.

why the hell are all you ARA's always using the worst arguement. screw morality, use your logic. Like these people don't understand moral reasoning, and you aren't epistemologically showing your morals very well.

As for the dude above me, you are hopeless, they used the term tropism that means its different. They don't react to stimuli like an animal does. Plants are not animals, they can't fear or react like an animal can. Lets keep in mind that these are two scientifically different kingdoms in the natural world here people. You ever wonder why plant biology and animal biology is alway separate?

Now presuming for some wild scientific discovery that proves you right, lets take this angle, its smarter for human's as a species to significantly cut our meat consumption. On the basis of how much vegatables it takes to produce meat, how much land it takes to graze, and how much it costs to transport all of this meat. And finally how much water it takes to do all the above.

[Canada_Rocks]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Gogo Yubari wrote: Plants aren't sentient.

sentient

/sensh’nt/

• adjective able to perceive or feel things.

— DERIVATIVES sentience noun sentiently adverb.

— ORIGIN from Latin sentire ‘to feel’.

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=dict&freesearch=sentient&branch=13842570&textsearchtype=exact

2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sentient

Quote: It is doubtful that plants feel in the same manner as humans. It is true that they do not have a nervous system. However, they do respond to experienced stimuli. These responses are call tropisms.
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/newsletters/hortupdate/julaug01/art5jul.html

Quote: His research in plant stimuli were pioneering, he showed with the help of his newly invented crescograph that plants responded to various stimuli as if they had nervous systems like that of animals. He therefore found a parallelism between animal and plant tissues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose

I think its obvious that plants do feel and experience stimuli so therefore can be considered sentient.

They are biological tissue the same as humans and animals, some plants have a high corelation of genes with humans even. Some are much more complex genetically.

As I said vegetarians are just practising speciation, there is no moral superiority to not eating animals.


Plants arent sentient. They are not aware

They do not have a consciousness.

They are not sentient MR Meriam Webster

[Selfish_Meme]

revolution_reversal wrote: As for the dude above me, you are hopeless, they used the term tropism that means its different. They don't react to stimuli like an animal does. Plants are not animals, they can't fear or react like an animal can. Lets keep in mind that these are two scientifically different kingdoms in the natural world here people. You ever wonder why plant biology and animal biology is alway separate?
Well ad hominem and all your argument still doesn't stand up, you are saying that its system of feeling is different therefore it isn't sentient, which is rubbish. If we knew an alien species that are intelligent and they don't have central nervous systems, then you would be a specist, just as bad as a racist. Plants can and do shy from bad stimuli, loud noise and stuff. Just because they do it at a much slower rate does not invalidate the response.

By the way Gobu, one definition of sentient is to feel, not only conciousness.

[Selfish_Meme]

Gogo Yubari wrote:


Plants arent sentient. They are not aware

They do not have a consciousness.

They are not sentient MR Meriam Webster
sentient
One entry found for sentient.
Main Entry: sen·tient
Pronunciation: 'sen(t)-sh(E-)&nt, 'sen-tE-&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : AWARE
3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling

If your gonna provide a refernce at least provide the full thing.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=sentient

[XiangYu]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Gogo Yubari wrote:


Plants arent sentient. They are not aware

They do not have a consciousness.

They are not sentient MR Meriam Webster
sentient
One entry found for sentient.
Main Entry: sen·tient
Pronunciation: 'sen(t)-sh(E-)&nt, 'sen-tE-&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : AWARE
3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling

If your gonna provide a refernce at least provide the full thing.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=sentient Agreed w/ Gogo. Plants aren't sentient...

[Selfish_Meme]

TwinkieDP wrote: Agreed w/ Gogo. Plants aren't sentient...
Wow, you convinced me... :bana:

[XiangYu]

Selfish_Meme wrote: TwinkieDP wrote: Agreed w/ Gogo. Plants aren't sentient...
Wow, you convinced me... :bana: Not like you've done a better job of convincing anyone... I know how to quote a dictionary too. But your definitions don't fit.

Perhaps we should practice cannibalism as well, since there really is no moral superiority in eating plants over animals, then it should follow that there is no moral superiority in favoring animal meat over human meat.

Then the old and the mentally retarded should be butchered for food, they are pretty much useless to society, by your logic

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

[Selfish_Meme]

TwinkieDP wrote: Not like you've done a better job of convincing anyone... I know how to quote a dictionary too. But your definitions don't fit.
Show me?

TwinkieDP wrote: Perhaps we should practice cannibalism as well, since there really is no moral superiority in eating plants over animals, then it should follow that there is no moral superiority in favoring animal meat over human meat.

Then the old and the mentally retarded should be butchered for food, they are pretty much useless to society, by your logic

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:
If that is all you base your morality on yes it would be possible. But how about basing it on history and sapience rather than biology. How about we want to promote the success of our own species making it important to succour the young. How about family makes our chances of success greater so we shouldn't eat the old and mentally retarded because they are family. How about society makes us more succesful as a species so we should encourage as many people as we can to be members of that society so making it wrong to eat the old and infirm.

[Selfish_Meme]

It is the paradox of vegetarianism that makes your reverse conjecture possible. Differentiating between one form of biology and another makes no sense. In the end the similarities are greater than the differences. Basing your stand on something other than whether it is human or animal or plant would be a better base. Like reasoning, sapiency, even ability to feel fear, as Singer suggests. Overall if you apply his equality of consderation you must apply it everywhere. You can't just pass over one phylum.

[XiangYu]

Ookay, so Selfish Meme's only problem is when people use the argument that "plants are not sentient" to morally justify vegetarianism. Sounds like nitpicking to me...
I eat all kinds of foods, except for human flesh...

[Selfish_Meme]

TwinkieDP wrote: Ookay, so Selfish Meme's only problem is when people use the argument that "plants are not sentient" to morally justify vegetarianism. Sounds like nitpicking to me...
I eat all kinds of foods, except for human flesh...
No my problem is that there is no good moral reason for vegetarianism.

There could be good reasons not to eat people eg reasoning, empathy, family, society, so the reverse case is covered. But if you are going to eat plants you may as well eat animals, especially those of lower orders that are closer to the level of plants. There could be good reasons not to eat higher animals, eg they were close to our own powers of reasoning or empathy.

There could be other good reasons for vegetarianism that I think are much better to pursue, health, world resources, and polution.

[Canada_Rocks]

TwinkieDP wrote: Ookay, so Selfish Meme's only problem is when people use the argument that "plants are not sentient" to morally justify vegetarianism. Sounds like nitpicking to me...
I eat all kinds of foods, except for human flesh...

Lats time I checked that was his main argument. i debunked it and moved on. I do not need to prove anything anyways. Science and nutrition has proven my case for me. All these anti-vegan thread do is make fun of vegans, people come in and say stupid things like MeMe has already demonstrated and then they go away.

I don;t care if people eat meat, I eat meat. That doesn't mean that veganism is all of a sudden "stupid", like so many people here are trying to say.

[XiangYu]

Selfish_Meme wrote: TwinkieDP wrote: Ookay, so Selfish Meme's only problem is when people use the argument that "plants are not sentient" to morally justify vegetarianism. Sounds like nitpicking to me...
I eat all kinds of foods, except for human flesh...
No my problem is that there is no good moral reason for vegetarianism.

There could be good reasons not to eat people eg reasoning, empathy, family, society, so the reverse case is covered. But if you are going to eat plants you may as well eat animals, especially those of lower orders that are closer to the level of plants. There could be good reasons not to eat higher animals, eg they were close to our own powers of reasoning or empathy.

There could be other good reasons for vegetarianism that I think are much better to pursue, health, world resources, and polution. Didn't you just argued that Plants are sentient? Now you are trying to create a Hierarchy of what people should or should not eat based on reasoning powers of the prey? WTF, you are contradicting yourself.

You are arguing simply for the sake of arguing. If its that important for you to win an argument then "I bow to your superior intellect" +P for no other reason than your sorry attempt at using consistency in your logic.

[Selfish_Meme]

TwinkieDP wrote: Didn't you just argued that Plants are sentient? Now you are trying to create a Hierarchy of what people should or should not eat based on reasoning powers of the prey? WTF, you are contradicting yourself.

You are arguing simply for the sake of arguing. If its that important for you to win an argument then "I bow to your superior intellect" +P for no other reason than your sorry attempt at using consistency in your logic.
I never said anything about not eating plants, I was only saying that justifying vegetarianism from a moral standpoint is tenuous.

I don't think vegetarianism is 'stupid' and I never hinted that it was.

Saying something isn't so is not debunking either.

[Canada_Rocks]

Poeple believe killing animals for food is immoral. Now that is just their belief. If you get offended becasue you infer that they are calling you immoral becasue you eat meat that is your problem. Poeple can make a moral argument for just about anything but when you try to battle subjective morals, you will not suceed.

[Selfish_Meme]

Gogo Yubari wrote: Poeple believe killing animals for food is immoral. Now that is just their belief. If you get offended becasue you infer that they are calling you immoral becasue you eat meat that is your problem. Poeple can make a moral argument for just about anything but when you try to battle subjective morals, you will not suceed.
I agree, people will believe what they want to believe. I don't get offended except when they try and insult me for no particular reason. What goes for me goes for them, they shouldn't get offended if I question their morals either.

After all how do we learn but by questioning.

[Canada_Rocks]

Selfish_Meme wrote: Gogo Yubari wrote: Poeple believe killing animals for food is immoral. Now that is just their belief. If you get offended becasue you infer that they are calling you immoral becasue you eat meat that is your problem. Poeple can make a moral argument for just about anything but when you try to battle subjective morals, you will not suceed.
I agree, people will believe what they want to believe. I don't get offended except when they try and insult me for no particular reason. What goes for me goes for them, they shouldn't get offended if I question their morals either.

After all how do we learn but by questioning.

Thats the beauty of it. People that think they are morally superior will belittle others.

That doesn't mean they "can't" play the moral card in an argument. They believe that the slaughter of animals is immoral therefore it is...to them

Just do what I do whenever somebody tries to play the moral card...

Just tell them that morals are relative and subjective and that you don't follow that particular moral code. It will shut those people up quite quickly.
Of course if you are trying to justify genocide or something extreme...you might have a battle on your hands... :wink: