Trees/plants as sentient beings...thoughts please

[pgkevet]

The fact that as a higher life form you are able to express a state (of emotion, pain, joy etc) doesn't exclude other so-called lower forms from experiencing them.

The fact that you have a nervous system primed to react in an overtly manifest fashion - mostly as wired reflexes from hormones, vocalisation, efferent nerve responses etc doesn't exclude lower forms from experiencing distress to noxious stimuli in their own way - even an amoeba will withdraw from a noxious chemical and motile bacteria will be motivated. Your own white cells as single cells will show chemotaxis.

 

If a single cell organism can demonstrate affinity or repulsion to stimuli then it has logic to assume that a multicellular organism with it's differentiations and specialised features will be more capable of responding to a larger range of such stimuli.

 

Where does 'sentience' come from? It's as much our own interpretation of the word limited by our own experience and values. "We think therefore we are"? - but that can fall down as soon as one has to consider what thought is - and it has to either be simple chemical transmitters holding memories and combinations or it has to be some higher more ethereal process? Even single cell plants have a huge array of complex chemicals scurrying about their intra-cytoplasmic structures more than capable of coding electrical charges within those molecules - and if it's ethereal then it may well be the height of arrogance to assume we are special.

 

I have heard a carrot scream.

 

If your nervous demonstrates sentience by virtue of it's rapid responses...does that mean than a slow person is less sentient or capable of such perceptions....slow those processes down further to the speed of a plant without a specialised nervous system and do you have the right to assume it's not sentient?

 

There ya go...food for thought.

 

Which is more cruel - eating 100 whitebait (100 lives) or a a 2lb porterhouse steak (one 250th of a cow)?

[sloth]

The fact that as a higher life form you are able to express a state (of emotion, pain, joy etc) doesn't exclude other so-called lower forms from experiencing them.

The fact that you have a nervous system primed to react in an overtly manifest fashion - mostly as wired reflexes from hormones, vocalisation, efferent nerve responses etc doesn't exclude lower forms from experiencing distress to noxious stimuli in their own way - even an amoeba will withdraw from a noxious chemical and motile bacteria will be motivated. Your own white cells as single cells will show chemotaxis.

 

If a single cell organism can demonstrate affinity or repulsion to stimuli then it has logic to assume that a multicellular organism with it's differentiations and specialised features will be more capable of responding to a larger range of such stimuli.

 

Where does 'sentience' come from? It's as much our own interpretation of the word limited by our own experience and values. "We think therefore we are"? - but that can fall down as soon as one has to consider what thought is - and it has to either be simple chemical transmitters holding memories and combinations or it has to be some higher more ethereal process? Even single cell plants have a huge array of complex chemicals scurrying about their intra-cytoplasmic structures more than capable of coding electrical charges within those molecules - and if it's ethereal then it may well be the height of arrogance to assume we are special.

 

I have heard a carrot scream.

 

If your nervous demonstrates sentience by virtue of it's rapid responses...does that mean than a slow person is less sentient or capable of such perceptions....slow those processes down further to the speed of a plant without a specialised nervous system and do you have the right to assume it's not sentient?

 

There ya go...food for thought.

 

Which is more cruel - eating 100 whitebait (100 lives) or a a 2lb porterhouse steak (one 250th of a cow)?

Interesting thoughts, good post and certainly some food for thought....

Out of curiosity, when did you hear a carrot scream? Was it pleasure or pain?

[pgkevet]

Interesting thoughts, good post and certainly some food for thought....

Out of curiosity, when did you hear a carrot scream? Was it pleasure or pain?

 

 

Listen closely next time you pull a large carrot from packed soil on a wet day..as it sucks out and the root tip snaps while you drag it out by its hair... listen with your soul.

 

 

 

 

(..Man, I can write rubbish! Should have been a spin doctor)

[brassmonkey001]

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river.

 

"Look at the fish swimming about," said Chuang Tzu, "They are really enjoying themselves."

 

"You are not a fish," replied the friend, "So you can't truly know that they are enjoying themselves."

 

"You are not me," said Chuang Tzu. "So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?"