if we reduce the meat/dairy industries to such a small scale that truly humane farming is possible, then they will become expensive delicacies and people will eat mostly vegan diets anyway
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Replying to @gabrielamadej @chaosprime
so that would still be a radical change in a positive direction. also: although we have zero reason to believe plant life is sentient, if it was the means by we which we grow/kill it is infinitely more humane
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Replying to @gabrielamadej @chaosprime
the most pressing problem with the meat/dairy industries is the extreme amount of suffering that animals go through in their lives, and the sheer scale of it (that 56 billion land animals die per year, most of them being tortured in horrible factory farm conditions)
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Replying to @gabrielamadej @chaosprime
there's another difference: giving up (or severely reducing) our meat and dairy intake is a trivial sacrifice to amend the suffering we cause, but giving up all food to save plant life is an extreme. suicidal sacrifice
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Replying to @gabrielamadej @chaosprime
so we can invoke a simple ethical principle: it is not right to cause extreme suffering to sentient beings for trivial benefits to us (such as our pleasure)
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Replying to @gabrielamadej @chaosprime
of course, we have no reason to accept the idea that plants are sentient because all we scientifically know about what causes mental states have to do with brains
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Replying to @gabrielamadej
"sentient" means "having senses". plants demonstrably have senses
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Replying to @chaosprime @gabrielamadej
popularly the word is used as if it meant what "sapient" means, but let's not feed into nonsense
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Replying to @chaosprime
i don't believe that's true. popular understandings of sapience has to do with sophisticated congition, whereas sentience has to do with being a subject of experience
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Replying to @gabrielamadej @chaosprime
plants do not have brains and are not subjects of experience. they do not have sensory experience. they might have 'senses' in a limit sense but that's not to do with sentience
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meh, brainolatry. we have no idea what makes a structure able to support a subject of experience and presuming the capacity comes from our magic brains is just chauvinism.
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Replying to @chaosprime
just look at this way: there is overwhelming evidence to believe humans and animals are sentient, where plants *might* be sentient but we have no mechanism to describe and therefore it seems less likely at this point
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Replying to @gabrielamadej
there's no actual evidence that any other human is a subject of experience. most of you claim you are, but that's just what a p-zombie would say, isn't it? animals don't even make the claim
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