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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Replying to @gabrielamadej
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 @chaosprime
it's not brain chauvinism because i'm not saying it's impossible, just unlikely in a way that doesn't factor into everyday moral considerations
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this likelihood cutoff smacks of arbitrariness
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