The Real Reason For Interest in Plant Sentience Has Nothing to Do With Plants
Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Gary L. Francione, Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach
July 2021

The plant sentience argument is, in a nutshell: we can’t avoid exploiting sentient beings because plants are (supposedly) sentient so it’s fine for us to keep exploiting nonhuman animals. In other words, your salad involved killing sentient beings so go ahead and enjoy that steak... Look at what recognizing sentience has done for nonhuman animals: nothing.

The next time you’re eating with a vegan, ask them about MY suffering and death. (Photo source: foodwine.com)

Every now and then, the internet lights up with the most recent claim that new evidence indicates that plants are sentient; that is, that they are conscious and have some sort of mind and are relevantly similar to animals.

The evidence on which these claims are based establishes at most that plants are alive and conduct various activities, some of which are very complex. That is, the evidence shows that plants react; it does not show that plants respond. For example, in his 2012 book, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses, Tel Aviv University scientist Daniel Chamovitz wrote that plants could see, smell, and hear. This gave rise to a wealth of claims in the popular media that plants were sentient. But when Scientific American interviewed Chamovitz and asked him point blank, “Would you say, then, that plants ‘think’?” Chamovitz replied, “No, I wouldn’t.” He added, “Just as a plant can’t suffer subjective pain in the absence of a brain, I also don’t think that it thinks.”

I want to argue that claims about plant sentience have nothing to do with any sincere interest in plant sentience. The real interest in plant sentience is in challenging the claim that we cannot morally justify continuing to exploit the billions of cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, fishes, etc. That is, the plant sentience argument is, in a nutshell: we can’t avoid exploiting sentient beings because plants are (supposedly) sentient so it’s fine for us to keep exploiting nonhuman animals. In other words, your salad involved killing sentient beings so go ahead and enjoy that steak....

Topics include:

• Plants: They React; They Don’t Respond
• Look at What Recognizing Sentience Has Done for Nonhuman Animals: Nothing
• Corn Carnage
• But What If Plants Are Sentient? Answer: Eat Plants

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PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE (PDF).

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