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[dreiche2]

How do you know plants don't feel pain?

There are several points to make here, but the most important one is that eating meat "kills" more plants than eating plants, simply because you have to feed plants to the animals you eat in the first place (and it's less efficient than eating plants right away, it's that simple).

Apart from that, it's just a matter of varying degrees of certainty. Am I "sure" that other humans apart from me feel pain? Well, pretty much so - you can never "prove" such a thing, but pragmatically speaking, yes I'm sure. Am I sure that other mammals feel pain? It's at least very likely, because they are evolutionary, anatomically and behaviourally so close to us. I study neuroscience/AI btw, and I can tell you that the brains of other mammals are essentially the same as ours.

Now, the further I go away from mammals (fish? Insect?), the more difficult it is to say. But that I cannot fully exclude that, say, a  stone has feelings shouldn't keep me from trying to avoid causing pain to higher animals where I can be almost sure that it is the case.

And with plants, it is rather unlikely that they feel pain. First, they don't have nervous systems like us. More importantly, developing pain perception just doesn't make sense evolutionary for plants, because the point of pain is to make an organism rapidly avoid the source of the pain, and, well, plants can't move, you know (with very few exceptions).

Even if organisms do have some reflex-based avoidance behaviour, it doesn't mean that they consciously feel pain. But yeah, this is a very very difficult topic. But again, the fact that there exist grey areas shouldn't make me ignore the (almost) white areas.

It is, especially since more and more people are turning into vegas. Personally I think that vegetarianism is the is the biggest bullshit ever. People would like to believe in this, they think that it's good for their health.

As has been pointed out, many people do it for ethical/ecological reasons. Personally, I can see why people say "I just like meat too much", but I feel offended if people question or even ridicule the reasoning behind vegetarianism. I value my rationality very high.

Oh, and with Gandhi, Hitler, Einstein and Christian Bale on my side, I have to be right, right?

[Tormy]

It is, especially since more and more people are turning into vegas. Personally I think that vegetarianism is the is the biggest bullshit ever. People would like to believe in this, they think that it's good for their health.

As has been pointed out, many people do it for ethical/ecological reasons. Personally, I can see why people say "I just like meat too much", but I feel offended if people question or even ridicule the reasoning behind vegetarianism. I value my rationality very high.

Oh, and with Gandhi, Hitler, Einstein and Christian Bale on my side, I have to be right, right?

If you don't eat meat because of ethical reasons, that is totally acceptable. It is not acceptable that some vegas are spreading fake informations, like "eating meat is bad for your health". That is what I call bullshit. Just don't forget, Humans are omnivores genetically.

[G-Flex]

Plants feeling pain? I feel like nobody should even have to argue against that.
Pain is a specific neurological response.

Neurological.

Plants don't have neurology. They cannot, by definition, have pain, or thought.
Why is this difficult for anyone to comprehend?

Also, what sort of evolutionary impetus (or even advantage) would a plant have to know it's in danger? It doesn't help the plant. The plant can't even move or otherwise react to defend itself. Sure, carnivorous plants will respond to things by making simple movements sometimes, but that's based on other, relatively simple mechanisms (trigger hairs and such).

[Pilsu]

Just because they lack a central neurocluster doesn't mean they can be treated any way you like, they're biological creatures    They certainly don't want to die

[Qmarx]

Plants feeling pain? I feel like nobody should even have to argue against that.
Pain is a specific neurological response.

Neurological.

Plants don't have neurology. They cannot, by definition, have pain, or thought.
Why is this difficult for anyone to comprehend?

Also, what sort of evolutionary impetus (or even advantage) would a plant have to know it's in danger? It doesn't help the plant. The plant can't even move or otherwise react to defend itself. Sure, carnivorous plants will respond to things by making simple movements sometimes, but that's based on other, relatively simple mechanisms (trigger hairs and such).

Plants certainly respond in a coordinated way to injury stimuli*.  The mechanism by which it happens is certainly different, but that doesn't mean they neccessarily don't feel pain.

*For example, by producing more pesticidal compounds.

[Tormy]

Just because they lack a central neurocluster doesn't mean they can be treated any way you like, they're biological creatures    They certainly don't want to die

Well in that case, eat water! 

[Soadreqm]

I say: endure.

In enduring, grow strong.

The flesh knows that it suffers, even when the mind does not.

I think that what the human body is designed by nature to do stopped mattering when we ditched the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for farming. It's also unnatural for humans to eat pure sugar, eat every day for their whole life, live in units of more than a few dozen humans, and fly in space. If we let little details like that stop us, we'd still be hunting vermin for food. Living in harmony with nature just means that nature might choose at any time to wipe you out, and no one will care, or even notice.

As for plants feeling pain, that's certainly interesting. Just arguing for the sake of argument here, I'd like to suggest that plants, along with all non-sentient lifeforms, cannot feel pain in the same way sentient lifeforms do. People feel pain, but also concern for their future. If take an ant and lob off one of it's legs, it will writhe as in distress, and try to escape your evil clutches. It certainly knows that it has lost a body part, and that it is in danger. A human in a similar situation is also concerned with the philosophical question of what happens after death; never seeing his loved ones again; the knowledge that even if he lives, legs don't grow back; the knowledge that the pain will go on for some time, no matter what he does. Abstract thinking gives you a lot of new things to fear, and lets you fear them in new ways.

And I certainly don't see how feeling pain would grant the photosynthesizing buggers some cosmic right not to be eaten by me. I have to eat something, or I will die. If I have a moral duty to help to others at my own expense, shouldn't the others also have a moral duty to help me? Lesser lifeforms are ethically required to let me eat them!

Someone mentioned the elves. They certainly have a very interesting approach to eating meat. They would never consider eating innocent animals, and will be angry if anyone else does, but if they are forced to kill something in (pre-emptive) self-defence, it would be a sin against the Earth Mother to let all those nutrients go to waste.

As for the original topic of eating kittens, I am neutral. I probably won't go out of my way to try it myself, but don't really think other people doing it are evil. You shouldn't eat people, but beyond that, everything's fine. Claiming that the cute and cuddly animals have more of a right to exist than the abominations that slither on sea floor is certainly very human, but I try not to do it.

[McDoomhammer]

I rather like the theory that individual ants are not so much organisms as the equivalent of cells in the Colony.  Taken on its own, a random ant or sample of ants cannot reproduce (part of the basic definition of a living organism).  But taken as a whole, the colony has the equivalent of nervous, reproductive, and circulatory systems.

But yes... I pretty much agree with you.  As I hinted before, you can claim moral high ground when you learn to photosynthesize.  But on the flip side, that does not make vegetarianism a bad decision.

[Pi]

We should all eat soylent green. It doesn't harm the poor soybeans or lentils.

[G-Flex]

Plants feeling pain? I feel like nobody should even have to argue against that.
Pain is a specific neurological response.

Neurological.

Plants don't have neurology. They cannot, by definition, have pain, or thought.
Why is this difficult for anyone to comprehend?

Also, what sort of evolutionary impetus (or even advantage) would a plant have to know it's in danger? It doesn't help the plant. The plant can't even move or otherwise react to defend itself. Sure, carnivorous plants will respond to things by making simple movements sometimes, but that's based on other, relatively simple mechanisms (trigger hairs and such).

Plants certainly respond in a coordinated way to injury stimuli*.  The mechanism by which it happens is certainly different, but that doesn't mean they neccessarily don't feel pain.

*For example, by producing more pesticidal compounds.

Define "feel pain". Feeling is neurological. It's limited to animals. You're anthropomorphizing plants too much.

For instance, a complicated machine made by humans right now can be made to detect when it's in trouble and react accordingly. This is the response it has; pain is not part of it. Same goes for plants.

[Pilsu]

You shouldn't eat people

Why not?

Wonder if amputees are allowed to keep their limbs. Would make for good eatin'

[Vaftrudner]

You shouldn't eat people

Why not?

Wonder if amputees are allowed to keep their limbs. Would make for good eatin'

I believe that they are usually burned. The elves are furious, of course.

[BradB]

I would keep my amputated limb, and get it coated in a hard resin or something to preserve it... THEN I WOULD USE IT AS A CLUB AND ROB A BANK WITH IT!

"Is the robber armed?"
"...well....yes"
"What with?"
"an ARM!"
"He is armed with an arm?..."

[Soadreqm]

You shouldn't eat people

Why not?

Well, eating things that die on their own is unhygienic, and killing people is wrong. As for why killing people is wrong, well, that's pretty much the only point all philosophers have more or less agreed upon. It's counter-productive to the society, people are mostly not naturally inclined to do it, if you kill people, they no longer have a reason not to kill you, and it's been defined as wrong by pretty much everyone with any inkling of authority in the matter.

Define "feel pain". Feeling is neurological. It's limited to animals. You're anthropomorphizing plants too much.

For instance, a complicated machine made by humans right now can be made to detect when it's in trouble and react accordingly. This is the response it has; pain is not part of it. Same goes for plants.

Well, if you define feeling pain as something neurological, plants are certainly incapable of it. That, however, skips all the non-neurological anguish you can make something feel. To recycle my earlier example about cutting people's legs off, take a human who has been given lots of magical painkillers that completely remove his ability to feel neurological pain, with no side effects. Is it okay if we saw his leg off without his consent? He cannot feel pain. Does that mean he won't suffer from losing a limb?

Or another example. Imagine that in the future we will be able to replace real nerves with artificial nerves, that are functionally identical. If we remove from a  person all systems that naturally allow him to feel pain, (relevant nerves, parts of his brain, everything else I don't know about,) and replace them with artificial, man-made systems, can he feel pain? He responds to stimuli in exactly the same way as before, but the response isn't neurological. Is it okay if we saw his leg off?

[Kagus]

But what if you kill (and eat) someone who has killed other people?  You said that killing other people would remove their reason to not kill you, so that means you would not have a reason to not kill a murderer.  You could then be provided with someone relatively healthy that you could kill and then dine upon.

Ah, I can imagine "Death Row Sundays" at the state penitentiary...  Come in for a romantic evening with a candlelit dinner of your favorite mass-murderers.  All meals are provided by hanging executions, for health reasons.