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[Nadaka]

Carrot juice is murder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santhara#Rationale_of_Starvation
http://everything2.com/title/airitarian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/03/miyuki-hatoyama-japan
http://greenteeth.blog.co.uk/2009/09/17/eat-sunlight-japan-s-weird-approach-to-saving-the-planet-6984809/

[Neruz]

No, plants do not have a nervous system. No plant known to man has nerves of any sort, sensory neurons, motor neurons, anything. Even if they did; they don't have a brain to process those signals anyway.

Define "nervous system", define "pain". There are definitions that apply to some plants. For instance:

nervous system: specialized tissues that aid in the transmission of signals within a living creature.
pain: a biochemical response to damaged tissue.

The nervous system is a network of specialized cells that coordinate the actions of an animal and send signals from one part of its body to another. These cells send signals either as electrochemical waves traveling along thin fibers called axons, or as chemicals released onto other cells. The nervous system is composed of neurons and other specialized cells called glial cells (plural form glia).

This is the current accepted definition of a Nervous System; a network of specialized cells that send signals from one part to another part. Specifically, the cells are various types of neurons (motor, sensory etc) and glial cells (ganglia etc).


Plants possess none of these.

however some of them do have cells that perform the exact same function, to me that is close enough. Its like saying that you are not really talking to someone over the phone because the vibrations don't pass directly from your vocal chords to the other persons ears through the air, instead they are converted to electro-magnetic vibrations in a copper wire for part of the distance.

You're going to need to provide some sources for that.

[Wiles]

You could have at least given the music video

The visual and audio quality of the original music video is shit, that's why I posted the other one. 

[Nadaka]

...

You're going to need to provide some sources for that.

Google is your friend... There is more, but this should be sufficient?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1709102/
http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/neuroview.php
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&list_uids=16843034&cmd=Retrieve&indexed=google
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p01s03-usgn.html

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

someone said to me, we should eat meat.  its unethical and the meat industry attributes to AGW.  I say, ok, i will quit eating meat and help save the planet, when you tell me what the fuck we are gonna do with all those cows and chickens now!"

[ChairmanPoo]

specialized cells do not equate a central nervous system.

[Jackrabbit]

someone said to me, we should eat meat.  its unethical and the meat industry attributes to AGW.  I say, ok, i will quit eating meat and help save the planet, when you tell me what the fuck we are gonna do with all those cows and chickens now!"

Milk them and egg them!

Vegans get no say. No idea what we'll do with the rest of them though.

[Nadaka]

specialized cells do not equate a central nervous system.

Having read some of my references a little deeper? There is one thing you are right about. Its not a central nervous system. The plants have distributed clusters of "brains" (root apices) interconnected by "nerves" (vascular strands containing plant specific neurotransmitters).

[G-Flex]

Something's ability to react to stimuli in a centrally-controlled manner doesn't mean it has a "brain" in a sense that need matter to ethics, or else there would be laws against the inhumane treatment of computers. What's more important is the question of conscience and self-awareness.

[Nadaka]

Something's ability to react to stimuli in a centrally-controlled manner doesn't mean it has a "brain" in a sense that need matter to ethics, or else there would be laws against the inhumane treatment of computers. What's more important is the question of conscience and self-awareness.

Not really, I never made that assertion. You don't need to be self aware or have a conscience to be able to feel pain.

[G-Flex]

I meant "consciousness", not "conscious". Typo. If you aren't in any way conscious, there's no real "you" to feel pain in the first place. I know this is really intellectually tricky territory.

[Reasonableman]

Hrm. What is pain? Never really heard it defined in any but the loosest terms. Is it the reaction of a system designed to detect damage to an organism? Or is it more specifically the overwhelmingly unpleasant experience we're all familiar with? Then what about people who deliberately inflict pain upon themselves because they find it in some fashion enjoyable? It's all very... fuzzy. It's even fuzzier when you consider that largely we determine what is and is not pain based on our reaction to it, rather than the substance of the thing. If it can even be called a thing.

If I go on this is gonna get metaphysical and none of us want that.

EDIT: I'd like also to remind everyone that, even if the chicken I am eating was slaughtered in the most horrific manner possible, and torn slowly limb from limb in screeching, horrible agony, I would find it no less delicious, nor have any particular qualms about eating it. The end result is, on all ends except that of the person doing the torturing, the same. As for them, they have their own problems they need to deal with.

[G-Flex]

Hrm. What is pain? Never really heard it defined in any but the loosest terms. Is it the reaction of a system designed to detect damage to an organism? Or is it more specifically the overwhelmingly unpleasant experience we're all familiar with? Then what about people who deliberately inflict pain upon themselves because they find it in some fashion enjoyable? It's all very... fuzzy. It's even fuzzier when you consider that largely we determine what is and is not pain based on our reaction to it, rather than the substance of the thing. If it can even be called a thing.

If I go on this is gonna get metaphysical and none of us want that.

The ability of a system to sense that something is wrong certainly isn't enough, because that in itself is not unpleasant. A computer can tell when it has a virus, and my TV can blink lights at me in a certain order to vaguely state what's wrong with it if it breaks; that doesn't really mean they "feel pain", because they aren't feeling anything. The key thing here is that something has to be able to suffer from it.

[Nadaka]

purely anecdotal, I cut my finger nearly off in a horrific cooking accident, I was coincidentally cutting meat to make a sandwich. Fortunately the blade got stuck in the bone instead of going clean through. Did I suffer? Not at all, the only effect it had on my ability to act was that I had to hold it shut with my thumb to keep jets of blood from squirting out. But I'll be damned if it didn't hurt as I drove myself to the hospital.

Your definition of pain, just like Neruz's definition of nervous system (that applied only to animals) is anthropocentric. It is defined from the standpoint that we are special on the basis of implementation, rather than purpose and function. There are those who once claimed that animals were incapable of pain, practically everyone now agrees that this is not the case.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

someone said to me, we should eat meat.  its unethical and the meat industry attributes to AGW.  I say, ok, i will quit eating meat and help save the planet, when you tell me what the fuck we are gonna do with all those cows and chickens now!"

Give them to me to eat. Especially the chickens.