Tree Rights

[trenton]

I have a weird question regarding the ethics of environmentalism. This is about the moral or ethical value of plants such as a tree. I would agree that in a society, humans and animals should have rights. The idea seems to be that as living, conscious, sentient beings both humans and animals have the capacity to experience love or suffering. Therefore, if we are to reduce unnecessary suffering, then we should be kind to humans and animals.

The part that I'm not sure about is in regards to other life forms such as plants. A tree doesn't appear to be conscious or sentient in the same way as humans and animals are, but it definitely is still alive. I would question whether or not it suffers in the same way as we do. If we say that trees should not have rights, then it appears that any value the tree has is a matter of property laws that restrict logging. Therefore the value of a tree is in its utility to a human society rather than the living being having its own value.

My questions are the following.

Is a tree conscious? How do we know one way or the other?

Why should we consider humans and animals as having moral value? How do we compute this with the moral value of a tree?

Why would a tree have moral value on its own terms, regardless of its utility to someone else? Should a tree have rights? If so, then what rights should the tree have?

How would we separate tree rights from animal rights if destroying trees would by extension be destructive to broader wild life?

How do we know if a thing is conscious or not? The cells in my body move in an orderly way, but would we consider the cells in my body conscious, or is consciousness something different the cells moving in my body?

On top of that, if consciousness were produced in the brain as neuroscience claims, then would it be the total creature that is conscious, or would it be some kind of neuron or neurons that are individually or collectively conscious? How do we separate that from the body? Would consciousness be something unified throughout an entire being, or would consciousness be a series of relationships between cells which create the illusion of being a self? In my experience, consciousness appears to be a unified experience of existing rather than fragmented between many cells. Additionally, if consciousness were produced in the brain through some kind of relationship between cells, then am I this relationship between cells, or do I have a brain that isn't me? Is the brain produced by consciousness or is consciousness produced by the brain? How would we tell the difference?

The most important question seems to be, "What the hell is consciousness?" This carries implications for tree rights depending on where we land.

[enchanted]

You can argue all you want but you will never persuade the masses. The disorganized masses (us) always lose to the organized ruling class. 

The type of thinking that claims everything has value and everything has a soul is not new. In fact our distant ancestors and other indigenous peoples thought this. Humanity will again return to this type of thinking when it reaches solid stage turquoise in a couple hundred thousand years.

Edited Friday at 03:34 AM by enchanted

[trenton]

@enchanted Why do you think it will be a couple hundred thousand years rather than about 5 to 10 thousand years?

[Stick]

2 hours ago, trenton said:

@enchanted Why do you think it will be a couple hundred thousand years rather than about 5 to 10 thousand years?

it will be 500 year max at this pace

[PsychedelicEagle]

If you reduce consciousness to the qualia states humans experience (which is usually what humans care about, hence why some of them are able to relate to animals), then by definition animals exhibit states of consciousness closer to humans than plants.

You could then assign an arbitrary value to the conciousness level of that being relative to that of human beings, and use it to compute the expected value of an action.

Interesting question you could then try to estimate a "consciousness lost value" by multiplying the number of individuals below by their assigned value:

To obtain 100 g of protein, how many individual organisms are consumed in each case—soybean plants if the source is soy, and cattle if the source is beef?

Edited Saturday at 02:48 PM by PsychedelicEagle

[Yimpa]

 

[trenton]

18 minutes ago, PsychedelicEagle said:

If you reduce consciousness to the qualia states humans experience (which is usually what humans care about, hence why some of them are able to relate to animals), then by definition animals exhibit states of consciousness closer to humans than plants.

You could then assign an arbitrary value to the conciousness level of that being relative to that of human beings, and use it to compute the expected value of an action.

Interesting question you could then try to estimate a "consciousness lost value" by multiplying the number of individuals below by their assigned value:

To obtain 100 g of protein, how many individual organisms are consumed in each case—soybean plants if the source is soy, and cattle if the source is beef?

I mean, if a soybean plant has less consciousness than a cow, then it looks like we should eat plants more than meat. The reason is that a cow would suffer a lot more in a factory farm than a plant would. In fact, plants often grow fruits for animals to eat because those fruits contain seeds which can naturally be pooped out to help the seeds spread. It looks like the plants want us to eat them in that sense, but the cows would clearly resist being eaten if we see them being attacked by a bear. So if plants appear to be designed for us to eat them because it benefits them, then we probably should eat plants instead of cattle.

This seems to be a sound moral philosophy in my opinion. There might be exceptions if a person has gut problems which might require them to eat meat instead of plants.

[enchanted]

13 hours ago, trenton said:

@enchanted Why do you think it will be a couple hundred thousand years rather than about 5 to 10 thousand years?

I was being pessimistic for effect and humour. Who knows when it will actually happen, its too hard to guess. 

[Yimpa]

Tree rights? Human rights? Lol.

The one who is right is the one who is in power.