• MaxMalRichtig@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 days ago

    Plants don’t “feel pain”. The entire concept of “pain” is alien to everything without a central nervous system.

    Plants DO however react to stressful external stimuli. They do that in a way, that we will never be able to relate to.

    Some publications use words as “pain” and “suffering” in that context in order to go give non-academic folks something to relate. But on a scientific level, these terms are irrelevant at best.

    • Pudutr0n@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      There is nothing to be said with any certainty about the subjective experience of any of consciousness other than our own. You (and philosophers and scientists) can keep guessing as much as you want, though, and keep pretending to be sure.

      • MaxMalRichtig@discuss.tchncs.de
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        8 days ago

        Read my second sentence again.

        The thing I am SURE about is, that using words and concepts from one area and postulating that they are applying in the same sense in another area, just because we found some loose similarity or similar trait, is logically not sound. See False-Equivalence

        Our understanding of “pain” only makes sense when applying it to beings with a nervous system, because this word describes just THAT.

        It’s like talking about hair and hairstyles and then applying the derived insights to birds, because their feathers “remind” us of hair.

        It just doesn’t apply. Other contexts require dedicated concepts that are not “loaded” by using termina from irrelevant concepts.

        Emotive language does not help your argument. It weakens any validity it might have otherwise.