Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
From: altar@beaufort.sfu.ca (Ted Wayn Altar)
Subject: Plant Pain
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Sender: news@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 16:54:17 GMT
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[This document contains both parts concatenated.]
I see that the old chestnut of “plant pain” has again been
invoked. Apparently, this is a common argument and so, dear
reader, permit me to re-post an older message of mine that
attempts to address this issue in a discursive, but also
humourous manner.
Happy Holiday Season,
ted
THE DIVERSIONARY TACTIC OF PLANT PAIN
TED ALTAR
A. HOW MIGHT CHARLES DARWIN RESPOND?
With respect to this extravagant debate on plant pain we
have at hand a most promiscuous adjoining of some verified
facts with improper inferences. This reminds me of a story
(probably apocryphal as are so many of the best anecdotes)
about Charles Darwin who in his later years was the guest of
a family whose two boys approached him with a clever
deception. Using some old desiccated specimens of insects,
they had deftly attached the wings of a butterfly, the head
of a beetle and the legs of a grasshopper to the body of a
centipede. “We have this strange bug we caught some time
ago” they innocently said, “Can you tell us what it might
be?” Darwin squinted and examined it as best he could and
asked, “Can you remember if it hummed when you caught it?”
he asked in all seriousness. Without smirking, the boys
answered yes, whereupon Darwin replied, “Just as I thought,
it is a humbug!”
B. THE SPECIOUS INFERENCE OF PLANT PAIN.
No doubt we all have been amazed by much “humbug” on this
conference, but maybe no greater example is to be given than
that of “plant pain”. Those whose common sense remains
intact will have no difficulty in accepting as sufficient
the following:
1. Our best science to date shows that plants lack any
semblance of a central nervous system or any other system
design for such complex capacities as that of a conscious
suffering from felt pain.
2. Plants simply have no evolutionary need to feel pain.
Animals being mobile would benefit from the ability to sense
pain; plants would not. Nature does not create gratuitously
such complex capacities as that of feeling pain unless there
should be some benefit for the organism’s survival.
Well, as Oliver Goldsmith realistically observed, “Every
absurdity has its champions to defend it”. And yes, we
have some defenders who would ignore common sense and argue
for plant pain. Remarkable!. But maybe not so remarkable
if we keep in mind the motivation for such humbug. The
following argument has repeated been voiced against the
concern of us who would forward greater regard for the
woefully neglected and grievous suffering of those sentient
creatures who cannot defend, nor articulate in words, their
plight. The following `reductio ad absurdum’ is supposed to
suffice as an irrefutable trashing of animal rights.
Premise(1) If a sentient being can consciously experience
pain and suffering, then it is wrong to inflict
pain & suffering on such a sentient being
Premise(2) Plants are sentient beings that can experience
pain & suffering
Conclusion: It is wrong to inflict pain & suffering on plants.
In order to challenge the acceptability of premise(1), the
anti-AR would have us believe that such a premise
ineluctably leads to the absurd conclusion as stated above.
In order to achieve this coup de grace of animal rights, the
anti-AR who would give little or no coin to premise (1),
would instead introduce the claims of premise(2) as somehow
“scientifically established”. In order to debunk animal
rights as foolish, the anti-AR would first have us believe
in the reality of “plant pain”. Hence, they would attempt
to bury AR into a hole but ironically by first bulldozing a
much deeper one for themselves.
E. “EVERY ABSURDITY HAS ITS CHAMPIONS TO DEFEND IT”
You say that I am merely spinning my wheels on a straw man?
Then permit me to quote from two of the most loquacious and
articulate promoters of plant “pain” on this conference.
Poster A would bait us with the following argument, an
argument that presumably he still holds as having merit by
virtue of his repeated postings of this worn polemic:
AR: “You’re crude and unfeeling; you’d probably laugh
at your mother’s death.”
non-AR: “That’s silly, my mother is a human. A deer isn’t.”
AR: “Deer can suffer, and so do cattle…so I don’t eat meat.”
non-AR: “You apparently have no problem killing plants, though.”
AR: “It’s not the same. Plants aren’t animals.”
non-AR: “You’re killing a living thing for food, nevertheless.”
AR: “But it can’t feel; it’s not sentient; it has no nervous
system.”
non-AR: “Does dissimilarity rule out ‘pain’?”
AR: “Yes.”
non-AR: “That’s completely illogical and unscientific.”
Note how Poster A would invoke the authority of logic and
science as “completely” on his side. Next, consider the
assertions of Poster B:
As a plant molecular biologist with quite a few
refereed papers on the subject of cellular
communication in plants, please allow me to debunk the
unsubstantiated mythology described above. Plants have
no *need* to feel pain? Ridiculous.
When a plant is attacked by an herbivorous insect,
might it not be in the best interest of the plant to
mobilize its chemical defenses in other parts of the
plant in anticipation of further insect attack? When a
leaf is infected by a pathogenic fungus, might the rest
of the plant wish to bolster its chemical and enzymatic
defenses against the spread of the pathogen? News
flash — the plant *would* benefit, hence the
development of a systemic (throughout the plant)
response to local tissue damage by herbivores and
pathogens. (Many) references available upon request.
It might easily be argued that *because* plants can’t
move they need effective chemical defenses and
effective detection and communication. This is the
case. You may doubt the sensory and integrative
abilities of plants, so I invite you to spend a few
weeks in my lab and learn the truth. Plants don’t have
nerves, since they don’t share a particularly recent
common ancestor with animals. Plants feel tissue
injury and respond quickly, precisely, and with an
effective battery of defenses. They don’t feel *like
us*, but it would be a mistake to say that they *don’t
feel*.
Here we have the authority of logic, science and “truth”
being imprecated against the sorry state of AR nescience and
“mythology”. Yet, no single published book, or paper in a
scientific journal, has been cited as indeed making this
claim that “plants feel pain”. Sure, there is interesting
evidence about plants reacting to local tissue damage and
even sending signalling molecules serving to stimulate
certain chemical defenses of nearby plants. But what has
this got to do with supporting the only morally relevant
claim worth considering, namely that “plants FEEL AND SUFFER
from pain”? Where are the scientific references for this
putative fact?
Now, dear reader, please be patient with my indulgence to
develop a reasoned reply to such assertive and authoritative
pronouncements about plant pain.
C. A REDUCTIO ON A REDUCTIO
Although the plant pain promoters are fond of reductios,
they will not likely appreciate the following extension of
their own. By their “logic”, it would equally be the case
that rain clouds behave purposefully in the sense that they
could be said to functionally remove, by way of raining,
excessive moisture that is causing their overstaturation.
Furthermore, rain clouds bear meaningful information about
their level of oversaturation in the form of weight relative
to volume. Do not clouds, therefore, “sense” (in some
tortured notion of the word) when atmospheric pressure is
insufficient for their moisture content to remain in a
vaporous state? The promoters of plant pain would have us
believe, against our good common sense, that by the mere
presence of purposive BEHAVIOURS of avoidance and REACTIONS
to tissue damage in plants we therefore must attribute to
plants mental states like that of some kind of “felt pain”.
Well, then by the same logic we must do the same to clouds.
In the hole that these promoters of plant pain would dig for
themselves, not only must we accept the thesis of plant
pain, we would also have to swallow some notion of “cloud
sentience”!
D. THE BEHAVIOURAL INFERENCE OF MENTAL STATES
Lest we forget the ultimate point of what follows, let us
not forget the central thesis of AR. Simply stated: to the
extent other animals share with us, at least to some degree,
certain morally relevant attributes, then to that extent we
cannot ignore, for the purposes of consistency or justice,
giving due regard and concern towards those animals. Two
attributes that are arguably relevant are:
1. our commonly shared interest in the avoidance of
pain and suffering.
2. and the quality of other animals also being
subjects-of-a-life which matters to them as to how such
a life fares well or ill.
Both these qualities posit other animals having certain
mental states. Also note that in order to speak of “mental
states” proper, we would denote, as common usage would
dictate, that such states are marked by consciousness. It
is simply insufficient to mark off mental states by only the
presence of purposefulness or intentionality since many
objects, like thermostats and hand calculators, possess
purposeful-looking behaviours or are in an information-
bearing state.
Let us further observe that the attribution of morally
relevant mental states to even humans was at one time an
issue of contention. For example, consider the case of that
very prestigious scientific apologist of his society’s
ambient prejudices, Silas Mitchell, founder of American
neurology. He claimed that civilized men suffered pain in a
far more ethically relevant manner:
“In our process of being civilized we have won . . .
intensified capacity to suffer. The savage does not
feel pain as we do” [1].
Today, we can witness a similar prejudice that animals do
not suffer pain to the same capacity as we do. For
instance, a cow after surgery will right away start eating
grass, therefore it will be said that the cow cannot be
suffering from post-surgery pain. Just as with the stoic
“savage”, who is to say that a cow is not likewise simply
bearing the pain more “heroically” since, as with the non-
civilized human, food is more of an imperative than moaning
with pain; indeed, what else can they do?
So then, how do we properly attribute the existence of
mental states to other animals, or even to ourselves for
that matter, since in the past we have certainly made
mistakes on this score? As we have seen, the *criterion of
outward functional behaviour* has been faulty with even
humans. Yet, our plant pain promoters would employ this
same criterion at a different level, turn things on their
head and argue that because plants react to noxious stimuli,
they therefore feel pain. Now, if the inference of pain
from overt behaviours has been faulty for attributing pain
where we now know pain most assuredly exists, then it is
probably equally faulty in attributing pain where pain does
not exist. If reactions or behaviours were sufficient, then
we would have to say that a mere toy doll crying and
wriggling, when triggered to do so by certain stimuli, was
indeed in pain.
Similarly, we cannot infer the presence of felt pain simply
by the presence of a sub-class of behaviours which are
functional for an organism’s amelioration or avoidance of
noxious stimuli. Thermostats obviously react to thermal
changes in the environment and respond in a functionally
appropriate manner to restore an initial “preferred” state
thereby maintaining an equilibrium of the status quo. We
would be dirt foolish, however, to then attribute to
thermostats that therefore they must “sense” or “feel” some
kind of “pain”. Even warning quotes around our terms don’t
protect us from such an catachrestic absurdity.
Clearly, the behavioral criterion of even functional
avoidance/defense reactions, is simply not sufficient nor
even necessary for the proper attribution of pain as a felt
mental state. This is not to say that it is completely
irrelevant for it can at least index the presence of pain in
those creatures we already know or have good reason to
believe experience and suffer pain. Behaviour by itself
does not index pain in our toy doll or thermostat, but
behaviour does usefully index the occurrence of pain and
suffering in those animals that we already have reason to
believe have the capacity to suffer.
E. THE RELEVANCE OF SPECIALIZED STRUCTURE
To state the obvious, science, including the biological
sciences, are generally committed to the working assumption
of scientific materialism or physicalism [2]. Now, unless
the “new” biology has returned to some arcane version of
vitalism or dualism, then we must start with the generally
accepted scientific assumption that matter is the only
existent or real primordial constituent of the universe.
Let it be said at the outset that scientific materialism as
such does not preclude the existence of emergent or
functional qualities like that of mind, consciousness, and
feeling (or even, dare I say it, free will), but all such
qualities are dependant upon the existence of organized
matter. If there is no hardware, there is nothing for the
software to run on. If there is no intact, living brain,
there is simply no mind. Now, just for the record it should
also be said that even contemporary versions of dualism or
mind-stuff theories will also make depended their embodied
mental states in this world on the presence of sufficiently
organized matter.
To briefly state the case, what is referred to as non-
reductive materialism [3] would simply consider cognitive
functions like consciousness and mind as emergent properties
of sufficiently organized matter. Just as breathing is a
function of a complex system of organs referred to
aggregately as the respiratory system, so too is
consciousness a function of the immensely complex
information-processing capabilities of a central nervous
system. Now, according to such a neo-functionalist account
of mental states, HOW the matter is organized and in with
WHAT materials is not necessarily delimited to the mammalian
brain. It is possible in theory, that our Alpha Centaurians
who evolved from carrots could equally instantiate some
“higher” functions of consciousness. This may even be
possible with a future computer given a sufficiently complex
and orderly organization of its hardware and clever
software. While such a computer does not yet exist, and we
don’t yet know about those Alpha Centaurians, we DO know
that certain living organisms on this planet do possess the
requisite complexity of specialized and highly organized
structure for the emergence of mental states.
In theory, plants could possess a mental state like pain,
but IF, AND ONLY IF there is a requisite complexity of
organized plant tissue which could serve to INSTANTIATE the
kinds of complex information processing that is prerequisite
to such higher order mental states as that of consciousness
and felt pain. A mammalian brain is not necessary but an
immensely complex hierarchically organized central processor
of some form would be.
Now, where is the morphological evidence that such a
complexity of tissue in plants exist? Single cells or even
aggregates of surrounding tissue is not sufficient for there
to be a functional state of felt pain any more than even
todays complex integrated circuit chips evince consciousness
of any kind. A lot is required and plants just don’t have
it. This is not to say that they cannot exhibit complex
reactions, but we are simply OVER-INTERPRETING such
reactions when they are designated as “felt pain”.
With respect to all mammals, birds, and reptiles, we know
that they possess a sufficiently complex neural structure to
enable felt pain plus an evolutionary need for such
consciously felt states. They possess complex and
specialized organizations of tissue call sense organs, they
possess a specialized and complex structure for processing
information and for centrally orchestrating appropriate
behaviours in accordance with mental representations,
integrations and reorganizations of that information. The
proper attribution of felt pain in these animals is well
justified, but it is not for plants by any stretch of the
imagination.
ted
I. REFERENCES
[1] Cited from M. Pernick’s (1985) “A CALCULUS OF SUFFERING:
PAIN, PROFESSIONALISM AND ANESTHESIA IN 19TH C.
AMERICA. New York: Columbia University Press. Cited
in turn in Bernard Rollin’s (1989), “THE UNHEEDED CRY:
ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS, ANIMAL PAIN AND SCIENCE”.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. I would strongly
recommend Rollin’s book as a very well argued and
documented scholarly work on this important issue.
[2] Burtt, E. A. (1924). THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF
MODERN SCIENCE. London: Routledge & Kegan
[3] See Flanagan, Owen’s THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND (2n ed).
Mass.: The MIT Press. Provides for a good review of
these issues.
THE FALLACIES BEHIND THE PLANT PAIN ARGUMENT
Many are destined to reason wrongly, others, not to
reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do
reason. (Voltaire)
How, then, could anybody seriously entertain this humbug of plant
pain? Is it not remarkable that the most persistent and
articulate of the anti-AR would forward such contentious and
prima facie absurd claims. But I guess it is not so remarkable
if we keep in mind their dogged intent to debunk the claims of
animal rights, seemingly no matter at what cost to good sense,
rationality, or even established scientific fact. Since, as we
have seen, many would claim to be avowed ethical subjectivists,
at least when it is convenient to do so, I guess we should not be
surprised that rationality and intellect is merely made sullied
handmaidens for advancing their quest to discredit the case for
animal rights.
What follows, dear reader, are five of the common flaws of reason
masquerading as arguments on behalf of plant rights.
1. Error #1: THE ARGUMENTUM AD IGNORANTIUM
In the name of open-mindedness, we are asked to take seriously
the claim of plant pain because the disbelievers and the
incredulous simply cannot prove that plants have no felt pain, or
that our knowledge of such things as with many other things, is
simply incomplete and uncertain. For instance, it has been said
that:
“The simple fact that “cruelty” cannot be DIS-proved
introduces reasonable doubt into this argument.”
Here we have the presumption of innocence found in a court of law
being inappropriately transferred to how scientific theories are
to be established or seriously entertained. Normally, we would
argue on BEHALF of a scientific theory by presenting evidence for
it, not by pointing to our current lack of evidence unless one is
arguing AGAINST a theory. The plant pain promoters would turn
the logic of scientific justification on its head.
Now, in a general or ultimate sense it is TRIVIALLY TRUE that
there is no final “proof” against such wild notions, but then
there is also no ultimate proof against unicorns or ghosts. It
is a well known INFORMAL FALLACY to conclude from a lack of
disproof for something’s existence that it therefore exists or
must be taken as a serious possibility for existence. That is to
say, it is simply false to argue that a proposition is true
simply on the basis that it has not been proved false. The idea
here is to try to persuade people of a proposition which avails
itself of facts and reasons the falsity or inadequacy of which is
not readily discerned.
This flawed logic is technically referred to by logicians as the
“ARGUMENTUM AD IGNORANTIUM” (argument from ignorance). This is a
logically invalid argument, one that would exploit our common
ignorance of things. Now, you might ask, why shouldn’t we permit
speculative theories to enter into our foundation of ethics.
Consider, however, the following example:
“no breath of scandal has ever touched the mayor,
therefore she is MUST be incorruptibly honest”.
Maybe she is and maybe she is not, but our ignorance does not
establish the truth or falsity of the conclusion that she is
incorruptibly honesty. It is simply unfair to employ our
ignorance as the sole basis of support for some social/public
concern.
Similarly, what we DO KNOW about how animals experience pain and
suffering is of relevance for a system of public ethics. What we
do know about plants is that they DO NOT HAVE a nervous system
nor a structure at the cellular level designed to process
information in a manner that would conceivably enable a conscious
suffering of pain or discomfort. What we do NOT YET KNOW about
the workings of plants, of how consciousness in general is
enabled, or of how the universe as a whole works, is simply not
relevant. It is one thing to plea for open-mindedness, it is
quite another to promote intellectual promiscuity under the same
banner.
2. Error #2: EQUIVOCATION OF TERMS TO BOOTLEG A FALSE
CONCLUSION
To understand this very slippery and flawed reasoning that
logicians refer to as the informal fallacy of EQUIVOCATION,
consider the following example:
“The end of a thing is its perfection;
death is the end of life;
hence, death is the perfection of life”
Note the two senses of the word “end” and how the last part of
the sentence confuses them. The word “end” may mean either
“goal” or “last event”. Both meanings are legitimate, but to
confuse the two in an argument is a fallacy. In the example
above we have two legitimate premises but a false conclusion that
does not follow from the premises, unless we remove the
equivocation and rewrite, say, the first premise as:
“The LAST EVENT of a thing is its perfection”.
But such a premise is patently false.
This is exactly the kind of flawed argumentation that is
occurring with our promoters of plant pain. For instance, the
term “sentient” is deemed applicable to plants given ONE of its
meanings to simply be the “responsiveness to sensory stimuli”.
After arguing further that what plants do at a molecular level
can be deemed a “sensory response”, even thought they do not
possess specialized organizations of tissue called sense organs
(see error #3 below), they would then have us accept the
designation that plants are “sentient”.
Let us, for the sake of argument, accept their twisted meaning of
the term of “sentient” to simply mean a functional reaction on a
biochemical or cellular level to noxious or warning stimuli. In
this sense, they will argue that a plant can be said to be
“sentient”. But at a different juncture they would then have us
conclude that because plants are indeed “sentient” they also
“feel” tissue injury or assault as “unpleasant”! What the wily
plant pain promoters have done is simply bootleg a false
conclusion by switching between two quite difference meanings of
the word “sentient”. Permit me to lay it out:
premise 1: Plants are responsive to “sense” impressions
premise 2: As defined in the dictionary, anything
responsive to sense impressions are sentient
conclusion 1: Plants are sentient
Note that premise 1 employs the word “sense” in a very
restrictive manner to mean, for the plant pain promoters,
“reactions to certain stimuli”. Now, for them to jump from this
minimal and idiosyncratic usage of “sentient” to the issue of
plant pain, our wily abusers of ordinary language IMPLICITLY are
forwarding something like the following argument.
conclusion 1: Plants are sentient
premise 3: Sentient beings are conscious of sense
impressions
conclusion 2: plants are conscious of sense impressions
premise 4: To be conscious of a noxious stimuli is felt as
unpleasant
conclusion 3: noxious stimuli to plants is unpleasant
From unpleasant we then arrive at plant pain. Of course, our
plant promoters will protest that they never said that plants
have “consciousness” or “feel” pain, but only that they respond
in a manner similar to how we respond to pain. Well, if that be
truly the only claim and no more, then there is simply no
relevance whatsoever of such an idiosyncratic notion plant “pain”
to the real ethical issue of animals suffering from felt pain.
If it is not irrelevant, then we have either one of 2 results:
1. equivocating on usage of “sentient” to bootleg a false
conclusion. This is a logical, not a semantic, fallacy.
2. redefining what ordinary people mean by pain and
suffering so that these terms no longer refer to a conscious
awareness of pain/suffering. Now we have the error of
irrelevant re-definition. This brings us to the next error
of reasoning.
3. Error #3: LOGOMACHY OR “LET’S PLAY RE-DEFINITION”
. For most people, “sentient” designates the capacity to feel.
That is, it would refer to a mental state, not a mere set of
behaviours. The Oxford English Dictionary list 3 core meanings,
of which the plant pain promoters will selectively choose only
one, it being the most minimal definition, namely:
“def 2: Phys. Of organs or tissues: responsive to sensory
stimuli.”
Of course, they do not look any further. If they were, they
might be surprised to discover that the word “sensory” refers to
the organs of “sense” or belonging to “sensation” In turn, the
words “sense” and “sensation” refers to the organs or mental
states of perception, of psychical affection, of consciousness,
etc. Indeed, it is designated right at the beginning that
“sensation” is “now commonly the subjective element in the
operation of the senses; psychical feeling” (OED). The meanings
that predominate refer to mental states, and as we have noted,
all mental states are marked by consciousness. Yet, our plant
pain promoters ignore these obvious conventions of ordinary word
meanings and would legislate their own. And what motivates this
re-definition of our terms? Certainly, not to promote clarity or
scientific accuracy. If plants have “pain” but no consciousness
then what are we to make of such muddy oxymorons as that of an
“unconscious pain” or an “unfelt pain”?
If our promoters of plant pain weren’t so blunt serious, this
might all be very funny. Indeed, good puns and amusing gaffs
result from an incongruous and inapposite word usage. For
example, someone once stole the seats from all the toilets in a
Canadian RCMP station. The official press release by the
Mounties said that they still had nothing to go on. Methinks our
pain promoters also have nothing to go on.
4. Error #4: REMOTE PARALLELS DO NOT MAKE FOR IDENTITIES
Now, we have been entertained by our plant pain promoters of some
interesting facts like that of oak trees diverting some of its
activity to an increase production of tannic acid in respond to,
say, a Gypsy moth invasion. We are informed that:
> There IS a parallel here, and the relative complexity of the
> sensory and interpretive mechanisms is irrelevant.
The cruel fact remains, however, that PARALLELS DO NOT MAKE FOR
IDENTITIES. Indeed, how something is achieved is just as
important as what is being achieved in order to properly
attribute there to be identity. For animals, conscious
motivation to avoid pain figures very large in how they would
avoid or mitigate pain. Pain is not something that is unfelt.
It makes no sense to speak of “unfelt, unconscious pain”, yet our
plant pain promoters will insist upon there being a morally
relevant parallel.
To illustrate this point about identity, please permit me to work
from a different and more familiar example. Now, it has been
argued that computers “think” as evidence by their capacity to
manipulate symbols. What shall we make of this?.
Searle’s (1980) well-known Chinese room argument, however, at
least makes clear that computers as syntactic engines are not
“understanders” of language even if they should one day be
successful at translating from Chinese to English back to
Chinese. The subjective life and mind accompanying a person’s
performances would seem to involve more than the computer’s
superior efficiency at manipulating data according to sequences
of algorithm-governed operations. To even here speak of “rule-
governed operations” is misleading since it suggests we can talk
of these machines under the description of them “following
rules”. Shanker (1987) makes the case that this violates our
logical grammar of rule-following being a normative rather a
mechanical action and that it is an action predicated on some
necessary minimal “understanding” of the rule. Due to the
literal ascription implied by this trope about computers, we are
lapsing into the same kind of conceptual confusion that would
occur if we were to literally ascribe to the members of a meeting
that they were following Robert’s rules of order even though they
were ignorant of, or did not understand the rules. If we were to
say such a thing, it would only be FIGURATIVE for simply saying
that the members just happen to be inadvertently or unknowingly
abiding by Robert’s rules. Notwithstanding the generosities of
idealization and wishful rhetoric, the computer analogue still
remains a metaphor and one that too often invites a misleading
anthropomorphism (Dreyfus, 1987).
Indeed, as the problems of the computer metaphor are becoming
more widely appreciated and, as Michie (1982) notes, the former
heuristic value of the metaphor is being replaced by more exact
and fruitful formalizations and mathematics, the metaphor is
beginning to become less frequent in the scientific prose of AI
science itself. While anthropomorphic speculation inaugurated
both the animal and computer models, it is a circumspect
anthropomorphism tempered with naturalism that now appears to be
the most fruitful approach for the understanding of animals
(Griffin, 1981), but it is an “objectivist”, or more precisely an
electrical-mechanical and symbolic-mathematical prose, that is
more fitting for AI. With respect to plants, the language of
mental states is simply addleheaded and daft.
5. Error #5: OVER-INTERPRETATION OF ESTABLISHED FACTS
Now, we have been told that “there IS some evidence which shows
that plants are “sentient”, in the broad sense of the word.”
Hmm., more likely the narrow and twisted sense of the word. But
again, all we have is simply the interesting but morally
irrelevant facts about plants reacting to certain noxious
stimuli, or to the signalling molecules of other plants under
attack. We are then asked about how this might be different from
our own sense of smell. They would ask, “is this not equivalent
to plant sensation or of a plant sensing its environment?” By
now, we should be able to readily reply that such usage simply
stretches our ordinary definitions of the word “sense”. Mere
behavioural reactions and avoidance to certain stimuli is
insufficient for the attributions of mental states like that of
perceptions and knowing sensation. Again, we have either an
equivocation of usage to bootleg false conclusion, or we simply
have a re-defninition of our ordinary meanings to something
idiosyncratic and morally irrelevant. HOW the plants do what
they do is just as important as the function of what those
reactions subserve.
Here is an example of over-interpretation that was due to this
error of only observing the end result and not the means. It was
once thought that army ants were comprised of a strategic
military column marching through the forest with direction,
purpose and foresight. Well, it turns out that these ants simply
follow the smell of the ants in front, and in turn the leading
ants simply, in a somewhat random manner, lurch or are, pushed
forward. If these ants were to be placed on a flat surface and
the leading ants were to make a circle back to the rump end of
the column, the marching column of ants would simply go around
and around until they died. Where is the intentional purpose,
planning and foresight? There is no scouting ahead of the
terrain, no deliberative leadership, just a very simply mechanism
that under normal conditions in the uneven terrain of the forest
works very effectively to keep the ants ever moving forward in
search new food supplies. The key point is that for many
centuries people over-interpreted what was going on simply
because they only observed the overt functional behaviours and
not the means and enabling conditions for those behaviours.
6. THE BELIEF IN NON-EXISTENT PAINS. 🙂
Patient reader, permit me to finish with one last observation.
Hypochondriacs are, as you know, people who believe in pains that
simply don’t exist. This much they have in common with our plant
pain promoters. Of course, hypochondriacs also are easily
persuaded that they must themselves have what even the most
superficial description of an illness would describe. I’ll leave
it to the reader to decide if this parallel also applies to our
plant pain promoters. Now, there is the amusing story of one
such person who after hearing a lecture on diseases of the
kidney, immediately phoned his doctor. The good doctor patiently
explained that in that particular disease there were no pains or
discomfort of any kind, whereupon our hypochondriac gasped, “I
knew it, my symptoms exactly!” 🙂
ted
REFERENCES
Dreyfus, Hubert L. (1987). Misrepresenting human intelligence.
In Rainer Born (Ed.), Artificial intelligence: The case
against. London: Croom Helm.
Griffin, Donald R. (1981). The question of animal awareness:
Evolutionary continuity of mental experience (2nd ed.).
California: William Kaufmann. Another good book that I
would highly recommend.
Michie, Donald (1982). Machine intelligence and related topics.
London: Gordon & Breach Science Publishers.
Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 3, 417-457.
Shanker, S. G. (1987). The decline and fall of the mechanist
metaphor. In Rainer Born (Ed.), Artificial intelligence:
The case against. London: Croom Helm.
Taylor, Charles (1964). The explanation of behaviour. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
