| Jay520 said: Bold: I'm not presenting my argument just yet. I'm just answering your question about plants having emotions. Since, we're using Wikipedia articles, then yes, emotions require consciousness. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion . Plants lack feelings, etc because they lack both a brain and nervous system. As for your questions, they are irrelevant as I haven't presented my perspective at all. I'm just answering your question about plants having emotions. |
To cite the Wikipedia-article you linked: emotion is the generic term for subjective, conscious experience
Subjective is the key here. We cannot measure emotion. So we don't know if animals, plants or whatever have these. Sure, I think it's unlikely plants have emotions. But I'm not really sure, emotions are really existing or are something of an illusion our brain produces. Just like if you put a videogame into the console you might think a world exists behind the screen of your television. You may know that it is not the case, but your brain produces the illusion from flickering images. Emotion might be simulated the same, to justify for our consciousness, why we did something that is possibly done by our body automati (like breathing).
All I say is, that it is hard to justify morale/ethics. If someone says he thinks eating animals is morally wrong, because in his opinion killing animals is wrong, than I'm OK with it. If someone says it is morally wrong, because animals have emotions, then I start to argue. Ethics/Moral isn't something that can be much reasoned. People decide about morals and stick to it (or change it later). Our morals have changed pretty much over the last centuries. And they will change more.
