Reddit Reddit reviews Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence

We found 6 Reddit comments about Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence
Island Press
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6 Reddit comments about Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence:

u/bobmoron · 3 pointsr/botany

You might also want to read Brilliant Green. It has very relevant info.

u/dode74 · 2 pointsr/facepalm

The "right" conclusion? We're back to objective morality again...

I'm semi-serious. It may well be the case that eating vegetables is also considered barbaric. However, I'm not the one claiming equivalency between plant life and animal life. Taking your own argument to the logical conclusion, though, does it not make more sense to simply commit suicide? After all, if you will eat many thousands of plants in your lifetime then you are better off minimizing those plant casualties by dying early. Since that's plainly an absurd position, I posit that there is not an equivalence: not all lives are equal.

That said, the current state of neuroscience is not the end-state of neuroscience. Studies suggest there may well be plant intelligence. To rely on the current state of a branch of science as your bedrock for an apparently objective morality is flawed due to the inherent mutability of scientific knowledge. As the science changes your morality will be forced to do so too.

Now I did explain my own position earlier to you:
>Outside actual food taste, the closer something is to being "me" the more distasteful I find the concept of eating it.
Other humans are pretty close to being actually "me" so I find the concept distasteful, but I would do it under certain circumstances.
Chickens are pretty far from being "me" so I don't find the concept distasteful at all.

u/erl_queen · 2 pointsr/HellenicPolytheism

Ok, so you seem to be making a big assumption that is causing consternation, which is that the soul or spirit is equivalent to the consciousness produced by (in our case) the brain. These are not necessarily related at all. For instance, does a mentally handicapped person not have a soul? What about someone who is in a vegetative coma, does that mean their soul has now departed and they should be honored as an ancestor already despite still being alive? When we die, and our souls move on to Haides or wherever (depending on your beliefs), we no longer have any access to our bodies and brains, and yet our souls may still be conscious and aware (example: the ghosts you mention). Some people also have the ability to send their spirits out from their bodies while in trance. It seems clear to me that the spirit and the physical form/brain are only tenuously connected in many ways.

Not to mention many of us have experiences of, say, communicating with animal spirits (dead or alive) where the spirit appears to understand and be able to communicate at a much higher level than any actual, physical animal is capable of.

Plants don't have to have developed "human-like consciousness" biologically for them to have a spirit attached, existing in parallel as it were, with some level of awareness and engagement with the world. Trees are often hundreds of years old, a spirit that old may well have developed even better awareness and engagement than some human spirits.

But possibly most importantly, plants do have senses and an ability to detect the world around them. They actually have ways of sensing light (as we do with our eyes) and chemicals (as we do with our noses and mouths), and sound vibrations (as we do with our ears), as well as some things we are actually unable to sense. They communicate with each other, with fungi, and even with animals through electrical and chemical changes. If you want to totally blow your mind, I highly recommend reading Brilliant Green: The Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence which will explain these things in detail much better than I can. You will never look at plants the same way again.

u/veg-uh-tub-boolz · 1 pointr/facepalm

>The "right" conclusion? We're back to objective morality again...

And back to the fact that you know nothing about metaethics and are merely assuming that there's no objective morality.


>I'm semi-serious. It may well be the case that eating vegetables is also considered barbaric. However, I'm not the one claiming equivalency between plant life and animal life.

I'm not claiming that either. I'm just saying that if plants feel, then going vegan still is the best way to reduce suffering and death of sentient life.

>Taking your own argument to the logical conclusion, though, does it not make more sense to simply commit suicide?

Nope.

>After all, if you will eat many thousands of plants in your lifetime then you are better off minimizing those plant casualties by dying early. Since that's plainly an absurd position, I posit that there is not an equivalence: not all lives are equal.

I agree, eating plants is fine. I was showing how your position didn't make sense. I don't think plants feel or think.


>That said, the current state of neuroscience is not the end-state of neuroscience. Studies suggest there may well be plant intelligence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal)

"Plant perception or biocommunication is the paranormal idea that plants are sentient, that they respond to humans in a manner that amounts to ESP, and that they experience pain and fear. The idea is not accepted, as plants lack nervous systems.[1][2][3][4]Paranormal claims in regard to plant perception are considered to be pseudoscience by many in the scientific community.[1][2][5][6]"

> To rely on the current state of a branch of science as your bedrock for an apparently objective morality is flawed due to the inherent mutability of scientific knowledge. As the science changes your morality will be forced to do so too.

Again, even if plants are sentient, going vegan and eating plants directly is still the best way to reduce suffering and death of sentient life.

>Now I did explain my own position earlier to you:
>>Outside actual food taste, the closer something is to being "me" the more distasteful I find the concept of eating it.
>Other humans are pretty close to being actually "me" so I find the concept distasteful, but I would do it under certain circumstances.
>Chickens are pretty far from being "me" so I don't find the concept distasteful at all.

So it's more okay to eat someone with a different skin color than it is to eat someone who is the same race as you?

u/wooliestbear · 1 pointr/Futurology

And as I said, as we currently understand, the jury is still out on whether or not plants are able to feel and perceive. Yes plants do have responsiveness, but so does a light bulb attached to a wire when we run a current through it. We do not know if there is someone home with plants. The lightbulb isn't feeling or perceiving anything but it is responding to stimuli.

I realize this sounds similar to Cartesian animal-machine thinking of the past and I will be checking out this book in the future, as there is lots of interesting work being done with regards to plant 'neurobiology'. However, as I said, I don't think this in anyway justifies the exploitation of animals we know to be sentient.

You're right, CAFO farms are not the only source of animal flesh. However, there is debate whether or not small production can ever be mainstream given supply and demand. There will always be someone willing to purchase and sell at a lower price, a lower prices usually include increases in production efficiency at the expense of animals. That's also ignoring a large amount of people who can't afford "humane" products.

For me, all of this is aside from the point. I think it is wrong to exploit sentient animals in any setting.

u/Zandesh · -3 pointsr/vegan

Sentient plants
As in regards to the sentient versus non-sentient debate, most vegetarians seems to have agreed upon ignoring scientific explorations and research that dates back even way back from Greek philosophers to Charles Darwin, and plant neurobiologists of today have made a wide variety of research and reports which findings seem to conclude that plants are indeed sentient.

examples are:

Plant-Environment Interactions: From Sensory Plant Biology to Active

Plant Behavior (Signaling and Communication in Plants)3 Mar 2009
by František Baluška

https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Green-Surprising-History-Intelligence/dp/1610916034

And I know most of you would use: But but but, more plant lives is being harvested to feed farm animals rather than if only consuming the plants.

But that argument is absolutely invalid in this specific debate, since the debate goes on: It's okay to kill plants rather than animals, just because plants are "non-sentient".