Ok, but what if plants are sentient?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering...
What if survival depends on suffering to some degree?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering...
What if survival depends on suffering to some degree?
I should have phrased the question slightly differently.
It's more around whether animals (e.g. vertebrates) can suffer and experience pain like we do.
The answer is yes - that's why we use animals in pain research and that's why a pig or cow screams when it's cut with a knife for example.
Even fish feel pain [0].
Plants react to stimuli - but plants don't have a nervous system, they don't have nociceptors (neurons responding to life threatening signals) to experience and feel pain, they don't have any means to 'escape pain', e.g. running away from danger.
[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fish-feel-pain...
For instance, you make a point of specifying you're considering whether things can suffer and experience pain like we do.
Why is that the delineating factor here? We don't really understand intelligence of consciousness and we've been basing our measures of both on the only instance where we're relatively confident exists. We think, therefore we are.
But what if we're wrong. What if our way isn't the only way to be intelligent, to be sentient. Why must they experience pain the way we do in order to be afforded protection? If we're just privileging our type of sentience over others, we're just drawing a different line. And always when someone draws a line, I ask, why there?
From there on it's a tough one though...
These are hard questions, I don't expect anyone to have the answers.
Everything kills everything else. Living things are merely temporary storage for genetic information. The genetic information that increase's its number of redundant backups faster then the number of instance failures wins.
However, if you're of the opinion that is unethical to cause more suffering and that killing other beings just to ensure your own survival then plants having sentience is a pickle.
Something has to give. You have to give in to the circle of life and acknowledge that your survival will bring in some measure of suffering to other beings. Or sacrifice yourself since there is no way to eat ethically by your standards.
Obviously, the vast majority of people will choose survival. But now they have to draw a line. What's friend and what's food? And once you draw that line, you have to defend that choice. You can't just say "because it's X", you have to explain why it is so.
I mean, learning all of this has just made me more of a "speciesist". I don't believe there is any way to resolve the conflict.
But I think we need to go on what we know so far, i.e. look at evidence from the scientific community and use our own observations.
You probably thought I put too much emphasis on 'experience pain like we do'.
What I meant was that - I'm borrowing words from C. Sagan - "They (animals) are too much like us". I didn't mean that they exactly experience pain like we do - maybe they do, maybe they don't. But I'm certain animals trapped in the large scale meat industry do suffer.
There have been numerous studies that show that animals feel pain, they think & feel.
And then there are our own observations - if you were growing up with pets - you'll know that animals have their own personality and do whimper and scream out when they are hurt and they do avoid any sources of pain if they can. Same for farm animals.
I think your questions already contains an answer. The line you're talking about or the circle of protection is growing.
There was a time were we exploited and caused enormous suffering towards other human beings on a large scale. We don't do that anymore and have laws that protect against that. We also think that cruetly towards animals is bad and have laws against that. Just those laws don't extend torwards farm animals - I'm sure that time will also come - more and more people are waking up and agree that the way we treat farm animals is just perverted and sick (see Earthlings https://vimeo.com/209647801).
And if we find evidence in the future that there are other ways to be sentient like you hinted at, we will also expand our circle of protection (compassion) to those life-forms.
Edit: typos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer...