Loughborough University
Browse

Plant sentience and the case for ethical veganism

Download (444.62 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-04-12, 13:03 authored by Josh MilburnJosh Milburn

Does the possibility of plant sentience pose a problem for ethical veganism? It has not yet been demonstrated that plants are sentient (i.e., that they can feel). Moreover, even if it were demonstrated that plants could feel, it would also have to be demonstrated that they can feel the affectively “valenced” feelings that are ethically significant, such as pain and fear, rather than just neutral sensations such as darker/lighter, or wetter/drier. Finally, if plants could feel valenced feelings, veganism would likely still be the ethical option, on the principle of causing the least harm.

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • International Relations, Politics and History

Published in

Animal Sentience

Volume

8

Issue

33

Pages

1 - 2

Publisher

WellBeing International

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Author

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by WellBeing International under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2023-04-06

Publication date

2023-04-06

Copyright date

2023

ISSN

2377-7478

eISSN

2377-7478

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Josh Milburn. Deposit date: 6 April 2023

Article number

5

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC