But what I am arguing is that is an anthropocentric view of what constitutes pain and suffering. We cannot assume either is not possible without a nervous system. It’s worth at least looking into the concept even though we don’t know that there would be a mechanism simply based on what we know about plants so far. I myself would put myself on the no side when it comes to whether or not plants feel pain, but I couldn’t say that it was a 100% definite no by any means and I think we may feel very differently about what it means to be a plant and what plants are capable of in 20 years.
You’ve got to operate on evidence, there’s an infinite number of things you can’t falsify and you have no criteria for choosing which to believe or not.
In other animals we observe things consistent with pain such as long term behaviour modification in the absence of a persistent hormone. Things like avoiding places they were injured, becoming more cautious or less curious, even changes that destroy them like starving themselves to death.
Anyone that says “only humans feel pain” is a chauvinist ignoring stuff like rats giving up the will to live.
But trees or mosses or whatever do none of this. A tree will keep trying to grow towards a fence that damages branches in a storm, a tree never starves itself to death making thicker bark after teens carve lovehearts into it, a tree doesn’t stop reproducing after 3 droughts kill all its children and so on. Leaves might change colour in response to periods of high or low sunlight but these changes are like tanning, they don’t modify anything about how the tree trees.
We can’t know is true, but we also can’t know I don’t have an invisible dragon in my garage. you should definitely not live your life thinking I have an invisible dragon in my garage. Why? you don’t have any evidence to suspect it’s real that is distinguishable from a random lie. We have no evidence of behaviour in trees indistinguishable from chemical signals we know are below the level of consciousness in ourselves.
But trees or mosses or whatever do none of this. A tree will keep trying to grow towards a fence that damages branches in a storm, a tree never starves itself to death making thicker bark after teens carve lovehearts into it, a tree doesn’t stop reproducing after 3 droughts kill all its children and so on. Leaves might change colour in response to periods of high or low sunlight but these changes are like tanning, they don’t modify anything about how the tree trees.
I don’t know why any of this means that our nebulous definitions of ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ cannot apply to plants.
If I stub my toe, it doesn’t modify anything about how I human. But it hurts.
It does though, you will stop walking. Clutch your foot, say ow, look at where you hit the thing, be more careful when walking near there, move the object, pad the object, maybe wear protective covers on your feet, maybe dress a wound if the nailbed was damaged etc. If your toe keeps hurting you will travel to a doctor for assessment, or splint the toe and so on.
Unless you don’t notice, in which case you feel no pain despite the toe signalling furiously.
Along side this a bunch of cellular processes will happen to repair the damage, but they happen even if you don’t notice (distraction/nerve damage, anaesthetic etc) and so we can notice “huh, there are 2 clusters of things happening, one is conditional and one isn’t” and that’s a clue that there’s something more going on than just a body repairing itself.