Plants, Again (or, ethics, still). Part I

Planted, An Introduction.

This post tries to think issues of veganism and vegetarianism alongside issues of the active nature of plants. The first part of the post will respond broadly to this question, and lay out my general ethical framework for these issues. For those of you have diligently read this blog for at least a few years, you might find part one repetitive (also, wow, thank you). The second part of the blog post (which will be posted another day) engages theorists forwarding these arguments, particularly Ian Bogost in his Alien Phenomenology, and Michael Marder in his Plant-Thinking, his article "Is it Ethical to Eat Plants?," and his debate with Gary Francione (Marder also has a forthcoming book I haven't read, The Philosopher's Plant).

Plants I:

This is not the first time I have addressed our ethical relationships to plants. See this post, and this post (and several more asides in other posts). This most recent post is immediately caused by a new scientific study that shows that "Plants respond to leaf vibrations caused by insect herbivore chewing." This has caused a variety of news sources to frame this recent discovery as being some sort of unique challenge or cause of concern for vegetarians and vegans. See, for example, this Gizmodo article which actually ends with this line, "Either way, we do know one thing for sure: The world just got a little less smug for the vegan set." Okay then. So, here is the relevant question, why? Why is it each time that some new study comes out expressing the idea that plants are more active and intentional than previously considered, there are a flurry of articles that seem to see this as somehow an argument against vegans? If you are concerned about plants, and any sort of suffering that may come from consuming them, wouldn't adopting a vegan diet be a first step to lowering that suffering? This is true because it takes from more plant protein to produce animal protein, and because that much of animal agriculture includes polluting and destroying lands. And of course, some people concerned with our ethical obligations to plants have made this very point. Near the end of Matthew Hall's Plants as Persons, he makes this very argument:

A third very significant driver of harm to individual plants, plant species, and plant habitats is the unnecessary, unthinking use of plants. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the use of plants to feed massive numbers of animals for the world’s wealthiest nations to consume. Recent estimates suggest that humankind farms and eats over thirty billion animals each year. In a plant context, this live- stock rearing is important because it accounts for more than 65 percent of the total global agricultural area. It also accounts for large volumes of grains and soya beans which are used as feed. In 2002, approximately 670 million tons of grains were fed to livestock, roughly a third of the global harvest. They were also fed 350 million tons of protein-rich products such as soya and bran. The areas cleared to rear animals and feed them on such a huge scale are natural plant habitats such as tropical forests, savannahs, and grasslands. The rearing of livestock on such large scales is one of the major drivers of habitat loss. Basing diets on meat consumption excessively inflates the area of land that is put under human cultivation. Reducing the amount of consumed meat is a direct way of reducing harm done to plants, animals, and human beings. Not least because this large industry is also responsible for generating 18 percent of global carbon emissions—which to provide an idea of scale, is more than all forms of transport combined. (p. 165)

So, rather than seeing plant sentience as a unique challenge to vegans, it seems vegans are already doing something to limit harm to plants. Rather than making the vegan set less smug, wouldn't this make the vegan set more smug? Actually, wait a second, don't you assume that the author of the Gizmodo article probably eats plants herself? So, there is no reason that plant sentience is at all something particular to vegans. This argument could be used against literally any social justice movement. For example, imagine this conversation:

Person 1: Would you like to help out to end genocide against X human population?
Person 2: Did you know plants might be sentient? So, I can't help you.
Person 1: Uhm... okay...?
Person 2: Well, see you are trying to expand our ethical obligations to X human population. But there are still groups you haven't expanded our ethical concern to. And until you figure out a way to respond ethically to all beings, you really haven't done anything yet, have you?
Person 1: I'm pretty sure that's not how ethics work. 

Okay, I hear your objections. This scenario ignores that maybe there is something particular combining our thinking about eating ethically. In other words, the failure to create a completely harm free eating experience negates trying to reduce harm in other ways. But again, if we aren't talking about veganism, would that objection really hold any water? Imagine this conversation:

Person 1: No thank you, I try to avoid X product because I try to avoid products produced by slave labor.
Person 2: Well, all capitalist labor comes from a system of exploitation (surplus value is theft), so there is no need to fight against products produced by slave labor.
Person 1: ... . So are you doing anything to stop either slave labor or capitalist exploitation?
Person 2: What? No, I am just saying stop being so smug, I don't have to feel guilty for using slave labor because of capitalist exploitation.
Person 1: I'm pretty sure that's not how ethics work. 

So, plant sentience is not an argument against veganism because (1) veganism already reduces harm against plants, and (2) if plants present an ethical call, it is an ethical call for all of us, not just vegans. There are, of course, other arguments we can explore. For example, while the research that plants are active beings seem undeniable, what that means in terms of how sentience is expressed seems to be a fairly open question at this point (see this article by Oliver Sacks, and this blog post from Scientific America). And even if sentience was answered, it would not always be a guide about what interests plants have. For example, I am concerned about voting rights being denied felons, but I am not worried about getting voting rights for my cats. And while I am concerned about what Lori Gruen calls the "ethics of captivity" in prisons and zoos, I have trouble believing there are similar issues in botanical gardens. But let us, for now, bracket these broader questions about our ethical obligations toward plants.
So, if there is no reason that vegans are uniquely implicated in the ethics of plants, why is it that we are constantly bombarded with arguments that plant sentience undermines ethical veganism? First, as I have long contended, there is a confusion between ethics and innocence. If there was the possibility for innocence, we wouldn't need ethics. Ethics exist because we have to try to figure out ways to live a good life out of a bad life. What are the ways we can live and act in a world where innocence is impossible? And as in the conversations above, the argument that there is no way to eat without harm is a way of removing responsibility. Universal guilt becomes its own form of innocence, a way of avoiding ethical calls. People don't want responsibility, so they figure out a series of ways to push ethical obligations away. Problems are seen as systematic, so individual change is not called for. Because no solution will be perfect, we know that any change and tactic can be co-opted, so we don't do anything. You only want to help these individuals who are in pain and suffering, and because it focuses on individuals, it is neoliberalism and we don't have to help those in pain. Because there is no innocence, we might as well go ahead and do what we wanted to do anyway. And suddenly, enough excuses pile up so that we somehow have managed to be radical and ethical without ever having to change who we are. It is hard, after all, to be responsible (even just for those lives in front of you). It is confusing to know that we will have politics that will be tainted, that we will communications that fail, and that we will have actions that will cause harm. Spinoza defined conatus as the striving to preserve oneself, and he called that joy. So, perhaps it is sadness to be haunted by others, perhaps it is despair to have to change for others. No wonder we want to create excuses to not act and still pat ourselves on the back. So, maybe we need some other definition of joy. One that finds in our vulnerability the basis of sociality, of laughing together, and of mourning. Perhaps we can find joy (as well as frustration and love) in the difference of others, and with the creative impulse to build a different world. To yearn, and to act, together.

Some thoughts on plants

I probably need better blog post titles.

Anyone who has been a vegetarian for any length of time has heard some variation of the argument, "What about plants?". As Jonathan Safran Foer points out in the video I just linked to, it usually occurs in rather insulting and idiotic formulations, "Haven't you heard the carrots crying?". Much like Thomas Taylor's Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, which sought not to support animal rights but to mock women's rights, these declarations have not sought to promote concern for the welfare of plants, but simply to belittle the welfare of other animals. Taylor, however, shows that sometimes the opponents of liberation have clearer sight. Much like people opposed to interracial marriages who argued such a destabilization would lead same sex marriages, we are currently in the midst of the fights for the rights of brutes. Maybe fighting for rights for other animals will give us a chance to see clearly if plants too deserve rights (or, at the least, ethical duties and obligations). Taylor ends his pamphlet with this closing paragraph:

And thus much may suffice, for an historical proof, that brutes are equal to men. It only now remains (and this must be the province of some able hand) to demonstrate the same great truth in a similar manner, of vegetable, minerals, and even the most apparently contemptible clod of earth; that thus this sublime theory being copiously and accurately discussed, and its truth established by an indisputable series of facts, government may be entirely subverted, subordination abolished, and all things every where, and in every respect, be common to all.

Though pure satire on the part of Taylor, don't tell me there isn't a part of you that cheers along, playing those lines straight.
I think the time is coming where serious concerns with plants are arising. Tom Sparrow runs down several places where people are moving in this direction (and I have heard of a few other instances). And we have even more from Tim Morton, including talking about slime molds and bacteria. Now, exactly a year ago I made a post about plants (okay, so I wrote this post a couple of days ago, but I could resist making these posts exactly a year apart when I noticed that), and I still stand behind it. I won't repeat it here, but I clearly need a more serious response if people are seriously engaging the ethical issues of plants without merely seeking to destroy our ethical commitments (which is how this argument has traditionally functioned). Are plants our next project for the expansion of our ethical sphere? Maybe beyond plants as well? Maybe until everything, everywhere is in common to all. In other words, flat ethics.
I want to begin by stating that many ethicists who have rejected speciesism does not logically extend to plants. If you are a devotee of Tom Regan or Peter Singer, there is nothing from their standpoint to extend their theories toward plants. The reason is they are working with some fairly precise criteria for who gets to be included in the moral community, and who gets excluded. And while there are plenty of gray areas for their theories, it doesn't mean there are some criteria from which they are extrapolating from. Meanwhile, few Continental ethicists have invested in these questions of who gets to count. If anything, there are frequent and explicit rejections of such discourses. Matt Calarco's wonderful book Zoographies, for example, is in many ways an extended argument for political, ontological, and ethical agnosticism. As he writes:

If this is indeed the case, that is, if it is the case that we do not know where the face begins and ends, where moral considerability begins and ends, then we are obliged to proceed from the possibility that anything might take on a face. And we are further obliged to hold this possibility permanently open. At this point, most reasonable readers will likely see the argument I have been making as having absurd consequences. While it might not be unreasonable to consider the possibility that "higher" animals who are "like" us, animals who have sophisticated cognitive and emotive functions, could have a moral claim on us, are we also to believe that "lower" animals, insects, dirt, hair, fingernails, ecosystems, and so on could also have a claim on us? Any argument that leads to this possibility is surely a reductio ad absurdum. In response to such a charge, I would suggest affirming and embracing what the critic sees as an absurdity. (p. 71, emphasis added)

How do you like that Calarco litany? Anyway, for those that do not engage in issues of moral considerability, or specifically reject such issues, the way forward gets more complicated. If you are a classical utilitarian, the way forward is to figure out if plants have the capacity for suffering. So far that seems highly unlikely, so you can just move on. But what if you don't know what gives a being a face (to use Calarco's Levinasian language), how can you say if you plants have faces? Julia Butterfly definitely felt that the tree Luna had a face. And while many of us might feel that a 1500 redwood does have a face or at least understand where she was coming from, few of us believe that the weeds in our garden have a face. As I said in my last post about plants, I find it hard to believe that breeding clementines to be seedless is the same sort of violence of breeding turkeys so they can no longer mate with each other, or enjoy basic sexual relations. Am I simply engaging in the same sort of 'moral schizophrenia' that people who eat animals and love their pets engage in?
This gets to the heart of much of my unease when talking about issues of plants. It is hard to at all be critical without having your arguments parallel those arguments made against animals. If you say plants do not suffer, do you not just repeat the moves of the Descartes and his disciples? If you wonder if plants actually have sociality just because they release chemicals that other plants respond to, are you not simply repeating all of those people who screamed anthropomorphism every time animals engaged in obvious modes of sociality? I think when arguments parallel the structures of obviously wrong arguments it is certainly time to be suspicious. However, saying, "Well, that is exactly like when x argues y" is not, in and of itself, an argument. For example, if someone said to you, "I know you believe that all the planets in the solar system orbit the Sun, but really they orbit as yet unknown black hole." Rejecting that claim until actual evidence is proffered does not make you the freaking Inquisition talking to Copernicus.
All of this isn't to say that plants are not beings worthy of our moral respect on the highest levels. But I remain far from convinced on these issues. Plants are awesome and cool. Like any being subject to evolutionary forces, they engage in active processes that resist them dying before reproductive. These processes in animals, both human and otherwise, have tended toward the abilities for suffering and joy, for sociality, for desire and and yearning, for senses of embodiment, etc. I have yet to see indications that plants responses to evolutionary pressures have really been the same. But I could be wrong, and am interested in hearing more on this issue.

What about plants?

In late December Natalie Angier wrote an op-ed for the NY Times arguing against ethical veganism by arguing for plants. Now, the old "But what about plants?" line is something that anyone who has taken an ethical stance toward our relationship with other animals have heard before. However, Angier hopes to up the ante by moving it away from "a trite argument or a chuckled aside" and instead give weight to this old argument by new science. And anyone who doesn't think plants are some how complex and fascinating should certainly read the article.
But the problem is that many things are complex and fascinating. And in the case of those beings who come under evolutionary pressures, there is a lot about them that resist being killed, or to be more precise resist being killed before reproduction. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't have survived till now. But, for all of that, does that mean they do not want (as in, desire, as in, have desires and interests and wants and suffering and joys and pleasures and all of that) to be killed? This is the crux of the argument, after all.
Angier contends that many scientists speak of plants in active terms, in terms of wanting and desiring. Which I have no doubt they do. After all, I hung out with Cornell chemistry grad students for three years and they spoke of particles and atoms and chemicals as wanting and desiring, as communicating and as active forces. Plants are not passive, neither are bacteria or atoms. But the chemists I hung out with didn't really mean that one atom wanted to bond with another atom, but rather given a certain set of conditions certain types of atoms would bond with other types. The short hand for these active processes was wanting. What I am confused about is if most scientists would say that plants had desires, wants, joys and depressions. It's harder for us who are not people who study plants to know this sort of thing as opposed to animals. For example, I just ate some clementines, which are all seedless. Is that seedlessness the same sort of violence as the turkey that is used for slaughter in this country, now unable to reproduce naturally and require artificial insemination (often through a turkey baster)?
This leads us to one of the more interesting parts of the article, that is, what is missing from its argumentation. The article is specifically set up as a response to committed vegetarianism and strong ethical veganism. But, and this is important, at no point does it make any attempt to explain why or how including plants in our ethical compass is a response to vegetarianism and/or veganism. Let's bracket the obvious answer that factory farming (which amounts to 99 percent of animal products that is consumed) destroys far more plant and animal life than just about anything else and therefore this argument should require one to be a practical vegan even if not an ethical vegan. We are going to bracket this argument because this arguments about plants have nothing to do with plants, actually. Rather, the argument works something like if you can eat nothing with innocence than everything is innocent. If guilt is everywhere, than you do not have to feel guilty about any particular thing. Status quo maintained. This argument seeks not to broaden our ethical considerations, but to obliterate them.
I have no doubt if it is true that plants have whatever it is that we consider important of being included in our moral community that everything will change. Everything will get more complicated. Ultimately, though, it will have to mean a serious way of learning to live, not an excuse for ignoring the suffering and damage we all know we are doing.