[notlenin]

aren't plants also sentient?

Isn't all life sentient?

If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?

[nickburns]

Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?

[notlenin]

honestly, I don't know.

Sentience is consciousness. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a plant, the plants existence is too different from mine for me to imagine it.

It would be like trying to imagine life in a 12-dimensional space - I'm a human, with a human consciousness, living in 3-dimensional space, that makes sense to me.

I can empathize, and to a certain degree imagine what it must be like to be a dog or a cat or a cow, because they're very similar to me in how they work. They move, they eat, they poop, they reproduce sexually. They have similar mammalian feelings and similar DNA (well, more similar than the plant).

But for all I know a plant, say the spinach I had a few days ago, could be just as conscious, albeit in a way that I absolutely cannot comprehend, and my ripping off the plant's leaves to eat them may be, to the plant, every bit as painful as someone ripping out my lungs to eat them.

[nickburns]

So you acknowledge the former but can't get past the latter. Got it. I wonder how the judges will score.

[notlenin]

sorry for the stupid question, but what is "the former" and what is "the latter"?

Did you mean I acknowledge the sentience of plants but not animals?

I believe that all life might be conscious, but life that is "very different" from me I have a hard time imagining what that consciousness might be like. For animals, especially mammals, I can easily imagine what they must be feeling and empathize with them. I can understand that a cow feels pain when hurt, because the cow is very similar to me. A plant might also feel pain when hurt (even the grass I step on might not appreciate me walking on it), but I'd have a harder time empathizing with that.

[nickburns]

It's never stupid to clarify what someone means if they communicate in a way that's unclear to you.

'Former' and 'latter' were in reference to the two questions I posed to you.

[goodpoint]

No, plants, bacteria, mushrooms are obviously not sentient as they lack a brain.