If Plants Are Morally Considerable, Does It Make No Difference Whether We Eat Animals or Plants?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 59 of the PDF edition · English translation

An alleged respect for all living beings is often invoked not in order to defend nonsentient living beings, but in an attempt to justify excluding nonhuman animals from the sphere of moral consideration. For example, the appeal to a supposed consideration for plants is very commonly used in an attempt to justify consuming animals.

However, this argument would fail to justify what it intends even if all living beings were morally considerable. This is because there would still be a reason to prioritize sentient beings in situations where, whatever we choose, we will necessarily harm either sentient beings or nonsentient living beings.

The reason is that sentient beings, because they can experience suffering and be prevented from enjoying positive experiences (as happens when someone dies, for example), can be harmed in particularly serious ways that no nonsentient being can.

Paul Taylor, one of the leading proponents of biocentrism (the view that all living beings, sentient or not, are morally considerable), agrees with this point⁷². He acknowledges that any form of suffering is an intrinsically negative occurrence in the life of a sentient being. For this reason, he concludes that, between killing plants and killing sentient animals, it is less wrong to kill plants if the animals would suffer.

One might think that the same view would then have to prescribe that it makes no difference whether we kill the sentient being or the merely living being, as long as the sentient being's death is painless. However, let us recall that Taylor condemns causing a death involving suffering because suffering is negative. But the reverse could be said of pleasure or happiness: they are positive experiences. One way for a sentient being to be harmed is through the presence of negative experiences; but another is through the absence of positive experiences (something that happens when they die⁷³).

If so, then whenever the death of a sentient being prevents the enjoyment of positive experiences, it is worse than the death of a merely living being (even if the death is painless, and even if we had to consider all living beings), since only the sentient being is harmed by being deprived of the positive things it would experience if it went on living. Therefore, even if plants were morally considerable, this would not justify consuming animals.

In fact, as far as diet is concerned, the logical implication for someone who believes that plants are morally considerable is to adopt ethical botanical fruitarianism, a stance characterized by consuming only what falls away from a plant. Usually, when people realize this implication, they immediately stop arguing that plants are morally considerable. This shows that they did not really believe what they were defending. They were merely looking for an excuse to go on consuming animals. However, the important point to note here is that, as we saw above, even if plants were morally considerable, there would still be reasons to prioritize sentient beings – and this is independent of whether those who advocate moral consideration for plants do so sincerely or not.