World News

From your source:

I cited 1(c) because it's the one that actually makes any sense with what they were saying. I did read the entire thing, and yes, saying they were using sense 3 would very obviously be a bad-faith interpretation of what they were saying; that's why I pointed to 1(c).

In terms of “sentience” or “consciousness” these also cannot be applied black and white to animals or plants

True to an extent. The line is fuzzy. Plants aren't sentient; we're not doing this. Plants don't have a nervous sytem and aren't conscious. It's a bad-faith attempt at equivocation not accepted by science. If we're talking about animals, sure there's a fuzzy line somewhere, but that fuzziness keeps getting moved back year after year. What we can say with certainty though is that that line isn't around what a typical omnivorous diet eats such as cows, pigs, birds, etc. and hasn't been for a very long time. There's increasingly robust evidence for fish's abililty to feel pain. I draw the line at no animals because I don't know exactly where in the animal kingdom that line really is and so don't feel comfortable choosing (and I have no interest in eating sponges), but rational minds can disagree when we're talking about bivalves, about echnioderms, etc. However, yes, we can easily apply things like consciousness to animals like pigs and have been able to for well over a decade now.

There is [are*] animals which show a quite complex consciousness and there is [are*] animals, where we couldn’t observe these (yet).

Correct. For example, humans have quite a complex consciousness among the consciousnesses we've found (maybe some advanced civilization out there totally dwarves us; who knows). Meanwhile, sponges likely aren't conscious, and we have zero evidence for their consciousness. Again, though, the most common land animals farmed for food are sentient, and it's increasingly evident that's also true of fish.

At the same time we see more and more examples of plants showing what could be called “pain” or “social life”.

Nope. Sorry, just nope. There is a wide scientific consensus that plants do not feel pain, let alone are conscious. The pseudoscientific discourse around antiveganism has begun turning away from health now that vegan diets are healthful and demonstrably confer substantial health benefits compared to omnivorous ones and away from the environment because climate change is demonstrably very real and caused in large part by animal ag and now toward "plant pain" because it's just enough to give scientifically illiterate laypeople another excuse to bury their heads in the sand.

OP could have just talked about “animals” instead of “beings”. Talking in terms of “beings” only muddies the water both between plants and animals but also animals and humans.

Humans are animals. Objectively. Objectively Homo sapiens are hominids, which are primates, which are mammals, which are chordates, which are animals. We are separated from the genus Pan by about 7–9 million years of evolution. This is like saying that talking about "vehicles" only muddies the water between cars and my 1987 Chevy Malibu. That you're expressing notions of plant pain and delineating humans biologically from animals really tells me you don't understand biology. They shouldn't change their language just because you don't understand basic taxonomy.

And the latter is highly problematic, which is why we must not be careless with these words.

Why is treating a basic biological fact as factual in a completely neutral way (which you're already weirdly extrapolating that they're comparing humans to other animals? when in reality they're just saying that non-human animals can be sentient?) problematic or careless?

Some Fascists work to infiltrate movements such as veganism or animal rights precisely with the goal to devalue human life through weakening the perception of value of human life over animal life.

Give me even the slightest shred of evidence that ecofascism is a serious problem that's so prevalent in veganism it warrants such a prominent mention here (let alone one at all) and that it's caused by treating other beings (I am going to use that word and use it proudly) as sentient/conscious or absolutely piss off with this fucking gutter trash. What the fuck are you fucking talking about trying to distract from the obvious ethical good of veganism through rhetorical whiplash to this nonsensical "um, actually, what about ecofascism?" Would you bring this up in a discussion about solar panels? "Um, just be careful not to talk about global warming or the spooky ecofascists might show up."

I don’t think this is the case for OP

NO SHIT.

or the majority of people in these movements

Okay?

but they need to be vigilant against it.

Vigilant against what? Basic scientific literacy? My dude, my guy, veganism is one of the most leftist movements you can imagine which has the express intent of reducing suffering and unjust hierarchies. We're constantly vigilant against fascism and refuse to let it infiltrate our spaces. I can think of few places other than an ancom protest rally that are more resilient to infiltration from fascists. I'm genuinely disgusted that your arguments were so flimsy that you felt the need to compare calling sentient animals "beings" to fascism.