Imagine a being capable of processing, remembering and sharing information — a being with potentialities proper to it and inhabiting a world of its own. Given this brief description, most of us will think of a human person, some will associate it with an animal, and virtually no one’s imagination will conjure up a plant.
Since Nov. 2, however, one possible answer to the riddle is Pisumsativum, a species colloquially known as the common pea. On that day, a team of scientists from the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University in Israel published the results of its peer-reviewed research, revealing that a pea plant subjected to drought conditions communicated its stress to other such plants, with which it shared its soil. In other words, through the roots, it relayed to its neighbors the biochemical message about the onset of drought, prompting them to react as though they, too, were in a similar predicament.
Curiously, having received the signal, plants not directly affected by this particular environmental stress factor were better able to withstand adverse conditions when they actually occurred. This means that the recipients of biochemical communication could draw on their “memories” — information stored at the cellular level — to activate appropriate defenses and adaptive responses when the need arose.
In 1973, the publication of “The Secret Life of Plants, ” by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, which portrayed vegetal life as exquisitely sensitive, responsive and in some respects comparable to human life, was generally regarded as pseudoscience. The authors were not scientists, and clearly the results reported in that book, many of them outlandish, could not be reproduced. But today, new, hard scientific data appears to be buttressing the book’s fundamental idea that plants are more complex organisms than previously thought.
The research findings of the team at the Blaustein Institute form yet another building block in the growing fields of plant intelligence studies and neurobotany that, at the very least, ought to prompt us to rethink our relation to plants. Is it morally permissible to submit to total instrumentalization living beings that, though they do not have a central nervous system, are capable of basic learning and communication? Should their swift response to stress leave us coldly indifferent, while animal suffering provokes intense feelings of pity and compassion?
Evidently, empathy might not be the most appropriate ground for an ethics of vegetal life. But the novel indications concerning the responsiveness of plants, their interactions with the environment and with one another, are sufficient to undermine all simple, axiomatic solutions to eating in good conscience. When it comes to a plant, it turns out to be not only a what but also a who — an agent in its milieu, with its own intrinsic value or version of the good. Inquiring into justifications for consuming vegetal beings thus reconceived, we reach one of the final frontiers of dietary ethics.
Recent findings in cellular and molecular botany mean that eating preferences, too, must practically differentiate between vegetal what-ness and who-ness, while striving to keep the latter intact. The work of such differentiation is incredibly difficult because the subjectivity of plants is not centered in a single organ or function but is dispersed throughout their bodies, from the roots to the leaves and shoots. Nevertheless, this dispersion of vitality holds out a promise of its own: the plasticity of plants and their wondrous capacity for regeneration, their growth by increments, quantitative additions or reiterations of already existing parts does little to change the form of living beings that are neither parts nor wholes because they are not hierarchically structured organisms. The “renewable” aspects of perennial plants may be accepted by humans as a gift of vegetal being and integrated into their diets.
But it would be harder to justify the cultivation of peas and other annual plants, the entire being of which humans devote to externally imposed ends. In other words, ethically inspired decisions cannot postulate the abstract conceptual unity of all plants; they must, rather, take into account the singularity of each species.
The emphasis on the unique qualities of each species means that ethical worries will not go away after normative philosophers and bioethicists have delineated their sets of definitive guidelines for human conduct. More specifically, concerns regarding the treatment of plants will come up again and again, every time we deal with a distinct species or communities of plants.
In Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea, ” the true identity of a princess is discovered after she spends a torturous night on top of 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds, with a single pea lodged underneath this pile. The desire to eat ethically is, perhaps, akin to this royal sensitivity, as some would argue that it is a luxury of those who do have enough food to select, in a conscious manner, their dietary patterns. But there is a more charitable way to interpret the analogy.
Ethical concerns are never problems to be resolved once and for all; they make us uncomfortable and sometimes, when the sting of conscience is too strong, prevent us from sleeping. Being disconcerted by a single pea to the point of unrest is analogous to the ethical obsession, untranslatable into the language of moral axioms and principles of righteousness. Such ethics do not dictate how to treat the specimen of Pisumsativum, or any other plant, but they do urge us to respond, each time anew, to the question of how, in thinking and eating, to say “yes” to plants.
【植物的语言】如果豆子会说话，你还会吃它吗
试着想象一种可以处理、记忆和分享信息的生物，一种具有适当的才能，居住在自己世界里的生物。根据这个简单的描述，大多数人想到的是人类，有一些会联想到动物，基本上没人会想到植物。
豌豆也会说话？
自从11月2日起，Pisumsativum，也就是人们常说的豌豆，成了这个谜语的一个可能的答案。那一天，一组来自以色列Ben-Gurion大学Blaustein Institute沙漠研究的科学家发表了他们的同行评审研究结果，宣称经历干旱条件的豌豆会通过土壤将这种压力传递给它们的同伴。换句话说，豌豆可以通过根告诉自己的邻居关于这次干旱来袭的生物化学信息，促使它们采取应对措施，尽管它们也处于相同的窘境中。
有趣的是，在接收到信息后，那些并没有受到特定环境压力因素影响的植物在真的遇到不利条件时可以更好的承受压力。这说明生化信息交流的接受者可以在需要时通过提取它们的回忆——即存储在细胞中的信息——来激活恰当的防御和适应反应。
吃植物时也应像吃动物一样感到不安？
1973年，Peter Tompkins和Christopher Bird的著作《植物的秘密生活》被一般人认为是伪科学，书中将植物的生活描述得像人类生活一样精巧而敏感。两位作者并不是科学家，而且文中许多怪异的结论也无法复制。但是今天，新的实实在在的科学数据似乎支持着书中的基本构想：植物是比我们原先所认为的更复杂的生物。
Blaustein Institute小组的研究发现为正在发展壮大的植物智能研究和植物神经学增加了又一块基石，至少他们的研究会促使我们重新思考与植物的关系。这些工具化的生物没有没有中枢神经系统，那么认为它们具备基本的学习和沟通能力在道德上是否说得通呢？是不是植物们对于压力的迅速反应能力就应该被我们冷漠的忽视，而动物的不幸遭遇就应该激起人们强烈的同情和怜悯呢？
显然，移情并不是植物伦理的一个合适基础。但是小说中关于植物的反应性、植物之间、植物与环境关系的启示已经足够破坏一切为问心无愧地吃东西所做的辩解。植物不仅仅是“事物”，也是一个“个体”——一个处于自己的环境之中，拥有内在价值、是非观念的智能体。这样重新思考为吃植物的所做的辩解，我们便可以得出饮食伦理的最尖端理论之一。
最近的细胞植物学和分子植物学研究发现，饮食偏好应该区分植物的“事物”属性和“个体”属性，并努力保持后者的完整性。区分工作非常困难，因为植物的主观性并不是集中在一个单独的器官或功能中，而是分散在它们身体的每个角落，从根到叶到芽。尽管如此，这种生命力的分散是有根据的，这使得植物具有适应性，令人惊奇的繁殖能力。它们可以在已经存在的部分上继续生长，复制已有部分，并且不改变已有的形态，因为它们不是层级结构的有机体。这种多年生植物的可再生性被人类认为是植物的特殊禀赋，并因此将植物加入他们的饮食中。
但是这并不能成为养殖豌豆这种一年生植物的理由，豌豆生命的终结完全是人类的外力作用。换句话说，由伦理出发的结论并不适用于植物这个抽象概念中的所有个体，必须考虑不同种类的特殊性。
在规范性的哲学家和生物论理学家简历了确定的人类行为准则之后，对于每个物种特殊性质的伦理考虑仍然没有结束。具体来说，每次我们考虑一个特殊的植物物种或群体时，怎样对待它们的问题会一再出现。
一颗豌豆引发的不眠夜
Hans Christian Andersen的豌豆公主童话故事中，公主的真实身份被识破，仅仅因为她的20床垫子和20床羽毛褥子下面放了一粒豌豆，她度过了备受折磨的一夜。也许关于吃得更有道德的争论和这种皇家特有的敏感性是相似的，有些人会争论说，对于那些没有足够食物的人来说，有意识的选择饮食结构是一种奢侈。但是这个类比也有一个更加仁慈的解释。
关于伦理问题的争论从来都不会一次性解决，有时这些问题会让我们觉得不舒服，有时我们良心太过不安甚至夜不能寐。公主被一颗豌豆困扰到无法入睡，就像是我们为伦理道德问题不安。这种伦理并不致力于怎样对待豌豆，或任何其他植物，而是促使我们在思想上和饮食上对一个问题做出回应：怎样对植物说“是”？
作者Michael Marder是Basque Country大学的哲学教授，他的新书《植物思考：植物生命体的哲学》将在今年晚些时候出版。
本文由由译言网nanguat提供
