khafra comments on The scourge of perverse-mindedness - Less Wrong

95 Post author: simplicio 21 March 2010 07:08AM

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Comment author: khafra 22 March 2010 03:27:13PM 3 points [-]

I don't mean to suggest that plants are clearly sentient, just that it's plausible, even for a human, to have a coherent value system which attempts to avoid the suffering of anything which exhibits preferences.

Comment author: Morendil 22 March 2010 04:35:45PM 2 points [-]

I'd agree with that sentence if you replaced the word "suffering", unsuitable because of its complex connotations, with "killing", which seems adequate to capture the Jainists' intuitions as represented in the link above.

Comment author: RobinZ 22 March 2010 04:41:50PM *  1 point [-]

Although it is relevant to note that the motive may be to avoid suffering - I wasn't there when the doctrine was formed, and haven't read the relevant texts, but it is possible that the presence of apparent preferences was interpreted as implying thus.