Plant autonomy and human-plant ethics

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 169-181

  Hall, Matthew ^a  

^a ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67650716603     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics200931218     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. "Open to Interpretation", Nature 453 (2008):824.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1993), p. 61.
5. Christopher D Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? And Other Essays on Law, Morals and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
6. Paul W. Taylor, "The Ethics of Respect for Nature", in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston, III, eds., Environmental Ethics: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 74-84. John O'Neill "The Varieties of Intrinsic Value." The Monist 75 (1992):119-37.
7. Taylor, "Ethics of Respect for Nature", p. 75.
8. Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology, The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants (Berne: Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology, 2008), p. 17.
9. Keekok Lee, "Is Nature Autonomous?" in Thomas Heyd, ed., Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (New York, Columbia University Press), p. 58.
10. Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (London: Hurst and Co., 2005), p. 172.
11. Taylor, "Ethics of Respect for Nature", p. 80.
12. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993), and Karen Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
13. Val Plumwood, "Ecological Ethics from Rights to Recognition: Multiple Spheres of Justice for Humans, Animals and Nature", in Nicholas Low, ed., Global Ethics and Environment (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 189.
14. Thomas Heyd, "Introduction: Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature: Theory and Practice", in Heyd, Autonomy of Nature, p. 8.
15. Heyd, "Autonomy of Nature", p. 5.
16. Ibid.
17. Although the term agent is seldom associated with nonhumans, it is applicable in the sense that the agent is a being capable of acting in the world. As I show below, plants are agents with active and complex behavioral patterns.
18. Lee, "Is Nature Autonomous?" p. 64.
19. Ibid.
20. Tony Trewavas, "Mindless Mastery", Nature 415 (2002):841. Tony Trewavas, "Aspects of Plant Intelligence", Annals of Botany 92 (2003):1-20. Although known for his stance against organic agriculture, Trewavas is one of the pioneers of the field of plant neurobiology, which aims to foreground the active, intelligent nature of green plants.
21. Sonia Sultan, "Phenotypic Plasticity for Offspring Traits in Polygonum persicaria", Ecology 77 (1996):1791-1807;
22. Sonia Sultan, "Phenotypic Plasticity for Plant Development, Function and Life History", Trends in Plant Sciences 5 (2000):537-41.
23. Arthur Hon, ed., The Critica Botanica of Linnaeus (London: The Ray Society, 1938), pp. 201-02.
24. Phenotypic plasticity is made possible by the modular structure of plants (animals have a fixed non-modular structure) which consists of a leaf, a bud, and a below ground root meristem. Restricted to the site of germination, this basic "module" can be put together in a wide range of complex structures with great variations in size, shape and complexity. Flexible in growth and development, plants thus have the ability to adapt their phenotype in response to signals from a highly variable and heterogeneous local environment in order to maximize their growth, survival and reproduction.
25. Trewavas, "Aspects of Plant Intelligence", p. 13.
26. Morphological plasticity is commonly expressed in growth habit and size, morphology and anatomy of vegetative and reproductive structures, in biomass accumulation, growth rates and sex expression. Genotype determines whether the individual phenotype or character can be plastic: expression and extent of that plasticity is a function of a plants perception and assessment of its environment.
27. B. G. Forde, "Local and Long Range Signalling Pathways Regulating Plant Responses to Nitrate", Annual Review of Plant Biology 53 (2002):203-24.
28. R. M. Callaway, S. C. Pennings, and C. L. Richards, "Phenotypic Plasticity and Interactions Among Plants", Ecology 84 (2003):1115-28.
29. Trewavas, "Aspects of Plant Intelligence", p. 3.
30. See Chris Cuomo, Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing (London: Routledge, 1998).
31. R. B. Jackson and M. M. Caldwell, "Integrating Resource Heterogeneity and Plant Plasticity: Modelling Nitrate and Phosphate Uptake in a Patchy Soil Environment", Journal of Ecology 84 (1996):891-903.
32. M. J. Hutchings and H. de Kroon, "Foraging in Plants: The Role of Morphological Plasticity in Resource Acquisition", Advances in Ecological Research 25 (1994):159-238.
33. Ibid.; Trewavas, "Plant Intelligence"; and Trewavas, personal communication, 1 November 2007.
34. Brace E. Mahall and Ragan M. Callaway, "Root Communication among Desert Shrubs", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 88 (1991):874-76.
35. See Eric D. Brenner, Rainer Stahlberg, Stefano Mancuso, Jorge Vivanco, FrantiŠek BaluŠka, and Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh "Plant Neurobiology: An Integrated View of Plant Signalling", Trends in Plant Sciences 11 (2006):413-19.
36. Richard Firn, "Plant Intelligence: An Alternative Point of View", Annals of Botany 93 (2004):345-51.
37. A. J. Trewavas, "Aspects of Plant Intelligence: An Answer to Firn", Annals of Botany (2004):353-57.
38. Firn compares the workings of plant life to the workings of an automated thermostat. Not only does this description of plant behaviour fail to take the complexities of phenotypic plasticity into account, it also displays a basic Cartesian assessment of the capacities of nonhumans. Fim, "Plant Intelligence."
39. Trewavas, "Aspects of Plant Intelligence", p. 4.
40. L Baillaud. "Mouvements Autonomes des Tiges: Vrilles et Autre Organs", in Wilhelm Ruhland, ed., Encyclopedia of Plant Physiology: XVII, Physiology of Movements, Part 2 (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1962), pp. 562-635.
41. Trewavas, "Aspects of Plant Intelligence", p. 10.
42. Ibid., p. 5 (emphasis added).
43. Colleen K. Kelly, "Resource Choice in Cuscuta europaea", PNAS 89 (1992):12194-97.
44. David Stenhouse, The Evolution of Intelligence: A General Theory and Some of its Implications (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974).
45. Trewavas, personal communication, 1 November 2007.
46. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature; Plumwood, "Ecological Ethics", p. 189;
47. and Taylor, Ethics of Respect for Nature, pp. 79-83.
48. Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, pp. 142-60.
49. Ibid.
50. Heyd, Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, p. 5.
51. Plumwood, "Ecological Ethics", pp. 200-01.
52. Deborah Rose, "An Indigenous Philosophical Ecology: Situating the Human", Australian Journal of Anthropology 16 (2005):294-305.
53. Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Indian Philosophy and the Consequences of Knowledge: Themes in Ethics, Metaphysics and Soteriology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 9.
54. Ibid.
55. Erazim Kohak, "Speaking to Trees", Critical Review 6 (1993):385.
56. Ibid., p. 383.
57. Ibid.
58. Such a view has much in common with Aldo Leopold's oft-repeated maxim that "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 224-25.
59. Also see Deborah Bird Rose, "Indigenous Ecologies and an Ethic of Connection", in Nicholas Low, ed., Global Ethics and Environment (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 175-87.
60. Kohák, "Speaking to Trees", p. 383.
61. United Nations Environment Programme, Global Environment Outlook GE04: Environment for Development, UNEP, 2008, p. XVI.
62. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (Montreal: Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2002), p. 4.
63. David Tilman et al., "Forecasting Agriculturally Driven Climate Change", Science 292 (2001):281-84.
64. Navin Ramancutty and Jonathan A. Foley, "Estimating Historical Changes in Global Land Cover", Global Biogeochemical Cycles 13 (1999):997-1027.
65. UNEP, GEO-4, p. 82;
66. and W. F. Laurance et al., "The Future of the Brazilian Amazon", Science 291 (2001):438-39.
67. SCBD, Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, p. 4;
68. C. D. Thomas et al, "Extinction Risk from Climate Change", Nature 427 (2004):145-48, and Stuart L. Pimm and Peter Raven, "Extinction by Numbers", Nature 403 (2000):843-45.
69. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), sec. 3.2.4.
70. Rose, "Indigenous Ecologies", pp. 175-87.
71. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (London: Pimlico, 1993), p. 9.
72. Charles M Peters, Alwyn H. Gentry, and Robert O. Mendelsohn, "Valuation of an Amazonian Forest", Nature 339 (1989):656-65.
73. See Matthew Hall, "Questions of Human-Plant Love: Tales From the Arabian Highlands", in Deborah Rose and Thom Van Dooren, eds., Unloved Others: Death of the Disregarded in the Time of Extinctions, unpublished book manuscript.