my intuition is that trees and plants aren’t conscious in the same way we are but they are agents and they still have things like desires, goals, etc. I generally place moral value in agency itself not just consciousness or sentience, and that lets me get around what would otherwise feel like substrate-chauvinism.
Sentience is absolutely the thing that matters here. My thermostat can respond to changes in its environment but that does not make it a moral patient.
my intuition is that trees and plants aren’t conscious in the same way we are but they are agents and they still have things like desires, goals, etc. I generally place moral value in agency itself not just consciousness or sentience, and that lets me get around what would otherwise feel like substrate-chauvinism.
Sentience is absolutely the thing that matters here. My thermostat can respond to changes in its environment but that does not make it a moral patient.