Introduction

While it is relatively well established in the philosophical literature that animals have rights, or at least are due moral consideration, it is much more contested whether plants or ecosystems do. Beginning from a plausible argument for the general attribution of rights to humans and non-human animals, I seek to answer the following questions: Do plants have rights? If they do, what sorts of things are permissible to do to plants or use plants for? Examining the necessary and sufficient conditions for rights attribution, I conclude that plants do indeed have rights. From there, I move to examine the implication of this conclusion in relation to firstly, whether the implications of granting plants a right to life cause it to simply be a non-starter, and then in relation to how plants are commonly used and viewed I come to the following conclusion: plants have rights and can be used if and only if it is for self-preservation and no alternative, non-life compromising methods exist.

Case for Animal Rights

To begin, it is necessary to establish a general case for rights, including those attributed to non-human animals[1] and humans. Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka offer such a case in Zoopolis, stating, “Conscious/sentient beings are selves – that is, they have a distinctive subjective experience of their own lives and of the world, which demands a specific kind of protection in the form of inviolable rights.”[2] Further, they state, “Beings who experience their lives from the inside, for whom life can go better or worse are selves, not things.”[3] This case for rights contains two conditions, both necessary, but only sufficient in conjunction: subjective experience, as well as interests (in terms of a life going better or worse). These conditions seem to obtain in humans, as well as animals, so both animals and humans are properly recognized as possessing inviolable rights.[4] While objections may be raised to whether or not these two conditions are sufficient for generating inviolable rights, this issue is beyond the purview of this paper, what the case is meant to show is simply a general exposition of what sorts of conditions are required to possess rights.

Donaldson and Kymlicka briefly consider the extension of their argument to support the rights of plants, but ultimately reject it. The basis for their objection ultimately rests on the idea that interests can only be ascribed to beings with subjective experience.[5] Further, they state that difference between plants and animals is key because to be sentient is to have “distinctive vulnerabilities and hence distinctive needs for the protection of inviolable rights.”[6] So, due to the lack of sentience in plants, they are not the proper possessors of rights.

Case for Plant Rights

So, based on the objections to plant rights raised by Donaldson and Kymlicka, it appears clear that in order to establish a case for plants rights, it is necessary to falsify one of the following premises:

Rights are owed only to those beings with interests Only beings with subjective experience are capable of having interests

To reject the first premise would appear to open the floodway to the potential of objects without life possessing rights (e.g. rocks), so it appears to be a non-starter. This is due to the dubiousness of what kinds of rights these things would possess. Given that a rock has no interests, it is unclear exactly what kind of rights it could possibly possess. However, the second premise appears vulnerable to objection, and in order to establish a case for plant rights, I will start by proving that non-sentient beings are capable of having interests.

Kenneth Goodpaster, in his article, On Being Morally Considerable, considers an argument suggested by Joel Feinberg in relation to plants having interests. Feinberg states, “Moreover, we do say that certain conditions are “good” or “bad” for plants, thereby suggesting that plants, unlike rocks, are capable of having a good.”[7] Feinberg later attempts to eliminate plants from having interests by claiming that to have interests necessitates having desires, desires being a mental state that is incapable of occurring in plants.[8] Goodpaster, in opposition to Feinberg, offers the idea that, “in the face of their obvious tendencies to maintain and heal themselves, it is very difficult to reject the idea of interests on the part of [plants] in remaining alive.” So, based on the plants own propensity to maintain their health and heal themselves when they have been injured, it seems as though they have interests in the sense that there are some things that are “good” for them (help to promote life) and “bad” for them (seek to kill or weaken their life).

Feinberg as well offers another objection to the idea of plants having interests, claiming that “the [interests] of living things like trees are not really their own but implicitly ours.”[10] Part of Feinberg’s objection here seems to be the idea that plants lack some sort of internal agency to recognize their own interests, and so it is only through human’s recognition of things that can be said to be “good” or “bad” for plants that they can be said to have interests. In some sense, this objection is clearly true – plants lack the “internal agent” to recognize their own interests. However, in another sense, it seems clearly false – it is unclear why exactly this internal agent needs to exist in order to properly consider something to be an interest. Consider the case of a newborn child or a comatose person – both of these types of people seemingly lack the internal agency necessary to recognize their own interests, but it seems perverse to deny that they exist. A comatose person seemingly has no internal agency at all, but it seems truly bizarre to claim that a samurai warrior using a freshly minted katana to remove their left leg is not bad for them. So, if one agrees that a comatose person losing a limb to a samurai warrior is indeed bad for them, then analogously, it seems as though interests properly belong to those things and beings that lack internal agency.

Recalling Donaldson and Kymlicka’s argument from section two, specifically the idea that possessing some faculty demands special protection in the form of rights,[11] it seems that plants likewise demand special protection in the form of rights. The plant’s inherent interest in life, evident through its tendencies to heal itself, grow and promote its own life, demands proper recognition through the recognition of its right to life. Furthermore, granting only a right to life to plants is compatible with the Donaldson and Kymlicka idea that animals have “distinctive vulnerabilities and hence distinctive needs for the protection of inviolable rights.”[12] These distinctive vulnerabilities may generate the need for a more expansive system of rights than plants, which will be elaborated on further in sections four and five.

Individual Rights

Consider whether the right to life generated in the prior section should rightfully be attributed to individual plants, or the ecosystem as a whole. I reckon to most, rights are intuitively seen as something very individual and to attribute non-reducible rights to a group (like an ecosystem) seems a bit odd.[13] The issue with attributing rights to individual plants is noted by J. Baird Calicott in Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Back Together Again, as he notes:

To attempt to safeguard the rights of each and every individual member of an ecosystem would, correspondingly, be to attempt to stop practically all trophic process beyond photosynthesis – and even then we would somehow have to deal ethically with the individual life-threatening and hence rights-violating competition among plants for sunlight.[14]

Based on this, Calicott suggests that it is impossible to generate an environmental ethic based off an extension of the case for individual rights, and instead offers an alternative proposal.[15] However, it seems to be an improper argumentative step to simply conclude that individual rights for plants are impossible and move to an alternative without more in depth exploration into the soundness of this conclusion.

Implicit in Calicott’s view seems to be the idea that rights are trumps. This means that rights can be used as a sort of trump over other non-right related considerations. While I grant Calicott this premise, the implications of viewing rights as trumps in the context of plant rights are not what he makes them to be. The primary reason why this is the case is highlighted in my exposition of what ‘rights as trumps’ are – they trump non-right related considerations. This however, leaves open the possibility that some right-related considerations may trump others, based on their respective ranking in the rights hierarchy. While so far only a right to life has been noted, as noted in the end of section three, animals and humans have distinctive vulnerabilities and thus more expansive rights.

Right to Self-Preservation and Conflict of Rights

A more expansive set of rights plausibly includes a right to self-preservation. Considering the basis for rights noted earlier is the proper recognition of certain capacities and functions possessed by things, the right to self-preservation is generated out of recognition of the ability of sentient beings to react to certain stimuli they perceive to be harmful, so as to prolong their life. Consider the following old fable – a father and his family are starving, but are poor and lack the money necessary to purchase bread to hold off starvation. So, in order to preserve the life of him and his family, the father steals bread from a store. I reckon the common intuition in this case is that nothing wrong was done – that is, the right to self-preservation trumps the storeowner’s property right over his bread. This illustration is two-fold, firstly showing that intuitively it seems as though a right to self-preservation is plausible, as well as showing that, again, intuitively rights conflict but exist in a hierarchy that allows for the resolution of conflict. These findings provide the necessary framework to proceed forward and consider the implications of the findings: is it true that individual plant rights is a non-starter, or, is it plausible to ascribe individual plant rights, while also avoiding the implications noted previously by Calicott?

To begin, it is necessary to sketch the developments to this point: both plants and animals have a right to life, based on the recognition of their being alive and continued interest in remaining so; furthermore, animals have a right to self-preservation. However, a conflict arises, as the use of plants for various purposes is necessary for the preservation of animal life. I believe this conflict can be solved, and the thesis I propose in regards to this is as follows – animals can justly override the right to life of a plant if and only if it is necessary for the animal’s self-preservation. While this avoids the consequences previous outlined by Calicott – the outlawing of everything except photosynthesis – it is still deeply problematic in a few different aspects: firstly, what is self-preservation, and what sorts of things are relevant to self-preservation? As well, how exactly does a right to self-preservation override a right to life? Lastly, what are the applied implications of this – how must human living be altered in order to accommodate for this right to life of plants?

To proceed in serial order, the first question I will tackle is what exactly is meant by a right to self-preservation. As previous highlighted, at minimum the right to self-preservation encompasses the ability to, interpreted literally, preserve one’s life. However, I would further like to advance the idea that self-preservation also includes the preservation of a minimum level of subsistence – this includes shelter, clothing and the means necessary to acquire these things, if and only if there are no non-plant (or animal) based methods of fulfilling the same needs. The means necessary to acquire these things involves things relevant to working, labouring and acquiring an education.[17] Furthermore, plants can be used sustainably for non-self-preservation – that is, so long as the plant’s life is not put in jeopardy or ended, it is permissible to use it.

The limitations outlined above, while at first seeming to be overly restrictive, appear a lot more lenient after elaboration. However, it is open to the very obvious objection that to define self-preservation so expansively is to distort the concept from actually being self-preservation. Rather, what I have highlighted above is some sort of right to flourishing.

This objection appears promising, however, on a global scale, it does appear necessary to define self-preservation so expansively. Consider the following: there exist no possible methods of security shelter, clothing or labouring tools without compromising the life of plants to do so. In such a world, it would appear that life would be, as Hobbes once said, nasty, brutish and short. Humans would lack the means to establish any sort of substantive life and would instead be doomed to short lives in which they would be ravaged by nature. To preserve their lives beyond this state of nastiness would require the use of plants to help construct shelter, clothing and tools to help make the advancements necessary to prolong life. So, it appears that self-preservation defined broadly is truly necessary to preserve life beyond the minimal state of the natural man.

The second task at hand is to show how exactly a right to self-preservation overrides a right to life. I take the answer to this to be that the right to self-preservation is simply an extension of the right to life, taking into account the capacity of sentient beings to react to external stimuli that threaten them. As well, it seems to be the case that the right to life of a sentient creature trumps that of a non-sentient thing, due to the suffering or loss of pleasure entailed by the loss of the sentient being’s life.

The final task at hand is to highlight some of the implications of this thesis for human life as currently construed. While certainly not the most important implication, perhaps the most whimsical one is that it would be morally impermissible to buy flowers for a loved one, as to do so is to compromise, say, the rose’s, right to life for the a reason that is not self-preservation.[18] Other more serious implications would be in relation to city planning – cities ought to be planned in such a way that the least amount of plant life is compromised. This would necessitate more vertical building (apartments, etc.) as this maximizes the ratio of compromised plant life (in terms of the plants, trees, etc. killing in order to lay foundations) to ability to house humans. As well, due to alternative methods, wooden furniture (and wooden things in general) would become impermissible to create. To the chagrin of those who obsess over their lawns and gardens, it would also appear to be impermissible to kill weeds (unless perhaps they were threatening the lives of other plants). Lastly, and perhaps most disappointingly, it would appear that the printing of books would become impermissible, especially considering the existence of e-book technology.

Implications of a Right to Self-Preservation

One may accept all the arguments to this point and still be rightfully worried about one underlying fact, yet to be discussed, that is, the real world implications of granting a right to self-preservation. In some contexts, it may seem that a granting a right to self-preservation becomes problematic. Consider cases like harvesting extra kidneys in the name of one’s self-preservation (assuming their kidneys have failed). Assuming that they are experts at harvesting kidneys such that they will not kill their patient, seemingly granting a right to self-preservation (assuming the lack of kidneys will lead to their death) would allow such organ harvesting.

It is necessary to highlight the rights that would be violated in performing involuntary organ harvesting – rights to bodily autonomy, rights against being harmed and rights to self-determination. My preliminary answer to this objection is that rights conflicts can be summated – that is, it is not simply the strongest right violated in the kidney-giver versus the strongest right in the kidney-harvester, but rather the total weight of the rights violated/infringed/overridden. While to give a true answer to this would require some method of both ranking and weighing all the possible rights violated, I suggest that the conclusion looks to lean strongly in the direction of the kidney-giver being unjustly treated as their total rights weight is stronger than that of the kidney-.

Conclusions

Beginning from a story of the basis for animal rights (both human and non-human), I sought to establish a plausible case for the rights of plants by arguing against the necessity of subjective experience to have rights. By showing that subjective experience is not necessary it order to have interests, it was shown that plants do indeed have rights, namely a right to life based in the recognition of their capacity to heal themselves and further their own life. Advancing from here into the possible implications of plant rights, it was shown that plant rights are not self-defeating in the sense that they rule out nearly all actions except photosynthesis. This was done through appealing to more demanding and distinctive animal rights, namely a right to self-preservation and presenting the thesis that plant rights can be violated if and only if it is necessary for self-preservation and no alternative non-life compromising methods exist. Expanding on the right to self-preservation, I have shown it to be more expansive and encompass not merely saving oneself, but furthering their lives in ways to avoid the nasty, brutish and short life of the natural man. Further, I highlighted some of the real world implications of granting plants a right to life. Lastly, I tackled a possible objection in relation to granting a right to self-preservation, namely by considering a case in which a human appeals to a right to self-preservation to justify organ harvesting. Showing this to be implausibly true, I conclude with relative confidence that plants have rights and can only be used if and only if it is for self-preservation and no alternative, non-life compromising methods exist.

[1] Henceforth simply ‘animals’

[2] Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011. 24.

[3] Ibid., 25.

[4] While there may be questions as to whether all humans (including those with cognitive disabilities) and all animals truly have subjective experience, I assume that in general humans and animals do have this.

[5] Ibid., 36.

[6] Ibid., 36.

[7] Goodpaster, Kenneth E. “On Being Morally Considerable.” In Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, 53-66. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005. 61.

[8] Ibid., 61.

[9] Ibid., 61.

[10] Ibid., 61.

[11] Zoopolis, 24.

[12] Ibid., 36.

[13] I say this with the understanding that the literature on group rights is just as rich as it is unexplored by myself. However, given that rights are generally taken to be (mostly) uncontested in terms of individuals (at least in comparison to groups), I seek to stay in this realm and avoid the complications of group rights.

[14] Callicott, J. Baird. “Animal Liberation and Environemental Ethics: Back Together Again.” In Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, 130-38. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005. 132.

[15] Ibid., 132.

[16] Earlier the focus was made to be on interests – I take interests to simply be the relationship between a thing and either its capacities or functions. Some interests may be in relation to the capacities a thing has, and some may be in relation to its functions.

[17] This is not an exhaustive list, merely some of the prima facie candidates for inclusion.

[18] Equally whimsically, I type this as I look at a vase of roses recently purchased for my mother by her partner.

[19] Again, this list is likely not exhaustive, these just seem to be the three most prominent rights violated.