{"id":1242,"date":"2019-04-28T13:08:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-28T12:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2019-04-28T13:08:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T12:08:22","slug":"tree-hugger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/04\/28\/tree-hugger\/","title":{"rendered":"Tree-Hugger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/287\/2018\/07\/cropped-orang1-1-1-300x180.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"180\" srcset=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/287\/2018\/07\/cropped-orang1-1-1-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/287\/2018\/07\/cropped-orang1-1-1-768x461.jpg 768w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/287\/2018\/07\/cropped-orang1-1-1-1024x614.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/287\/2018\/07\/cropped-orang1-1-1.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Although I don\u2019t think trees feel, I share your feelings about trees, <span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><u><a href=\"https:\/\/evolvingtheforest.uk\/programme\/\">Simon<\/a><\/u><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>And whether or not they are feeling, plants are certainly living; and treating them like inert materials feels wanton.<\/p>\n<p>Not to mention the dependence on them of all life &#8212; sentient and insentient.<\/p>\n<p>Life is a product of evolution &#8212; Dawkins\u2019s \u201cBlind Watchmaker\u201d &#8212; who is blind not just in the sense of lacking foresight and design, but in lacking moral sense (or any sense).<\/p>\n<p>Evolution is merciless, psychopathic. Life feeds on itself, literally.<\/p>\n<p>And although no one knows what the causal function of sentience is (the very query has been dubbed &#8220;the hard problem.&#8221; it is indisputable that sentience evolved, hence it must have conferred adaptive advantages.<\/p>\n<p>The advent of sentience was also the advent of suffering.<\/p>\n<p>But the advent also of compassion, at least in some sentient species &#8212; chiefly, I think, the mammals and birds and other species that did not just split in order to reproduce, like microbes, or lay and leave countless eggs, like turtles, but spawned only a few helpless (\u201caltricial\u201d) young that had to be cared for to survive. Thus was empathy born &#8212; and that \u201cmind-reading\u201d ability that is <u><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><a href=\"https:\/\/animalstudiesrepository.org\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&amp;context=animsent\">perhaps the most acute in our own species<\/a><\/span><\/u>, paradoxically the most monstrous as well as the most merciful of them all.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s a complex problem on which you are embarking, <a href=\"https:\/\/evolvingtheforest.uk\/programme\/\">Simon<\/a>, in pleading for mercy for trees. Not the &#8220;hard problem,&#8221; but a heart-rending one, coupled as it is with the fate of all living creatures, suffering or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although I don\u2019t think trees feel, I share your feelings about trees, Simon. And whether or not they are feeling, plants are certainly living; and treating them like inert materials feels wanton. Not to mention the dependence on them of all life &#8212; sentient and insentient. Life is a product of evolution &#8212; Dawkins\u2019s \u201cBlind &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2019\/04\/28\/tree-hugger\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Tree-Hugger&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1244,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}