Plant rights

Samuel Butler's Erewhon contains a chapter, "The Views of an Erewhonian Philosopher Concerning the Rights of Vegetables".

[3] Paul W. Taylor holds that all life has inherent worth and argues for respect for plants, but does not assign them rights.

[5][6] Whilst not appealing directly to "rights", Matthew Hall has argued that plants should be included within the realm of human moral consideration.

[9] Despite the scientific uncertainty about what causes consciousness, notably highlighted by the hard problem of consciousness,[11] it is generally considered that none of the members of the plant kingdom can feel pain since they lack any nervous system, notwithstanding their ability to respond to sunlight, gravity, wind, and any external stimuli such as insect bites.

[14] In his dissent to the 1972 Sierra Club v. Morton decision by the United States Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas wrote about whether plants might have legal standing: Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation.

Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.