Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Bounty

摘要

Matthew Hall's book provides a nuanced, articulate defense of treating the floral diversity of Earth as sentient life forms worthy of ethical care and normative standing. A research scientist at the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hall points out that almost all places where life exists and where humans have settled are "plantscapes" (p. 3); furthermore, "Importantly, both directly and indirectly, it is the visible presence of ... plant biomass which enables the presence and continued existence of human beings" (p. 3). Our embeddedness within plantscapes, and the services plants provide as the basis of myriad terrestrial food chains so that humans and other faunal species can exist, provides one-half of Hall's starting point for his systematic exploration of plant-human interactions.