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Starting with its title, Key's (2016) target article advocates the view that fish do not feel pain. The author describes the neuroanatomical, physiological and behavioural conditions involved in the experience of pain in humans and rodents and confidently applies analogical arguments as though they were established facts in support of the negative conclusion about the inability of fish to feel pain. The logical reasoning, unfortunately, becomes somewhat incoherent, with the arbitrary application of the designated human criteria for an analogical argument to one animal species (e.g., rodents) but not another (fish). Research findings are reported selectively, and questionable interpretations are invoked to support the author's position. In this commentary, I briefly examine two of the analogies presented in Key's target article and highlight the role (and consequences) that personal opinions and preconceptions have in issues concerning human ethical responsibilities toward the welfare of non-human species.

In this article, I endeavor to recount the odd history of how we have come to perceive plants like we do, and illustrate how plants themselves perceive and sense the world and, most importantly, what they can tell us about Nature. Through examples of the ingenious ways plants have evolved to thrive, I engage the idea that our modern society is afflicted by a severe disorder known as plant blindness, a pervasive condition inherited from our forefather Aristotle and accountable for the current state of vegetal disregard and hence environmental dilapidation. I propose that the solution to this state of affairs rests in a radical change of perspective, one that brings the prevailing, yet defective, Aristotelian paradigm together with its expectations on how Nature should behave to an end. Enacted, such change releases us into a new experience of reality, where the coherent nature of Nature is revealed.

The authors of this paper provide a brief overview of the rights‐based literature that has been used to produce mechanisms to acknowledge non‐human agency in critical systems thinking (CST). With consideration of recent studies of plant cognition, we propose that by recasting CST's underlying commitments, we may produce new ontologies and new ways of working with the embedded stakeholders of socioecological systems. While the discursive shifts are simple, to recast 'social awareness' as 'socioecological awareness' and 'human emancipation' to 'emancipation', these changes open up the boundaries, scope and relevance of practice. We see this as a second turn and the next important movement in CST. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Treves et al. (2019) make a convincing case that conservation efforts need to go beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Implementing that vision, however, will require human advocates to represent nonhuman interests. Where will the knowledge of those interests come from? How can humans know what is in the best interest of another animal, a plant, or an ecosystem? We discuss how the values embedded in current scientific practices may be ill-suited to representing nonhuman interests and we offer some ideas for correcting these shortcomings.