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A good, but for whom?

A plant has no interests, only needs: without a subject to whom its fate can matter, there is no one to wrong.

Objects to Biocentrism

Singer · Practical Ethics

1. Biocentrism grants a worth of its own to all that pursues its good, sentient or not.
2. But 'pursuing a good' is said in two senses: a clock 'wants' to tell the time, a virus 'wants' to replicate, without anything mattering to anyone. A genuine interest presupposes a subject to whom its fate can make a difference.
3. Without sentience, there is no point of view from which living or dying is good or bad for the organism: one can destroy it, one does not wrong it; 'respect' has no addressee.

Therefore So moral worth requires a being able to feel its good: below sentience there are admirable mechanisms, not subjects toward whom we would have duties.