Sentientism (Jamie Woodhouse)
Explore every episode of Sentientism
| Pub. Date | Title | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Feb 2021 | 33: "Us humans are slow learners" - Kim Stallwood - author & scholar - Sentientist Conversation | 00:52:17 | |
Kim is an animal rights author, independent scholar, consultant, and speaker. He has 45 years of personal commitment as a vegan and professional experience in leadership positions with some of the world’s foremost animal advocacy organisations. The Kim Stallwood Archive is held by The British Library. He wrote Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate with a Foreword by Brian May (Lantern Books, 2014). He is currently working on the biography of an elephant called Topsy. He became a vegetarian in 1974 after working in a chicken slaughterhouse and a vegan in 1976. You can find Kim at https://kimstallwood.com/, https://twitter.com/grumpyvegan and https://www.instagram.com/kim_stallwood/. You can find the video of our conversation here on the Sentientism YouTube Channel, along with full show notes. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." We discuss: - Growing up in Surrey in a working class, Church of England community - Joining the RSPCA and being against animal cruelty as a family - Working in a chicken slaughter-house in 1973. An experience that changed everything - Going vegetarian in 1974, only knowing 2 vegetarians - Arguments with mum about going vegetarian + her going veggie without Kim noticing - Going vegan (with mum, then family) in 1976 - Being the 2nd employee at Compassion in World Farming, then a lifetime in animal advocacy - Theosophy's themes of connectedness and opposing animal cruelty - Learning philosophy as an animal advocate - Making a clear break from Christianity - Having a personal belief system: 4 key values, but not labelling with any spiritual system - Camberley Kate's care for non-humans and feeling outrage over how we treat other animals - Compassion as the first key value. Identifying with the experience of other sentient beings and being motivated to help - And much more...! Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. | |||
| 14 Nov 2021 | 84: "Nobody likes hypocrisy but we're all hypocrites" - Dr. Brian Earp - Sentientist Conversation | 00:58:14 | |
Dr. Brian Earp (@briandavidearp) is Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics & Health Policy & a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford. His work is cross-disciplinary, following training in philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, history & sociology of science and medicine, & ethics. He has written extensively on resisting traditional & religious justifications for causing harm – particularly to children through genital mutilation / circumcision. He wrote the book "Love Drugs" w/Julian Savulescu. Brian is also a professional singer & actor. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 02:00 Brian's Intro - Academically trying to understand the world & lay out how it should be. 03:04 What's Real? - Growing up in Seattle in a Free Methodist Evangelical Christian society - Mum: Christianity & god. Dad: A more naturalist perspective - "Evolution was something that might tempt us away from the path of righteousness" - Unthinkingly accepting Christianity at first - Asking questions of the pastor at 12/13 yrs. Is it fair to send people to hell who have never even heard of Jesus? - The problem of evil... while being emotionally sensitive to the pain of others - Taking "a very serious concern with morality" from mum's Christian worldview even as a kid - Divine command theory: things are right/wrong because god says so - Agnostic re: metaphysics: "What do you mean by god?" - The burden of proof is on the claimant... "Wow - how are you confident about that?" - Bible college vs. secular Yale - Studying philosophy at college - The fundamental fact claims fell apart - Ethical concerns: religious homophobia etc. The tension between strict religious rules & personal compassionate intuitions "something has to go here!" - "Unless I have an independent reason to believe one view over another..." 15:37 What Matters? - Supernatural worldview risks to universal compassion - Can compassion go too far? Undermining justice/fairness? - Agnostic about the grounding of ethics / meta-ethics - Instead a Quinian web of beliefs & intuitions I'm pretty darn sure about: "Needless suffering of an innocent person"... "Treating people differently without reason"... "concern for the disadvantaged / those without power or representation" then reasoning about cases - "We should believe what we have best reason to believe" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 12 Jun 2023 | 157: “This is a critical decade… the calm before the storm” - Anita Krajnc & Nicola Harris from Plant Based Treaty - Sentientism | 01:18:15 | |
Anita is Executive Director of the Plant Based Treaty initiative and the Animal Save Movement, a worldwide network of Save groups bearing witness to farmed animals & promoting veganism & love-based, grassroots activism. She describes herself as an animal rights and an environmental activist. She is the co-author of the book "The Secret Lives of Pigs". Nicola is Director of Communications for the Plant Based Treaty initiative and works on the Animal Save Movement's communications team. She has over 20 years of experience in pressure campaigning in the UK. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 02:22 What's Real? - NH: - Raised #atheist with strong values & morals "be open-minded & critical & follow my heart & dreams... encouraged to find my own way." "My journey to #veganism has led me to question everything." - Being told a cow is "beef"... "I was horrified". "You'll have to eat it or you'll die... we only eat the animals when they die of old age... no harm done." - Becoming #vegetarian then #vegan... breaking the brainwashing - #Punk, #hardcore & DIY "You can't go to a punk gig without coming hope with some pamphlets." Moby's Punk Rock Vegan Movie - #Paganism & earth based religions - Grounded in own experiences (e.g. taking people on excursions to chicken farms & bearing witness) AK: - Dogmatic #Catholic household "my journey was always trying to rebell against that... it didn't seem very authentic... the same performance every week... I didn't find it interesting or convincing" - Parents from the former Yugoslavia - Seeing "The Animals Film" - Discovering #CarlSagan and #Cosmos "that rang true with me" - Rejecting the sexism / discrimination often found in #christianity - "We had very different worldviews from my parents" - "I sort of like to think that animals have souls" #leotolstoy 's "Calendar of Wisdom" - "Treat others as you'd like to be treated... we all know it applies to animals... also love thy neighbour... they're universal principles... if there's life on another planet... they apply" - "I don't believe in the dogma of religion... or miracles... but there's something very special about life" 19:26 What & Who Matters? AK: - Regan Russell's Anglican upbringing - "It wasn't difficult to move away from the [Catholic] world that I was living in" - Peace & conflict studies, environmentalism, animal ethics at university - "I was human centric... it didn't even occur to me to think about other animals" - "When I saw the [Animals] film... it completely changed my world-view... it became a core value for me" - #feminism & animal agriculture - Studying environmental thought: "Does a tree have standing, does the Grand Canyon matter?... it opened my world" - Going beyond sentience. Protecting trees for their own sake "Nature is incredible - it's such a gift... trees and this forest have rights in and of themselves - they're not just a utility to us or animals or sentients" - "Sentience is absolutely important" NH: - A human-centred upbringing but "my mum used to take me over to the animal rights stalls... sign the petitions against fox-hunting & fur..." - Family time in nature - "The Hidden Life of Trees" - "It's blown my mind... they work as a community... you want to protect them" - "I do absolutely extend my moral scope to the environment around us - we are all connected" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 29 Mar 2021 | 41: "Morality isn't linked to religion" - Amy Wilson - Activist Lawyer - Sentientist Conversations | 01:01:06 | |
Amy Wilson (https://twitter.com/Ms_AmyPWilson) is an Animal, Human & Earth Rights Lawyer. She founded the Animal Law Reform & Animal Law Africa NGOs. She works as the Aquatic Animal Law Initiative Fellow at the Center for Animal Law Studies and volunteers with a number of other organizations in South Africa, across Africa and in the USA. In South Africa, Amy has leadership roles with the Coalition of African Animal Welfare Organisations and the Humane Education Trust. Throughout Africa, she works with Lawyers for Animal Protection in Africa. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here https://youtu.be/p--DwudERgQ on Sentientism YouTube. We discuss: - Social justice & taking integrated approaches to animal, human & even earth rights - Growing up in post-apartheid South Africa - Attending convent school as a Presbyterian (non-Catholic) christian. Feeling excluded & "lesser" - Reading the Bible: "Revelations was my jam!" - Realising the inconsistencies in religion - Encountering homophobia "Am I somehow damned to hell" for being bi-sexual? - "Everything kind of feels sinful" - The fear around questioning. Asking even the uncomfortable questions - Learning about other religions. Commonalities & rigidity - Moving from religion to spirituality. Universal compassion for all beings. Still exploring. - Moving away from religion because of evidence/reason & warped ethics - The "dominion over animals" concept - The pre-human origins of morality - The use of religion as a weapon of oppressive colonial power - Being open-minded about whether we are part of a broader universal consciousness - Gaia and spirituality. Does consciousness create matter? - The power of never being completely sure of anything - The risks of religious & scientistic dogmas & arrogance - "Morality isn't linked to religion" - The Golden Rule - Everything is connected, every one matters - Going vegetarian then vegan. "It took a long time for me to connect the dots. I loved animals so much & I didn't realise eating them was wrong" - The "aha moment" while eating an animal
Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks, Graham for the post-production: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu | |||
| 21 Feb 2023 | 145: A US Constitution For All Sentient Beings - Maybe Sooner Than We Think? - Michael Dorf - US Constitutional Law Professor - Sentientism | 01:33:55 | |
Michael is a law professor and scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Michael has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written/co-written/edited six books, including Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (co-written with his wife, Sherry Colb), as well as scores of law review articles about American constitutional law. He is also a columnist for Verdict. Michael is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Michael has appeared in American news media as a legal expert and has been interviewed by and/or quoted in, for example, The New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (another suspected sentientist). In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 02:02 Michael's Intro - Studying physics, then the law - Clerking then legal scholarship - Blogging @ Dorf On Law - #vegan since 2006 - Animal work in partnership with Mike's wife, Sherry Kolb "we agreed on nearly everything, but not quite everything" 04:44 What's Real? - Growing up in New York, raised #jewish "but mostly culturally" - "My father never went to synagogue unless it was somebody's wedding... he was not at all religious but he was the most ethical person I knew" - "Religion is not necessary and certainly... not sufficient to make someone an ethical person" - "That personal aspect... overshadowed anything I was being taught" - Dad's library: "the answers that the religious folks were giving to deep philosophical questions... barely scratched the surface... whereas if I went into my dad's study... Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy"... Lao Tse..." - Teaching: "what I really value is engagement with hard questions" - "The sorts of answers that religion gives stop asking the questions just when they become interesting... god made the world... god thus commanded it... it leaves lots of further questions unasked" - "Nearly all of the spiritual or supernatural beliefs I've encountered, whether religious or otherwise, strike me as ridiculous" - "If that happens [god appearing] then I'll adjust my views... but that will be in response to evidence... that itself would be a kind of naturalism." ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 22 Jul 2022 | 121: "Compassion is a boundless capacity" - Lisa Kemmerer - Sentientism | 01:17:07 | |
Lisa is an activist and academic who specialises in anymal and environmental ethics. She was an associate professor of philosophy and religion at Montana State University Billings until she retired in 2020 to found and lead the educational, vegan umbrella organization, Tapestry. Lisa is the author or editor of ten books including Animals and World Religions. She has also written over 100 articles and book chapters. Lisa coined the term anymal as a “correct” term for non-human animals. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:28 Lisa's Intro 01:58 What's Real? - Linking epistemology & ethics - "My mind sees a continuum" - Being born with "a more eastern way of thinking" - Metaphysical & practical concerns - "I don't tend to use philosophy in an abstract way" - "I have very little faith in human reasoning... we are not rational beings." - Descartes reasoning that anymals aren't sentient - "We cannot trust our reason... that doesn't mean reason's out... we need to do it with humility" - "It's the extent of our power that makes our arrogance dangerous" - "Roe vs Wade was just overturned... don't tell me humans are rational." - "Trump's reality... I don't want to know about that" - The USA: "Democracy requires education & we're not an educated public" - "Our reason is flawed... we need to use it... we have to be sceptical" 11:53 What Matters? - "Cultures & people - that's where you have to work" - "To try to bring change I need to work with humans where they're at" - "I can see the beauty in it... and I can see the problems in it" - "Cruelty is not a good thing... compassion is a good thing... fairly universal" - "I love religions... they have a committed strong belief... I can get a hold of it" - "I have never, never talked to a serious Christian, & had them, after a serious conversation, say 'it's OK, what we're doing with anymals'... an atheist? - whole different picture." - Fowler's stages of religion "I was there (stage 6) in my teens" - "These religions are rock solid in teaching the core ethic... of compassion" - Wild animal suffering & hell as challenges to a benevolent god - "Western faiths tend to be very rigid..." Eastern faiths are more pluralistic/flexible? - Compassion / empathy as central to Lisa's family's ethics - "When you live in a community you can't tolerate cruelty" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 22 Mar 2021 | 39: "The Peppa Pig Paradox" - activist academic Lynda Korimboccus - Sentientist Conversations | 01:01:05 | |
Lynda (https://twitter.com/LMKorimboccus and http://www.korimboccus.com/) is an anthrozoologist, sociologist & philosopher who teaches sociology in Scottish Further Education. She is also a musician, songwriter, writer and artist. Lynda is Editor-in-Chief of the Student Journal of Vegan Sociology (http://www.vegansociology.com/journal/). Lynda’s recent paper, “The Peppa Pig Paradox”, was published in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (http://journalforcriticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JCAS-Vol-17-Iss-5-October-2020-1-FINAL.pdf). In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is also on our Podcast - subscribe here: https://apple.co/391khQO & all the other platforms https://pod.link/1540408008. The video of our conversation is here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_YjyCRc4ym8 We discuss: - Being an activist academic - The "Peppa Pig Paradox" and cognitive dissonance - Critical Animal Studies and Vegan Sociology - Multi-disciplinary perspectives spanning psychology, sociology, anthrozoology and philosophy - "There's no such thing as an amateur philosopher" - Being a child philosopher - Growing up Methodist Christian with an ex-Muslim father who converted to Christianity, then later went back to Islam - Drifting away from the church - Being a "weak atheist" or agnostic - Bible stories were only ever stories. Never believing they were true - Reasons why people leave religions - "I don't like labels". Having the freedom to choose what makes sense - Compassion as a common theme running through, and pre-dating religions - Religious sectarianism and violence in Scotland - If we strip religious ethics back to universal compassion we don't need the supernatural beliefs as justifications - Compassion, kindness, social justice and veganism as the central elements of Lynda's ethics - Taking decisions to minimise harm - The danger of socially constructed categories re: gender, race, species. Pets vs. farmed animals - The risks of a human-centred perspective, even in our understanding of and use of sentience - And much more (see YouTube or sentientism.info for full show notes) Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Lynda on our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu | |||
| 16 May 2022 | 112: "Ought flows from sentience" - neuropsychologist & "Hidden Spring" author Mark Solms | 01:38:31 | |
Mark is a psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, best known for his discovery of the brain mechanisms of dreaming and his use of psychoanalytic methods in contemporary neuroscience. He holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital and is the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Mark has received numerous awards, notably Honorary Membership of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, the American College of Psychoanalysts and the American College of Psychiatrists. He has published more than 250 articles and book chapters, and 6 books. His second book, The Neuropsychology of Dreams, was a landmark contribution to the field. His 2002 book (with Oliver Turnbull), The Brain and the Inner World was a best-seller and has been translated into 13 languages. His latest book, on the hard problem of consciousness, is The Hidden Spring. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:29 Mark's Intro - The brain as the organ of the mind - Breaking from behaviourism - Studying psychoanalysis (first person) alongside neuroscience (studying from the outside) - The value of interdisciplinary studies of consciousness - Artificial intelligence perspectives 06:08 What's Real? - Sunday school, Christian mother - At 5-6 yrs old, father said "Your mum believes in all that stuff, I don't." - Brother's horrific accident & brain damage: "He came back from the hospital... a changed person." "Who is this guy and where is Lee?" - "I was forced at an early age to confront this question of the relationship mind & body... the person & the organism" - "My sentient being must somehow be bound up with the functions of this bodily organ" - "I think we underestimate little kids... they really do think about these things" - "Clearly he is his brain" - Finding it terrifying... intimations of our own mortality - Lying in bed in panic: "I am going to cease to exist" - Depression: "what's the point?" - Becoming atheist, now agnostic. Appreciating the limits of human comprehension (through working with patients) - "We're only able to comprehend as much as the instrument we use... is capable of... it's not a perfect instrument" - Taking a comfort in ignorance & the limits of our capability - "Do the best we can to understand" but "science has limits" - Un-testable/falsifiable beliefs. Delusions as a response to frightening uncertainties ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 19 Sep 2023 | 170: "Think more like six year olds!" - Psychology Researcher Luke McGuire - Sentientism | 01:22:42 | |
Luke is a lecturer working in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter. His research examines social and moral development between childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Between 2017 and 2020 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on the Wellcome Trust, ESRC and NSF funded “STEM Teens” project. This project examined the role of youth educators in informal science learning sites, both by longitudinally following youth educators and by quasi-experimentally examining their role in these sites. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome - Previous guests Kristof Dhont (ep:47), Matti Wilks (ep:45) - PHAIR Society conference https://phairsociety.org/ 01:53 Luke Intro - Social & moral developmental #psychology - Human prejudice, discrimination - fairness, co-operation, resource allocation - PHAIR symposium on "The Meat Paradox" "That was a big inspirational moment for me" 04:13 What's Real? - "The beauty of this podcast is forcing people to wrestle with their own socialisation" - Mum from Northern Ireland & dad from Scotland "culturally religious backgrounds" - Going to church & "learning about the more scientific worldview alongside that... I wrestled with the conflict of those two things when I was younger" - Rural childhood "being face to face with the natural world" - "I sort of decided for myself when I was about 11 or 12 years old that the religious side of it was not really for me" - "My parents were so respectful of whatever we wanted to do as kids" - #punk and #metal - "There's lots of people who come from sub-cultures into this animal rights movement... it's those sub-cultural spaces where these more radical ideas are first laid down and then expand out into the broader world" - @moby 's Punk Rock Vegan Movie - "I haven't gone as far as the full animal rights sleeve tattoo yet but there's still time" - Peer influence "your parents might act as your early socialisers but a lot of what happens from when you're 6-7 years and older is down to the circles you're moving with in outside the home" - A vegetarian friend at 13 - "If you work in science for long enough you stop believing that anything can be proven 100%... do not use the word 'proof'... you cannot use that word." - "I'm with you - the more naturalistic view" - Nature-facing spiritual movements "pagans are on the rise again... people are turning back to nature" - Epistemological issues: #QAnon #antivaxx #flatearth #BigLie #trump #astrology #homeopathy #covid19 ... - "There could be a rational computational model for how we interact with the world but that's just not how it works - the social world is impossibly complicated and the human brain is not very well set up to understand... so we have to use these more simple heuristics" - "We see the importance of group membership time and time again - that identity aspect" - #ReplicationCrisis - "We have to use these simple decision-making processes because everything is too complicated" - "We can dream of being the rational thinker but we're never going to get there" - #misinformation , #disinformation , #conspiracy - Genuine vs. performative belief? - "What does it mean to really believe something?" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 26 Jan 2023 | 141: "All suffering matters morally" - Eva Hamer of Pax Fauna - Sentientism | 01:17:14 | |
Eva is the operations lead for the startup non-profit Pax Fauna. Pax Fauna exists to design a more effective social movement for animal freedom in the U.S. Eva has been organizing in the animal freedom movement since 2015 when she started working with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) in Chicago, where she focused on building community, writing protest music, and compiling the movements’ songs into an online songbook used by advocates around the world. She started working full time as DxE’s legal coordinator in 2018, managing the organization’s many legal cases, organizing trainings, and orchestrating large artistic demonstrations. Building on a background in Kingian nonviolence, Eva is a dedicated student of #nonviolentcommunication and is committed to bringing NVC’s repertoire of creative problem-solving tools to the work of building a better culture in the animal movement. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:39 Eva's Intro 02:48 What's Real? - "Growing up I definitely loved the supernatural... ghosts... god... mystical things" - Raised #episcopalian, baptised, church "I remember really enjoying that" - Considering confirmation but "starting to feel a little bit sceptical" - 5th grade: Debating people online about religion - "A sudden realisation... I don't actually believe all of this" - Looking for purpose - Identifying as an #atheist & focusing on the harms of religion (unaccepting, destructive, family rejections) - "I still don't believe in anything that can't be falsified" - "I'm really connected to the needs that can be met by religion..." working in an end of life hospice - "My own spirituality... characterised by #nonviolence" a Kingian perspective, nonviolent communication - Meeting the needs (community, morality)... without the supernatural - Valuing acceptance & care for others led to hostility vs. some religious ethics - #yoga & #meditation then finding "a more secular form of meditation" - Using supernaturalism as a metaphor - Naturalistic "spirituality"... "a felt sense of purpose" 13:20 What Matters? - Non-violence: Getting away from black & white "right and wrong" thinking to "thinking about needs" - Finding creative alternatives to meeting needs without violence - Needs & strategies to meet them - More fundamental needs: safety, sustenance, freedom from suffering - #maslow 's hierarchy, Scott Barry Kaufman's sailboat @ThePsychologyPodcast - Protective use of force. Justifiable force. "Nonviolence is definitely not #pacifism " - Mourning unmet needs ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 05 Oct 2021 | 77: Rod Graham's "Being" - cross-post bonus episode on Sentientism | 01:05:12 | |
This episode is a bonus cross-post from Rod Graham's Being series on YouTube where I talked to Rod about Sentientism. You can watch the video of our conversation on his channel here. Check out and subscribe to Rod's channel and give him a follow on Twitter. Sentientism: Sentientism Facebook (all welcome) | |||
| 15 Aug 2023 | 164: Talking about Sentientism on "Knowing Animals" with philosopher Josh Milburn - a cross-post bonus episode | 00:38:51 | |
This episode is a bonus cross-post of my conversation about Sentientism with Josh Milburn on his Knowing Animals podcast, founded by the late and much loved Siobhan O'Sullivan, as part of their Protecting Animals series. Make sure you subscribe to Knowing Animals wherever you listen. Of course Josh has also been my guest on Sentientism back in episode 50. You can find it here on the Sentientism YouTube (don't forget to subscribe and click the bell!) and here on the Sentientism Podcast. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what (and who) matters?” The Sentientism worldview answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 16 Apr 2021 | 47: "Freedom, equality & avoiding harm to others" - Kristof Dhont - Social Psychologist - Sentientist Conversations | 01:18:32 | |
Kristof is a social psychologist and senior lecturer at the university of Kent where he runs SHARKLab (Study of Human InterGroup & Animal Relations). He is the author of "Why We Love and Exploit Animals". We discuss: - The psychology of human-animal relations - Links between sexism, racism & speciesism - "Us humans are weird". We're not fully rational decision makers - Being sceptical of our own rationality - Knowing the right answer isn't the same as persuading others to agree or make changes - Growing up in Belgium, a largely Catholic country but with many who are non-practicing - Attending church, then becoming "strongly atheist" because of evidence, but also "the nasty stuff" (sexism, homophobia, racism) - Being raised with values of compassion & respect. Finding those values in Christianity, other religions and in Humanism - Moving to a more nuanced view of the good and bad in religion - Traditions and rituals have value for some people. As long as they don't cause harm to people outside or within the group - The abuse of power in institutionalised religion - Pre-human proto-morality - We don't need supernatural beliefs to justify compassionate ethics. We just need them too justify harmful ethics - Religious schooling - Being angry with the world as a teenager: religion; capitalism; animal products; injustice - then being led to study human behaviour - Taking teenage rebellion and applying it to social justice activism in academia - Moral intuitions re: "freedom, equality and avoiding harm to others" - Freedom & equality shouldn't just be left wing concerns. They're much more widely shared - Sentience matters re: moral consideration, not intelligence - Are freedom and equality fundamental or important because of how they impact suffering/flourishing? - Caring about animals. Having companion animals as family members - The Meat Paradox - Seeing a family member killing chickens and rabbits - The hardcore punk music scene & Straight Edge. Bands with a clear, constructive message re: politics & animal ethics & anti-fascism (vs. more pessimistic grunge and 1970's punk) - "I can't keep eating meat any more", supported by the positive social pressure of the music scene & friends making the change - Parents initially resisting veg*nism, needing to learn DIY (it's easier now!) - Learning about dairy/eggs & going vegan at University - Wild animal suffering and how to prioritise it vs. animal farming/fishing. The risk of paternalism/hubris - Effective Altruism - Benevolent & hostile sexism - Sentientism's focus on inclusive moral consideration - The challenges of rescue and sanctuary animals and predator companion animals - The default human answer of "kill them all" re: issues with wild animals - Animals don't care what category we put them in. They suffer just the same - And much more... (full notes at https://sentientism.info/) Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks, Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 07 Apr 2022 | 105: "The world is going to get better for animals in our lifetime" - Species Podcast host Macken Murphy - Sentientism | 01:44:05 | |
Macken is a writer and science educator. He hosts a weekly podcast about animals, Species, recommended by both Apple and BBC’s Wildlife magazine. He is currently studying anthropology at the University of Oxford. He has written a children’s book about animal symbiosis, Animal SideKicks. *Content Warning - description of violence* In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:54 Macken's Intro: Species podcast, writer, grad student 03:19 What's Real? - Never exposed to the supernatural so "I never really had occasion to believe in it" - Dad is a Pastafarian pastor - Raised by two atheists (who were raised Protestant & Catholic in Northern Ireland during The Troubles) - "Their first impression of religion in life was one that was related to needless violence... seeing someone get shot for their religious affiliation" - "I've never seen even a slightly good reason to believe in any of that stuff..." - Culturally still Christian (Santa!) - Is spiritual but not religious... "trying to have your cake & eat it too?" - Are those who grew up religious more likely to end up anti-religious than those who didn't? - Odd that atheism requires such focus vs. arguing against the existence of Santa - The risks of patronising deference to religion re: sexism, homophobia, bigotry - Losing religious belief might harm some people - Why is using evidence & reason the best approach? What if "I just don't like it" - Different forms of evidence & reasoning - Biases, denial, gullibility & skepticism 25:40 What Matters & Who Matters? - Utilitarianism in theory & nihilism in practice - Vegan "If I wasn't vegan I'd feel super guilty all the time" - "I wasn't really raised with a moral framework... there was one rule... from my dad... 'don't be a dick'" - My mum gave me a list: "One girlfriend at a time... never get a grade below a B..." - Evolved ethical intuitions - "We're an altruistic, really prosocial species... we're also a really evil, horrible species" - A pre-disposition to moral strictness "I didn't swear for years... I basically haven't lied at all (maybe this is a bit of a lie)." - Testing utilitarian on thought experiments "but if you followed me around all day I'd be acting very much the same way as my ancestors (except veganism)... family first, friends second, everyone else when I can & it's easy" - Effective Altruism ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 13 Aug 2024 | "Not personhood... beingness" - Professor Maneesha Deckha - Sentientism 209 | 01:19:23 | |
Maneesha Deckha is a law professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Her work initially spanned human rights, injustice, feminist theory, post-colonial & decolonial theory and later, inter-species justice and its links and intersectionality with human social justice. Maneesha founded and directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University. She is the author of the book “Animals as Legal Beings”. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:55 Welcome - Maneesha on The Animal Turn and Think Like a Vegan podcasts hosted by: - Claudia Hirtenfelder Sentientism episode - Emilia Leese Sentientism episode - SentientistEducation 03:05 Maneesha's Intro - "To consider how different oppressions for different groups, both human and animal and even other non-humans, are systemically structured and are related and overlap - and also how they might be different" - Working long before and since the "Animal Turn" in academia "when not too many people were discussing animals" - Research: animals legal subjectivity, animal ethics, feminist perspectives "connecting work... looking at issues of gender, race, culture, species in tandem" - "Addressing questions that affect women, that affect children, that affect animals - through that intersectional lens" - Starting and Directing the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University - Public facing projects e.g. the "A Deeper Kindness" documentary 06:55 What's Real? - Growing up in a Hindu household... celebrations, stories - The radical diversity of Hinduism "all these gods and goddesses and quite a few of them are multi-species... Lord Ganesh" - University courses on Hinduism and Buddhism - "I always looked at that... as myth" - The ethos of learning... being introduced to modernist, scientific & secular views - "I approached the world in a more secular, atheist frame... atheist understood as being compatible with Hinduism... not really believing in these gods and goddesses but somewhat happy that these stories are there... the diversity of thought that it brings up" - "When we have a physical sensation or emotional sensation that it's real... that pain is real... that suffering is real even if it's psychological" - Learning about social construction and the influence of language at university "we cannot access... reality... without mediating that access through concepts, through language" - "We can't really know something 100% for certain... because it depends on how we frame it on the interiority of our mind which of course almost always depends on language" 26:30 What Matters? 37:25 Who Matters? 01:07:47 A Better World? 01:15:50 Follow Maneesha - “I’m of that age where I’m not too excited about social media” - Maneesha at the University of Victoria - A Deeper Kindness documentary series - Human Children, Nonhuman Animals, and a Plant-Based Vegan Future Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 08 Jan 2023 | 137: "What is it like to be another animal?" - Lori Marino - Sentientism | 01:24:21 | |
Lori is Executive Director of The Kimmela Center and Founder & President of The Whale Sanctuary Project. She is a neuroscientist and expert in animal behavior and intelligence, formerly on the faculty of Emory University where she was also a faculty member at the Emory Center for Ethics. She is internationally known for her work on the evolution of the brain and intelligence in dolphins and whales and marine mammal welfare in captivity, as well as cognition in farmed animals through The Someone Project. In 2001 Lori co-authored a ground-breaking study with Diana Reiss offering the first conclusive evidence for mirror self-recognition in bottlenose dolphins, after which she decided against conducting further research with animals held captive in zoos and aquariums. Lori has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers, book chapters, and magazine articles on marine mammal biology and cognition, comparative brain anatomy, self-awareness in nonhuman animals, human-nonhuman animal relationships, and the evolution of intelligence. Lori has appeared in several films and television programs, including Blackfish; Unlocking the Cage; Long Gone Wild and the upcoming documentary about Corky, the orca held captive by SeaWorld since 1969. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome - Guest links e.g. Kathy Hessler https://youtu.be/R5eZebUAsQg 01:52 Lori's Intro - A central question: "What is it like to be another animal?" - "I ran into ethical issues that shaped how I conducted my career" - Science then science-based advocacy "it's all based on facts" 04:12 What's Real? - Raised Roman #Catholic as an Italian American in Brooklyn NY "Church on Sunday" - "I started to question the whole proposition... that there's some sort of a god" - Heaven, hell, sin "It's not light hearted... it's dark" - Becoming a recovering Catholic - "If there is a god, it's on vacation" & the #problemofevil - Becoming #atheist "that's what I am today... I don't see any reason to propose that there's anything supernatural out there" - #agnostic "what does that even mean?... I'm atheist in the same way that I don't think that there are purple dinosaurs walking around in my room & talking to me... I'm not agnostic about that." - "I didn't ever draw my ethics from religion" - Catholic "#ethics but from a very weird point of view" - The psychological needs motivating religious belief - Teenage dabbling in #pseudoscience 20:45 What and Who Matters? A Better Future! ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 18 Jun 2022 | 118: "You can definitely be a victim & a perpetrator" - Erin Wing - Animal Outlook Deputy Director of Investigations - Sentientism | 01:20:38 | |
Erin is the Deputy Director of Investigations at Animal Outlook, a national animal-advocacy nonprofit organisation. Erin was an undercover investigator for two years. She left the field after her last investigation at the Dick Van Dam Dairy in California, where she saw cruelty, abuse & suffering every day. Through her new position with Animal Outlook, Erin works closely with investigators, providing support & resources. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:38 Erin's Intro - Undercover farm & fishery investigations & Animal Outlook 02:46 What's Real? - Growing up very religious... - Church every Sunday, Biblical moral standards - The Golden Rule "Do unto others..." - "There was a point in my life where I started to question... there always seemed to be some exclusions... some conditions" - "'Others' encompassed everyone... human, animals, children, everyone regardless of sexuality, background, identification..." - No longer Christian, now non-religious... "someone who just wants to make the world a better place for everyone in it" - "As I got older I started questioning things more" - Very religious mother "faith based" who still encouraged questions - Religious belief: "That's great for them... as long as no one is being hurt" - Questioning both the facts & ethics of Christianity - "It really came to a head for me... [I] managed to fall into almost every marginalised community" LGBTQ+, race... - "I fell into so many of those categories that potentially might be excluded from salvation" - The supernatural, luck, agnosticism? - "I never rule anything out" humility 18:25 What Matters? - [Golden Rule] "the way I would like the world to function" - "...my own trauma & hardship & suffering" - Compassion for it's own sake or because god commands? 23:30 Who Matters? - "I've always had this connection with animals" - As a child "I did not see a lot of kindness", often conditional compassion - With non-human animals: "There are no conditions to receive affection from them"... "Those were the purest connections I could make" - Making friends with a scary-sounding neighbourhood dog "I just felt a wet nose & breathing" - Saving a stray dog & drowning kittens - Watching an animal farming documentary at ~13-14 yrs old "I immediately felt horrified" - "I could feel that contradiction... why am I eating this?" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 23 Nov 2021 | 85: "If you have experienced suffering you're aware of its badness" - Philosopher Michael Huemer - Sentientist Conversation | 01:21:03 | |
Michael Huemer (@FakeNousBlog) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than seventy academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, & political philosophy, as well as eight amazing books that YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY BUY including Skepticism & the Veil of Perception, Ethical Intuitionism, The Problem of Political Authority, Approaching Infinity, Paradox Lost, & Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism. He blogs at fakenous.net. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:31 Mike's Intro 02:20 What's Real? - Reading bible stories at 5 yrs old & declaring "This is stupid!... I don't believe in god" - "all the major religions are false... incredibly implausible" - Bible & other religious texts: "just so obviously the sort of things a primitive human would write"... obsessed w/sex, different human tribes - "If I'd created a universe containing 100 bn galaxies... I don't think I'd be obsessed with this particular tribe of humans" - "God in traditional religions doesn't even seem like a decent person, let alone the greatest... If he was a human we'd have to lock him in jail" - Mike's "Scary Bible Quotes" page - Jesus contradicting the Old Testament - Atheism to agnosticism. "There could still be a creator". Fine tuning - Intelligent design, multiverse, anthropic responses - Methodological naturalism & metaphysical naturalism - "I don't even really know what supernatural means" - "There can be natural things that are beyond our understanding" - "I think I'm conscious & I don't think my consciousness is physical"... many naturalists say that's not naturalism - Direct realism: "You should assume that things are they way they seem unless you have specific reasons for thinking otherwise". Most people who object don't know what it is. "The main problem is people refuse to listen." 23:52 What Matters? - "It was always bizarre that people thought you needed religion in order to have ethics" - Divine Command Theory: "The boss is going to mess you up". That's not ethics - What does "where does ethics come from?" even mean? Where did numbers come from? - "We thought about it - then it was obvious" - "If you've felt pain you're going to notice that it's bad" - The is/ought gap "is supposed to be between such & such is painful & such & such is bad" - "If you have experienced suffering you're aware of its badness" - "In a way I'm following what I thought when I was a small child" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 14 Jan 2021 | 21: "How can I have been morally asleep for so long?" - Prof Randall Abate - Sentientist Conversation | 01:06:59 | |
Randall is an author and environmental, animal, climate and constitutional law professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey. His books include “What Can Animal Law Learn From Environmental Law?” and “Climate Change and the Voiceless: Protecting Future Generations, Wildlife, and Natural Resources”. In these Sentientist Conversations (subscribe!), we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.” Full show notes here: https://sentientism.info/how-can-i-have-been-morally-asleep-for-so-long-prof-randall-abate-new-sentientist-conversation Watch the video here. We discuss:
You can find Randall here at Monmouth. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info. Join our “wall” using this simple form. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-prod work on this video. Follow him at @cgbessellieu. | |||
| 28 Dec 2020 | 16: “How can we do the most good for non-human animals?” - Jamie Harris – Animal Advocacy Careers co-founder & Sentience Institute Researcher - Sentientist Conversations | 01:08:58 | |
Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/how-can-we-do-the-most-good-for-non-human-animals-jamie-harris-animal-advocacy-careers-co-founder-sentience-institute-researcher-new-sentientist-conversation You can find the video of our conversation here https://youtu.be/ea_v6kWCGZQ Jamie is co-founder of and researcher at the non-profit Animal Advocacy Careers, a researcher at the Sentience Institute and host of the Sentience Institute Podcast (subscribe!) In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is “evidence, commitment and compassion for all sentient beings.” Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Help normalise compassion and rationality by joining our “wall” using this simple form https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-prod work on this video. Follow him @cgbessellieu. | |||
| 21 Mar 2025 | Hugo Award winning Sci-Fi author Peter Watts - "We are entropic eddies complex enough to have woken up" - Sentientism 56 - REMASTERED | 01:15:52 | |
Peter Watts (https://rifters.com/) is a Hugo Award winning sci-fi author. His works include the Rifters trilogy (e.g. Starfish) & the Firefall series (e.g. Blindsight). He earned a Ph.D from the Univ of BC Canada. He held several academic positions & worked as a marine-mammal biologist before becoming an author. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:30 Peter's Intro - Baptist to biology to sci-fi - A father so confident in Baptist truth that he encouraged questioning "He taught so many people about the word of god but had somehow failed to reach me" - Becoming a marine biologist then fleeing the political bullshit - Becoming a sci-fi author - Including academic references in sci-fi. "I've been published in Nature more than they have because Nature publishes sci-fi stories!" - "One of the coolest things about this gig is that scientists seek me out" 4:35 What's real? - Parental default "We're programmed to imitate & imprint" - A "rock star" Baptist minister father who trained other ministers. Seeing him struggle with domestic abuse, dementia & being a "non-practicing homosexual" - "He was the most unjudgmental man I've ever known." "Rolling his eyes at the sin but loving the sinner." Maybe because he was afraid of being judged for being gay. "A tormented, unhappy but wonderful guy" - Starting to question religion by reading sci-fi - Robert Heinlein's 'Stranger in a Strange Land' "introduced me to what an asshole the old testament god was". For some reason this hadn't been mentioned in Sunday school - Interestingly, as a gay minister, dad didn't seem to know about Leviticus - "Learning just enough from sci-fi novels to be an asshole to my dad" - "God doesn't really explain anything" - Being an atheist teenager + later becoming anti-religious - "Religion is basically a biological epiphenomenon" - Snorting oxytocin to improve fidelity - In/out group tribalism - Once you strip away the rhetoric humans act pretty much like any other mammal - "Being right is not as important in survival as having the esteem of your social group" - "Nobody ever achieved exalted social status by saying 'you guys are all fucking morons & here's my evidence'" - More educated people sometimes just have better post-rationalisations - "When you think of people as mammals a lot of stuff that seems bat-shit insane suddenly makes sense" - A soft spot for psionics/telepathy: "Time travelling snuff porn"? - "We kinda don't know everything yet - isn't that what science is about?" - Does being open-minded make us vulnerable to fundamentalists? - "It's easier to fit god than uncertainty onto a bumper sticker" And much more... (see YouTube or Sentientism.info) Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 23 Jan 2024 | Is veganism a moral obligation? Ghostless Machine cross-post bonus - Sentientism 184 | 01:26:45 | |
Welcome to episode 184 of the Sentientism Podcast. A podcast about what's real, who matters and how we can make a better world. The Sentientism worldview answers those deep questions by committing to evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. This episode is a bonus cross-post of my discussion with Ariel Pontes. His Ghostless Machine podcast includes a series of dialogues where he has friendly disagreements over controversial topics with a variety of guests. I had the pleasure of being his first. Make sure you go and subscribe. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking to Ariel - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the three most important questions: “what’s real?”, “what (and who) matters?” and "how can we make a better future?" The Sentientism worldview answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks to Tarabella and Denise for chipping in with our production costs via the secret(ish) Sentientism Patreon. | |||
| 14 Jun 2022 | 117: Intro to Sentientism (30 mins) "Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings" | 01:17:49 | |
This episode is a recording of my presentation about Sentientism to the Terra.do climate change platform & community. Many thanks to Adam and the team for inviting me. My core presentation runs for about 30 minutes - the rest is an open conversation with the group. Drop me an email at hello at sentientism dot info if you'd like a copy of the slides - or you can see them on the YouTube of my presentation. Terra.do is the world’s first online climate learning platform and community for professionals looking to pivot their career towards climate solutions. Their goal is to get 100 million people, in all sectors of society, working on climate change by 2030. They run cohort-based online programs for talented individuals that teach them everything about climate, plug them into a network of mentors and expose them to full-time/part-time/entrepreneurial work opportunities in the space.) In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what (and who) matters?” Sentientism answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 28 Apr 2021 | 50: "Animal activists don't have to be on the political left" - Josh Milburn - Sentientist Conversation | 01:08:45 | |
Josh (https://josh-milburn.com/ & https://twitter.com/JoshLMilburn & https://www.instagram.com/aveganphilosopher/) is a moral & political philosopher with research interests in animal ethics, the philosophy of food, liberal & libertarian political theory & applied ethics. He is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dept of Politics & International Relations at the University of Sheffield. He co-hosts the Knowing Animals podcast. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/akBBFREpveU. We discuss: - Taking an interdisciplinary approach to academia & activism - Encountering various religious traditions as a child - Thinking "I don't believe that" at 8 years old re: Noah's ark - Being a "militant atheist" as a teenager - Studying religions to undergrad level - What is real & what we can know to be real - There is a world out there but we don't know all about it - Science & naturalism - Dogma vs open-mindedness & humility - Moral realism & different kinds of claim/evidence - The dangers of moral relativism & nihilism - Grounding morality in a naturalistic understanding of sentient beings & sentience. "I don't suffering & I don't think you do either" - Pluralism - Religious studies didn't cover philosophy - Being very resistant to vegetarianism. A fundamental challenge - Reading Peter Singer at 17 while considering studying philosophy - "Philosophers are often not the best activists" - Philosophical arguments don't have the same impact on everyone - Some people "get it" but still don't change. Others just don't get it - "Imagine animals had rights - how would we feed the world?... It would't be a vegan food system." Clean/cultivated meats & milks - "Can we get to an ethical food system without people having to change their practices at all?" - Animals where it's less certain whether they are sentient. Invertebrates, oysters, jellyfish, insects, sponges - Deciding how to act in the face of uncertainty - "It's got to be a high bar to say 'you cannot do that thing that is central to your life'" but "Sentient animals have rights" and that's enough to tell pig farmers to stop - Edge cases re: veganism & animal ethics - Liberalism & state coercion. Only using coercion when injustice is clear - Having compassion for human sentients too, even those doing harm - #JustTransition - The history of the term "Sentientism". Rodman, Ryder, Singer - It's hard not to be consequentialist in its broadest sense - Deontological rules do have to pay attention to what happens - Gary Francione's abolitionism - Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka's Zoopolis - Sentientism as a pluralistic philosophy - "Animal activists don't have to be on the political left" - Sentientism rules out intra-human discriminations. Racism/homophobia etc. don't belong - Robert Nozick was a vegetarian & a libertarian - And much more. See https://sentientism.info/ or YouTube for full show notes. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Josh on our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks to Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 09 Apr 2021 | 45: "Children are much less speciesist than adults" - researcher Matti Wilks - Sentientist Conversations | 01:08:22 | |
Matti (https://www.mattiwilks.com/ and @matti_wilks) is a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, working with Professor Paul Bloom. She studies moral psychology & moral development - including attitudes to cultivated meat & the "natural", the moral status of various types of entities & altruism. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: - Doing research to make the world a better place (& curiosity) - Growing up non-religious (w/ ex-Jewish father) & vegetarian - Seeing the benefits & value in religion: Community & compassion - Open-mindedness & humility - The danger of over-confidence in naturalism & science - Researching ve*an children in meat-eating households - Parallels between religious & omnivore societal defaults and indoctrination/norm setting - Many "religious" people don't actually hold to the supernatural beliefs - Why do we have morality & what should morality be about? - Being uncertain about whether there are moral truths - Harm & suffering as inherently bad. The drive to reduce suffering - Haidt et al's Moral Foundations Theory - Even if nothing matters to the universe, experiences matter to each individual sentient being - Would Isaac killing his son have been right? (No) - Isn't choosing whether to care about suffering just choosing whether to be moral? - People seem to be more ethically motivated than they used to be - Even Greenwashing is a sign that more people care about the environment - Public negativity re: factory farming - Having the capacity to act more ethically is a privilege (being free of survival needs) - Moral relativism - Growing up around animals & becoming an "outraged" activist at 15-16 yrs - Studying animal cognition. "The Gap" by Thomas Suddendorf
- The importance of the moral scope boundary - Sentientism as pluralistic re: ethical systems - Degrees of sentience vs. egalitarian approaches - And much more! Full shownotes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist wall" using this form. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks, Graham for the post-prod. | |||
| 20 Nov 2020 | 4: "Do you want a habitable planet for your children?" - Sentientist Conversations - Zion Lights | 01:16:18 | |
Zion Lights is an author & activist known for her environmental work & science communication. She is UK director of Environmental Progress. She has been a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion (XR) UK on TV and radio, and founded & edited XR’s Hourglass newspaper. She has written for The Huffington Post, authored the evidence-based nonfiction book The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting, and given a TEDx talk. We talk about:
There’s more about Zion here: http://www.zionlights.co.uk/ & you can follow her on Twitter here @ziontree. Here she is on our Celebrity “wall”. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at sentientism.info. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community. Our main group is here on FaceBook. | |||
| 16 May 2023 | 155: Dogs and pigs have meaningful lives! - Philosopher Michael Hauskeller - Sentientism | 01:35:07 | |
Michael is head of philosophy at the University of Liverpool. His current work spans transhumanism, death & meaning. He has written a vast range of topics, including on whether non-human animals can have meaningful lives & "What It Is Like to Be a Bot". He says of his work: "As a philosopher, I am a generalist, which is a nice way of saying that I have done many different things & I am not really an expert on anything in particular." In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:42 Michael's Intro - What it means to be human, to live a good life, a meaningful life - Transhumanism & human enhancement - Meaning & life & death - When dealing with foundational, broad questions: "It is very difficult to be precise... I hardly ever feel that 'now I've got it'" 06:06 What's Real? - "It's much easier to point at something & disuss whether that is real" - "If you can name something then in some sense it must be real" - Raised #Christian & sent to Sunday school & Bible classes & regular confessions to the village priest - "I sort of believed there was a god when I was little" - A god watching me "a means of controlling me... Big Brother in heaven... it was just oppressive... a punishing god, a critical god" - "I didn't feel the presence... I just believed that there was something because I was told there was something" - "Very quickly I dropped my religious beliefs... as soon as I started to think for myself I became an #atheist" - "It just faded away... it was always superficial" - "Some people take me for a Christian because I share some of the intuitions religious believers have" - "I'm not entirely comfortable with calling myself a naturalist although I don't believe in anything supernatural" - "Naturalism is also very programmatic & ideological" - "There are a lot of things in this world that we cannot understand...& some naturalists are very confident that we can understand everything & that's there's no mystery... there is a lot of mystery." - Max More's #transhumanism ... pits science vs. religion - Origins of the universe & life & consciousness "we don't know!" Science might figure it out - it might not - "... whatever there is is part of nature" - Over-confidence vs. humility - The subjective & the objective - Plato & Parmenides: "being is more real than becoming"... "but we live in a world of becoming... how can that be less real?" - The "normative use of reality"... to "declare something else as not real... a term to deny something else its reality" - The denial of animal suffering "not so common any more" & the #cartesian model - "If you see an animal in pain you know it is in pain... it takes a lot of willful blindness not to acknowledge..." - "One of the reasons... why animals could not possibly feel any pain... because it would then be far too horrible how we treat animals... god wouldn't allow it!" - "If we assume the world is good & we see all the apparent suffering... then it cannot be... A moral reason behind denying the suffering of animals" - JW "An echo of a religious mode of thought that's then re-built in a humanist mode of thought" - "If we have evolved naturally... there's no reason to assume our brains are capable of understanding the universe... what possible use can it have?" - "A naturalistic perspective should actually teach us humility" 29:03 What Matters? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 24 Jan 2025 | “How do you find meaning in a universe that’s doomed?” - Astrophysicst Dr. Katie Mack @AstroKatie - Sentientism 144 - REMASTERED | 01:27:25 | |
Katie is a theoretical cosmologist who holds the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at Perimeter Institute. Her academic research investigates dark matter, vacuum decay and the epoch of reionisation. Katie is also a popular science communicator who participates in social media and regularly writes for Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time and Cosmos. She is the author of the book “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)” In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:58 Katie's Intro - #cosmology & #astrophysics - "The study of the universe from beginning to end from the smallest to the largest scales" - #darkmatter, the beginning of the universe & the end of the universe - Research & public engagement 03:33 What's Real? - Growing up going to church & youth group & #bible study - United Church of Christ... liberal & open-minded #socialjustice #lgbtq rights - Useful guidelines for life but "I never really understood how faith works... believing things without evidence" - Exploring different religious traditions e.g. #judaism "attending church on Sunday mornings and synagogue on Friday nights" - "I always wanted to believe something... there's a fundamental urge most humans have to connect with the divine... #spirituality of some kind... the problem was I didn't believe in anything" - Connecting with religious songs, prayer, rituals about forgiveness & bettering yourself... - Being told "just believe"... "I don't know how to do that!" - "I believe things if I see evidence for them... if I have some reason" - A scientifically curious kid - "The way I relate to the world... is through evidence" - "I don't fundamentally grasp the concept of choosing your perceptions... choosing your beliefs. I don't think I can do that" - Ontological & epistemological naturalism - "I haven't had a spiritual experience... I assume I would write it off as something explainable through psychology and physics... but I can't say for certain" - Enrolling in a #theology seminary school after graduating in physics: "wanting to understand religion... why people believe in things... I dropped out after 6 months" - "I've done everything... went to every service... went to seminary... I did all the things and still god has not appeared to me in any way... I was a little bit jealous... that certainty, that feeling of peace... you are loved by the most powerful being in the cosmos... that sounds really cool... sign me up" - "I could follow all the rules... I couldn't believe" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 30 Jan 2021 | 27: "Vegan stuff is going to be hot!" - Dr. Corey Lee Wrenn - Sentientist Conversations | 01:19:42 | |
Corey Lee Wrenn is a UK-based American sociologist and scholar of social movements and human-nonhuman relations. She is a lecturer in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent. Corey says: “The magnitude of nonhuman suffering is such that activists can’t afford to take chances. My work is designed to take the guesswork out of social movement mobilization and animal rights activism, and I need your help to implement the findings.” Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/vegan-stuff-is-going-to-be-hot-sociologist-corey-lee-wrenn-new-sentientist-conversation Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.” We discuss (and much more): - The Vegan Feminist Network, The Vegan Society - Corey’s books: “A Rational Approach to Animal Rights“, “Piecemeal Protests”, Animal Rights in Ireland, Vegan Sociology, Vegan Feminism - Growing up atheist in the american “bible belt” south, surrounded by deeply religious culture and family - A cousin gifting a bible saying “I’m worried about your soul!” - Reading the bible – “a lot of animal killing… this isn’t for me” - The sociological concern about whether urbanisation and the de-emphasis of religion might leave a moral vacuum (e.g. Durkheim) - Being “a child of the human rights project” – individual freedoms (e.g. from suffering), equality, social justice - Mishka joins our conversation 🐶 - First animal protest at 8 years old “I crawled under my bed and wouldn’t come out” re: animal shelter euthanasia - Drawing pictures showing the turkey’s perspective at Thanksgiving - Growing up in a meat-eating, hunting culture as the “lone Appalachian vegan” - Vegetarian at 13 when realised “That was an actual animal” - Vegan on first day at university after leaving home - Granting moral consideration to all sentient beings regardless of category... You can find Corey at coreyleewrenn.com, here on FaceBook and @DrCoreyLeeWrenn. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “wall” Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Our biggest (~90 countries so far) is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham for his post-prod work. Follow him: @cgbessellieu. | |||
| 28 Dec 2024 | "A dual indoctrination of farm culture... and religion" - Jim Mason - Sentientism 219 | 01:24:38 | |
Jim Mason is a lawyer, journalist and animal rights activist. He was introduced to philosopher Peter Singer, guest on Sentientism episodes 156 and 218, in 1974. Their book Animal Factories was first published in 1980 and revised in 1990. It provides a critical review and photographic documentation of factory farming practices in North America. Jim's book, An Unnatural Order: The Roots of Our Destruction of Nature looks at the historical and cultural roots of the Western belief in God-given dominion over the living world. Jim was elected to the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2001. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:15 Welcome 02:47 Jim's Intro - Raised on an animal farm, milking cows, killing chickens - Vegetarian since 1955 and more recently vegan - Born during WWII, growing up in 1940-50s rural America - Religious indoctrination "a family of Bible thumpers... I had to be in church every time the door was open" - Methodist Christianity - "A dual indoctrination of farm culture... and religion... the most intense Christian indoctrination" - "I was brought up on human supremacy and using animals and animal exploitation as a way of life" - Until early 30's "I never really departed from that agrarian mentality" - "I became an atheist at Sunday School" - Mourning the loss of dog Butch "my main companion... a brother to me" - "I asked the preacher... 'Will I see Butch in heaven?'... he finally droned on... 'No we don't see animals in heaven - animals don't have souls'... By the time the service was over I began to consciously think 'I am an atheist - I don't believe this stuff'" - "I have since graduated from atheism to anti-theism... I don't like any form of theism... it's anti-science... we'll find a better kind of based for our spirituality other than superstition." 06:41 What's Real? - "It's human supremacy. We're made in the image of god. And since I've become an atheist I've realised that we've made god in the image of ourselves... We created a god that looked like us to give us power over the world." - Old Testament upbringing... "[not] Christian Nationalist or fundamentalist... good old mainstream Protestants" - Era of segregation and "women's oppression had not occurred to us yet"... Trad Wives "church, children, kitchen" - God, bible, Jesus "we were sinful and we had to come to church to purge ourselves... a whole system to train us to behave..." 26:56 What Matters? 42:20 Who Matters? 01:02:34 A Better World? Follow Jim - @JimMasonAUO (“reluctantly – I think it’s [Twitter] in it’s death throes”) And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 16 Oct 2023 | 174: "Law is a reflection of the people that make it" - Iyan Offor - Sentientism | 01:32:46 | |
Dr Iyan Offor is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Birmingham City University conducting interdisciplinary, theoretical research focusing on global animal law, environmental justice, intersectionality, posthumanism and law in the Anthropocene. Iyan is passionate about delivering legal education and research that will lead to the improvement of protections for animals and the environment in law. Iyan teaches international environmental law and human rights, legal theory, legal research, and constitutional law. He will also be creating a new course on animals in environmental law. His new book, "Global Animal Law From The Margins", is published by Routledge. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips 01:22 Welcome - Josh Gellers (previous Sentientism guest) 03:00 Iyan's Intro - Socio-legal scholar. Animals, nature and the law - and how those interact with society - Improving educational options re: animal law: PhDs, masters projects, programmes, talks - "...that appetite for learning about animals, the environment and the law that's already there - [but] in many places there's not space" - Research: "How law can be used as a tool to try and improve animals lives... the core of what I'm trying to do" - New book: "Global Animal Law From The Margins" - Globallaw's multi-scale focus vs. #internationallaw (just the international level) - Feminist, queer & postcolonial perspectives on the animal question - "It ends up being a bit wacky... the international trading system... taking this forward-looking ethical approach... not the most natural bed-fellows but I think in the end it works" 06:58 What's Real? - An #atheist household in a very religious community (highlands of Scotland) and wider family - #bornagain #christian grand-parents "a healthy dose of trying to convert us... my parents weren't to thrilled about that but we were well prepared." - "I couldn't bring my #harrypotter books into the house because magic was seen as sinful and against god's will... it didn't make a lot of sense to me." - Christian cartoons and religion at school "There was a feeling of it being forced on us" - "I can see as quite problematic the ways in which children at school were expected to engage in Christian custom" - Exchange year in Singapore, multiculturalism, secularism re: separation of state and religion - Coming to understand grand-parents' turn to religion "they needed their faith" - "I identify as part of the queer community... growing up in that very small, rural and christian environment... growing up closeted... has been interesting" - Parents "gave us the information & gave us the freedom to make our own choice... that's an incredible privilege to have that freedom..." - "I don't practice or follow a religion... it's never felt like a gap in my life" 34:18 What and Who Matters? 01:11:39 A Better World? 01:28:19 Follow Iyan - https://twitter.com/IyanOffor - https://www.linkedin.com/in/iyan-offor/ - https://www.bcu.ac.uk/law/about-us/meet-our-staff/iyan-offor - Global Animal Law From The Margins “the e-book is reasonably priced” ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 23 Jan 2023 | 140: "Animal rights is a social justice issue now" - Fashion Activist Bel Jacobs - Sentientism | 01:19:09 | |
Between 1999 and 2014, Bel was Style Editor for Metro. The fall of Rana Plaza in 2013 forced a re-assessment; today, she is a writer, speaker and activist with a focus on animal rights, the climate emergency and the toxic fashion system. Bel has taken part in and moderated numerous panels for brands and organisations and has been interviewed about her work in activism, alternative systems in fashion and culture change. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:48 Bel's Intro - Journalism, fashion editor, social & animal justice activism - "The world of fashion sucks you in" - Co-founding The Islington Climate Centre & running The Empathy Project 04:19 What's Real? - (I mis-spoke & asked "what matters?" - sorry!) - Growing up in #hongkong ... rich, vibrant, urban - "Really loving animals" first companion animal at 3 "they were these beautiful things" - Stray animals & wet markets "but no one talked about it" - Food "a very big deal in that culture"... valuing the exotic e.g. suckling pig / turtle soup - "At least they were honest... there was no pretense at compassion" - "I tucked in because everyone else tucked in" - "I held this love of animals whilst eating them for a very long time" - Growing up "broadly agnostic" with a Jewish father & a mother who moved through various religions - Saying the Lord's Prayer every morning at school - "I just couldn't correlate why there were so many sad things happening & god didn't seem to be very active in sorting it out" - Coming to #spirituality through "the extent of the suffering... abuse... cruelty"... "I could not rationalise it" - "I'm going to drive my love to them through thought & visualisation & #meditation " - "My god is the natural world" - "Animals are the sentient representations of nature" - "I do like to get my hands in the soil" 19:34 What Matters? - "Religions are man made constructions... constructed in times long gone... by powerful men... You cannot not question them." - Suffering as central to understanding good & bad 23:46 Who Matters? - "Even as we talk most people will think we're talking just about humans" - Moral philosophy's focus on humans - The rationalisations that support animal exploitation "I had an innocent idea of what authority does" - "I would volunteer in animal shelters then go home and have a meat dinner" - A journalist trip where they helped a sheep get free from barbed wire then "had lamb for dinner" - "My awakening... was my encounter with the #Yulin dog meat festival... I started to question the nature of humanity" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 25 Aug 2021 | 72: "Making Compassion Easier" - Tobias Leenaert - Author and meta-advocate - Sentientist Conversation | 01:08:08 | |
Tobias (@TobiasLeenaert) is an author & a vegan advocacy consultant. He blogs at Veganstrategist.org & wrote "How to Create a Vegan World". He is the co-founder of ProVeg International. He is an Effective Altruist - thinking about the best ways to achieve a compassionate society. He also describes himself as a "Slow opinionist". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:28 Tobias' Intro - A life of vegan advocacy - Setting up EVA, then "meta-activism" helping other activists be more effective 2:37 What's Real? - Being confirmed as a Catholic & attending Catholic school because "that's just what you do" - Defending rational & scientific worldviews - "I'm not the most devout atheist you can find"... there's a possibility there's "something more" - Could religious visions one day be made real through technology? Reincarnation, heaven, creation/simulation? - "Maybe religious ideas are perversions of what is technologically possible" - Science fiction - Hallucinogenics & "religious" experiences - The hard problem of consciousness vs. "it's just what doing this sort of info processing feels like" - The echoes of religious ideas even for those who no longer believe. The Exorcist" movie 15:34 What Matters Morally? - Being raised as an ethical person. Volunteering at 12 yrs old - A teenage phase of being less morally engaged, then "it came back - especially with animals" - "That empathy was there always - without needing a system of rules" - Emotional & rational bases for compassionate ethics - "You can be a vegan sociopath"... decide rationally to act compassionately without feeling empathy 22:12 Extending moral consideration to non-humans - Loving companion cats and dogs at home as a child - Wondering what's the difference between them & cows we eat - "If I can't answer that question I have to stop eating animals" - Taking 10 years to go vegan even after that realisation - The power of taste preference... overcoming intertia - Making a bet to go without meat for a month. Then carrying on - Empathy, reasoning, then practice - "Making compassion easier" - Peter Singer's shallow pond thought experiment - Anthropocentrism, sentiocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism - Wild animal suffering & artificial sentients - "I don't see the point in going beyond sentientism - only sentient beings can suffer by definition" - The dangers of environmentalists granting moral consideration to species or populations that have no concerns & can't experience ... and much more. Full notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 09 Mar 2021 | 36: "The Ocean is Alive" - Ocean Ecologist Glenn Edney - Sentientist Conversations | 01:03:53 | |
Glenn Edney (https://oceanspirit.org/) is an Ocean ecologist, underwater naturalist, sailor and professional diver. He has been exploring the Ocean and interacting with Ocean life for more than 30 years. He has an MSc in Holistic Science from Schumacher College and Plymouth University UK. His research is focused on understanding the Ocean as a living system and the role she plays as the primary life support system for our planet. He has a strong interest in bringing together traditional indigenous Ocean knowledge and modern scientific ecological understanding. For the past four years he has been collaborating with OceansWatch.org in working with communities in Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands to develop community based, qualitative assessment methodologies to monitor the health of local reefs. He has written three books, including "The Ocean Is Alive". In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation and full show notes are here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9GAvks4BKJA. We discuss: - Ocean ecology - The ocean as a "living" interconnected system - First experiencing the ocean at 3 years old and the pervasive presence of the ocean in Aotearoa (New Zealand) - Growing up in a conservative, farming area - A dog best friend - Running away from Sunday School at 5 yrs old. Not being able to get straight answers - What we think of the natural world has often been heavily modified by humans - Moving from the country to suburban Auckland. "An environment just for humans". Sensing the separation of humans. - Studying fundamentalist Christian churches at university - Visiting the tomb of St. John the Baptist - Transcendent experiences of connectedness and continuity, even within a naturalistic worldview - The physical and spiritual experiences as distinct or as one - The distinction between reality and the categories we apply to it - The limits of science - Collective minds and memory - The "evolution" of a living ocean as a whole system - Degrees or levels of sentience - "Life has always been communal" - Living things have always communicated sense data about the world (chemically or via other mechanisms). The early origins of sentience - ...and much more (show notes here https://youtu.be/9GAvks4BKJA)! Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks to Graham for his post-prod work: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 18 Jan 2021 | 22: "A Fabulous Vegan Future!" - Jasmin Singer, Author & Activist - Sentientist Conversations | 00:53:41 | |
Jasmin Singer is the author of “The VegNews Guide to Being a Fabulous Vegan” and the memoir “Always Too Much and Never Enough“. She’s the co-founder & co-host of the award-winning Our Hen House podcast & nonprofit (now in its eleventh year), the Director of Editorial for Kinder Beauty, & the editor of the Encompass Essays: “Pursuing Racial Equity in Animal Advocacy”. Jasmin was named a “40 Under 40” by The Advocate Magazine, a top “Eco-Preneur” by Go Magazine & can be seen in documentaries including “Vegucated” & “The Ghosts In Our Machine”. Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/a-fabulous-vegan-future-jasmin-singer-new-sentientist-conversation The video version of our conversation is here on YouTube. In these Sentientist Conversations (subscribe!), we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.” We discuss:
You can find Jasmin at @jasmin_singer & jasminsinger.com. Subscribe to Our Hen House as well as to the Sentientism podcast! Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info. Join our “wall” using this simple form. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks to @cgbessellieu for his post-prod work. | |||
| 08 Jan 2021 | 19: "Diverse sentients could live in mutual symbiosis" - Artist Graham Bessellieu - Sentientist Conversations | 00:36:35 | |
Full show notes at: https://sentientism.info/diverse-sentients-could-live-in-mutual-symbiosis-graham-bessellieu-new-sentientist-conversation. The video is here on the Sentientism YouTube channel. Graham is an artist, a photographer and a video/audio content producer. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.” We discuss:
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Join hundreds of others on our “wall” using this simple form. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-prod work on this video. Follow him at @cgbessellieu. | |||
| 24 Dec 2020 | 15: "Let's end humanity's war on the rest of the planet" - Better Meat CEO & Hall of Famer Paul Shapiro - Sentientist Conversations | 00:55:12 | |
Paul Shapiro https://twitter.com/PaulHShapiro is the author of the national bestseller "Clean Meat": https://cleanmeat.com/. He's also the CEO of The Better Meat Co. https://www.bettermeat.co/, a four-time TEDx speaker, host of the Business for Good Podcast https://www.businessforgoodpodcast.com/ & inductee in the Animal Rights Hall of Fame. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is "evidence, commitment and compassion for all sentient beings." https://sentientism.info/ Our conversation is also on our YouTube channel - subscribe there too! https://youtu.be/8oupdUTrS18 We discuss: - Being fellow "sents" (thanks AJ Jacobs!) - Advocating Sentientism before hearing the term - Vegetarian then vegan at 13 in 1993 (despite thinking it would lead to death...) - Carl Lewis as an inspirational vegan - Volunteering in animal protection as a teenager - "Trying to end humanity's war on the rest of the planet" - Founding Compassion over Killing at high-school & taking it national - https://www.humanesociety.org/ - Paul's "Clean Meat" book - how food tech might do the most good - Easier to act our way into a new way of thinking than to think our way into a new way of acting. Making unethical practices obselete - Ending slavery as a lesson in social change - Founding The Better Meat Co - Jewish upbringing & identity - "Even if you question the supernatural they don't kick you out" - An animal conscious family. Rescue dogs as family members (now Eddie https://www.instagram.com/eddiethepittie.) - Switching to take the perspective of non-humans + standing up to "frog baseball" - Compassion as a moral foundation - Being kicked out of Hebrew class for asking why god would ask for sacrifices - The rich tradition of animal compassion/veg*nism within Judaism - Israel as the #2 most vegan country - Utilitarianism & Peter Singer - "anti suffering & pro happiness" - Loving kindness meditation - Aspiring to The Paradoxical Commandments - Evolution isn't perfectly driven towards truth or rationality - Groups can socially reward individual faith in fictions. Some delusions can be useful - Humility at the heart of naturalism & science. Being OK not knowing - The confidence that can come with ignorance - Leaving the world a better place - Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good - The ethical inertia of social norms & traditions - The Honour Code http://appiah.net/books/the-honor-code/ - Animal farming will be condemned by future generations - Consistent US voting against poor farming practices. Need that codified into law & corporate policy - Cost reduction pressure worsens farm conditions - Tech can render exploitative practices obselete (like cars re: horses, kerosene re: whales, pens vs. quills) - Fast, cheap, easy alternatives likely to reduce more suffering than ethics - It's hard to condemn a system you're still part of - The moral argument has already been won re: ending animal farming - People buy food mainly because of price, taste, convenience (not ethics or env.) - Business for Good vs. ending capitalism? Purpose and/or profit? | |||
| 27 Jun 2023 | 159: Should non-sentient agents matter too? - Philosopher Nicolas Delon - Sentientism | 01:34:27 | |
Nicolas is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the New College of Florida. In Fall 2023, he will join the College of Charleston as Assistant Professor of Philosophy. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:55 Nico's Intro - Philosophy PhD in France (the moral status of animals - a #relational theory) - PostDoc @nyuanimalstudies2689 - Chicago Uni Law School w/ #MarthaNussbaum - Asst. Prof @NewCollegeofFL - #Vegan, dad, runner 03:17 What's Real? - "I'm a pretty strong naturalist" - A non-religious family - #protestant parents "a minority in France & in Belgium" - Religion classes in Belgium: Segregated into #Catholic, Protestant & "the others" - Father's ethos: "Self discipline, a sense of integrity... and he hated the Pope... but he didn't really believe in god... some higher order of things that he was not sure about... an #agnostic more than a #theist " - No particular revelation, but didn't believe in god after 12-13 yrs old - "A strong distrust of religious authorities" - Studying philosophy, drawn to #spinoza and #nietzsche - "#nietzsche has really stuck with me" - As a pre-teen "I remember thinking... nasty things about god then feeling very guilty..." - "The world just made more sense for me without a supernatural entity that would be its creator & legislator" - There's so much we don't understand... because of a strong commitment to epistemic humility... I'm not in the habit of ruling out a priori the existence of things that we think don't fit the current worldview. That being said... I don't believe in a god... supernatural entities... ghosts." - #Meditation & #psychedelics "I think there is such a thing as mystical experiences but... don't reveal really anything that is possibly hidden from a broadly naturalistic understanding of the world" - "The naturalistic framework makes you enquire about the world... in constant revision" 11:15 What Matters? - "Anti-realist on many issues... I'm not a moral realist" - "I don't think there are real mind-independent facts about morality" - "A Protestant integrity" - "I grew up with #punkrock... gave rise to some of my commitments with respect to #animalrights " - Talking about #anarchism with dad: "I disagree with them politically... but some of the most moral people I've ever met are anarchists" - "Whether or not you believe in god... you can still have a commitment to right & wrong" - "What I think I took from punk rock & in part from Nietzsche... is that people come up with their own values... and have to get along somehow." - "There's room for moral talk - I wouldn't be an ethicist otherwise" - If anything is going to be right or wrong... it's going to be... the result of some form of constructive/deliberative/expressive process" - "Of course I was tempted by #nihilism" & #relativism - Having a "robust commitment to justice" while rejecting hierarchy/authority is arguably more moral? (why dad respected anarchists) - "Nihilism was the big worry for Nietzsche at the end of the 19th Century" - "Some values are worth promoting but we have to think about which values... but they don't have a bedrock that's independent" - Even without moral realism we have "tools to criticise other communities' moralities" - Descriptive vs. normative assessments 29:53 Who Matters? 1:15:11 Making a Better World? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 11 Oct 2024 | "A whole new relationship with non human animals that will blow people’s minds!" - Jonina Turzi - Sentientism 28 - REMASTERED | 01:13:15 | |
Jonina (@JoninaTurzi) is cofounder of Lancaster Farm Sanctuary, a volunteer district leader for HSUS, & a doctor of physical therapy & yoga educator. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:24 Jonina's Intro - Lancaster Farm Sanctuary, physical therapy, yoga teaching, sobriety, queerness 2:33 What's Real? - Hippie parents, social justice, civil rights - Catholic father & schooling, more cultural than doctrinal - Brethren Church family history - Parents with a spiritual appreciation without buying into religious doctrine - Feeling the freedom to explore "I just want you to be happy" - "It felt like a human construct" - Identifying as an atheist as a teenager - Finding a beauty in the human body (& a sense of spiritual meaning) through an anatomy class - Being bullied, as a "young queer kid", by members of "Youth for Christ" - "I have no idea what's real" - The lower & upper case "Self" in some Yoga practice - Some things might always be unknowable - Reverence, wonder & awe... openness 17:10 What (& who) Matters? - Oneness & interconnectedness - Unnecessary harm to sentient others - Might plants have a kind of sentience? "I'm OK with saying we shouldn't harm plants unnecessarily" - Seeing the similiarities between human and non-human animals through physiology - "The idea that non-human animals aren't sentient is so bizarre to me" - Movement & intent as indicators of sentience - Are Roomba's sentient? - Evolution, behaviour/comms, information processing as inferential evidence for sentience - Intrinsic & instrumental value - The ethical dangers of holistic/ecocentric thinking - "Spirtual Bypassing"... rushing to find a purpose/meaning/spiritual goal while bypassing compassion & understanding - Knowing very spiritual people who also own factory farms - A local factory farm with a Bible verse written on it - "The foundation of a spiritual practice is caring for others" - Stages of moral development: Ego, ethno, anthropocentric... 37:30 Vegetarian to vegan - Rebelling against Jonina's mother's vegetarianism as a teenager - Being vegetarian. Not understanding dairy - Seeing slaughterhouse footage & going vegan together with Jonina's partner - Social indoctrination re: animal ethics & the supernatural - Climate change - The relationship between scarcity & morality. Is it harder to be moral under scarcity? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Thanks for the post-prod Graham. | |||
| 10 Aug 2022 | 123: "Let's make a world with less suffering today!" Ingrid Newkirk - PETA founder and president - Sentientism | 00:57:56 | |
Ingrid is an animal activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several books, including "The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights", "Animalkind" and the 30th anniversary new edition of "Freeing The Animals". Ingrid has worked for the animal-protection movement since 1972. She has been given the following awards: Washingtonian of the Year, 1980; Courage of Conscience Award, 1995; Shining World Compassion Award, 2007; Ahimsa Award, 2014 and the Peter Singer Prize for Strategies to Reduce the Suffering of Animals, 2016. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:24 Ingrid's Intro - Building PETA, the world's largest animal advocacy organisation - Writing 14 books including "Free The Animals" about the Animal Liberation Front 03:39 What's Real? - "We are all creatures of our upbringing" - A strict, "victorian" father & a very kind mother - "I was shipped out to boarding school & raised by some disciplinarian nuns" - Nuns took out their bitterness on the "little rich girls" in their care - Rejecting the nuns' oppression helped motivate Ingrid to be rebellious, to fight for the powerless & seek justice - Earliest memory: Family dog "was like my brother" - Church on Sunday, but "it never really stuck with me" - Being lured into religiosity, but "it was a passing phase" - "I rejected what the nuns said because they were so ghastly" - Roman Catholicism. Praying at 6am every morning, "a lot of silence" - "We didn't respect the nuns... they were barbaric... even of the little kids... 5 & 6 year olds who would cry themselves to sleep" - A visiting Jesuit priest got one of the school-girls pregnant - "For a while I would cross the road if I saw a nun coming the other direction" - Later re-engaging with Christianity (bible, church)... "ultimately I completely rejected it... it made no sense at all... if there is a god it's... a cruel god or a powerless god" - Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - "I'm not afraid to say I'm an atheist" - "Ricky Gervais & Bill Maher... are not kowtowing... are not intimidated" - The imperative to speak out (where others can't) - Being told to accept "mystery" on face value, "absurd" stories & blind faith - Lisa Kemmerer's views on religious compassion for non-human animals ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 01 Dec 2020 | 8: "My enemy, which I will destroy, is arbitrariness!" - Sentientist Conversations - Stijn Bruers | 01:09:35 | |
In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Stijn is a physicist (phd), economist (phd in progress), animal activist, rational moral philosopher (another phd) and an Effective Altruist! He co-founded and is president of EA Belgium. He’s currently researching economics at the university of Leuven. We talk about:
You can learn about Stijn’s work here: stijnbruers.wordpress.com & he's on Twitter here @StijnBruers. Stijn is on our “Sentientist wall” – why not join him there in helping to normalise compassionate, rational thinking? Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at sentientism.info. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook. | |||
| 16 Mar 2021 | 38: "Sentientism captures everything - it's future proof" - Michael Dello-Iacovo - Sentientist Conversation | 00:53:44 | |
Michael Dello-Iacovo (http://www.michaeldello.com/ and https://twitter.com/MichaelDello) is a PhD candidate in space science, looking at off-Earth exploration, mining & asteroid impact risk. Michael hosts the Morality is Hard podcast where he examines ethical questions and argues that everyday ethical choices are harder than we think they are. He is currently on the New South Wales state committee for the Animal Justice Party and is a committee member of the party’s youth wing. Michael has dedicated his life to giving back and making the world a better place for all. To that end, in 2016 he pledged to donate all of his income above AUS$45,000 each year to the most effective charities and causes, a pledge which he will uphold with his parliamentary income, if elected. Michael was previously the CEO of Effective Altruism Australia. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Our conversation is also on the Sentientism YouTube Channel - don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications. We discuss: - Michael's PhD (pending) in space mining, terraforming, colonisation and asteroid deflection - Effective Altruism. Earning to give to do good vs. doing good directly - Peter Singer's TED talk - Leaving industry for a full time PhD and becoming an Animal Justice Party political candidate - Michael's Morality is Hard podcast, blog and Vegan Space Scientist YouTube - Growing up Catholic and attending a very religious school - Taking the Christian god, hell and heaven for granted. Being told every day it was true - Struggling with the fear of death without an afterlife. The comforting fiction of heaven - The painful realisation at 19 yrs that "not any of it was true" and becoming an atheist - The centrality of our own experience and the difficulty of conceiving of not existing - Searching for meaning after religion. Exploring and identifying with utilitarianism and consequentialism - "The only things sentient minds can value are suffering and wellbeing". Everything else we think we value is a means to an end or we're tricking ourselves - Our common evolutionary history with other sentient beings - Panpsychism and whether atoms are sentient/conscious - If electrons are "conscious" it must be very boring and they're still not sentient - Caring for companion animals but eating other animals as a child - Going vegetarian for environmental reasons, becoming more open to ethical veganism, then switching - Insect, digital mind and alien sentience - "Sentientism just captures everything and its future proof" - CosmicSkeptic grudgingly identifying as Sentientist: "The term has absolutely no wit about it" - Is Sentientism the only moral discrimination? - And much more! Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Michael on our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 12 Nov 2020 | 1: Welcome to the Sentientism Podcast! Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings. | 00:01:45 | |
Hi, Welcome to our new podcast. This is just a quick trailer. | |||
| 11 Jun 2024 | "The Solutionary Way... we can't wait!" - Zoe Weil - Institute for Humane Education - Sentientism 201 | 01:21:08 | |
Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE). She is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement. She has authored eight books both for adults and children, including her latest, "The Solutionary Way" – available for pre-order now! Zoe writes the Becoming a Solutionary blog at Psychology today. She has made numerous TV and radio appearances and has given six TED talks, including “Extending our Circle of Compassion.” Her first Sentientism conversation with me was back on episode 37. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:15 Welcome - Our first conversation: https://youtu.be/4NaSEJ4q8NQ - Most good (MOGO), least harm - Star Trek as a utopian inspiration - Mr Spock and Dr Spock "both of them have had a big influence" 03:42 Zoe Introduction - Co-founder and President of The Institute for Humane Education - IHE: "Educate people to create a world where all humans and animals and nature can thrive... huge, huge goal and vision" - K-12 schools and graduate programmes with Antioch University - "It's going to keep my busy my entire life" 04:37 The Solutionary Way - Subtitle "Transform your life, your community and your world for the better" - "An antidote to polarisation... actually solving the problems that we face... in a way that is good for everyone" - "We are not a single issue organisation... justice and compassion needs to be spread for everybody so that the world can be truly humane" - Solutionary lens "you approach problems as solvable" instead of "us vs. them approaches" - Critical thinking "what's true, what's false... lies at the foundation" - Systems thinking "see the connections... identify causes... leverage points..." - Strategic thinking - Creative thinking - Solutionary Framework: 4 phases, 12 steps - Prioritising problems & identifying the one you want to solve "Learn and learn then really dive deep... identify a narrow enough problem that you have the capacity to solve" - The Solutionary Way in schools... 4th graders have big concerns but might not be able to address them in full... so what can they "feasibly solve"? - "We have identified a leverage point which is the educational system through which we are working on... all problems" - "K-12 educational system is fundamentally working at the root cause of every other societal system" - "What happens in our educational system prepares us to be citizens" - "A profoundly important core strategy... at the same time many of the problems that we are facing are so immediate... we can't wait" - "Sometimes the people who care most... wind up doing work that is counter-productive... they may burn more bridges than they build" - Dealing with activist burnout and depression - Polarisation and populism in modern discourse... denial of a shared reality... denial of shared values... blaming instead of solutions 17:52 A Shared Reality? 25:17 Shared Values? 57:29 Thinking About Solutions 01:05:50 Education 01:17:10 Follow Zoe and buy "The Solutionary Way"! - June 25th book launch (pre-order now!) - @ZoeWeil - The Institute for Humane Education Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 19 Jan 2022 | 92: "Science denial is about identity, not facts" - Lee McIntyre, philosopher of Science and author of "How to Talk to a Science Denier" - Sentientist Conversation | 01:35:25 | |
Lee McIntyre (leemcintyrebooks.com & @LeeCMcIntyre) is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy & History of Science at Boston University & an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. Lee is the author of How to Talk to a Science Denier as well as many other books, essays & papers. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Scientific American, the Boston Globe, the New Statesman & the Humanist. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:30 Lee's Intro - Philosophy of science to public philosophy ("it's supposed to be about making life better") - "Science denial & misinformation are the scourges of our age... there's an epistemic crisis" - Clarity & 2-way public engagement "philosophers can't just be talking to each other" 06:00 What's Real? - Ontology (being) & epistemology (knowing) - "It's possible there are things that are real... that we cannot know" - Naturalistic ontology (only the natural exists) & epistemology (evidence & reason) - Growing up in Portland - Questioning: "My mom didn't treat me like a kid... That made me a philosopher early on" - Dad & grandmother kicked out of church - Raised non-religious - "It was good to wonder, but it wasn't good to pretend that you were certain of things that you couldn't know or that you didn't know" - Socrates: the real enemy isn't ignorance (because we can learn) it's false knowledge - "Don't let the charlatans take that sense of wonder away from you" - Norm MacDonald: Faith as a choice, a leap? - Experiencing cancer & considering mortality - How does Dawkins know there's nothing after death? Could there be a naturalistic afterlife? - "The fact that there are questions we can't answer is not an excuse for pretending we have an answer" - Faith is often a response to the discomfort of uncertainty - David Hume & empiricism - Skepticism, humility, hubris - Karl Popper, fallibilism - Pretend naturalism vs. good faith naturalism - Science denial/conspiracism: Gullibility about what you want to believe & extreme skepticism about any alternative - Arbitrariness - Hugh Mellor's "The warrant of induction" https://youtu.be/0__p0iVUi2M & bayesianism 38:00 What (& Who) Matters? - Teaching ethics for a decade but "I've never really made up my mind" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 11 Feb 2025 | A Joyful Journey Towards an Edenic Vision - Matthew Halteman of Calvin University - Sentientism 221 | 01:39:24 | |
Matthew Halteman is professor of philosophy at Calvin University and a fellow in theOxford Centre for Animal Ethics. He wrote Compassionate Eating as Care of Creationand co-editedPhilosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments about the Ethics of Eating (with Andrew Chignell and Terence Cuneo). His latest book,Hungry Beautiful Animals: The Joyful Case for Going Vegan, was published in November 2024. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips 01:12 Welcome - Our Sentientism guest mutuals: Jasmin Singer, Mariann Sullivan, Christof Koch, Elan Abrell, Christopher Sebastian, John Sanbonmatsu... 04:19 Matt's Intro - "A kid from the mid-west - my people are agriculture people" 04:30 What's Real - "A Mennonite boy... anabaptist tradition of the Christian faith" - "A group... who focuses much more on... the ethics than the meta-physics" - "I remember being really surprised... to realise that other kids had different versions of the Christian faith..." - "The tradition I grew up in was really focused on... god is love and Jesus said... love god with all your heart... love your neighbour as yourself" - "The question in my tradition... was 'are you loving people'... unconditional love, unconditional grace... are you being the hands and feet of Jesus Christ on the ground" - "My family... the group of Mennonite scholars that gets tapped to write the book about Mennonites... my dad was the Mennonite economist... my aunt was the Mennonite feminist theologian..." - "My uncle... wrote a systematic theology...the Catholics and the Protestants had been doing this for centuries and the Mennonites were always focused on what happens on the ground... being the hands and feet of Jesus showing unconditional love to a suffering world." - "I've always thought that arguments about what is real tend to distract us from the real question... how do we show love to our neighbour... lifts up the people who are suffering... brings the people on the margins to the centre" - "Culture wars... debates over worldviews... have not shown a very impressive track record of success in this regard" - "We spend so much time fighting over what is real that we miss the fact that in a lived experiential way we have way more in common than we disagree about" - "For finite, error-prone creatures like us the really interesting conversations are on the ground where we're grieving, where we're suffering, where we're celebrating..." And more... full show notes atSentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More atSentientism.info. Join our"I'm a Sentientist" wall viathis simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in ourgroups. The biggest so far ishere on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 18 Jan 2023 | 139: Going Beyond Atheism... to Sentientism? Cross-post bonus episode with Nathan Alexander, Todd Tavares (Beyond Atheism podcast) & Jamie Woodhouse | 01:19:50 | |
This episode is a bonus cross post of my conversation about Sentientism with Nathan and Todd on their Beyond Atheism podcast. Beyond Atheism moves beyond questions of gods' existence to ask "what's next in a godless world?" If that question interests you make sure you go and subscribe. Many thanks to Todd and Nathan for inviting me. I think they're on their way to Sentientism… In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what (and who) matters?” Sentientism answers those questions with a commitment to "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Find out more at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 16 Jul 2021 | 66: "Time has come for animals to be globally protected in UN-iversal law" - Sabine Brels of the World Federation for Animals | 00:59:11 | |
Sabine is legal advisor to the World Federation for Animals (https://wfa.org/). In 2014, she cofounded the Global Animal Law (GAL https://www.globalanimallaw.org/) Association and led work on the creation and update of the first complete Animal Welfare Legislation Database. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube https://youtu.be/OovrrbG1Crk. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:24 Sabine's Intro - Animal Law & International Governance for Animals - Founding GAL, building the AWL Database, developing a 100 strong global animal law community - The UNCAHP (United Nations Convention on Animal Health & Protection) https://www.uncahp.org/ - #OneHealth & #OneWelfare - Working with the new World Federation for Animals to make animal protection a UN imperative 3:57 What's Real? - Learning about the beauty & value of the natural world from Sabine's grandmother - "I believe in what I can see but also in things I can't see that are obvious" - Looking into the eyes of a cat & sensing it's "soul" - Attending Catholic classes, but always preferring a more holistic, non-religious worldview - Finding Catholicism restrictive, seeing the downsides of religion, deciding not to attend communion - "We feel this notion of respect for all beings" - Respecting all life is common to most religions - Solidarity & compassion - The commonalities between religious/naturalistic worldviews. "Souls" vs. sentience. Energy & information processing. Universal connectedness. - "When I say 'soul' I mean that the being I see has a consciousness" 15:34 What Matters Morally? - A mother who was a nurse, motivated by human compassion - Developing a similar sensitivity for animal suffering from a young age - A close relationship with a German Shepherd dog - Being brought to a bull-fighting event in France at 4 years old. Seeing an animal being tortured to death - "feeling ashamed of my own species". "I wanted to intervene." Adults told me it wasn't real - then I saw the butchery behind the arena - "These animals needed some people to defend them" - "I felt it was my moral duty" - The challenges of going vegan in France - Facing health concerns from parents - At 18, asking a doctor how to go veg*an and being told "it's not possible to be healthy" - Moving to Canada. Finding it much easier there to go vegetarian then vegan. Avoiding zoos & animal tested products - Social context can make change hard or easy. ... And much more. Full show notes on Sentientism.info or YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod. | |||
| 08 Jul 2024 | "Marx for Cats" - Leigh Claire La Berge - Sentientism 204 | 01:16:34 | |
Leigh Claire La Berge is Professor in City University of New York's English Department. Her work focuses on aesthetics and political economy. Her first book, "Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s", tracked the convergences of finance, realism and postmodernism in literature and culture throughout the 1980s in the United States. Her second book, "Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art" explored the twin rise of new forms of socially engaged art alongside what she called "decommodified labor," or labor that is not recompensed. Along with Alison Shonkwiler, Leigh Claire is the co-editor of the collection, "Reading Capitalist Realism". She recently published a book about animality and economy entitled "Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary". She is working on a new book called "Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect that Capitalism is a Joke" about her experience with corporate labor, Y2K, and management consultants. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:58 Welcome 02:32 Leigh Claire's Intro - "In an English department you don't just find people who read novels or who write novels... but also who do philosophy, critical theory..." - "Relationship between economic forms and the constitution of reality" - "... different cultural objects... artworks or films or TV shows or novels... mediate between what we perceive as economically real and what might be economically possible" #economics - #philosophy major, working for a management consultant in Manhattan - Seeing the corporate world... accounting... profiteering... record-keeping "I was genuinely surprised... this cannot be the way that capitalism works... but it is!" - Studying #politicaleconomy "manifestly politicised understanding of economic forms and economic structures" - "Scandals and Abstraction" on financial scandals represented in film & literature - "Wages against artwork" on art, economy and also animals (e.g. an exhibit of live birds) - Thinking about animals' presence in the economy - Explaining political economy to artists "What if you were talking to cats?" - The Marx For Cats video series "The cats loved it!" - Writing "Marx for Cats" - "A history of the capitalist world system... as told through cats, with cats and for cats" - "Cats are also amazing anti-work creatures... anti-authoritarian creatures" - "Cats have been understood to be anti-authority for at least 1200 years" - Royal lions, wildcat strikes, sabotabbies... - Animals that can be companion and work animals because "capitalism... it both structures our external reality and our most intimate, internal, familial realities." 12:03 What's Real? - "By the time I was 6 or 7 it was clear that church was not going to be for me" ... and much more (see sentientism.info for full show notes) 29:15 What Matters? 33:57 Who Matters? 58:11 A Better World? 01:13:22 Follow Leigh Claire - @marxforcats on Twitter - @marxforcats on Instagram - Watch out for “Fake Work” Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 25 Mar 2022 | 103: "Humanism is just way too focused on one animal" - Philosopher Constantine Sandis - Sentientism | 01:29:20 | |
Constantine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, Director of Lex Academic & a Fellow of the RSA. He describes his philosophical interests as “unfashionably broad, but I work primarily in the philosophy of action, moral psychology & interpersonal understanding. I also have an interest in the psychology of philosophy, as advanced by Hume, Nietzsche, & Wittgenstein.” He spent most of his twenties as a theatre director & playwright. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:15 Constantine's Intro - "I'm looking forward to finding out if I'm a Sentientist or not" - Teaching & researching philosophy - Phil of action, Wittgenstein & Hume, virtue ethics, anti-vegan rhetoric - Rejecting the separation betweeen human & non-human animals "Who are 'we' anyway?" - The value of improving human worldviews (epistemology & ethics) - Beliefs & values & reasons driving action 08:07 What's Real? - Greek Orthodox Christian upbringing but "science was taken very seriously" - Born in India, living in Zimbabwe - Being placed in "Protestant" vs. "Catholic" or "Ethics" class - Agnostic as a teenager - Degree at Oxford in phil & theology "By the end of that degree I was atheist" - "The more you read about it [the bible] as a human text..." - Studying Christian moral reasoning & Nietzsche - Wittgenstein & Kierkegaard - "I'm not one of those Dawkins style atheists" - "I just don't have this faith" - "Everyday life was very naturalistic" - Culturally Christian - Those who stay religious but update the ethics - "I think there are things we can't explain" - Doubt as central to science & naturalism - "I know the precise second I switched from agnostic to atheist" in a phil of religion lecture: "Just because it's possible something exists & you can't disprove it's existence doesn't mean you're agnostic about it... a 3 headed dragon in some other galaxy." Atheism & Adragonism :) - Norms re: religious rituals/marriage - Why do religious organisations get a pass re: basic ethics? (sexism, homophobia, abuse)? - Atheist societies often suffer from similar problems - The good that can come from religion - Allen Ginsberg re: homophobia in Cuba - Post-truth, QAnon, homeopathy, Flat Earth... epistemology fails - Refusing medical treatment on religious grounds - Vountary euthanasia - Wearing the hijab - Personal autonomy, but don't harm others 35:18 What (and who) matters? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 15 Dec 2020 | 13: “Humans might one day need to beg AIs for our sentient rights” – AI expert Roman Yampolskiy – Sentientist Conversations | 00:38:51 | |
Full show notes & links here. Roman is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Louisville. He is known for his work on behavioral biometrics, the security of cyberworlds & artificial intelligence safety. He founded the field of intellectology – the analysis of the forms & limits of intelligence. He is director of the Cyber Security Laboratory in the department of Computer Engineering &Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering. Roman has written over 100 publications, including many books spanning these fields. In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” To catch the cameo from Luna the puppy ("seems conscious") watch the video of our conversation here. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel while you're there. We discuss:
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| 30 Nov 2021 | 86: "There's not a huge difference between how we treat farmed animals & how we treat people - as resources" Nandita Bajaj of Population Balance - Sentientist Conversation | 01:15:31 | |
Nandita is the ED of Population Balance which works to address the impacts of human overpopulation & overconsumption on the planet, people & animals. As faculty with the Institute for Humane Education, Nandita teaches a course “Pronatalism & Overpopulation” about the pervasive pressure on women to have children & the impacts on them, families, non-human animals & the planet. Previously, Nandita worked as a high school physics & math teacher & an administrator in both the public & independent school systems as well as an engineer at Bombardier Aerospace. She has a B.Eng. (Aerospace Engineering) from Ryerson University, a B.Ed. from University of Toronto & an M.Ed. (Humane Ed.) from Antioch University. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:10 Nandita's Intro - Engineering to teaching maths/physics to studying & teaching at the Institute of Humane Education (animals, humans, environment) - Pronatalism: The pressure to have children - Population stabilisation 04:26 What's Real? - Growing up in a fairly liberal household in North-West India - Moving every 3 years. "Wired to desire change" - Following Hindu religious holidays & traditions - Transactional religious compliance: fear-based & conditional - Tribalism & superstition "It didn't make a lot of sense to me" - Moving to Canada - Becoming non-religious was fairly straight-forward - Dabbling in self-discovery & studying psychology: Realising "These pieces of my identity were for the most part socially constructed" - De-constructing values & beliefs "Who I was made to believe I was was very limited & finite & self-serving." Reputation, wealth, success, family - "What motivates me deeply?" rather than "what do people expect of me?" - Exploring eastern & western philosophy - "There is this deep reverence that I hold - not for a god... but for the entire evolutionary process" "There seems to some kind of a kind of miraculousness to it" - Interconnectedness, scale, deep time, human humility - "There is something much bigger going on." Mystery - driven by science - but not limited to evidence, because there may be things we'll never have evidence of - Evidence might be limited but that's not an excuse for "making stuff up" - How supernatural beliefs can warp compassionate ethics 22:18 What & Who Matters? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 02 Feb 2024 | "If you combine rationality and compassion you have the essence" - Jonathan Leighton of OPIS - Sentientism 185 | 01:22:34 | |
Jonathan is an ethics strategist, writer, social change advocate and public speaker. He is Executive Director of the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS), a Swiss-based think-and-do tank that promotes the prevention of human and non-human suffering as our overriding global ethical priority. His book, The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe, explores the question "What matters?". His new book The Tango of Ethics: Intuition, Rationality and the Prevention of Suffering goes further in proposing a rigorous reassessment of how we think about ethics. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 01:00 Welcome 03:34 Jon's Intro - Molecular biology PhD - Ethicist - Writing "The Battle for Compassion" and "The Tango of Ethics" - Running the "think and do tank" OPIS (Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering) "Trying to put the ideas into practice" 04:41 What's Real? - A scientific family, physicist father - "A naturalistic, mechanistic way of thinking about the world" - "It's not that there was no #spirituality at all... a #Jewish household that was more traditional than religious... Reciting things that I didn't necessarily understand the meaning of" - "...a brief phase where I did take things [religious prescriptions] more literally... but that didn't last very long" - "Seeing the world as inherently physical" - "Not to say that the subjective doesn't matter... the subjective is the essence of what matters" - Maternal grandfather "I remember him describing himself as a Humanist... his way of saying 'don't take the supernatural too seriously'" - "I think spirituality is an important part of life... but I don't think of spirituality in the supernatural sense... I think of spirituality in terms of the experience... a feeling that there is an intense meaning possible in life." - "During spiritual experiences we might suspend the very rational perspective. You can't really be fully plunged into a spiritual experience if you're also trying to analyse things scientifically at the same time." - In circles with people, lighting a fire, reciting poetry... "it feels like a source of meaning at times to get into that other state of mind." - "It's this dance between two very different perspectives" - "How do we reconcile the need to understand reality as accurately as possible using the tools of rationality and science and how do we also extract meaning from our existence?" - JW: Instead of a scientistic denial or a mystical reification of the subjective... a recognition that our subjective experiences are part of the objective world we all share... and are the source of its value - Subjective experience is determined by the physical "but you won't actually know what it's like... without having experienced it yourself" 13:25 What Matters? - "Subjective experience... it's the most important part of reality... the only part of reality that really matters when it comes down to ethics..." 46:40 Who Matters? 01:03:37 How To Make A Better World? 01:19:43 Follow Jon and OPIS - https://www.jonathanleighton.org/ - https://www.preventsuffering.org/ ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 21 Aug 2024 | Talking to the most important people in the world (maybe) about Sentientism - The RE Podcast - Sentientism 210 | 01:12:19 | |
This episode is a cross-post of my discussion with Louisa Jane Smith on "The RE Podcast". Her audience are some of the most important people in the world - religions and worldview teachers and their students. Make sure you go and subscribe there too. As well as hosting the podcast Louisa is a Religious Education Teacher and Head of Life Skills at a school in England. She a member of the National Association for Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) executive committee as well as being a public speaker and author. Louisa was also my guest on Sentientism episode 205 if you want to hear more about her philosophical journey so far. If you're a teacher or are just interested, why not join our next free webinar on "Teaching the Sentientism Worldview"? I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree! I also wanted to extend a warm welcome to everyone who has recently joined one of our online Sentientism communities. More people join us there every day - whether they think of themselves as Sentientists or not. The groups are open to everyone. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platforms and you'll find us there. FaceBook is our biggest group so far with 2,300 members from over 100 countries. Soon we'll have 14,000 subscribers on YouTube too. It's great to have your support there. Also check out the new "In action" section of Sentientism.info. We're building pages there about Sentientist Education, Politics, Rights, Economics, Justice, Agriculture, Environmentalism and more - come and help us work out what a more Sentientist world might look like. A final thank you to Denise and Tarabella who found our secret Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the world towards "evidence, reason and compassion". Thanks for listening! Follow Louisa - The RE Podcast on Facebook Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 15 May 2021 | 54: Suffering matters even if we didn't cause it - Heather Browning - from Zookeeping to Philosophy | 01:17:48 | |
Heather (https://twitter.com/zoophilosophy & https://www.heatherbrowning.net/) is a scientist, philosopher & a former zookeeper & welfare officer. She is now a researcher at the London School of Economics specialising in animal sentience, welfare, & ethics. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on the Sentientism YouTube. We discuss: 1:33 Heather Intro - biology to zookeeping to philosophy - Volunteering, later working at zoos. Getting to know animals - Studying zoology/biology - Studying philosophy, shifting to PhD focus on measuring animal welfare - "Cheetahs don't really like to run" - How do "natural behaviours" relate to animal welfare - Trying to take the animal's point of view - The Foundations of Animal Sentience programme at LSE - The power of interdisciplinary work 10:55 What's real? - Growing up in a fairly naturalistic household. Occasional church visits - Being encouraged to question & explore - Joining a church group for the community - Balking at religious rules/restrictions - Asking questions & not getting answers - "Science just seemed like the best way of investigating the world" - Scientists are flawed humans too - There are many things we don't know & some we may never understand - We're evolved creatures that have developed heuristics that have been useful to us for survival/procreation - The dangers of a need for/expectation of perfection - Dangers of over-confidence/dogma/motivated reasoning in science 21:54 What matters morally? - Naturalism does involve giving up meaning, but we can create our own meaning - Hedonist nihilism. What matters to me? - Sitting between naturalising or eliminating morality, vs. moral realism - Evolutionary basis of human consciousness, including empathy, fairness, co-operation (and not just in humans) - "What matters is the subjective pleasure and pains we have in our lives" - "Our wellbeing is an objective fact about the world" - Empathy is caring about the wellbeing of others 31:42 Which entities matter? Moral scope - "I've always loved animals" - At 5 yrs "When I grow up I want to be a zookeeper" - Finding it difficult to eat meat. Feeling disgust - Saying "I'm vegetarian" to get out of cooking meat in a class, then realising "I could just do that" and going vegetarian at 12 yrs - Supportive parents: "Now you need to learn to cook!" & being joined by a sister - A friend was told "You can't go vegetarian" - And much more... See Sentientism.info or YouTube for full notes. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Heather on our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 25 Sep 2024 | "This great unresolved tension of modern life" - Monica Murphy & Bill Wasik - Sentientism 214 | 01:15:20 | |
Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine. Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and a writer. Their previous book, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, was a Los Angeles Times best seller and a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Their latest book, "Our Kindred Creatures" makes a case for seeing the fight against animal cruelty as a crucial thread in America's history. Readers are introduced to the activists, scientists, andmoguls who helped create our modern views on animals, with our intense compassion for certain species and ignorant disregard for others. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome - "Our Kindred Creatures" as an example of Sentientist History? 03:30 Monica and Bill's Intros - Writing two books together: Rabid and Our Kindred Creatures - "...Monica's interest in animals [as a veterinarian] that I think got me interested" - Telling the story of how the animal welfare movement came to the USA in the decades after the civil war - The emergence of the modern way of thinking about animals "some of them are like members of the family... others of them in huge numbers are excluded..." - "Everyday people in cities... were living among all kinds of animals in a way that feels very foreign to us today" 07:18 What's Real? - Meeting in a church youth group, Bill's family more devout than Monica’s - "It was not a creationist church... there was a sense that we weren't going to doubt what science was telling us just because we were part of a religious tradition that had a different story" - "'In a world in which there's no god why should we care at all about human suffering?'... runs implicitly through the book - many of the people we write about are religious" - Links between religion, the abolition of slavery and animal ethics "though of course the slavers themselves had various bible verses that they waved around" - "Today we're Unitarian Universalists... go to church on Sundays and Bill sings in the choir" - "Our Unitarian church is a very humanist church... animals don’t' come up much... some other Unitarian churches have animal affinity groups" - "There are also a lot of atheistic Unitarians... our church leans atheistic... the younger people even more so" - "Whatever concept of god that I have wouldn't conform with traditional ones - it's more notional" - "We came back to religion because of our son... he was a very loud atheist... a disrespectful atheist... we wanted him to expand his thinking" - "Even though we occupy three different spots in our family on the atheistic side of the spectrum we're very at home in this church" 25:27 What and Who Matters? 52:43 A Better World? 01:12:27 Follow Bill and Monica And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 23 Mar 2025 | "A Climate of Truth" - Mike Berners-Lee - Sentientism 224 | 01:28:14 | |
Mike Berners-Lee is Professor in Practice at Lancaster University and director and principal consultant of Small World Consulting. His books include How Bad are Bananas?, The Burning Question and There Is No Planet B and he is a contributing author to The Climate Book created by Greta Thunberg. His latest book is A Climate of Truth. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips 01:02 Welcome 03:03 Mike's Intro - "A professor of what... I'm not really quite sure... a professor of the future?" - Academic: Climate change, carbon flows, sustainable food systems, AI, technology - Small World Consulting "help organisations to respond to the environmental and wilder polycrisis that we are accelerating towards" - "Trying to create a better world for humans and other beings to live in" - From climate change to "the climate emergency... crisis... breakdown" - From trying to deal with climate change in isolation to..."all these things are just so joined up... climate... nature... food... population... social questions... politics... economics..." - "You can't deal with that separate from questions about what matters, who matters, does truth matter... you have to go deeper and deeper..." - Philosophy "I'm very pragmatic about it." - "It's important to work at all of these levels at once" - "I lose patience [with fellow academics] when they lose contact with everyday reality" - "How much of how we basically think and how we basically run society is fit for purpose... and how much we need to go back to the drawing board?" - The Anthropocene "the era in which suddenly it's humans that are so powerful" - "How we do economics... politics... how we think... it all dates back to a time when we could just expand our activities... the world was a robust playground... we could get away with anything we liked... Now we're right up against the stops... a hard physical boundary" - "We've given ourselves enormous physical power and wejust haven't given ourselves, yet, the wisdom with which to wield that power" - "We're like babies running around with machine guns" 09:52 What's Real? - Mathematician parents "they also went to church" - "They asked a lot of questions [about religion]... they were not literalists" ... 21:53 What Matters? 34:00 Who Matters? 51:05 A Better World? 01:24:30 Follow Mike: - "A Climate of Truth" A very simple guide to what’s going on in the world…" - Mike on BlueSky @mikebernerslee “I’m on BlueSky and I’m not on X… Please do avoid any social media in which you do not trust the owner… please switch right now”. And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 10 Mar 2022 | 100: "I am relentlessly naturalistic" - Barbara J. King - Animal Author & Advocate & Anthropologist - 100th Episode!! | 01:17:26 | |
Barbara is emerita professor of anthropology at William & Mary and a freelance science writer and public speaker. The author of seven books, including the new Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild, Barbara focuses on animal emotion and cognition, the ethics of our relationships with animals, and the evolutionary history of language, culture, and religion. Her book How Animals Grieve has been translated into 7 languages and her TED talk on animal love and grief has now received over 3 million views. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:39 Barbara’s Intro
05:05 What’s Real?
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 05 Mar 2021 | 35: "We can't understand humans without recognising that we are animals" - Diana Fleischman - Sentientist Conversations | 00:50:11 | |
Dr Diana Fleischman is an evolutionary psychologist & an author. Until recently she was a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. Her field of research includes the study of disgust, human sexuality, hormones & behaviour. She is involved in the effective altruism & animal welfare movements & identifies as a feminist and a Sentientist. Diana's 2018 Darwin Day Lecture, hosted by Humanists UK, was part of the inspiration for our work developing & raising awareness of Sentientism. You can find Diana at https://twitter.com/sentientist Why not join her on our "I'm a Sentientist" wall? https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/diana-fleischman. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is available here on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe and click the bell for notifications. We discuss: - Evolutionary psychology - Effective Altruism - Diana's Darwin Day talk to Humanists UK - Whether Humanists are more likely to be ethical vegans - Whether "carnism" is socialised or a state of nature - Diana's father's German Jewish & Polish family history during WWII & since - "They fell in love because he fed her a lot of food" - Diana's Catholic mother. Being baptised in Portugal - Going to synagogue with Diana's grandfather & Catholic Sunday School - After first communion "I don't like it & I don't believe it" - Going atheist at 9/10 yrs after brother did at 7 - Being fascinated by evolution - "I carried The Evolution Book around like a teddy bear" - Being teased as "Monkey Girl" for believing in evolution. The worst bullies seemed to be the most religious kids - Being told in the early 1990's by a teacher "evolution is controversial - it's not a settled idea" - We skipped the evolution chapter in the Biology textbook - Becoming stridently anti-religious - "I thought we couldn't really understand human beings without understanding that humans are animals" - I met so many wonderful religious people in the vegan movement & became much less aggressively anti-religion - Religious arguments for why we should be compassionate are wrong but that compassion can still have good outcomes - Diana's Hen Do turns into a witches coven - Weeping after being blessed by a minister & being moved by ritual - "I am exactly the kind of person who could fall into religious fervour" - Sam Harris: "Religions shouldn't have a monopoly on reverence" - "Nature is a horrible place" - & much more... (full show notes on YouTube & sentientism.info) Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Diana on our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Thanks to Graham for his post-prod. Follow him: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu | |||
| 01 Jun 2022 | 115: Sentientist Economics - Nicolas Treich - Sentientism | 00:54:19 | |
Nicolas is a research associate at INRAE (L’institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement) and the Toulouse School of Economics. His work focuses on risk and decision theory, environmental economics, benefit-cost analysis and, more recently, on animal welfare. He has published scientific papers on subjects including the precautionary principle, the value of statistical life, and climate policy. He has organized several international conferences and written numerous articles for the general public, as well as reports on risk policy issues. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:31 Nicolas' Intro - Economics, risk, environment, psychology, now non-human animals - "Trying to include animal issues into mainstream economics" - From anthropocentrism to sentientism in every field? 04:40 What's Real? - Growing up in SW France - Catholic parents, but "religion was not very important" - Attending church - Not anti-religion but not a positive view either - "Religions have contributed to a strong divide between humans and animals... dominion... stewardship" - Surrounded by animals... dogs, cows in grandfather's farm, horses - "I liked to view myself as an animal lover" - "I like to see myself as a scientifically-minded person" - Religious & naturalistic routes to anthropocentrism 12:08 What & Who Matters? - "We are raised to eat meat... and we don't really question it" - "My vegetarian epiphany" 10 years ago on a date - "I was completely ignorant about what is going on in that industry [dairy, eggs, meat]" - "I didn't see that when it's quite obvious - and I have wrong beliefs - what happened in my brain, my mind & in society?" - Cognitive dissonance, meat paradox, psychology: "Every time I had new sources of information it was bad news" - A colleague, expert in the meat industry, asked "what's the problem with animal welfare in the meat industry?" - "People don't want to see, don't want to know... even the experts" - "There is a demand for cognitive dissonance, but also a supply" - The evolution of morality, but why do we care about animals - some more than others? Extension of our compassion for humans, reciprocity? - Emotional / intellectual routes into moral consideration - Bio/ecocentrism/holism - "In economics, all research is anthropocentric" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 27 Jan 2021 | 26: “Change is possible but hard” – Jeff Sebo – Author, Activist, Philosopher – Sentientist Conversation | 00:57:53 | |
Jeff Sebo is Clinical Assoc. Prof. of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, & Philosophy, & Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program at New York University. He is on the executive committee at the NYU Center for Environmental & Animal Protection & the advisory board for the Animals in Context series at NYU Press. He is a board member at Animal Charity Evaluators, a board member at Minding Animals International, an Exec. Cttee. member at the Animals & Society Institute, and a Senior Fellow at Sentient Media. Full show notes are here https://sentientism.info/change-is-possible-but-hard-jeff-sebo-author-activist-academic-new-sentientist-conversation In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.” The audio will also be on our Podcast – subscribe on Apple here & most other platforms via Anchor. We discuss:
Follow Jeff at @jeffrsebo & find him at jeffsebo.net Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “wall” | |||
| 09 Feb 2023 | 143: "Why bad beliefs happen to good people" - Philosopher Neil Levy - Sentientism | 01:02:18 | |
Neil is a professor of philosophy with research interests spanning philosophy of mind, psychology, free will, moral responsibility, epistemology & applied ethics. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics & professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. From 2010, he was head of neuroethics at the Florey Institutes of Neuroscience in Melbourne. He has written many papers & books, including “Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People“. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome - Is Neil a #Sentientist ? 02:05 Neil's Intro - Perpetual winters between Oxford & Sydney - Philsophy of applied ethics, free will, epistemology - Neil's episode on #DecodingTheGurus re: intellectual virtue signalling 03:55 What's Real? - Brought up #jewish "very much a cultural thing... synagogue twice a year" in #southafrica Africa - Jewish Saturday school - Moving to #Australia & attending religious school - At 11-12 "This doesn't make much sense to me - this god business. I've been a convinced #atheist ever since" - "Being religious can be perfectly reasonable" - Subjective rationality "how well are you processing your evidence given where you are?" - "People are much more rational than we think... even #QAnon supporters... they're completely wrong... but if they believe what they're saying... they're rational given where they start" - #Trolling & #bullshit - "We've got lots of evidence people don't believe what they're saying" - #Determinism & #freewill & "the epistemic condition on responsibility"... "nobody does have that kind of control over their beliefs... they've done the best they can with the evidence available to them" - "Criticism comes cheap... so does praise" - "Luck explains so much" constitutive & present luck - "It gives us more to do... of the sort of things philosophers aren't good at" - Teaching critical thinking, logic, fallacies "people get better... but they don't get better at using it outside the classroom" - "In the classroom I give you evidence... they stipulate it... you just accept it"... "But in the real world you're faced with the continual problem... should I trust the evidence?" - A key reason people don't update beliefs given new evidence is because "they just don't trust the evidence in the first place... and you can formally model why they shouldn't... given what they already believe" - The "capital punishment views" experiment - "If somebody shows me a prima facie plausible study showing that... all dogs have 5 legs... I'm going to think... that it's bullshit" - Bayesianism - Gullibility, dogmatism, #skepticism - #QAnon , #Antivaxx , #homeopathy ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 10 May 2023 | 154: "With great power comes great responsibility" - Elan Abrell - Cultural Anthropologist & Author - Sentientism | 01:22:29 | |
Elan is a cultural anthropologist focusing on human-animal interactions, environmental justice, and food politics. He is assistant professor of the practice in environmental studies and coordinator of the animal studies minor at Wesleyan University. He is the author of the Gregory Bateson Prize winning book: "Saving Animals: Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care". He also contributed a chapter called "The Empty Promises of Cultured Meat" to the book "The Good it Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:25 Elan's Intro - Cultural anthropology and teaching animal studies "my favourite thing to teach!" - Appearing on Knowing Animals & Our Hen House - Working with Kathryn Gillespie 02:42 What's Real? - Raised mostly #secular - Dad believed in #reincarnation - At 12yrs old becoming aware of major religions & thinking "probably none of them are right" - "Materialist with a small 'm', empiricist with a small 'e'" - "Probably when we die, we die... that just makes our lives more poignant & important" - Being given a bible stories book by a #jehovahswitness "this god person is really cruel... like a villain" - "Reassuring in a humbling kind of way... I'm a tiny part of this vast universe... we're no less important for that" - "Mildly #agnostic... I know that I don't know" - Not spiritual but "a certain sense of wonder" - An #ayahuasca retreat. Most others talked of "spiritual" experiences. "I felt pretty in touch with the particles of the universe... I don't have any anthropomorphic encounters to explain I just felt deeply in touch with creation and appreciative that I'm a part of it... that went down like a lead balloon." - Ego dissolution... "the seed of #sentience ... that I share... with other animals" 17:00 What Matters? - #comics : "#spiderman was my favourite super-hero... with great power comes great responsibility" (vs. #judgedredd and "law and order" :) ) - "We have an obligation to help each other when we can" - Fairness: "Some people's extra benefit isn't really worth anybody else's suffering" - "I don't have a #utilitarianism perspective of maximising pleasure... but for each individual who experiences the world they deserve to have minimal suffering & maximal enjoyment of life" - Understanding bad actions that may be a response to trauma or desperation - not bad ethics - "An openness to understanding what might be motivating people even in conflicts" - Neil Levy: "Why bad beliefs happen to good people" - Peter Singer - Ethical pluralism: #care/#virtue/#deontological/relational ethics as long as all sentient beings get to count "that's exactly right" - #elonmusk & the ethics of self-driving cars "it's deeply flawed if you can take individual lives & throw them away without their consent because you think it will actually benefit more people in the long run" - #consequentialism - Risks of utilitarianism: aggregating, offsetting, replacement, maximisation, ends justifying means, epistemic / ethical uncertainty & risk 26:21 Who Matters? - Beyond #anthropocentrism - Growing up "having relationships with members of other species" 49:43 How To Make a Better Future? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 16 Nov 2023 | 178: "A commitment to solidarity and a stubborn commitment to hope" - Defending Animals Author - Kendra Coulter - Sentientism | 01:04:50 | |
Kendra is a professor at Huron University and a fellow of the OxfordCentre for Animal Ethics. She is a leading expert on animals and work, animal protection organizations and policy, and gender equity. Kendra has led multiple research projects enriching our understanding of human-animal work and animals’ own forms of labour in important new directions including through development of the concepts of humane jobs, interspecies solidarity, and ecosocial reproduction. Kendra's latest book is Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. She is the author of dozens of scholarly articles, book chapters, and public reports, as well as the path-making Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. She is the co-editor of Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? Kendra has also published more than sixty columns including for The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Salon, Ottawa Citizen, Winnipeg Free Press, Edmonton Journal, The Conversation, iPolitics, and National Observer. Her work has so far been translated into French, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, German, and Bahasa Indonesia. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 01:17 Welcome - 3 previous guests did blurbs for Kendra's new book: Ziya Tong, Marc Bekoff, Jeff Sebo 03:02 Kendra's Intro - "I'm not related to Ann Coulter... we have slightly different worldviews" :) - "The primary purpose of my life is to improve and save animals' lives" - "Cultivating empathy and compassion" - Discriminatory "isms" and proactive, agitational, generative "isms" - "Foregrounding sentient beings is a very powerful mobilising way of thinking about the positives... trying to find unity and common cause" - JW: "Just rejecting the negative isms isn't quite enough... we also some sort of positive stance about what we do care about... who should matter." - "We need to critique the problems... we also simultaneously need to be developing and proposing alternatives and solutions" 05:55 What's Real? - Riding horses before walking, "learning how to be kind to animals" - Raised by left-wing atheists - "To this day I maintain a very progressive worldview... however... I have become less ideological" - "Crucial to have an ethical core... but that the process of inquiry... evidence gathering and analysis... is absolutely essential" - Dialogue with groups who have different views "while recognising that certain worldviews are antithetical to justice and equity for humans and other beings" - Field research "experiencing things with your body... being out engaging... not reclining into the ivory tower" - Amplifying and communicating with broad audiences "Public intellectual is one of the best compliments you can give someone... your ideas matter... using ideas to inspire action" - Open mindedness based on evidence and data "but never losing those core commitments... equity... solidarity... justice" 15:11 What Matters? 26:36 Who Matters? 49:10 A Better World? 01:02:04 Follow Kendra - https://twitter.com/DrKendraCoulter - https://huronatwestern.ca/profiles/faculty/kendra-coulter-phd/ - https://www.instagram.com/gifted.horse/ ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 26 Nov 2020 | 6: “I love the idea of Sentientism” - Bestselling Author AJ Jacobs | 00:45:53 | |
New York Times bestselling (4 times!) author and journalist AJ Jacobs experiments on himself to help us all learn. In this Sentientist Conversation he talks with Jamie about what he believes, what matters morally, and how his writing projects link to Sentientism's tenets of evidence, reason and universal compassion. AJ: “I love the idea of Sentientism” We discuss: - Sentientist themes in AJ's personal experimentation writing projects: Living biblically, connecting everyone, thanking everyone, never lying, learning everything! - The "belonging, belief and behaviour" of religion – including secular Judaism and hanging out at the Scientology centre. - Effective altruism and longtermism. - Moral realism, relativism and why the Taliban’s ethics just aren’t good. - Preferring shallow beliefs to deeply held beliefs. - The ethics of human and non-human animal, robot and far future ethics. - Expanding our moral circle through recognising our connectedness and/or through seeing climate change as a common enemy. - Presenting positive opportunities to do good vs. using guilt. - What a Sentientist utopia might look like and whether we should even specify one. - Can Sentientism help address today’s dogmatic polarisation? AJ is on our Sentientist "wall": - why not join him there using this simple form? AJ's web site is ajjacobs.com. Sentientism is "Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." You can find out more about it at https://sentientism.info/ Everyone interested, whether Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our global community. Our main group is here on Facebook. Many thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-production work on this video. Go follow him (and maybe work with him!) at @cgbessellieu. | |||
| 05 Dec 2021 | 87: "You CAN change other people!" - Howie Jacobson of Plant Yourself - Sentientist Conversation | 01:20:06 | |
Howie (@askhowie & plantyourself.com) is a coach & author & podcast host. His coaching work with people & organisations focuses on leadership, values, productivity & health. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 02:01 Howie's Intro - Coaching & writing - "Not a big fan of capitalism" - Effective altruism through organisations - "Helping people respond to reality" - Not knowing "what's real?" or "what matters?" but let's try to work it out 04:54 What's Real? - Growing up in a conservative Jewish household in New Jersey - Culturally Jewish but "kind of atheist" - Mother's history of the holocaust & kindertransport - Father's "Jewish identity & socialism." Needling the Rabbi: "We have to rest on the Sabbath so now I have to walk up 30 flights of stairs?!" - Being given "The Truth About the Bible" book. Bible inconsistencies & immorality - "The Jews have learned to argue & doubt & question" - "The Jewish people must survive" as a core commitment - Einstein, Marx, Freud - A militant zionist phase - "It was safe." There was no danger to the ritual vs. sweatlodges - A "safe, conventional, suburban religion" - Attending an Ivy League college - "There are smart people who believe in ghosts" - Exploring parapsychology - "There were serious academics questioning my worldview which was completely materialistic" - Rejecting the exclusive tribalism & the simplistic narratives of religion but "There is a big effing mystery out there" - Shamanic practices "oh honey, it's all bullshit" - Being sceptical of our own perceptions & reasoning. Be open - Predictive dreams - Contextualism... "How is this working for me?" - "Look for & assume positive intent... then act like it's true" - Talking to trees, brambles as defences, mycorrhizal fungi as comms networks - Narratives of dominion vs. "consciousness in everything" - Arbitrary vs. narratives grounded in reality - "Supposedly using evidence & reason we've destroyed the planet" - Checks: 1) consistency with the natural world & 2) compassion 32:50 What Matters? - Be nice to people - Mother's experience of Nazi occupation of Austria. "The teachers & her so called friends were wearing Nazi armbands" & "Punch a Nazi". ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 05 Mar 2023 | 147: "Animal research... much harm with very little benefit" - Neuroscientist Dr Katherine Roe from PETA - Sentientism | 01:26:40 | |
Katherine is chief of Science Advancement and Outreach (SAO) at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). SAO aims to change the paradigm of biomedical research by promoting the development & implementation of cutting-edge strategies in biomedical research & training & eliminating the use of animals in experimentation. Katherine earned her bachelor’s degrees in biology psychology from Syracuse University and her Ph.D. in experimental psychology and cognitive science from the University of California–San Diego. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, she went on to become a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she stayed for eight years. Over the course of her research career, she studied the neural correlates of linguistic, spatial, & memory processes, working with children with early focal brain injury, adults & children with schizophrenia, and individuals with Williams syndrome and related genetic disorders. Katherine has more than 20 years of experience conducting brain and neuroimaging research with humans and is an expert at experimental design and data analysis. She has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and has presented her findings at national and international industry conferences. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:29 Katherine's Intro - from neuroscience and the NIH to PETA - "About half of biomedical research... involves very invasive procedures with animals" - "It became clear to me that that assumption... that the harms we were doing were justifiable... fell apart... the harms were much greater than I realised but also... there's a lot of species differences that make data from these labs difficult to translate into benefits for humans." - "Then the question becomes... well what are we doing?" - "Trying to make sure people realise how sentient these animals really are... they have their own needs & wants & desires" - Previous episodes with Ingrid Newkirk https://youtu.be/M7Ac2Ba2jbM & Aysha Akhtar https://youtu.be/EZ_gh0ldzpo 04:55 What's Real? - "Religious but not deeply religious" parents - Anglican, episcopalian Christians - "It never really took" - Not needing external reasons for "wanting to cause as little harm as possible and to live in harmony with the world around us" - Learning about animals through science "started to change the way I viewed them" 24:54 What & Who Matters? 46:49 How Can We Make a Better Future? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 30 Jun 2024 | Teaching the Sentientism Worldview - webinar recording - Sentientism 203 | 00:30:27 | |
This is the audio from our "Teaching the Sentientism Worldview" webinar. The webinar was aimed at religious education / worldviews / philosophy teachers in the UK but will hopefully be of interest to everyone! Let us know @sentientism on any social media platform if you'd like to attend a future webinar and / or follow Sentientism on Eventbrite to be notified of future events. Here's the video recording on the Sentientism YouTube (don't forget to subscribe!) if you want to be able to see the slides I'm referring too. I'm happy to send these out if of interest so just get in touch if you'd like a copy. Here are more #SentientistEducation resources - feedback and ideas always welcome! We also have a dedicated Sentientist Education FaceBook chat here. I think you might have to join the main Sentientism FB group first to access it. All are welcome! | |||
| 13 Dec 2023 | Christof Koch & IIT - "Consciousness is not a computation... it's a state of being" - Sentientism 181 | 01:20:31 | |
Christof is a neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness on which he worked with Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick for 24 years. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Christof describes his passion in life as "to understand how I came to be in this wonderful, mysterious universe. Not so much me, personally, but me as a conscious, experiencing thing surrounding by other conscious organisms and trees, stars, and the sea." Over the last decade, he has worked closely with the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi. Together they advocate for an Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness - often seen as a modern version of panpsychism that only ascribes consciousness to entities with some degree of irreducible cause-effect power. Christof is the author of the books Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. , The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, and Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons. His forthcoming book, Then I am Myself the World, is due out in 2024. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome - "My dog... Mr. Felix... a sentient being" - The dedication from Christof's forthcoming book "Then I Am Myself The World": "... to all fellow travellers on the river of time who howl, bark, cry, screech, whine, bellow, shriek, buzz, sing, speak or those without a voice - for it is only in compassion with all life that we can redeem ourselves." 03:52 Christof's Intro - Physicist turned neurobiologist - "I've always been fascinated by the question of #consciousness" 04:45 What's Real - Growing up in a devout Roman #catholic family, raised kids Catholic - "One thing that always irked me... the belief that my dogs... somehow didn't have a soul and wouldn't be resurrected... that always bothered me... whatever it is we all share" - "I lived in two worlds - like many scientists do. On Sunday you go to church and you pray... during the week, the rest of the time, you're a scientist - you try to explain everything using natural explanation... this split... I couldn't support any more" - "Progressively I lost my faith... I'm a naturalist... I try to explain everything... using natural laws" - A priest acknowledging that non-human animals are "parts of god's creation" and can suffer, but "they do not partake in the same way we do" - Human exceptionalism "many religions believe that humans are exceptional... we're in charge of the universe... everything gets subsumed under human demands - that struck me as wrong" - "Who has what faith - it's totally random - it depends where you were born and in which family you were born... how can this be true?" - JW: Topics that draw even some naturalists back towards the mystical: Origins & nature of the universe, life, humanity, consciousness... 13:47 What and Who Matters? 39:45 What are Consciousness and Sentience? 1:14:09 A Better World? 1:17:35 Follow Christof - Christof at the Allen Institute ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 22 Sep 2021 | 76: Humanism will Evolve into Sentientism - Peter Tatchell - Sentientist Conversations | 01:05:53 | |
Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell & petertatchell.net) has been an activist for human rights, democracy, LGBT+ freedom and global justice since 1967. Watch the Netflix documentary about his life, "Hating Peter Tatchell". He directs the Peter Tatchell foundation (petertatchellfoundation.org). In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on Youtube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:10 Peter's Intro - a lifetime of activism - Teenage campaigning: indigenous rights, death penalty, Vietnam war - A wide spectrum of campaigns: LGBT+ rights, social justice, free speech, Balochistan, West Papua 3:07 What's Real? - Growing up in Melbourne in 1950-60s under a right-wing government - Evangelical Protestant Christian Bible literalist parents - "You take what your parents say, usually, to be what is right" - Studying science at school & starting to question - Being horrified at 11 yrs hearing about the racist bombing of a black church in Alabama - Black civil rights & Martin Luther King & Liberation theology - "If god is omnipotent, why does evil happen?" - Teaching Sunday School at 16 - Being told evolution was a "satanic theory" by abusive step-father - Dropping the hateful, vengeful old testament god & holding on to more compassionate new testament values - Homosexuality was still a criminal offence in 1969 - "I was genuinely afraid that if I came out, they [my parents] would turn me in to the police" - "For both of them, homosexuality was a terrible, mortal sin - almost on a par with murder & rape" - How Peter's mother has come to support LGBT+ rights - Becoming an atheist & humanist at ~20 19:10 What & Who Matters? - Still holding to some of the compassionate values of Christianity, but those values aren't exclusive to religion - Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Global, not "western" - Human rights are evolving & expanding. Yet to extend to LGBT+ / disability - AI/robot rights? Peter's 1970's degree dissertation on cyborg sentience & rights - Pre-human proto-morality - Looking after the family cow at 9 yrs old. Seeing the cruelty of circuses/zoos at 10. - "I knew they had feelings... but I never thought they had rights" - Being revolted by seeing chickens being killed "but I was still eating the meat" - Considering non-human animal rights in the 1970-80s & reducing animal product consumption - "Other animals are sentient beings - they have feelings" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join Peter on our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Thanks for the post-prod Graham. | |||
| 16 Apr 2025 | "The United Nations has two core defects" - peace entrepreneur Anders Reagan - Sentientism 225 | 01:35:32 | |
Anders Reagan is a peace entrepreneur, philosopher, academic, and technologist. He is founding director of the Peace and Conflict Science Institute (PACS), an academic think-tank and advocacy organisation with special consultative status at the United Nations that aims to put peace and rights mechanisms on more rigorous, evidence-based foundations. Anders is also an AI Consultant at the University of Oxford. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips 01:06 Welcome 02:58 Anders' Intro 03:58 What's Real? - "My upbringing and emotional impetus for initiatingthe academic journey that I went on... happened because of a clash between a non-theistic, agnostic background and a religious, Christian environment" - Born in Boulder, Colorado "rather liberal" - Agnostic parents, father interested in Buddhist traditions - Moving to Arkansas at 7 yrs old "quite conservative leaning" - "A sudden transition happened with our social relationships... encountering people who had a Christian religious doctrine at such a core place... in their personality" - "Oftentimes the first question you'll be asked is 'what church do you go to?'... and at the time we didn't have any answer" - "It is an ingratiating tactic... These people are so kind and approchable... they're clearly looking for common ground to build off of" - "But when you respond with 'I'm atheist I don't go toany church at all'... the reaction... would be suspicion, confusion..." - "My mum... took the tactic of saying we would 'homechurch'... either indicating that we have no religion at all or we're way more intense than the rest of you" :) - At 7 years old: "That was intense... I didn't haveany concept of god or theism or religion - I'd never heard of any of these things... it was like living through a culture clash even though I hadn't left my own country" - "We eventually did find a home in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship... very welcoming of what they called liberalreligion... people who had found themselves ostracised by other congregations... LGBTQ+... Muslims... the Wicca faith... they would congregate in this space... exchange ideas... trying to find common ground across all of these different religious doctrines... I found that to be very enriching" - "Sunday School programme which offered a survey ofreligions. By the time I finished that programme... I felt like I had a pretty thorough understanding of the full range of religious and spiritual traditions" 21:54 What Matters? 42:14 Who Matters? 01:09:40 A Better World? 01:32:30 Follow Anders - andersjreagan@pm.meAnd more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 18 Nov 2020 | 3: "We have a golden opportunity to re-imagine our relationships with non-human animals." - Sentientist Conversations - Joe Wills | 01:11:31 | |
In this Sentientist Conversation I talk to Law and Rights Lecturer and Author, Dr. Joe Wills. We talk about what’s real and what matters morally. “We have a golden opportunity to re-imagine our relationships with non-human animals.” We discuss: | |||
| 19 Dec 2020 | 14: Give Yourself The Chat - Sentientism cross-post bonus episode | 00:42:54 | |
This episode is a cross-post from the Give Yourself The Chat podcast where I (Jamie) was interviewed about Sentientism. Peter Lewis is a coach, consultant and, as we found out in this conversation, a fellow Sentientist. Peter's podcast focuses on personal development and practical philosophy. If that sounds interesting - why not subscribe to the podcast and sign up for his mailing list at https://peterlewiscoaching.com/? Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at Sentientism.info. Why not join our “wall” using our simple “I’m a Sentientist” form? Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook. We have a fascinating range of compassionate, rational people there from around 90 countries so far! | |||
| 10 Feb 2021 | 30: "If you hand most people a knife they won't stab a cow!" - John Oberg - Sentientist Conversation | 00:42:45 | |
John is a professional animal advocate & public speaker. You can support his work at https://www.patreon.com/JohnOberg In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings." Full show notes and the video of our conversation are here: https://youtu.be/UTZlwC4nHq8 We discuss: - John's career in animal advocacy and vegan advocacy - "It's been the best change of my life - it's given my live a lot of meaning & I've made a big difference for animals." - Helping other advocates & organisations to be effective via social media - Messages being seen by 10's of millions of human eyes - Growing up in the mid-West, but in a fairly non-religious context - We generally assumed God exists, but it was rarely talked about - Thinking at 14 "This doesn't make any sense - I'm an atheist!" - Going through a "militant" atheist phase - then softening to just being open minded... "I don't rule anything out" - The challenges of coping with family illness & death. Recognising the pull of the hope of an afterlife - Given there are so many thousands of religions, amazing how someone can be so sure theirs is the right one. It's just what they were taught as a child - How the "golden rule" & broad themes of compassion pre-date, then run through most religions - How naturalism needs to be humble & open minded (even to crazy ideas) - Avoiding the arrogance of dogma even within atheist/skeptic/naturalistic worldviews - Withholding belief until there's evidence. Being comfortable not knowing until then - "A Meaningful Life" and "The Animal Activist's Handbook" by Matt Ball, founder of Vegan Outreach - The meaning of life is about 2 things: The pursuit of pleasure and joy and the avoidance of pain and suffering (the latter being more important) - And more.. You can find John at https://twitter.com/JohnOberg, https://www.facebook.com/JohnObergOfficial and https://www.johnoberg.org. You can support him via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/JohnOberg. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this simple form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham for his post-prod work. Follow him: @cgbessellieu | |||
| 18 Oct 2024 | "Factory farming... is impermissible in Islam" - Altamush Saeed - Sentientism 216 | 01:08:39 | |
Altamush Saeed is an animal and environmental law professor. He teaches Pakistan’s 1st Animal Law Advocacy Course and is Founding Managing Partner At Environmental and Animal Rights Consultants, Pakistan’s 1st dedicated Animal and Environmental law and policy firm. Altamush is known for his non-profit work on Interspecies Justice for which he has won multiple awards. He also co-founded the Charity Doings Foundation, a non-profit that aims to save all life, be it human, animal, or the environment in Pakistan. Amongst many other advisory roles he serves as a strategic academic advisor and advocate for Muslim Veganism and Environmentalism at Green Islam. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:11 Welcome - Islam and non-human animals - Animals as survivors/victims of natural disasters 03:00 Altamush's Intro - 3 masters degrees: animal, environmental and human rights law "I always see the three disciplines as together" - Teaching law - Founding and running a non-profit and a law firm - Becoming a documentary film-maker 05:00 What's Real? - "I've had multiple identities" - Growing up in Pakistan - Doctor parents... a good education... privileges - "Animals are kind of invisible" - "this anthropocentric mindset... fuelled by the idea that you're unable to see beyond your own needs... until they're met at a proper scale... it's hard for people to see beyond human beings... that's the lived reality in Pakistan." - Pakistan as an Islamic nation "part of our constitution... we have laws on Islam... laws on animal rights in Islam... codified, however not implemented properly." - "Initially I didn't see animals... that's how I started my non-profit" - "A cat came into my life... even though I physically rescued her she was the one who mentally rescued me... that's the day when I started seeing animals for who they really are..." - JW: Religious belief based on faith/revelation/authority or on evidence and reason? - "It's actually both of them... I do believe in the text... the Quran... taught about that from a very young age... we pray... community... good human rights stuff" - "All Muslims are khalifa which is basically a ruler. But the actual word is steward... a sovereign who has responsibility for everything..." - "That's not normally how it's read... you are the most superior being... everything has been made for you... you have divine permission to do anything including eating animals." - "I used reason... the most driving reasoning for me was the mercy of Allah... there are constant references that his mercy overpowers his anger" 13:05 What and Who Matters? 17:00 Who Matters? 41:52 A Better World? 01:04:48 Follow Altamush And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 19 Apr 2023 | 151: "I went vegan finally when I fell in love with one" - filmmaker and writer Jay Shapiro - Sentientism | 02:19:35 | |
Jay Shapiro is an award winning filmmaker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020. He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:54 Jay Intro - The Essential #samharris series - Documentary & narrative film-making - "I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea" 03:16 What's Real? - Growing up in a secular #Jewish household - "Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one" - "Never again becomes the holiest prayer" - Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum - "I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist" - Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like" - An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi - #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials" - Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality" - How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality - Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction - "There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences - "It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one" - The National High School Ethics Bowl - Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" @TED - Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question" - "Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!) - Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth... - Writing about Sam Harris, not for him - Object-oriented ontology - #psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal" - How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it" - Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out" - #Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue) - What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology? - Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads" - Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think" https://youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc - Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves - Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance 37:45 What Matters? - "There is no grounding (to ethics)" - David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm - "If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris - There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship" 58:50 Who Matters? 01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 28 Jan 2022 | 94: Let's create more effective, compasionate narratives - Writer Alex Lockwood - Sentientist Conversation | 01:27:42 | |
Alex (@alexlockwood & alexlockwood.co.uk) is a fiction & non-fiction writer. He is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies at Uni of Sunderland. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University & has published stories, essays & journalism in a wide range of magazines, journals & newspapers. He has a particular fascination with how we write about our engagements and relations with the nonhuman world. Alex’s debut non-fiction work, The Pig in Thin Air, was published with Lantern Books in March 2016. Alex was one of the founding team of Animal Rebellion, a director of The Save Movement & a member of the Vegan Society‘s Research Advisory Committee. His “Planting Value” report for @The Vegan Society lays out plans for a transition towards a vegan UK plantingvalueinfood.org. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 01:11 Alex’s Intro
05:10 What’s Real?
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 20 Apr 2021 | 48: "Maybe moral systems are harmful! Like religion they are used to divide us." - Walter Veit - philosopher, scientist and sentientist - Sentientist Conversation | 01:27:05 | |
Walter (https://twitter.com/wrwveit & https://walterveit.com/) is an interdisciplinary scientist, philosopher & writer focusing on biology, minds & ethics. He publishes the ‘Science & Philosophy‘ series on Psychology Today & Medium. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?" Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." Our conversation is also here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xxSGItuaSn4. We discuss: - Defending Descartes, as a child! - Studying philosophy, politics, economics & science - Writing a PhD on the philosophy of consciousness. How sentience came to arise in a purely physical universe - Growing up in an agnostic family, attending church but "grumbling" - Finding it strange learning about god at school. Asking annoying questions :) - A brief early teenage phase of believing in god, then reverting to atheism - Church seemed like a "weird cult-like thing." "It just didn't make sense." - There are thousands of religions. They can't all be right. Just disbelieving in one more than religious people do - Being a "hard-core naturalist" but still feeling the pull of superstition - Finding naturalism reassuring. Can abandon the "f*cking scary stuff" (monsters, ghosts, hell) - We can just enjoy our lives & explore the universe - The pull of being part of something larger. The universe, a tribe, a sports team fan group... - The hesitation in Germany about collectivism - "It's a peculiar world we live in - it's exciting" - Does morality crumble without the normative force of a god. "A dude in the sky making up laws and we just have to follow them" - People sceptical of morality aren't sceptical about laws. You can break them but there might be consequences - Too much of morality seems arbitrary. But Bentham almost proposed utilitarianism as a sort of science, not morality - Utilitarians in the UK were engaged in politics & in improving the world - Instead of considering morality - just consider the facts re: "What do animals want from their own point of view" - Facts: animals exist. They can be harmed. They don't like suffering - Humans evolved as a social species. That makes us care - "Morality" might create more harms than benefits! - There is no dividing line between humans and other animals because we all have interests - Both morality and religion have been used to divide humans & animals - Even oppressive groups have divided people through an appeal to morality - The deep connection between morality and spirituality/religion. Often naturalists & atheists don't see the danger - Naturalists are attacked for being amoral but are no less moral - And much more... Full show notes are on Sentientism.info. I ran out of space! Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Thanks, Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu. | |||
| 04 Dec 2023 | S-Risks with Tobias Baumann - "Avoiding the Worst... a moral catastrophe" - Sentientism 180 | 01:13:30 | |
Tobias co-founded the Center for Reducing Suffering with Magnus Vinding. CRS is a research center that works to create a future with less suffering, taking all sentient beings into account. More broadly, Tobias is involved in the effective altruism movement which applies evidence and reason to find the most effective ways to help others. In his new book, Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe, Tobias lays out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks) and outlines ways to steer the world away from s-risks and towards a brighter future. You can get his book for free on Amazon or read the PDF version. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:10 Welcome 02:09 Tobias' Intro - CRS: "How can you best reduce suffering?" - Tobias's book "Avoiding the Worst" and S-Risks - A 2 step approach: 1) who & what matters, 2) empirical understanding & action 03:33 What's Real? - "I am #atheist since I am old enough to think about these issues" - "I have a naturalist worldview - my answer to what's real is what we can scientifically observe & measure..." - JW: For many religious people the biggest S-Risk "is that of being sent to hell by a supposedly benevolent god" - Cognitive biases: wishful thinking (hoping s-risks aren't possible), confirmation bias (looking for evidence that supports our existing beliefs - ignoring contradictory evidence), scope neglect (struggling to understand or emotionally respond to very large numbers) - JW: Animal agriculture as an understandable S-risk vs. #longtermism, large scales, artificial sentients - "Factory farming is a moral catastrophe of incredible scale" - JW: The ethical (e.g. "only humans matter") and epistemological (e.g. "animal farming is humane") errors that can cause massive harms - Animal advocates' neglect of wild / free-ranging animal suffering ethics "the vast majority of sentient beings on earth are not humans... are not factory-farmed animals... but animals living in the wild, in nature - and they also suffer very serious harms... predation... starvation... diseases" - @AnimalEthics video course on wild animal ethics - "This might be the most important source of suffering at this point in time"- Risks of belief digitisation (jumping to yes/no instead of probabilistic credences) when considering low probability outcomes and/or large scale impacts - Dealing with uncertainty - "It's not necessarily what we are emotionally made for..." - The expected value approach and "Pascal's mugging"... "taking speculative scenarios sufficiently seriously but not getting too crazy over it" - "I would not think of S-risks as a Pascal's mugging... The broader idea of a large-scale moral catastrophe in the future doesn't seem that far-fetched to me at all" - "We already have a similar dynamic... in terms of factory farming. Why is it so crazy to think that something similar and even larger scale could happen in the future." - "The topic is quite neglected. I'm just a random guy on the internet and I've managed to write the first book on the topic." 20:30 What Matters? 27:40 Who Matters? 48:45 A Better World? 01:10:40 Follow Tobias - Avoiding the Worst - CRS ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 27 Feb 2023 | 146: Bursting "The Reality Bubble" - Ziya Tong - Science broadcaster and author - Sentientism | 01:20:06 | |
Ziya is a television presenter, producer, author and board member. She was the co-host of Discovery Channel’s long-running primetime science magazine, Daily Planet. In 2019 she wrote the book “The Reality Bubble“. Ziya serves on the boards of a range of NGOs and charities, including PEN Canada, We Animals Media and WWF International. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:46 Ziya's Intro - Science broadcasting @discoverycanada - Author of "The Reality Bubble" exposing human blind-spots - NGO board roles including @WeAnimalsMedia (animal photojournalism led by Jo-Anne McArthur) - Tweeting about earthlings: https://twitter.com/ziyatong 03:32: What's Real? - "Being a bi-racial person gives you a sort of split view... Chinese... Eastern European" - Communism & capitalism, eastern & western - "I never really... took one true dogmatic reality" - "I consistently shed layers of what I previously thought of as reality" - Yoda: "You must unlearn what you have learned" - A science journalist career "naturalistic in one sense" - "With science you can reveal a lot... the whole book [The Reality Bubble] is about that... but it always puts a lens between you and the subject" - Black holes & mites on our eyelashes - "The humanities are much more subjective" - Polymaths spanning humanities & the sciences "that blend is what's interesting to me" - "Indigenous perspectives... have so much to share with us about how we perceive reality" - Swimming sea wolves in British Columbia "new to science - but indigenous peoples had known about these wolves for their entire histories" - The Consilience Model: Science and indigenous perspectives "Two eyed seeing" - Plant medicines like #ayahuasca "which open up an entirely new door to reality" - "I don't believe reality stands on firm ground... I'm happy to run around the ice flow as it shifts... reality should never be solid" - Science & indigenous perspectives "are both based on observation" - "To a neutrino this mug wouldn't be here at all" - "We have to question our every-day common sense notions of reality" - Humilty & error-correction - Risks of dogma within science "we looked at animals as if they were machines" - Brought up Roman #catholic , dabbled with #buddhism / #sufiism - Rumi: "There's a hundred ways to kiss the ground" - #Vipassna #meditation - a 10 day silent retreat "you are really guided by yourself" - Feeding ants & saving an ant "I promised not to kill anything" as part of the 10 Buddhist precepts ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 18 Mar 2022 | 101: "There's a caste angle to how animal cruelty works in India" - Karthik Pulugurtha - Fish Welfare Initiative - Sentientism | 01:07:28 | |
Karthik is MD of the Fish Welfare Initiative, India. He has a background in animal welfare & ethical livelihoods. He is a PhD scholar at the National Academy of Legal Studies & Research in India & previously managed the university’s Animal Law Centre. While there, researched the unethical practices associated with industrialised egg production in India. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:36 Karthik's Intro - Humility, curiosity & wonder - Leading the Fish Welfare Initiative in India - PhD studying freedom for queer people "I never had the opportunity growing up to fully express myself, be myself" - How would we take decisions if we had more freedom & hope 04:01 What's Real? - A deeply religious Hindu, upper class extended family in South India - Becoming sceptical of biases like "darker skin meant some kind of bane from god" - Religion operated in a deeply heteronormative way. Being queer fed the scepticism - Women in the family with a deep empathy, including for animals - Being one of the few male vegetarians (most of the women were) - Brahmin caste dynamics & the "purity" of being vegetarian - Caste discrimination - Studying "science, technology & society" & the tools to unlearn the "cultural baggages" and to re-learn a different way re: animal rights - A very difficult journey but "I would call myself an atheist now" - "Hinduism had plenty of opportunities to explore queer life but it no longer does" - Progressive & fundamentalist religious movements - "Most of the bigotries we've subsumed into Hinduism are fairly modern - at least in the Indian context" - "The most liberating thing for transgender people in this country has been to derive power from a lot of the [Hindu] rituals"... pilgramages - A scientific way of finding meaning - "Life is such an anomaly" - "I find meaning in human actions" - Going from being bullied to seeing his own students standing up to bullies - "Homosexuality was recently decriminalised" - "One of the arcs tending towards a better future" - "You're automatically challenged if you have an atheistic worldview" - "A lot of my relatives... think that I'm homosexual probably because I abandoned god" - A partner pushed to the brink of suicide by their orthodox Muslim family because of their homosexuality - "There's a caste angle to how animal cruelty works in this country" - Animal sacrifice & killing vermin tasks fall to the lower castes - "Enormous cruelty in the name of carrying on this legacy" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 11 Dec 2022 | 136: "Rationality comes with responsibility" - Kathy Hessler - Sentientism | 01:29:19 | |
Kathy is Assistant Dean, Animal Legal Education at George Washington University Law School and Director of the Animal Legal Education Initiative. Kathy has been a clinical law professor for 30 years and has been teaching animal law for 22 years. She is the first law professor hired to teach animal law full-time. Kathy helped develop the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School (L&C). For fourteen years she taught there and directed the Animal Law Clinic. She also created and directed the Aquatic Animal Law Initiative and is the co-founder of World Aquatic Animal Day along with Amy P. Wilson. Kathy co-authored “Animal Law in a Nutshell”, “Animal Law – New Perspectives on Teaching Traditional Law” and the amicus briefs submitted in the U.S. v. Stevens and Justice v. Gwendolyn Vercher cases. She has written numerous law review and other articles and teaches and lectures widely across the U.S. and internationally. Kathy was a board member with the Animal Legal Defense Fund; helped found the Animal Law Committee of the Cuyahoga County Bar; and was the chair and a founder of the Animal Law Section and the Balance in Legal Education Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS). She was also a co-chair of the Clinical Legal Education Section of the AALS, is on the board of the Center for Teaching Peace and is a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:30 Kathy's Intro - #animallaw professor & practitioner - #nonviolence activism - "This is one area of law where students can do something today... to change things" - "& they're implicated... what we eat, what we wear" - "It's hard to say 'all day I'm talking about protecting animals' & go home & eat them" 06:39 What's Real? - Raised #Catholic & #republican "Rules bounded, status quo, respected authority... dogmatically religious" - "You weren't supposed to question"... just listen to parents & nuns - Noticing inconsistencies (in one place girls can be altar servers, in another they can't) - Mid to late #1960's "A lot of questioning" - #Vatican II - Liking justice aspects, not liking treatment of women/indigenous people - Questioning in college - "If people who told me that god existed... were wrong about women... they could be wrong about god" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 22 Nov 2023 | Melanie Joy - "How to End Injustice Everywhere" - Sentientism 179 | 00:58:48 | |
Melanie Joy, PhD, is a Harvard-educated psychologist specializing in relationships, communication, and social transformation. She is the award-winning author of six books, including the new How to End Injustice Everywhere and the bestselling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Getting Relationships Right: How to Build Resilience and Thrive in Life, Love, and Work. Melanie is also an internationally recognized speaker and trainer who’s presented her work in fifty countries across six continents. Melanie is best known for her groundbreaking theories on the psychology of violence and nonviolence and building healthy relationships. Her work has been featured by media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, BBC, NPR, and ABC Australia. She is the eighth recipient of the Ahimsa Award—previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela—for her work on global nonviolence; and she also received both the Peter Singer Prize and the Empty Cages Prize for her work developing strategies to reduce the suffering of non-human animals. Melanie is the founding president of the international organization, Beyond Carnism. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:04 Welcome 02:51 Melanie's Intro - The psychology of violence and #nonviolence , oppression and social transformation - The psychology of eating animals and the work of @BeyondCarnism 04:05 What's Real? - #catholic father, #protestant mother, neither particularly religious - Attending #presbyterian #Christian church (occasionally) and nursery school - Later, father re-discovered Catholic roots and became very religious. Jewish step-mother converted to Catholicism - Mother joined #unitarianuniversalism church - "I was never religious myself but I was very interested in religion... my first major was comparative religious ethics... fascinated by all things spiritual... the occult..." - Very interested in #Judaism for a while - "Always asking about meaning and what's true and what's real... sort of the way my brain was wired" - Partially raised by #Quaker uncle and aunt "very progressive and socially engaged... very strong #socialjustice orientation" while father and step-mother were increasingly conservative - "Everybody else in my family... is very progressive... my grandfather was even a #communist or at very least a #socialist " - Quakerism and UU: "Integrating this sort of spiritual orientation which wasn't believing in a god, but believing in something more... that has to be very socially engaged... that was very attractive to me." - "I'm not a Buddhist... but I have been guided by the principles of #buddhism " - "My understanding of the world has been very much informed by witnessing and observing my family and the way they understood their own traditions and practices" - "Liking to be in churches and liking to be in synagogues and wanting to be in temples... I felt very drawn" 26:43 What Matters?38:46 Who Matters?44:34 A Better World?55:45 Follow Melanie - How to End Injustice Everywhere ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 10 Sep 2022 | 126: "I've always identified with the 'Other'" - Adrian Tchaikovsky - Sci-Fi/Fantasy Author - Sentientism | 01:11:07 | |
Adrian is a multi-award winning fantasy and science fiction author. He is known best for his series Shadows of the Apt and for his novel Children of Time. Children of Time was awarded the 30th Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Preview! 00:55 Welcome 02:15 Adrian's Intro - "I write books about giant spiders from outer space" 03:45 What's Real? - "I'm very much on the science end" - "We weren't a religious household" - US/UK religiosity - "A fascination with the natural world" - Dabbling w/#spirituality "It's amazing how many people have been King Arthur" - "I believed in every damn thing... desperate to find the 'other'" - "The people who want to believe don't examine it" - "Still... looking for that strange but within a scientific boundary" - #aliens - #evolution - "I am pretty much entirely naturalistic" - #briancox - #homeopathy & "special cases" - #scientificmethod - Tech & magic. Apt & Inapt - #telepathy , #psychics, #ghosts "people are out there trying to fake it is... tangential evidence that it is not real" - "I'm not saying 'this cannot be' but I am saying 'show it to me'" - "There is no supernatural" - Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? - #cryptids - "I don't want to be fooled by some... snake-oil salesman" - "There's a weird sort of science cosplay going on" - Folklore, fiction, speculation, narrative "this is a long way from saying 'this is the case' 29:15 What Matters? - "Try to do no harm & don't be a dick" - The Golden Rule & improvements - Autism, pronouns... considering others - Freedom & constraints on freedom - "Being considerate & egalitarian... if you have the luck & the resources to be able to" - "I get my morality from other people" - "I could so easily have fallen in with a very different group of people" - Divine command theory, relativism, nihilism, egoism - "Science can be mis-used... race theory for example" - "Religion defaults to a faith-based argument that effectively is not an argument" - "I accept the theory of relativity but I don't understand it" - Studying animal behaviour: Skinnerian behaviourism: "Animals... can't really feel pain" - Animal intelligence. Spiders dreaming - Phil of mind: #Illusionism, eliminativism, #panpsychism - Origins of sentience "those are the things that make life do what it does" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 08 Sep 2024 | "You don't really have to convince people to be compassionate" - Jesse Tandler MD of New Roots Institute - Sentientism 212 | 01:22:26 | |
Jesse Tandler is Managing Director of New Roots Institute. He oversees programming, people operations, and implementation of New Roots Institute's strategy. Jesse is a writer, academic, and has been an educator for nearly two decades. He earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley in 2002 and an MFA from the New School in 2007. Shortly thereafter, he began teaching high school students about the ethics of our food culture. Later, during his PhD work, Jesse continued to include environmental and animal ethics on the syllabi of his undergraduate classes at the City University of New York, where for five years he taught philosophy, literature, writing, and rhetoric. In 2017, he moved to Los Angeles to apply his years of research and educational experience in the non-profit sphere. Outside of New Roots Institute, you may find him practicing yoga, appreciating beauty in its myriad forms, reading in one of his preferred languages, or teaching food politics at UCLA. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:09 Welcome 02:55 Jesse's Intro - Continental philosophy, teaching food politics and running New Roots Institute (was the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition) 03:32 What's Real? - Jewish pre-school - "I assumed there was a god because that's what the adults told me" - At 6-7 yrs old "It seemed slightly improbable to me because there was no other evidence for it" - At 4-5 yrs "I started getting really concerned about death and what was going to happen when I died... the annihilation of my consciousness" - "I asked my dad and he said 'of course there's no god'... I felt validated actually" - Next 15 years "a very atheistic worldview... probably some contempt for religion and people who believed in something that seemed completely impossible to me... I was pretty loud about it..." - "Very few atheists around me..." A 9th grade debate: "Is there a god... it was pretty much me against the class" - "It became a point of identity for me... in middle school and high school" - "Some of my points of identity - like being a meat-eater - had changed drastically" - College at Berkeley, psychedelics "It opened me up to the possibility that I might just not be seeing everything... my five senses were limited... I had a circumscribed intellect... it was unlikely I had access to whatever the reality out there is." - "Us looking at the universe is like a dog looking at the TV... the dog has no idea what's going on with the TV... I barely have any idea..." - 2 layers: phenomenon "what we experience" then "something else going on that we just don't really have access to - maybe some kind of spiritual access.. intuitive access.. but we can't figure out empirically." 20:38 What Matters? 35:38 Who Matters? 46:47 A Better World? 01:19:29 Follow Jesse: - @jmtandler And more... full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 25 Apr 2024 | A Truly Humane Education - Laura Chepner - The Vegan Society's Education Officer - Sentientism 194 | 01:21:03 | |
Laura is Education Officer at The Vegan Society and Chair of The Vegan Society's Education Network. She is a qualified primary school teacher and well known for introducing the phrase ‘vegan-inclusive education’ to the education sector. Laura worked for several years as the UK’s only vegan inclusion education specialist under the pseudonym ‘Primary Veducation’ and continues to offer training to school staff on what it means to be vegan and how to appropriately teach and treat vegan learners in their care. Laura also empowers vegan learners and parents/guardians by facilitating the creation of peer-developed and reviewed resources and offering supportive interventions. Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:14 Welcome 03:20 Laura's Intro - Supporting vegan learners & their families in education (vs. discrimination, being misunderstood) - Former primary school teacher "my first love" - Supporting the educators. Building the world's first and only CPD (continuous professional development) training course helping educators in being "vegan inclusive" - Leaving teaching after becoming vegan "I felt that the curriculum clashed with my ethics too much" - Vegan daughter starts school "They told me that they weren't going to provide a lunch for her... I was crying around the supermarket getting a packed lunch... my daughter is the most compassionate, kind & loving girl... I think she's being discriminated against." - Working with friends to create the UK's first vegan menu in her school - Starting "Primary Veducation" as a free consultancy - "Theorising vegan-inclusive education" - "To live through that [discrimination] was mind-boggling... I felt like I was by myself... on my own... all of these things were just completely flipped... I had to find this voice... I believed I was the only vegan the village... who would even care?" - Finding a vegan community. A wave of vegan parents wanting help "I realised it's not just me... shouting in this echo chamber" - "Everything I'd been taught... by people who I respected... my parents, my teachers, religious leaders... told me that one thing was correct... it wasn't" - "Everything felt undone... it did feel utterly heartbreaking... something good has come out of it" 11:44 What's Real? - Jewish family. Russian-Latvian-Irish-British - Grandmother born Christian, converted to #judaism - Attending Jewish school, Synagogue and Sunday School - Mother "wanted my brother and I to be the most Jewish we could possibly be so we could fit in... Bar and Bat Mitvah's" - "Religion... become something... neither of us... are particularly driven by anymore" - Brother & family atheist - Valuing Jewish community, tradition, culture, food... "it's familiar" - "A lot of the just have blind faith and don't question... god did this, god created that, we live the way the 10 commandments tell us to - anything other than that is just outrageous" 25:30 What & Who Matters? 44:57 Making a Better World? 01:17:12 Follow Laura - Veducated:An Educator’s Guide for Vegan Inclusive Teaching ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 27 Aug 2021 | 73: Artists of Data Science - cross-post bonus episode on the Philosophy of Sentientism | 01:05:25 | |
This episode is a bonus cross-post from The Artists of Data Science podcast where I talk to Harpreet Sahota about Sentientism. We cover some of my personal perspectives too - so as ever, many other Sentientists will disagree. Harpreet has hosted an eclectic range of guests in his 171 episodes so far. If it looks interesting, why not subscribe to TADS as well as Sentientism! | |||
| 04 Nov 2021 | 82: "It's the greatest transformation in human history... Who wouldn't want to be part of that?" - Dr. Sailesh Rao of Climate Healers - Sentientist Conversations | 01:18:47 | |
Dr. Sailesh Rao (climatehealers.org) is Founder & Exec Dir of Climate Healers, a non-profit working to heal the climate. After a glittering career in tech he switched to focus on solving our environmental crises. Dr. Rao is the author of two books, Carbon Dharma & Carbon Yoga, & is an Exec Producer of several documentaries including, The Human Experiment (2013), Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014), What The Health (2017), A Prayer for Compassion (2019) & They’re Trying to Kill Us (2021). In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 01:14 Dr. Rao's Intro - from India to the US, from tech to saving the world! - Growing up in a Hindu family in Chennai, India - "God is in charge & you are just an instrument" vs. the materialism of engineering training - Being inspired by the moon landing - Landing his dream job at Bell Labs - Starting a consulting firm creating the high-speed internet - "I had achieved, but I wasn't happy" - Frustrations with commercialisation & cut-throat competition - Seeing Al Gore talk about climate change... "If half of what he's saying is true I'm wasting my time" - Jumping to work on climate change "the biggest systems change around" - Being trained by Al Gore to take the message out - Asking Al Gore "If we take all the land we're currently using for raising animals & turn it back to forest can we not reverse climate change?" but he didn't want to talk about it - Starting Climate Healers 07:23 What's Real? - Becoming disillusioned with religion "This is poor work if God's in charge" - "We're the only species that's a mistake on this planet" - Visiting a sanctuary forest "I felt this sense of perfection"... "We did nothing... we gave it back to the animals... make sure no human being comes inside" - "My granddaughter was born... I felt as if I was holding humanity in my arms"... "I belong exactly as I am... you are a fool!" - Writing "Carbon Dharma" & "Carbon Yoga" - "Any 5 year old can tell you... be kind to all life" - Transforming from caterpillar to butterfly - "We are the climate regulating species" - Fire, weapons, partnerships with animals... then fossil fuels - Be a caretaker species, not a predator species - "If you insist on being a narcissistic predator species you're going to die" - "My granddaughter brought me back to faith" - "We're here to serve the animals not to eat them" - "The evidence... is that the Bhavadgita is actually correct" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 03 Aug 2024 | "To see a socialist radical turn into a conservative reactionary just mention animal rights" - Mark Humanity author of "The Humanity Trigger" - Sentientism 207 | 01:14:46 | |
Mark Humanity is a long-time vegan activist. He currently lives on the edge of a rainforest in New Zealand and is on the Board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Mark has been involved in animal rights since a teenager, initially in Ireland’s embryonic movement and later in the much more developed UK movement. A hunt saboteur for many years, Mark has been vegan since 1989 and got involved with the NZ Vegan Society via his vegan outreach Initiative called “Vegan Living Auckland”. He is currently helping raise two plant-based children and has a background in mental health nursing. Mark is the author of "The Humanity Trigger". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 00:34 Welcome 02:13 Mark's Intro - Anarcho-punk and vegan activism - Now “anarchish” - Writing “The Humanity Trigger” about two centuries ofdirect action for animals in Ireland - Vegan Society Aotearoa board - 20 years as a psychiatric / learning disabilities nurse - Now stay at home dad raising two vegan kids on the edge of a rain forest 03:28 What's Real? - “Things that still exist irrespective of whether people believe in them or not – are what’s real” - Raised in a staunchly Irish Catholic family and society - “our sense of reality growing up was filtered through the eyes of a deeply authoritarian… fascist-adjacent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic church” - “The government were simply puppets at the beck and call of the church when the church chose to intervene” - Attending church run by Redemptorist priests / monks “on the surface they preach very worthy things… giving to the poor… vows of chastity & poverty & obedience…” - The monthly Redemptorist “Reality” magazine: “Very medieval thinking… resurrections… ascensions to heaven… virgin births… that was all reality” - “I tried to believe it because it was what everyone around me was saying was true.” - “Anyone that even thought or even asked questions about it was deemed to be dangerously… on the slippery slope” - “If you haven’t been brought up in a strictly religious environment it’s very hard to imagine what it’s like when everyone around you believes in the devil… god… jesus… heaven and hell…” - Transubstantiation “Jesus does come down into that bread – his body is in that bread… it is literal – it is not meant to be taken as a metaphor” - “I tried to believe it but I couldn’t” - Comics, 2000AD, Pat Mills, Alan Moore “I read into those scripts… Flesh… Strontium Dogs, some of Judge Dredd… non-human animals had agency… were lead actors in these scripts… were the heroes and villains” - The influence of punk on other Sentientism guests: Delci Winders, Kristof Dhont, Nick Pendergrast, Nicola Harris, Luke McGuire, Nico Delon, Jamila Anahata, Tom Harris 19:05 What and Who Matters? 34:30 A Better World? ... and much more (full show notes at sentientism.info) Follow Mark - The Humanity Trigger Web Site Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 23 Nov 2022 | 134: "It just started to not make sense" - ObjectivelyDan - Host of "Truth Wanted" - Sentientism | 01:27:30 | |
Dan is the host of Truth Wanted, a call-in talk show that's part of the Atheist Community of Austin.Truth Wanted focuses on how and why people believe what they believe - and how we can talk about beliefs in more effective ways - whether it’s karma or Christ, Bigfoot or crystals. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: We discuss:
03:08 Dan's Intro
05:07 What's Real?
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 06 May 2022 | 110: "Bringing individual animals into the frame" - Author & Ethnographer Kathryn Gillespie - Sentientism | 01:54:49 | |
Kathryn Gillespie PhD (kathrynagillespie.com) is a writer, multispecies ethnographer, & feminist geographer. She is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Geography & the Applied Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program. Her research & teaching interests focus on: ethnography & qualitative methods; feminist & multi-species theory & methods; food & agriculture; political economy; critical animal studies; human-environment relations. She is the author of The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. She has also published in numerous scholarly journals & has co-edited three books: Vulnerable Witness: The Politics of Grief in the Field; Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World; and Economies of Death: Economic Logics of Killable Life & Grievable Death. Kathryn has volunteered with Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, Food Empowerment Project and Pigs Peace Sanctuary. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:15 Kathryn's Intro - Understanding the harms animals experience under capitalist & settler colonial regimes, particularly in food systems - "Bringing individual animals into the frame" - Field work in farms & auction yards "spaces of exploitation" - Sanctuaries: Seeing the lasting harms of exploitation but also "places to imagine flourishing" & rehabilitation - Multi-species auto-ethnography. Everyday violence & care - Living w/chickens "turned us vegan" & lab-rescued beagles - Academia & activism 07:52 What's Real? - Raised somewhat in the Episcopal church - "That just did not resonate with me" - Visiting Baptist churches "that was incredible... a joyful explosion of faith" - A Buddhist grandmother & "Living Buddha, Living Christ" by Thich Nhat Hanh - Practising Tibetan Buddhism as a teenager - Buddhist compassion & Episcopalian blessing of animals on St. Francis' day - Supernatural vs. naturalistic Buddhism "The supernatural stuff never appealed to me" - Envying the pure, comforting faith of a fundamentalist Christian best friend - Compassion for the other or because god tells you? - Pagan & Wiccan practics - People re-connecting with nature during COVID - The etymology of "real" in Latin/Sanksrit from "wealth"... the capitalisation/commodification of life - Emotional, embodied, lived experiences re: meaning, connection & knowledge making. Another form of evidence 32:10 What Matters? ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 26 Aug 2024 | "Being more rather than having more" - Ecolinguist Arran Stibbe - Sentientism 211 | 01:16:22 | |
Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?" Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:00 Welcome - "I'm a massive fan of Sentientism. It's a crystal clear worldview that you're expressing... it's an important message that needs to get out there." - Arran's book "Econarrative" 03:39 Arran's Intro - Ecological linguistics... "I get to analyse any kind of discourse that I want to... then I critique the stories that are emerging... based on my ecological philosophy... respecting living beings and wanting them to flourish" - Discourses from Men's Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories... "positive ones and negative ones" - "Searching for new stories to live by" - Consulting with @greenpeace and others on messaging - Stories... Ben Okri: "Stories are the secret reservoirs of values... if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves" - "If we pay careful attention to the language we can understand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society" - Stories as "cognitive models in our minds that influence how we think, how we talk and how we act"... individuals and across a culture e.g. "The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat... a hegemonic story" - Narrative: "A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime... sequences of events..." - "I would go with this #meme idea... but I think it's even more fundamental than that... so much of what we're thinking is part of this wider social cognition..." - "Is it a simplification to think of a separate being... you wouldn't exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space... your continued existence depends on breathing..." 11:27 What's Real? 26:35 What and Who Matters? 46:15 A Better World? & much more. Full notes at sentientism.info. 01:12:52 Follow Arran - Arran at the University of Gloucestershire - The Stories We Live By – the free online course - The Ecolinguistics Association - Stibbe, Arran (2024) Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury - Stibbe, Arran (2021) Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 13 Aug 2021 | 71: "Boom! - the entire world changed - everyone was questioning everything" - Mariann Sullivan - Podcast Host and Activist Lawyer/Lecturer - Sentientist Conversation | 00:58:24 | |
Mariann (@marisul) is Co-host with previous guest Jasmin Singer of the Our Hen House podcast and host of the Animal Law Podcast. She is a lawyer, lecturer, teacher and animal rights activist. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on the Sentientism YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:40 Mariann's Intro. An Animal life - Working as a lawyer in New York - Adopting a dog on impulse then waking up to animal issue - "He'd stopped eating meat because of the way animals were treated - and t was just like 'boom!'" - Most people know there's a problem - they just avoid thinking about it - Joining (later chairing) the Animal Law Committee of the NY bar - Connecting animal advocacy organisations - Meeting Jasmin Singer & starting Our Hen House 6:02 What's Real? - Growing up Catholic - "I had faith but it was never a burden for me" - Not really being religious any more... "but those voices never really go away" - As a teenager "It just started to seem unlikely" - Getting comfortable with "I don't know" - Ethics & evidence as reasons for abandoning supernatural worldviews - The tumult of Catholic college in 1968. From dressing for dinner & attending church to "men with beards living in the dorms" - "Boom - the entire world changed - everyone was questioning everything" - Leaning towards atheism but not being certain - "We're connected to each other in ways we don't understand" - Non-sentient living things - Woo! vs. naturalistic views of sentience & consciousness - Finding awe in a naturalistic worldview 18:01 What Matters? - "It's all about suffering"... and about pleasure too - Suffering matters... "It's so obvious" - "What kind of god - would create this planet - where animals eat each other" - Morality as compliance vs. concern for suffering/flourishing - Reading Peter Singer. He wrote down what many were already feeling - "Why did I get there and everybody doesn't get there?" - "I don't think it's a philosophical problem... it's a psychological problem" - "How can you not sound self-righteous when you're right?" - "I don't understand why this is this big moral journey" - The "all we have to do is tell everybody" stage of activism - The family & social challenges of going vegan - The risks of motivated reasoning even within a naturalistic worldview 28:48 The Future - Balancing despair & hope with the help of Our Hen House - Things have shifted. "It's almost as if we have won the moral argument already." ... and much more. Full notes on YouTube or Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall using this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on Facebook. Thanks Graham for the post-production. | |||
| 12 May 2024 | Hip Hop is Going Green - Keith Tucker of Hip Hop is Green - Sentientism 197 | 01:30:46 | |
Keith Tucker is founder and Executive Director of Hip Hop is Green, a nonprofit organization on a mission to support holistic wellness and transform urban communities environmentally. He has been a visionary and social entrepreneur for over 30 years. He has worked with hundreds of businesses, youth groups and community organizations and many icons in the entertainment business as a creative promoter and an ambassador for the culture of hip hop. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:19 Welcome 02:44 Keith's Intro - Founder and ED of Hip Hop is Green - "I'm a father, a brother, a friend, a husband and currently I'm a human being living on earth" 03:19 What's Real? - Growing up in Seattle, raised by mother, grandmother and grandfather - Religious grandparents - Going to #baptist church - Attending strict #catholic school, taught by nuns "I remember sister Sheila - boy she was mean" - Catholic high school in California - "Some rough times." Drugs (from 13 yrs old), street-life "in with the wrong crowd" - Grandmother and mother "I'm so blessed and fortunate to have had them in my life... gave me a great foundation of morals and values and patience and determination" - Lending a bike and having it stolen "I'm a very giving and nice person... I have to beware... trust has its limits" - 31 years clean & sober now - "My values who I am today were actually both shaped by good things that happened to me and bad things that happened to me" - "Just really good people", not because of their religion... - "...spiritual as well... my grandmother used to call it motherwit... I still have that today... I just get a feeling... it's always 100% right every time... everybody has it to... some people listen to their motherwit more than others" - "Back in the early '70s it was a different world... in school they could paddle you in class... in front of everyone... there was no such thing as non-bullying" - Being taught the Bible "I never really questioned anything... absorbed it into who I am... although I wasn't following most of the Bible to be honest at that point... I was more interested in having fun and partying... not really focusing on why I'm here, who I am and what my purpose is" - Last time used drugs. Motherwit voice spoke very loud "you may not live through this." Attending a treatment centre, guided by the motherwit voice "it's not luck" - April 7 1992 "I need to change my life... I kept that commitment all the way through to today... the weight had been lifted off me." - Finishing treatment, moving to the Texas countryside - Starting to figure out "who is Keith Tucker... what is my purpose?... Baptism through fire." - "I am not Christian or religious today.... but I am very spiritual and I believe in god." - "I walk in my purpose and in god's purpose every single day... helping people and serving people is what my purpose is" - "The people that were enslaved... were introduced to the Bible... as a system to keep their minds enslaved." - "Using religion to chain people's minds" 29:30 What Matters? 47:30 Who Matters? 01:05:40 A Better World? 01:28:24 Follow Keith Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 24 May 2024 | "Reductionism is well-named. It reduces what you can do." - Michael Levin - Sentientism 199 | 01:19:41 | |
Michael is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. He is also an associate faculty at the Wyss Institute at Harvard. Michael is a director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. He is also co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms. Michael's Levin Lab focuses on "Embodied Minds: understanding diverse intelligence in evolved, designed, and hybrid complex systems" and works "at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science". This work includes the bioengineering of novel living machines and has clinical applications in regenerative medicine. Michael has editing roles at a number of academic journals and has published more than 350 papers. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. 00:00 Clips! 01:18 Welcome - "We biologists have plenty of spherical cows" 03:50 Mike's Introduction 04:37 What's Real? - A "not religious but highly spiritual" Jewish background - Hebrew school " I harrassed everybody with questions.... how souls are supposed to work...the hard problem of consciousness... the answers weren't terribly forthcoming." - At home "an emphasis on inquiry... asking big questions... things that matter" - "The question of 'how do I know?' figured prominently in my childhood" - "Rationality is an amazing tool but one can also ask questions about its limitiations... what are the things that we're not seeing" - Being sceptical about the approaches you're bringing to a problem - "I pretty much only have one supernatural belief which is that the universe is understandable... Once you've taken that on everything else becomes possible... I can't think of anything that would be truly supernatural..." - "We are finite beings" trying to understand reality then "you have to ask yourself 'how is this working out?... is this helping me have a more meaningful life... be a more ethical person... have better relationships with others?'" - "I don't really think of myself as a biologist... my fundamental commitment... has been to understand embodied mind" - "I'm interested in cognition, intelligence and inner perspective in a wide range of diverse systems... some of which are alive" - "I think cognition is a broader category than life" - "It just so happens that life is, so far, our best example of how that can scale" - "Molecular networks scaling into cells scaling into tissues scaling into organisms and beyond" - Collective intelligence, goals... "biology is an excellent playground for these things" - Cognition, mind etc. "All of these cognitive claims... where you think something is on the spectrum... how much mind... I don't think these are terms describing particular systems. I think these are terms describing our intended relationship to them... an engineering interaction protocol" 51:04 What and Who Matters? 01:08:53 A Better World? Follow Michael Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! | |||
| 21 Jan 2022 | 93: "I believe in the abolition of cages - human & non-human" - Rachel Krantz, author of "Open" - Sentientist Conversation | 01:29:10 | |
Rachel is a multi-award winning writer, podcast host & media consultant. Her memoir, “Open – An Uncensored Memoir Of Love, Liberation, And Non-Monogomy” was published in 2022. She is on the advisory board for Sentient Media & the board of directors of Our Hen House. Rachel does nonprofit media consulting, especially for vegan organizations & brands. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 00:00 Welcome 01:34 Rachel's Intro - Journalism, writing memoir "Open", normalising veganism & liberation 06:12 What's Real? - Growing up culturally Jewish. Parents wanted to leave behind the stricter ordinances (e.g. gender) - Jewish school (daily prayers, dress codes) "I was not having it" - Moving to a more liberal Jewish school - "Tikkun olam": helping the world as an ethos. What you do in this life - not an afterlife. Giving back - Immigration lawyer dad working w/Catholic charities - Trip to Israel w/a religious group. "I was very disillusioned... they didn't talk about Palestinian people... didn't address the conflict at all" - Stark contrast w/parents' sense of Jews as: "we're liberals, we've suffered... so we care about other social minorities & discrimination" - "The oppressed becoming the oppressors" - Proud to be culturally Jewish but "I identify less & less w/religious aspects... the more I examine them the more there's speciesism or sexism baked in" - Always sceptical of a patriarchal god - At 9 yrs, trying to make sense of the death of a cousin. Bargaining w/god & praying to protect loved ones - Realising bad/good things happen for no reason & interrogating the idea of god - Agnostic now. "As sceptical of staunch atheism as I am of staunch religiosity." - Humility, interconnectedness. Meditation, dancing with trees - Limits of knowledge (now or ever) - Credence & probabilities vs. binary beliefs - Psychedelics: the science & the experience. The comfort of universal interconnectedness - "I'm not convinced of any afterlife or a soul that will go on" - Terror management. Coming to terms w/the fear of death (maybe a next book!). We know we'll die but don't want to! Coping via religion, group continuity as a response... - "Can I confront this reality [death] & make friends with it?... what would that open up in terms of freedom?" ...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form. Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there! Thanks Graham. | |||
| 12 Apr 2021 | 46: "The root of all evil is thinking some suffering doesn't matter" - Jane Velez-Mitchell Unchained - Sentientist Conversation | 01:03:13 | |
Jane (https://twitter.com/JVM) is a TV broadcaster, author, journalist & now CEO of the animal rights non-profit Jane Unchained (https://janeunchained.com/). She has written four books, two of which were NY Times bestsellers. In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on the Sentientism YouTube. We discuss: - Jane's career in media & journalism & now running a non-profit - Countdown to Year Zero & making the world vegan by 2026 - Near death experiences - Growing up in "showbiz" New York with Puerto Rican/Irish parents - Jane's mother gave up meat early - Thinking the family was vegetarian but eating pescetarian - Going to different churches as an adventure, but when things got serious, going back to Catholicism - Dabbling rather than strong religiosity - "Let your conscience be your guide" - We all know what's wrong and right. The role of guilt, shame & remorse - Recovering from alcoholism. 26 years sober! - Praying every morning "Turn it over - seek guidance". Making the bed every day - "We don't need to have a definition of a higher power - it's just not me" - Ego & self-centredness is the source of so many wrongs - Societal forces claiming that "some suffering doesn't count" are behind most evils. Human & animal - ...And much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. | |||
| 12 Jun 2021 | 60: "That's moral progress - you have to interfere in things" - Philosopher Kyle Johannsen - Sentientism | 01:22:59 | |
Kyle (https://twitter.com/KyleJohannsen2 and https://philpeople.org/profiles/kyle-johannsen) is Adjunct Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Queen's University. His research is in social & political philosophy, & in animal & env. ethics. He teaches normative ethics, metaethics, bioethics, business ethics, cyberethics, the philosophy of law & critical thinking. He is the author of "Wild Animal Ethics". In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:22 Kyle's Intro - Catia Faria's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catia_Faria) dissertation on wild animal suffering 2:25 What's Real? - Growing up Roman Catholic. Attending catholic schools. Believing in god. - "I didn't like being Catholic. I found it very restrictive... I didn't like having to pray - it felt fruitless" - Ethics was being thought about but "I didn't like the conservative values" e.g. abortion, contraception, sex - "It just struck me as false." - Catholicism did leave the impression that it's important to think about morality - Majoring in philosophy 8:25 What Matters? - "Morality is objective" - "Even relativists behave like morality is objective... why would you argue unless there were some right answer?" - Even under objective morality duties vary by context - Moral objectivism doesn't have to imply moral realism - Consistency, coherence, flourishing, co-op as potential groundings - Goods (welfare, resources, health, relationships), functions (distribution, efficiency, increases) & constraints (respect) values - "I don't know if pleasure always wins out" - Pluralism within Sentientism 21:15 Moral Scope? Sentience - Anthropocentrism, Sentiocentrism, Biocentrism, Ecocentrism - Sentientism as Sentiocentrism & Naturalism - Sentiocentrism itself implies naturalism. It conflicts with many supernatural/religious worldviews (e.g. soul as basis for moral value, use of science to assess sentience) - Hard cases of marginal sentience (brain injury, foetal development, simplest animals) 28:27 The Journey to Sentientism - Taking a PhD animal ethics course taught by Will Kymlicka based on Zoopolis - Concluding that "Sentience is the correct criterion for inclusion in the moral community" - Pluralism re: various goods. But sentience is a condition for the non-welfare elements to count as good (e.g. health only matters if the being cares about being healthy) - "Veganism is a moral requirement if sentiocentrism is right" - Going vegan during the PhD. Cutting out animal products over 8 month transition. Finding social support - And much more. See YouTube or Sentientism.info Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/ Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ Join me and Kyle in our biggest community group - open to all: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism | |||
| 24 Jan 2021 | 25: “Imagining a better future through our everyday decisions” – Podcaster and academic Claudia Hirtenfelder – Sentientist Conversation | 01:07:19 | |
Claudia Hirtenfelder is a PhD Candidate in Geography at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She is host of The Animal Turn Podcast (Subscribe!) In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube. Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/imagining-a-better-future-through-our-everyday-decisions-podcaster-and-academic-claudia-hirtenfelder-new-sentientist-conversation We discuss:
You can find Claudia at @ClaudiaFTowne & The Animal Turn here. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “wall” Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham Bessellieu for his post-prod work. Give him a follow! | |||
| 14 Sep 2021 | 75: Should Stoics be vegan? - Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci - Sentientist Conversation | 01:00:29 | |
Massimo (figsinwinter.blog & @mpigliucci) is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He co-hosted the Rationally Speaking Podcast & was the editor in chief for the magazine Scientia Salon. He is an outspoken critic of pseudoscience & creationism & an advocate for secularism, science education & Stoicism. In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on Youtube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:10 Massimo's Intro: Evo bio to philosophy 1:40 What's Real? - Growing up in Rome, "Catholic by default" - Accepting the christian world view, but questioning it early. The Trinity, transubstantiation - At communion: "It doesn't taste like human flesh" - Adopting secular humanism & turning to science & philosophy - The limitations of secular humanism: "When it came to real crises in my life... secular humanism was not very useful... it doesn't help me to think in terms of human rights when my father is dying" - Stoicism as a practical philosophy of ethics & how to live a meaningful life - Hume & Russell - Some of the commandments "seem a little narcissistic & self-centred coming from a god" - Jesus seems like a good guy but the Catholic church has taken some awful political positions over the centuries & today - Not blaming Jesus but instead blaming patriarchal forces inside & outside religion - Antivaxx, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine - "I don't believe that any unfounded belief is harmless, ultimately" - The attitude of taking unfounded beliefs seriously crosses boundaries easily. Jumping from one mystical or conspiracy theory to another - Hume "A reasonable person proportions his belief to the evidence" - Faith as belief without evidence - The ony thing you don't want to do without belief is go to 0% or 100%. Bayesianism - Carl Sagan's It's nice to have an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out - Don't ask "is it possible?" ask "how likely is it to be true?" - The risk of dogmatic attitudes even amongst skeptics - People don't like being told they're idiots - Even a religious/supernatural worldview with modern ethics still presents a risk - When religious authority conflicts with compassionate ethics - As a secular humanist can disagree with Sagan or Seneca. As a Christian person I can't disagree with god or Jesus 21:21 What & Who Matters? - The Tolstoy fallacy "Unless there is a god you might as well go around murdering and raping" - Naturalistic ethics (Philippa Foot, Confucianism, virtue ethics and more...) ...And much more. Full show notes on YouTube and Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
Thanks for the post-prod Graham. | |||