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.

Thom Norman is the co-founder of FarmKind, a new non-profit focused on raising money for some of the best farmed animal charities. FarmKind is designed to help donors both have a big impact for animals and donate to the organisations they care about most. It allows users to split donations between an expert-recommended super-effective charity and their favourite charity, then provides a bonus on both.

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!

00:56 Welcome

- Cameron King episode

02:30 Thom's Intro

- Co-founding @farmkind 

- "What's the thing I can do best... to tackle the issue of factory farming?"... "We believe the single biggest thing... is to donate to the right charities... we help people to do that"

- Finding charities that do great work and making donating to those charities super-easy

03:44 What's Real?

- A very, very religious family "church is an integral part... of their worldview... also social structures"

- "Broadly a positive thing"

- Anglican, Church of England Christian

- Asking philosophical questions that "hit up against some bible verse or god - and that's the end of the conversation"

- Conversations with some Christians about animals: "Humans are made in the image of god... we are above other animals... that is kind of the end of the conversation"

- "As someone who increasingly... took the suffering of animals very seriously... I don't think that's where the conversation should end... and for many Christians that's not where it ends"

- "You can think that humans matter more than animals and still think that animals do matter"

- "We can still agree on basic things like 'suffering is bad'... 'animals suffer'... 'if there are things we can do to prevent suffering'... 'then it seems obvious that that's a good thing'"

- The people working within religious communities to emphasise more universal sentiocentric compassion... #ahimsa, #stewardship, care and compassion, mercy

- Reading religious apologetics and secular points of view

- "I don't know what I think... a pragmatic pragmatism?... what version of the world do I see that allows me to operate... to move through it... even if epistemically or ethically that's not 100% perfectly logically sound"

- Humility... "We need to be clear that we're not sure that we're right"

- Donating to the most effective charities "is not the only thing people care about"... so FarmKind allows donation splitting... head and heart donations

- The tension between different values... more rational and more intuitive / personal

- "It's very important we don't disregard those emotional reasons"

15:03 What Matters?

26:00 Who Matters?

38:24 A Better World?

01:08:37 Follow Thom and FarmKind  

- Farmkind.giving (sign up to the newsletter!)

- @FarmKindThom

- Thom on LinkedIn

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!

Robert Grillo is an activist, author and speaker for all species. He is also the founder and director of Free from Harm, a non profit dedicated to helping end animal exploitation. He founded Slaughter Free Chicago in 2018 which has now grown into the Slaughter Free Network. As a communications professional for over 25 years, Robert once worked on large food industry accounts where he acquired a behind-the-scenes perspective on food branding and marketing. His book, Farm to Fable: The Fictions of Our Animal-Consuming Culture, explores the powerful narratives driving our culture of mass animal consumption. Robert's other published works include contributions to The Humane Hoax, Caged: Top Activists Share Their Wisdom on Effective Animal Advocacy and Circles of Compassion: Connecting Issues of Justice.

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

- Free from Harm's "Humane Farmer" transfarmation stories: https://freefromharm.org/humane-farmer/

03:25 Robert's Intro

- Author, speaker, activist

- Free from Harm's mission: "advance a #plantbased food system and challenge the dominance of animal agriculture through bold and innovative grass-roots action."

- Evolving from an on-line resource to "on the ground activism"

05:16 What's Real?

- At 10 yrs old father passed away. Creative, jazz, painting, architecture

- Exploring dad's library... ways of thinking, ethics

- "He was a non-believer - not a spiritual person"

- Mother also non-religious

- Ordinary middle-class upbringing

- "I was definitely an outsider... I didn't really fit in... now I embrace it... causes me to question... being open to new ideas and scepticism... I feel like it's a strength"

- The risks of scepticism spilling over into conspiracism

- "Sometimes it's a small group of people that sense an injustice... that mainstream society doesn't... that's the role of activism... awakening and triggering of popular support to bring justice."

- JW: Why epistemology matters "it's not just a popularity contest..." it's the weight of evidence

- Spirituality / supernatural / transcendent?: "We have so much to deal with here that I don't have time for that stuff... I'm not seeking it out at this point in my life"

12:56 What Matters?

- Experiencing father's suffering and death as a child. "I developed a sense of empathy"

- "I didn't really come into an understanding of the suffering of other animals... until much later in life"

- Emotional (e.g. empathy, care) vs. intellectual (utility, justice, rights) moral influences

- Sympathy, empathy & compassion

17:28 Who Matters?

- The risks of care/empathy in narrowing our moral scope

- "I came to realise what the real conditions were for the animals that suffer in our food system... their suffering was like our suffering."

- Watching documentaries and @mercyforanimals  investigative footage

- "Humane, sustainable farming?... empty marketing promises."

28:44 A Better Future?

01:07:30 Follow Robert

- robertgrillo.com

- https://freefromharm.org/

- @Free_from_harm

- @robert_grillo

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!

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!

LoriKim (she/her/we/our) describes herself as an educator, organiser, activist, conservationist, abolitionist, naturalist & healer. Originally from Jamaica & now living in the Bronx, USA, LoriKim has dedicated her life to working for social & environmental justice specifically organizing around LGBTQIA+, Black, Brown & Indigenous communities.  LoriKim’s work in anthropology & her training as a biologist has helped her work against environmental racism, in providing environmental education for People of Color & in working towards decolonialism & liberation through veganism for over 25 years. LoriKim works as a founder, facilitator and organiser with organisations including BlackVegFest https://blackvegfest.org/ & The Cypher.

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

01:26 LoriKim's Intro

- Educator, organiser, activist, conservationist, abolitionist, naturalist, healer

- "Black liberation practice" with "a queer & vegan lens"

02:38 What's Real?

- Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica

- "Being a Black country... what that means is that we had to really hold tight to our traditions, our histories that were muddled, were removed... because of slavery"

- "Highly colonised", stringent laws, highly carceral

- "Missionaries saw opportunity to come in and bring their various and sundry versions of the truth"

- Synchronising traditions into Christianity as the only way they could survive

- Growing up Catholic "A very white and blond Jesus... this is not someone I can relate to."

- "I never believed in Santa Claus"

- "Religion... as the framework I had to live under in order to go about my daily life"

- Communion, saying rosary, prayer

- "What I saw in the natural world did not reflect this idea that god created all of these things... I watched creation happen."

- Moving to the US at 13

- "This religion doesn't make any sense to me" & "bruk out" from church

- Coming out & stopping eating meat at 14

- "I could not equate this idea of loving all beings... and also eating them"

- "Yes - I'm an atheist... I don't believe any of this"

- "However, spirit moves you."

- Talking with ancestors "I thought that was me talking to myself, but..."

- "I would ask for things in my head & it would happen"

- "I never really strayed away from thinking about the world beyond"

- A multitude of universes & studying science

- "A hybrid of really being rooted in science... & there's so much more that's unknown that I know that I feel"

- "I'm an Aquarius & we don't follow anybody else's rules"

- Practising things that come from a lot of African ancestral traditions, "but not strictly"

...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.

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.

Marina is a journalist, currently focusing on factory farming and the criminalization of activists who fight it. Marina has written for Vox, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Intercept and many other publications. She used to be an editor for Harvard Magazine. Before that, she wrote and edited for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Toledo Blade and The Harvard Crimson.

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

01:25 Marina's Intro

- Zeroing in on animal-focused journalism

03:20 What's Real?

- Raised by a single mum

- Jewish but not v.religious (like many Soviet jews)

- Emigrating from Belarus to the USA at 3yrs old

- Growing up in St. Louis

- Orthodox Jewish school to 8th grade but "feeling like an outsider"

- "I was sceptical of the religious stuff from a pretty young age"

- Updating "my religion" on FaceBook as "The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" in middle school

- Gender segregated classes

- Hearing anti-Arab racist statements in class

- "A profound sense of justice"

- Going vegetarian at 11 yrs old "if we don't have to kill animals... then it's wrong to do that"

- School-mates "did not understand vegetarianism... god gave us dominion over animals... they're happy to be killed & give us sustenance."

- Secular, progressive high-school, but "I wouldn't say that people's attitudes... were particularly different... different reasons... protein, animals not intelligent..."

- Moving to veganism

- "I see everything through an animal liberation lens"

- Secular/scientific/naturalistic worldviews don't guarantee good ethics either

- "I feel a profound connection to alll of life on earth, particularly animals & sentient life... it's something I can't express in material terms"

- Animal ways of understanding can transcend what humans are capable of. Birds navigation, dog smell capability...

- "Respect for non-human life & epistemological humility should underpin our efforts to understand the world - rather than the assumption that humans have the right to manage & dominate"

- "I still identify as Jewish... an important part of who I am"

- Atheists/agnostics within religious communities

- "The way I feel about life & animals can definitely be described as spriritual"

- Human dominionism "is totally at odds with my worldview"

- The harms that can come from religious or naturalistic worldviews

- "Science is responsible for a lot of evil stuff too"

24:00 What Matters?

- Justice

- "I reject any form of violence... & that's what animal agriculture is"

...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.

Susana is an assistant professor based at the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science of UNED, working on animal ethics and the philosophy of animal minds. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Complutense University of Madrid, an MA in Global Ethics and Human Values from King’s College London and a PhD in Philosophy from UNED, Spain. She has been a post-doc fellow at the University of Graz and at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna. Susana describes her research interest as focusing on “what animals are capable of feeling, thinking, and doing, and what this means for the sort of treatment that we owe them.”

Susana led the project “Animals and the Concept of Death” which culminated in her book, “La Zarigüeya De Schrödinger” or “Schrödinger’s Possum”.

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

01:46 Susana's Intro

- Vienna & Madrid cultures re: animals & veganism

03:57 What's Real?

- Growing up in a 100% atheist household. Unusual for 1980's Spain

- "I used to think of god as a woman" but "I never had it as a belief"

- No religious education... "It's a little bit sad"

- "It's always been very natural to not have god as part of the explanation"

- Some sense of shame about not being religious as a kid but "I quickly grew proud of my beliefs"

- Attending an international private school with rich kids "I knew I was different"... incorporated being an atheist into that difference

- Superstitions "Just in case" :)

12:51 What Matters?

- "I want to believe in moral realism - I don't want to be a relativist"

- "Sentience is definitely something that provides a good grounding for ethics & moral status"

- "I feel like something is left out if we focus excessively on sentience"

- Agency as a potential moral grounding? "Something that ought to be respected about agency"

- Wilcox: "agency & sentience are co-extensive"

- "Harms beyond sentience?... ways of wronging animals that don't correlate with subjective feelings": dignity, preventing from relations / developing capacity

- Drawn to objectiveless accounts of wellbeing more than hedonist accounts

- "Pleasure is something important... but a life that contains only pleasure... might be a good enough life, but it's somehow impoverished"

- Nihilism

- "It feels like experiences aren't everything"... "Experiences are subject to manipulation, habituation..."

...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.

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.

Steve is a philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay who specializes in animal ethics, environmental ethics and meta-ethics. He was co-founder in 1985 of the journal Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics and served as its initial co-editor. Steve was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Quarterly (1991–1994). In 1983, Steve founded, with his wife Jeanne, the Hayward Friends of Animals Humane Society. They now operate Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in Need, in California. Steve wrote Morals, Reason, and Animals, in 1987, Subjective Morals, in 2011, and edited Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat; published in 2004.

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 Steve's Intro

- Getting out of the ivory tower "Put the values you espouse into effect & help the animals"

- A seminal early voice in animal ethics

6:05 What's Real?

- Growing up in Salt Lake City

- Immigrant parents from war-torn Europe "focused on making sure they could make a living"

- Greek Orthodox & Methodist Christian parents

- Sunday School

- Order of the Cross cult (vegetarian because of reincarnation)

- "I was never interested in religion" "The story of Noah was really nuts"

- "The story in the 1950's was you couldn't survive without meat... but my mother proved that wrong"

- "We liked animals... didn't see the need to kill them for something totally unnecessary"

- James vs. Bertrand Russell "It's immoral to believe something just because it makes you feel good"

17:03 What Matters?

- Literature as a way into philosophy

- Philosophy at Rice University (classical, medieval, existential)

22:52 Who Matters?

- Singer's Animal Liberation

- Animals "were my friends"

- "The most basic principle of morality is not to cause suffering for no good reason"

- "I was very much a Kantian"

- Writing "Are Animals Moral Beings"

- "Utilitarianism can tend to subordinate the indvidual... it tried to do a science of ethics"

- "Kantianism has problems too"

- Pluralism & pragmatism: Care ethics, Singer & utility, Regan & rights, Korsgaard & Kant...

- "We need to build on history"

- Anthropocentric & bio/ecocentric challenges

- “A lot of environmental ethics… is nonsense”

...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.

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.

Dr. Mark Solomon is an author, neuropsychologist, musician and radio show/podcast host whose work touches on a wide range of topics. Mark produces a national Street Epistemology radio show/podcast called "Being Reasonable" (beingreasonableshow.com, @B_Reasonable_, @Being Reasonable)

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

01:25 Mark's Intro

-  @Street Epistemology . Conversations about "what you know and how you know it"  @Anthony Magnabosco , Reid Nicewonder  @Cordial Curiosity  

02:44 What's Real?

- Flat Earth

- Backfire effect

- Talking less about the belief & more about the reasons for the belief

- Improving our epistemology, not just "correcting" beliefs

- "I grew up in a Jewish household that didn't discuss god"

- Living with two separate epistemologies: naturalism / humanism but culturally Jewish

- "I couldn't even tell you that my rabbi believed in the supernatural"

- SE as a tool anyone can use

- Evidence & reason

- Objectivity & subjectivity

- Reality, truth, belief & opinion

- Starting conversations with understanding how people think of truth

27:44 What Matters?

- "I don't know"

- "I try to be a selfless person but sometimes I act selfishly"

- "I just act - I don't know if I have a choice"

- Uncertainty, psychology & moral foundations

- Suffering vs. flourishing (causing bad feelings in others is bad)

- Moral origins in evolution & psychology

- Determinism & free will

- Pre & non-human morality

- Compassion & co-operation as evolutionarily adaptive

- Virtue, deontology, utility, feminist care, relational ethics

- "If there were no sentient beings there would be no morality"

- Internal (warm fuzzy feelings, reciprocity...) & external reasons to be good

- True altruism & demandingness. "At least don't needlessly cause suffering & death"

- Emotional & intellectual routes to compassion

- Alleviating suffering vs. enhancing flourishing

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights

48:15 Who Matters?

- Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?"

- Getting backyard chickens for eggs & as pets

- "It's become painfully obvious to us that they are really smart creatures with their own social order... they definitely feel suffering."

- "There are some really stark commonalities between humans & chickens"

...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.

Louisa is a Religious Education (RE) Teacher and Head of Life Skills at a school in England. She is host of the RE podcast, an RE Subject reviewer for Oak National, a member of the NATRE (National Association for Teachers of Religious Education) executive committee and the Surrey SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) as well as being a public speaker and author.

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!

00:45 Welcome

- Kids today are "The most enlightened generation... so socially aware... so aware of, for better or worse, the bigger picture... so passionate about things that really matter."

- Jamie's appearance on The RE Podcast talking about Sentientism

- "The reason we love RE [religious education] is because we love those big questions... this is like a proper geek out for me!"

- The balance between neutrality and authenticity for RE teachers... how much to talk about your own worldview

05:45 Louisa's Intro

- 22 years of RE teaching in UK secondary schools

- The RE Podcast "little lockdown project... I'd been wanting to do something creative... the first dedicated podcast for students and teachers of RE"

- "I had no idea what a podcast was... the RE community... have been so supportive... now nearing 4 years of doing this... I absolutely love it"

- Religious Education "fairly unique... to British schools... a national entitlement... every child up to the age of 18"

- How RE has evolved from religious instruction "how to be a good Christian" to now: "religion and worldviews - everybody in the world has a worldview... we all stand somewhere... show respect... compassion for people who think differently... religious and non-religious worldviews"

- NATRE exec

- Oak National online teaching platform

09:19 What's Real?

- #catholic mum, #atheist dad, brought up Catholic (christening, school, church)

- "You just accept the reality that you are given by your caretakers. And that was then reinforced at school... reinforced at church... with my friends..."

- Despite atheist dad: "At no point did I really consider that atheism was a valid worldview"

- At 8 yrs old "My dad had this big conversion... from being a complete and utter atheist and hating religion to becoming quite an evangelical Christian... he had a religious experience... he heard a voice... felt a pressure... waves of energy going through him."

- Going to protestant evangelical church with dad "so very different from my Catholic version... quite exciting... my whole family left the Catholic church and went to the Protestant church."

- "It was quite fundamentalist... to the point of it being quite judgmental"

- "University was the first time I really questioned anything... taken out of my little religious bubble... exposed to... alternative ideas"

- "A lot of the things I'd been told just didn't hold up... going to hell... attitudes to homosexuality..."

35:34 What Matters?

46:15 Who Matters?

01:11:26 A Better Future?

01:30:50 Follow Louisa

- @TheREPodcast1

- The RE Podcast

- Louisa on Instagram

- 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!

Lucas studied and practiced architecture in the U.S., Canada, and India before leaving it all behind in an effort to rethink what it is to live a meaningful life. Since then he's traveled the world, started a philanthropic enterprise, Haven Hearts, and written a beautiful, compassionate book. Along the way he enjoys playing frisbee, making things with his hands, and befriending every dog who crosses his path.

He is the author of The Weight of Empathy, a travel memoir. Lucas describes it as an exploration of both our relationship with animals and his own personal process of learning how to be a compassionate person in an often violent and uncaring world.

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 Lucas' Intro - author & social enterprise entrepreneur

- Architecture, travelling, volunteering, writing "The Weight of Empathy", benefitting the world

03:28 What's Real?

- Non-religious parents, "recovering Catholic" mother, father from a Jewish family

- Raised as a child on a "hippy" commune

- "From the moment I knew the word I probably identified as an atheist", but not anti-theist

- Some "woo-woo" spirituality. Tarot cards, divination, magic

- Open minded, rational, scientific way of thinking

- Experimenting w/levitation & telekinesis "It was not very successful"

- Religious inspiration in art/culture. Community & separation

- Where people turn to for explanations of the unexplainable

- Alan Watts & Daoism

- Hallucinogenics & mushrooms

- A "hybrid rationalist spiritual view"

- Carl Sagan

- "There's an inherent quality in matter... that is self-organising"

- From interstellar dust to stars to elements to life to sentience

- "Sentient beings are a way for the universe to observe itself"

- "Maybe if you took mushrooms you'd describe the same things in a different way"

- Teleology, fine tuning argument & the anthropic principle

- Multiple worlds

29:34 What & Who Matters?

- Sensitive, pacifistic tendencies

- Communism (Russian family history), justice, equality

- An affinity with non-human animals (dogs, cats & wild animal)

- Loving the family chickens, but eating them. "These were chickens I knew"

- Inventing a justifying narrative as a child that humans need to eat the meat of animals because "we're made of meat"

...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.

Adam is a Lecturer in Env. Sci. at Deakin Uni. He works on questions related to ecology, conservation & society. He is most interested in: i) how concern for Animals informs environmental values & practice, ii) the env. potential of transitioning to plant-based agri & iii) more critical approaches to how the sciences consider Animals. Adam wants to leverage research to help create a better future for Animals, the environment & humans.

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

01:57 Adam's Intro - "An animal person". Vegan activist, lecturer & scientist

- The idea that animals matter "took over"

03:16 What's Real?

- Catholic grandma, mother traumatised by Catholicism, non-religious father

- High-school: enthusiastic atheism & "an affinity with science"

- Uni: learning about the social history & context of religions

- "I'm a proper atheist... I just don't think there's anything there"

- "How I think about reality is grounded in natural science"

- Humility re: complex systems (e.g. social, envir)

- Scientism. Science might not have all of the answers

- Reading fantasy & sci-fi: "Religion is just another fantasy book"

- Religious friends. Talking about bible inconsistencies & faith & submission

- "Letting your thinking be done by others - I'm not into that"

- Scepticism "show me the evidence"

- The positives of religious community & connection

- Environment: "Why can't we love it for what it is rather than investing some sort of supernaturalness into it"

- Faith vs. evidence & reason

- Pseudoscience & "pretend naturalism"

- Conspiracy theories, woo & Goop

- "Pseudoscience tries to use the language of science to trick people"

- QAnon: "That stuff is batshit"

- Teaching science communication

- Flat Earth, Cults & "True Believers"

- The "Oh No Ross & Carrie" podcast https://ohnopodcast.com/

- "Religion is an accepted mass delusion"

- Heaven & hell: "It's a good way to control people"

33:40 What Matters?

- Social cohesion & relationships

- "Being good to the person next to you... not harming"

- Pluralism: virtues, deontology, utilitarianism, consequentialism

- Evolution of morality: from having young that need care

- "Survival of the most caring?"

- "I don't want to just propogate my genes any more - that's why I'm not down the sperm bank every day"

- "Ethicists & philosophers often talk shit"

- The frequent disregard of conservationists for sentients (e.g. culling)

...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.

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.

Jordi is an ethical vegan, a zoologist and a veganism content writer and consultant. He has been involved in different aspects of animal protection for many years. He became well-known for securing ethical veganism as a protected characteristic under the UK Equality Act 2010 in a landmark Employment Tribunal case. He has worked doing campaigning, lobbying, scientific research, undercover investigations and consultancy. He has authored several books, including “Ethical Vegan: A Personal and Political Journey to Change the World”.

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 

01:14 Jordi's Intro

- Adding new identities: Zoology, ethical vegan, activist, writer.

- Legal case re: ethical veganism becoming a protected philosophical belief in the UK

- Writing "The Ethical Vegan"

03:26 What's Real?

- Growing up in Catalonia as a Roman Catholic (like 99.9% of people there)

- Becoming atheist as a child despite "I never met one... I assumed that everybody else believed in the Catholic god"

- Other cultures seemed to be "pre-Catholic"

- Living under the oppression of Franco's fascist dictatorship "Catalan culture survived underground." "As a child... the message you get is 'this reality is not the real one'" "I have to maintain a reality against the reality around me" That led to questioning Catholicism

- Being bullied "The world was a completely hostile place to me... the country... the streets"

- Discovering the welcome of the animal world & nature "I could see there was something better"

- Catalan Catholicism was softer. More open to doubt than the fascist-friendly, Spanish version

- Internal struggle at 12 yrs "What happens if I don't believe"

- "Protestants tend to become agnostics. Catholics tend to become atheists."

- "I prayed to god to make me an atheist... so I can discover you by myself"

- Being anti-religious at first, but softening with age

- Secular Buddhism

- Formal institutional religions vs. more personal/flexible religions & spirituality

- "I built my philosophy from instinct"

- Naturalistic & mystical/spiritual connections with nature

- "That bark seems more important than what you were just saying" :)

- The same feeling of awe can be interpreted in spiritual or naturalistic ways

- Jordi's 13 hour lecture on "From Nothing to Everything - a Natural History of the Universe"

- "Reality is a subjective thing but also shared"... "Find the points in common"

...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.

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.

I had the pleasure of talking about Sentientism on the Clearer Thinking podcast hosted by Spencer Greenberg. This is a cross-post of our episode so make sure you go subscribe to Clearer Thinking too. Clearer Thinking is a podcast about ideas that truly matter. If you enjoy learning about powerful, practical concepts and frameworks, or wish you had more deep, intellectual conversations in your life, then you’ll love this podcast! 

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!

There's a full transcript here: https://clearerthinkingpodcast.com/episode/090 

Show notes (thanks Josh!):

How can we encourage people to increase their critical thinking and reliance on evidence in the current information climate? What types of evidence "count" as valid, useful, or demonstrative? And what are the relative strengths and weaknesses of those types? Could someone reasonably come to believe just about anything, provided that they live through very specific sets of experiences? What does it mean to have a "naturalistic" epistemology? How does a philosophical disorder differ from a moral failure? Historically speaking, where does morality come from? Is moral circle expansion always good or praiseworthy? What sorts of entities deserve moral consideration?

Jamie Woodhouse works on the Sentientism worldview ("evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings") — refining the philosophy, raising awareness of the idea, and building communities and movements around it. After a quarter century in the corporate world he is a now an independent consultant, coach, and volunteer. You can follow Jamie on Twitter at @JamieWoodhouse or email him at hello@sentientism.info.

Here are a few more links related to Sentientism:

• Sentientism YouTube channel
• Sentientism podcast
• Sentientism website
• Sentientism Facebook group
• All other places to find Sentientism (including Twitter, Reddit, Discord, and many others)

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.

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

• Biological anthropology, animal advocacy & writing
• 28 years in academia then freelance science writing & speaking
• Animal cognition & animal-human relationships
• Watching Jane Goodall & Dian Fossey go from scholarship to advocacy… doing fieldwork with apes…
• “Soon it became clear I wanted to work for animals as well as on animals”

05:05 What’s Real?

• Growing up in New Jersey
• Raised Presbyterian, sent to church & sunday school
• “It wasn’t really part of my identity”, more background & community
• “My parents didn’t question that there was a god, that god was… in charge of us.”
• “I fell into that… & then came college”
• First person in the family to go to college. “I arrived with my Bible – within 2 or 3 semesters that was kind of exploded”
• Taking theology & pre-med classes
• Agnostic then atheist
• Choosing evolution & science
• Mum at 88: “I wonder if what I thought all those years is really true… is there a god?”
• “I was never particularly interested in reconciling religion & science”
• Refusing money from The Templeton Foundation… “I don’t accept the claim that there’s no agenda”
• Religious ethical problems: Homophoba, sexism, fears of hell, human dominion
• Writing “Evolving God”. Finding the earliest roots of religious expression in non-human animal imagination/rule-following/empathy/perspective-taking
• Jane Goodall’s claim that chimpanzees feel awe & wonder
• The universal “religious” sense
• Frans de Waal
• “I think that I am relentlessly naturalistic”
• Working with primates
• “Concentrically my circles began to widen”

...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.

Carter is Policy Director and Board Member of the Fair Start Movement, an organisation dedicated to giving every child a fair start in life. He is the author of Justice as a Fair Start in Life. Carter began his career as an Honors Program appointee to the U.S. Department of Justice. He later served as a legal adviser to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in the national security law division. He wrote his thesis reformulating the right to have children under Jeremy Waldron, his extensive academic work on family planning has been published by Yale, Duke, and Northwestern Universities, as well as in peer-reviewed pieces.. He has served on the Steering Committee of the Population Ethics and Policy Research Project and was a Visiting Scholar at the Uehiro Center, both at the University of Oxford. He has taught at several law schools in the U.S., served as a peer reviewer for the journal Bioethics, and most recently managed an animal protection strategic impact litigation program.

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 

01:21 Carter's Intro

- Fair Start Movement: Shifting family planning from prioritising the desires of parents to prioritising the needs of future children

- Achieving the SDGs

- A future of 4-6 billion humans vs. 12-14 billion

- Economic growth & inequity & ecosystem factors

- The right to a fair start in life

03:54 What's Real?

- Naturalistically based civil rights

- Rejecting the flawed "science" used to justify discrimination

- Truth & justice

- "Scientific justifications for the denigrations of non-humans also fell apart under scrutiny"

- Reading Peter Singer. Applying civil rights lessons to animal rights

- Exploring the human population issue

- Suffering, flourishing & relative autonomy

- Climate/environment limitations on autonomy & flourishing

- "Science had become god" & a naturalistic family

- "What we've learned about non-human cognition really should embarrass decades & decades of human living as completely unethical"

- "It's our children, grandchildren &great-grandchildren that will suffer the most because we've failed to respect the non-human world"

- Nagel's "View from nowhere"... "we all mutually agree to avoid that pain... that doesn't require supernatural grounding"

- Systemic failures in law & early education

14:25 What Matters?

- Naturalistic ethics

- Social contract ethics

- "Would you consent to that?"

...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.

Dr. Richard Firth-Godbehere PhD is one of the world’s leading experts on disgust and emotions. He is an independent researcher and consultant in the history, language, science & philosophy of emotions & an honorary research fellow at the centre for the history of the emotions, Queen Mary University of London. Richard’s first book, "A Human History of Emotions" (also known as "Homo Emoticus") will soon be published in over a dozen languages in countries ranging from Japan to the USA, from Australia to Brazil.

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 

01:27 Richard's Intro

- The history of human emotions

- Academia & public engagement

- History "never talked about feelings" but wars start "because someone gets annoyed"

- You can't really separate emotion & rationality "You cannot make a decision unless you feel something"

- Interdisciplinary

06:00 What's Real?

- Lapsed Catholic mother & an "its all bloody rubbish-arian" father

- Scientific family; Doctors, engineers, nurses. "We didn't go into the seminary"

- Joining mum in a spiritual phase. Tarot, mediums, psychics...

- Realising you could "read people" without tarot

- "Yeh - this is a load of rubbish"

- "Firmly atheist". The incoherence of "god". "If it's timeless it doesn't exist anywhen, if it's spaceless it doesn't exist anywhere"

- "Every answer... has come down firmly not on the side of the supernatural"

- "In a world where we have a billion HD cameras... why do we only see blurry photographs [of ghosts]?"

- Hume's scepticism

- The Kalam Cosmological Argument "doesn't get you back to god... it could have been a farting space pixie!"

- "People assume emotions mean 'irrational'"

- Science is driven by excitement, wonder, passion & curiosity

- "The idea that science is people in lab coats with no feelings is completely wrong"

- "Emotion is a driver & part of decision-making"

- "The Stoics didn't suppress their emotions, they used them!"

19:10 What (& Who) Matters?

- Ethics comes from us being an evolved group animal. "If we all went around stabbing each other we wouldn't be here"

- The Golden Rule

- Secular Humanism

- Well-being for humans & beyond

- "I have a real problem with 'everyone must be happy!'"

- Negative emotions (e.g. appropriate fear) can help wellbeing

- Good/bad forms of hate & love

- The harm of "toxic happiness." It's OK to feel down

...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.

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
- Marx for Cats book

- Leigh Claire at CUNY

- Marx for Cats video series

- 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!

Steve (stevesapontzis.com) is professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay. He specialises in animal ethics, environmental ethics & meta-ethics. He was co-founder in 1985 of Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics & served as its initial co-editor. Steve was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Quarterly. In 1983, Steve founded, with his wife Jeanne, the Hayward Friends of Animals Humane Society. They now operate Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in Need, in California. Steve wrote the books "Morals, Reason & Animals" & "Subjective Morals" & edited Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat.

I'm afraid the audio is patchy - I should have organised a better mic for Steve - sorry! If you struggle to follow our conversation on the podcast, please find episode 97 here on the Sentientism YouTube channel where I've edited a complete transcript as subtitles. Don't forget to subscribe while you're there! I'll post that transcript on Sentientism.info too for those who would prefer just to read.

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

01:14 Steve's Intro

- Growing up in Salt Lake City to French/Greek parents

- Greek Orthodox & Methodist Christian

- Order of the Cross (vegetarian)

- Going vegetarian as a teenager

- Philosophy at Rice University, Texas

- Louis Mackey & Kierkegaard

- University of Paris & existentialism & Merleau Ponty

- PhD at Yale

- Cal State

- Retirement

- Hayward Friends of Animals & Second Chance charities

- Singer's Animal Liberation "The only philosophy book with a cookbook at the end"

- Teaching animal ethics, ethical theory, environmental ethics

9:19 What's Real?

- Going through the motions at church

- "I didn't really believe in god it was not something that appealed to me whatever."

- "There's so much suffering in the world."

- The limits of science in understanding reality "I think the meaning of a poem is something that's real"

- "Reality is very complicated and things are real in I think a wide variety of ways"

15:47 What (& Who) Matters?

- Writing "Subjective Morals"

- "morals are created by human beings"

- The self-centred and the other-social

- "morals develop in order to reinforce the strength of our other social motivations"

- "there's no limitation to empathy"

...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.

Coral is an aspiring writer, an animal rescue volunteer/donor & runs a bunny boarding & grooming business. She is an ex-Mormon atheist & a "meat & potatoes girl" turned vegan. Find Coral & her content at: @atheist_vegan, & wattpad.com/user/VCoralSandsV & inkitt.com/veganatheist & on YouTube.

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 & why Sentientism is important

02:39 "Vegan Atheist Coral"'s Intro

- A Mormon, military family

- Joining the Coastguard

- From "A meat & potatoes girl" to vegan & animal rescue

- From religious to "spiritual" to agnostic/atheist

- #JoinTheConversation & Street Epistemology

- Stories with morals. Star Trek

11:55 What's Real?

- Growing up Mormon (yet another "one true church")

- "It encompasses every bit of your life"

- 4 hours in church then 2 more in "school" every Sunday

- "Most of my childhood I felt like I was in church"

- Strong emphasis on family, but "very good at shunning" if you don't believe

- Internal self-pressure: "You're constantly measuring yourself against what you think Jesus would want you to do"

- Joseph Smith & the golden plates

- The old & new Bible testaments superceded by The Book of Mormon

- The trinity, creationism, proselytising

- Fundamentalist & progressive Mormons

- Managing the public perception of Mormonism (e.g. modesty dress codes)

- Sending children on missions. Isolating from families & friends to reinforce church teachings

- "The other people you're on the mission with are almost snitches"

- Church sees friends & even own parents as potential threats

- Pressured to speak to elders about doubts "testimony" as long as they're resolved in favour of the church

- Moving from the west coast to Alabama. Culture shock

- Growing up with a naievety about race & racism

- The shock of a new school "We pray here"

- "I go to the one true church & they're all wrong"

- Parents drifting away from the church due to accusations about a minister

- Studying other religions... "there has to be an ultimate truth"

- Some family are still Mormon

- Asking "what do we know & how do we know?", exploring philosophy (brain in a vat, The Matrix), re-evaluating "the god question"

...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.

Helen (@hkopnina) is Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Business at the University of Northumbria & also lectures at The Hague University. Her research focuses on environmental education, biodiversity & corporate sustainability.

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

01:12 Helen's Intro

02:49 What's Real?

- The passage to caring about ecosystems for many ecocentrists was through a connection to individual animals

- Growing up atheist "just like everybody else in the Soviet Union" in Moscow

- Parents who were "wild about wilderness"

- Visiting Siberia "in the summer & without gulags"

- "I loved fairy tales" but firmly naturalistic

- "I'm still 99% atheist with 1% reserved for doubt"

- Political dissident parents, pushing back on ideology

- "When you don't have religion you create a religion yourself - & that was communism... we had Lenin & Marx as our gods..."

- Lenin, Marx & Engels as a "holy trinity"?

- "My parents instructed me that it was bullshit"

- Naturalistic ontology (no supernatural) & epistemology (use evidence & reason)

- Flat earth, anti-vaxx, one party states...

13:45 What (& Who) Matters?

- Kant, deontology, consequentialism...

- "You can call me a cynic - I don't think there is any absolute morality - I think we invent it."

- Injustice & unfairness

- Frans de Waal's fairness experiments with chimps

- "Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are all about us humans" (vs. https://sentientism.info/how/sentientist-development-goals)

- "Why don't we have the same moral consideration for billions of other living beings - it just seems inconsistent... unjust"

- Environmental Justice isn't about the env. its about distribution of goods & harms among humans

- Wokeness, fairness, division & distribution. The risks of forcing pure equality (e.g. Soviet Union - bloody revolution then a new elite emerges)

- Avoiding relativism & nihilism. Can we construct a universal morality?

- The impacts on Soviet Union of WWII then Stalin

- "I see our planet as one of billions - so it doesn't really matter"

- Anthropology & cultural relativism "why is human sacrifice & cannibalism a good thing?"

- Moral progress "but things can be turned back too"

- Survival & reproductive rationales for morality "Otherwise you get beaten up"

- "Anger at inconsistency... it pisses me off that it just applies to one single species"

- Feminism: "I'm just not interested to be honest"

...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.

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:
00:00 Welcome

01:11 Alex’s Intro

• A writer-academic-activist
• The challenge of focus!
• Private & public writing (e.g. COP26), being part of a network

05:10 What’s Real?

• Last week’s shamanic journeying ayahuasca retreat: “Asking deep questions about what it means to be a human being on this planet”
• Animist ontologies & methodologies
• Advocating for the non-human
• “Who is a person?… can we co-create this planet [in a way] that recognises the birthright of all beings”
• Growing up in working class, inner-city, South London council estates
• Catholic upbringing, but with some atheist family
• “School of hard knocks… spiritual & religious questions weren’t very real”
• Confirmed as Catholic, school run by monks & church every weekend… “Realising it was a symbolic story… it wasn’t taught as a fundamentalist truth”
• “Didn’t sit right with me that my very very kind & generous atheist grandfather (& his cats!) wasn’t going to go to heaven.”
• Experiences of connecting with our planet, the broader universal spirit… that have always been quite real to me
• ...

...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.

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.

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.

Mary Pat (@mpchampeau) is the director of graduate programs at the Institute for Humane Education (@HumaneEducation & humaneeducation.org) & faculty at Antioch University. Mary Pat has been in the field of education since 1979 when she began teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger. Before joining IHE, she worked in refugee camps in Asia & supervised culture & language programs for the World Trade Institute in New York.

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

01:12 Mary Pat's Intro

- Humane Ed Grad Prog. One of the only graduate level social justice progs that includes non-human animal protection (w/human rights & environmental justice)

- A place where people can be who they are with respect to non-human animal ethics. Without apology

- Humane Education's focus on exploring questions that are central to Sentientism

- "This is the next level... when are we going to open our circle of compassion - to humans we've never met - to animals...?"

- Expanding both our compassion & our role in the world

- Why do so many people committed to social justice / intersectional perspectives / resisting all oppressions struggle to consider non-human sentients?

- Systems thinking & how oppressions (& solutions) interlink. From lose-lose-lose to win-win-win?

10:00 What's Real?

- "Hardcore, long-term, recovering Catholic"

- Growing up in Buffalo, NW in a large Irish Catholic family

- Catholic schools & public schools (per George Carlin)

- "We kind of looked down on the 'publics' because they were going to hell"

- "The 1960's never really touched us"

- Taking a world religions course

- Reading "The Religions of Man". Catholicism was only one of the religions! "Why is Catholicism even in this book?"

- Peeking out of the nest for the first time

- Living in muslim communities in Niger. "I could totally relate" because of the parallels with Catholicism

- Rejecting Catholocism but being grateful for the vocabulary

- Religious beliefs (angels, devils, god...) as "iconic representations of our psyche"

- The human impact of the story of Christ. Finding spirituality in adversity

- Easily rejecting & working against the negatives of religious (& non-religious) worldviews (sexism, racism, homophobia...)

- Are religions slowly evolving towards more modern humanistic/sentientist ethics?

...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.

David is an activist & chief petitioner of the Yes On IP13 campaign (www.yesonip13.org & @yesonip13) which aims to outlaw the harming & killing of sentient animals in the US state of Oregon. That's without exceptions for animal agriculture, hunting, research or other forms of exploitation. Originally with a background in psychology & public health, David’s switch to activism began after bearing witness to pigs being killed in gas chambers.

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 David's Intro

- Being new to activism

- IP13: Criminalising killing & breeding animals in the state of Oregon

- "We're asking for what we want"

- Linking the academic & the real world

04:03 What's Real?

- Culturally Jewish/Christian family branches

- Religion was just a label

- Having a Bar Mitzvah to "side with my mother... it made religion seem arbitrary to me"

- "They taught me how to read Hebrew but never taught me what I was saying"

- "It wasn't a worldview... it wasn't used to make sense of the world"

- "Sitcoms were more of a determinant of what's real"

- Meeting people who had done atheist & animal outreach

- "Free yourself from those harmful social norms!"

- UFOs, conspiracy theories & religion

- There's enough awesomeness in reality

- "I was angry when I learned that Santa wasn't real"

- Investigating Santa as a child w/a hidden camera

- Why do we lie to children about so many things?

- Homeopathy, "stop the steal", astrology, tea leaves...

- "Psychedelics made me more naturalistic & gave me the final push to go vegan as well"... connectedness

- Buddhism & Plum Village monks

- Talking to a flat earther

- The challenge of having enough, but not too much scepticism

- Epistemological & methodological naturalism

- "Pretend naturalism" (only considering evidence supporting what you already want to believe)

- What evidence would change your mind?

24:55 What (& Who) Matters?

- Intuitive ethics

- Vegetarian at 14 "I didn't want to eat animals"

- "'I'm not very much of an animal lover"

- "I thought that cows had to be milked" & eggs were "picked up like an easter egg hunt"

- Going vegan, then learning about dairy/eggs

- Watching Dominion then getting involved in activism

- "A baseline of avoiding violence"

- Compassion for victims vs. judging human actions...

...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.

Cameron (cameron@animaladvocacyafrica.org) is the Operations Lead for Animal Advocacy Africa (also @Animal_Africa). Cameron ran his own eCommerce business for several years before pivoting to charity entrepreneurship to have a more extensive & substantial positive impact on the world. Cameron has been involved in the Effective Altruism community for over ten years & went through Charity Entrepreneurship’s 2020 incubation program.

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 Cameron's Intro

- Studying, business, Effective Altruism, earning to give, charity entrepreneurship, starting AAA

03:01 What's Real?

- Growing up with a logical/reasoned/scientific mindset

- Attending church & religious school

- Being drawn to scepticism, rationalism, atheism, Effective Altruism

- Softening to consider Buddhism/spiritualist elements

- Meditation "It felt like there's something more going on here". Interconnectedness, a peace with determinism (no free will)

- There are some moral truths in religious thinking. Religion as metaphor

- Open mindedness & humility

15:30 What (& Who) Matters?

- An early sense of justice "I couldn't sit back & do nothing"

- Suffering/contentment as a core moral axiom

- The asymmetry betwee suffering & flourishing

- We can learn & grow & become happier from suffering

- Over-simplifying suffering/flourishing

- "Notes From the Underground" by Dostoevsky & Alan Watts

- Understanding/truth/knowledge as a meta-goal for humanity?

- "You can kind of fit everything in" to sentience

- Considering moral scope as a teenager. Other humans. Other sentients. Veganism.

- Watching challenging YouTube ethical debate videos (Joey Carbstrong)... "I can't answer this... It shook me."

- A "who can be vegetarian for the longest" bet with a friend. Going vegan 4 weeks later

- The social/family aspect was the most difficult partly because "It challenges other people's beliefs"

- "I've now channelled my vegan angst into this charity"

- "Changing your mind is possible."

- Bio/ecocentrism?

- Digital sentience?

- Animal farming as an obvious, tractable, human wrong

- Wild animal suffering vs. an idealistic reverence for "nature"

- Links between naturalistic epistemology & ethics

38:08 How Can we Make a Better World?

- Effective Altruism: "Doing the most good you can in an evidence based & effective way"

...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.

Nick (@NickPende & theconversation) is a Sociologist who researches social movements, social change & Critical Animal Studies. He is a member of The Institute for Critical Animal Studies, the International Association of Vegan Sociologists & The Australian Sociological Association. Nick co-hosts the Freedom of Species podcast & radio show on Melbourne’s 3CR community radio station & also co-hosts the Progressive Podcast Australia podcast with his partner Katie.

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

01:22 Nick's Intro

- Animal advocacy & social justice activism - doing them & studying them sociologically

- Hosting the Freedom of Species podcast & radio show

04:50 What's Real?

- Growing up non-religious w/agnostic (or atheist?) parents

- Joining a religious friend at Sunday School

- Being very anti-religious at 5-6 years old (a mini Richard Dawkins?) "This doesn't make any sense at all"

- "Religion or spirituality has zero impact on my ethics"

- Softening somewhat...

- "Myq Kaplan probably started off where I was before taking mushrooms... I've just never taken the mushrooms"

- Non-supernatural analogues for spirituality/supernatural: Flow states, rituals, habits

- The ethical problems of believing without evidence e.g. anti-vaxx

- Harry Potter & the Methods of Rationality fanfic

- Being open minded but not wasting our time on every implausible claim

- Religion as a brake on social progress (sexism, homophobia, speciesism...)

- Religion's positive & negative functions in society

- Reforming religions to conform w/secular ethics

- Threatening children w/eternal torture

22:35 What Matters?

- A Christian friend: "You seem like quite ethical people but you're not religious!"

- Socially progressive, liberal parents, so ethics came naturally

- Apathetic & apolitical as a kid. "I was more into ice hockey"

- Punk rock as a gateway into ethics & politics. Bad Religion

- Protesting the Iraq war

- Anti-war, pro-env, human rights, then animal rights & veganism "It just made total sense"

- Justice first, then compassion. More a rational than an emotional response

- Challenging hierarchies. Human & non-human

- "It didn't make sense that I was above my dog"

...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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jamila (thesoulfulveganista.com & @Jamila_Anahata) is an activist, blogger & holistic lifestyle coach. She is aso Marketing Director of the Afro-Vegan Society. Sign up for their NAVCON2021 summit on Nov 13th - open to all!.

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

01:12 Jamila’s Intro - Soulful Veganista & the AfroVegan Society

- Community, creativity, connection to resist oppression and help others

- "All the isms & justices". Veganism, racial justice / food justice / climate justice...

- AVS: Veganism through a black lens

02:45 What’s Real?

- Growing up in Maryland in the Southern US

- Raised Southern Baptist Christian. Bible study, daily church, Sunday service

- "I used to down religion... that industry"

- The church as a powerful community for black southern people... "throwing our pain at the altar"

- Experiencing deep racism... beyond bias

- A hunger for something beyond the suffering of "this realm"

- "I was always a gothy kid... a punk kid"

- "3 seconds after I went vegan I decided I wasn't going to be Christian any more"

- "If I can open my mind about veganism... I can do anything... it was so liberating"

- Leaving religion because of evidence, ethics or rebellion

- "My dad is a natural activist... he reminds me of Malcolm X"

- Learing the painful history of Christianity

- Not wanting to support the religion or animal product industries

- Empathy as a moral compass. I didn't need religion for that

- Keeping the compassion & community

- Looking within for ethics

- Spirituality. Connection & oneness

- "There's more to life than my own suffering or flourishing"

- Languages, class, religions, castes, hierarchies, status & how they separate us

- "I swiped away all the titles"

- Eckhart Tolle

- "I am not what they think I am... I am divinely guided"

- "If we wiped away all the oppressive things from Christianity that's what we'd be left with"

- "I feel like I receive intuitive messages from my spiritual team"

- Scepticism & believing in science... but that can't be all there is

- Other planes or dimensions

- "I was that faith based person where science was the enemy"

- "This pandemic helped me... I learned that medicine is OK..."

- Believing in 'what is' doesn't make me a less of a spiritual person

- Naturalism on this plane, spiritualism for the others?

...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.

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.

Pablo (@PabloPCastello & on LinkedIn) is a Research Assistant at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law & a Junior Fellow of the Animals & Biodiversity programme of the Global Research Network (GRN) think tank. He is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway (UoL). His research in Philosophy focuses on understanding the importance of human language in producing human dominion over animals. He also investigates the role animal language can play in relation to the participation of animals in political decision-making processes & the construction of zoodemocratic systems. His interests include ecofeminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, critical disability studies, animal law, conservation, continental philosophy & critical animal studies.

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 Pablo's Intro - interdisciplinary, intersectional research re: human & non-human animals, their languages & potential zoodemocracy.

3:51 What's Real?

- Born into an atheist family

- Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" & the mystical sense of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky

- "Becoming sensitive to a dimension of reality that I thought had been hidden to me" via Wittgenstein's early work

- Are poetry, music, arts & feeling beyond science even while they are aspects of reality (not the mystical)?

- Being grounded in our embodied existence (ecofeminism)

- "Ethical value flows from reality"... "Sentience matters because it is real... there are beings that actually suffer"

- Interests, preferences & relationships are grounded in who those beings are

- Derrida's "The Animal That Therefore I Am." What is it like for a cat to see me naked?!

- Alterity. Appreciating the "other" in their own terms. Levinas

- Science & naturalism & personal experience

- Feminist thought & context

- Language, categories, relations, community & power

- "Western" binaries. Those w/without reason. Barbarians & the civilised.

- Are relations & communities & cultures reducible to patterns of info proc in the minds of sentients?

- Is the bond between cow & calf intrinsically valuable, or are the relationships reducible to the individual cow & calf?

- Science & scientism

- Claire Jean Kim's "Dangerous Crossings". Understanding different actors' positionality - including our own. Ethic of mutual avowal

...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.

Healthy Planet is hosted by Bob DiBenedetto. His WUSB radio show aims to help people learn about the powerful effect our everyday choices can have in creating a healthy and compassionate world.

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.

Cat (@CatBeschVN) founded and leads Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue. She is also a writer & activist addressing many non-human animal 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:

0:00 Welcome

1:10 Cat's Intro

- Founding Vietnam Animal Aid & Rescue

- Growing up in Virginia, USA

- Studying International Relations in Washington DC

- A political/military family

3:10 What's Real?

- Growing up as a liberal Lutheran with very religious parents

- The church as social fabric

- Figuring out that "I just don't really believe in any of that crap"

- High school & Baptist society in Alabama

- The church seeing all sex as shameful... "holding virginity in such high esteem"

- Feminism & Islam. "Headscarves & Hymens" by Mona Eltahawy. 

- "The way the institutions look at sex & sexuality just makes you want to put your fist through a wall"

- "A whole bunch of girls that think they're going to hell"

- That was the turning point. Everything started to crumble

- Not picking at the church too hard as it was the social fabric. "Life is hard enough at 16." I left it silently on my own

- The hypocrisy of religious compassion & judgementalism

- Atheists & agnostics are not immoral people

- "I attended church... I took communion... my sins are flushed... now I can go back to being a dickhead"

- Religious compassion is often conditional & constrained

- The immorality of even "moderate" religious worldviews (e.g. hell, sexism, homophobia)

- "Women are not emotionally stable enough to be leaders in the Catholic church"!

- "I found it oppressive." Leaving the church was a moment of liberation

- Travelling & living in many religious cultures

- Starting the "Let's not be an asshole" religion

- Being wrong. "I used to hate vegans", now I'm "on the side of all sentient beings"

- Everybody has a chance to change

- "I just don't know" as a strong naturalistic stance

25:09 What (& Who) Matters?

- An early empathy for animals "they were my best friends", but living in an environment where killing sentient beings was normal

- I never met a vegan in the horse riding world

- "I love what you do for me" isn't love

- Being angry at our previous selves for not seeing

- Thinking all vegans must be "dirty hippies"

- Meeting first vegans hosting couch-surfers in Mongolia

- Being challenged "You love animals but who are you eating?"

...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.

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.

I hope you enjoy our conversation! As ever, this is my personal perspective so many other Sentientists will disagree - while still agreeing on "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings."

Sentientism:

sentientism.info

Sentientism Facebook (all welcome)

📺https://www.youtube.com/c/Sentientism

John is an activist academic, a green political economist and former Green Party politician in Northern Ireland. He is Professor of Green Political Economy in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast. His main research interests span politics, economics, the ethics of sustainability/ sustainable development, green moral and political theory, green political economy, vulnerability, resilience , civic republicanism and green politics, Irish/Northern Irish politics, Q Methodology and sustainable energy politics and policy.

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!

01:01 Welcome

- "Summer in Ireland... best weekend of the year" :)

- Zion Lights episode

03:34 John's Introduction

- Green political economy

- Co-chair the Belfast Climate Commission

- "A recovering politician" led the Green Party of Northern Ireland

- "I've always been politically active... I feel compelled... at this moment of crisis... a polycrisis... climate, ecological, social... animal welfare horrors of our current social order"

- "A dissident political economist - I don't accept either #capitalism or endless economic growth"

- "Our current economic system has now passed its sell-by date... industrialisation, globalism, the horrendous suffering of the more-than-human world"

- Pessimism amongst climate scientists "describing in many respects... an uninhabitable world in the future"

- "We cannot continue in a business as usual manner in the academy while the world is on fire... we need to practice what we teach"

- "This time, not only of crisis... of great opportunity... we can fix so many problems... science... political will... justice focus" (global, inter-generational and inter-species justice and equity)

- "We have all the solutions... What we lack... is the political will and the ethical courage of our convictions"

07:33 What's Real?

- Growing up in working class Dublin

- "Not just as a lapsed but a completely collapsed #Catholic... I've been an #atheist all my thinking life"

- At ~10yrs old asking "What's the evidence for this off-world, male, white deity?... Not really finding satisfactory answers from the priest or from teachers."

- "I do hold some affection for Catholicism..."

- The denial of evolution & #creationism among some Northern Irish Protestants and Evangelicals. Often #climatechange denialism too

- Flaws of Catholicism: abuse of women & children & abuse cover-ups "effectively brought down the church... in Ireland... from its position of power"

- General acceptance of science within Catholicism

- "A form of poetry... religious perspectives as beautiful stories... they're fairy tales... beautiful but they're not real... can have certain morality lessons"

... and much more!

21:50 What Matters?

39:54 Who Matters?

55:43 A Better Future?

01:27:03 Follow John:

- @ProfJohnBarry

- John on LinkedIn “I like subverting LinkedIn – there’s far too many shiny, happy business-type people”

- John’s MarxistLentilist Blog

- John on Academia.edu

- John at Queens University Belfast

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!

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.

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.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook.

Thanks for the post-prod Graham.

C Lou / Carrie (@clouhamilton1 & veganismsexandpolitics.com & drcarriehamilton.com) is an author, editor & translator. She wrote the book "Veganism, Sex & Politics: Tales of Danger & Pleasure" about her vegan journey & how veganism relates to wider social justice issues including feminist, queer & anti-racist politics as well as environmentalism.

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

2:05 Carrie's Intro - academic history to writing & activism

- Acknowledging Canada's indigenous & settlement history

- Growing up near Toronto

- Agnostic, democratic socialist parents, focused on social justice, activism environmentalism & praxis. No feminism, animal ethics or colonial awareness

- "I didn't know any vegetarians when I was growing up"

- Extending moral consideration beyond humans. Considering our responsibilities

- Feminism & women's studies

- The liberation of leaving academia

- Writing "Veganism, Sex & Politics"

- Academic activism, public reach & politics

- "The idea that you would do animal studies while at the same time eating their bodies..."

16:25 What's Real?

- Agnosticism

- Psychedelics, spiritual/mystical experiences

- Having respect for religious people but little patience for religious institutions. Not positive influences. Patriarchy & authoritarianism

- Institutional abuse & cover-ups

- Naturalistic & supernatural experiences of awe & wonder

- How supernatural beliefs can warp ethics

- How religious organisations use societal deference as a shield

- The positive contributions of religious institutions

- Feminism: asking questions & considering practicalities

30:09 What Matters?

- Supernatural & naturalistic ethical frameworks

- The importance of challenging our assumptions & influences (e.g. re: sentient animals & veganism)

- Individualism, collectivism, authoritarianism, dogma

- Forms of feminism

- "It's important to think about... & revise... where our values come from"

- Movements that are ostensibly secular often mindlessly integrate aspects of authoritarianism & dogma from religion

- Criticisms of veganism as puritan & sacrificial. But it's a pleasure!

- The challeges of talking about veganism as a "moral baseline" (Francione, Steiner). Too much dogma?

- Applying a naturalistic humility & scepticism to ethics

- Introspection via Buddhist meditation & writing

- Having the space & resources to slow down & be mindful

+ more! Full 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 using this simple form.

​Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Our biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks for the post-prod Graham.

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!