Sentientism

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.

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.