Episódios
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Altamush Saeed is an animal and environmental law professor. He teaches Pakistan’s 1st Animal Law Advocacy Course and is Founding Managing Partner At Environmental and Animal Rights Consultants, Pakistan’s 1st dedicated Animal and Environmental law and policy firm. Altamush is known for his non-profit work on Interspecies Justice for which he has won multiple awards. He also co-founded the Charity Doings Foundation, a non-profit that aims to save all life, be it human, animal, or the environment in Pakistan. Amongst many other advisory roles he serves as a strategic academic advisor and advocate for Muslim Veganism and Environmentalism at Green Islam.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:11 Welcome
- Islam and non-human animals
- Animals as survivors/victims of natural disasters
03:00 Altamush's Intro
- 3 masters degrees: animal, environmental and human rights law "I always see the three disciplines as together"
- Teaching law
- Founding and running a non-profit and a law firm
- Becoming a documentary film-maker
05:00 What's Real?
- "I've had multiple identities"
- Growing up in Pakistan
- Doctor parents... a good education... privileges
- "Animals are kind of invisible"
- "this anthropocentric mindset... fuelled by the idea that you're unable to see beyond your own needs... until they're met at a proper scale... it's hard for people to see beyond human beings... that's the lived reality in Pakistan."
- Pakistan as an Islamic nation "part of our constitution... we have laws on Islam... laws on animal rights in Islam... codified, however not implemented properly."
- "Initially I didn't see animals... that's how I started my non-profit"
- "A cat came into my life... even though I physically rescued her she was the one who mentally rescued me... that's the day when I started seeing animals for who they really are..."
- JW: Religious belief based on faith/revelation/authority or on evidence and reason?
- "It's actually both of them... I do believe in the text... the Quran... taught about that from a very young age... we pray... community... good human rights stuff"
- "All Muslims are khalifa which is basically a ruler. But the actual word is steward... a sovereign who has responsibility for everything..."
- "That's not normally how it's read... you are the most superior being... everything has been made for you... you have divine permission to do anything including eating animals."
- "I used reason... the most driving reasoning for me was the mercy of Allah... there are constant references that his mercy overpowers his anger"
13:05 What and Who Matters?
17:00 Who Matters?
41:52 A Better World?
01:04:48 Follow Altamush
- Altamush on LinkedIn
- Altamush on Instagram
- @earcpakistan
- Charitydoings.org
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!
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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.
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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 theissue 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 ofanimals 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 animalsand still think that animals do matter"
- "We can still agree on basic things like 'sufferingis 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 toemphasise 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 andmore 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!
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Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York TimesMagazine. Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and a writer. Their previous book, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, was a Los Angeles Times best seller and a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Their latest book, "Our Kindred Creatures" makes a case for seeing the fight against animal cruelty as a crucial thread in America's history. Readers are introduced to the activists, scientists, andmoguls who helped create our modern views on animals, with our intense compassion for certain species and ignorant disregard for others.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:09 Welcome
- "Our Kindred Creatures" as an example of Sentientist History?
03:30 Monica and Bill's Intros
- Writing two books together: Rabid and Our KindredCreatures
- "...Monica's interest in animals [as a veterinarian] that I think got me interested"
- Telling the story of how the animal welfare movement came to the USA in the decades after the civil war
- The emergence of the modern way of thinking about animals "some of them are like members of the family... others of them in huge numbers are excluded..."
- "Everyday people in cities... were living among allkinds of animals in a way that feels very foreign to us today"
07:18 What's Real?
- Meeting in a church youth group, Bill's family more devout than Monica’s
- "It was not a creationist church... there was a sensethat we weren't going to doubt what science was telling us just because we were part of a religious tradition that had a different story"
- "'In a world in which there's no god why should wecare at all about human suffering?'... runs implicitly through the book - many of the people we write about are religious"
- Links between religion, the abolition of slavery andanimal ethics "though of course the slavers themselves had various bible verses that they waved around"
- "Today we're Unitarian Universalists... go to churchon Sundays and Bill sings in the choir"
- "Our Unitarian church is a very humanist church...animals don’t' come up much... some other Unitarian churches have animal affinity groups"
- "There are also a lot of atheistic Unitarians... ourchurch leans atheistic... the younger people even more so"
- "Whatever concept of god that I have wouldn't conformwith traditional ones - it's more notional"
- "We came back to religion because of our son... hewas a very loud atheist... a disrespectful atheist... we wanted him to expand his thinking"
- "Even though we occupy three different spots in ourfamily on the atheistic side of the spectrum we're very at home in this church"
25:27 What and Who Matters?
52:43 A Better World?
01:12:27 Follow Bill and Monica
- @murphydvm
- @billwasik
- Our Kindred Creatures
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!
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Richard Twine is Reader in Sociology at Edge Hill University in the UK, working at the nexus of critical animal studies, environmental sociology, the sociology of climate change and gender studies. He is co-director of The Centre for Human Animal Studies, an interdisciplinary forum for research and activities that engage with the complex material, ethical and symbolic relationships between humans, other animals, and their environments. Richard is the author of many articles, papers and books for both academic audiences and the wider public, including "The Climate Crisis and Other Animals".
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!
00:43 Welcome
02:34 Richard's Intro
- Philosophy, psychology, history, natural sciences, bio-technology and sociology
- Ecofeminism (Carol Adams, Val Plumwood), Regan, Singer, then Critical Animal Studies
- The "flawed awakenings" of climate change awareness and non-human animal ethics
05:28 What's Real?
- Non-religious, implicitly atheist, socialist parents andhousehold
- Attending Sunday School with a Christian friend "Itdidn't have any effect - it was just another space to play"
- A religious teacher who "made us recite the Lord'sPrayer at the start of every day... that was odd... that kind of drove me away from religion"
- Asking for an exemption from religious education atsecondary school "Probably sociologically limited because it's actually good to learn about religion... but I already knew that wasn't something that I wanted to spend my time doing"
- A materialist outlook "when we die, we die... decompose and feed the rest of nature... a kind of beautiful thing... I don't believe in an afterlife"
- Avoiding dogmatism about materialism. Interested in near-death experiences
- "I'm on board with that aspect of Sentientism -reason and evidence... but I would also add that my atheism isn't simplistically rationalistic... elements of romanticism in it... Shelley... beauty and wonder of nature giving us some kind of meaningfulness in our lives... that's enough."
- "There's a poor track record with religiosity andconservative ideology... distanced me from it... used to justify patriarchy, anthropocentrism, colonialism, capitalism etc."
- A hobbyist interest in UFOs and UAPs "stems from mychildhood... subscribed to a magazine called 'The Unexplained'... I've always had that interest but ultimately - give me some evidence."
- Conspiracy theories and cover-ups "I'm sceptical butI'm fascinated"
- Richard's "'Alien' Disclosure and Critical AnimalStudies" blog post26:48 What Matters?
32:59 Who Matters?
58:29 A Better World?
01:21:12 Follow Richard
- RichardTwine.com
- @RichardTwine
- The Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University
- @CfHAS
- The Climate Crisis and Other Animals
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!
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Jesse Tandler is Managing Director of New Roots Institute. He oversees programming, people operations, and implementation of New Roots Institute's strategy. Jesse is a writer, academic, and has been an educator for nearly two decades. He earned a B.A. from UC Berkeley in 2002 and an MFA from the New School in 2007. Shortlythereafter, he began teaching high school students about the ethics of our food culture. Later, during his PhD work, Jesse continued to include environmental and animal ethics on the syllabi of his undergraduate classes at theCity University of New York, where for five years he taught philosophy, literature, writing, and rhetoric. In 2017, he moved to Los Angeles to apply his years of research and educational experience in the non-profit sphere. Outsideof New Roots Institute, you may find him practicing yoga, appreciating beauty in its myriad forms, reading in one of his preferred languages, or teaching food politics at UCLA.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:09 Welcome
02:55 Jesse's Intro
- Continental philosophy, teaching food politics and running New Roots Institute (was the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition)
03:32 What's Real?
- Jewish pre-school
- "I assumed there was a god because that's what the adults told me"
- At 6-7 yrs old "It seemed slightly improbable to mebecause there was no other evidence for it"
- At 4-5 yrs "I started getting really concerned aboutdeath and what was going to happen when I died... the annihilation of my consciousness"
- "I asked my dad and he said 'of course there's no god'... I felt validated actually"
- Next 15 years "a very atheistic worldview... probablysome contempt for religion and people who believed in something that seemed completely impossible to me... I was pretty loud about it..."
- "Very few atheists around me..." A 9th grade debate: "Is there a god... it was pretty much me against the class"
- "It became a point of identity for me... in middleschool and high school"
- "Some of my points of identity - like being ameat-eater - had changed drastically"
- College at Berkeley, psychedelics "It opened me up tothe possibility that I might just not be seeing everything... my five senses were limited... I had a circumscribed intellect... it was unlikely I had access to whatever the reality out there is."
- "Us looking at the universe is like a dog looking atthe TV... the dog has no idea what's going on with the TV... I barely have any idea..."
- 2 layers: phenomenon "what we experience" then"something else going on that we just don't really have access to - maybe some kind of spiritual access.. intuitive access.. but we can't figure out empirically."
20:38 What Matters?
35:38 Who Matters?
46:47 A Better World?
01:19:29 Follow Jesse:
- New Roots Institute
- Jesse on LinkedIn
- @jmtandlerAnd 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!
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Arran Stibbe is Professor in Ecological Linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. In his teaching and research he focuses on how language makes us who we are as people, and the role of language in building the kind of society we live in, using discourse analysis and ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics examines how language encodes the stories we live by, and shapes how we see ourselves and our relationship with other animals and the earth. This involves linguistic analysis of a wide range of discourses, from advertising which encourages people to buy unnecessary and ecologically damaging products, to the inspirational language of nature writing. He is founder of the International Ecolinguistics Association.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:00 Welcome
- "I'm a massive fan of Sentientism. It's a crystal clear worldview that you're expressing... it's an important message that needs to get out there."
- Arran's book "Econarrative"
03:39 Arran's Intro
- Ecological linguistics... "I get to analyse any kindof discourse that I want to... then I critique the stories that are emerging... based on my ecological philosophy... respecting living beings and wanting themto flourish"
- Discourses from Men's Health magazine to the Pork industry handbook to nature poetry, creation stories... "positive ones and negative ones"
- "Searching for new stories to live by"
- Consulting with @greenpeace and others on messaging
- Stories... Ben Okri: "Stories are the secret reservoirs of values... if we change the stories that individuals and nations live by then we change the individuals and nations themselves"
- "If we pay careful attention to the language we canunderstand these stories that fundamentally underpin our unequal and unsustainable and quite cruel society"
- Stories as "cognitive models in our minds thatinfluence how we think, how we talk and how we act"... individuals and across a culture e.g. "The masculine man being strong & not showing emotions & eating lots of meat... a hegemonic story"
- Narrative: "A more traditional kind of story you might tell to children at bedtime... sequences of events..."
- "I would go with this #meme idea... but I think it'seven more fundamental than that... so much of what we're thinking is part of this wider social cognition..."
- "Is it a simplification to think of a separate being... you wouldn't exist for more than a few minutes on your own in space... your continued existence depends on breathing..."
11:27 What's Real?
26:35 What and Who Matters?
46:15 A Better World?
& much more. Full notes at sentientism.info.
01:12:52 Follow Arran
- Arran at the University of Gloucestershire
- The Stories We Live By – the free online course
- The Ecolinguistics Association
- Stibbe, Arran (2024) Econarrative: ethics, ecology and the search for new narratives to live by. London: Bloomsbury- Stibbe, Arran (2021) Ecolinguistics: language, ecology and the stories we live by (second edition). London: Routledge
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
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This episode is a cross-post of my discussion with Louisa Jane Smith on "The RE Podcast". Her audience are some of the most important people in the world - religions and worldview teachers and their students. Make sure you go and subscribe there too.
As well as hosting the podcast Louisa is a Religious Education Teacher and Head of Life Skills at a school in England. She a member of the National Association for Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) executive committee as well as being a public speaker and author. Louisa was also my guest on Sentientism episode 205 if you want to hear more about her philosophical journey so far.
If you're a teacher or are just interested, why not join our next free webinar on "Teaching the Sentientism Worldview"?
I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did talking - feedback and suggestions are always welcome. As ever I'm only one Sentientist so others will disagree!
I also wanted to extend a warm welcome to everyone who has recently joined one of our online Sentientism communities. More people join us there every day - whether they think of themselves as Sentientists or not. The groups are open to everyone. Just search for the word "Sentientism" on your favourite platformsand you'll find us there. FaceBook is our biggest group so far with 2,300 members from over 100 countries.
Soon we'll have 14,000 subscribers on YouTube too. It's great to have your support there.
Also check out the new "In action" section of Sentientism.info. We're building pages there about Sentientist Education, Politics, Rights, Economics, Justice, Agriculture, Environmentalism and more - come and help us work out what a more Sentientist world might look like.
A final thank you to Denise and Tarabella who found our secret Sentientism Patreon and are kindly contributing to our production costs - helping us steadily nudge the worldtowards "evidence, reason and compassion".
Thanks for listening!
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!
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Maneesha Deckha is a law professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Her work initially spanned human rights, injustice, feminist theory, post-colonial & decolonial theory and later, inter-species justice and its links and intersectionality with human social justice. Maneesha founded and directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative at Victoria University. She is the author of the book “Animals as Legal Beings”.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
00:55 Welcome
- Maneesha on The Animal Turn and Think Like a Veganpodcasts hosted by:
- Claudia Hirtenfelder Sentientism episode- Emilia Leese Sentientism episode- SentientistEducation
03:05 Maneesha's Intro
- "To consider how different oppressions for differentgroups, both human and animal and even other non-humans, are systemically structured and are related and overlap - and also how they might be different"
- Working long before and since the "Animal Turn"in academia "when not too many people were discussing animals"
- Research: animals legal subjectivity, animal ethics,feminist perspectives "connecting work... looking at issues of gender, race, culture, species in tandem"
- "Addressing questions that affect women, that affectchildren, that affect animals - through that intersectional lens"
- Starting and Directing the Animals & Society ResearchInitiative at Victoria University
- Public facing projects e.g. the "A Deeper Kindness" documentary
06:55 What's Real?
- Growing up in a Hindu household... celebrations, stories
- The radical diversity of Hinduism "all these gods andgoddesses and quite a few of them are multi-species... Lord Ganesh"
- University courses on Hinduism and Buddhism
- "I always looked at that... as myth"
- The ethos of learning... being introduced to modernist,scientific & secular views
- "I approached the world in a more secular, atheistframe... atheist understood as being compatible with Hinduism... not really believing in these gods and goddesses but somewhat happy that these stories are there... the diversity of thought that it brings up"
- "When we have a physical sensation or emotionalsensation that it's real... that pain is real... that suffering is real even if it's psychological"
- Learning about social construction and the influence oflanguage at university "we cannot access... reality... without mediating that access through concepts, through language"
- "We can't really know something 100% for certain...because it depends on how we frame it on the interiority of our mind which of course almost always depends on language"
26:30 What Matters?
37:25 Who Matters?
01:07:47 A Better World?
01:15:50 Follow Maneesha
- “I’m of that age where I’m not too excited about social media”
- Maneesha at the University of Victoria
- A Deeper Kindness documentary series
- Human Children, Nonhuman Animals, and a Plant-Based Vegan FutureSentientism 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!
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Joel is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans. After completing his B.A. in philosophy at the University of Akron, he was a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama working in environmental education and sustainable development. He completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Tennessee. Joel was a scholar-in-residence at Wesleyan University in 2013 as the New York University Animal Studies Initiative’s Animal Ethics and Public Policy Fellow. He held visiting assistant professorships at Washington State University and Binghamton University, SUNY, before coming to Loyola. His main areas of research are applied ethics, especially environmental ethics, and the philosophy of science. One of his many academic publications is "Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics".
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!
00:50 Welcome
- Joel's PhD thesis re: #sentiocentrism
- Our Sentientism FaceBook group where Joel is a member
02:47 Joel's Intro
- Asst Prof of philosophy at Loyola
- Director-elect of the environment programme
- Coaching the Ethics Bowl
- Institutional Review Board and animal usage ethicist
- Peace Corps volunteering in Panama
- Analytic philosophy focus
- Applied, environmental, animal ethics
- Philosophy of science and biology
- British #empiricists
- Grew up as a "latch-key kid" in Akron countryside "being in and messing around with nature" & rescuing animals ("Boy" turned out to be a girl...)
- Mother a nurse "seeing... the fragility of life very early on"
- Dad sold musical instruments "grew up around musicand art"
- "All manner of outdoor adventuring... rock climbing,kayaking"
- "I'm a pretty hard-core board gamer... Evolution... Wingspan... nature themed board-games"
- "Within philosophy applied ethics can be a bit of a perjorative... not real philosophy"
- "I'm still trying to delay answering the question 'what do I want to be when I grow up?'"
11:02 What's Real?
- Raised in a minimally #protestant #Christian family "church on Sundays and that was about it"
- Mum was "more spiritual than religious". Church for the singing and community more than belief
- Dad: "We go to church because that's what we're supposed to do"
- An inauthenticity about it "going through the motions"
- "I've never been religious or spiritual"
- "I think we're all born atheistic at least in the sense that we don't have any active beliefs in anything supernatural... we start as empiricists..."
- Being puzzled as a kid at realising most humans arereligious "I thought I might have been broken!"
- Sunday school after church at 10 yrs old hearing aboutNoah's ark "there's so many species of beetle - this doesn't make any sense at all... basic critical thinking"
32:53 What Matters?
51:50 Who Matters?
01:22:19 A Better World?
... and much more (full show notes at sentientism.info)
Follow Joel
- Joel at Loyola
- Joel on LinkedIn
- Joel at PhilPeople
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!
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Mark Humanity is a long-time vegan activist. He currently lives on the edge of a rainforest in New Zealand and is on the Board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Mark has been involved in animal rights since a teenager, initially in Ireland’s embryonic movement and later in the much more developed UK movement. A hunt saboteur for many years, Mark has been vegan since 1989 and got involved with the NZ Vegan Society via his vegan outreach Initiative called “Vegan Living Auckland”. He is currently helping raise two plant-based children and has a background in mental health nursing. Mark is the author of "The Humanity Trigger".
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
00:34 Welcome
- Tom Harris episode
- Corey Lee Wrenn episode
- Philip McKibbin episode
02:13 Mark's Intro
- Anarcho-punk and vegan activism
- Now “anarchish”
- Writing “The Humanity Trigger” about two centuries ofdirect action for animals in Ireland
- Vegan Society Aotearoa board
- 20 years as a psychiatric / learning disabilities nurse
- Now stay at home dad raising two vegan kids on the edge of a rain forest
03:28 What's Real?
- “Things that still exist irrespective of whether peoplebelieve in them or not – are what’s real”
- Raised in a staunchly Irish Catholic family and society
- “our sense of reality growing up was filtered through theeyes of a deeply authoritarian… fascist-adjacent dictatorship of the Roman Catholic church”
- “The government were simply puppets at the beck and call of the church when the church chose to intervene”
- Attending church run by Redemptorist priests / monks “on the surface they preach very worthy things… giving to the poor… vows of chastity & poverty & obedience…”
- The monthly Redemptorist “Reality” magazine: “Verymedieval thinking… resurrections… ascensions to heaven… virgin births… that was all reality”
- “I tried to believe it because it was what everyone around me was saying was true.”
- “Anyone that even thought or even asked questions about it was deemed to be dangerously… on the slippery slope”
- “If you haven’t been brought up in a strictly religiousenvironment it’s very hard to imagine what it’s like when everyone around you believes in the devil… god… jesus… heaven and hell…”
- Transubstantiation “Jesus does come down into that bread – his body is in that bread… it is literal – it is not meant to be taken as a metaphor”
- “I tried to believe it but I couldn’t”
- Comics, 2000AD, Pat Mills, Alan Moore “I read into those scripts… Flesh… Strontium Dogs, some of Judge Dredd… non-human animals had agency… were lead actors in these scripts… were the heroes and villains”
- The influence of punk on other Sentientism guests: Delci Winders, Kristof Dhont, Nick Pendergrast, Nicola Harris, Luke McGuire, Nico Delon, Jamila Anahata, Tom Harris
19:05 What and Who Matters?
34:30 A Better World?
... and much more (full show notes at sentientism.info)
Follow Mark
- Mark at Earth Island Books
- The Humanity Trigger Book
- The Humanity Trigger Web Site
- The Vegan Society Aotearoa
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!
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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" transfarmationstories: https://freefromharm.org/humane-farmer/
03:25 Robert's Intro
- Author, speaker, activist
- Free from Harm's mission: "advance a #plantbased foodsystem and challenge the dominance of animal agriculture through bold and innovative grass-roots action."
- Evolving from an on-line resource to "on the groundactivism"
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 aninjustice... 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 apopularity contest..." it's the weight of evidence
- Spirituality / supernatural / transcendent?: "We haveso 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 thesuffering 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 forthe animals that suffer in our food system... their suffering was like our suffering."
- Watching documentaries and @mercyforanimals investigative footage
- "Humane, sustainablefarming?... 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!
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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... sosocially 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 REteachers... 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 beenwanting 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 tobe 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... frombeing 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 "sovery 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 holdup... 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!
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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 peoplewho read novels or who write novels... but also who do philosophy, critical theory..."
- "Relationship between economic forms and theconstitution of reality"
- "... different cultural objects... artworks or filmsor 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 politicisedunderstanding of economic forms and economic structures"
- "Scandals and Abstraction" on financial scandalsrepresented in film & literature
- "Wages against artwork" on art, economy and alsoanimals (e.g. an exhibit of live birds)
- Thinking about animals' presence in the economy
- Explaining political economy to artists "What if youwere 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 forat 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!
-
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!
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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 itssell-by date... industrialisation, globalism, the horrendous suffering of the more-than-human world"
- Pessimism amongst climate scientists "describing inmany respects... an uninhabitable world in the future"
- "We cannot continue in a business as usual manner inthe 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 thepolitical 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 thisoff-world, male, white deity?... Not really finding satisfactory answers fromthe priest or from teachers."
- "I do hold some affection for Catholicism..."
- The denial of evolution & #creationism among someNorthern 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, happybusiness-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!
-
Zoe Weil is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education (IHE). She is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement. She has authored eight books both for adults and children, including her latest, "The Solutionary Way" – available for pre-order now! Zoe writes the Becoming a Solutionary blog at Psychology today. She has made numerous TV andradio appearances and has given six TED talks, including “Extending our Circle of Compassion.” Her first Sentientism conversation with me was back on episode 37.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:15 Welcome
- Our first conversation: https://youtu.be/4NaSEJ4q8NQ
- Most good (MOGO), least harm
- Star Trek as a utopian inspiration
- Mr Spock and Dr Spock "both of them have had a biginfluence"
03:42 Zoe Introduction
- Co-founder and President of The Institute for HumaneEducation
- IHE: "Educate people to create a world where allhumans and animals and nature can thrive... huge, huge goal and vision"
- K-12 schools and graduate programmes with AntiochUniversity
- "It's going to keep my busy my entire life"
04:37 The Solutionary Way
- Subtitle "Transform your life, your community andyour world for the better"
- "An antidote to polarisation... actually solving the problems that we face... in a way that is good for everyone"
- "We are not a single issue organisation... justice and compassion needs to be spread for everybody so that the world can be truly humane"
- Solutionary lens "you approach problems as solvable" instead of "us vs. them approaches"
- Critical thinking "what's true, what's false... lies at the foundation"
- Systems thinking "see the connections... identify causes... leverage points..."
- Strategic thinking
- Creative thinking
- Solutionary Framework: 4 phases, 12 steps
- Prioritising problems & identifying the one you wantto solve "Learn and learn then really dive deep... identify a narrow enough problem that you have the capacity to solve"
- The Solutionary Way in schools... 4th graders have bigconcerns but might not be able to address them in full... so what can they "feasibly solve"?
- "We have identified a leverage point which is theeducational system through which we are working on... all problems"
- "K-12 educational system is fundamentally working atthe root cause of every other societal system"
- "What happens in our educational system prepares usto be citizens"
- "A profoundly important core strategy... at the sametime many of the problems that we are facing are so immediate... we can't wait"
- "Sometimes the people who care most... wind up doingwork that is counter-productive... they may burn more bridges than they build"
- Dealing with activist burnout and depression
- Polarisation and populism in modern discourse... denial of a shared reality... denial of shared values... blaming instead of solutions
17:52 A Shared Reality?
25:17 Shared Values?
57:29 Thinking About Solutions
01:05:50 Education01:17:10 Follow Zoe and buy "The Solutionary Way"!
- June 25th book launch (pre-order now!)
- The Solutionary Way
- @ZoeWeil
- The Institute for Humane Education
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
-
Devon Docherty, Carol Jasper and Maja Cullen are psychology researchers from the University of Stirling. Carol is a lecturer, Devon is a teaching assistant and Maja is a research assistant. Devon is also a researcher, writer and animal advocate with Surge and Earthling Ed.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:09 Welcome
03:25 Devon, Maja and Carol Introductions
- Psychology (human-animal interactions, clinical health) and animal advocacy
- Their papers on the paradoxes and dissonances of vegetarianism and pescetarianism
- Quantitative research: "science doesn't have to be about numbers... if we want to understand people... we need to do that with words... listen to their experiences... their own narratives... we all have positionality."
- "Science teaching so often is based entirely in pseudo-objectivity... subjectivity can be really powerful."
06:53 What's Real?
Carol:
- Growing up in a #presbyterian family. Attending Sundayschool. Exploring celtic / pagan mythology and spirituality.
- Reading the Bible "a really beautiful book... but howcan the old testament... be real?" Dad's response: "a way that people used to understand the world around them... in the absense of other explanations"
- Now constructing narratives in a scientific domain
- Belief in the supernatural? "I'd be really hesitantto say that we have all the answers... consciousness... I want to believe that there's a ghost in the machine although I know there isn't"
- Celtic confluence of the ephemeral and the tangible"intertwined together... I very much believe in the concrete real but also I like to think there's things we don't know and we don't understand yet... we should always be trying to find out more."
- "Maybe it's just... physical energy... but I like to think there's something beyond us... hope there's some other... maybe there's some hope that they could come and help us get everything right."
Devon:
- "It's really complex being a human sometimes."
- #catholic family and school "very strict catholic teaching"
- "Religion never really resonated with me"
- "The teacher was telling us that animals don't have souls... That was the moment that I realised that I really do have these strong views."
- "I had a dog at the time... she was just as full and complex of a being as I was."
- Moving away from religion to "do my own thing"
- "I'm pretty terrified of death"
- Focusing on morality "That's my thing - rather thananything outside of the realm of what we can see and how we can treat other people"
- JW: Psychological motivations for religious belief: fearof uncertainty, fear of death, a hope that god has a plan
- "I got to learn more and more about the Catholicchurch and realise how much I disagree with it"
- JW: Epistemological and ethical reasons people move away from religion
Maja:
- Growing up in Germany, then moving to Scotland
- "It was rare... to meet someone who wasn't christened"
... and much more! (full notes at sentientism.info)
47:55 What and Who Matters?
01:12:05 A Better World?
01:37:15 Follow!
Carol: @DrCarolJasper, @veganfoodtrainer
Maja: @maja_cullen_
Devon: @devonmdocherty, Devon on LinkedIn, @earthlingedSentientism 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!
-
Michael is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. He is also an associate faculty at the Wyss Institute at Harvard. Michael is a director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. He is also co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms. Michael's Levin Lab focuses on "Embodied Minds: understanding diverse intelligence in evolved, designed, and hybrid complex systems" and works "at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science". This work includes the bioengineering of novel living machines and has clinical applications in regenerative medicine. Michael has editing roles at a number of academic journals and has published more than 350 papers.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips!
01:18 Welcome
- "We biologists have plenty of spherical cows"
03:50 Mike's Introduction
04:37 What's Real?
- A "not religious but highly spiritual" Jewish background
- Hebrew school " I harrassed everybody with questions.... how souls are supposed to work...the hard problem of consciousness... the answers weren't terribly forthcoming."
- At home "an emphasis on inquiry... asking big questions... things that matter"
- "The question of 'how do I know?' figured prominently in my childhood"
- "Rationality is an amazing tool but one can also ask questions about its limitiations... what are the things that we're not seeing"
- Being sceptical about the approaches you're bringing to a problem
- "I pretty much only have one supernatural belief which is that the universe is understandable... Once you've taken that on everything else becomes possible... I can't think of anything that would be truly supernatural..."
- "We are finite beings" trying to understand reality then "you have to ask yourself 'how is this working out?... isthis helping me have a more meaningful life... be a more ethical person... have better relationships with others?'"
- "I don't really think of myself as a biologist... myfundamental commitment... has been to understand embodied mind"
- "I'm interested in cognition, intelligence and innerperspective in a wide range of diverse systems... some of which are alive"
- "I think cognition is a broader category than life"
- "It just so happens that life is, so far, our best example of how that can scale"
- "Molecular networks scaling into cells scaling into tissues scaling into organisms and beyond"
- Collective intelligence, goals... "biology is an excellent playground for these things"
- Cognition, mind etc. "All of these cognitive claims... where you think something is on the spectrum... how much mind... I don't think these are terms describing particular systems. I think these are terms describing our intended relationship to them... an engineering interaction protocol"
51:04 What and Who Matters?
01:08:53 A Better World?
Follow Michael
- drmichaellevin.org
- thoughtforms.life
- @drmichaellevin
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!
-
Emilia is co-author of the book Think Like A Vegan and host of the Think Like a Vegan podcast. She is involved in the Birchfield Highlands re-wilding project in Scotland, edits the quarterly magazine for The Heath & Hampstead Society in London and has developed life skills and ethics workshops for underserved youth. Professionally, she has been a corporate finance lawyer for over 20 years.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.00:00 Clips!
01:25 Welcome
- Shared Sentientism guests with @thinklikeavegan :
- Troy Vettese episode
- Josh Milburn episode
- Aysha Akhtar episode
04:41 Emilia's Intro
- Corporate finance, vegan writing / podcasting, rewildingin Scotland, magazine editing
05:45 What's Real?
- Growing up in Italy
- #catholic school "which I hated... it never made sense to me that only some people... would go to heaven"
- Letting teachers know at 5-6 years old "this doesn'tmake any sense"... "they kind of stopped asking me questions"
- Dad is an Indian philosophy professor
- Investigating eastern and western traditions and religions"I said 'none of it matters'... it matters what I do here and now"
- "People have their traditions and I love that...butfor me ultimately I don't need to have any of that"
- "The fundamental of all of them is love... just practice it"
- "That love then turns in to a respect and a valuing... of sentient life... and everything that's around us"
- "Plants & funghi... even minerals and mountains... they may not feel anything but that doesn't matter... it's allconnected"
- "The fate of the least among us... is extremely important"
- "Bees and insects... how they go, we go"
- "I don't need an outside force to tell me to do the right thing"
- "A certain basic fairness... treat everyone the same unless there's a morally relevant reason to treat them differently"
- "I have personally witnessed things that I cannot explain... there's lots of things I don't know... so I've decided that's fine"
- "You have to leave space for changing your mind... welearn everything!"
- JW: How broken epistemology can lead "good" people to do terrible things
- The ethical and epistemological errors that justify animalagriculture
- Maneesha Deckha's "beingness" concept
- "We as advocates have to be better at our own rhetoric"
- "We live in a capitalist, non-vegan world... so therewill be inherent things that you are not going to be able to solve"
- "You don't need to be well versed in philosophy... wecan all get there"
- Examining what's driving our actions... fear (of others,change, deistic reprisal, social norms, admitting we were wrong)
- JW: Uncommon common sense re: ethical and epistemic basics
- Humans building convenient hierarchies "as long asyou're at the top"
- "Animal agribusiness has never been nice... 10,000years ago... 5,000 years ago... there's always objectification, exploitation and death... that doesn't change"
- "To the being - you only have one life"26:20 What Matters?
53:13 Who Matters?
01:00:42 A Better World?
01:22:00 Follow Emilia
- EmiliaLeese.com
- Think Like a Vegan Podcast
- @emiisgoodeating
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