128: “I’m so happy to be doing the right thing” – Alene Anello – Legal Impact for Chickens President & Founder – Sentientism

We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.

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Alene is the President and Founder of Legal Impact for Chickens. She graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for a federal judge and then started litigating for animals. She has worked at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and The Good Food Institute. Alene is licensed to practice law in New York, the District of Columbia, and California. Alene is committed to helping chickens to honor the memories of her two beloved avian family members, Conrad and Zeke.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

02:08 Alene’s Intro

– “Making factory farm cruelty a liability… we sue companies for abusing animals on factory farms”

02:44 What’s Real?

– Raised #atheist “they didn’t teach me anything about god”

– A friend & camp counsellor talking about someone who is always watching you – even indoors!

– Mum: “Just don’t argue with them because you don’t want to make them upset”

– “I’m an atheist today… because I’ve never been encouraged to be religious I think I have a much more positive view of #religion “

– “It’s kind of hard to know if anything’s real… I don’t feel like I have evidence of anything at all… even that I exist!”

– “I do assume there’s ground I can walk on… that the things I see are real”

– “Day to day I live very much like a naturalistic person”

– “There’s probably a world outside my body”

– Imperfect memory & perception & dreaming

– Arbitrary beliefs

– “How do I know my mind is functioning correctly?… it helps me have more empathy for people that think very differently”

– Risks & harms of bad epistemology

– #naturalism vs. #dogma vs. #fideism (#faith) vs. fake naturalism

22:25 What Matters?

– “#morality comes from psychology… humans just evolved morality… part of it comes from society”

– Descriptive & normative ethics

– Relativism

– “I have this intuitive sense that suffering is bad & joy is good”

– Utilitarianism

– Equality

– It’s hard to convince a psychopath to be moral

– “Pick somebody who already cares about suffering… & show them how whoever I’m concerned about is suffering”

– #Consequentialism, #virtue ethics, #deontology, #feminist care ethics

– Offsetting one being’s suffering with the flourishing of another?

– #pluralism 

38:28 Who Matters?

– “I care about animals a lot”

…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall via this simple form.

Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!

Thanks Graham.