39: “The Peppa Pig Paradox” – activist academic Lynda Korimboccus – Sentientist Conversations

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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Lynda (https://twitter.com/LMKorimboccus and http://www.korimboccus.com/) is an anthrozoologist, sociologist & philosopher who teaches sociology in Scottish Further Education. She is also a musician, songwriter, writer and artist. Lynda is Editor-in-Chief of the Student Journal of Vegan Sociology (http://www.vegansociology.com/journal/). Lynda’s recent paper, “The Peppa Pig Paradox”, was published in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (http://journalforcriticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JCAS-Vol-17-Iss-5-October-2020-1-FINAL.pdf).   In these Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”  Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.”  The audio is also on our Podcast – subscribe here: https://apple.co/391khQO & all the other platforms https://pod.link/1540408008.

The video of our conversation is here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_YjyCRc4ym8

We discuss:

– Being an activist academic

– The “Peppa Pig Paradox” and cognitive dissonance

– Critical Animal Studies and Vegan Sociology

– Multi-disciplinary perspectives spanning psychology, sociology, anthrozoology and philosophy

– “There’s no such thing as an amateur philosopher”

– Being a child philosopher

– Growing up Methodist Christian with an ex-Muslim father who converted to Christianity, then later went back to Islam

– Drifting away from the church

– Being a “weak atheist” or agnostic

– Bible stories were only ever stories. Never believing they were true

– Reasons why people leave religions

– “I don’t like labels”. Having the freedom to choose what makes sense

– Compassion as a common theme running through, and pre-dating religions

– Religious sectarianism and violence in Scotland

– If we strip religious ethics back to universal compassion we don’t need the supernatural beliefs as justifications

– Compassion, kindness, social justice and veganism as the central elements of Lynda’s ethics

– Taking decisions to minimise harm

– The danger of socially constructed categories re: gender, race, species. Pets vs. farmed animals

– The risks of a human-centred perspective, even in our understanding of and use of sentience

– And much more (see YouTube or sentientism.info for full show notes)

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Lynda on our “wall” https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.

Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

Thanks Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu