40: “Compassion needs to be grounded in reality” – Jessica Pierce – Bioethicist and Author – Sentientist Conversation

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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Jessica Pierce (https://www.jessicapierce.net/) is a bioethicist & writer. Her work focuses on human-animal relationships & interconnections between ecosystems & health. Her “All dogs go to heaven” blog at Psychology Today is here https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-dogs-go-heaven.

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 video of our conversation is on the Sentientism Youtube here: https://youtu.be/mUg6gWbCo1U

We discuss:

– Training in philosophy & religious studies

– How ethics intersects w/biomedical science

– Working for 10 years in medicine

– Medicine can damage and enable health

– Shifting to focus on non-human animal ethics

– Companion animal relationships & the experience of losing Ody

– The parallels between non-human animal & human care/ethics

– Breaking the default assumption that “humans are the raw materials of ethics”

– Growing up in an “outdoorsy” family in the Sierras & Colorado

– Attending Buddhist temples, synagogues, churches. A wide variety of religions

– Finding kernels of truth in every tradition but “you don’t want to get stuck in one”

– Studying religion from undergrad to phd

– “How is someone with a phd in religion an atheist?” “When you study religion it turns you that way.”

–  Not rejecting the theist traditions, but also not embracing them

– If there is some “god” (with a small “g”) then it’s in nature and if there’s a “heaven” then its a state of mind, a state of being in harmony and peace.

– “Humans are not the centre of the universe”

– Our attitude that we can just exploit and use the world is an offense

– “I would put myself in that camp of naturalism”

– The appeal of pantheism

– The trap of human arrogance (both scientists and religious people seeing humans as “like gods”)

– And much more (visit Sentientism.info for full show notes)…

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

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