85: “If you have experienced suffering you’re aware of its badness” – Philosopher Michael Huemer – 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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Michael Huemer (@FakeNousBlog) is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of more than seventy academic articles in epistemology, ethics, metaethics, metaphysics, & political philosophy, as well as eight amazing books that YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY BUY including Skepticism & the Veil of Perception, Ethical Intuitionism, The Problem of Political Authority, Approaching Infinity, Paradox Lost, & Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism. He blogs at fakenous.net.

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

01:31 Mike’s Intro

02:20 What’s Real?

– Reading bible stories at 5 yrs old & declaring “This is stupid!… I don’t believe in god”

– “all the major religions are false… incredibly implausible”

– Bible & other religious texts: “just so obviously the sort of things a primitive human would write”… obsessed w/sex, different human tribes

– “If I’d created a universe containing 100 bn galaxies… I don’t think I’d be obsessed with this particular tribe of humans”

– “God in traditional religions doesn’t even seem like a decent person, let alone the greatest… If he was a human we’d have to lock him in jail” 

– Mike’s “Scary Bible Quotes” page

– Jesus contradicting the Old Testament

– Atheism to agnosticism. “There could still be a creator”. Fine tuning

– Intelligent design, multiverse, anthropic responses

– Methodological naturalism & metaphysical naturalism

– “I don’t even really know what supernatural means”

– “There can be natural things that are beyond our understanding”

– “I think I’m conscious & I don’t think my consciousness is physical”… many naturalists say that’s not naturalism

– Direct realism: “You should assume that things are they way they seem unless you have specific reasons for thinking otherwise”. Most people who object don’t know what it is. “The main problem is people refuse to listen.”

23:52 What Matters?

– “It was always bizarre that people thought you needed religion in order to have ethics”

– Divine Command Theory: “The boss is going to mess you up”. That’s not ethics

– What does “where does ethics come from?” even mean? Where did numbers come from?

– “We thought about it – then it was obvious”

– “If you’ve felt pain you’re going to notice that it’s bad”

– The is/ought gap “is supposed to be between such & such is painful & such & such is bad”

– “If you have experienced suffering you’re aware of its badness”

– “In a way I’m following what I thought when I was a small child”

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

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Thanks Graham.