95: “The Sustainable Development Goals are all about us humans!” – Dr. Helen Kopnina – 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.

SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcast | Website | Spotify | RSS

Helen (@hkopnina) is Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Business at the University of Northumbria & also lectures at The Hague University. Her research focuses on environmental education, biodiversity & corporate sustainability.

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

01:12 Helen’s Intro

02:49 What’s Real?

– The passage to caring about ecosystems for many ecocentrists was through a connection to individual animals

– Growing up atheist “just like everybody else in the Soviet Union” in Moscow

– Parents who were “wild about wilderness”

– Visiting Siberia “in the summer & without gulags”

– “I loved fairy tales” but firmly naturalistic

– “I’m still 99% atheist with 1% reserved for doubt”

– Political dissident parents, pushing back on ideology

– “When you don’t have religion you create a religion yourself – & that was communism… we had Lenin & Marx as our gods…”

– Lenin, Marx & Engels as a “holy trinity”?

– “My parents instructed me that it was bullshit”

– Naturalistic ontology (no supernatural) & epistemology (use evidence & reason)

– Flat earth, anti-vaxx, one party states…

13:45 What (& Who) Matters?

– Kant, deontology, consequentialism…

– “You can call me a cynic – I don’t think there is any absolute morality – I think we invent it.”

– Injustice & unfairness

– Frans de Waal’s fairness experiments with chimps

– “Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are all about us humans” (vs. https://sentientism.info/how/sentientist-development-goals)

– “Why don’t we have the same moral consideration for billions of other living beings – it just seems inconsistent… unjust”

– Environmental Justice isn’t about the env. its about distribution of goods & harms among humans

– Wokeness, fairness, division & distribution. The risks of forcing pure equality (e.g. Soviet Union – bloody revolution then a new elite emerges)

– Avoiding relativism & nihilism. Can we construct a universal morality?

– The impacts on Soviet Union of WWII then Stalin

– “I see our planet as one of billions – so it doesn’t really matter”

– Anthropology & cultural relativism “why is human sacrifice & cannibalism a good thing?”

– Moral progress “but things can be turned back too”

– Survival & reproductive rationales for morality “Otherwise you get beaten up”

– “Anger at inconsistency… it pisses me off that it just applies to one single species”

– Feminism: “I’m just not interested to be honest”

…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. Come join us there!

Thanks Graham.