81: “Ethical value flows from reality” – Pablo Perez Castello – 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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Pablo (@PabloPCastello & on LinkedIn) is a Research Assistant at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law & a Junior Fellow of the Animals & Biodiversity programme of the Global Research Network (GRN) think tank. He is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway (UoL). His research in Philosophy focuses on understanding the importance of human language in producing human dominion over animals. He also investigates the role animal language can play in relation to the participation of animals in political decision-making processes & the construction of zoodemocratic systems. His interests include ecofeminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, critical disability studies, animal law, conservation, continental philosophy & critical animal studies.

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:

0:00 Welcome

1:30 Pablo’s Intro – interdisciplinary, intersectional research re: human & non-human animals, their languages & potential zoodemocracy.

3:51 What’s Real?

– Born into an atheist family

– Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” & the mystical sense of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky

– “Becoming sensitive to a dimension of reality that I thought had been hidden to me” via Wittgenstein’s early work

– Are poetry, music, arts & feeling beyond science even while they are aspects of reality (not the mystical)?

– Being grounded in our embodied existence (ecofeminism)

– “Ethical value flows from reality”… “Sentience matters because it is real… there are beings that actually suffer”

– Interests, preferences & relationships are grounded in who those beings are

– Derrida’s “The Animal That Therefore I Am.” What is it like for a cat to see me naked?!

– Alterity. Appreciating the “other” in their own terms. Levinas

– Science & naturalism & personal experience

– Feminist thought & context

– Language, categories, relations, community & power

– “Western” binaries. Those w/without reason. Barbarians & the civilised.

– Are relations & communities & cultures reducible to patterns of info proc in the minds of sentients?

– Is the bond between cow & calf intrinsically valuable, or are the relationships reducible to the individual cow & calf?

– Science & scientism

– Claire Jean Kim’s “Dangerous Crossings”. Understanding different actors’ positionality – including our own. Ethic of mutual avowal

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

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Thanks Graham.