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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Jenny (@jennysplitter and jennysplitter.com) is an award-winning journalist & science writer covering food, agriculture, climate change, biodiversity, health & technology. Her work has been published across a wide range of media outlets including Vox, Forbes, Observer, The Washington Post, Popular Mechanics and New York Magazine. Jenny is a co-founder & contributing editor to the science communication project SciMoms. She is also a podcast host on the Animal Studies channel of the New Books Network & her newsletter, FutureFeed, chronicles change in the food system.
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
1:05 Jenny’s Intro – journalism and SciMoms
2:09 What’s Real?
– Growing up in California as reform Jewish
– Reform Judaism: “It’s definitely not heavy handed with the God stuff”
– Most of the parents were atheist and agnostic. It’s mostly about the ritual and the tradition and the history
– Jewish philosophy re: responsibility, community obligations & making the world better
– It’s less about the rules than the discussion
– Moving from a naive view of a caring god to “at some point I just didn’t really worry about it any more”
7:58 What Matters Morally?
– Complexity in reform Judaism moral discussions at Hebrew school
– “Closer vs. further away from God”
– “Of course I’m angry – I’ve just been told by my friend I’m going to hell”
– SkepChick & other atheist communities
– “Do no harm”, community, avoiding bad people, getting into the complex stuff
– COVID & re-thinking communities
– The evolution of morality, good & bad
– Moral scope & consideration
– Writing about the climate impacts of meat & going reducetarian, then just stopping eating meat
– Enjoying substituting out animal products in cooking
– Not wanting to do the big philosophical debate but changing behaviour anyway
– Morality then behaviour or behaviour then morality?
– Philosophical arguments vs. “real people” conversations
– Emotion, stories & logic
– Mollusc/invertebrate sentience?
– Assessing the suffering of farmed animals & fish
– Garrett Broad @ Fordham & why we care about some animals & not others
– “My cat is a vicious murderer”
– We don’t have to understand non-human animal sentience perfectly to be confident they can suffer
– Bio/ecocentrism, conservation and environmentalism. “We have to be thinking about ecosystems”
– Ecosystem services
– “Perilous bounty” by Tom Philpott
– #JustTransition for industrialised & indigenous cultures
…and much more. Full notes on Sentientism.info and YouTube.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ here: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one is here on Facebook.
Thanks Graham for the post-prod.
Cebuan (Cebby) Bliss (https://twitter.com/CebbyBliss) is a PhD candidate researching animal and biodiversity governance at Radboud University in the Netherlands (https://www.ru.nl/english/people/bliss-c/). In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is “evidence, reason …continue
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Tom Cledwyn describes himself as the “chief emailer” at Drop Dead Generous (he’s actually the co-founder). Inspired by Chris Anderson’s (of TED) book, “Infectious Generosity”, Tom and his co-founder John Sweeney set up DDG as an experiment in sparking creative, …continue
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Jack Waverley is a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Manchester. He uses marketing and consumer research to protect and promote the interests of all animals, including humans. Jack teaches on a range of BSc and MSc courses …continue
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