60: “That’s moral progress – you have to interfere in things” – Philosopher Kyle Johannsen – 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.

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Kyle (https://twitter.com/KyleJohannsen2 and https://philpeople.org/profiles/kyle-johannsen) is Adjunct Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Queen’s University. His research is in social & political philosophy, & in animal & env. ethics. He teaches normative ethics, metaethics, bioethics, business ethics, cyberethics, the philosophy of law & critical thinking. He is the author of “Wild Animal Ethics“.

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

1:22 Kyle’s Intro

– Catia Faria’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catia_Faria) dissertation on wild animal suffering

2:25 What’s Real?

– Growing up Roman Catholic. Attending catholic schools. Believing in god.

– “I didn’t like being Catholic. I found it very restrictive… I didn’t like having to pray – it felt fruitless”

– Ethics was being thought about but “I didn’t like the conservative values” e.g. abortion, contraception, sex

– “It just struck me as false.”

– Catholicism did leave the impression that it’s important to think about morality

– Majoring in philosophy

8:25 What Matters?

– “Morality is objective”

– “Even relativists behave like morality is objective… why would you argue unless there were some right answer?”

– Even under objective morality duties vary by context

– Moral objectivism doesn’t have to imply moral realism

– Consistency, coherence, flourishing, co-op as potential groundings

– Goods (welfare, resources, health, relationships), functions (distribution, efficiency, increases) & constraints (respect) values

– “I don’t know if pleasure always wins out”

– Pluralism within Sentientism

21:15 Moral Scope? Sentience

– Anthropocentrism, Sentiocentrism, Biocentrism, Ecocentrism

– Sentientism as Sentiocentrism & Naturalism

– Sentiocentrism itself implies naturalism. It conflicts with many supernatural/religious worldviews (e.g. soul as basis for moral value, use of science to assess sentience)

– Hard cases of marginal sentience (brain injury, foetal development, simplest animals)

28:27 The Journey to Sentientism

– Taking a PhD animal ethics course taught by Will Kymlicka based on Zoopolis

– Concluding that “Sentience is the correct criterion for inclusion in the moral community”

– Pluralism re: various goods. But sentience is a condition for the non-welfare elements to count as good (e.g. health only matters if the being cares about being healthy)

– “Veganism is a moral requirement if sentiocentrism is right”

– Going vegan during the PhD. Cutting out animal products over 8 month transition. Finding social support

– And much more. See YouTube or Sentientism.info

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/

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