45: “Children are much less speciesist than adults” – researcher Matti Wilks – 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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Matti (https://www.mattiwilks.com/ and @matti_wilks) is a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, working with Professor Paul Bloom. She studies moral psychology & moral development – including attitudes to cultivated meat & the “natural”, the moral status of various types of entities & altruism.

In these 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:

– Doing research to make the world a better place (& curiosity)

– Growing up non-religious (w/ ex-Jewish father) & vegetarian

– Seeing the benefits & value in religion: Community & compassion

– Open-mindedness & humility

– The danger of over-confidence in naturalism & science

– Researching ve*an children in meat-eating households

– Parallels between religious & omnivore societal defaults and indoctrination/norm setting

– Many “religious” people don’t actually hold to the supernatural beliefs

– Why do we have morality & what should morality be about?

– Being uncertain about whether there are moral truths

– Harm & suffering as inherently bad. The drive to reduce suffering

– Haidt et al’s Moral Foundations Theory

– Even if nothing matters to the universe, experiences matter to each individual sentient being

– Would Isaac killing his son have been right? (No)

– Isn’t choosing whether to care about suffering just choosing whether to be moral?

– People seem to be more ethically motivated than they used to be

– Even Greenwashing is a sign that more people care about the environment

– Public negativity re: factory farming

– Having the capacity to act more ethically is a privilege (being free of survival needs)

– Moral relativism

– Growing up around animals & becoming an “outraged” activist at 15-16 yrs

– Studying animal cognition. “The Gap” by Thomas Suddendorf 

– Humans do have distinctive capacities but all sentient animals qualify for moral consideration

– The importance of the moral scope boundary

– Sentientism as pluralistic re: ethical systems

– Degrees of sentience vs. egalitarian approaches

– And much more! Full shownotes at Sentientism.info.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info. Join our “I’m a Sentientist wall” using this form.

Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook.

Thanks, Graham for the post-prod.