20: “De-centring the human” – Robot (and other non-human) Rights author Josh Gellers – Sentientist Conversation

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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Josh Gellers is an associate professor at the University of North Florida. His work spans animal, environmental and artificial intelligence ethics and law. He is a research fellow with the Earth System Governance Project and is a Fulbright scholar. He is Author of “Rights for Robots: Artificial Intelligence, Animal and Environmental Law” (open access!).

Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/de-centring-the-human-new-sentientist-conversation-with-josh-gellers-also-happy-new-year

In these Sentientist Conversations (subscribe!), we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”. Sentientism is “evidence, commitment & compassion for all sentient beings.”

Our conversation is also here on YouTube.

We discuss:

• Seeing the impact of climate first hand in South Florida
• Spanning “hard” and social sciences, rights, ethics and law, animal, environmental and artificial intelligence… inter-disciplinary
• Sophia the robot and non-human entity rights
• Growing up in a culturally Jewish household, with a mix of conservative religious and more secular liberal perspectives
• Doubting religion from an early age
• How could there be an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving god when there is so much suffering?
• Seeing examples of sexism and societal shaming within orthodox religion
• Kosher laws as historic public health recommendations
• Exposure to Buddhist animal ethics in Sri Lanka (living with spiders)
• “Other ways of knowing and worlding” and pluralism
• Wanting to say there are certain universals, but hesitating to say “I have the right way”
• Guilt and consciousness about how to be in the world
• Learning, respecting, humility, open-mindedness, compassion
• Doing the above without slipping into a relativism that allows the powerful to oppress others
• Critical environmental ethic with underlying pillars: Compassionate, resilience, sensitivity to the needs of others – ground rules as a safety net vs. relativism
• Needlessly causing harm isn’t compassionate, whatever your cultural norms
• People who care about people they know and people who care about people they don’t know
• And more… Full show notes are here: https://sentientism.info/de-centring-the-human-new-sentientist-conversation-with-josh-gellers-also-happy-new-year

Josh is @JoshGellers and his home page is at joshgellers.com.

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

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