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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David Pearce is a philosopher & co-founder of the World Transhumanist Organisation, now Humanity+. His work centres on “The Hedonistic Imperative” – a moral obligation to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life.”
You can find the video of our conversation here.
We discuss:
– Using biotech to abolish suffering & replace it with gradients of hedonic bliss
– Compassion, Buddhism, negative utilitarianism & the need to systematise benevolence
– The “3 supers” of Transhumanism: super intelligence, super longevity & super happiness + why non-humans should be included
– Growing up as a 3rd generation v*gan in a Quaker household
– Waiting for god to get in touch at 7-8 yrs old then ceasing to believe at 10-11 yrs
– The centrality of compassion to the values of David’s family
– Is morality like supporting a football team?
– We can build our ethics on deep intuitions, then extrapolate
– First person suffering is dis-valuable. Hold your hand in iced water!
– The centrality of our perspective as a highly adaptive illusion. The suffering of others is just as salient to them – each of us is not special
– “My morality is a feature of reality”
– A future connected mega-mind might look back on us as ignorant as well as unethical
– A choice to be immoral is also irrational
– Basing our morality on a naturalistic epistemology & spanning “is-ought”
– How nearly everyone disagrees with Sentientism
– Focusing on the good in religion & working on common ground
– The Bible is light on the bio-tech details of how the lion will lie down with the lamb 🙂
– If god has given us CRISPR, why not use it to show mercy?
– If humans have compassion, surely god’s compassion should be even deeper?
– Not being righteous even when you’re right
– Having compassion for people you disagree with & naturalistic humility about your own beliefs
– Religious texts don’t prohibit the positive use of tech
– We’re all amateurs re: understanding consciousness
– Consciousness/sentience as “just” info proc or something more
– Is the USA conscious? (Eric Schwitzgebel)
– Micro-experiential zombies
– Physicalism plus the intrinsic nature of the physical, is experience the “fire in the equations”?
– Falling asleep doesn’t destroy consciousness, it breaks binding
– Eric’s “crazyism” – stay open minded
– Powerpointism as an alternative to panpsychism 🙂
– The temptation to fill gaps / address uncertainty with “woo” and mysticism/magic/god
– Even if consciousness is fundamental, it’s not “like anything” to be a rock
– Distinction between panpsychism (consciousness attached to fundamental entities) & non-materialist physicalism (experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical)
– Using genetics to give our offspring better lives – for health and to adjust their hedonic set-points
– Ending animal farming “death factories” – laws will outlaw
– Making it easy to do the right thing
– Mitigating wild animal suffering (fertility regulation – immuno-contraception/gene drives). We are already intervening negatively on a massive scale
– SCN-9A gene, the volume knob of pain
– Converting carnivores to herbivores, providing cultured-meat alternatives, without being constrained by species essentialism
– “Nature is pretty” vs. “Compassion for the suffering”
– Moving from “kill them all” to compassionate interventions
– Using our tech capability to tap into the latent compassion of humans.
See the YouTube video for full show notes.
In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Stijn is a physicist (phd), economist (phd in progress), animal activist, rational moral philosopher (another phd) and an Effective Altruist! He co-founded and …continue
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Raffael Fasel is University Assistant Professor in Public Law at the Cambridge Law Faculty and Fellow of Jesus College. He specialises in public law, with a particular interest in constitutional theory, human rights law, and animal rights law. Raffael is …continue
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Isabella La Rocca Gonzalez is an artist, writer, photographer, teacher and activist. She describes her work as “part of a long tradition in art and photography: to bring to light and find beauty in the hidden, unconscious, or disregarded. As …continue
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