39: "The Peppa Pig Paradox" - activist academic Lynda Korimboccus - Sentientist Conversations

Lynda (https://twitter.com/LMKorimboccus and http://www.korimboccus.com/) is an anthrozoologist, sociologist & philosopher who teaches sociology in Scottish Further Education. She is also a musician, songwriter, writer and artist. Lynda is Editor-in-Chief of the Student Journal of Vegan Sociology (http://www.vegansociology.com/journal/). Lynda’s recent paper, “The Peppa Pig Paradox”, was published in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies (http://journalforcriticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/JCAS-Vol-17-Iss-5-October-2020-1-FINAL.pdf).   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 audio is also on our Podcast - subscribe here: https://apple.co/391khQO & all the other platforms https://pod.link/1540408008.

The video of our conversation is here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_YjyCRc4ym8

We discuss:

- Being an activist academic

- The "Peppa Pig Paradox" and cognitive dissonance

- Critical Animal Studies and Vegan Sociology

- Multi-disciplinary perspectives spanning psychology, sociology, anthrozoology and philosophy

- "There's no such thing as an amateur philosopher"

- Being a child philosopher

- Growing up Methodist Christian with an ex-Muslim father who converted to Christianity, then later went back to Islam

- Drifting away from the church

- Being a "weak atheist" or agnostic

- Bible stories were only ever stories. Never believing they were true

- Reasons why people leave religions

- "I don't like labels". Having the freedom to choose what makes sense

- Compassion as a common theme running through, and pre-dating religions

- Religious sectarianism and violence in Scotland

- If we strip religious ethics back to universal compassion we don't need the supernatural beliefs as justifications

- Compassion, kindness, social justice and veganism as the central elements of Lynda's ethics

- Taking decisions to minimise harm

- The danger of socially constructed categories re: gender, race, species. Pets vs. farmed animals

- The risks of a human-centred perspective, even in our understanding of and use of sentience

- And much more (see YouTube or sentientism.info for full show notes)

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Lynda on our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.

Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

Thanks Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu