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