40: "Compassion needs to be grounded in reality" - Jessica Pierce - Bioethicist and Author - Sentientist Conversation

Jessica Pierce (https://www.jessicapierce.net/) is a bioethicist & writer. Her work focuses on human-animal relationships & interconnections between ecosystems & health. Her "All dogs go to heaven" blog at Psychology Today is here https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-dogs-go-heaven.

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 on the Sentientism Youtube here: https://youtu.be/mUg6gWbCo1U

We discuss:

- Training in philosophy & religious studies

- How ethics intersects w/biomedical science

- Working for 10 years in medicine

- Medicine can damage and enable health

- Shifting to focus on non-human animal ethics

- Companion animal relationships & the experience of losing Ody

- The parallels between non-human animal & human care/ethics

- Breaking the default assumption that "humans are the raw materials of ethics"

- Growing up in an "outdoorsy" family in the Sierras & Colorado

- Attending Buddhist temples, synagogues, churches. A wide variety of religions

- Finding kernels of truth in every tradition but "you don't want to get stuck in one"

- Studying religion from undergrad to phd

- "How is someone with a phd in religion an atheist?" "When you study religion it turns you that way."

-  Not rejecting the theist traditions, but also not embracing them

- If there is some "god" (with a small "g") then it's in nature and if there's a "heaven" then its a state of mind, a state of being in harmony and peace.

- "Humans are not the centre of the universe"

- Our attitude that we can just exploit and use the world is an offense

- "I would put myself in that camp of naturalism"

- The appeal of pantheism

- The trap of human arrogance (both scientists and religious people seeing humans as "like gods")

- And much more (visit Sentientism.info for full show notes)...

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

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