Sentientism

Lu (https://twitter.com/LuShegay) is an animal law attorney from Kazakhstan, now based in the USA. She is the co-founder and Managing Director of the Institute of Animal Law of Asia (https://www.ialasia.org/ and https://twitter.com/ianimallawasia). In 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 here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:15 Lu's Intro - Animal law from Kazakhstan to the USA 2:07 What's Real? - Kazakhstan as a secular country, with Islam and Christianity the main religions - Being brought to Christianity by Lu's mother - Learning about religion and realising "it's not real - god is not real" - Believing "there's somebody above us but they're not like us" - "I believe in the universe and I believe in science" -  Believing using facts and reason, but also believing there are some things that can't be explained 6:52 What Matters Morally? - Morality can come from the heart. Listening to ourselves re: what feels right or wrong - Having compassion & putting yourself in someone else's shoes - As a child: loving animals but still eating animals - Re-considering animal ethics while exploring animal law in Kazakhstan - "The legal system doesn't work well in Kazakhstan even for humans" so many aren't ready for the animal law field - Studying animal law in the USA and learning about animal suffering - Dr Raj Reddy's class "changed my world" https://law.lclark.edu/live/profiles/7148-rajesh-reddy - Going vegetarian - Learning about what happens to male chicks in the egg industry. Giving up eggs - Going vegan. "It came to me naturally that I was doing something wrong" - Eating meat is central to culture in Kazakhstan but there are meat and dairy alternatives - Family not understanding veganism. Questioning health and ethics - "I've only met one other vegan in Kazakhstan" - Biocentrism, ecocentrism and the interdependencies for sentients - Loving space, but not understanding why governments spend so much more on exploring other planets rather than caring for ours and exploring our oceans - Long-termism. Space colonisation 21:54 The Future - Being realistic about moral scope expansion - Raising awareness and educating people - Recognising that different countries have very different contexts. Where there are serious human crises it's harder to prioritise non-human issues - The non-human animal law agenda across Asia - Does law follow culture and politics or can it lead and innovate as well? - In many Asian countries politics & law don't respond to public opinion - Some countries have animal laws but there is no enforcement (e.g. Kazakhstan animal cruelty legislation) - Different animal law approaches (cruelty, personhood, farming/fishing) - The EU and UK recognising the salience of animal sentience - "I'm positive about our future... I experienced the rapid change in my own views". Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

Henry (https://twitter.com/henrymance) is the chief features writer for the Financial Times newspaper. He is the author of "How to Love Animals in a Human Shaped World." (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/1606708923_how-to-love-animals-in-a-human-shaped-world/9781787332089). In 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. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:27 Henry's Intro - Studying environmental policy - Photography and the natural world - Working for a biodiversity think tank in Colombia - Journalism at the Financial Times - Writing "How to Love Animals..." - "It hasn't really been about changing my values... it's been about trying to align my behaviours." 3:25 What's Real? Anglican Christianity - Keith Thomas' "Man and the Natural World" - Different Christian perspectives on non-human animals - Is the Noah's Ark story one reason why we find zoos acceptable? - "Noah's Ark is not a particularly good model for conservation" - "We think we're Noah but in fact we're the flood" - Interviewing the Archbishop of Canterbury "Pets do go to heaven!" - Animal Interfaith Alliance - "Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom or compassion" - Talking to Mongolian Buddhists about eating meat "if you don't see the killing it's less of a sin" - How distance means we allow animal farming to continue - JW: "The Dalai Lama isn't vegan and he has no excuses" - How Anglicanism focuses on compassion & love rather than dogmatic rules - Obedience vs. compassion in religious ethics - The church has often been behind the curve in ethics - "Iris Murdoch's idea of love helped me more than any direct religious underpinning" 13:00 What Matters? - At first "I wanted animals to be OK because I liked looking at them." Polar bears and orangutans - The impact of humanity on wild animals - Shifting to take the animals' point of view - Being forced to think about animal farming in Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens - How viewing species of animals as "eaten" reduces our assessment of sentience - We spend money on our pets medical bills that could save human lives - "If it happens like this it must be tolerable" - "Sentience is a pretty good starting point" - Are bivalves & insects sentient? - The richness of bee behaviour & the risks of insect farming - "Surely people can see for themselves - that is a conscious animal" - Edge cases vs. the core issue of animal farming - "There is something really special about consciousness" vs biocentrism & ecocentrism - Whether you care about sentience or ecosystems what you have in common is "Factory farming is a complete disaster" - And much more (see Sentientism.info or YouTube for full show notes). Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

Richard (https://twitter.com/onemorebrown & https://onemorebrown.com/)  is a philosopher at CUNY. His work is focused on the philosophy of mind, consciousness studies & the foundations of cognitive science. He also has interests & projects in the philosophy of language, metaethics, philosophy of physics, logic, the philosophy of logic and the history of philosophy. In 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 here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:10 Richard's Intro: A carbon-based philosopher. 2:08 What's real? - Attending Christian and other religious venues. Mother converting to being a Jehovah's Witness - "I found it incredible - in the sense of not possible to believe" - "Worship me or die" - Theodicy & the problem of evil - Refusing baptism at the age of 14. "If you live in my house you're going to do this." - Running away, stealing a motorcycle, being arrested & spending 4 years at juvenile hall - Scholarship & philosophy - Atheistic re: formal religions: "I find the stuff in all the holy texts to be obviously man made", but agnostic re: theism - What counts as evidence? Fine tuning, arguments from design? - Simulation hypothesis. Maybe our creator is a teenager in the next universe up or hyper-dimensional mice - God as a genocidal maniac - Religious homophobia - Naturalistic ethics based on reason (vs. authority/fear/obedience) - "It's better to do the naturalistic thing because you have to ultimately do it anyway" - Islam means "peace through submission" - "It's undignified to demand worship" 18:29 What matters morally? - "I always thought it was obvious that there are things that matter morally" - Being raised vegetarian, then going vegan - The optimistic futurism of the 1950's - JW pamphlets depicting a transhumanist utopia where we've engineered the predators to eat Impossible Burgers - "I was raised to see animals as companions & friends & family members" - Kant, universalism, freedom & autonomy - Theirs is valuable because mine is valuable - "There's something rational about morality" - "I couldn't make sense of sociopaths" - Hume's is/ought - A flaw in traditional Kantian ethics is that "only 'rational creatures' get into the club". Christine Korsgaard corrects - Ethical pluralism & moral considerability 32:42 Sentience, consciousness and p-zombies - Panpsychism as a popular alternative to the impasse between physicalism & dualism - Can electrons experience/suffer? Are they pieces of consciousness? If so, surely they're bored? - Epiphenomenalism - We often respond before we are conscious - "The mind is the brain" - Is panpsychism any more outlandish than the concept of fields in physics? ... And much more. See YouTube and Sentientism.info. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/.  Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

Heather (https://twitter.com/zoophilosophy & https://www.heatherbrowning.net/) is a scientist, philosopher & a former zookeeper & welfare officer. She is now a researcher at the London School of Economics specialising in animal sentience, welfare, & ethics.  In 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 here on the Sentientism YouTube. We discuss: 1:33 Heather Intro - biology to zookeeping to philosophy - Volunteering, later working at zoos. Getting to know animals - Studying zoology/biology - Studying philosophy, shifting to PhD focus on measuring animal welfare - "Cheetahs don't really like to run" - How do "natural behaviours" relate to animal welfare - Trying to take the animal's point of view - The Foundations of Animal Sentience programme at LSE - The power of interdisciplinary work 10:55 What's real? - Growing up in a fairly naturalistic household. Occasional church visits - Being encouraged to question & explore - Joining a church group for the community - Balking at religious rules/restrictions - Asking questions & not getting answers - "Science just seemed like the best way of investigating the world" - Scientists are flawed humans too - There are many things we don't know & some we may never understand - We're evolved creatures that have developed heuristics that have been useful to us for survival/procreation - The dangers of a need for/expectation of perfection - Dangers of over-confidence/dogma/motivated reasoning in science 21:54 What matters morally? - Naturalism does involve giving up meaning, but we can create our own meaning - Hedonist nihilism. What matters to me? - Sitting between naturalising or eliminating morality, vs. moral realism - Evolutionary basis of human consciousness, including empathy, fairness, co-operation (and not just in humans) - "What matters is the subjective pleasure and pains we have in our lives" - "Our wellbeing is an objective fact about the world" - Empathy is caring about the wellbeing of others 31:42 Which entities matter? Moral scope - "I've always loved animals" - At 5 yrs "When I grow up I want to be a zookeeper" - Finding it difficult to eat meat. Feeling disgust  - Saying "I'm vegetarian" to get out of cooking meat in a class, then realising "I could just do that" and going vegetarian at 12 yrs - Supportive parents: "Now you need to learn to cook!" & being joined by a sister - A friend was told "You can't go vegetarian" - And much more... See Sentientism.info or YouTube for full notes. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join Heather on our "I'm a Sentientist" wall https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.

Marcus (https://twitter.com/MarcusDaniell) is a professional tennis player from New Zealand. He is a philanthropist and an advocate for effective altruism through his work as the founder of High Impact Athletes (https://highimpactathletes.org/) and as a member of Giving What We Can.  In 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 here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome 1:45 Marcus intro - pro tennis and High Impact Athletes charity 3:02 What's real? - Growing up on a farm in New Zealand - A "spiritual" father and a "hippie" mother - Pragmatism, a love for nature and animals, but a comfort with death. Hunting as a child - Attending Christian schools - Enjoying Religious Education but never buying in. Being agnostic/atheist from a young age - Moving alone to Slovakia for tennis - Discovering "spirituality" and eastern philosophies - Studying philosophy at university - Discovering animal ethics but thinking "I'm an athlete, I need meat" - A turning point when a friend ordered whale in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo - Going veg*an a week later - Finding awe and wonder in a naturalistic/scientific worldview - "Put me next to the ocean or in a forest or a jungle and it's like experiencing magic for me" - Naturalistic karma? Putting positive energy into the world and getting positive things back 14:06 What matters? Humans and non-humans - Meeting a vegan tennis pro - "I now feel like I'm living in my space in the world - in the right way" - A sense of solidity... "That's really helped me" - Our lack of understanding of non-human sentients - Intelligence vs. sentience as a moral qualifier - "I would consider myself a sentientist now" - I try to give respect to all sentient beings. If they can suffer, try not to cause them suffering - Artificial sentients? Does suffering matter regardless of species or substrate? - Sentience as an evolved class of information processing that could also be programmed in - Luna the puppy makes an audio appearance - Existential, catastrophic and suffering risks (S-risks) - Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. Trying not to cause suffering - It's so easy not to think. "I wonder how we can create more of these culturally shocking moments to make more people understand" - The morals were somewhere there, just hidden under layers of culture and tradition 28:05 The Future - Talking to others about animal products and hearing "We agree on all the reasons but I'm not going to make the change" - "I would love for the world to be plant-based" - Is regenerative animal farming an option? - Can slaughter ever be humane? - The broad common ground re: rejecting factory farming - And more... (see YouTube or Sentientism.info). Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ w/this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Marcus is on our "celebs" page: https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/marcus-daniell. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.

Aysha (https://twitter.com/DrAyshaAkhtar & http://www.ayshaakhtar.com/) is a neurologist, public health specialist & author. She is President & CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences (https://contemporarysciences.org/). She worked for the Office of Counterterrorism & Emerging Threats of the FDA & served as Lieutenant Commander in the US Public Health Service. She is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Aysha wrote: "Animals &  Public Health: Why treating animals better is critical to human welfare." In 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 here on YouTube. We discuss: 0:00 Welcome & Sentientism 2:10 Aysha Intro - Neurology, public health, emerging threats (e.g. pandemics) - Setting up CCS to replace all animal research and testing with human relevant methods 4:27 What's Real? Renouncing Islam, becoming atheist - Growing up in a Pakistani Muslim family, but more culturally than strictly religious - Calling herself a Muslim, but then seeing how her father & Muslim society treated girls & women differently - Feeling pressure to dress modestly - Announcing "I renounce Islam" at 11 yrs old - Still believing in a god, then becoming an atheist - "Why would a god care about me and not someone else living a miserable life?" "If there is a god, why is there so much suffering?" - How can the suffering we cause animals be something a god could allow? - Religion helps people feel less lost. Understanding why people cling to it - Meaning, value, moral structure, purpose, community, love, awe & wonder are available naturalistically too. 15:50 What Matters Morally? All suffering & flourishing beings - Keeping the good parts of religious morality - "Living a life that causes the least amount of harm & the greatest amount of joy possible" - "Of course that includes non-human animals because they feel, they have emotions" - Our moral basics can be very simple - Rights, dignity, personhood, sentience - Why so much philosophy assumes only humans matter. The fundamental mistake of disregarding so much suffering - People seem more concerned about the potential suffering of AI & mini organic brains, while not caring about animals - Experiencing sexual abuse & finding solace with Sylvester the dog "my best friend" - Finding out Sylvester was being physically abused & calling that out, then finding the confidence to stand up for herself - Accidentally being sent PETA materials about the life of a dairy cow. The family went vegetarian that evening - Being a vegetarian in the Pakistani community in the 1980's was unheard of - Being made fun of my other kids, but "I didn't give a damn". "I didn't care what they thought about me I cared what they thought about the issue" - Reading Regan, Singer. Finding the connections between human & non-human ethics & rights - "We were such nerds" 31:05 What are sentience & consciousness? - And more - see YT! Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/. Join our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ w/this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist.   Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups e.g.: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism.

Josh (https://josh-milburn.com/ & https://twitter.com/JoshLMilburn & https://www.instagram.com/aveganphilosopher/) is a moral & political philosopher with research interests in animal ethics, the philosophy of food, liberal & libertarian political theory & applied ethics. He is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dept of Politics & International Relations at the University of Sheffield. He co-hosts the Knowing Animals podcast. 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 here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/akBBFREpveU. We discuss: - Taking an interdisciplinary approach to academia & activism - Encountering various religious traditions as a child - Thinking "I don't believe that" at 8 years old re: Noah's ark - Being a "militant atheist" as a teenager - Studying religions to undergrad level - What is real & what we can know to be real - There is a world out there but we don't know all about it - Science & naturalism - Dogma vs open-mindedness & humility - Moral realism & different kinds of claim/evidence - The dangers of moral relativism & nihilism - Grounding morality in a naturalistic understanding of sentient beings & sentience. "I don't suffering & I don't think you do either" - Pluralism - Religious studies didn't cover philosophy - Being very resistant to vegetarianism. A fundamental challenge - Reading Peter Singer at 17 while considering studying philosophy - "Philosophers are often not the best activists" - Philosophical arguments don't have the same impact on everyone - Some people "get it" but still don't change. Others just don't get it - "Imagine animals had rights - how would we feed the world?... It would't be a vegan food system." Clean/cultivated meats & milks - "Can we get to an ethical food system without people having to change their practices at all?" - Animals where it's less certain whether they are sentient. Invertebrates, oysters, jellyfish, insects, sponges - Deciding how to act in the face of uncertainty - "It's got to be a high bar to say 'you cannot do that thing that is central to your life'" but "Sentient animals have rights" and that's enough to tell pig farmers to stop - Edge cases re: veganism & animal ethics - Liberalism & state coercion. Only using coercion when injustice is clear - Having compassion for human sentients too, even those doing harm - #JustTransition - The history of the term "Sentientism". Rodman, Ryder, Singer - It's hard not to be consequentialist in its broadest sense - Deontological rules do have to pay attention to what happens - Gary Francione's abolitionism - Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka's Zoopolis - Sentientism as a pluralistic philosophy - "Animal activists don't have to be on the political left" - Sentientism rules out intra-human discriminations. Racism/homophobia etc. don't belong - Robert Nozick was a vegetarian & a libertarian - And much more. See https://sentientism.info/ or YouTube for full show notes. Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at https://sentientism.info/.  Join Josh on our "wall" https://sentientism.info/wall/ using this form: https://sentientism.info/im-a-sentientist. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Main one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks to Graham for the post-prod https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.

Joey (https://josephtuminello.academia.edu/) is asst. professor of philosophy at McNeese State Uni & program coordinator for the nonprofits Farm Forward & Better Food Foundation (See also Default Veg). His research covers philosophies of food, medicine, animals & environment. He teaches biomedical ethics & sections of ethical theory & existentialism. 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 also here on YouTube (subscribe there too!). We discuss (full show notes are on YouTube and Sentientism.info): - Growing up in a Catholic household in Louisiana - "Who's your mama, are you Catholic & can you make a roux?" - Questioning religion early on. Developing scepticism. Understanding mechanisms of control in religion & beyond - Hard-core atheist phase & studying philosophy - Non-theism & atheism. Tempered with humility & openness - "Open-mindedness & scepticism go hand in hand" - Deciding not to get confirmed - Attending Catholic high school that didn't welcome questioning & experiencing social adversity - Social justice & hateful interpretations of some religions (e.g. Westboro Baptist Church) - Using religious arguments to justify discriminations - Analytic philosophy & challenging religious inconsistencies - "Ambiguity & tension is part of the human experience" - Humility & open-mindedness needs to be at the core of naturalism - The arrogance in "angry atheism" - Getting comfortable not knowing. With-holding belief until there's evidence - Meta-physics & ethics - "We don't have access to the ultimate nature of reality" but there are still things we can meaningfully say about reality - Experiences are happening. Phenomenology, directed consciousness & the self/non-self - Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" - Consciousness, interests that matter and ethics (caring about the interests of others) - Lacking a justification for the exploitation or oppression of others, human or not - The "Embrace The Void" podcast with Joey's friend Aaron - Pre-human morality - Is the choice to be moral simply the choice to care about the perspectives of others - Moral inter-subjectivism. There are moral truths independent of each mind but they do require an interface between subjects - Sentient beings do matter morally, but is sentience the only thing that matters? Is cutting down a tree wrong if it has no impact on sentients? - The risk of anthropocentrism, because humans are defining & assessing sentience. But sentience existed long before & far beyond humans - And much more... see YouTube. 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. Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Main one is here on FaceBook. Thanks to Graham.

Walter (https://twitter.com/wrwveit & https://walterveit.com/) is an interdisciplinary scientist, philosopher & writer focusing on biology, minds & ethics. He publishes the ‘Science & Philosophy‘ series on Psychology Today & Medium. 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." Our conversation is also here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xxSGItuaSn4. We discuss: - Defending Descartes, as a child! - Studying philosophy, politics, economics & science - Writing a PhD on the philosophy of consciousness. How sentience came to arise in a purely physical universe - Growing up in an agnostic family, attending church but "grumbling" - Finding it strange learning about god at school. Asking annoying questions :) - A brief early teenage phase of believing in god, then reverting to atheism - Church seemed like a "weird cult-like thing." "It just didn't make sense." - There are thousands of religions. They can't all be right. Just disbelieving in one more than religious people do - Being a "hard-core naturalist" but still feeling the pull of superstition - Finding naturalism reassuring. Can abandon the "f*cking scary stuff" (monsters, ghosts, hell) - We can just enjoy our lives & explore the universe - The pull of being part of something larger. The universe, a tribe, a sports team fan group... - The hesitation in Germany about collectivism - "It's a peculiar world we live in - it's exciting" - Does morality crumble without the normative force of a god. "A dude in the sky making up laws and we just have to follow them" - People sceptical of morality aren't sceptical about laws. You can break them but there might be consequences - Too much of morality seems arbitrary. But Bentham almost proposed utilitarianism as a sort of science, not morality - Utilitarians in the UK were engaged in politics & in improving the world - Instead of considering morality - just consider the facts re: "What do animals want from their own point of view" - Facts: animals exist. They can be harmed. They don't like suffering - Humans evolved as a social species. That makes us care - "Morality" might create more harms than benefits! - There is no dividing line between humans and other animals because we all have interests - Both morality and religion have been used to divide humans & animals - Even oppressive groups have divided people through an appeal to morality - The deep connection between morality and spirituality/religion. Often naturalists & atheists don't see the danger - Naturalists are attacked for being amoral but are no less moral - And much more... Full show notes are on Sentientism.info. I ran out of space! 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.   Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sentientism. Thanks, Graham for the post-prod: https://twitter.com/cgbessellieu.

Kristof is a social psychologist and senior lecturer at the university of Kent where he runs SHARKLab (Study of Human InterGroup & Animal Relations). He is the author of "Why We Love and Exploit Animals". We discuss: - The psychology of human-animal relations - Links between sexism, racism & speciesism - "Us humans are weird". We're not fully rational decision makers - Being sceptical of our own rationality - Knowing the right answer isn't the same as persuading others to agree or make changes - Growing up in Belgium, a largely Catholic country but with many who are non-practicing - Attending church, then becoming "strongly atheist" because of evidence, but also "the nasty stuff" (sexism, homophobia, racism) - Being raised with values of compassion & respect. Finding those values in Christianity, other religions and in Humanism - Moving to a more nuanced view of the good and bad in religion - Traditions and rituals have value for some people. As long as they don't cause harm to people outside or within the group - The abuse of power in institutionalised religion - Pre-human proto-morality - We don't need supernatural beliefs to justify compassionate ethics. We just need them too justify harmful ethics - Religious schooling - Being angry with the world as a teenager: religion; capitalism; animal products; injustice - then being led to study human behaviour - Taking teenage rebellion and applying it to social justice activism in academia - Moral intuitions re: "freedom, equality and avoiding harm to others" - Freedom & equality shouldn't just be left wing concerns. They're much more widely shared - Sentience matters re: moral consideration, not intelligence - Are freedom and equality fundamental or important because of how they impact suffering/flourishing? - Caring about animals. Having companion animals as family members - The Meat Paradox - Seeing a family member killing chickens and rabbits - The hardcore punk music scene & Straight Edge. Bands with a clear, constructive message re: politics & animal ethics & anti-fascism (vs. more pessimistic grunge and 1970's punk) - "I can't keep eating meat any more", supported by the positive social pressure of the music scene & friends making the change - Parents initially resisting veg*nism, needing to learn DIY (it's easier now!) - Learning about dairy/eggs & going vegan at University - Wild animal suffering and how to prioritise it vs. animal farming/fishing. The risk of paternalism/hubris - Effective Altruism - Benevolent & hostile sexism - Sentientism's focus on inclusive moral consideration - The challenges of rescue and sanctuary animals and predator companion animals - The default human answer of "kill them all" re: issues with wild animals - Animals don't care what category we put them in. They suffer just the same - And much more... (full notes at https://sentientism.info/) 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. 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.