Find our Sentientist Conversation here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism Podcast.

Luke (lukeroelofs.com & Majestic Equality) is a philosopher of mind at the Centre for Mind, Brain & Consciousness at New York University. Although Luke works primarily on philosophy of mind & metaphysics, their areas of interest include ethics, social & political philosophy, early modern philosophy and philosophy of gender & sexuality. Their book, “Reason, Empathy, and the Minds of Others” is under contract with Oxford University Press.

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.” As well as the video above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple and here on the other platforms​​​​​​.

We discuss:
0:00 Welcome

1:32 Luke’s Intro – Philosophy of Mind

• Linking epistemology (how can we know) and ethics
• Empathy
• Consciousness as “the state that we’re in whenever we’re aware of anything… and any possible variation… of states like that”

3:41 What’s Real?

• Growing up fairly non-religious, but not anti-religious
• Talking to “modern” Christians who focused on “the spirit of Jesus’ ethos”
• Seeking out more forthright religious perspectives
• Being a fairly convinced atheist since 14 yrs
• “There’s very little evidential weight in the specific claims of religious revelation”
• The idea the universe was contrived by a benevolent being… doesn’t seem supported by the very morally mixed character of existence
• “The great majority of existence is neither good nor bad – it’s just dust in space”
• Mysterious ways & ineffability
• Theodicies as reminiscent of the excuses humans make for abuse
• The “Just World” bias leads us to make excuses for suffering
• Faith as belief without evidence or faith as trust in & loyalty to your group

14:00 What (and Who) Matters?

• Going vegetarian. “There was something weird about eating animals”
• Going vegan at 13-14 to spite an annoying person who pointed out the logical inconsistency of being vegetarian
• “Fine… just to spite you I’m going to be vegan”
• Most potential changes in my beliefs wouldn’t change my moral beliefs
• Morality as a somewhat autonomous domain of reasoning
• The epistemology of imagination (of our own future states, or those of other sentient beings) as the link to ethics
• “Any argument will fail against someone who says ‘what if I don’t care about logical consistency'”
• The evolution of morality. The explosion of human intelligence, maybe through social needs?
• Empathy as a side-effect of the value of being able to predict the actions of other agents and maternal commitment
• “I don’t think there’s any clear line that can be drawn that will separate humans from animals in a way that seems like it ought to be morally compelling”
• More “advanced” human capabilities don’t unseat or supercede the more basic question about suffering or flourishing
• “I don’t want to say that a human life and a mosquito life have equal value”
• Degrees of sentience and degrees of moral value
• Sentientism’s focus on the boundary of moral consideration
• The potential convergence between ecocentric, biocentric and sentiocetric perspectives (e.g. re: animal farming and the environment)
• “I had philosophy books instead of social skills”
• “Arguments led to behaviour changes… I get the impression that’s not all that common among more normal people”

34:15 Panpsychism & Metaphysics

• “All things are conscious in the exact proportion to their physical complexity – down to even the simplest physical things which have some unimaginably simple conscious state.”
• Broad Sentientism (consciousness of any sort – pervasive) & Narrow Sentientism (capacity to experience suffering/flourishing – generally animals)
• “We may have a better intuitive grip on which things can have pleasure and suffering than on which things are conscious per se”
• “I understand other minds by reference to my own mind”
• Suffering, pleasure or desire?
• Plant sentience? “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere in a tree that puts everything together”
• Workspace integration & attention. Plants don’t seem to have either. They just have stimulus-reponse pairing
• If there is some type of plant experience it’s importantly different to that of animals
• Animals do have pleasure & displeasure because they have a nervous system that centralises & compares & integrates sensory input because they have a body that moves
• Sentient wholes & parts
• A system could be conscious but also have sub-systems that are in themselves conscious
• Micro-minds and the combination problem. Luke’s “Combining Minds” book
• Some non-materialists claim “the mind can’t have parts.” An indivisible and immaterial soul?
• “Trying to have my cake and eat it too” – seeing value in the integration of a system as well as it’s constituent parts
• Is too much ecocentrism and environmentalism a veneer over anthropocentrism? Maybe that’s unfair as many people do seem to have a genuine environmental concern
• “Maybe I love the biosphere because on some level I was always recognising its structure as an expression of some sort of sentience that I value.”
• “Philosophy is always playing catch up”
• “The cold light of day is not always the best light”
• Illusionism, Keith Frankish and Daniel Dennett
• Consciousness and sentience as biologically evolved classes of information processing?
• “Dennettian Panpsychism” and the convergences between panpsychism and materialist monisms (together against dualism)
• “There’s no consciousness but information processing” vs. “Consciousness is just what information processing is”
• The challenges of terminology re: consciousness
• “Illusionism feels like it’s left something out re: my experience”
• “If I weren’t a panpsychist I might well be a materialist of some fairly aggressive sort.” Other panpsychists prefer dualism as a second option
• “Woo” vs. more materialistic versions of panpsychism

1:01:36 Philosophy and The Future

• Human psychology
• Supernaturalism and anthropocentrism as “kryptonite” for otherwise careful thinkers
• “There are a lot of vegan philosophers”
• Intellectual workers need to be able to disconnect from real-life implications. That can be valuable but it can also block positive behaviour changes
• “The history of progressive movements is full of people who endorse high-sounding ideas but that need a push when it comes to acting”
• Animal liberation is really hard because there’s no one who both can advocate and has a self-interested stake – that makes progress slower
• Justice, solidarity and co-operation – facilitated by tech progress and higher standards of living and interpersonal connection
• Optimistic about the long-run, but we might not have a “long-run”
• If humans manage to get it to get to solve collective action problems (e.g. climate change) in time…
• Otherwise, environmental and resource pressure could dangerously undercut co-operation
• Populism, authoritarianism, nationalism, Trump and Netanyahu. Are we re-playing a lot of early 20th century history? Capitalist over-optimism leads to a collapse and reacitonary, even fascist movements?
• Capitalism is in some ways an improvement – but it also has a potential for global control and subsuming our social functions within it
• The danger of becoming too enamoured with the idea of progress per se. We need to see the real risks of new scientific ideologies. E.g. Eugenics was conceived as a positive idea, then used for horrific ends
• We need to struggle for empathy, equality and liberation
• Listen to those who are being oppressed, often through the intersections of different oppressions
• The need for a combination of naturalism and sentiocentric compassion
• “Majestic Equality” – “High ideals can easily be very empty if they’re not informed by attention to people’s concrete social position.”

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Thanks Graham for the post-production.