Matti (@matti_wilks​ & mattiwilks.com​) is a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, working with Professor Paul Bloom. She studies moral psychology & moral development – including attitudes to cultivated meat & the “natural”, the moral status of various types of entities & altruism.

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.” Click on the video above or here to watch. The audio is also on our Podcast – subscribe on Apple here & the other platforms here.

We discuss:

• Doing research to make the world a better place (& curiosity)
• Growing up non-religious (w/ ex-Jewish father) & vegetarian
• Seeing the benefits & value in religion: Community & compassion
• Open-mindedness & humility
• The danger of over-confidence in naturalism & science
• Researching ve*an children in meat-eating households
• Parallels between religious & omnivore societal defaults and indoctrination/norm setting
• Many “religious” people don’t actually hold to the supernatural beliefs
• Why do we have morality & what should morality be about?
• Being uncertain about whether there are moral truths
• Harm & suffering as inherently bad. The drive to reduce suffering
• Haidt et al’s Moral Foundations Theory
• Even if nothing matters to the universe, experiences matter to each individual sentient being
• Would Isaac killing his son have been right? (No)
• Isn’t choosing whether to care about suffering just choosing whether to be moral?
• People seem to be more ethically motivated than they used to be
• Even Greenwashing is a sign that more people care about the environment
• Public negativity re: factory farming
• Having the capacity to act more ethically is a privilege (being free of survival needs)
• Moral relativism
• Growing up around animals & becoming an “outraged” activist at 15-16 yrs
• Studying animal cognition. “The Gap” by Thomas Suddendorf
• Humans do have distinctive capacities but all sentient animals qualify for moral consideration
• The importance of the moral scope boundary
• Sentientism as pluralistic re: ethical systems
• Degrees of sentience vs. egalitarian approaches
• Sentience as a class of information processing?
• Most people don’t want to cause animal suffering, but personal/cognitive costs impede & their level of concern is lower than it should be vs. human exceptionalism
• Cognitive dissonance & motivated reasoning
• Most religious people still use naturalism for most decisions
• Supernatural and (flawed) scientific ways of justifying radical human supremacy
• Simpler sentients (non-human animals, human babies?) might even suffer more than humans. We can often mitigate our suffering
• “Humans are special, but not quite as special as we think we are”
• “We need to stop asking people to do the hard moral work”. Activists really want people to make a moral change
• “Once people change their behaviour they might be able to change their attitudes and start caring more”
• Cultured/cultivated meat as an example. People can keep doing what they enjoy but without the harms
• Righteousness & preaching are understandable but rarely effective
• The challenges of hiding our righteous indignation in order to engage constructively with others
• To change minds: Start from source they trust or with something they already agree with
• “If you care enough to be an advocate, you’re already not representative of your audience”. What motivates you probably won’t motivate them (e.g. many people go veg*n for health reasons)
• Tracy Schultz’ work re: disturbing images
• Is it naive to think kids are compassionate naturalists?
• “Young children weigh human & animal lives much more closely than adults do”
• “Young children are much less speciesist than adults” 1 human : 1.5 dogs or 6 pigs vs. 1 human : 100 animals
• In-group bias peaks at 4-5 yrs
• “Our strong speciesism is something we learn socially”
• The gap between belief & behaviour “X is wrong but I’m curious/tempted”
• We’ve won the moral argument. So focus more on making it easy (& normal) for people to change behaviour (but keep eyes on the moral outcome!)
• Going veg*n with others makes it much easier & more sticky
• It’s great you’re on a journey but don’t stop
• “Natural” rejection of GMOs/Golden Rice & similar risks for cultivated meat. Process over content
• Emotion (strong) vs. evidence (weak) re: updating beliefs.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

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Thanks, Graham for the post-production. Follow him at @cgbessellieu​.