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

David is an activist & chief petitioner of the Yes On IP13 campaign (www.yesonip13.org & @yesonip13) which aims to outlaw the harming & killing of sentient animals in the US state of Oregon. That’s without exceptions for animal agriculture, hunting, research or other forms of exploitation. Originally with a background in psychology & public health, David’s switch to activism began after bearing witness to pigs being killed in gas chambers.

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.” In addition to the video above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple and here elsewhere.

We discuss:
00:00 Welcome

01:29 David’s Intro

• Being new to activism
• IP13: Criminalising killing & breeding animals in the state of Oregon
• “We’re asking for what we want”
• Linking the academic & the real world

04:03 What’s Real?

• Culturally Jewish/Christian family branches
• Religion was just a label
• Having a Bar Mitzvah to “side with my mother… it made religion seem arbitrary to me”
• “They taught me how to read Hebrew but never taught me what I was saying”
• “It wasn’t a worldview… it wasn’t used to make sense of the world”
• “Sitcoms were more of a determinant of what’s real”
• Meeting people who had done atheist & animal outreach
• “Free yourself from those harmful social norms!”
• UFOs, conspiracy theories & religion
• There’s enough awesomeness in reality
• “I was angry when I learned that Santa wasn’t real”
• Investigating Santa as a child w/a hidden camera
• Why do we lie to children about so many things?
• Homeopathy, “stop the steal”, astrology, tea leaves…
• “Psychedelics made me more naturalistic & gave me the final push to go vegan as well”… connectedness
• Buddhism & Plum Village monks
• Talking to a flat earther
• The challenge of having enough, but not too much scepticism
• Epistemological & methodological naturalism
• “Pretend naturalism” (only considering evidence supporting what you already want to believe)
• What evidence would change your mind?

24:55 What (& Who) Matters?

• Intuitive ethics
• Vegetarian at 14 “I didn’t want to eat animals”
• “‘I’m not very much of an animal lover”
• “I thought that cows had to be milked” & eggs were “picked up like an easter egg hunt”
• Going vegan, then learning about dairy/eggs
• Watching Dominion then getting involved in activism
• “A baseline of avoiding violence”
• Compassion for victims vs. judging human actions
• Judging moral agents (actions/decisions) vs. the impact on moral patients/victims (outcomes)
• Freedom from fear & violence as a need of individual sentient beings
• Non-violence is the the best way of meeting all of our needs
• Free will & determinism & moral luck
• Restoration/rehabilitation/protection/deterrence vs retributive justice
• Non-violent communication, Rosenberg
• Beauvoir’s “Ethics & Ambiguity”
• “The freedom to oppress others isn’t a freedom we should respect”
• Anti-Vaxx: bodily autonomy vs. putting others at risk
• “Everything comes back to sentience”
• Fear of violence as an imposition on freedom & flourishing
• “The animals live mostly under fear”
• “Only sentient beings have these sorts of needs”
• Still feel connected to non-sentient things but there’s a distinction
• “You can’t grant rights to a river & not to a pig”
• “There’s no sentience at the species level”
• Wild animal suffering, whether human caused or not
• “All suffering has to matter, surely?”
• “Until people start caring about the animals they’re directly hurting…” will they care about wild animals?

53:58 How Can we Make a Better World?

• David’s IP13 Nov 2022 election ballot measure in Oregon: “A bottom up approach to legislation”
• Helpful naivety: “You need to be naive to challenge institutions like this!”
• 112k supporting signatures, then on the ballot, then a public yes/no vote
• Animal abuse is “intentional reckless injury of an animal”
• If you’re enjoying the physical or sexual abuse you’re bad. If you’re abusing for other reasons – that’s fine
• Victims’ perspective is ignored
• Remove exemptions (farming, hunting, pest control, fishing, research) from Oregon’s animal cruelty law. Criminalising injuring & breeding & killing of animals
• “create a sanctuary state”
• “I don’t know if it’s the most effective but it’s authentic” (vs. welfare)
• Anyone can donate!
• Laws influence ethics
• “We can choose what is right & wrong”
• #JustTransition plans, property status, sanctuaries
• Give farmers the opportunity to really care for animals
• The goal is to stop this everywhere, not just Oregon.

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

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Thanks Graham for the post-production.