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

Constantine is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, Director of Lex Academic and a Fellow of the RSA. He describes his philosophical interests as “unfashionably broad, but I work primarily in the philosophy of action, moral psychology, and interpersonal understanding. I also have an interest in the psychology of philosophy, as advanced by Hume, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein.” He spent most of his twenties as a theatre director and playwright. Constantine writes a quarterly opinion column for The Philosophers’ Magazine, contributes to Times Higher Education and The Times Literary Supplement, and frequently appears as a guest on radio programmes such as The Moral Maze, Analysis, and Free Thinking.

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

01:15 Constantine’s Intro

• “I’m looking forward to finding out if I’m a Sentientist or not”
• Teaching & researching philosophy
• Phil of action, Wittgenstein & Hume, virtue ethics, anti-vegan rhetoric
• Rejecting the separation betweeen human & non-human animals “Who are ‘we’ anyway?”
• The value of improving human worldviews (epistemology & ethics)
• Beliefs & values & reasons driving action

08:07 What’s Real?

• Greek Orthodox Christian upbringing but “science was taken very seriously”
• Born in India, living in Zimbabwe
• Being placed in “Protestant” vs. “Catholic” or “Ethics” class
• Agnostic as a teenager
• Degree at Oxford in phil & theology “By the end of that degree I was atheist”
• “The more you read about it [the bible] as a human text…”
• Studying Christian moral reasoning & Nietzsche
• Wittgenstein & Kierkegaard
• “I’m not one of those Dawkins style atheists”
• “I just don’t have this faith”
• “Everyday life was very naturalistic”
• Culturally Christian
• Those who stay religious but update the ethics
• “I think there are things we can’t explain”
• Doubt as central to science & naturalism
• “I know the precise second I switched from agnostic to atheist” in a phil of religion lecture: “Just because it’s possible something exists & you can’t disprove it’s existence doesn’t mean you’re agnostic about it… a 3 headed dragon in some other galaxy.” Atheism & Adragonism 🙂
• Norms re: religious rituals/marriage
• Why do religious organisations get a pass re: basic ethics? (sexism, homophobia, abuse)?
• Atheist societies often suffer from similar problems
• The good that can come from religion
• Allen Ginsberg re: homophobia in Cuba
• Post-truth, QAnon, homeopathy, Flat Earth… epistemology fails
• Refusing medical treatment on religious grounds
• Vountary euthanasia
• Wearing the hijab
• Personal autonomy, but don’t harm others

35:18 What Matters & Who Matters?

• “Half Humean, half Wittgensteinian”
• Contrasting reason & care
• Annette Baier
• Hume: Reason as the “slave of the passions”… Without “care”, ethics would be very different
• Hume did talk about non-human animals
• Justice, equality, suffering
• Mark Schroeder’s “Slaves of the Passions”: “If there was no such thing as desire ethics could not take hold”
• Caring has to come before reason
• Wittgenstein: “It can’t be reasons all the way down… there’s something very animal & primitive at the basis”
• Many philosophers try to separate humans from other animals using “reason”. Hume & Wittgenstein both say “no… we share behaviours & desires”
• Ahimsa
• “Humanism is just way too focused on one animal… it’s kind of like religion for people who don’t want to believe in god”
• “What’s important is not harming other beings… first do no harm”. Why can that view garner so much hatred?
• “What is so radical about not wanting to harm beings that feel pain”
• Theophrastus https://sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/theophrastus
• A meat-eating family
• Meeting veg*ns at unversity
• Teaching ethics
• Rosalind Hursthouse “Humans & other animals” virtue ethics “but she was eating veal!”
• Went vegetarian (vegan was considered radical). Vegan for 5 yrs
• A “Slower, old school journey”
• “Consequences matter a lot”
• Does consequentialism risk majoritarianism?
• Biocentrism & ecocentrism “I don’t really see how you can harm a rock”
• Species vs. individuals
• Panpsychism
• Cultivated meat

01:12:09 How Can We Make a Better World?

• Semi optimistic & pessimistic
• Climate catastrophe
• “People thought veganism was a fad & it isn’t”
• #JustTransition for communities
• “You can end world hunger if you re-distribute the food the animals are eating”
• The agri/env clash
• Cat diets
• Progress? “The penny can drop”
• The distinction between “the doing & the thing done”

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

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Thanks Graham for the post-production.