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Joey (josephtuminello.academia.edu) is asst. professor of philosophy at McNeese State Uni & program coordinator for the nonprofits Farm Forward & Better Food Foundation (See also the Default Veg campaign). 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 audio is also on our Podcast – subscribe on Apple here ​​​& all the other platforms here​​​​​​.

We discuss:

• 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
• Sentience isn’t “how like humans are you?”. It’s just a characteristic humans happen to to have too
• The need for prudence re: assessing sentience. Giving entities the benefit of the doubt
• So much of the environmental movement grants ~zero moral consideration to farmed & many wild sentients
• Daoism. “The Dao that can be told is not the eternal way”. “Language can’t fully capture the nature of reality”
• Moral relativism
• The Is-ought barrier. I our ethics aren’t grounded somehow in reality – aren’t they arbitrary?
• Is the “moral circle” concept problematic? Humans at the centre, patronisingly granting moral consideration based on similarity to humans
• “Growing up I knew there was something weird about eating meat” & having a love for animals
• Breaking the deliberate obfuscation of links between animal products & animals
• Documentary Food Inc.
• Parallels betw. leaving religion & going vegan
• Seafood & meat deeply embedded in Louisiana culture
• Veganism is getting so much easier, like vegetarianism was ~10 yrs ago?
• Finding elements in cultures & religions that are open to non-human animal ethics (e.g. Andrew Linzey). Compassion, re-casting stewardship & dominion
• Veganising cajun foods!
• The deep, global roots of naturalistm & sentiocentrism
• Compassion for people indoctrinated into doing harm. But public intellectuals, philosophers & Humanists?
• Moral philosophers seem to be no more moral than anyone else. Experts at post-rationalisation?
• “Be open to the possibility that you could be wrong about everything you think”
• Zoonosis, anti-microbial resistance, climate impacts
• Systemic change
• Pluralism & pragmatism
• Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals”
• BFF’s DefaultVeg initiative – vegan by default!
• Moral purity vs. effective change. “You’re on a journey but just don’t stop”
• “I’m concerned with oppression in all its forms”

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​. Join our I’m a Sentientist “wall” using this simple form​.

​Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. The main one is here on Facebook.

Thanks to Graham for the post-production!