This short article aims to introduce the Sentientism worldview to the Religions and Worldviews education community in the UK. The original version was published here in the Spring 2024 newsletter of AREIAC, the Association for Religious Education Inspectors, Advisers and Consultants.

The Sentientism Worldview: “Evidence, reason, & compassion for all sentient beings”

Part of the excitement of modern Religious Education comes from exploring non-religious worldviews with children, an important element of the REC’s Religion and Worldviews approach. That exploration is timely as around half of UK people now say they have a non-religious worldview.

One increasingly popular modern worldview, that builds on ancient ideas, is Sentientism. You may have seen it mentioned in this RE Today resource or heard about it on The RE Podcast or the What Even Is RME? podcast.

Like other worldviews, whether religious or not, Sentientism looks to help us with the deep questions like “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better world?” Sentientism suggests we start answering those questions with a commitment to “evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings”.

Sentience is the capacity to feel or to have experiences like pain or happiness or boredom. So sentient beings are, so far, human and nonhuman animals. But, maybe one day, we’ll create or meet artificial or alien sentient beings that should matter too.

Sentientism’s “compassion for all sentient beings” shares rich common ground with religious concepts like ahimsa, compassionate stewardship, ital and avoiding mafsada. At the same time, its “evidence and reason” shares the humble, open-minded, evidence-led naturalistic epistemology of Humanism.

While Sentientism is a fairly new word, only coined in the 1970s, its core ideas are very old, maybe even pre-human. Naturalistic epistemology and sentience-focused ethics have deep roots in many regions and cultures and times. These themes can be found in African, Asian and ancient Greek thought, for example. Some thinkers even combined these ideas into something very much like an ancient form of Sentientism. One example is the blind Arab philosopher poet Al-Ma’arri who lived over a thousand years ago. He used a naturalistic approach to challenge religious thinking and wrote about the ethics of veganism long before the word “vegan” was invented. He’s a fascinating historic character to bring into the classroom to complement modern sentientist thinkers like Greta Thunberg, Billie Eilish, Peter Singer and Joaquin Phoenix.

Sentientism seems to be of particular interest to young people as it resonates with their concerns about the environment, their care for nonhuman animals, the threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence (could AI be sentient?) and the risks of misinformation, disinformation, conspiracism, discrimination and exclusionary ethics. Sentientism also provides a secular framework for finding meaning and purpose that many young people find compelling.

An additional attraction of teaching the Sentientism worldview is that its commitment to “evidence and reason” can be a gateway into the wider worlds of philosophy, science and the humanities. Even younger children engage richly in questions like “how can we work out what’s true?” and “who should we care about?” All too often these deep questions are neglected because we’re busy focusing on lists of beliefs and practices and on narrowly intra-human ethics.

Children of all ages also enjoy exploring the sometimes radical implications of this simple, pluralistic worldview. One of the most obvious implications of Sentientism is Veganism (see VinEs great resources here), now recognised in UK and EU Equalities Law as a cogent philosophical belief and a protected characteristic. But what about Sentientist Politics, Sentientist Justice and even a Universal Declaration of Sentient Rights? We can reimagine our entire world together.

Exploring the Sentientism worldview can help you bring real philosophical depth into your classroom in an engaging way that feels fresh and relevant to young people. In my own work with schools, I find children’s curiosity and compassion bubbles up with an irrepressible energy when we work on these profound questions.

If you’re interested in digging a little deeper, here’s a recording of a recent “Teaching Sentientism” webinar. I’m also registered with RE Hubs as a nationwide school speaker for Sentientism so I can help you run classes, workshops, deliver assemblies or shape curriculums. Please do get in touch if I can help in any way. And regardless, I’d love to hear your and your children’s thoughts on the Sentientism worldview.

Jamie Woodhouse (hello@sentientism.info)

Links: YouTube Podcast Sentientism.info Community (all welcome!) @Sentientism