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

Melanie Joy, PhD, is a Harvard-educated psychologist specializing in relationships, communication, and social transformation. She is the award-winning author of six books, including the new How to End Injustice Everywhere and the bestselling Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows and Getting Relationships Right: How to Build Resilience and Thrive in Life, Love, and Work. Melanie is also an internationally recognized speaker and trainer who’s presented her work in fifty countries across six continents.

Melanie is best known for her groundbreaking theories on the psychology of violence and nonviolence and building healthy relationships. Her analyses have helped explain why people engage in “nonrelational” behaviors—behaviors that harm other people, animals, the planet, and themselves—as well as how to change this pattern. Her work has been featured by media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, BBC, NPR, and ABC Australia. She is the eighth recipient of the Ahimsa Award—previously given to the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela—for her work on global nonviolence; and she also received both the Peter Singer Prize and the Empty Cages Prize for her work developing strategies to reduce the suffering of non-human animals. Melanie is the founding president of the international organization, Beyond Carnism.

Melanie is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview. She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

Melanie on Wikipedia
How to End Injustice Everywhere
Beyond Carnism
Infighting.org
MelanieJoy.org
@DrMelanieJoy

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

Kendra is a professor of management and organisational studies at Huron University and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is a leading expert on animals and work, animal protection organizations and policy, and gender equity. Kendra has led multiple research projects enriching our understanding of human-animal work and animals’ own forms of labour in important new directions including through development of the concepts of humane jobs, interspecies solidarity, and ecosocial reproduction.

Kendra's latest book is Defending Animals: Finding Hope on the Front Lines of Animal Protection. She is the author of dozens of scholarly articles, book chapters, and public reports, as well as the path-making Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity. She is the co-editor of Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? Kendra has also published more than sixty columns including for The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Salon, Ottawa Citizen, Winnipeg Free Press, Edmonton Journal, The Conversation, iPolitics, and National Observer. Her work has so far been translated into French, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, German, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Kendra is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope. She is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview.

@DrKendraCoulter
Kendra on Insta
Kendra at Huron University

I am in favor of sentientism because I believe 'any individual who is capable of subjective experience should be considered a moral subject'. I also believe in treating feeling beings with compassion.

Cansu on Medium

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

Molly is a writer, copywriter, editor, creative strategist and an animal rights activist. She is Founder and CEO of the non-existent farm, Elwoods Organic Dog Meat.

Molly is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview. She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

elwooddogmeat.com
mollyelwood.com
@ElwoodDogMeat
mollyelwood
instagram.com/molly.elwood
linkedin.com/in/mollyelwood

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

Luke is a lecturer working in the Department of Psychology at the University of Exeter. His research examines social and moral development between childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Between 2017 and 2020 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on the Wellcome Trust, ESRC and NSF funded “STEM Teens” project. This project examined the role of youth educators in informal science learning sites, both by longitudinally following youth educators and by quasi-experimentally examining their role in these sites.

Luke is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview. He is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

@lukemcguirex
LukeMcGuire.co.uk

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

Jared is a researcher at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Until the summer of 2023 he was a lecturer at the University of Washington School of Computer Science. While there he created a class on the philosophy of AI and created and taught an ethics course as well as teaching technical artificial intelligence courses. His satirical novel "The Strength of The Illusion" was published in the summer of 2023. Previous Sentientism guest Mark Solms called it "extraordinary".

Jared is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope. He is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview.

JaredMoore.org
@jaredlcm
The Strength Of The Illusion

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

Kat is an effective altruist who co-founded Nonlinear (incubating artificial intelligence extinction risk non-profits), Charity Entrepreneurship (helping people start new, effective charities), and Charity Science Health. She describes her main focus today as trying "to make transformative artificial intelligence go well instead of poorly."

Kat is an atheist and has a naturalistic worldview. She has a sentiocentric moral scope.

KatWoods.org
Kat__Woods
Kat on FaceBook

Sentientism most aligns with my moral intuitions.

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

Alexandra is an actress, activist and health coach. She has appeared in more than 100 feature films and television programs starring alongside actors including Tom Hanks, Pamela Anderson, Pierce Brosnan, Kevin Costner and Dan Ackroyd. She is internationally recognized for her 5-year starring role as Lt. Stephanie Holden in the tv series Baywatch. For 4 years, Alexandra hosted the extreme sports series Wild Waters on the Outdoor Life Network, in addition to hosting the WE network series Winning Women for two seasons. She also hosted 150 episodes of the environmental cable access talk show EarthTalk Today. Alexandra has her own wellness coaching business through which she personally coaches clients all over the world and speaks to groups on how to change their habits for a healthier lifestyle and a happier life. Alexandra co-hosts a weekly podcast, Switch4Good which is heard worldwide and has over 3 million downloads and YouTube views.

Alexandra was honored by the ACLU of Southern California as their “2005 Activist of the Year” for her long history of fighting for the environment, voting rights and peace issues. In 1997, the United Nations commended Alexandra for her work on human overpopulation. In 1999, she won the International Green Cross award. She walked across America for over five weeks on The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, and has been arrested over a dozen times for protesting at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. She was also arrested during a peaceful 1990 sit-in for AIDS patients to access fast tracked pharmaceutical drugs and protecting electric cars from being crushed. She has been arrested 5 times for peacefully protesting animal exploitation. She has been involved in open rescues of other farm animals. Alexandra wrote, produced and hosted Jam-packed, an educational film broadcast on PBS about the human overpopulation crisis, which has won several environmental awards. She followed that up with The Cost of Cool- Finding Happiness in a Materialistic World, which won a CineEagle award. In 1986, she (along with producer / manager Daniel Sladek) founded Young Artists United, a successful non-profit organization dedicated to helping teenagers in need. Alexandra has also personally spoken, classroom-by-classroom, to over six thousand Los Angeles teenagers on the issue of human overpopulation and continues to speak at universities and conferences on the issue. Alexandra has a TEDx talk on the benefits of a one child family which currently has 675,000 views. In 2000, Alexandra and her identical twin sister Caroline were the recipients of the Christopher Street West Rainbow Award for their ongoing support of gay and lesbian rights.

Alexandra was a certified EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) for 23 years. She competes in long distance swimming and Ironman races, including competing in the World Ironman Championship in Hawaii (2.44 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile marathon) which she completed in 13:18:52. In 2012, Alexandra swam around Key West, a 12.5 mile race. In 2014, she swam the 22 km Reto Acapulco off the coast of Mexico.

Alexandra is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope. She is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview.

Alexandra on Wikipedia
AlexandraPaul.com
Alexandra_actress (Instagram)
Alexandra on FaceBook
Switch4Good podcast

Respect and care for sentient creatures.

Delci is an animal protection lawyer, scholar, teacher and programme builder. She is an associate professor of law and Director & Founder of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. The Institute is committed to training animal advocacy leaders (e.g. masters degrees and programmes, Farmed Animal Advocacy Clinic) and serving as a resource hub.

Delci previously taught at Lewis & Clark Law School, where she directed the world’s first law school clinic dedicated to farmed animal advocacy. She served as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at the PETA Foundation, was the first Academic Fellow of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program, and was a visiting scholar at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Her primary interests are in animal law and administrative law. She has also taught animal law at Tulane University School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

Delci's work has appeared in the Denver Law Review, Florida State Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, NYU Law Review, and the Animal Law Review. She has also published extensively in the popular press, including The Hill, National Geographic, Newsweek, New York Daily News, Salon, U.S.A. Today, and numerous other outlets.

Delci is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope "overlaid with a respect for systems and interconnectedness". She is an atheist and has a naturalistic worldview.

Find our Sentientist Conversation here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism podcast. Full show notes and all the links are here too.

@DelciannaW
@ProfWinders (Instagram)
Delci on LinkedIn
Delci at VLGS

Varda Mehrotra is an animal advocate and movement builder, exploring intersectional solutions. Most recently, she founded Samayu to undertake intersectional work and apply a systems approach for issues surrounding justice and animals in food systems. Under her decade-long leadership, FIAPO - India’s federation for animal organisations - was recognized as one of the most effective animal charities. She has spearheaded several large-scale undercover investigations, campaigns for farmed animals, companion animals and wild animals and was the architect of India’s largest plant-based advocacy network which has created many animal advocate leaders in the country. Prior to that, she spent several years organising within the grassroots animal advocacy movement in Scotland.

Varda has a broadly naturalistic worldview, describing herself as a "nothingist" when it comes to deities. She is vegan and has, at least, a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@MehrotraVarda

Nicolas is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the New College of Florida. In Fall 2023, he will join the College of Charleston as Assistant Professor of Philosophy.

Nicolas is vegan and has, at least, a sentiocentric moral scope (see his work and our conversation below about moral consideration for non-sentient "agents"). He has a naturalistic worldview.

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

NicolasDelon.com
Nicolas' Substack Blog "Running Ideas"
@NicoDelon

Anita is Executive Director of the Plant Based Treaty initiative & the Animal Save Movement, a worldwide network of Save groups bearing witness to farmed animals & promoting veganism & love-based, grassroots activism. She describes herself as an animal rights and an environmental activist. She is the co-author of the book "The Secret Lives of Pigs".

Anita is vegan and has at least a sentiocentric moral scope. She has a naturalistic and non-religious worldview.

Find our Sentientist Conversation (along with Nicola Harris) here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism podcast.

@animalrightsyay
Plant Based Treaty

Nicola is Director of Communications for the Plant Based Treaty initiative and works on the Animal Save Movement's communications team. She has over 20 years of experience in pressure campaigning in the UK.

Nicola is vegan and has at least a sentiocentric moral scope. She is an atheist and has a naturalistic worldview.

Find our Sentientist Conversation (along with Anita Krajnc) here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism podcast.

@Nicola_ASM
Plant Based Treaty

I have been ethologically studying the behavior of the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) and almost from the beginning of this work, it was clear to me that these foxes are sentient beings. I've grown to understand that all wildlife and our pets included are sentient.

Elan is a cultural anthropologist focusing on human-animal interactions, environmental justice, and food politics. He is assistant professor of the practice in environmental studies and coordinator of the animal studies minor at Wesleyan University. He is the author of the Gregory Bateson Prize winning book: "Saving Animals: Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care". He also contributed a chapter called "The Empty Promises of Cultured Meat" to the book "The Good it Promises, the Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism".

Elan is vegan and has (at least) a sentiocentric moral scope. He is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview.

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

@ElanAbrell
Elan on LinkedIn
Elan's interview on Our Hen House

Peter holds a Canada Research Chair in Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, at Ontario Tech University. He is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business and Information Technology, where he leads the Trustworthy AI Lab. He co-edited the foundational book, Self-Aware Computing Systems, published by Springer, and is Associate Editor of IEEE Technology & Society Magazine. He has published over 75 papers in academic journals and conference proceedings, and led teams that have worked with dozens of companies in the areas of artificial intelligence, data science, and software development.

Peter has a naturalistic worldview. He is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope. His article "Of Fish and Robots" links his sentiocentrism with his work on artificial intelligence.

Petelewis.com
Peter at the Trustworthy AI Lab
@petelewis

Find our conversation here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism podcast. Full show notes are here.

Tania is the Arthur W. Marks Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. She oversees the Concepts and Cognition Laboratory, which uses the empirical tools of cognitive psychology and the conceptual tools of analytic philosophy to study the human mind. Their research focuses on topics including explanation, learning, causal reasoning, and folk epistemology.  Tania is the recipient of numerous early-career awards including the Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, the Spence Award from the Association for Psychological Science, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and a James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition. She blogs about psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science at Psychology Today and for NPR’s 13.7: Cosmos & Culture.

Tania has a naturalistic worldview. She has said "These new strands of research can’t promise a scientifically grounded account of human origins that rivals creationism in its psychological appeal, but they can help to explain how some people find beauty and fulfillment in a naturalistic worldview. There is something deeply satisfying in broadening the scope of what we understand. And that is part of the seductive grandeur of science." She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

Tania on Wikipedia
Tania at Princeton
The Concepts and Cognition Lab
@TaniaLombrozo

Andrew is Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics and Founding Director of the University of Winchester Centre for Animal Welfare, Adjunct Professor in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University, Queensland, EBVS European and RCVS Veterinary Specialist in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law, American and New Zealand Veterinary Specialist in Animal Welfare, Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and Principal Fellow of Advance HE.

@DrAndrewKnight
Andrew on LinkedIn
Andrew on FaceBook
AndrewKnight.info
SustainablePetFood.info

Because sentientism is the basic criterion for moral consideration, and all sentient beings deserve respect and consideration of their interests.

Mary on FaceBook

Katherine is chief of Science Advancement and Outreach (SAO) at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). SAO aims to change the paradigm of biomedical research by promoting the development and implementation of cutting-edge strategies in biomedical research and training and eliminating the use of animals in experimentation. Katherine earned her bachelor’s degrees in biology and psychology from Syracuse University and her Ph.D. in experimental psychology and cognitive science from the University of California–San Diego. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, she went on to become a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she stayed for eight years. Over the course of her research career, she studied the neural correlates of linguistic, spatial, and memory processes, working with children with early focal brain injury, adults and children with schizophrenia, and individuals with Williams syndrome and related genetic disorders. Katherine has more than 20 years of experience conducting brain and neuroimaging research with humans and is an expert at experimental design and data analysis. She has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and has presented her findings at national and international industry conferences.

Katherine is non-religious, with a broadly naturalistic worldview. She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

Katherine at SAO
PETA's Research Modernisation Deal
@BooLacey

Sentientism takes John Rawls's "Veil of Ignorance" to its logical conclusion: creating a world I'd want to live in no matter what form of sentient being I was born.

Because sentience matters.

https://just.google.my.name

Why Sentientism? "Because it is morally and ethically the right thing to be."

Ντέμπορα / Deborah on FaceBook
@marthaphoebe64

"All morality stems from the fact that sentient beings prefer some experiences over others. The purpose of logic, governance, and society is to cultivate the wellbeing of sentient beings, frequently by opposing or modifying the lumbering, heartless evolutionary processes that seek to dominate and potentially degrade them."

Proponent for Sentience

Eva is the operations lead for the non-profit Pax Fauna. Pax Fauna exists to design a more effective social movement for animal freedom in the U.S., using original research as well as careful study of social movement literature and the recent history of the animal movement in order to reverse the cultural norm of eating animals. Eva has been organizing in the animal freedom movement since 2015 when she started working with DxE in Chicago, where she focused on building community, writing protest music, and compiling the movements’ songs into an online songbook used by advocates around the world. She started working full time as DxE’s legal coordinator in 2018, managing the organization’s many legal cases, organizing trainings, and orchestrating large artistic demonstrations. Eva has a deep curiosity about culture in all its forms, and how social movements engage with culture both internally and externally. Through songwriting, she has explored how music and art can shape the messaging and attitudes of the animal movement. Building on a background in Kingian nonviolence, she is a dedicated student of Nonviolent Communication, and she is committed to bringing NVC’s repertoire of creative problem-solving tools to the work of building a better culture in the animal movement. Working for years as a music therapist in hospice taught Eva how to apply metrics to aspects of life that are difficult to measure- and how to judge when metrics aren’t working to tell the whole story.

Eva is non-religious and has a naturalistic worldview. She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@evahamer
Eva on Mastodon
Eva on Instagram
Eva at Pax Fauna