Charles Darwin was a naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. His proposition that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors is now widely accepted, and considered a foundational concept in science.
While he seemed to recognise the moral worth of sentient non-humans, there seems to be little basis to the suggestion that he was vegan or vegetarian, but his great-great grandson is confident he’d be vegan if he was alive today. Darwin had a naturalistic worldview and considered himself agnostic.
He said: “We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention and curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”, “There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties … The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind”, and “The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”
Darwin on Wikipedia

Kat Dennings (Katherine Victoria Litwack), is an actress. She is known for starring as Max Black in the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls and as Darcy Lewis in the Marvel superhero films Thor and Thor: The Dark World. Since making her acting debut in 2000, Dennings has appeared in films including The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Big Momma’s House 2, Charlie Bartlett, The House Bunny, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Defendor, and Suburban Gothic.
Kat seems to have a naturalistic worldview, having said that Judaism “is an important part of my history, but, as a whole, religion is not a part of my life.” In late 2020 she said she was adopting a plant-based diet, although primarily for environmental rather than ethical reasons.
Kat on Wikipedia
katdennings.com
@katdenningsss
@OfficialKat

Massimo is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He co-hosted the Rationally Speaking Podcast, and was editor in chief for the online magazine Scientia Salon. He is an outspoken critic of pseudoscience and creationism and an advocate for secularism, science education and Stoicism.

Massimo argues that people, particularly Stoics, should be either vegetarian or vegan. Personally, he remains vegetarian. He says: “I’m going to redouble my personal efforts to follow this path and further reduce my intake of other [sentient animal] foodstuff. I hope you will join me, to reduce both suffering in the world and our carbon footprint as a species. And Seneca adds, you’ll also feel better and think more clearly.”

Find Massimo’s Sentientist Conversation with me here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism Podcast.

Massimo on Wikipedia
massimopigliucci.com
@mpigliucci

A.C. or Anthony is a philosopher and author. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He frequently appears in British media discussing philosophy and public affairs.

Anthony is the author of over 30 books on philosophy, biography, history of ideas, human rights and ethics, including The Future of Moral Values (1997), What Is Good? (2000), The Meaning of Things (2001), The Good Book (2011), The God Argument (2013), The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016) and Democracy and its Crises (2017). He was a trustee of the London Library and a fellow of the World Economic Forum, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts.

Anthony has a naturalistic worldview. He is a vice-president of Humanists UK and an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.

Anthony has been vegetarian since around 1980, saying in this interview “The kinds of animals that people eat – cows, chicken, sheep and so on – are capable of fear and suffering, and experiences of pleasure. They’re sentient to that extent, and I don’t think there’s any argument about that. There is an argument about fish, and certainly an even bigger argument with shellfish, about whether they’re having a pleasant time or can be afraid or suffer – but I’m rather inclined to draw the line well beyond where it might need to be drawn, just on as-it-were safety’s sake. I can eat healthily, pleasantly and well, and enjoy myself without being involved in too much killing of sentient beings capable of suffering and fear. Now, I wear leather shoes and a leather belt and people point out this is inconsistent, and I tell them they are right. Moreover vegetarianism is actually an illogical position, because if you actually were going to take all this very seriously you should really be a vegan, but I find veganism takes up time and thought and attention and is a bit of a struggle, and there are other things to do with one’s life – so being a vegetarian is really a halfway house where you’re personally self-minimising the involvement you have in factory farming – in the slaughter of sentient beings.”

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

A.C. Grayling on Wikipedia
acgrayling.com
@acgrayling

Brian is a musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and astrophysicist. He is the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen. He is vegan. He has described himself as an agnostic, but has also said that, at times, be believes that some sort of a god does exist.
Brian on Wikipedia
@DrBrianMay
brianmay.com

Jim is a theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a regular broadcaster and presenter of science programmes on BBC radio and television, including The Life Scientific. In 2014, he was named as a RISE (Recognising Inspirational Scientists and Engineers) leader by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He is not vegetarian or vegan. He was President of the British Humanist Association between January 2013 and January 2016.
@jimalkhalili
jimal-khalili.com

Siân is a politician who has served as Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales since 2018. She currently is a member of the London Assembly and the only Green Party councillor on Camden Council, representing Highgate. While she has substantially reduced her consumption of animal products, she does eat meat occasionally. She is a Humanist and a patron of Humanists UK.
Siân on Wikipedia
@sianberry

Steve is a cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature  argues that violence in human societies has generally declined over time. Enlightenment Now  uses social science data to show a general improvement of the human condition over recent history. Steve is a Humanist who is also comfortable also identifying as a Sentientist given he grants moral consideration to all sentient beings. He doesn’t yet seem to have applied that stance to his consumption decisions.

The closing paragraph of Enlightenment Now includes the phrase “The story belongs… to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist in its being.” The book analyses the decline in “animal cruelty” as a sign of progress yet largely ignores the clearly anti-progress story of the rapid, relentless growth of animal farming. Maybe the next edition will be titled: “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Sentientism, and Progress”?

Steve on Wikipedia
@sapinker
stevenpinker.com
Steve in conversation with suspected Sentientist Stephen Fry, where he says: “To treat other people and ultimately other sentient creatures as equivalent in interests to my own.”

Adam is a geneticist, author and broadcaster. He was an audio-visual content editor for the journal Nature for a decade, and is a frequent contributor to the newspaper The Guardian. He hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Science, has produced several science documentaries and has published books related to genetics and the origin of life. He is an atheist and a humanist. He describes himself as vegetarian.
Adam on Wikipedia
@AdamRutherford

Alice is a biological anthropologist, biologist, television presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been Professor of the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. Since 2019, she has been President of the charity Humanists UK, which campaigns for “a tolerant world where rational thinking and kindness prevail”. Alice does show concern for sentient non-human animals and seems to be working on removing them from her consumption (no meat, but does eat fish, eggs and dairy).
Alice on Wikipedia
@theAliceRoberts
alice-roberts.co.uk