Find his Sentientist Conversation with me here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism Podcast.

Adrian is a multi-award winning fantasy and science fiction author. He is known best for his series Shadows of the Apt and for his novel Children of Time. Children of Time was awarded the 30th Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016.

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.” The audio is also on our Podcast here on Apple & here everywhere else.

We discuss:
00:00 Preview!
00:55 Welcome
02:15 Adrian's Intro

• "I write books about giant spiders from outer space"

03:45 What's Real?

• "I'm very much on the science end"
• "We weren't a religious household"
• US/UK religiosity
• "A fascination with the natural world"
• Dabbling w/#spirituality "It's amazing how many people have been King Arthur"
• "I believed in every damn thing… desperate to find the 'other'"
• "The people who want to believe don't examine it"
• "Still… looking for that strange but within a scientific boundary"
• #aliens
• #evolution
• "I am pretty much entirely naturalistic"
• #briancox
• #homeopathy & "special cases"
• #scientificmethod
• Tech & magic. Apt & Inapt
• #telepathy , #psychics, #ghosts "people are out there trying to fake it is… tangential evidence that it is not real"
• "I'm not saying 'this cannot be' but I am saying 'show it to me'"
• "There is no supernatural"
• Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?
• #cryptids
• "I don't want to be fooled by some… snake-oil salesman"
• "There's a weird sort of science cosplay going on"
• Folklore, fiction, speculation, narrative "this is a long way from saying 'this is the case'

29:15 What Matters?

• "Try to do no harm & don't be a dick"
• The Golden Rule & improvements
• Autism, pronouns… considering others
• Freedom & constraints on freedom
• "Being considerate & egalitarian… if you have the luck & the resources to be able to"
• "I get my morality from other people"
• "I could so easily have fallen in with a very different group of people"
• Divine command theory, relativism, nihilism, egoism
• "Science can be mis-used… race theory for example"
• "Religion defaults to a faith-based argument that effectively is not an argument"
• "I accept the theory of relativity but I don't understand it"
• Studying animal behaviour: Skinnerian behaviourism: "Animals… can't really feel pain"
• Animal intelligence. Spiders dreaming
• Phil of mind: #Illusionism, eliminativism, #panpsychism
• Origins of sentience "those are the things that make life do what it does"
• AI sentience (lacking bio evo drives)?
• A #UniversalDeclarationofSentientRights ?
• "Freedom to & freedom from"

51:14 Who Matters?

• Does "do no harm" extend to non-humans?
• Hypocrisy
• Vegetarianism, eggs, dairy and veganism
• "But I am very fond of a bacon sandwich in the morning… a philosophically untenable position"
• Saving trapped insects from the conservatory "with as much care as possible… seems the right thing to do… the idea of them getting stuck & dying upsets me"
• "I can construct an insect in my head - that I know what it feels like… I have an empathy there"
• "I feel considerably more for insects… than most people ever will"
• Sci-fi/fantasy & non-human sentience: "It's a very good genre to explore these things in"
• #starshiptroopers film & Adrian's SpiderLight book. Dehumanisation. "The creeping realisation that we are the bad guys."
• #fascism , #colonialism , #anthropocentrism
• "I've always had a brief for the other"
• Battle Beyond the Stars film & a heroic alien lizard "You have the permission to make anything you want into a hero - it doesn't have to be the guy from the Waltons"
• What would aliens thing of animal farming? Who are the monsters?

57:50 A Better Future?

• Utopias & distopias
• Sci-fi / fantasy "They can be good fun, they can be very very serious philosophical tools"
• #thehandmaidstale
• "Getting people to think about an idea without immediately triggering all of their defenses"
• Polarised culture & politics
• "Make my own point of view the villain…"
• Iain M. Banks' #Culture series
• "The domination of selfishness & greed" via dogma & hierarchy
• Win-wins
• "I'm a natural pessimist but there are limits… surely… the dam breaks"
• "We have the resources & technology to turn things around"
• Re-distribution & equality
• Slavery, democracy, war, disease… "Things have actually got better"

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, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-production.

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

Emerson is the host of the Counter Apologetics & Walden Pod podcasts. Both are also available on his  @Emerson Green  YouTube channel.

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.” The audio is also on our Podcast here on Apple & here everywhere else.

We discuss:
00:00 Welcome

01:32 Emerson's Intro

• Podcasting as a relationship saver 🙂
• Counter Apologetics (#religion & #atheism)
• Walden Pod (#consciousness & #panpsychism )
• "Religion is at the intersection of practically everything I care about"

05:01 What's Real?

• Raised as a #youngearth #creationist Christian, sheltered from science & philosophy
• Now atheist, "maybe beginning to lean #agnostic "
• Attending #apologetics Camp "this is the defence! I don't believe in god"
• @Answers in Genesis "they do try to give scientific & philosophical arguments"
• "Young Earth Creationism is one of the wrongest things you could propose"
• "A book from god seems like a pretty solid epistemic source"
• "The universe… is really not 6000 years old"
• Mum is a professor at an Xtian university
• "It's wrong to say they're #anti-science exactly"
• "I learned about evolution later & was blown away"
• "I was blown away by how bad the Bible was… morally"
• The failure of prayer
• #mormonism & the "Under The Banner of Prayer" film. The risks of thinking god is speaking to you
• "The mainstream Xtian narrative… is just basically incoherent"
• Hell & the #problemofevil vs. a just, good, god. #Theodicy
• Historical contingency, religious diversity
• "If they were born in India they'd probably be Hindus"
• "I was very angry for a while… felt like I'd been lied to"
• The psychological shock of deconverting
• "If I could choose to be believe I would… just for the sake of my mum"
• The distress of family & friends
• Hidden atheism within religious communities & even pastors
• Shunning e.g. "gay homeless teenagers around Salt Lake City"
• Natural #theology
• #Fideism & faith vs. "everyone I know has reasons"
• Philip Goff & secular religion
• @Bart D. Ehrman
• Naturalism & the natural world as "common ground"
• Usage vs. definitions
• Conservative/scientific & moderate/abstract & liberal naturalisms vs. supernaturalism
• "Sometimes I self-deprecatingy call myself a 'spooky naturalist'"
• "Here's what we know from science - is that all there is?"
• @Sean Carroll

37:52 What Matters?

• Xtian propaganda that morals "belong" to religion so atheists must be nihilists
• "Moral #nihilism is one of the least plausible positions you can name… suffering isn't bad?"
• William Lane Craig @ReasonableFaithOrg & divine command theory (burning people for eternity is "good"). God as the moral subject (subjectivism)
• Moral anti-realism, relativism, objectivism
• Ethical non-naturalism: "Morality is real & objective, there are right & wrong answers to moral questions. The holocaust was bad - it doesn't matter how anyone feels about it… suffering just is bad."
• Ethical truths as like mathematical/logical truths
• #Euthyphro dilemma
• Are normative claims reducible to the descriptive? (Is-ought)
• #empiricism vs. rational intuition
• Mike Huemer's "Ethical Intuitionism" See our Sentientist Conversation here

51:15 Who Matters?

• "I have #vegan moral principles… but I'm not a consistent vegan"
• Disgust "they're ribs"
• "It's hard to overstate how evil factory farming actually is"
• Getting banned from Twitter for speaking up about factory farming
• "It's hard not to get angry when people are diminishing & trivialising the very real, very terrible suffering of trillions of sentient beings"
• @Ricky Gervais
• "If you like animals then don't eat them… I always have loved animals"
• Baby animals… lamb & veal… "what's wrong with you?"
• @Sentience Institute surveys on banning slaughterhouses & factory farms
• "Family farms" & "free range" & "regenerative animal agriculture"
• Cultivated meat & plant-based products
• "People will actually stop using factory farms… then we can ban it"
• "#sentience is ultimately what I care about… there might be other things that matter as well as sentience"
• #pluralism & #utilitarianism & #naturallawtheory
• "If you can't tell which of those is worse you might be morally stunted"
• Dignity, autonomy
• Maximising, minimising & demandingness
• Is there a minimal level of sentience that wouldn't matter?
• Plant sentience?
• Biocentrism, ecocentrism? “I don’t think it’s totally crazy… maybe living systems have intrinsic value regardless of whether or not they’re sentient?”
• Panpsychism
• JW: “I’m more worried about the exclusion of sentient beings than I am about the inclusion of other stuff”
• “Crazy to care more about the ecosystem than you care about sentient beings”… they’re the main reason why you care about the ecosystem
• Grading sentience & moral consideration
• “Maybe intelligence diminishes the need to have really intense pain & pleasure”… “It’s totally possible that non-human animals have a worse experience of physical pain than we do”… Imagining a chimpanzee at the dentist
• Under panpsychism “does an electron feel pain?”
• “All the things you think pre-reflectively are not conscious (tables, chairs…) are probably not conscious on panpsychism”
• “Don’t use panpsychism as an excuse to not go vegan”
• “Obviously neo-cartesianism is crazy… morally perverse”
• Fish sentience “they have nervous systems!”
• “Panpsychism implies it’s wrong to eat animals”
• “Panpsychism could imbue the natural world with intrinsic value (vs. instrumental value) and make us care more about the environment”
• Luke Roelofs
• “The same kind of thing that motivates you and me is the same kind of thing that motivates small particles…”
• Sentience as “the morally salient component of consciousness”
• Could a panpsychist micro-consciousness be insentient leaving only macro-consciousnesses as sentient?
• Bentham’s “can they suffer?”
• “What is really morally relevant about consciousness…? Sentience is a good way of getting there… subjective experience.”
• “If you took an electron and flung it out into space it would be sentient in the sense that it would be like something for it to exist… but an electron that’s part of my right arm is not conscious… it’s been merged into this bigger whole.”
• An electron might have “a brute ‘what it’s likeness’… maybe a sense of wanting to go towards positive charge… It’s literally not relatable to our experience at all.”
• “You don’t need any kind of process” for there to be consciousness under panpsychism… it’s just brute & fundamental
• Two emotional paths to panpsychism: Arrogant & anthropocentric (human consciousness must be fundamental) and humble (Consciousness is all-pervasive and humans are just a tiny part of that – “we’re really not special”)
• “There’s nothing magical about me – I’m just a bunch of physical processes – I’m just a collection of physical activity… it’s just protons and electrons and neutrons”
• Powerpointism 😊 and Dan Dennett’s “niftyism”
• The hard problem / the construction problem (Rasmussen)… “you can get Powerpoint from non Powerpoint and humans from non-human beings – but when you’re talking about subjective experiences from a point of view… from non-subjectivity? You’re starting with the wrong kind of thing.”
• A bat or an Emerson emulator?
• Physicalists need to be able to “draw a bridge” from the physical to subjective qualitative experience, but “most don’t even try”
• “All of physical science is just dealing with what stuff does and not what stuff is”… “that is the foundation of panpsychism”
• Russellian monism… “There is an intrinsic nature to physical stuff… [because] consciousness exists”
• “We know, because we’re conscious, that consciousness exists” or are our experiences just another set of internal “reports”?
• “Whatever sentience is, it matters”
• “You sound like Philip Goff right now!”

01:59:41 A Better Future?

• Podcasting & YouTube as the answer 😊
• Humans have the power and human decisions are based on worldviews about “what’s real” and “what matters”. Failures of compassion and epistemology
• “I’m actually pretty pessimistic about the future”
• “There could be an end to factory farming” via cultivated / plant-based alternatives winning on price/taste/convenience/efficiency/environment… “one of the worst things about our culture could come to an end”
• In a semi-capitalist system “The market really does determine quite a lot”
• “There will be a small group of psychotics who want to eat animal products anyway”
• “People just like their little treats”
• Unionism “One of the only positive political developments I’ve seen”
• “A more democratic economy overall with workers having more ownership and control”
• “Every other development seems negative”
• Can public philosophy make a difference? “Maybe I’m just playing Sudoku… but I can’t help it”
• “My wife doesn’t listen to my podcast… she gets 3 personal podasts a day 😊”… “The unsubscribe button is a divorce”
• Intellectual honesty, humility and compassionate conversations about deep topics.

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, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-production.

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

Pearl describes herself as “poly-vocational”. She is a foreign relations & management consultant with an MA in International Relations & an MBA in International Business. She is a vegan whole foods advocate via her “Le Twisted Spoon” club. Pearl is also a community organiser and public speaker!

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.” The audio is also on our Podcast here on Apple & here everywhere else.

We discuss:
00:00 Welcome

01:17 Pearl's Intro

• Foreign relations consulting & #vegan activism

02:55 What's Real?

• Growing up in #kansas USA
• A traditional African-American household
• "There's a connection between people clinging to religion & #poverty"
• "This disparity between what was taught on Sunday and what people practiced throughout the week"
• "Unsavoury" behaviour by church leaders
• Poverty, moving frequently, homeless shelters
• Church charity (food, paying bills)
• "As an adult I feel much more #spiritual & less religious"
• "If it didn't make sense to me I had a problem with it"… Santa Claus etc.
• Open-minded mum
• Church corruption & money "You have to pay to pray"
• Disparities in the #bible
• Churches teaching Jesus but not following his example
• "Everything was taken away from the people who came over [slavery] and it was replaced with this [Christianity]"
• "I still believe there's something higher than myself"
• Christianity's role in colonialism
• #religion 's allure for those suffering ("your suffering in this life doesn't matter because heaven!"). "A lot of really bad things have been allowed to happen because of that principle…"
• Compassion vs. status, in-out groups, hierarchy
• Three experiences "I have zero explanation for that"
• "Is there someone bigger than myself that clearly loves me - I know that for sure"
• The problems of suffering & unanswered prayers "It doesn't add up rationally"
• "The kind of god I want to worship & love wouldn't behave in that way"
• Jesus' teachings vs. Jesus as a god
• Husband became #christian by listening to Christian radio in Paris
• Church food banks & real help
• "I don't think that maybe 'Christian' is the right term to describe myself these days"
• Even #jesus threatened non-believers with hell
• Child abuse in religious groups. Risks of authority/power/groupishness

46:03 What and Who Matters?

• Growing up - "family matters"
• "If you have something you should share it"
• "Unless you piss me off" 🙂
• US Marine Corps scholarship & a sense of nationality
• Justice & equality
• Food systems, reading about veganism
• "We're cutting down trees just so people can have a steak"
• "You can't just say facts because their brain is not prepared for the atrocities… so they can have what they have on their plate."
• "I'm a huge believer in the dollar vote"
• "They don't teach you this in school… how can I be so ignorant?… I thought I was an educted woman."
• Kicking a dog will get you in trouble "but you can torture livestock?"
• Antibiotics & superbugs, worker exploitation
• "People have literally died because of these farming practices"
• "If you know better you have to do better"… but you need to know how

56:26 A Better Future?

• Personal, political, institutional change
• "Different tools for different jobs"
• Animal rights arguments "can fall on deaf ears"
• Shifting government subsidies towards #justtransition
• From moral righteousness to effectiveness
• "As vegans we forget our compassion too"
• Health, #environmental & ethical reasons for #veganism
• #AgGag laws
• "You're a liar if you say that you support the environment & you don't have conversations about the food industry"
• "When you are vegan because of your ethics… you will never have another bite of animal products ever again"
• #sentience
• Backyard chicken eggs & "free-range" farming… "there just isn't any ethical way to consume eggs… or dairy"
• @Our Hen House
• "Jesus coming down & like 'you did what?!'"
• "Living my life in a way where I try to do no harm to anyone - it just feels good - it feels easy."
• Cats, mice & insects "How far do you apply human concepts?"
• Life-long learning
• "People have to learn how to make healthy vegan meals"
• Alternatives vs. plants
• Standing for office "you ran a very unique campaign!"
• Veganism, #socialjustice & #sustainability
• Cooking vegan for people… "People can't not eat free food!"

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, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on Facebook.

Thanks Graham for the post-production.