Dhruv is a PhD student at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. He has interests in psychology, philosophy and animal advocacy.

Dhruv has a broadly naturalistic worldview. He is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

Dhruv on the EA Forum
Dhruv’s article “Abolitionist in The Streets, Pragmatist in The Sheets”
Dhruv on LinkedIn
Dhruv at the University of Cambridge
Dhruv on Medium

Otep is a writer, singer, voice-over artist and activist best known as the lead vocalist and founder of the metal band Otep.

She is an animal rights advocate and vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. Otep seems to be non-religious so may have a naturalistic worldview.

Otep on Wikipedia
@otepofficial
Otep on Tumblr
Otep on YouTube
Otep on Instagram

Douglas is a scholar of cognitive science, physics and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation and discovery in mathematics and physics. He is Director of the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at Indiana University Bloomington. His 1979 book “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and a National Book Award for Science. His 2007 book “I Am a Strange Loop” won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

Douglas describes himself as a “non-religious person” and a “materialist” who is strongly critical of pseudoscience and claims of the paranormal – so has a naturalistic worldview.

He seems to have at least a theoretical sentiocentric moral scope, having gone vegan as a teenager due to his views on the distribution of consciousness across the animal kingdom and due to his compassionate ethics. In “I Am a Strange Loop” he describes himself as vegetarian.

Douglas on Wikipedia
Douglas at Indiana University

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

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

Crystal is a veterinary practitioner, a journalist and an activist. She is the co-founder of Our Honor, a charity aiming to create an organized network of veterinary professionals who are able to challenge unethical institutionalised systems and amplify the voices of those who have been marginalised.

Crystal is vegan and has, at least, a sentiocentric moral scope. She has a scientific and naturalistic worldview although is open to the idea that “consciousness may be a supernatural thing”.

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

@drcrystalheath
Crystal on Instagram
Crystal on TikTok
CompassionateBay
VAVSD

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

Lori is Executive Director of The Kimmela Center and Founder & President of The Whale Sanctuary Project. She is a neuroscientist and expert in animal behavior and intelligence, formerly on the faculty of Emory University where she was also a faculty member at the Emory Center for Ethics. She is internationally known for her work on the evolution of the brain and intelligence in dolphins and whales and marine mammal welfare in captivity, as well as cognition in farmed animals through The Someone Project. In 2001 Lori co-authored a ground-breaking study with Diana Reiss offering the first conclusive evidence for mirror self-recognition in bottlenose dolphins, after which she decided against conducting further research with animals held captive in zoos and aquariums.

Lori has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers, book chapters, and magazine articles on marine mammal biology and cognition, comparative brain anatomy, self-awareness in nonhuman animals, human-nonhuman animal relationships, and the evolution of intelligence. Lori has appeared in several films and television programs, including the 2013 documentary Blackfish about killer whale captivity; Unlocking the Cage, the 2016 documentary on the Nonhuman Rights Project; Long Gone Wild, the 2019 documentary; and in the upcoming documentary about Corky, the orca held captive by SeaWorld since 1969.

Lori is an atheist & has a naturalistic worldview, saying “I don’t see any reason to propose that there’s anything supernatural out there”. She is vegan & has a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

Lori on Wikipedia
Lori on FaceBook
@MarinoLori
The Kimmela Center
The Whale Sanctuary Project

Kathy is Assistant Dean, Animal Legal Education at George Washington University Law School and Director of the Animal Legal Education Initiative. Kathy has been a clinical law professor for 30 years and has been teaching animal law for 22 years. She is the first law professor hired to teach animal law full-time. Kathy helped develop the Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark Law School (L&C). For fourteen years she taught there and directed the Animal Law Clinic. She also created and directed the Aquatic Animal Law Initiative and is the co-founder of World Aquatic Animal Day along with Amy P. Wilson. Kathy co-authored “Animal Law in a Nutshell”, “Animal Law – New Perspectives on  Teaching Traditional Law” and the amicus briefs submitted in the U.S. v. Stevens and Justice v. Gwendolyn Vercher cases. She has written numerous law review and other articles and teaches and lectures widely across the U.S. and internationally.

Kathy was a board member with the Animal Legal Defense Fund; helped found the Animal Law Committee of the Cuyahoga County Bar; and was the chair and a founder of the Animal Law Section and the Balance in Legal Education Section of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS). She was also a co-chair of the Clinical Legal Education Section of the AALS, is on the board of the Center for Teaching Peace and is a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

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

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

Kathy at GWU
Kathy’s papers at SSRN

Ann is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its sequel series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, as well as the book of the same name. She directed episodes of both series. In the late 1970s Ann became the Creative Director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project which produced the golden discs affixed to both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. She also published a novel, A Famous Broken Heart and later co-wrote several best selling non-fiction books with Sagan.

Ann seems to have a sentiocentric moral scope, at least in concept. It’s not clear whether she is vegetarian, vegan or neither. Ann has a non-religious, scientific, naturalistic worldview.

In the book “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, co-authored with Carl Sagan, they wrote: “Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.”

Here, she writes: “It is precisely in the absence of reciprocity, as in our mercy towards the helpless [including non-human animals], that we may be most sure that any given moral act is unalloyed by self-interest.”

Ann on Wikipedia

Nicky is a broadcaster and journalist. He has worked in television and radio since 1981 and as a network presenter with BBC Radio since 1987. He is a vocal advocate for animals, writing and campaigning for animal rights, welfare and conservation. Nicky was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 Birthday Honours for his services to children and adoption causes.

He seems to be vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. He has a non-religious, naturalistic worldview.

@NickyAACampbell
Nicky on Wikipedia

John Howard Moore was a zoologist, philosopher, educator, humanitarian and socialist. He is considered to be an early, yet neglected, proponent of animal rights and ethical vegetarianism/veganism and was a leading figure in the American humanitarian movement. John was a prolific writer, authoring numerous articles, books, essays, pamphlets on topics including animal rights, education, ethics, evolutionary biology, humanitarianism, socialism, temperance, utilitarianism and vegetarianism.

John was raised as a Christian with an anthropocentric moral scope. As he learned about Darwin’s theory of evolution he rejected both Christianity and anthropocentrism. Instead, he developed a secular, sentiocentric ethic grounded in the evolutionary Universal Kinship (1906) of all sentient beings. His speech “Why I am a vegetarian” was published in pamphlet form in 1895. In it he wrote: “human beings preach as the cardinal of morality that they should act upon others as they would be pleased to have others act upon them, and then take the most sensitive and beautiful beings all palpitating with life, and chop them into fragments with a composure that would do honor to the managers of an inferno.”

J. Howard Moore on Wikipedia

Corry (notcorry) Is a YouTuber and podcaster. He co-hosts (with Luke Cutforth) the SciGuys podcast that “brings you the crazy, weird, and wonderful stories from the science world”.

Corry is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. He seems to be non-religious and to have a naturalistic worldview.

@notcorry
Linktree
notcorry YouTube

Luke is a film-maker, YouTuber and podcaster. His first feature film, “The Drowning of Arthur Braxton” won the Best UK Feature award at the Raindance film festival. He co-hosts (with notcorry) the SciGuys podcast that “brings you the crazy, weird, and wonderful stories from the science world”.

Luke is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. He seems to be non-religious and to have a naturalistic worldview.

lukecutforth.net

Why Sentientism?: “For all sentient beings”

Oscar is an animal activist and moral philosopher who is currently a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and is one of the co-founders of the organization Animal Ethics. Oscar is vegan and non-religious.

Oscar on Wikipedia
Oscar’s Blog
Oscar on FaceBook

Why Sentientism? Because every sentient being has the capacity to be harmed, and any being with a capacity to be harmed has a moral right not to be harmed. See my “Demystifying Animal Rights” for details.

Sara is an actress, comedian and writer. She has appeared on television programmes including 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown for Channel 4, QI and The Great British Sewing Bee for BBC and Taskmaster for the digital channel Dave.

Sarah is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. She has said here: “I went on a school trip to a farm and loved the animals. I told Dad I was going to be a farmer because I wanted to look after animals and show them to children, but he said that’s what we eat, chopped up. I was aghast.” She is an atheist, a patron of Humanists UK and seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

@sarapascoe
sarapascoe.co.uk
Sara on Wikipedia

Jon is a comedian. He is best known for his appearances on 8 Out of 10 Cats and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and his work as co-host with Russell Howard on BBC 6 Music. He is the presenter of Jon Richardson: Ultimate Worrier, and also featured with his wife in the TV show Meet the Richardsons. He’s co-host of the “Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts” podcast which takes a rational, compassionate look into our future.

Jon is vegan, implying he has a sentiocentric moral scope. He seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Jon on Wikipedia
@RonJichardson
jonrichardsoncomedy.com
@JANDTHEF Podcast

Matti is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She was previously a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, working with Professor Paul Bloom with whom she published the paper “Children prioritize humans over animals less than adults do”. She studies moral psychology & moral development – including attitudes to cultivated meat & the “natural”, the moral status of various types of entities & altruism.

Matti is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. She is non-religous and has a naturalistic worldview.

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

@matti_wilks​
mattiwilks.com​

Doctor Claudia is a Geography PhD at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She is host of The Animal Turn Podcast (Subscribe!)

Claudia is an atheist (ex-Christian) and has a naturalistic worldview – although is cautious about defining “evidence and reasoning” too narrowly such that we might exclude more emotional or intuitive modes of thinking and neglect social contexts and personal experiences. She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

Find our Sentientist Conversation here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism Podcast. I also had the pleasure of being Claudia’s guest on “The Animal Turn“. You can find our episode here.

@ClaudiaFTowne
The Animal Turn Podcast

Jill has been a leading voice in digital media for more than a decade. She’s been published in outlets including MTV, The Huffington Post, and the Village Voice. She served as Head of Content for a popular vegan media platform from 2017-2020, with a reach of more than 50 million per month. She has worked with a number of impact media platforms to help build their traffic and positioning, as well as with leading brands and celebrities working to make the world a more sustainable and ethical space. Jill is the co-founder, CEO and Head of Content for Ethos.

Jill has a broadly naturalistic worldview. She is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@jillettinger
jillettinger.com
Ethos

naturalism.org

Michael is a law professor and scholar of U.S. constitutional law. He is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. In addition to constitutional law, Michael has taught courses in civil procedure and federal courts. He has written/co-written/edited six books, including Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights (co-written with his wife, Sherry Colb), as well as scores of law review articles about American constitutional law. He is also a columnist for Verdict. Michael is a former law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Michael has appeared in American news media as a legal expert and has been interviewed by and/or quoted in, for example, The New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (another suspected sentientist).

Michael is vegan with a sentiocentric moral scope. He has a naturalistic worldview, describing himself here as “an ethnically-identifying-but-non-religious American Jew.”

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

Michael on Wikipedia
Dorf On Law Blog
@dorfonlaw
Michael @ Verdict

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

Katie is a theoretical cosmologist who holds the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at Perimeter Institute. Her academic research investigates dark matter, vacuum decay and the epoch of reionisation. Katie is also a popular science communicator who participates in social media and regularly writes for Scientific American, Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time and Cosmos. She is the author of the book “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)”

Katie is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope. She has a naturalistic worldview, saying here: “I had a lot of trouble believing in anything that I didn’t have strong evidence for. It comes back to the scientific view point maybe. I didn’t have religious experiences. I didn’t have a feeling of connection with the divine. I wanted that feeling of connection … I found the practice very meaningful, but I never got the faith.”

Katie on Wikipedia
@AstroKatie
astrokatie.com
Disorientation, a poem by Katie

Chiara is an astrophysicist who researches gravitational waves. She is an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics and an assistant professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. She is also a science writer and communicator.

Chiara is a Humanist, implying she has a naturalistic epistemology. She is veg*an, implying she may have a sentiocentric moral scope.

Chiara on Wikipedia
chiaramingarelli.com
@Dr_CMingarelli

Simon is a comedian, writer and director. He wrote and directed the films Carnage and Benjamin. His work on television has included presenting Popworld and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Simon is Jewish and seems to have a naturalistic worldview. He has said (albeit as part of a comedy performance): “I don’t want to attack religious people who may be here this evening. It feels like a sort of unkind thing to do, to attack religious people, and it feels… You know, it feels too easy, and like the battle’s already been won…” Simon is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. His film, Carnage, depicts a future vegan human society trying to come to terms with the guilt of its carnist past.

Simon on Wikipedia
simonamstell.com
@simonamstell

Greg is a science fiction writer and amateur mathematician, best known for his works of hard science fiction. He specialises in stories with mathematical and quantum ontology themes, including the nature of consciousness. His other themes include genetics, simulated reality, posthumanism, mind transfer, sexuality, artificial intelligence and the superiority of rational naturalism over religion. Greg has won multiple awards including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the Locus Award.

Greg is an atheist and seems to have a firmly naturalistic worldview. He is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope.

Greg on Wikipedia
gregegan.net
@gregegansf

Emily is a fantasy fiction author who (from her edebell.com home page): “enjoys blending classic and modern elements. A passionate vegan and earnest progressive, she feels strongly about issues related to equality and compassion. Her works are quiet and queer and often explore conceptions of identity and community, including themes of friendship, family, and connection. She lives in Ferndale, Michigan, where she writes stories and revels in garlic.”

Emily is also an atheist, implying she has a naturalistic worldview.

edebell.com
@edebellauthor

Sherry was C.S. Wong Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. She had been valedictorian of her high school class and then valedictorian of her class at Columbia College. After Harvard Law School, she clerked with Second Circuit Judge Wilfred Feinberg and then Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. She was frequently quoted in The New York Times and many other publications and was a prolific writer, including in her regular columns on Verdict and Dorf On Law. Sherry wrote the book, Mind if I Order the Cheeseburger? And Other Questions People Ask Vegans, and, with Michael Dorf, wrote Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights which focuses on sentience as the qualifier for moral consideration.

Sherry was vegan with a sentiocentric moral scope. She seemed to have a naturalistic worldview and was a strident critic of the harms enabled by religions.

@SherryColb
A tribute to Sherry’s life on the Our Hen House podcast