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

Karen is an animal rights advocate and president of United Poultry Concerns. UPC is a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to address the treatment of domestic fowl in farming – including chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Karen also runs an animal sanctuary. She is the author of several books on veganism and animal rights, including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (1997) and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (2005).

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

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

Karen on Wikipedia
United Poultry Concerns
@upcnews
Thinking Like A Chicken Podcast

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

Matt is Press Coordinator and an investigator for Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). As part of his activism he has conducted animal farm investigations, been threatened with prison for rescuing farm animals from abuse and pranked NewsMax and FoxNews by posing as the CEO of Smithfield Foods – exposing to millions of viewers the damage their industry does to non-human animals, human animals and to the planet.

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

“Standing Trial” – A Profile of Matt in Harpers Magazine
@Matt_J_1

Neil is a professor of philosophy with research interests spanning philosophy of mind, psychology, free will, moral responsibility, epistemology, and applied ethics. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and professor of philosophy at Macquarie University, Sydney. From 2010, he was head of neuroethics at the Florey Institutes of Neuroscience in Melbourne.

He has written many papers and books, including “Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People“.

Neil describes himself as a naturalistic philosopher. He is vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@neillevy10
Neil at the Oxford Uehiro Centre
Neil on PhilPapers
Neil on Decoding The Gurus

Alene is the President and Founder of Legal Impact for Chickens. She graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for a federal judge and then started litigating for animals. She has worked at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and The Good Food Institute. Alene is licensed to practice law in New York, the District of Columbia, and California. Alene is committed to helping chickens to honor the memories of her two beloved avian family members, Conrad and Zeke.

Alene has a non-religious, naturalistic worldview (with a strong sceptical streak…). She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@AleneAnello
@ChickensLegal

Chaitanya is Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in the Centre for Regulatory Policy and Governance. He has a PhD in Economics. Chaitanya’s research interests include economic development strategies in the global south, structural change, economic development and regulatory policy, urban economics, and non-anthropocentric strategies/alternatives to anthropocentric value systems in progress and conservation including food systems research (and maybe Sentientist Economics?)

In addition to his academic work, Chaitanya has published articles on economic development, inequality and on the intersection of Hinduism, politics and animal ethics in India.

Chaitanya has a naturalistic worldview and, at least, a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@chaitanyatalrej
@eat_plants_stay_fit
Chaitanya on ResearchGate

Clive is a Labour politician in the UK who has been the Member of Parliament for Norwich South since winning the seat at the 2015 general election. He was a candidate for Leader of the Labour Party in the 2020 leadership election. Clive previously served as vice-president of the National Union of Students, worked as a TV reporter for BBC News and served as an infantry officer with the Territorial Army. He served a three-month tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2009. Clive became shadow defence secretary in June 2016 and shadow business secretary in October 2016. He left the Shadow Cabinet in 2017 in protest over the Labour Party’s decision to whip its MPs into voting to trigger Article 50, but rejoined the front bench a year later as shadow minister for sustainable economics.

Clive is a Humanist. He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanists Group and was elected as its chair in 2015. He seems to be veg*an, possibly implying a sentiocentric moral scope.

Clive on Wikipedia
@labourlewis
clivelewis.org

Thomas is a philosopher and emeritus professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, a co-founder of the German Effective Altruism Foundation, president of the Barbara Wengeler Foundation and on the advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. From 2008 to 2009 he served as a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study; from 2014 to 2019 he was a Fellow at the Gutenberg Research College; from 2019 to 2022 he was awarded a Senior-Forschungsprofessur by the Ministry of Science, Education and Culture. From 2018 to 2020 Thomas worked as a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence. Thomas is a founding member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.

In 2009, he published a popular book, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, which discusses the ethical, cultural and social consequences of consciousness research.

Thomas seems to have a naturalistic worldview (see his essay on Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty) and a sentiocentric moral scope. In a recent episode of  The Sentience Institute Podcast (otherwise focused on his proposal for a moratorium on artificial sentience development) he says: “And for an applied ethics perspective, I think the most important thing is if we want to minimize suffering in the world, and if we want to minimize animal suffering, we should always err on the side of caution, we should always be on the safe side.”

@ThomasMetzinger
Thomas at JGU Mainz
Thomas on Wikipedia

Carol is an author, artist, animal activist and scholar whose work focuses on the reality of animals’ lives as important contributors to the biodiversity of this planet. She is Professor Emerita of Design and Dynamic Media and Critical and Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr University of Design, Vancouver, BC. CANADA. Her most recent book is The Creative Lives of Animals.

Carol is vegan and has (at least) a sentiocentric moral scope. Carol is non-religious and has a broadly naturalistic worldview. She is happy to call herself a Sentientist – having joined our “wall“.

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

carolgigliotti.com
@cgigliotti

Lisa is an activist and academic who specialises in anymal and environmental ethics. She was an associate professor of philosophy and religion at Montana State University Billings until she retired in 2020 to found and lead the educational, vegan umbrella organization, Tapestry. Lisa is the author or editor of ten books including Animals and World Religions. She has also written over 100 articles and book chapters. Lisa coined the term anymal as a “correct” term for non-human animals.

In her book, In Search of Consistency, she said ” We have extended ethics outward from self to family to community to all of humanity. We are now called to extend moral consideration to other species.”

Lisa grants moral consideration to all sentient beings and is vegan. She doesn’t publicly disclose her epistemological worldview.

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

Lisa on Wikipedia
LisaKemmerer.com
Lisa on ResearchGate
@L_Kemmerer

Philip is a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, of Pākehā (NZ European) and Māori (Ngāi Tahu) descent. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, affiliated with the Sydney Environment Institute. He holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy from The University of Auckland & diplomas in te reo Māori (the Māori language) from Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Philip has written for publications such as the Guardian, Newsroom, & Takahē. His book, Love Notes: for a Politics of Love, is published in New York by Lantern Books. In 2018, he co-organised ‘The Politics of Love: A Conference’ at All Souls College, Oxford. Philip was also kaiwhakatipu (editor) of He Ika Haehae Kupenga.

Philip is vegan and grants moral consideration both to all sentient beings and to non-sentient entities. He has a broadly naturalistic, atheist/agnostic worldview although he takes spirituality seriously – albeit considered through a critical filter. He has said: “Those who know me best appreciate the contradiction between my strong interest in spirituality, and my deep, often very vocal, opposition to religion.”

philip-mckibbin.com
thepoliticsoflove.com and Love Notes
Philip on FaceBook
@philip_mckibbin

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

Ana is Executive Director of Sentient. Sentient is a non-profit journalism outlet aimed at making transparent the suffering that goes on in our food systems and inspiring readers to think more about the implications of what we eat. Ana also hosts the Sentient podcast.

Ana is vegan, grants moral consideration to all sentient beings and has a broadly naturalistic worldview.

@AnaBrdly

Erin is the Deputy Director of Investigations at Animal Outlook, a national animal-advocacy nonprofit organisation. Erin was an undercover investigator for two years. She left the field after her last investigation at the Dick Van Dam Dairy in California, where she saw cruelty, abuse & suffering every day. Through her new position with Animal Outlook, Erin works closely with investigators, providing support & resources.

Erin has a sentiocentric moral scope so is vegan. She has an open-minded, naturalistic worldview.

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

Erin on the Our Hen House podcast
Profile of Erin by Unbound Project

Rutger is a historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics, including “Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World” and “Humankind”. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and the BBC. Rutger has been described by The Guardian as the “Dutch wunderkind of new ideas” and by TED Talks as “one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers”. His TED Talk, “Poverty Isn’t a Lack of Character; It’s a Lack of Cash”, was chosen by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the top ten of 2017.

Rutger was brought up in a Christian family but is now an atheist and seems to have a naturalistic worldview. He is either vegetarian or vegan, implying he’s at least moving towards a sentiocentric moral scope.

Rutger on Wikipedia
rutgerbregman.com
@rcbregman

Marina is a journalist, currently focusing on factory farming and the criminalization of activists who fight it. Marina has written for Vox, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Intercept and many other publications. She used to be an editor for Harvard Magazine. Before that, she wrote and edited for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Toledo Blade and The Harvard Crimson.

Marina grants moral consideration to all sentient beings so is vegan. She also has a broadly naturalistic worldview, although is comfortable describing her sense of connection with the world and other sentient beings as “spiritual”.

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

@mbolotnikova
marinabolotnikova.com

Susana is assistant professor based at the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science of UNED, working on animal ethics and the philosophy of animal minds. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Complutense University of Madrid, an MA in Global Ethics and Human Values from King’s College London and a PhD in Philosophy from UNED, Spain. She has been a post-doc fellow at the University of Graz and at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna. Susana describes her research interest as focusing on “what animals are capable of feeling, thinking, and doing, and what this means for the sort of treatment that we owe them.”

Susana led the project “Animals and the Concept of Death” which culminated in her book, “La Zarigüeya De Schrödinger” or “Schrödinger’s Possum”.

@Susana_MonsO
susanamonso.com
Susana at UNED

“Even when I was deeply entrenched in the dairy and beef industries for almost two decades before becoming a vegan activist, it was impossible to deny or discount the personalities, emotions and the ability to feel and most of all suffer. We are all animals, we are all equal and none of us should be treated any different or lesser, for not being born the same. Non-human animals need no other purpose or use than to simply be.”

Jackie is a former dairy & beef farmer turned full-time animal rights advocate. She is head of communications and a founding board member for the global non-profit, VeganFTA (For The Animals). She co-hosts their podcast and live shows. Jackie is also an author and public speaker.

Jackie has a broadly naturalistic worldview although does have a sense that there may be something spiritual beyond the natural world. She is vegan and has a sentiocentric moral scope.

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

@jackienormanfta

Aph is a writer, vegan activist, and digital media producer. She is the author of Racism as Zoological Witchcraft; co-author (with Syl Ko) of Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters and creator of the website Black Vegans Rock.

Aph is vegan. She was raised Catholic but “isn’t Catholic any more” and seems to have a naturalistic worldview. She has said “Racism uses animality as a vehicle to oppress any being that is not considered ‘human’.”

Aph on Wikipedia
aphko.wordpress.com

Robert is a political scientist, political theorist, and intellectual historian. He is a Professor Emeritus in the politics department at the University of Leicester, where he has worked for much of his career. Much of his work concerns animals in politics and ethics including his books Animals, Politics and Morality; Political Animals; Animal Ethics; The Political Theory of Animal Rights; The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation (with Gary Francione); A Theory of Justice for Animals; and The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights (with Yewande Okuleye).

Robert proposes an “enhanced sentience” stance on animal ethics and seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Robert on Wikipedia
robert-garner.com
@robleicester1

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

Jonathan is an ethologist and author. He was Director of Animal Sentience with the Humane Society Institute for Science and Policy and Department Chair for Animal Studies with Humane Society University. He lectures internationally on animal behavior and the human-animal relationship. Jonathan also served as Associate Editor of the journal Animal Sentience from 2015 to 2019.

Jonathan’s books include: The Use of Animals in Higher Education; Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good; Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals; What A Fish Knows and SuperFly.

Jonathan is vegan and has written extensively about the reality and moral salience of non-human animal sentience. He has a naturalistic, scientific worldview and also describes himself as an atheist.

Jonathan on Wikipedia
@Jonathanpb1959
jonathan-balcombe.com
Interview with Jonathan by previous Sentientism guest Jordi Casamitjana

Steven is a philosopher, writer, speaker and activist with 30 years work in diverse social movements such as animal rights, species extinction, human overpopulation, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media and culture, globalization, and capitalist domination. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. Steven has published 13 books and over 200 articles and reviews, spoken in nearly two dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and in 2007 was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.”

Steven is co-author (with Douglas Kellner) of a trilogy of postmodern studies. More recently, he introduced and co-edited four anthologies: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals; Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth; Academic Repression: Reflections on the Academic-Industrial Complex; and The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination. His most recent book is: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century.

Steven is a vegan and animal rights activist. He seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Steven on Wikipedia
drstevebest.wordpress.com
Steve talking about “The Politics of Total Liberation” on the ARZone podcast

Dale is Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at New York University, a scholar of environmental ethics and animal rights, and an analyst of climate change discourse. He also serves as a faculty affiliate for the NYU School of Law and as director of NYU’s Animal Studies Initiative. In addition to his affiliation with the NYU Departments of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, Dale also holds positions at The Dickson Poon School of Law and at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.

Dale is the author of “Animal Liberation is an Environmental Ethic”, Co-editor with Marc Bekoff of “Readings in Animal Cognition”, “Morality’s Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature”, “Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction”, “Reason in a Dark Time” and (with Bonnie Nadzam) “Love in the Anthropocene”.

Dale seems to have a broadly sentiocentric moral scope but is also open to considering agency as an additional moral qualifier as part of a pluralistic approach. He has said “The animals… that are supposed to have had happy lives probably did not have happy lives and were almost certainly not painlessly killed.” He seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Dale on Wikipedia
Dale at NYU

Jo-Anne is a photojournalist, public speaker, animal rights activist and author. She is best known for her We Animals Media project, a media agency and photography project documenting human relationships with animals. Jo-Anne offers presentations about human relationships with animals in educational and other environments and provides photographs and other media for those working to help animals.

Jo-Anne was the primary subject of the 2013 documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine, directed by Liz Marshall, and with Keri Cronin, she is the founder of the Unbound Project, which aims to celebrate and recognize women animal activists. Her first book, We Animals, was published in 2013; her second, Captive, was published in 2017; and a third, Hidden, which featured a foreword by Joaquin Phoenix, was published in 2020. Jo-Anne has been awarded a range of commendations for her photography and activism, including several commendations in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards and joint first place in the COP26 photography competition.

Jo-Anne is vegan and has (at least!) a sentiocentric moral scope. Jo-Anne has a broadly naturalistic worldview, describing herself as atheist/agnostic with a “spiritual sense of the world”.

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

weanimalsmedia.org
Joannemcarthur.com
Jo-Anne on Wikipedia

Miyoko is a chef, cookbook author, animal sanctuary founder and owner of dairy-free cheese brand Miyoko’s Creamery. She is a leading advocate for the right of vegan food products to use “traditional” meat and dairy terms on their labels. Miyoko is the author of “The Now and Zen Epicure” and “The Homemade Vegan Pantry”.

Miyoko is vegan and has said: “We need to move all of humanity to recognize animals as sentient beings that have their own lives, and their own right to having their own lives…”  I’m not sure whether she has a naturalistic worldview but her ethics don’t seem to be grounded in the supernatural. She has said: “We need to create a culture that’s based on compassion and love. Those are the only things that matter.”

Miyoko on Wikipedia
The Miyoko’s Creamery Story
@MiyokoSchinner

Ingrid is an animal activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world’s largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several books, including The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble and Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion. Ingrid has worked for the animal-protection movement since 1972. She has been given the following awards: Washingtonian of the Year, 1980; Courage of Conscience Award, 1995; Shining World Compassion Award, 2007; Ahimsa Award, 2014 and the Peter Singer Prize for Strategies to Reduce the Suffering of Animals, 2016.

Ingrid is an abolitionist and a vegan, implying a sentiocentric moral scope. She is also an atheist, implying she has a naturalistic worldview.

Find my Sentientist Conversation with Ingrid here on the Sentientism YouTube and here on the Sentientism Podcast.

Ingrid on Wikipedia
ingridnewkirk.com

Kathryn Gillespie PhD is a writer, multispecies ethnographer, & feminist geographer. She is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Geography & the Applied Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program. Her research & teaching interests focus on: ethnography & qualitative methods; feminist & multi-species theory & methods; food & agriculture; political economy; critical animal studies; human-environment relations. She is the author of The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. She has also published in numerous scholarly journals & has co-edited three books: Vulnerable Witness: The Politics of Grief in the Field; Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World; and Economies of Death: Economic Logics of Killable Life & Grievable Death. Kathryn has volunteered with Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, Food Empowerment Project and Pigs Peace Sanctuary.

Kathryn has a broadly naturalistic worldview and a sentiocentric compassion.

Find Kathryn’s Sentientist Conversation with me here on the Sentientism YouTube and on the Sentientism podcast.

kathrynagillespie.com

David is a moral philosopher specializing in bioethics and animal ethics. He is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University, where he has taught since 1989, and the author or editor of several books on ethics, including Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status, Human Identity and Bioethics, and Creation Ethics: Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life.

He seems to have a naturalistic, sentiocentric worldview. He has written extensively on taking a sentiocentric approach to animal ethics and extends the same approach to potentially sentient artificial intelligences. He has written: “So do ethicists have a greater obligation than other people to maintain ethical diets? No, they have the same obligation as everyone else. But unlike a lot of people, ethicists have no excuses for failing to understand dietary ethics and living accordingly.”

David on Wikipedia
David at George Washington University

Joel was a political and legal philosopher. He is known for his work in the fields of ethics, action theory, philosophy of law, and political philosophy as well as individual rights and the authority of the state. Feinberg is seen as one of the most influential figures in American jurisprudence.

He proposed an interest-based approach to non-human animal rights that saw interests as requiring mental states (hence sentience), implying a sentiocentric moral scope. He was an atheist and had a naturalistic worldview. He said “Conceptual clarity is neither more or less important for public policy than factual discovery. Each is vitally necessary and the two are mutually dependent.”

Joel on Wikipedia