Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest physicists of all time. Einstein is known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics.

Einstein did talk about “the god of Spinoza” but seemed to see these in a firmly naturalistic context. He preferred to describe himself as agnostic rather than atheist. He did not believe in a personal god or an afterlife saying “No. And one life is enough for me.” He served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York and was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Association. He also said: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. … I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

He seems to have been vegetarian by the end of his life. He said: “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures…” and “If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”

Thanks to @its_sethlee for suggesting Einstein as a “proto-Sentientist” and for his research shared in our Sentientism FaceBook Group (all welcome – Sentientist or not!).

Einstein on Wikipedia

Aditya is the wild animal suffering outreach coordinator for Animal Ethics. He works in grass-roots animal activism with a variety of organisations. He is studying Animal Protection Law at the National Legal Studies Research Institute in India.

He is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview.

Find Aditya’s Sentientist Conversation with me here on YouTube and here on Podcast.

Roos is a professor of social psychology at Radboud University and a public speaker. She conducts scientific research and teaches about topics including first impressions, self-knowledge, behavioral change and human-animal relationships.

Roos is vegan and seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Roosvonk.nl
@Roosvonk
Roos on Wikipedia

Find Jenny’s Sentientist Conversation with me here on the Sentientism YouTube and Sentientism Podcast. Jenny also interviewed me (Jamie Woodhouse) here for her SubStack podcast.

Jenny is Managing Editor of Sentient. She is an award-winning journalist & science writer covering food, agriculture, climate change, biodiversity, health & technology. Her work has been published across a wide range of media outlets including Vox, Forbes, Observer, The Washington Post and New York Magazine. Jenny is a co-founder & contributing editor to the science communication project SciMoms. She is also a podcast host on the Animal Studies channel of the New Books Network & her newsletter, FutureFeed, chronicles change in the food system.

Jenny is vegan, has a naturalistic worldview (culturally reform Jewish) and considers herself a Sentientist.

@jennysplitter
jennysplitter.com
futurefeed.substack.com

Barbara is emerita professor of anthropology at William & Mary and a freelance science writer and public speaker. The author of seven books, including the new Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild, Barbara focuses on animal emotion and cognition, the ethics of our relationships with animals, and the evolutionary history of language, culture, and religion. Her book How Animals Grieve has been translated into 7 languages and her TED talk on animal love and grief has now received over 3 million views.

Barbara is “pretty close to vegan” and, as an atheist, seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

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

@bjkingape
barbarajking.com
Barbara on Wikipedia

Jane is a TV broadcaster, author, journalist & now CEO of the animal rights non-profit Jane Unchained. For six years she hosted her own show on CNN Headline News. She has written four books, two of which were NY Times bestsellers. She has won numerous awards for her activism on behalf of non-human animals.

Jane is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview.

Find her Sentientist Conversation with me here on the Sentientism YouTube and Podcast. In it, she says “The root of all evil is thinking some suffering doesn’t matter”.

@JVM
Jane Unchained

Cebuan (Cebby) is a PhD candidate researching animal and biodiversity governance at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

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

@CebbyBliss
Cebuan at Radboud

Tom was a philosopher who specialized in animal rights theory. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, where he taught from 1967 until his retirement in 2001. Tom was the author of numerous books on the philosophy of animal rights, including The Case for Animal Rights, one of a handful of studies that have significantly influenced the modern animal rights movement. In these books he argued that non-human animals are what he called the “subjects-of-a-life” (approximately sentient – capable of experience), just as humans are, and that, if we want to ascribe value to all human beings regardless of their ability to be rational agents, then to be consistent, we must similarly ascribe it to non-humans.

From 1985, he served with his wife Nancy as co-founder and co-president of the Culture and Animals Foundation, a nonprofit organization “committed to fostering the growth of intellectual and artistic endeavors united by a positive concern for animals.”

Tom was vegan and seems to have had a naturalistic worldview. While relying on a secular perspective he also worked to encourage those with religious worldviews to take the rights of sentient animals seriously, as in this piece.

Tom on Wikipedia
regan.animalsvoice.com

Jacy is a social scientist and co-founder of the Sentience Institute. His acclaimed book, The End of Animal Farming, analyses the development & popularisation of food technologies such as plant-based & cultivated meat. Jacy’s research has been featured in The Guardian, Vox, Forbes, and other global media outlets, and he has presented at conferences and seminars in over 20 countries. He is currently a PhD Fellow at The University of Chicago. He is from Huntsville, Texas and lives in Chicago with his wife Kelly Anthis and their rescued dogs Apollo & Dionysus.

Jacy is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview and is happy to identify as a “Sentientist”.

Jacy’s Sentientist Conversation with me is on the Sentientism YouTube and podcast.

@jacyanthis
jacyanthis.com
Jacy on Wikipedia

Eze is a Beatriu de Pinós Postdoctoral Fellow at the Law & Philosophy Group of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is also a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics, a think tank dedicated to the promotion of the full consideration of nonhuman animals in all areas of public life.

His current research focuses on the alleviation of wild animal suffering and on developing a neorepublican approach to the political status of nonhuman animals that focuses on their freedom through immunity from domination.

He says: ” I strongly believe in the need to engage in politics in order to create a better world for all sentient beings, including nonhuman animals.”

Eze is vegan and an atheist.

@Eze_pz
ezepaez.com

Catia is a moral philosopher and activist for animal rights and feminism. She is a postdoctoral researcher for the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology at the University of Minho and is a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics. Previously, Catia was a lecturer in Ethics and Sustainability at Pompeu Fabra University and a visiting researcher at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

Catia’s PhD thesis was the first of its kind to defend the idea that humans should help non-human animals in the wild to reduce the problem of wild animal suffering. In 2015, Faria co-edited, with Eze Paez, a double volume of the journal “Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism”, on the problem of wild animal suffering and ways to reduce it. In 2020, Faria co-authored, with Oscar Horta, a chapter on welfare biology in The Routledge Handbook of Animal Ethics.

Catia is vegan, grants moral consideration based on sentience and seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Catia on Wikipedia
@catiaxfaria

Kyle is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University. His research is in social & political philosophy & in animal & environmental ethics. He teaches normative ethics, metaethics, bioethics, business ethics, cyberethics, the philosophy of law, & critical thinking. Kyle is the author of “Wild Animal Ethics – The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering”.

Kyle is vegan and has a sentiocentric and naturalistic worldview. He identifies as a Sentientist.

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

@KyleJohannsen2
Kyle on Academia.edu
Kyle on PhilPeople

I believe in non-violence (ahimsa) as a key philosophy and the shortcut to world peace. I am a sentientist because I have compassion for all beings and do not exploit or abuse animals for greed or ignorance. I can only hope that this philosophy expands and we manifest a utopian dimension of peace.

@NEO10Y

Richard is a philosopher at the City University of New York. His work is focused on the philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and the foundations of cognitive science. He also has interests and projects in the philosophy of language, metaethics, philosophy of physics, logic and the philosophy of logic, as well as the history of philosophy. He blogs at Philosophy Sucks! and hosts the Consciousness Live! podcast.

He is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview.

Richard’s Sentientist Conversation with me will be out soon on YouTube and Podcast.

@Onemorebrown
onemorebrown.com

Find Christopher’s Sentientist Conversation with me here on YouTube and Podcast.

Christopher is the director of social media for Peace Advocacy Network, he sits on the Advisory Council for Encompass, he is a senior fellow at Sentient, he is co-founder of VGN, and he lectures at Columbia University in the Department of Social Work for the graduate course POP: Power, Oppression, & Privilege. Using a multidisciplinary approach that includes media theory, political science, and social psychology, he focuses on how human relationships with other animals shape our attitudes about race, sexuality & class.

Christopher on Patreon
Christopher on Instagram
christophersebastian.info

Marcus is a professional tennis player. He is a philanthropist and an advocate for effective altruism through his work as the founder of High Impact Athletes and as a member of Giving What We Can. He is veg*an and has a naturalistic worldview.

Marcus’ Sentientist Conversation with me is here on YouTube and Podcast.

Marcus on Wikipedia
@MarcusDaniell

Yasmine is a rights activist, advocating primarily for the rights of women living within Islamic majority countries. Yasmine founded the charity Free Hearts Free Minds which provides mental health support to freethinkers in Islamic majority countries. Her book, Unveiled, recalls her experiences growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic household, her arranged marriage to a member of Al-Qaeda, her escape and how she built a new life.

She is veg*an and has a naturalistic worldview.

You can find Yasmine’s Sentientist Conversation with me here.

@YasMohammedxx
yasminemohammed.com

“I’m concerned with oppression in all its forms.”

Joey is assistant professor of philosophy at McNeese State University & programme coordinator for the nonprofits Farm Forward & Better Food Foundation (See also the Default Veg campaign). His research covers philosophies of food, medicine, animals & environment. He teaches biomedical ethics & sections of ethical theory & existentialism.

He is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview.

Watch his Sentientist Conversation with me here on YouTube or Podcast.

Joey on Academia.edu

Kristof Dhont is a social psychologist & senior lecturer at the university of Kent where he runs SHARKLab (Study of Human InterGroup & Animal Relations​). He is the author of “Why We Love & Exploit Animals“. Kristof is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview.

Kristof’s Sentientist Conversation with me is on the Sentientism YouTube and Podcast.

@kristof_dhont
SHARKLab at Kent University

Elizabeth is a philosopher. She is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. Elizabeth’s research covers topics in social philosophy, political philosophy and ethics, including: democratic theory, equality in political philosophy and American law, racial integration, the ethical limits of markets, theories of value and rational choice, the philosophies of John Stuart Mill and John Dewey, and feminist epistemology and philosophy of science.

Elizabeth was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and has received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship to support her work. Anderson was named a Progress Medal Laureate in February 2018 by the Society for Progress for her book “Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It)”. In 2019, she received a “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Fellows Program. Elizabeth was also listed in the 2020 Prospect list of the top 50 thinkers for the COVID-19 era. Elizabeth’s book “The Imperative of Integration” won the American Philosophical Association’s 2011 Joseph B. Gittler Award. She also wrote the book “Value in Ethics and Economics”.

Elizabeth has a naturalistic worldview and grants moral consideration to “beings capable experiencing joy or suffering” per her recent appearance on Sean Carroll’s MindScape podcast and her chapter, “Animal Rights and the Values of NonHuman Life” in Nussbaum and Sunstein’s 2004 book “Animal Rights – Current Debates and New Directions“. She starts the chapter with “I believe that animals have intrinsic value”.

Elizabeth on Wikipedia
Elizabeth at UMichigan

Carrie Poppy is an American journalist, atheist, vegan, creator, and host of the popular podcast “Oh No! Ross and Carrie” which describes itself as “the show where we don’t just report on spirituality, fringe science and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves.” The show itself comes from a skeptical perspective (both hosts are atheists) but also approaches the topics with genuine curiosity, warmth, and interest. She’s not a fan of labels, but shares the Sentientist commitments to naturalism and sentiocentrism.

OhNoPodcast.com  and OhNoPodcast on Wikipedia
carriepoppy.horse
@CarriePoppyYES

Jessica Pierce (born October 21, 1965) is an American bioethicist and writer. She is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School. She has been writing and lecturing about the moral contours of human-animal relationships for over 15 years and is a leading scholar in animal ethics and environmental bioethics. She has published 11 books, including The Last Walk and Run, Spot, Run, as well as hundreds of scholarly and popular articles. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. She writes a regular blog for Psychology Today called All Dogs Go to Heaven. You can find out more about Jessica at jessicapierce.net. Her most recent book, co-authored with Marc Bekoff, is A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without People (Princeton University Press) will be released in October of 2021.

Jessica is vegan and has a naturalistic world-view, although remains open minded about and is influenced by eastern philosophy.  

In Jessica’s Sentientist Conversation with me (also here on podcast), she says “Compassion needs to be grounded in reality”.

jessicapierce.net
Jessica on Wikipedia

Lynda is an anthrozoologist, sociologist and philosopher who teaches sociology in Scottish Further Education. She is also a musician, songwriter, writer and artist. Lynda is Editor-in-Chief of the Student Journal of Vegan Sociology. She is vegan and has a naturalistic worldview.

Lynda’s Sentientist Conversation with me on the Sentientism YouTube and Podcast.

Lynda’s recent paper in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies, “The Peppa Pig Paradox”
@LMKorimboccus
korimboccus.com

Christopher “Soul” Eubanks is a public speaker, author, musician, photographer, animal rights activist and the founder of Apex Advocacy. He is vegan and has said he is no longer religious – although it’s not clear whether he has a more broadly naturalistic worldview.

@soul_eubanks
souleubanks.com
apexadvocacy.org

Joe is an author and lecturer at the University of Leicester. His research interests lie in the areas of human rights, animal rights and legal, political and moral theory and he is currently working on issues relating to the moral and legal status of non-human animals.

Joe’s Sentientist Conversation with me on YouTube and Podcast

@DrJoeWills
Joe at the University of Leicester

Find Mikko’s Sentientist Conversation with me on our YouTube and Podcast

Mikko is a tech start-up founder and CEO (now https://candle.to/​). He founded & is now board chair of Sentient – an organisation dedicated to making the world a better place for all sentient beings through journalism.

“I think a secular morality has to come from the systematisation of empathy, and empathy is a mode of understanding sentient beings.”

Luke is a philosopher of mind at the Centre for Mind, Brain & Consciousness at New York University. Although Luke works primarily on philosophy of mind & metaphysics, their areas of interest include ethics, social & political philosophy, early modern philosophy and philosophy of gender & sexuality. Their book, “Reason, Empathy, and the Minds of Others” is under contract with Oxford University Press.

You can find Luke’s Sentientist Conversation with me here on the Sentientism Youtube and on the Sentientism Podcast here on Apple and here on the other platforms​​​​​​.

lukeroelofs.com
Majestic Equality blog

James Timothy “Tim” Holland Jr., better known by his stage name Sole, is an underground hip hop artist from Portland, Maine. He is one of eight co-founders of the record label Anticon. He has been a member of the groups Northern Exposure, Live Poets, Deep Puddle Dynamics, So-Called Artists, Da Babylonianz, Sole and the Skyrider Band and Waco Boyz. While living in Denver, Sole was active in the local outpost of the Occupy Wall Street political movement. He has been involved in various anarchist projects and he hosts a podcast about revolutionary politics and radical philosophy called “The Solecast.”

Sole is vegan and seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

@mcsole
soleone.org
Sole on Wikipedia

Ezra is a American journalist, political analyst, New York Times columnist, and the host of The Ezra Klein Show podcast. He is a co-founder of Vox and formerly served as the website’s editor-at-large. He has held editorial positions at The Washington Post and The American Prospect and was a regular contributor to Bloomberg News and MSNBC. His first book, Why We’re Polarized, was published in 2020.

Ezra is ~vegan and has published on the ethics of animal farming. He has described himself as an agnostic and seems to have a naturalistic worldview.

Ezra on Wikipedia
@ezraklein

Marcus Jamal Hopson, known professionally as Hopsin, is a rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, music video director and actor from Los Angeles, California.

He follows a straight edge lifestyle which often implies a serious stance re: non-human animal ethics, including veganism. He seems to have a naturalistic worldview, having left Christianity and not believing in a god – although still saying “I want god to be real”.

@hopsin
Hopsin on Wikipedia