Dr. Diana Fleischman is an evolutionary psychologist & an author. Until recently she was a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. Her field of research includes the study of disgust, human sexuality, hormones & behaviour. She is involved in the Effective Altruism & animal welfare movements & identifies as a feminist and a Sentientist. Diana’s 2018 Darwin Day Lecture, hosted by Humanists UK, was part of the inspiration for my work developing & raising awareness of Sentientism.

You can find Diana at @Sentientist​ (yes!) & dianaverse.com​. Why not join her on our “I’m a Sentientist” wall using this simple form?

In these 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 – subscribe on Apple here​ & all the other platforms here. Reviews and ratings really help spread the word too!

We discuss:

• Evolutionary psychology
• Effective Altruism
• Diana’s Darwin Day talk to Humanists UK
• Whether Humanists are more likely to be ethical vegans
• Whether “carnism” is socialised or a state of nature
• Diana’s father’s German Jewish & Polish family history during WWII & since
• “They fell in love because he fed her a lot of food”
• Diana’s Catholic mother. Being baptised in Portugal
• Going to synagogue with Diana’s grandfather & Catholic Sunday School
• After first communion “I don’t like it & I don’t believe it”
• Going atheist at 9/10 yrs after brother did at 7
• Being fascinated by evolution – “I carried The Evolution Book around like a teddy bear”
• Being teased as “Monkey Girl” for believing in evolution. The worst bullies seemed to be the most religious kids
• Being told in the early 1990’s by a teacher “evolution is controversial – it’s not a settled idea”
• We skipped the evolution chapter in the Biology textbook
• Becoming stridently anti-religious
• “I thought we couldn’t really understand human beings without understanding that humans are animals”
• I met so many wonderful religious people in the vegan movement & became much less aggressively anti-religion
• Religious arguments for why we should be compassionate are wrong but that compassion can still have good outcomes
• Diana’s Hen Do turns into a witches coven
• Weeping after being blessed by a minister & being moved by ritual
• “I am exactly the kind of person who could fall into religious fervour”
• Sam Harris: “Religions shouldn’t have a monopoly on reverence”
• “Nature is a horrible place”
• If our naturalism is robust we can let ourselves enjoy a sense of soulful aesthetic reverence. If we have to remind ourselves of it – maybe it’s fragile
• Morality is about how we collaborate in groups but there are some absolute standards
• The social & family resonance of consuming animal products
• Sentientism is a coherent moral view but sub-cultures or even the wider culture aren’t going to be sympathetic to it
• The challenges of trading off competing interests of different sentients
• Rationalism, the value of Chesterton’s Fence & weddings
• Being obsessed with animals as a child
• Being disgusted by unfamiliar foods & family resistance vs. the desire to give up animal products
• Learning about animal agriculture practices, hoping for a “humane” loophole & not finding one
• Reading Animal Liberation, then going hardcore vegan the next day at 27
• Eating practices get crystallised. “Everyone wants to eat what they ate as a child”
• Predation is “natural” but so is compassion for non-humans
• Children can be fascinated with animals for exploitative reasons (e.g. it’s common for children to torture/kill animals for amusement)
• Children’s views on companion animals become de-coupled from their views of wild/farmed animals
• Some people can’t yet thrive on a vegan diet
• Diana’s “Practical Veganism” article ​
• The global response to COVID has made Diana more pessimistic
• The hope of clean meat, given how long it takes to persuade people to go vegan
• Gary Francione & abolitionism
• The risk of values blockers to clean meat progress (as happened with GMOs)
• Is a certain level of intelligence required to improve our own morality?
• Cognitive enhancement “I’d love, in my lineage, to be the dumbest person” might enable human moral enhancement? (Julian Savulescu)
• “Trees are not sentient”
• Taking breaks from Twitter.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info​​​​​​​​​​. ​ ​

​Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our groups. Our main one is here on FaceBook​.

Thanks to Graham for his post-prod work. Follow him: @cgbessellieu