Sentientism | A US Constitution For All Sentient Beings - Maybe Sooner Than We Think? - Michael Dorf - Ep: 145 @Sentientism | Uploaded February 2023 | Updated October 2024, 2 minutes ago.
Michael (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/michael-dorf) is a law professor & 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 & 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 #ussupremecourt Court & 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 & has been interviewed by and/or quoted in, for example, The New York Times, @CNN National Public Radio & @TheDailyShow with Jon Stewart (another suspected sentientist).
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 on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
02:02 Michael's Intro
- Studying physics, then the law
- Clerking then legal scholarship
- Blogging Dorf On Law
- #vegan since 2006
- Animal work in partnership with Mike's wife, Sherry Kolb "we agreed on nearly everything, but not quite everything"
04:44 What's Real?
- Growing up in New York, raised #jewish "but mostly culturally"
- "My father never went to synagogue unless it was somebody's wedding... he was not at all religious but he was the most ethical person I knew"
- "Religion is not necessary and certainly... not sufficient to make someone an ethical person"
- "That personal aspect... overshadowed anything I was being taught"
- Dad's library: "the answers that the religious folks were giving to deep philosophical questions... barely scratched the surface... whereas if I went into my dad's study... Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy"... Lao Tse..."
- Teaching: "what I really value is engagement with hard questions"
- "The sorts of answers that religion gives stop asking the questions just when they become interesting... god made the world... god thus commanded it... it leaves lots of further questions unasked"
- Choosing to believe? Faith? "I don't even understand the disposition... I've never been able to choose to believe things"
- "Nearly all of the spiritual or supernatural beliefs I've encountered, whether religious or otherwise, strike me as ridiculous"
- Taking an Indian philosophy class with Robert Nozick (based on advice from Amartya Sen)
- "If that happens [god appearing] then I'll adjust my views... but that will be in response to evidence... that itself would be a kind of naturalism."
- #ontology , #epistemology , #fideism
- "The core evidence for me against the existence of a benevolent deity is the existence of evil in the world"
- "Sherry's parents were holocaust survivors and all of her other relatives... were wiped out by the Nazis"
- "I actually find myself offended... after winning a football game you see an athlete thanking god... it strikes me as arrogant to think that the creator of the universe thought to intervene... to ensure that the ball bounced this way and that but not to prevent the suffering & death of millions of humans & billions of non-human animals"
- "I might be amenable to the belief that the world was created by a malevolent being... but that's not really on offer."
- #Freewill #theodicy "it's flawed even on its own terms"
- Transitioning away from religion
- "There really are two distinct Jewish communities": liberal or #orthodox
- Even in #ultraorthodox communities "practice is more important than faith"
- Possibly true story: group of very religous Jewish men in Auschwitz "put god on trial... and essentially convict god... then they pray"
26:40 What Matters?
- "I am deeply pragmatic" John Dewey, William James #pragmatism
- "My moral intuitions come before any attempt at synthesising or deriving them..."
- Family participating in a longitudinal research study "there's a chapter on my father and me" in the book "Mothers, Fathers & Children"
- Father on philosophy of parenting: "I'm anti-philosophical"
- "Part of pragmatism is that you do it almost unthinkingly... there are some things I'm very deliberate about... when I became vegan that meant making choices..."
47:12 Who Matters?
01:10:55 How Can We Make a Better Future?
... & much more!
#Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Michael (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/michael-dorf) is a law professor & 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 & 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 #ussupremecourt Court & 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 & has been interviewed by and/or quoted in, for example, The New York Times, @CNN National Public Radio & @TheDailyShow with Jon Stewart (another suspected sentientist).
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 on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
02:02 Michael's Intro
- Studying physics, then the law
- Clerking then legal scholarship
- Blogging Dorf On Law
- #vegan since 2006
- Animal work in partnership with Mike's wife, Sherry Kolb "we agreed on nearly everything, but not quite everything"
04:44 What's Real?
- Growing up in New York, raised #jewish "but mostly culturally"
- "My father never went to synagogue unless it was somebody's wedding... he was not at all religious but he was the most ethical person I knew"
- "Religion is not necessary and certainly... not sufficient to make someone an ethical person"
- "That personal aspect... overshadowed anything I was being taught"
- Dad's library: "the answers that the religious folks were giving to deep philosophical questions... barely scratched the surface... whereas if I went into my dad's study... Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy"... Lao Tse..."
- Teaching: "what I really value is engagement with hard questions"
- "The sorts of answers that religion gives stop asking the questions just when they become interesting... god made the world... god thus commanded it... it leaves lots of further questions unasked"
- Choosing to believe? Faith? "I don't even understand the disposition... I've never been able to choose to believe things"
- "Nearly all of the spiritual or supernatural beliefs I've encountered, whether religious or otherwise, strike me as ridiculous"
- Taking an Indian philosophy class with Robert Nozick (based on advice from Amartya Sen)
- "If that happens [god appearing] then I'll adjust my views... but that will be in response to evidence... that itself would be a kind of naturalism."
- #ontology , #epistemology , #fideism
- "The core evidence for me against the existence of a benevolent deity is the existence of evil in the world"
- "Sherry's parents were holocaust survivors and all of her other relatives... were wiped out by the Nazis"
- "I actually find myself offended... after winning a football game you see an athlete thanking god... it strikes me as arrogant to think that the creator of the universe thought to intervene... to ensure that the ball bounced this way and that but not to prevent the suffering & death of millions of humans & billions of non-human animals"
- "I might be amenable to the belief that the world was created by a malevolent being... but that's not really on offer."
- #Freewill #theodicy "it's flawed even on its own terms"
- Transitioning away from religion
- "There really are two distinct Jewish communities": liberal or #orthodox
- Even in #ultraorthodox communities "practice is more important than faith"
- Possibly true story: group of very religous Jewish men in Auschwitz "put god on trial... and essentially convict god... then they pray"
26:40 What Matters?
- "I am deeply pragmatic" John Dewey, William James #pragmatism
- "My moral intuitions come before any attempt at synthesising or deriving them..."
- Family participating in a longitudinal research study "there's a chapter on my father and me" in the book "Mothers, Fathers & Children"
- Father on philosophy of parenting: "I'm anti-philosophical"
- "Part of pragmatism is that you do it almost unthinkingly... there are some things I'm very deliberate about... when I became vegan that meant making choices..."
47:12 Who Matters?
01:10:55 How Can We Make a Better Future?
... & much more!
#Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
