Sentientism | "Widening our circle is part of the logic of being a rational human" - Steve Sapontzis - EP:97 @Sentientism | Uploaded February 2022 | Updated October 2024, 9 hours ago.
TURN SUBTITLES ON! The audio is patchy - I should have organised a better mic for Steve - sorry! So I've edited a complete transcript as subtitles. I'll post the full transcript on Sentientism.info.
Steve (stevesapontzis.com/) is professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay. He specialises in animal ethics, environmental ethics & meta-ethics. He was co-founder in 1985 of Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics & served as its initial co-editor. Steve was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Quarterly. In 1983, Steve founded, with his wife Jeanne, the Hayward Friends of Animals Humane Society. They now operate Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in Need, in California. Steve wrote the books "Morals, Reason & Animals" & "Subjective Morals" & edited Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat.
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 & pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:14 Steve's Intro
- Growing up in Salt Lake City to French/Greek parents
- Greek Orthodox & Methodist Christian
- Order of the Cross (vegetarian)
- Going vegetarian as a teenager
- Philosophy at Rice University, Texas
- Louis Mackey & Kierkegaard
- University of Paris & existentialism & Merleau Ponty
- PhD at Yale
- Cal State
- Retirement
- Hayward Friends of Animals & Second Chance charities
- Singer's Animal Liberation "The only philosophy book with a cookbook at the end"
- Teaching animal ethics, ethical theory, environmental ethics
9:19 What's Real?
- Going through the motions at church
- "I didn't really believe in god it was not something that appealed to me whatever."
- "There's so much suffering in the world."
- The limits of science in understanding reality "I think the meaning of a poem is something that's real"
- "Reality is very complicated and things are real in I think a wide variety of ways"
15:47 What (& Who) Matters?
- Writing "Subjective Morals"
- "morals are created by human beings"
- The self-centred and the other-social
- "morals develop in order to reinforce the strength of our other social motivations"
- "there's no limitation to empathy"
- "I think the only logical limitation is that those things about which we care in this sense of empathizing with them - respecting their interest - is that they have interests."
- Animism & anthropomorphism (projections of human interests) vs. interests entities actually have in the world
- "I think the ecosystem by itself doesn't care whether it's a drought or rainy."
- Pre-human proto-morality?
- Writing "Are Animals Moral Beings"... "They are virtuous beings but they're not fully
moral in the Kantian sense"
- The risks of relativistic or arbitrary ethics
- "You can have all sorts of codes of ethics, codes of behaviour... But they're only moral if they're... functioning to try to combat our strongly self-centered feelings and motivate us to have a wider perspective so that we reinforce our ability to be compassionate"
- "Don't be selfish!"
- Pluralism: Care ethics, Singer & utility, Regan & rights, Korsgaard & Kant...
- "I never really felt that doing ethics is something where one can construct some kind of grand system and have a basic principle - and then everything was derived in a logically tight manner from that."
- "Weed the gardens - work where we have some purchase."
- Wild animal suffering: Writing the "Saving the Rabbit From the Fox" chapter of "Morals, Reason & Animals" in 1987
- Nature isn't just "red in tooth and claw"
- Helping wild animals in distress. Preventing predation? "I don't know how one is going to do that on a large scale..."
- Moral agents & patients
- "I don't think we need to revere the current order of nature. We should try to ameliorate it"
- A PBS story about a blind fox
- "we don't just say 'well that's just the way - he's not able to survive he's a weakling so just let him die.'.. we should be helping."
44:24 How Can We Make a Better World?
- "I think we have to see what talents each of us has - what the problems that we in our
situation are controlling and try to work with those."
- Alternatives to animal products & testing
- Empathic (Humane?) education: "get more emphasis on compassion... into the schools"
- Self-centredness, "individual freedoms" & anti-vaxx
- "You wouldn't want to be shot so why is it OK to shoot the deer?"
- "you can get them to pursue this widening circle of compassion as part of the logic of being a rational human."
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.
Thanks Graham! twitter.com/cgbessellieu
TURN SUBTITLES ON! The audio is patchy - I should have organised a better mic for Steve - sorry! So I've edited a complete transcript as subtitles. I'll post the full transcript on Sentientism.info.
Steve (stevesapontzis.com/) is professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay. He specialises in animal ethics, environmental ethics & meta-ethics. He was co-founder in 1985 of Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics & served as its initial co-editor. Steve was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Quarterly. In 1983, Steve founded, with his wife Jeanne, the Hayward Friends of Animals Humane Society. They now operate Second Chance, Helping the Pets of People in Need, in California. Steve wrote the books "Morals, Reason & Animals" & "Subjective Morals" & edited Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat.
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 & pod.link/1540408008.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:14 Steve's Intro
- Growing up in Salt Lake City to French/Greek parents
- Greek Orthodox & Methodist Christian
- Order of the Cross (vegetarian)
- Going vegetarian as a teenager
- Philosophy at Rice University, Texas
- Louis Mackey & Kierkegaard
- University of Paris & existentialism & Merleau Ponty
- PhD at Yale
- Cal State
- Retirement
- Hayward Friends of Animals & Second Chance charities
- Singer's Animal Liberation "The only philosophy book with a cookbook at the end"
- Teaching animal ethics, ethical theory, environmental ethics
9:19 What's Real?
- Going through the motions at church
- "I didn't really believe in god it was not something that appealed to me whatever."
- "There's so much suffering in the world."
- The limits of science in understanding reality "I think the meaning of a poem is something that's real"
- "Reality is very complicated and things are real in I think a wide variety of ways"
15:47 What (& Who) Matters?
- Writing "Subjective Morals"
- "morals are created by human beings"
- The self-centred and the other-social
- "morals develop in order to reinforce the strength of our other social motivations"
- "there's no limitation to empathy"
- "I think the only logical limitation is that those things about which we care in this sense of empathizing with them - respecting their interest - is that they have interests."
- Animism & anthropomorphism (projections of human interests) vs. interests entities actually have in the world
- "I think the ecosystem by itself doesn't care whether it's a drought or rainy."
- Pre-human proto-morality?
- Writing "Are Animals Moral Beings"... "They are virtuous beings but they're not fully
moral in the Kantian sense"
- The risks of relativistic or arbitrary ethics
- "You can have all sorts of codes of ethics, codes of behaviour... But they're only moral if they're... functioning to try to combat our strongly self-centered feelings and motivate us to have a wider perspective so that we reinforce our ability to be compassionate"
- "Don't be selfish!"
- Pluralism: Care ethics, Singer & utility, Regan & rights, Korsgaard & Kant...
- "I never really felt that doing ethics is something where one can construct some kind of grand system and have a basic principle - and then everything was derived in a logically tight manner from that."
- "Weed the gardens - work where we have some purchase."
- Wild animal suffering: Writing the "Saving the Rabbit From the Fox" chapter of "Morals, Reason & Animals" in 1987
- Nature isn't just "red in tooth and claw"
- Helping wild animals in distress. Preventing predation? "I don't know how one is going to do that on a large scale..."
- Moral agents & patients
- "I don't think we need to revere the current order of nature. We should try to ameliorate it"
- A PBS story about a blind fox
- "we don't just say 'well that's just the way - he's not able to survive he's a weakling so just let him die.'.. we should be helping."
44:24 How Can We Make a Better World?
- "I think we have to see what talents each of us has - what the problems that we in our
situation are controlling and try to work with those."
- Alternatives to animal products & testing
- Empathic (Humane?) education: "get more emphasis on compassion... into the schools"
- Self-centredness, "individual freedoms" & anti-vaxx
- "You wouldn't want to be shot so why is it OK to shoot the deer?"
- "you can get them to pursue this widening circle of compassion as part of the logic of being a rational human."
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.
Thanks Graham! twitter.com/cgbessellieu
