111: "The basis of all value is sentience" - Steve Sapontzis Take #2 - Sentientism

Steve is a philosopher and professor emeritus of philosophy at California State University, East Bay who specializes in animal ethics, environmental ethics and meta-ethics. He was co-founder in 1985 of the journal Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics and served as its initial co-editor. Steve was a member of the board of the American Philosophical Quarterly (1991–1994). 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 Morals, Reason, and Animals, in 1987, Subjective Morals, in 2011, and edited Food for Thought: The Debate over Eating Meat; published in 2004.

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 video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:34 Steve's Intro

- Getting out of the ivory tower "Put the values you espouse into effect & help the animals"

- A seminal early voice in animal ethics

6:05 What's Real?

- Growing up in Salt Lake City

- Immigrant parents from war-torn Europe "focused on making sure they could make a living"

- Greek Orthodox & Methodist Christian parents

- Sunday School

- Order of the Cross cult (vegetarian because of reincarnation)

- "I was never interested in religion" "The story of Noah was really nuts"

- "The story in the 1950's was you couldn't survive without meat... but my mother proved that wrong"

- "We liked animals... didn't see the need to kill them for something totally unnecessary"

- James vs. Bertrand Russell "It's immoral to believe something just because it makes you feel good"

17:03 What Matters?

- Literature as a way into philosophy

- Philosophy at Rice University (classical, medieval, existential)

22:52 Who Matters?

- Singer's Animal Liberation

- Animals "were my friends"

- "The most basic principle of morality is not to cause suffering for no good reason"

- "I was very much a Kantian"

- Writing "Are Animals Moral Beings"

- "Utilitarianism can tend to subordinate the indvidual... it tried to do a science of ethics"

- "Kantianism has problems too"

- Pluralism & pragmatism: Care ethics, Singer & utility, Regan & rights, Korsgaard & Kant...

- "We need to build on history"

- Anthropocentric & bio/ecocentric challenges

- “A lot of environmental ethics… is nonsense”

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.

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Thanks Graham.