45: "Children are much less speciesist than adults" - researcher Matti Wilks - Sentientist Conversations

Matti (https://www.mattiwilks.com/ and @matti_wilks) is a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University, working with Professor Paul Bloom. She studies moral psychology & moral development - including attitudes to cultivated meat & the "natural", the moral status of various types of entities & altruism.

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 video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

- Doing research to make the world a better place (& curiosity)

- Growing up non-religious (w/ ex-Jewish father) & vegetarian

- Seeing the benefits & value in religion: Community & compassion

- Open-mindedness & humility

- The danger of over-confidence in naturalism & science

- Researching ve*an children in meat-eating households

- Parallels between religious & omnivore societal defaults and indoctrination/norm setting

- Many "religious" people don't actually hold to the supernatural beliefs

- Why do we have morality & what should morality be about?

- Being uncertain about whether there are moral truths

- Harm & suffering as inherently bad. The drive to reduce suffering

- Haidt et al's Moral Foundations Theory

- Even if nothing matters to the universe, experiences matter to each individual sentient being

- Would Isaac killing his son have been right? (No)

- Isn't choosing whether to care about suffering just choosing whether to be moral?

- People seem to be more ethically motivated than they used to be

- Even Greenwashing is a sign that more people care about the environment

- Public negativity re: factory farming

- Having the capacity to act more ethically is a privilege (being free of survival needs)

- Moral relativism

- Growing up around animals & becoming an "outraged" activist at 15-16 yrs

- Studying animal cognition. "The Gap" by Thomas Suddendorf 

- Humans do have distinctive capacities but all sentient animals qualify for moral consideration

- The importance of the moral scope boundary

- Sentientism as pluralistic re: ethical systems

- Degrees of sentience vs. egalitarian approaches

- And much more! Full shownotes at Sentientism.info.

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

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

Thanks, Graham for the post-prod.