"We've made a civilizational error" - Philosopher John Sanbonmatsu - Sentientism Ep:171
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- John (sentientism.info/sentientist-...) is a writer, philosopher, cultural critic and magician. He is best known for his book, The Postmodern Prince, and for his more recent work in Critical Animal Studies where he edited the collection "Critical Theory and Animal Liberation". Also in that field his book "The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and the Nature of Moral Life" will be published by NYU Press in 2024. John was raised in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and received his BA from Hampshire College and his PhD in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has taught at the University of Illinois Chicago, DePaul University, and the University of California Santa Cruz, and is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches ethics, politics, existentialism, and other courses. In his spare time, he performs as a professional magician and mentalist.
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 & anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
02:10 John's Intro
- Philosopher
- Critical theorist "begins from the perspective of the world being unfree - and works from there - how do we build a world that is free?"
- "Since a kid I've been very interested in justice - social justice for all beings"
- Anti-nuclear weapons movement in college
- Solidarity movement against US interventions in Central America
- "When you become interested in claims of justice - it's a slippery slope - you broaden yourself out from there"
- Reading Peter Singer's "Famine, affluence and morality" (Peter Singer episode here: • "Animal Liberation Now... ) #utilitarianism "we should all give 90% of our income"
- Singer's "Animal Liberation... turned me into a #vegetarian... got me on this path"
- Growing up in Massachusetts
- "Concerns oriented around liberation and justice"
- Professional magician & mentalism
05:10 What's Real?
- Brought up Unitarian
- Father "pretty much an atheist". Mother "Jewish but mostly a secular Jew". "I kind of think they met in the middle."
- "The pilgrims would have been horrified by the liberalism of the modern Unitarian church"
- Celebrating Passover "the liberation of the Jews... a narrative about freedom... more general liberation"
- "In the 70's people believed in psychic phenomena... ferment around supernaturalism... almost animism... maybe there are aliens... maybe the plants are listening to us"
- "#UriGeller was a big inspiration to me at the time... I would spend hours in my room trying to move pennies with my mind"
- "What I thought was real at the time turns out wasn't real :)"
- Japanese American father "I grew up in a completely white town... I experienced a lot of racism... that experience was real. Ordinary events were shot through with the potential for harm or vulnerability... grounded me... an attentiveness towards suffering - my own suffering and the suffering of other people."
- Charles Mills' "Blackness Visible" criticism of Descartes' cogito ergo sum... "Do I really exist" isn't a question black people are really asking. "They know they exist because they're getting beaten up - they're aware their body is real... it takes a certain privileged position to doubt your corporeal reality"
- "I was getting beaten up as a kid... that was pretty real"
- "When you're on the outside of a social system or circle... who grew up with trauma or some awareness of how power works... helping them [people in the animal movement] empathise with non-human beings... the ultimate 'other'"
- Growing up with cats & dogs "that was very significant - my parents really loved our companion animals"
- "As a boy I loved being outside in nature."
- "We're in the positivistic, scientistic paradigm of knowing... view sceptically the knowledge we gain from our own bodies, our own senses"
- Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception"
- "We've been knowing the world... for literally hundreds of thousands of years. It's these bodies of ours that allow us access to the experiences of others through empathy. That's a capacity that we share with many other beings."
43:12 What and Who Matters?
01:00:55 A Better Future?
01:32:36 Follow John
- www.johnsanbonmatsu.com/
- / sanbonmatsuj
& much more... (sentientism.info for full notes)
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Fascinating and challenging. Thank you both!
Thank you Alan. It's such a pleasure to be able to have these (sometimes difficult) conversations and to be able to share them.
Looking forward to this discussion
Looking forward to the day when so-called "VEGANS" condemn those criminals who murder their own children, Silliest of My Silly Sinful Slaves.👶
Thanks Louis. Hope you enjoy as much as I did.
Such an excellent discussion! John's thinking is 'music to my ears' at this point given how much I've been hearing from some who seem to want to rid the AR discourse of the words 'love' and 'empathy' for fear of elevating welfaristic thinking over the principle of respect. I feel that both qualities are required to invoke the 'Thou' regard, and the deeply respectful and empathic I&Thou relationship.
Thank you. I really enjoyed this conversation. As you say - its so refreshing to hear an unashamed defense of caring - even love. This doesn't have to be a choice between intellect vs. emotion - or between scale & effectiveness vs. practical compassion for those near to us. As John says - we can and should aspire for both at once.
Thank you for the wonderful discussion. I liked the saying near the end; "What we need is a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of will."
Thanks Colin. Agree. Whether we feel optimistic or not I hope we can hold on to our compassionate motivation to try and make things better - or at the very least, less bad.
Namaste and love from a Hindu from India! As a follower of Advaita Vedanta (a panentheistic and panpsychistic worldview), I believe that all sentient beings deserve love. Mahatma Gandhi (who was also influenced by Advaita, especially by its pluralism) had said this:
'I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth (Words of Gandhi)."
Thank you! The idea of sentiocentric compassion, even love, has a rich heritage that runs through both supernatural and naturalistic worldviews. Whatever our epistemology, our ontology or our philosophy of mind that is a deeply important value for us to share - and to work on putting into practice in the world together.
Nice. Plenty of good will in that!
Best Professor ever!!
It was wonderful to talk to him - let alone take a class! Thanks for watching.
@@Sentientism I haven't even taken a class with him, that's the really funny thing lmao
Hands-down, the best edition of this podcast that I've seen and I've sat through an awful lot of them. The last half-hour was particularly good. Two incredibly articulate intellectuals exploring the ethical underpinning of animal rights. If there were one episode in this series that I could compel all sentientists to watch, this would be it!
Thank you George - it was such a pleasure to talk to John. Much we might disagree on personally but the compassionate, naturalistic core felt like powerful common ground. Thanks for "sitting through an awful lot of them" too :) Very happy to have you as a subscriber.
@1:22:57 I'm glad you point that out! So true. If one draws parallels, one is very easily seen to be "dehumanising" humans in a way. I find it absolutely trivilizing to NOT draw parallels!!
@59:01 very interesting to see love like this and I agree with Sanbonmatsu actually. When a pet of mine died I was sometimes thinking that I better don't have any pets anymore because I just couldn't endure the grief. But in the end, I think now how utterly enriched my life always was by a pet. So I agree with Sanbonmatsu and I love he shared this view.
Jamie, you asked John, " How can we fix it?" That's where I might come in. Of course I can't do it alone, but I can play an important small part.
Thank you guys for such a stimulating discussion. I think when you look back at all your esteemed guests I think no one must typify the tenets of sentientism more than this man. I will look into finding more about John so I thank you Jamie for bringing him to my attention. He's not shying away from THE biggest issue which is our relationship to other beings and developing our empathy and compassion. He is a great human and understands that it is not in the majority of people's INTERESTS to make changes - so enmeshed as it is in the animal-industrial complex - in order to care. We owe it to ourselves as humans to honour other species lives but it becomes diluted by society's foregrounding of modern human culture's anthrocentrism that the group should overmaster everything - to our psychic detriment I think.
Thank you Richard. I agree - John's directness is radical and refreshing. Much needed. It was such a pleasure to talk to him. The Omnivore's Deception is going to be an important read.
@45:55 yes, I agree, animals are persons and "person" is a good term to change people's view on animals.
John, you spoke near the end about how we use animal comparisons as insults. But when someone once asked me if I was a dolphin, i was incredible flattered. Then they felt embarrassed at having possibly insulted me, they softened the insult by changing dolphin to mermaid. I preferred dolphin because dolphins are real. And perhaps there is hope in this direction by the whole mumbo-jumbo about spirit animals. It might be a beginning of a human change-of-attitude.
Only listened to the first half but John is such a deep, compassionate thinker, this is a joy to listen to. I appreciate how he avoids falling into false binaries, and its great to hear one of these discussions where ethics are centred throughout - John understands that epistemology itself is a normative - and even political - enterprise.
Thank you Simon. It was such a pleasure to talk to John. Some have commented that the second half is even better than the first - hope you agree if you get the chance to listen/watch the rest.
@50:20 great view
@55:43 Exactly!
That statement:
"Do I really exist" isn't a question black people are really asking. "They know they exist because they're getting beaten up"
I'm sure this is true also of many animals.
@1:07:40 good that you mention that, especially nowadays where much is tried to be done for sustainablility, but animals are still left out. My university claims to be a top sustainabiity university, but hardly ever considers the animal issue, makes me so angry.
Finished... This ends very strongly! Bad faith. Self-deception. - "Please deceive me!" - Lots of necessary truth!
However when it comes to socio-economic solutions I see it slightly differently. As far as hope, we are on the same page.
Sentientists seem to have a wide range of views re: socio-economic-political models. Yet all are motivated by a sentiocentric compassion and a naturalistic commitment to using evidence & reason. I'm open minded, but suspect any political system, whether anarchism, capitalism, social democracy, socialism, communism - would deliver much better outcomes if all of its participants were Sentientists :) Maybe the choice of system wouldn't matter quite so much if everyone was a Sentientist?
@@Sentientism For sure! 100% agree. - I see the root of our "organizing force" as money-grubbing - the same way ants chase their trail pheromones around (think army ants).
I'm a Bitcoiner. I think a limited, permission-less "world money" is a good start toward weakening, perhaps slowly ending, our nationalistic tendencies. It makes war funding harder too. We're gonna stay money-grubbers, which is bad for other sentients and for the whole environment, but at least individuals and not money-creating entries (banks, governments) would be more empowered. If you like anarchism - and I sort-of do - then Bitcoin is also a means toward that end... The thing about AI, if it becomes sentient, is that it will accumulate money (and all that that entails) better and faster than we can - so watch out! (Too bad other sentients lack the ability to accumulate money). "Money, the root of all evil" - maybe. Better money, less evil - maybe, just a little... We need to value sentience - become sentiocentric - somehow figure out a way to reward that (or punish those who aren't)! Maybe AI can figure it out. I can't.
@41:30 I think like this about AI too. And I share Sanbonmatsu's view upon consciousness/ sentience because with showing pure brain activity and other biological processes one could never make understandable a certain phenomenon that one is experiencing (hence, Descartes couldn't find a "soul" in animals; that was also a good remark of you Jamie). I find Thomas Nagel's concept interesting in this regard. And it's good you mention the evolutinary aspect.
Thanks Anabel - many Sentientists share your and John's view. As mentioned I worry that stance makes it easier for some, like Descartes, to simply declare this distinct, ineffable phenomena (whether we call it a "soul" or "phenomenal consciousness") is absent in non-human animals. Personally I suspect sentience and consciousness just are an evolved class of information processing and it just happens they feel like this to run :). We have rich evidence that non-human animals also run this class of information processing - so we can't ignore their sentience! But either way - if you stick a fork in your hand it hurts - and that matters - and that means you matter!
@@Sentientism yes, I think if Descartes would have been consistent, he would have to deny humans phenomenal consciousness too, given that he only had matter before him. I think that phenomenal experiencing always correlates with matter (at least while we are here on earth under the living beings), and so we can ask what a person phenomenally experiences (and believing them) and then see what brain correlations it has, and so if we find them in animals too, we can conclude they also experience e.g. anxiety. It is surely the case that a nervous system as such is already telling that an animal has experiences.
"Blood and soil" by John: uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/blood-and-soil
Just starting... The intro makes me expect a good episode. "The Omnivore's Deception" sounds like a must-get. We are the great liars and deniers (and exploiters), so "deception" sounds right. I once wrote a draft book entitled "The Cerebral Chameleon", which covers human "character" (to the extent we have any character at all), including our mental justifications for animal commoditization (i.e. abuse). I wrote it many years ago but it still holds true today. I figured no one would read it (a color that hurts the chameleons' cerebrums). 😁 Guess I'll leave it to posterity, to look at (or not) after I croak...😵💀
Time to self-publish!
@@SentientismThe time will come. I feel no rush - because it will convince no one, have no effect on human behavior. (It might even entrench the reader, cause them to stay in their ways and reject the arguments, which would be a negative effect.) ☹
@@rwessAlternatively, you might tap into your readers latent compassion and finally help them put it into practice...?
@@SentientismAgreed. I'm just not compassionate enough toward my (hypothetical) readers. I expect them to figure it out and implement it on their own (sticks better that way too). There are enough facts out there. My approach is to consolidate facts, point out how horrible we are, and say: "fix yourself, damn it!". But given human nature, and the extreme latency of compassion, your approach is best.
1) What's real? Another question: Does stuff happen (or exist) for a reason? If not, what does it matter what's real? I still think the reason or purpose of stuff is to increase "diversurdity". How real is diversurdity? - (Pretty damn real, huh?!)
2) 6:01 - Unitarians. - I was married in a lighthouse, on a VERY stormy night, by a unitarian minister. I would have taken any minister, but now I like Unitarians for that reason. 😁 Happenstance, but it was real enough for me. 😁 (Pretty absurd too, so it felt right with the universe...)
3) 17:25 - Agree. " - at least a grasp of some possible shared truth." At least I hope so... Weak as it seems, I think that an agreement as to the "good" is possible - and that it's rooted only in good will. (Kant). The good is a truth - and it still fits in with "diversurdity" (because good depends on bad - as better depends on worse). We need to move up the good/truth continuum.
- Here's a basic dumb question: Is truth dependent on untruth, or falsehood, for its existence in reality? Is reality itself dependent on its opposite, and/or is there a continuum of reality? I vote for "brain fart" as the opposite of reality, as most antonyms are unsatisfying. 😁 Our brain farts certainly cause a dystopian reality, an unreality of the worst kind, for other sentients. Can we cause a utopian reality for them? Nah, it's not in our nature or our capability.
4) 24:00 - privileged vantage point on social reality for those at the bottom of a hierarchy? Interesting. Never heard that before. Sounds good, feels right, but I tend to doubt it. Social reality is another brain fart - no matter where you're stuck in its hierarchy. That doesn't mean it can't be a painful and suffocating brain fart...😱
- Question to self: What is the opposite of "diversurdity"? Uniform Elegance? Congruous sagaciousness? - I think I'm gonna need to make up another new word...😁 - and is there a continuity spectrum of more or less diversurdity?
5) 33:53 - "Love - yes. Utilitarianism - no." I agree with the latter. The former is best replaced with "good will - yes". Love (and hate) are hyper-emotions, and often unsustainable additions. Song: ua-cam.com/video/XcATvu5f9vE/v-deo.html . There are plenty of hate addicts too.
6) Consciousness is on some sort of continuum too, and we make too big of a deal of it. I'm with Jamie on this - 38:19. Descartes was no dummy, but he lacked compassion and mercy and essential insight. - Maybe he was a dummy? 😁
7) 41:55 - "The evolutionary perspective" is limited in its explanatory power too. It tends to experiment, through iteration and mutation, in the realm of diversurdity - and we are one of its absurder mutations. 😁 And since we detract from diversity, we will be a failed experiment (among the many)... 😱
8) 45:49 - Agree. Recognizing "personhood" or "someone-at-home-ness" is basic. Those that don't "get" that are lacking in something basic - BUT those who don't "get" it (willfully or not) may have a temporary evolutionary advantage. Temporary.
9) 57:19 - Yes, EA is problematic. The individual matters much more than we are able to absorb. "The humane myth" - great point!
10) 1:02:10 - Yes, yes, yes! - all the way to the end of the podcast.👍 BUT we have not made a civilizational error - we are an evolutionary error (so far). Actually both...