During my long stay in hospital and my slow journey learning to walk again, I have thought a lot about life. Many fellow patients had worse illnesses than I have. They inspired me to focus on the positive. Accept what is real, then improve it. Be fair to myself, and to others.
Shortly before my illness, I became aware of a unifying philosophy or worldview that helps me through my recovery. Sentientism focuses on what’s real and who matters. Philosopher Jamie Woodhouse and an expanding global community promote this approach.
Its main principles are using evidence and reason to understand reality, and having compassion and moral consideration for every sentient being who can feel pain, stress, fear, pleasure, peace, and joy. This philosophy is consistent with my beliefs about reality and morality.
Reality
Sentientism is consistent with my beliefs about reality. I believe the universe is natural and is best understood by applying reason to evidence.
So how do we figure out what is most likely to be true? Obviously we have to use a combination of our senses and our thinking.
Faith and personal experience are the least reliable ways of identifying what is true. They’re subjective, inconsistent, and often immune to correction. They result in different people coming to different beliefs about the same reality.
Applying reason to evidence is the most reliable way. Why? Because it can more reliably result in different people coming to the same beliefs about the same reality.
When we apply reason to evidence, the idea of a god seems to be implausible, and natural explanations for the universe keep flowing.
I am happy to say that I might be mistaken about anything that I believe. But applying reason to evidence makes it less likely that I will be mistaken.
Morality
Sentientism is also consistent with my beliefs about morality. I subscribe to a variation of John Rawls’ social contract theory of morality.
In short: how would a perfectly rational set of people design principles of justice for a society, if we don’t know in advance what position we would hold in that society?
That is, we don’t know if we will be rich or poor, male or female, healthy or sick. This veil of ignorance forces us to think beyond ourselves, and to develop universally just principles to apply to all people.
My personal addition to the theory is that we also should not know what species we would be. I believe one of the greatest injustices in our world is how we treat nonhuman animals.
Every year we kill over 50 billion farmed animals, and up to a trillion fish. These sentient beings suffer unjustly for our convenience. I believe our slaughter of them is an ongoing moral atrocity.
This variation on John Rawls’ social contract theory won’t tell us exactly what is right and wrong in any given circumstance. But it gives us a principles way to examine it.
Artificial intelligence
Could we consider Artificial Intelligence to be sentient? Not at the moment. It isn’t conscious, it doesn’t have a sense of self, and it doesn’t feel pain, stress, fear, pleasure, peace, or joy. It can simulate those feelings. But it cannot actually experience them.
But could Artificial Intelligence develop to be sentient? This is a harder question than it seems. If a future AI can replicate sentience so well that we cannot tell the difference, how should we ethically treat it differently to ourselves?
One obvious response is that AI does not have free will. But how do we know that we humans have free will? There is some evidence that our conscious minds are not making decisions, but merely noticing things that our biological brains and bodies have already started to do.
That said, the presence or absence of free will doesn’t undermine sentientism. If we have free will, we are morally responsible for what we do, including being fair to others. If we don’t have free will, then those of us who subscribe to sentientism will do so anyway, because that is simply what our biology will cause us to do.
Which brings us back to our earlier question. What if a future AI behaves as if it’s sentient? Well, that’s exactly the kind of case sentientism prepares us for, by using evidence and reason to assess reality. And we should focus on this question alongside the rapid evolution of AI.
Sentientism today
Future questions aside, we can coherently apply sentientism today to how we approach reality and morality, when it comes to fairness toward both human and nonhuman animals.
Sentientism combines and builds on rationalism, naturalism, atheism, and veganism. It’s also more inclusive than humanism, because it extends moral concern to all sentient beings.
We can’t know anything for certain. But I am pretty confident about this: starting with what’s real, and caring about who feels, is a solid foundation for a life worth living.
You can follow the links below for more information on sentientism.
Sentientism website
Sentientism on Youtube
Sentientism Podcast
Sentientism on Instagram
Sentientism Facebook Page
Sentientism Facebook Group
Sentientism on X
Jamie Woodhouse’s website