In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Stijn is a physicist (phd), economist (phd in progress), animal activist, rational moral philosopher (another phd) and an Effective Altruist! He co-founded and is president of EA Belgium. He’s currently researching economics at the university of Leuven.
We talk about:

Academic activism
God not saving Stijn from swimming classes
Martial arts, Star Wars & eastern/Buddhist philosophy (chi, forces, accupuncture, telekinesis, telepathy)
Retaining a sense of awe, wonder & connection within a naturalistic worldview
Ecocentrism/biocentrism as intuitively attractive, but as Stijn’s biggest moral mistake
Ecosystems can’t suffer & “Gaia doesn’t care”
The risk that ecocentrism often really reflects a human aesthetic judgement, not genuine altruistic concern for other sentients
The moral salience of wild animal suffering
The “don’t play god” rule against intervening in nature is a reflection of human values, not altruistic concern
Are the most important moral questions actually the simplest?
The value of thought experiments in solid morality - treating ethics like physics
In ethics as in physics, we shouldn’t arbitrarily make exceptions
Nihilism & its association with a materialist worldview
Outgrowing a “puberty” stage in personal philosophy
Moral uncertainty
Life project of finding fundamental moral principles. Starting with 8, then 5, now 3: 1) Universal application / categorical imperative; 2) Avoiding unwanted arbitrariness (e.g. discrimination, exceptions, revelation); 3) Relative preferences (~utility / well-being / preferences)
Religious believers are atheists in every other religion
Starting from rights & working back to derive sentience as the moral qualifier (makes no sense to apply rights (e.g. autonomy / being used as a means) to non-sentients as they have no interests or needs to protect)
We can grant rights to everything, but they can only be breached for sentient beings!
Sentience/flourishing/suffering as the full range of simple & rich qualitative experiences, not just basic hedonistic pains & pleasures
How every other interest or preference (e.g. freedom/autonomy) can be assessed through their impact on the quality of sentient experience
... Find the full show notes here.

You can learn about Stijn’s work here: stijnbruers.wordpress.com & he's on Twitter here @StijnBruers.
Stijn is on our “Sentientist wall” – why not join him there in helping to normalise compassionate, rational thinking?
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings.” You can find out more at sentientism.info.
Everyone interested, Sentientist or not, is welcome to join our community groups. Our main group is here on FaceBook.