Thanks Jon. I agree on all fronts. Looking forward to reading your book.
In addition to normalisation and any “lock-in” being based on sentiocentric, compassionate values would baking in a broadly naturalistic epistemology also be desirable?
I describe the Sentientism worldview as “evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings” in part because I don’t think compassion alone is sufficient.
Thanks, Jamie. Yes, I entirely agree, assuming of course that this epistemology encompasses subjective experience. In other places I consistently refer to the combination of compassion and rationality as core values. In fact, one could argue that compassion is a consequence of rationality if one takes into account the content of all current and potential subjective experiences/mind states as the most relevant part of reality to act upon, and one also takes a metaphysically accurate view of personal identity. In this post I didn’t focus on rationality because it is already a strong given within the EA community (although I dispute the rationality of some widely held principles), whereas concern for suffering is more variable.
Thanks Jon. I agree on all fronts. Looking forward to reading your book.
In addition to normalisation and any “lock-in” being based on sentiocentric, compassionate values would baking in a broadly naturalistic epistemology also be desirable?
I describe the Sentientism worldview as “evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings” in part because I don’t think compassion alone is sufficient.
Thanks, Jamie. Yes, I entirely agree, assuming of course that this epistemology encompasses subjective experience. In other places I consistently refer to the combination of compassion and rationality as core values. In fact, one could argue that compassion is a consequence of rationality if one takes into account the content of all current and potential subjective experiences/mind states as the most relevant part of reality to act upon, and one also takes a metaphysically accurate view of personal identity. In this post I didn’t focus on rationality because it is already a strong given within the EA community (although I dispute the rationality of some widely held principles), whereas concern for suffering is more variable.