This week’s episode is an interview I recently conducted with Jamie Woodhouse, who has been working on building and creating a community for Sentientists. It is such a fascinating listen and there are so many ideas that can be taken back to the classroom when examining it as a non religious viewpoint. It was really refreshing to have a new way to think about non- religious ideas and the inclusion of all sentient beings not just the sole focus on humanism.
In the episode we talk about what Sentientism is about and why one might identify as a Sentientist. We think about how this could be applied to moral issues in the classroom – the obvious being Animal Rights but we broaden this out to thinking about Justice and Conflict too. We also broaden it out further by thinking about Sentientism in Philosophical Questions. Which made me think, I wonder if at Higher in Origins we could use Sentientism as a non religious worldview; I think it would be tricky to pick up marks based on the way the marks are awarded and the structure that needs to be followed but would make a really interesting essay – maybe something to include in assignments.
Jamie and I also talk about AI, if it becomes sentient (or is it already?) then what does that mean for it’s Rights? A great idea for if looking at ‘Does a Robot have Rights?’.
Jamie has done an absolute power of work in the promotion of Sentientism, something I didn’t know an awful lot about initially but the website Sentientism.info and the FAQ’s really help with understanding of it. There also is a guide on RE:Online. A whole host of interesting resources are linked on the Sentientism website here. You may have initially heard me talking to Fiona Moss about this in our podcast episode.
I would love to know if you would think about including Sentientism in your curriculum as a non religious worldview.
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