Animal Consciousness Day2 PanelDiscussion (6 of 6)

[Sentientism]

Thank you to the organisers and participants - a fascinating series of presentations and discussions.

I wonder how future generations will look back on this conference. I suspect they will appreciate the scientific and philosophy of mind challenges we're struggling with, while chuckling at some of our dead ends, distractions and "I feel too special to just be physics" human conceits.

I also suspect that they will be shocked at how hard we work at dodging the ethical implications of animal sentience - particularly where we already have very high credence in the sentience of so many species. They'll be amazed that nearly everyone, even scientists with a rich understanding of animal sentience and thoughtful moral philosophers, continue to happily have other sentients harmed and killed for human pleasure because our society considers it "normal". Hopefully, by then, we will have ended the exploitation and farming of sentient animals and have made progress on mitigating wild animal and human animal suffering too. Animal farming and fishing by then will be added to the list of historical social phenomena we look on with horror. A growing number of us, including its trillions of victims, already do.