Humanism Versus Sentientism

There are many critics of the philosophy of life known as 'humanism'. Most critics are external to humanism, usually religious. Some criticisms are damning, such as those by popular historian, Yuval Noah Harari, and found in his books, Sapiens and Homo Deus. What perturbs me most is when fellow humanists and supporters put substantive objections to humanism. Of particular concern are the criticisms that humanism is 'anthropocentric' and 'human-centric'. Jamie Woodhouse is a UK resident and a self-professed humanist who, nonetheless, finds fault along these lines. In this essay, I will undertake a close examination of Woodhouse's critique and respond as best I can.

Because of this perceived 'anthropocentricism', Woodhouse believes that humanism needs an 'upgrade' to what he aberrantly calls 'Sentientism'. Woodhouse describes his Sentientist world view this way:

In a sentence, sentientism is "Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings". Sentientism is a worldview or philosophy – a way of thinking about what to believe in and who to care about. It is committed to using evidence and reason and grants moral consideration to all sentient beings.

[Woodhouse 2024a]

For Woodhouse, humanist organizations grant insufficient attention to non-human sentient creatures, both in statements of principle and in social action. As Woodhouse [2023] puts it: 'it always concerned me that humanism was too centred on our own species'.

In the following section, I will challenge this conclusion, drawing upon the official pronouncements of the global Humanist organization, Humanists International, and key national bodies. I will also highlight how humanists from the time of the Enlightenment have been working on the ground to advance the interests of non-human sentients. The terms 'anthropocentric' and 'human-centric' are also ripe for equivocation, making it unclear the nature of the actual complaint. I will tease out a strong sense of these terms that, on examination, fails to apply to humanism. In addition, I'll address a weaker sense that applies to almost all worthwhile social movements, with the consequence that the accusation loses its sting.

Woodhouse is right, however, in pointing out that most of the advocacy work of Humanist organizations is on combatting social injustices. By attending to the historical development of the term 'humanism', we will better appreciate how this primary focus on human concerns does not entail diminishing the value of non-human sentients. In Sec. 3, I explore how the term 'humanism' came to denote freethinkers who believed that human beings have the innate capacity for reasoning and moral judgment without reliance on a supposed supernatural realm. In effect, 'human' in 'humanism' refers to our capacity as human beings to discern the truth and to direct our own moral lives without some divine overseer.

In Sec. 4, I then apply that historical appreciation of the origins of 'humanism' to the specific question of whether humanist organizations are devoting enough campaigning specifically to issues of animal suffering. Here, I draw the important distinction between an organization's philosophical commitments and the necessary strategic focussing of limited resources to specific areas if it is to advance its historical mandate.

On that distinction, Woodhouse responded that strategic necessities notwithstanding, Humanist organizations turning a blind eye to the continued consumption of animal products with all of its consequent animal suffering is akin to espousing universal human rights while remaining neutral on slavery and human infant farming. I address this critique in Sec. 5 by first pointing out where Woodhouse is open to the same charge and by showing how his analogy breaks down in parts. Nonetheless, Woodhouse has a point. I make suggestions on how his wish for more action from Humanist organizations on animal suffering can be instantiated.

Big History

Perhaps my most pointed criticism of Woodhouse's approach is in Secs. 6 and 7. If 'sentientism' is not properly regarded as a 'world view', then Woodhouse's appeal to 'upgrade' humanism to his new 'world view' is misplaced. If I am right on this, humanism can no more be upgraded to sentientism than a row boat be upgraded to an oar. In Sec. 6, I survey the current academic and non-academic uses of the term 'sentientism' and conclude that Woodhouse's efforts at revising the meaning of the term have been unsuccessful.

In Sec. 7, I turn the tables on Woodhouse to show how his efforts are not in actuality in the service of upgrading humanism to Sentientism. Rather, by packing all of the traditional humanist concerns over religious dogmatism and totalitarian intolerance into his redefined 'sentientism', Woodhouse is, in effect, aiming for an upgrade of sentientism to humanism. I argue that this attempt is a backward step as Woodhouse fails to translate his conscription of traditionally humanist concerns into action on the ground. In that sense, his attempted upgrade is merely perfunctory.

Because Woodhouse most times uses the term 'sentientism' in his irregular sense of a complete world view, this complicates how I will use the term in this essay. When speaking of his reuse of the original term, Woodhouse does mention how the original meaning refers to a moral theory only; viz.: 'the granting of moral consideration to sentient beings' [Woodhouse 2019b]. This is what he counts as 'Sentiocentrism/Sentientism v1.0'. As he puts it: 'Over time, the terms sentientism and the more recent sentiocentrism have come to be used largely synonymously.'

With his revisionist agenda, Woodhouse now wants to pull these two terms apart. Woodhouse [2024a] explains: 'This re-casting would leave the term "sentiocentrism" to apply to the granting of moral consideration to all sentient beings while using "Sentientism" to describe an explicitly naturalistic worldview that grants the same moral consideration.' For Woodhouse, this new 'sentientism' is an expansion of the current meaning to also include the philosophy of naturalism and the use of reason and evidence not only on moral matters, but in all dimensions of human enquiry; that is, to make 'sentientism' a complete 'world view'.

Given these two meanings of 'sentientism', in this essay I will endeavour to make clear to readers to which I am referring. Where I refer to sentientism as a moral philosophy only, I will use the lowercase 's'. Where I refer to Woodhouse's redefined Sentientism as a complete world view, I will use the uppercase 'S'. The only exceptions here are where either word is part of a quotation. In a similar vein, I will make a distinction between humanism as a philosophy of life or world view and the Humanist movement consisting of organizations, leaders and members. For the former, I will use the lowercase 'h', while for the latter, I will use the uppercase 'H'.

Copyright © 2025 Leslie Allan