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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse.bsky.social

5.9K followers 300 following 660 posts

Professor, LSE. Philosophy of science, animal consciousness, animal ethics. Director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience.

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · Mar 25

An emotional day - I can announce I'll be the first director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE, supported by a £4m grant from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Our mission: to develop better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (1/2)
www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-...

LSE announces new centre to study animal sentience

The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE will develop new approaches to studying the feelings of other animals scientifically.

www.lse.ac.uk

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 1d

It's so incredible how low homicide rates are in Europe. The UK, with a population of 70 million people, had fewer than 600 murders in 2023.
www.connexionfrance.com/news/double-...

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The Royal Institute of Philosophy @triphilosophy.bsky.social · 2d

"The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI" by @birchlse.bsky.social (published by @oxunipress.bsky.social) has been shortlisted for the Nayef Al-Rodhan International Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy.

Learn more: royalinstitutephilosophy.org/news/shortli...

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 4d

Critics of Gandhi too often mix genuine political disagreement with sexual innuendo and rumour. The disagreements with Ambedkar were verifiably real, and it's tragic that they shared the same aim (liberation of Dalits) and yet disagreed so deeply about the means.

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 4d

I don't think the idea of Gandhi as defender of the status quo can be at all reconciled with "Caste Must Go". There is clearly a challenge to the status quo, and one can debate whether it is radical enough.

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 4d

You're already aware that he defended a deeply heterodox, anti-caste, anti-hierarchical version of the varna, so all that remains is a difference of emphasis - does one emphasise his radical heterodoxy or his failure to go even further.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 5d

Oh God, not this again. The use of -ize rather than -ise does not mark a US/British English divide. Standard Oxford is -ize for example. There's a whole Inspector Morse episode about this. Expected better from the FT

Why I welcome Americanisation. Sorry, Americanization

News of the British Museum’s fundraising gala smacks of the sort of imitation and assimilation we’re good at

www.ft.com

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 5d

What a great responsibility and a great privilege to be directing the world's first Centre for Animal Sentience. Many thanks to the ~300 in the room and ~500 online who attended our launch event. Wonderful to have you there on Day 1. www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/s...

Launch event of the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, LSE

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 5d

He held racist views in the early 1900s but had moved beyond them by 1908, and opposed racism for the next 40 years. (sahistory.org.za/archive/some...). Sexually, he was celibate/asexual from his late '30s. (I'm aware of some claims otherwise from some biographers, which I think are wrong.)

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 5d

From 1935 onwards - "Caste Must Go" - I think it's impossible to read him as a defender of caste. Even before 1935, he never allowed it in his own communities. His campaigns focused on ending "untouchability" but that doesn't mean he truly supported the rest. archive.org/details/cast...

Caste Must Go and the Sin of Untouchability : Gandhi, Mahatma : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

iv, 108 pages 18 cm

archive.org

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Rosalind Ahmed @21rosa.bsky.social · 6d

An informative and stimulating 🧵
Humanity certainly does need to explore new ways of being. Thanks @birchlse.bsky.social

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

For years I got Gandhi (who is 156 today, the International Day of Non-Violence) backwards. I thought he developed nonviolent methods to end British rule, but this gets the ends and means the wrong way round. It's rather that he had to end British rule to make space for nonviolence. (1/8)

Gandhi statue in Parliament Square, London. (Prioryman CC-BY-SA 4.0.)

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

He held racist views in the early 1900s but had moved beyond them by 1908, and opposed racism for the next 40 years. (A source on this: sahistory.org.za/archive/some...).

Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

Gandhi campaigned against "untouchability" for around 30 years. He fell out with Ambedkar, very sadly, but was at no point a defender of caste-based oppression. (A source on this: janataweekly.org/gandhis-appr...)

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Frances Egan @francesegan.bsky.social · 6d

Shamelessly promoting my favorite paper. Everybody who was anybody in the history of science/philosophy/mathematics had a view on the moon illusion. frances-egan.org/uploads/3/5/...

frances-egan.org

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Josh Habgood-Coote @impractknow.bsky.social · 6d

You might like this on the role of spinning in Gandhi's political philosophy muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Project MUSE - Gandhi’s Spinning Wheel: The Charkha and Its Regenerative Effects

muse.jhu.edu

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

Many commentators celebrate Gandhi's political campaigns but downplay his broader nonviolent philosophy. I think it's more relevant today than ever. We see now that Gandhi's critique of capitalism and industrialization was not misplaced. We do need new ways of life - and the freedom to experiment.

Gandhi in 1906, three years after founding Phoenix Settlement in South Africa in 1903.

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

India after independence went in a very different direction. Courageous experiments in nonviolent self-sufficiency do still go on (notably the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka and Auroville in India) but the Gandhian dream of a scaleable model of self-sufficient village life remains elusive. (7/8)

Aerial view of the Matrimandir in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India.

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

What future did he want? He saw in India's 700,000 villages an incubator of new ways of life. He wanted "gram swaraj", "village self-rule": every village aiming for nonviolent self-sufficiency in its own way, free to experiment autonomously. Perhaps his boldest and most important idea. (6/8)

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

But any campaign, to be a foundation for a future nonviolent way of life, must itself be nonviolent - so Gandhi's commitment to nonviolence was never conditional or pragmatic. He believed a violent campaign would lead to a future society not worth creating. (5/8)

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

Yet colonialism denied him the basic freedoms any such experiment requires. Freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom to grow and keep your own food, even freedom to make your own salt. He gradually realised colonialism must end before true experimentation with nonviolence can begin. (4/8)

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

Gandhi experimented four times with vegan diets, including a fruitarian phase eating only "fruits, nuts, seeds and olive oil", calling it "one of the greatest experiments of my life". Each time he got ill. He longed for "a vegetable substitute for milk which is equally nourishing and digestible".

Gandhi asks readers of his autobiography to send him suggestions of a vegetable substitute for milk.

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

What Gandhi wanted above all was to experiment with alternative, nonviolent ways of life. He was greatly influenced by Leo Tolstoy's later writings. He established two "Tolstoyan" communities in South Africa, then one in India. The goal was self-sufficiency with minimal harm to living beings. (2/8)

Residents of Tolstoy Farm, South Africa, 1910 (Gandhi is seated fifth from the right).

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d

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Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 7d

Jane Goodall shows you can be 91 and still go too soon.

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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 7d

Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt

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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 7d

Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, dies aged 91

Jane Goodall Institute says ‘tireless advocate’ for natural world died in California during US speaking tour The world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall has died at the age of 91, her institute has said. The Jane Goodall Institute announced that she had passed away of natural causes while in California as part of a US speaking tour. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

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