@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:21

Are Human Lives More VALUABLE than non-human lives? What is YOUR moral status?

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Professor Rebecca Walker is not afraid of cognitive dissidents. I get uncomfortable with it because it gives me a headache. But I think she is a leader in handling the conversations that are full of multiple at the same time. She's a philosopher and she works in the medical field and she helps people deal with the relationship between moral theories and biomedical practices. So to put that in plainer English, the vaccines we get are usually tested on animals and animals die at alarming rates

Professor Rebecca L. Walker takes a walk with us through this emotional mine field #TEDspeaker #womenInScience

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@RLWalker
Rebecca Walker
@RLWalker · 4:31
We take it that sort of differences between us don't amount to a difference between how much we should value each other morally at a sort of basic level. And then the next question is why? So a lot of times philosophers have appealed to the different kinds of capacities that human beings have. So the ability to think and act morally, for example, would be something that you might appeal to
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:47
Rebecca is so great to hear your voice. And I listened to your answer twice, actually, because I was just thinking about the challenge you propose about the why and about asking people to sort of look at our hardwiring in terms of thinking and maybe rewire just a little bit. And when you have a really diverse group of people, which I'm sure you do when you teach, I imagine that really brings a very vital energy to the classroom
@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@RLWalker
Rebecca Walker
@RLWalker · 4:32
I think that the important move that the philosopher is going to want to make is to distinguish the idea of moral status and cultural status or value. So ideally, when we think about the moral status of animals from a philosophy point of view, we want to think about what's a sort of shared or justified set of views that we can hold kind of beyond all of these cultural differences that we have
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@DBPardes
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:36

@RLWalker

Rebecca, thank you for that really thoughtful reply. And you're just helping me frame things in an interesting way. And I wanted to kind of button this conversation up with a request that you give us some homework. What would you like us to do as consumers, as as parents, as CEOs, people who are making decisions daily?
@RLWalker
Rebecca Walker
@RLWalker · 2:48
So, as I mentioned before as well, sometimes just saying to other people that I work in animal ethics kind of shuts down the conversation, but I would hope that that would open it up instead. And I think when it comes to the issues you're pointing out about being an everyday member of society, a parent business own or what have you, what I would say is open up those conversations
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