What Are Zoos For? – Heather Browning and Walter Veit‬ – Sentientism 223

We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.

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Heather Browning is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton. Her primary research interests are animal welfare, ethics, and consciousness.

Walter Veit is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading and an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at the Ludwig MaximilianUniversity of Munich. Much of Walter’s recent writing has been on animal minds, welfare and ethics, as well as evolution.

As we’ve already covered our standard Sentientism “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how to make a better world?” questions in our previous conversations in episodes 48, 54 and 158, here we focus on Heather and Walter’s new book “What Are Zoos For?“

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better world?”

Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Find our previous conversations with Walter and Heatherhere, here and here.

00:00 Clips

01:12 Welcome

– Heather’s episode 54, Walter’s episodes 48 & 158

02:15 Intros (see bios above)

– Heather “How do we study what’s happening inside theminds of animals… what the world is like for them… the ethical implications”

– Walter “I study the diversity of minds… in animals… neurodiversity… in humans… in AI systems”

– “Our zoo book… how should zoos run… take a non-anthropocentric perspective”

03:40 What Are Zoos For? And Who Are They For?

– The range of human views about zoos: entertainment /conservation / fascination vs. exploitation

– Heather’s background as a zookeeper and a zoo animalwelfare officer

– Combining an understanding of zoos from the inside plusphilosophy

– Instead of the zoo industry vs. total animal liberation”a more balanced perspective… from the point of view of the animals and not just human ethics”

06:44 Pillars of Human Zoo Justification

– Entertainment, conservation, education and research

– “There’s definitely been a shift over time”

– “In the beginning they were very much places of entertainment. The original proto-zoos were owned by rich and powerful people… to demonstrate their power”

– “This history… entertainment… domination of animals… leads people to be very concerned about what zoos do”

– Monica Murphy & Bill Wasik episode

08:35 Types of Zoo Today

– “There’s a great diversity of zoos… we’re not just defending all zoos as they currently exist”

– Best practices, improving welfare standards “they should increase”

16:15 Challenges to the idea of “good zoos”

25:52 Zoos, the wild, agriculture, companions, sanctuaries

35:50 Parallels with human situations?

44:25 The life histories of zoo animals

59:55 Should human animals just leave other animals alone?

01:10:12 What can we do?

01:11:44 Follow

– What Are Zoos For?

– Heather Browning

– Walter Veit

And more… full show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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