Is one human life worth more than another?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by sean

I despise religion in all its manifestations*. . .

*Just want to add, I'm sorry about any offense this statement causes. I realise it's unfair and unreasonable. I know religion is important to many people, including some people I care about. I'm leaving it in as a declaration of bias.

Right off I would immediately remark, "You despise what you've been told about it." The unchurched very often display a depth of ignorance about religion and its manifestations that would scare a bathyscaphe. Where do you find the slogan Ignorance Is Strength again -- and who benefits in strength from that ignorance? Are you sure you'd want them benefiting?

Any system or organization can be gamed by any grifter for any reason. This does not in itself devalue the system or organization; it just illustrates the Biblical remark that "the love of money is the root of all evil." If the Bible had spoken of addictions in other than the Vulgate Latin sense (phrases like flammis acribus addictis), they'd have gotten in there too.

[sean]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Right off I would immediately remark, "You despise what you've been told about it." The unchurched very often display a depth of ignorance about religion and its manifestations that would scare a bathyscaphe. Where do you find the slogan Ignorance Is Strength again -- and who benefits in strength from that ignorance? Are you sure you'd want them benefiting?

No, not told, churched. I have deep but informed arguments with religion. Of the Christian virtues --faith, hope and charity-- only charity comes anywhere near a virtue in my estimation. Faith and hope are insidious vices.

In their book Should the baby live?, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer examine the question that frames this thread: "Is one human life worth more than another?". They show how an intuitive answer to this question begs an assertion of the 'sanctity' of life.

This ideologically inspired slight of hand hinges on two separate meanings of the term 'worth'; the first an objective accounting of the value of a life, the second a subjective reality; the quality of a life.

My position is that the quality of a life may sometimes be less than the quality of any life, and that the courage to act on this conclusion by ending a life is inspired by comprehension of (paradoxically) the 'worth' of that life in the first sense. That comprehension goes far beyond cant and dogma.

Sometimes letting a baby die is an act of love. It isn't an easy option, and the suggestion that it might be is a gross insult to those people who have faced such a choice.

[sean]

Gotta love those scots! I'm a big fan of Richard Holloway. But yeah. I can see where you're coming from.

But I think somewhere between 'Virtue' and 'Duty' there's actually room for a humble little concept, verging on the ethological, which is called 'empathy', which to me is something innate, and not entirely unique to humans.

The interesting thing about empathy is that it can be educated, to a large extent by understanding the possibility and extent of harm.

What I can't accept is that there is such a thing as an objective 'knowledge' of the nature of virtue, which seems to be what Aristotle and other supernaturalists want us to believe.

[DanaC]

I am really not much for philosphy or philosophers. I prefer something more *thinks* nailed down: hence I am an historian not a philosopher :P

That said, i think Singer has some interesting things to say. Some worrying ones too, but some of it is genuinely intriguing. I don;t think he is under any obligation to live by his philosphy and I get the distinct impression that he has simply followed his ethical philosphy to their logical conclusion in many instances. That's his task, as a philospher/ethicist: to set the parameters of his theory and then follow them out where they go to. It is no more uncomfortable than many other ethical/philosphical theories, once you track them to their logical conclusions. Such theories are by their nature, artificial: the human factor will bugger up the best and worst of theories once an attempt is made to live by them.

Gah. Philosophers. Historians are way more fun

[sean]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Gah. Philosophers. Historians are way more fun

Natural philosophers!

[DanaC]

Pshaw. I say again, pshaw.

[sean]

Have you read "The fates of nations" by Paul Colinveaux?
Or, in a similar vein, Jared Diamond's "Guns, germs and steel"?
or Manuel de Landa's "War in the age of intelligent machines" Brilliant!

Natural historians, I meant to say...
Ah, Natural History, the slightly disreputable, chain smoking dowager aunt of the Sciences!

[ZenGum]

They're ALL branches of philosophy, mate.

I've never actually studied Singer directly or fully so I have no more than incidental knowledge of his positions, but he is somewhat like Radar, in that, having settled on some principles he builds on them exactly as logic dictates, but never then considers a reductio ad absurdum of his own position, because he is already sold on the principles and the numerous apparent successes along the way.

I think Smooth is unfair to him, and I could argue about his philosophy, but I only do that for money. And it isn't really my field, I'm more into metaphysics.

[sean]

I can't pretend to be a student of Singer, or philosophy for that matter. I've read vanishingly small quantities of both.

But I'm interested in what Singer has to say about 'expanding circles' of empathy. As an ethologist, I'm interested in the roots of empathy in our biology, as described by primatologist Frans deWaal. Like Singer, I'm a hard consequentialist, but I think empathy provides a subjectivity within which utilitarianism makes sense. It's not an abstract calculus, it's insight into the causes of harm and the nature of suffering.

I think maybe the three big ideas in philosophical ethics -virtue, duty and the greater good- probably reflect three modes of the operation of empathy -subjective, collective and universal.

smoothmoniker's comments about children younger than 2 and the mentally handicapped made me think of the Stephen Hawking would have been left to die argument against Obama's health reforms. Lol!

And I never really got metaphysics. Is that like angels on pinheads and stuff?

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by sean

smoothmoniker's comments about children younger than 2 and the mentally handicapped made me think of the Stephen Hawking would have been left to die argument against Obama's health reforms. Lol!

No, I'm not fear-mongering here, that's directly from Singer, and it's a position he's restate and defended many, many times in his writing and public interviews. I'm not presenting an extreme distortion of his views, those are his views, and he makes no apology for them.

[smoothmoniker]

By all means, watch this entire interview for context, and read what he's written elsewhere, but here is Singer articulating exactly this point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bi81JcddWc#t=5m35s

[DanaC]

I just watched that interview and I thought he made some good points actually. I don't think it's so shocking. He's not advocating the euthanasia of babies born with a disability. He's advocating choice for families when a child is born severely disabled: it's a tricky one and difficult to draw legislative lines, but the example he gives of a baby born with no brain, but a brain stem is an interesting one.

[sean]

Originally Posted by DanaC

I just watched that interview and I thought he made some good points actually. I don't think it's so shocking. He's not advocating the euthanasia of babies born with a disability. He's advocating choice for families when a child is born severely disabled: it's a tricky one and difficult to draw legislative lines, but the example he gives of a baby born with no brain, but a brain stem is an interesting one.

Yeah, he seems pretty reasonable to me.

Personally I think religious sloganeering around the 'sanctity of life' is little more than a fetish. Keeping somebody in a persistent vegetative state for decades when children die every minute of the day for want of a handful of rice is simply perverse.

I know a little girl who is quite severely disabled, and to be honest, when she was a baby, I wondered about the point of her life. It was a lesson for me because she is very much loved and altho she requires constant care, she gives a lot back to those around her and is an inspiring person to know. I like her a lot.

But she isn't insentient, she's a thoughtful and clever little girl. Also, she lives in an environment with the resources to care for her. Where people have a more ongoing struggle for survival, I expect the balance shifts because the survival of a family or community can be endangered if one individual becomes a significant burden.

I have some faith in the power of love, and I think an ideology that compels a woman to carry an unwanted child to term, or compels parents to keep alive a child whose future is severely compromised by illness, is actually contemptuous of the power of love and I despise it.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by sean

I know a little girl who is quite severely disabled, and to be honest, when she was a baby, I wondered about the point of her life. It was a lesson for me because she is very much loved and altho she requires constant care, she gives a lot back to those around her and is an inspiring person to know. I like her a lot.

But she isn't insentient, she's a thoughtful and clever little girl. Also, she lives in an environment with the resources to care for her. Where people have a more ongoing struggle for survival, I expect the balance shifts because the survival of a family or community can be endangered if one individual becomes a significant burden.

I have some faith in the power of love, and I think an ideology that compels a woman to carry an unwanted child to term, or compels parents to keep alive a child whose future is severely compromised by illness, is actually contemptuous of the power of love and I despise it.

I hate that this post by you has touched me so deeply. thanks

[sean]

Originally Posted by classicman

I hate that this post by you has touched me so deeply. thanks

Thanks classicman! I'm touched that you're touched, seriously.