The value of an action is instrumental; actions are valuable in as much as they aid us to achieve specific outcomes.
The value of a person is intrinsic; all people have value for themselves and that value is independent of any outcome.
The instrumental value of every action is unique and measurable. Each individual action is either more useful or less useful in attaining a specific outcome. We value the actions that help us to attain the outcomes we want to achieve.
The intrinsic value of every living person is universal and immeasurable. It is impossible to quantify the value of a living person. Every living human being has infinite possibilities. It is also impossible to compare the value of one living person to another. No one is more valuable than anyone else. No one is less valuable than anyone else. We all share the same intrinsic value as living human beings.
We must take care to avoid blurring the line between a person and their actions. A person’s aid in accomplishing a particular task may be more valuable or less valuable than another person’s aid in accomplishing that same task. That is the value of the aid and not the value of the person.
The instrumental value of a person’s actions cannot replace or modify their intrinsic value as a person. The intrinsic value of all people endures every moment of their lives.
This is your first flawed reason. What is the “intrinsic value” of one particular living person?
Why is it “impossible” to quantify the value of a living person?
Prove it. And if you can’t, then at least explain your reasoning.
No, it’s not. I do it all the time.
I do not want to kill Person A. I do want to kill Person B.
(Person A is my brother.) (Person B is a guy who looked at my with contempt.)
Spreading this feminist propaganda isn’t going to affect your chances at getting laid Xan … knock it off? (Or is this asking too much?)
[b]What??? Why???[/b]
How do you differentiate this? You’re beginning to see the light from the darkness here … people are not equal. Be a man.
What is the intrinsic value of a serial murder-rapist who gets his kicks off cutting the gentials off a child and gutting them while they’re still alive?
You questions deserve a fuller reply, but I am kind of pressed for time at the moment. Let me give you one key idea to consider. If you treat people as only having an instrumental value then you reduce them to things. “Person X is a useful thing. Person Y is a useless thing.” When you start treating people like things then you expand the possibility of horrific abuses.
That is why I argue that every person has a value that is only dependent on the existence and sentience of the person, nothing more.
A person ALSO has comparative levels of value in the roles they play. Some people are better at particular tasks than others, but that scale of value is secondary and cannot replace or change the primary scale of intrinsic value.
If its impossible to compare to human’s worth, it’d be impossible to compare the worth of anyy human to any animal, because rhesus monkeys have levels of self-awareness and theory of mind thats not observed in plenty of autistic people, let alone chimps, who crush large large amounts of brain damaged/mentally handicapped/autistic people in areas of self-awareness and thinking about the minds of others.
So if we can’t compare animal/human worth because if we did it’d be a huge inconsistancy in belief if we did, we’ll have to let all these people with ‘inherent worth’ which ‘can’t be measured’ die horrible deaths from diseases which may be cured by animal research.
We can measure two humans, because theres plenty of humans who don’t have the consciousness or self-awareness of other animals, and we’d naturally not be able to measure *THEM EITHER, because any standard that embraced all humans as having ‘inherent’ worth, but not other animals, when these other animals have more mental clarity/ability than brain damaged humans, well its irrational and nonsensical.
The judgements must be based on self-awareness, abiltiy to feel, consciousness, and a bunch of other complex calculations. If a human life can’t be measured, I don’t know what we’re doing ripping the eyes out of chimpanzee’s which have more self-awareness than so many many many sick humans.