Killing one is like killing all of humankind
A
surprisingly common argument used by pro-choicers to prove that nobody
really believes fertilized eggs to be human is to ask which one you
would first save in a fire, a human baby or a portable freezer with a
hundred fertilized eggs. This is not a bad argument at all, since it
proves the intended goal so well and the whole argument is so obvious
that I bet that most pro-choicers will come up with it on their own (I
know I did, years ago). But I still have to wonder whether those who
use this argument realize what door they open with it.
What does the exact same argument prove if instead of a baby and the freezer we assume, for example, a baby and a seriously demented old person, both equally unable to escape on their own? Or just pick suitable example people on your own to put on both sides. Any answer that is essentially different from "I would toss a coin to choose" and thus puts the two sides to be rescued into a nonsymmetric position, proves that the people on those sides have a different value, at least in the answer-giver's mind.
If the two people to choose from were a homeless bum and a prolific surgeon, it seems somehow horrible to save the surgeon. It is almost if you were somehow obliged to save the homeless bum in this situation, otherwise you are some kind of a nazi or something. But doesn't the fact that you have to save the homeless bum also prove that people have unequal value, since by this argument the bum obviously has a higher "value" than the surgeon? If the bum and the surgeon really had equal value, there is no way either choice could be faulted in any way as being worse then the other, yes? (This idea has an interesting corollary that groups that advocate "equality" between different groups of people wouldn't really settle for equality, since mere equality still allows arbitrary discrimination.)
It is a common idea that everybody is in some sense of "equal value" simply by being a member of the human species. It is taken as an axiom, since no test is provided with it to allow anyone to check whether you currently reside in a universe in which every human has an equal value, or in a universe in which they do not. Perhaps for a practical test, if everyone is supposed to have this equal value, I sure have never seen anybody consistently behaving as if they thought that this was true. Someone who would consistently say to the previous question "I would toss a coin to choose" in every situation could plausibly claim that they really do believe this.
Especially if we also believe that this equal value is in some sense infinitely large, things get problematic. Perhaps every human is equally valuable in some vague abstract sense which never actually influences anybody's real-life decisions or actions, which are based on more concrete forms of values and preferences, in which people are most definitely created unequal. Of course, the concept of equal value of every person is a simple and useful heuristic in all practical decision-making, which is necessarily finite and rough by its nature anyways, so we don't need to care about the paradoxes bursting out of this concept when it is pushed to the extremes. (For example, one nasty side effect of the assumption of infinite value of human life is that the death of only one is no better than the death of a hundred, since hundred times infinity still equals one infinity.) At least the idea of equality of all humans is a relatively stable equilibrium, whereas if the idea of unequal value became prevalent, there's no telling what kind of social chaos this would lead to.
If the value of humans is problematic, the value of animals seems to be even more problematic and paradoxical. For example, someone who kicks a dog for fun is considered to be a much worse person than someone who kicks a human being for fun. But a butcher who kills thousands of cows and pigs (or dogs, in a culture in which dogs are eaten as food) is not considered to be a bad person at all, except perhaps by the militant vegans. I'm sure this makes sense somehow: perhaps a man who kicks a dog establishes his low position in human status hierarchy (if he were ranked higher, he could kick humans) and is despicable and worth scorn for this reason.
What does the exact same argument prove if instead of a baby and the freezer we assume, for example, a baby and a seriously demented old person, both equally unable to escape on their own? Or just pick suitable example people on your own to put on both sides. Any answer that is essentially different from "I would toss a coin to choose" and thus puts the two sides to be rescued into a nonsymmetric position, proves that the people on those sides have a different value, at least in the answer-giver's mind.
If the two people to choose from were a homeless bum and a prolific surgeon, it seems somehow horrible to save the surgeon. It is almost if you were somehow obliged to save the homeless bum in this situation, otherwise you are some kind of a nazi or something. But doesn't the fact that you have to save the homeless bum also prove that people have unequal value, since by this argument the bum obviously has a higher "value" than the surgeon? If the bum and the surgeon really had equal value, there is no way either choice could be faulted in any way as being worse then the other, yes? (This idea has an interesting corollary that groups that advocate "equality" between different groups of people wouldn't really settle for equality, since mere equality still allows arbitrary discrimination.)
It is a common idea that everybody is in some sense of "equal value" simply by being a member of the human species. It is taken as an axiom, since no test is provided with it to allow anyone to check whether you currently reside in a universe in which every human has an equal value, or in a universe in which they do not. Perhaps for a practical test, if everyone is supposed to have this equal value, I sure have never seen anybody consistently behaving as if they thought that this was true. Someone who would consistently say to the previous question "I would toss a coin to choose" in every situation could plausibly claim that they really do believe this.
Especially if we also believe that this equal value is in some sense infinitely large, things get problematic. Perhaps every human is equally valuable in some vague abstract sense which never actually influences anybody's real-life decisions or actions, which are based on more concrete forms of values and preferences, in which people are most definitely created unequal. Of course, the concept of equal value of every person is a simple and useful heuristic in all practical decision-making, which is necessarily finite and rough by its nature anyways, so we don't need to care about the paradoxes bursting out of this concept when it is pushed to the extremes. (For example, one nasty side effect of the assumption of infinite value of human life is that the death of only one is no better than the death of a hundred, since hundred times infinity still equals one infinity.) At least the idea of equality of all humans is a relatively stable equilibrium, whereas if the idea of unequal value became prevalent, there's no telling what kind of social chaos this would lead to.
If the value of humans is problematic, the value of animals seems to be even more problematic and paradoxical. For example, someone who kicks a dog for fun is considered to be a much worse person than someone who kicks a human being for fun. But a butcher who kills thousands of cows and pigs (or dogs, in a culture in which dogs are eaten as food) is not considered to be a bad person at all, except perhaps by the militant vegans. I'm sure this makes sense somehow: perhaps a man who kicks a dog establishes his low position in human status hierarchy (if he were ranked higher, he could kick humans) and is despicable and worth scorn for this reason.
I think you could save the doctor because you consider the doctor and the homeles person equal and either you want to save the doctor because he sounds like he is a more useful member of society (at a guess) OR because since they are of equal value it doesnt realy matter and so you are free to make the selfish choice of having a doctor owe you one as opposed to a bum (doctor is more likely to be able to return the favour)
Posted by Genius | 1:02 AM
The initial argument doesn't succeed anyway. There can be a basis of choosing between saving one person's life or another's that has nothing to do with assuming one person is of greater or lesser value than the other. For instance, one might think it's worse to cause more pain. If someone has to die, and one will suffer pain and the other not, then save the one that would suffer pain by dying. There's also the value of having desires that can be satisfied. If one's desires can be frustrated, that's generally bad. Something without such desires is less bad to allow to die if one has to choose. So thinking it's better to save the baby than the embryos doesn't require thinking it's ever ok to kill the embryos when it's not a situation of only being able to save one or the other, because the reason to save the baby might be consistent with the wrongness of killing embryos.
Posted by Jeremy Pierce | 10:52 PM
What is a bum?
—gmanedit
Posted by Anonymous | 11:42 AM