Special treatment of humans

Sometimes one talks of humans as having a higher value than other animals, and hence it being appropriate to treat them better. While humans do have a higher value, I don't think this is what justifies favoring them. For to treat something well is to bestow value on them. But it is far from clear why the fact that x has more value than y justifies bestowing additional value on x rather than on y. It seems at least as reasonable to spread value around, and preferentially treat y.

A confusing factor is that we do have reason to preferentially treat those who have more desert, and desert is a value. But the reason here is specific to desert, and does not in any obvious way generalize to other values.

I don't deny that we should treat humans preferentially over other animals, nor that humans are more valuable. But these two facts should not be confused. Perhaps we should treat humans preferentially over other animals because humans are persons and other animals are not--but this is a point about personhood rather than about value. I am inclined to think we shouldn't argue: humans are persons, personhood is very valuable, so we should treat humans preferentially. Rather, I suspect we should directly argue: humans are persons, so we should treat humans preferentially, skipping the value step. (To put it in Kantian terms, beings with dignity are valuable, but what makes them have dignity isn't just that they are valuable.)

Some finitisms

I’m thinking about the kinds of finitisms there are. Here are some:

1. Ontic finitism: There can only be finitely many entities.

2. Concrete finitism: There can only be finitely many concrete entities.

3. Generic finitism: There are only finitely many possible kinds of substances.

4. Weak species finitism: No world contains infinitely many substances of a single species.

5. Strong species finitism: No species contains infinitely many possible individuals.

6. Strong human finitism: There are only finitely many possible human individuals.

7. Causal finitism: Nothing can have infinitely many items in its causal history.

8. Explanatory finitism: Nothing can have infinitely many items in its explanatory history.

I think (1) and (2) are false, because eternalism is true and it is possible to have an infinite future with a new chicken coming into existence every day.

I’ve defended (7) at length. I would love to be able to defend (8), but for reasons discussed in that book, I fear it can’t

I don’t know any reason to believe (3) other than as an implication of (1) together with realism about species. I don’t know any reason to believe (4) other than as an implication of (2) or (5).

I can imagine a combination of metaphysical views on which (6) is defensible. For instance, it might turn out that humans are made out of stuff all of whose qualities are discribable with discrete mathematics, and that there are limits on the discrete quantities (e.g., a minimum and a maximum mass of a human being) in such a way that for any finite segment of human life, there are only finitely many possibilities. If one adds to that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, in a transworld form, one will have an argument that there can only be finitely many humans. And I suppose some version of this view that applies to species more generally would give (5). That said, I doubt (6) is true.

Gaining and losing personhood?

1. Love (of the relevant sort) is appropriately only a relation towards a person.

2. Someone appropriately has an unconditional love for another human.

3. One can only appropriately have an unconditional R for an individual if the individual cannot cease to have the features that make R appropriate towards them.

4. Therefore, at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person. (1–3)

5. If at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person, then all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person.

6. If all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person, then it is impossible for a non-person to become a human person.

7. All humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person. (4,5)

8. It is impossible for a non-person to become a human person. (6,7)

9. Any normal human fetus can become a human person.

10. Therefore, any normal human fetus is a person. (8,9)

(I think this holds of non-normal human fetuses as well, but that’ll take a bit more argument.)

It’s important here to distinguish the relevant sort of love—the intrinsically interpersonal kind—from other things that are analogously called love, but might perhaps better be called, say, liking or affection, which one can have towards a non-person.

I think the most controversial premises are 2 and 9. Against 2, I could imagine someone who denies 7 insisting that the most that is appropriate is to love someone on the condition of their remaining a person. But I still think this is problematic. Those who deny 7 presumably do so in part because they think that some real-world conditions like advanced Alzheimer’s rob us of our personhood. But now consider the repugnance of wedding vows that promise to love until death or damage to mental function do part.

Standing against 9 would be “constitution views” on which, normally, human fetuses become human animals, and these animals constitute but are not identical with human persons. These are ontologies on which two distinct things sit in my chair, I and the mammal that constitutes me, ontologies on which we are not mammals. Again, this is not very plausible, but it is a not uncommon view among philosophers.

Of cats and humans

We acquired a cat around Christmas. Never having had a pet before in my life (except for a puppy for a few days decades ago), what have I learned philosophically? Maybe this:

All cats by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight they take in their senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when they are not going to do anything, they prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes one know and brings to light many differences between things.

This is, of course, what Aristotle says in the first paragraph of the Metaphysics, except he says it about humans. We tend to think of the pleasures of the mind as distinctively human. But a focus on pleasures of the mind is not distinctively human. Observing and exploring are our cat’s most driving pleasures.

The difference between humans and other animals may lie in the type of intellectual pleasure. Aquinas distinguishes the rightly ordered pursuit of understanding from the vice of curiositas. The main difference is that in the virtuous pursuit, one seeks an understanding of how the world explanatorily fits together, rather than a mere listing of facts of the sort one gets from mere seeing (here’s a tree, here’s a squirrel, etc.).

Will dogs live forever?

Suppose a dog lives forever. Assuming the dog stays roughly dog-sized, there is only a finite number of possible configurations of the dog’s matter (disregarding insignificant differences on the order of magnitude of a Planck length, say). Then, eventually, all of the dog’s matter configurations will be re-runs, as we will run out of possible new configurations. Whatever the dog is feeling, remembering or doing is something the dog has already felt, remembered or done. It will be literally impossible to teach the dog a new trick (without swelling the dog beyond normal dog size).

But a dog’s life is a material life, unlike perhaps the life of a person. Plausibly, a dog’s mental states are determined by the configuration of the dog’s (brain) matter. So, eventually, every one of the dog’s mental states will be a re-run, too.

And then we will run out of states re-run once, and the dog will only have states that are on their second or later re-run. And so on. There will come a day when whatever the dog is feeling, remembering or doing is something the dog has felt, remembered or done a billion times: and there is still eternity to go.

Moreover, we’re not just talking about momentary re-runs. Eventually, every day of the dog’s life will be an identical re-run of an earlier day of the dog’s life (at least insofar as the dog is concerned: things beyond the power of the dog’s sensory apparatus might change). And then eventually every year of the dog’s life will be a re-run of an earlier year. And then there will come a year when every coming year of the dog’s life will already have been done a billion times already.

This doesn’t strike me as a particularly flourishing life for a dog. Indeed, it strikes me that it would be a more flourishing life for the dog to cut out the nth re-runs, and have the dog’s life come to a peaceful end.

Granted, the dog won’t be bored by the re-runs. In fact, probably the dog won’t know that things are being re-run over and over. In any case, dogs don’t mind repetition. But there is still something grotesque about such a life of re-runs. That’s just not the temporal shape a dog’s life should have, much as a dog shouldn’t be cubical or pyramidal in spatial shape.

If this is right, then considerations of a dog’s well-being do not lead to the desirability of eternal life for the dog. As far as God’s love for dogs goes, we shouldn’t expect God to make the dogs live forever.

This is, of course, the swollen head argument, transposed to dogs, from naturalist accounts of humans.

But maybe God would make dogs live forever because of his love for their human friends, not because of his love for the dogs themselves? Here, I think there is a better case for eternal life for dogs. But I am still sceptical. For the humans would presumably know that from the dog’s point of view, everything is an endless re-run. The dog has already taken a walk that looked and felt just like this one a billion times, and there is an infinite number of walks that look and feel just like this one to the dog ahead. Maybe to the human they feel different: the human can think about new things each time, because naturalism is false of humans, and so differences in human mental states don’t require differences in neural states (or so those of us who believe in an eternal afterlife for humans should say). But to the dog it’s just as before. And know that on the dog’s side it’s just endless repetition would, I think, be disquieting and dissatisfying to us. It seems to me that it is not fitting for a human to be tied down for an eternity of a friendship with a finite being that eventually has nothing new to exhibit in its life.

So, I doubt that God would make dogs live forever because of his love for us, either. And the same goes for other brute animals. So, I don’t think brute animals live forever.

All this neglects Dougherty’s speculative suggestion that in the afterlife animals may be transformed, Narnia-like, so that they become persons. If he’s right, then the naturalistic supervenience assumption will be no more true for the animals than for us, and the repetition argument above against dogs living forever will fail. But the argument above will still show that we shouldn’t expect brute animals to live forever. And I am dubious of the transformation hypothesis, too.

At the same time, I want to note that I think it is not unlikely that there will be brute animals on the New Earth. But if so, I expect they will have finite lifespans. For while an upper temporal limit to the life of a human would be an evil, an upper temporal limit to the life of a brute animal seems perfectly fitting.

Three levels of sex/gender

The biological understanding of male and female is something like this. Some species reproduce sexually. Some species that reproduce sexually exhibit a consistent difference in size between the two gametes that come together in sexual reproduction. In those species, the producer of the larger gamete is called “female” and the producer of the smaller gamete is called “male”. We can thus draw a distinction between a species having sexes, namely having respective producers of two different kinds of gametes, each of which is needed for sexual reproduction, and the species having male and female sexes.

Let me speak vaguely but heuristically. Human reproduction has a deep ethical and theological significance because it produces persons. Moreover, humans normally reproduce sexually (the exception of course being twinning). So it’s unsurprising if the existence of two sexes among humans has intrinsic ethical and theological significance. But the difference between male and female seems to have no intrinsic ethical or theological significance. It matters that there are two reproductive kinds, but that one of the two kinds produces a larger gamete than the other has no intrinsic ethical or theological significance.

But of course even though what defines the difference between male and female humans is the difference in gamete size, the actual differences between male and female humans are not in fact limited to differences of gamete size. Those humans that produce smaller gametes produce more of them, while those humans that produce larger gametes produce fewer of them and gestate offspring. Humans have “primary sex characteristics” that support differing ways of reproductive functioning.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine earth* where there are humans*. To a cursory external examination, humans* live, look and behave just like humans, and have the same kind of sexual differentiation. One sex produces lots of gametes and the other relatively few. The sex that produces fewer gametes gestates offspring for nine months, has mammary-type glands that nourish offspring after gestation, is a little smaller on average, etc. But on earth*, it also turns out that the the sex that produces relatively few gametes produces the smaller gametes. (There may be evolutionary reasons why this is unlikely. But unlikely is not impossible.) Thus, on earth* male humans* fill the same biological roles as female humans do on earth, except at a near-microscopic level where the sizes of gametes become visible.

Now overlay on this the social level. This could go in multiple ways. It is easiest to imagine that on earth*, male humans* have the same social positions, and suffer from the same sorts of discrimination, as female humans do on earth. But it could in principle be reversed: it could be that the social position of male and female humans* is like that of male and female humans, respectively. Or it could be nullified: there could be no significant differences in social position.

This suggests that there are three levels to sex/gender:

• The definitionally fundamental distinction between male and female in terms of gamete size.

• Other biological differences—particularly with respect to reproductive functioning.

• The social distinctions.

The first two tend to be lumped together as “sex” or “biological sex”, while the last gets called “gender”. But there really are three distinct levels. We might roughly call them: “biological gametic sex”, “biological functional sex” and “social gender”. Thus, among humans*, the connection between biological functional sex and biological gametic sex is the reverse of how it is among humans. So we now have three different senses of terms like “man”, “woman”, “male” and “female”.

If birds aren't reptiles, maybe people aren't animals?

Some biological taxa are clades: a clade is a taxon that contains a descendant of every included organism. For instance Mammalia is a clade, while Reptilia is not, since birds aren't reptiles but are descendants of reptiles. There are biologists that wish that we used a phylogenetic classification scheme, one where all taxa are clades. But that's not what is traditionally done. Let's consider the hypothesis that the traditional approach is right in the sense that it cuts nature at joints. Then a taxon can change from being a clade to being a non-clade. I assume that Reptilia changed in this way when birds evolved. And whether such a change has occurred is a substantive question.

In principle, then, it is possible for the kingdom Animalia, which I understand is normally taken to be a clade, to change into a non-clade. And it is a substantive question, then, whether such a change occurred when humans evolved. It could be the case that sapience marks such a departure that we are a new kingdom, and Animalia is no longer a clade. I think a close relative of this thought--albeit without evolutionary connections--is behind the ordinary person's (as opposed to a philosopher's) resistance to the idea that we are animals: personhood is such a transformative feature that it marks a completely new kind of organism.

But while the question is substantive, it's not tenable to say we aren't animals. If we are not animals, it seems we aren't mammals. (Maybe more can be said, though?) But if we aren't mammals, then various natural kind-based explanations fail: we can't say, for instance, that we have complex bones in the inner ear because we have mammals.

Note, too, that the question raised in this post is orthogonal to the question that animalists are concerned with. For all that we animalists need for our positive theory is that we are organisms--whether the particular kind of organism we are is an animal, a plant, a fungus or something else is not very important for the theory.

The human animal and the cerebrum

Suppose your cerebrum was removed from your skull and placed in a vat in such a way that its neural functioning continued. So then where are you: Are you in the vat, or where the cerebrum-less body with heartbeat and breathing is?

Most people say you're in the vat. So persons go with their cerebra. But the animal, it seems, stays behind—the cerebrum-less body is the same animal as before. So, persons aren't animals, goes the argument.

I think the animal goes with the cerebrum. Here's a heuristic.

• Typically, if an organism of kind K is divided into two parts A and B that retain much of their function, and the flourishing of an organism of kind K is to a significantly greater degree constituted by the functioning of A than that of B, then the organism survives as A rather than as B.

Uncontroversial case: If you divide me into a little toe and the rest of me, then since the little toe's contribution to my flourishing is quite insignificant compared to the rest, I survive as the rest. More controversially, the flourishing of the human animal is to a significantly greater degree constituted by the functioning of the cerebrum than of the cerebrum-less body, so we have reason to think the human animal goes with the cerebrum.

Another related heuristic:

• Typically, if an organism of kind K is divided into two parts A and B that retain much of their function, and B's functioning is significantly more teleologically directed to the support of A than the other way around, then the organism survives as A rather than as B.

My heart exists largely for the sake of the rest of my body, while it is false to say that the rest of my body exists largely for the sake of my heart. So if I am divided into a heart and the rest of me, as long as the rest of me continues to function (say, due to a mechanical pump circulating blood), I go with the rest of me, not the heart. But while the cerebrum does work for the survival of the rest of my body, it is much more the case that the rest of the body works for the survival of the cerebrum.

There may also be a control heuristic, but I don't know how to formulate it.

The value of unconscious human life

Some think that the life of a human being who has permanently and irreversibly lost consciousness has no value. Here are three arguments against tying human value and human dignity to consciousness.

Argument 1: Leibniz and Freud have taught us that much of our mental life is unconscious. If we just look at a typical person's conscious episodes what we get is a disconnected life, a series of short film clips, rather than the rich story that a typical human life is. It would be strange, then, to make the conscious life be the sole locus of value. This argument is there just to move one's intuitions away from an excessive focus on consciousness. It won't, for instance, be relevant in the case of brain damage so severe that there is good reason to think there are no unconscious mental processes (though in practice it does caution one; we know that medical personnel can be mistaken about whether a patient is conscious, and it seems to be even more difficult to determine whether there are unconscious mental processes).

Argument 2: Some living things, like trees, exhibit metabolic activity. Other living things, like earthworms, exhibit significant movement. Other living things, like geckos (I assume), exhibit conscious awareness. Yet others, like dogs, exhibit significant and flexible problem-solving skills. And others yet, of which the only example we are empirically sure are humans, exhibit the kind of sophisticated intellectual functioning and interaction that is characteristic of persons. But the later entries in this list also exhibit the activities of the earlier ones. Earthworms not only move, but also metabolize. Geckos not only are consciously aware, but also move and metabolize. Dogs not only solve problems, but are conscious, move and metabolize. And humans do all of these—and exhibit sophisticated cognition on top of it. The life of a tree, a worm, a gecko and a dog has value, and the good that is found in each of these is found in the typical life of a human. Not all of these goods require consciousness: the good of metabolism and movement is present in many animals without, as far as we know, consciousness. Thus the life of a human who does not exhibit consciousness nonetheless exhibits a number of other goods. To deny this is basically to deny that humans are animals, or to take the implausible view that the life of a tree or a worm has no value.

Argument 3: Consider the attitude one might have towards someone that one loves who has fallen dreamlessly asleep—say, one's child or one's spouse. One may fondly kiss the beloved's head, recognizing the beloved's present value—fondness always involves an element of taking the beloved to have value. If the value of humans essentially requires consciousness, there is either a mistake here or else the value is entirely constituted by the expected future consciousness. It is implausible to say that a mistake is being made, so let us consider the future-consciousness hypothesis. Suppose that the beloved is going to be executed by a tyrant as soon as she about to regain consciousness. Then there is no future consciousness (except in the afterlife, and I do not think the attitude depends on beliefs about the afterlife). But the tragic absence of a future consciousness does not make one less fond—it does not make one value the person less—but the very opposite. Nor is one's attitude as it is towards a corpse. In the case of the sleeping person who will be executed, one dreads and mourns a future loss; in the case of the corpse, one mourns an already present loss.

Final remarks: The above establishes a weak conclusion: that there is intrinsic value in an unconscious human life. One might think that this weak conclusion avails little. But I think it establishes one thing: It is a mistake to think that one can be bestowing a good on an unconscious patient by killing her. An unconscious patient is not suffering. The evils that have befallen her are evils of privation (maybe the evil of suffering is also an evil of privation, but that is more controversial)—she lacks consciousness, speech, complex two-way interaction, etc. But she still exhibits the kinds of goods that oak trees exhibit. And to kill her is to deprive her even of these goods. (A religious person might say: "It will hasten her happiness in the next life, and that is of value." But rarely do we know that a person's afterlife will be free of suffering. Besides, the hastening is not much of a benefit, because when one is unconscious, one is not waiting. According to her subjective time, she will get the goods of the afterlife just as quickly if she is killed now as when she is allowed to live for another ten years of unconsciousness.)

One might think that it is an indignity for a human to be active only at the level of plants. That, I think, is too high a view of humans. We all begin with a life of purely metabolic activity after conception, and most of us end with a life of purely metabolic activity (if only for a few seconds).

An important question (Trent Dougherty asked me about this today), but one that is not required for my weak conclusions above, is whether the metabolic life is intrinsically more valuable in the human than in the oak tree. The answer is, I think, positive, but it is a hard question. (One argument for a positive answer comes from the hylomorphic view of the human soul—our metabolic life is energized by our rational soul.)