Value and dignity

1. If it can be reasonable for a typical innocent human being to save lions from extinction at the expense of the human’s own life, then the life of a typical human being is not of greater value than that of all the lion species.

2. It can be reasonable for a typical innocent human being to save lions from extinction at the expense of the human’s own life.

3. So, the life of a typical innocent human being is not of greater value than that of the lion species.

4. It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being in order to save tigers, elephants and giraffes from extinction.

5. It is not wrong to intentionally destroy the lion species in order to save tigers, elephants and giraffes from extinction.

6. If (3), (4) and (5), then the right to life of innocent human beings is not grounded in how great the value of human life is.

7. So, the right to life of innocent human beings is not grounded in how great the value of human life is.

I think the conclusion to draw from this is the Kantian one, that dignity that property of human beings that grounds respect, is not a form of value. A human being has a dignity greater than that of all lions taken together, as indicated by the deontological claims (4) and (5), but a human being does not have a value greater than that of all lions taken together.

One might be unconvinced by (2). But if so, then tweak the argument. It is reasonable to accept a 25% chance of death in order to stop an alien attack aimed at killing off all the lions. If so, then on the plausible assumption that the value of all the lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes is at least four times that of the lions (note that there are multiple species of elephants and giraffes, but only one of lions), it is reasonable to accept a 100% chance of death in order to stop the alien attack aimed at killing off all four types of animals. But now we can easily imagine sixteen types of animals such that it is permissible to intentionally kill off the lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes in order to save the 16 types, but it is not permissible to intentionally kill a human in order to save the 16 types.

Optimism

I've been gradually realizing just how important it is to presume our ideological and political opponents to be motivated by pursuit of the good and true. Of course, in some cases the presumption is false, but likewise sometimes our co-partisans--and we ourselves--are motivated badly.

Here's a psychological advantage of making this presumption. If we lose out to our opponents (say, in the polis, in a department meeting, etc.), it's much less depressing when we see it as nonetheless a kind of victory for the true and the good--for we presume that the desire for the true and the good is what energized our opponents in their victory, what made them persevere, what made them win support.

It may seem not in keeping with a Christian view of this world as fallen to make this presumption. But at the same time, while this world is fallen, Christ's grace is widespread. And wherever people are moved by the true and the good, there is a likelihood that grace is at work. In fact, it is precisely the fact that the world is fallen that makes it likely that grace is at work where the pursuit of the true and the good energizes people.

None of this minimizes the importance of energetic disagreement when needed. If Fred and Sid disagree on which of two ropes to throw the drowning man, and Sid with great energy carries the day and throws the rotten rope to the drowning man, although Fred can see it as a kind of victory for the good in that Sid was being driven by the good, nonetheless the drowning man is likely to drown. So the presumption that our opponents are motivated rightly is fully compatible with resisting them respectfully to the best of our ability. Indeed, the very fact that Sid is pursuing the good is a reason for Fred resist Sid's mistaken choice of rope, so as to save Sid from an action that does not in fact achieve what Sid wants it to achieve.

Suppose it's granted that the presumption is helpful. But what justifies the presumption? Is it justified merely pragmatically? I don't think so. I think there is a general presumption that things are working rightly, a presumption that we should minimize the attribution of malfunction. (This general presumption may be what keeps us from scepticism, what makes it appropriate to trust in our senses and our fellows' testimony.) And it is a lesser defect to be wrong about the means than about the ends.

Endangerment and harm

Suppose I deliberately endanger you, but the danger doesn't befall you. Then there is a sense in which I do you no harm, but there is also a sense in which imposing the danger on your was a harm to you. You have a claim against me for my endangerment of you.

But one can also endanger people who never exist. For instance, if I give you a drug that has a high probability of physically harming your future children if you have any (let's say I assign a certain moderate probability to your having children), but you never actually have any children. There I might be harming you in some way, but I don't harmed them, since they never exist to be harmed. One can tweak the case so there are no parents to be harmed. Maybe I expect intelligent life to evolve on some planet with moderate probability, and I set up a device to harm some intelligent beings on that planet once they evolve, but no life evolves there.

There are thus two probabilities in endangerment. There is the probability that there is going to be potential victims at all and the conditional probability that a potential victim will be harmed given that there is going to be a potential victim at all. And the probability of harm is the product of these two probabilities.

It is a very interesting question whether there is a significant moral difference between a case where

• I deliberately cause a probability 1/4 of harm to a person I know for sure to exist

versus a case where

• I deliberately cause a probability 1/2 of (same as above) harm to a person I assign probability 1/2 to the existence of (i.e., I deliberately cause it to be the case that if that person exists, she has chance 1/2 of suffering that harm)

when we suppose that in the first case the danger did not in fact befall the person while in the second case the person did not in fact exist.

The consequentialist intuitions that we all have to some degree pull one to saying that there is no difference. On the other hand, in the first case there is a person that I have failed to love and respect her in the way that she deserves, while there is no such failure of love and respect in the second case. In fact, if one has a picture of morality as essentially involving interpersonal relations, it is difficult to see how any wrongdoing has happened in the second case if in fact the person never comes to exist.

A theist might be able to maintain both something like the consequentialist intuition and the idea that moral failures are primarily failures of interpersonal relations. There is a deep and mysterious message in Scripture expressed by the Psalmist saying to God: "Against you, you alone, have I sinned" (Ps 51.4). The Psalm heading connects this with David's sin against Uriah, which makes this message particularly puzzling, since it seems clear that David sinned against both Uriah and God. But suppose we take really seriously the idea that all positive attributes are acts of participation in God. Uriah's dignity, then, is an act of participation in God's dignity, and its value entirely derivative from God's infinite dignity. In some sense, then, David's wrongdoing against Uriah really just is a wrongdoing against God. Now suppose that David had been wrong, and there never had been a Uriah. (Maybe Bathsheba was an unmarried woman who created a myth of an Uriah in order to protect herself from unwanted advances.) The wrongdoing against God's dignity would have been just the same. The wrongdoing against Uriah wouldn't have been there, but that wrongdoing's "culpatory force" was entirely derivative from the culpatory force of the wrongdoing against God, since Uriah's dignity was an act of participation in God's dignity. If we have something like this picture, then we really can say that all moral failures are primarily failures of interpersonal relations and yet hold the two cases, the one where there is an endangered victim and the one where there turns out not to be one, to be morally on par. For all respect and love is ultimately and implicitly for God, though perhaps God qua participated in or participable in by a creature.