Subject of Discussion: What Gives Human Life Value?

The notion that human life has value is almost universally accepted in western cultures. Yet, while the concept is seemingly innate [2, 5, 17], there is by no means universal acceptance of what it is that gives human life value. Unfortunately, without this common understanding ethical dilemmas ranging from eugenics to euthanasia will continue to plague our politics and personal lives. Worse still, if we leave the question unanswered in our own minds, we leave ourselves ill prepared to face the life and death decisions that ultimately confront most people.

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Nonreligious arguments on the subject are decidedly more varied, and while I’ve attempted to summarize the more common ones below, I’ve omitted quite a few as well. Nonetheless, the summaries, and their related links, should give you plenty to think about before the meeting. (For your convenience I’ve pasted some of the more interesting text from the referenced documents right below the related links.)

                            Characteristics that distinguish us from other animals.[ 4, 5, 7, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25]

                            Our intelligence, self-awareness, personal identity [4, 7, 16, 18, 25]

                            Our personal values, group values, and senses of morality [7, 20, 21]

Finally, I’d like to ask discussion participants to remain focused on the question of what gives human life value. The subject naturally lends itself to further speculation on a wide range of social issues, but each of those can readily spawn hours of debate in their own right. More to the point, perhaps, fully exploring this topic will hopefully provide participants with a better foundation for undertaking those related discussions in the future.

1 >> http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Street_Journal/value.html

The amount people are willing to pay to extend their life for a fixed period of time, according to one version of Feldman's model, is roughly equal to what that person would spend on personal consumption during that time.

Feldman's theory is in the minority, however. Most economists working in this area calculate the value of a human life by examining how much an individual is willing to pay to reduce the risk of death. But Feldman believes this method is fraught with philosophical and empirical deficiencies. For example, he points out that when you ask someone what they would pay to reduce his or her risk of death by one percent, that answer would be entirely different from what they would be willing to pay to reduce the risk by 10 percent.

"The empirical studies for such an ill-defined concept get estimates all over the place and sometimes get bizarre results," he said, citing one study that showed unionized workers were willing to pay eight times more for reducing their risk of death than non-union workers.

Although this economic model - willingness-to-pay measures - has been adopted by most economists, the courts use the human capital model to determine damages in cases of wrongful death. "This views people as a machine - a stream of income," said Feldman. "To make [the plaintiffs] whole, they look at what the deceased would have earned and passed on to them."

Feldman believes there is a certain logic to this when widows and children go before the courts to seek justice for a family member who has lost his or her life through another's negligence. But such an approach "implies that someone who is 65 years old or is retired is worth nothing," said Feldman. "A younger person's life is going to always be more valuable using this model."

2 >> http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/06/of-fundamental-moral-principles-and.html

There is one final point to be made about all this -- and that has to do with the supreme value of a single human life. In our desensitized, dehumanized age, most people have almost no appreciation for what I'm talking about, and our political establishment and media only make this grievous failing worse. Each of us is unique; not one of us can be replaced. Each of us has a family, loved ones, friends and a life that is a web of caring, interdependence, and joy. When even one of us is killed or horribly injured for no justifiable reason, the damage affects countless people in addition to the primary victim. Sometimes, the survivors are irreparably damaged as well. Even the survivors' wounds can last a lifetime.

3 >> http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2006/09/on_the_value_of_human_life.php

Over at Pharyngula, PZ is beating up Starbucks over one of the quotes on their cups. The quote is by Discovery Institute fellow Wesley Smith, and it reads:

The morality of the 21st century will depend on how we respond to this simple but profound question: Does every human life have equal moral value simply and merely because it is human? Answer yes, and we have a chance of achieving universal human rights. Answer no, and it means that we are merely another animal in the forest.

4 >> http://www.aubreyrhea.com/value/report.htm

The American Heritage Dictionary defines person as, "1. A living human being, especially as distinguished from an animal or thing. 2. The composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality."

Self-awareness is being aware one's thoughts and feelings, and able to critically analyze those thoughts and feelings. … people are self-aware because they can have thoughts about their thoughts.

American Heritage Dictionary defines intelligence as, "the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge."

American Heritage Dictionary defines it as, "Having an awareness of one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts, and one's own environment."

There is a theory called "functionalism" that says the human brain is a large computer program itself.

the right of self-determination, or being one's own master, goes along with responsibilities

June '98 issue of Discover magazine there is an article entitled "Evolving a Conscious Machine." The subtitle of the article says, "Some computer scientists think that by letting chips build themselves, the chips will turn out to be stunningly efficient, complex, effective, and weird -- kind of like our brains."

Are they valuable because they are intelligent, self-aware, and conscious? Maybe. But if so, why? Is it because these qualities make them able to well-serve society? Is it because these qualities make them like us?

we humans want to protect each other because we share the same genes. Our altruistic drive comes from evolution and the struggle for survival. We are just acting according to our genes, which happen to tell us to preserve our own species. These genes are like our program, planted within us by chance

quote by the evolutionist Stephen Jay Gold: "The human species has inhabited this planet for only 250,000 years or so -- roughly .0015 percent of the history of life, the last inch of the cosmic mile. The world fared perfectly well without us for all but this last moment of earthly time -- and this fact makes our appearance look more like an accidental afterthought than the culmination of a prefigured plan.

5 >> http://bovination.com/cbs/valueOfAHumanLife.jsp

Most people would say that human life is a precious thing, and that taking it away from someone by force is a bad thing. Most would also say that an (non-human) animal's life is less valuable, and most (if they are pushed to consider it) would say that the value of a life is based on the intelligence of that creature. Intelligent creatures (like a dog, chimp or dolphin) are more valuable unintelligent creatures (like flies, cockroaches or earth-worms).

This is gives us a clue about the the nature of humanity which makes it valuable - a human's intelligence, but it also raises uncomfortable questions. Are the lives of more intelligent humans worth more than non-intelligent humans? Is the life of a severely brain damaged human with apparently less intelligence than an ape less valuable than that ape?

In fact it has more to do with empathy than with intelligence. People empathize with other people, they empathize with dogs (because they make good pets), with dolphins (because they always seem to be smiling), and with apes (because they are physically so much like us), but generally do not empathize highly with insects or worms.

Interestingly this echos of much racist behavior in the past. The notion that 'they don't feel pain like us' was used to justify all manner of actions which would now be considered atrocities. A more politically correct education teaches that we should empathize with all races equally, and many people are careful to ensure that their stated aims reflect this.

There is a new device called a Widget which can be fitted to all cars, and is likely to save lives. Exactly which lives it saves is hard to say, but based on accident statistics and our best calculations it will save about 10 lives per year. The device costs $X to fit to any car (new or used) should we make this compulsory on all 10,000,000 cars in this country?

to remove a 10% chance of death, they will pay about 10% of their salary. Some will be willing to pay more, some less, but the median would be about there.

This suggests that

The value of a human life is approximately what someone earns in a lifetime.

There is another thought experiment which asks question "how much would you be willing to extend your life by X years", which typically yields a similar result.

Once someone accepts that there is a value on a human life, that it is acceptable to let some people die if the cost of saving them is too great, and that human lives are not the only measure of society's utility, then they are a long way to being able to solve the problems of the world rationally and without resorting to hysterical slogans.

6 >> http://www.beswick.info/rclresources/23C95Ser.htm

Some sense of the sanctity of life is basic to a Christian understanding. Biblically speaking, a person is "in the image of God", able to relate to God, and to relate to others in the kind of relationship that Jesus enjoyed with God the Father. We have the potential to become children of God. That is God's purpose for us in his creation. Ultimately we belong to him and can hope to find our place with him, and we are not free to do with our lives whatever we will. The sanctity of life has to do with its purpose and the value that is placed on human life by its Creator who gave it the potential to share in the very life of the Creator God.

The Age, representing a currently popular secular humanist ideology said in an editorial 5 July 1995, that "A civilised society does not permit any pressure or hint of pressure on its older members to make them believe they have outlived their usefulness". I wonder if that is true and how general it is. In the light of what we know about suicides can we apply to Australian society the same claim in respect of young people: can we honestly say something like, "A civilised society does not permit any pressure or hint of pressure on its young people to make them believe they have no useful place in their society and that their life is not worth living"? It should be obvious that most societies are very effective in conveying messages of rejection to people who are not wanted whether they be young or old.

Are we to say that some people, namely old people, have a right to commit suicide and others, especially young people, do not have that right? Is any such a right to be limited to special circumstances, and if so is a person's subjective assessment of the worthwhileness of their life to be a relevant consideration, or even the only consideration? If the value a person places on his or her own life at a particular time is not always sufficient, then is some other person's assessment of the worthwhileness of their life to weigh in the balance? The debate about euthanasia turns on the various answers that can be given to these questions.

…It has been much more common in the past to recognize some balance between the interests of the individual and what is good for society as a whole, especially in matters of life and death. It has been the normal human experience that we have an interest in each other's lives. So John Donne could write "No man is an island, entire to itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. .... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

2. Nor are we on our own. We do not have this life alone as individuals, but in relationship to others. The value of human life and responsibility for the stewardship of life is shared in a human community. For a Christian it is a responsibility shared in the fellowship of believers in which there should be mutual trust and support of one another to bear whatever burdens may fall on us in an imperfect world from which evil is yet to be banished.

7 >> http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/132

In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, internationally renowned psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl wrote about his years of witnessing unspeakable horrors in Nazi death camps. In discussing the value of human life, he wrote:

Under the influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life and human dignity, which had robbed man of his will and had made him an object to be exterminated (having planned, however, to make full use of him first—to the last ounce of his physical resources)—under this influence the personal ego finally suffered a loss of values. If the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal value. He thought of himself then as only a part of an enormous mass of people; his existence descended to the level of animal life (1984, p. 70, emp. added).

Animal life—isn’t this what many scientists tell us gave rise to humans?

Are humans nothing more than "higher animals," as some would have us believe?

The immunological view. This view sees human life as beginning when the organism recognizes the distinction between self and non-self. In humans, this occurs around the time of birth.

In discussing the human worth of the mentally ill and individuals born with birth defects, Fletcher remarked:

Idiots are not, never were, and never will be in any degree responsible [because they cannot understand consequences of action]. Idiots, that is to say, are not human. The problem they pose is not lack of sufficient mind, but of any mind at all. No matter how euphoric their behavior might be, they are outside the pale of human integrity. Indeed, sustained and "plateau" euphoria is itself prima facie clinical evidence of mindlessness (1975, p. 20, bracketed comment in orig.).

8 >> http://www.tcnj.edu/~psociety/id14.htm

9 >> http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/sep/19life.htm

10 >> http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-252584/ethics

As more genetic tests become available—not only for defects but perhaps eventually for robust health, desirable personality traits, attractive physical characteristics, or intellectual abilities that are under strong genetic influence—humanity will face the question posed by the title of Jonathan Glover's probing book What Sort of People Should There Be? (1984).

11 >> http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27000

Doug Casey

What is a human life worth to you? Let's take the emaciated Ethiopian (strike that dated image: The child is now Afghani, and will probably soon mutate into an Iraqi, then a Sudanese) whose photo graces the foster-parent ads in many magazines. A dollar a month? You'd probably say "of course," even if you neglected the chance to send in your check the last time you saw her. How about $10? Sure. $100? Maybe. $1,000? Almost certainly not.

So that child's life actually has a real dollar value to the person who's going to write the check. Forget the generalities about infinite value. That only washes if you're spending other people's money, which effectively has no value.

What if the kids you save later decide that they have to wipe out the rest of their country's rhinos and rain forest in order to survive? Maybe, quite candidly, you'd rather have the rain forest around than the kids. The concept of infinite value of a human life leads to a sense of cognitive dissonance in the light of the real world.

The fact is that a life has a finite value, just like anything else. Some lives are worth a dollar. Others (like your own, or those of your friends and family) are worth perhaps millions. Others are worth nothing. Still others are worth negative amounts, which is why the mafia, or the government, or some individuals put prices on the heads of certain people.

It's all completely arbitrary. It's arguable that if there's only one human life in the world, then that life really does have infinite value, since "value" doesn't exist independent of humans who assign it. The only thing for sure is that the sanctimonious concept of the pricelessness of human life is ridiculous.

As for the ethics of it, I feel perfectly justified in spending several thousand dollars for medical treatment of a dog or a horse I own, even though I wouldn't consider doing so for any of the millions of people who "need" it more. Money, after all, represents the distilled life of the person who earned it. And if life has any value, then people should be at ethical liberty to spend it as they wish. But not everybody believes that.

12 >> http://www.metaphoria.org/ac4t0612.html

The money to pay for survival, however, is another matter. Callous neoliberal economics renders human capital inconsequential. To neoliberalism, the use value of a human being does not matter. Only their surplus value matters to the capitalist, thus making the value of rich human life greater than that of the poor.

Marc W. Herold, in his July 22, 2002 posting, The Value of a Dead Afghan: Revealed and Relative, states that when it comes to the value of human life,

13 >> http://cantholdmytongue.com/2007/11/15/151/

Mr. James M. Stevenson is a bird lover who has been using his rifle with attached scope to take out small cats that might hunt the birds he loves. He is on trial and facing prison time for his cat killings. Neurotic cat lovers have taken to Stevenson as a murderous fascist, thus ranking him much lower than many of them have been inclined to place another man responsible for a few killings himself, their President. But that’s different, right?

14 >> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5156

Abstract:     
A fundamental principle of psychophysics is that people's ability to discriminate change in a physical stimulus diminishes as the magnitude of the stimulus increases. We find that people also exhibit diminished sensitivity in valuing lifesaving interventions against a background of increasing numbers of lives at risk. We call this "psychophysical numbing." Studies 1 and 2 found that an intervention saving a fixed number of lives was judged significantly more beneficial when fewer lives were at risk overall. Study 3 found that respondents wanted the minimum number of lives a medical treatment would have to save to merit a fixed amount of funding to be much greater for a disease with a larger number of potential victims than for a disease with a smaller number. The need to better understand the dynamics of psychophysical numbing and to determine its effects on decision making is discussed.

15 >> http://www.tdf.it/2005/vita_eng.htm

16 >> http://ebtx.com/pgv/pgv12g15.htm

…one human life is lessened in value by the gross increase in the population of Earth.

If there were trillions of beings inhabiting the solar system (a very remote possibility), of what value would that being be to his civilization as a whole? His value would be nil. Only his friends and family would care in the least. Conversely, if you were to travel for hundreds of miles before seeing another person, would not his value then be increased?

When commentators deride the callousness of our times they overlook that death and poverty are ubiquitous and cannot be expected to engender empathy. Morality has not lessened ... rather ... the quantity of people has increased so markedly as to cause disinterest.

Any cell might (one day soon) be cloned to make another similar individual. However, an integrated aggregation of cells is considered of greater value than one cell for the same reason that a Renaissance painting is considered of greater value than a Modern smear painting.

The body of a fully grown man (of itself) is no more valuable than that of any other large mammal. … Hence, it is the information contained within the brain which has the only true and enduring value.

Again now, by this criterion, the ovum has least value and the adult most and the dead body of a man least again. We lose value when we deteriorate in mind and body due to aging or disease or lack of thought. We gain value, as we age, [as actuality] and lose it at the same time [as potentiality]. Then, at some point we begin to lose both our potential and actual value due to age or infirmity until we are valuelessly entombed.

17 >> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218051939AAwpczG

This is true that life is valuable. This is a belief so innate to the mind, so commonly held that it is hardly ever realized, but in various different ways we live to fulfill our life, its dreams and potentials the being alive we have inherent to ourselves.

 18 >> http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/17042

When it comes to life we, as human beings, have a unique perspective. We, to our knowledge, are the only self conceiving creature in the sense that we can think beyond our own physical need and reaction. We can actually think about ourselves, our past experiences, our future plans and our existence. How to put a value on this ability to conceive a higher thought?

Perhaps our existence has a certain value in the grand scheme of all things. Perhaps our human existence has or will improve the universe; indeed being the highest life-form on our planet and it being the only planet that we know of able to sustain life certainly puts us in a unique circumstance. A ?one of a kind? usually has a value measurable only in the eye of the beholder. Then the definition of value has to be defined by who?s asking (a priceless unique vase or coin has little value to one who is starving, while a collector may pay millions and scoff at a dried out dinner roll and half-eaten salad.)

19 >> http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/NISPAcee/UNPAN004710.pdf

There is a consensus in economic society (Viscusi (1986), p. 207) that in this context, human life must only mean statistical human

life and its value should be based on the current willingness-to-pay (WTP) of the people. Namely, we have to summarise how much

money (or other property of similar value) individuals in the population under review are willing to sacrifice in order to decrease the

risk of death by a certain level, or.as another solution.how much money they are willing to accept as a compensation in exchange for the increased risks (The latter can be called willingness-to-accept compensation (WTA)).

In his study, he examined what kind of expenses the society should take into account for traffic accidents,

which can be deadly in extreme cases. He specified two, well-definable categories:

(a) pain, fear and suffering caused by the accident (or the risk!);

(b) Concrete and well-definable expenses:

(1) loss of future goods and services output because of the death or injury; and

(2) the direct resources spent on repairing the consequences of the accident: medical expenses,

material damages in the vehicle and other properties and administrative expenses.

According to Reynolds, examination of the first category is outside the competence of the economists. Dawson

(1967) had a similar opinion, although he made a not too significant difference.he considered the potential

victim.s future wages rather than his future output as the adequate basis of the current value calculation.

Abraham and Thedié (1960) separate the expenses and distinguish .economic components. and .subjective

components.. They follow the categories of Reynolds in connection with the economic components; however,

they classify the subjective components and define them numerically. They specified the following five

categories:

(1) suffering of relatives;

(2) subjective costs of the society;

(3) suffering of victims who survived;

(4) decreased enjoyment of life for victims who survived;

(5) fear that one might be the victim of similar (future) accidents.

(3) The third method is built on faith in the effectiveness of political methods.13 According to this method, the

society makes a lot of decisions concerning investments that are supposed to save human life. Thus, the

society evaluates them in an implicit way. This logic is entirely opposite to the train of thought of our

present research, because we believe that we need to specify the value of human life in order to help the.

more or less political.decision-making concerning the investments. We do not and cannot assume that ab

ovo society.s real evaluation appears in these decisions.

(4) Finally, the insurance principle also offers a possible method: we know how much premium a person is

willing to pay concerning certain risks that endanger his life with a specifiable probability. From this, the

evaluation of his life can be calculated.14 There are a number of problems with this methods, the most

serious one is a logical error: we do not decrease the risk of our death by life insurance, we only decrease

the financial problems of our loved ones and relatives after we have died. Therefore, when we sign the

insurance (and specify the amount), we don.t try to evaluate our life, rather we try to influence the financial

situation after our death. A bachelor who lives alone does not have any reason to sign life insurance, even if he may consider himself as valuable as any other member of society.

Total 100.0

Source: Needleman (1976), p. 332.

Philosophical considerations

20 >> http://www.dreamhawk.com/king.htm

At the profoundest level, research has shown that babies reared outside of human contact - such as those lost and reared by animals, or such children as Helen Keller who was deaf and blind - do not develop self awareness and a human identity. This suggests we are given identity by our kin and countrymen, in particular by the teaching of language. In fact my research suggests that our very mind is barely our own, but is constructed largely out of ready made pieces of family and national culture and attitudes, and from the concepts integral to the language we are taught. We add tones and ‘furniture’ and call it our personality. But language, ancestral influences, family contact, personal experiences; national culture, are the building blocks from which our being is formed.

I believe people still need a realistic hope to motivate them. They need a sense of contributing to the society which gave them existence and a realistic and satisfying reward for their part in collective cooperation - living on social security breeds a sort of half life. They need to be recognised for something of worth in their activities toward other human beings. They need moments during which they feel a part of something greater than their own limited self. And they need symbols of the wider life and culture of which they are an integral part.

21 >> http://traubman.igc.org/expandid.htm

22 >> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080217102137.htm

23 >> http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm

It is significant that the problem of equality, in moral and political philosophy, is invariably formulated in terms of human equality. The effect of this is that the question of the equality of other animals does not confront the philosopher, or student, as an issue itself—and this is already an indication of the failure of philosophy to challenge accepted beliefs. Still, philosophers have found it difficult to discuss the issue of human equality without raising, in a paragraph or two, the question of the status of other animals. The reason for this, which should be apparent from what I have said already, is that if humans are to be regarded as equal to one another, we need some sense of "equal" that does not require any actual, descriptive equality of capacities, talents or other qualities. If equality is to be related to any actual characteristics of humans, these characteristics must be some lowest common denominator, pitched so low that no human lacks them—but then the philosopher comes up against the catch that any such set of characteristics which covers all humans will not be possessed only by humans. In other words, it turns out that in the only sense in which we can truly say, as an assertion of fact, that all humans are equal, at least some members of other species are also equal—equal, that is, to each other and to humans. If, on the other hand, we regard the statement "All humans are equal" in some non-factual way, perhaps as a prescription, then, as I have already argued, it is even more difficult to exclude non-humans from the sphere of equality.

Faced with a situation in which they see a need for some basis for the moral gulf that is commonly thought to separate humans and animals, but can find no concrete difference that will do the job without undermining the equality of humans, philosophers tend to waffle. They resort to highs sounding phrases like "the intrinsic dignity of the human individual";[9] they talk of the "intrinsic worth of all men" as if men (humans?) had some worth that other beings did not,[10] or they say that humans, and only humans, are "ends in themselves," while "everything other than a person can only have value for a person.''

In case there are those who still think it may be possible to find some relevant characteristic that distinguishes all humans from all members of other species, I shall refer again, before I conclude, to the existence of some humans who quite clearly are below the level of awareness, self-consciousness, intelligence, and sentience, of many non-humans. l am thinking of humans with severe and irreparable brain damage, and also of infant humans. To avoid the complication of the relevance of a being's potential, however, I shall henceforth concentrate on permanently retarded humans.

24 >> http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080103130517AALd7Sm

I have to pick the use of fire as the single thing that obviously separates homo sapien from the rest of the Earth's animals.

25 >> http://www.philica.com/display_observation.php?observation_id=39