What’s Wrong with the World

one who believes and teaches that we should kill the innocent and helpless is deliberately striving to deface the image of God reflected in his own conscience.

How much better could it be put?

Thank you.

By the way I often choose not to harrow people's feelings with such horrible cases, but this one just so strongly highlighted the sheer evil of the "burden" rhetoric that I felt I had to blog it myself.

I think the proper legal approach to suicide should be no legal punishment, but rather mandated psychiatric help. Most suicides are done by people who are ill, and what they need is to be locked up in a mental hospital and dosed for a few months on anti-depressants, not a criminal record, fines or imprisonment.

Not if they batter their wives to death first, Mike.

Besides, you're a libertarian! I would think you'd be _more_ upset at the idea of mandated psychiatric help.

And of course _assistance_ in suicide can be a matter of perfectly ordinary criminal prosecution even if the person himself who attempts suicide is treated rather as a psychiatric case.

But never mind that: "Legalizing" suicide, as perhaps you weren't aware (your comment seems to indicate you may not know this) means that you _don't_ mandate anything like that for the attempted suicide. You help him to commit suicide in some "clean" and "non-brutal" fashion. And if he can't do it himself, you do it for him. The purpose of "safeguards" (which are usually not followed anyway) is that you sit around coolly watching the person who says he wants to die in order to decide if his desire is settled rather than transient and whether it has a "rational" basis (aka whether the one asked to assist thinks he should want to die). The question of actually stopping him is not even on the table, except insofar as one _may_ wait a while before actively helping him.

No one who is opposed to legalized suicide has any particular stake in anything but stopping people from killing themselves and stopping people from killing those who supposedly want to die or "would have wanted" to die. Locking people up in psych hospitals is actually a very serious matter and needs to be handled carefully, but the main point is that suicide is not _allowed_, much less _assisted_ and _encouraged_. That is what is implied when we discuss the legalization of suicide.

Besides, you're a libertarian! I would think you'd be _more_ upset at the idea of mandated psychiatric help.

If someone is driven to suicide by chemical imbalances then that is beyond their control and they cannot be easily said to act as a rational, responsible person.

I'm not an ideologue about politics anymore because I've grown tired of how various "thinkers" refuse to admit that no ideology or philosophy really accounts for how complicated and diverse the problems are that society faces. As I've brought up before, I love throwing the Mariel Boat Lift into the faces of open border libertarians as just one example...

You help him to commit suicide in some "clean" and "non-brutal" fashion. And if he can't do it himself, you do it for him.

That's like saying that by legalizing drugs I want to take the next step of facilitating drug use, going so far as to help him light up or inject himself. What you are describing is not just legalizing, but is really euthanasia.

My opinion is that suicide is a complicated issue that varies from case to case, and as such should be judged individually according to the general rules of Christian conduct. Accordingly, suicides rooted primarily in sin like pride should be treated with far less charity than those committed or attempted primarily as a result of biology. Not that they should be treated coldly, but rather that they should be treated with the understanding that their act was a freely chosen sin not a result of their nature.

The "you" there was not meant to refer to _you_ but to what assisted suicide and suicide legalization advocates actually are looking for.

I doubt very much that you would say that anyone who wants to do cocaine should be shut up for his own good in order to prevent him from doing cocaine! Obviously, from the perspective of drug legalization, there would be no point in legalizing it aside from the idea that some people *should really be allowed* to do it. And the same is true of suicide.

Suicide has been treated for a long time as a mental health issue. It is already non-criminal in the only sense in which you have expressed a desire in this thread for its decriminalization. You are just behind the times. Therefore, you do not seem to understand what is actually being sought _now_ by those who talk about "legalizing" suicide and, in particular, "legalizing" assisted suicide. If everyone who tries to commit suicide can legally be stopped, either by private people who confiscate their drugs or guns or by the state's locking them up, then suicide is not "legal" in the practical sense, which is what its advocates are seeking. The same would be true of a "drug legalization" scheme that simply transferred the burden for stopping anyone from using drugs to the mental health profession, which was given police powers to lock people up for attempted drug use.

Again, no one is talking about failing to treat attempted suicides "charitably." The question is whether their act should be able to be stopped, whether it should be legal in the full sense of being just another choice that they are allowed to make.

And whether you realize it or not, when something is fully legalized in that sense, _of course_ assisting it is legal. If committing suicide is no business of the state's, if people are simply allowed to do it, then there is no legal or logical rationale for preventing those people from obtaining help in so doing, just as if drug use is legal, drug selling is also legal, and it is also legal for you to go out to the dealer and pick up drugs for your paralyzed friend. Fully legal is fully legal.

The "you" there was not meant to refer to _you_ but to what assisted suicide and suicide legalization advocates actually are looking for.

I know it was an editorial "you." I merely don't see suicide and euthanasia policies as being inherently related.

Let's call a spade a spade here. Assisted suicide is not suicide, it is euthanasia. I will personally no more call euthanasia "assisted suicide" than I will call a black man an "African American."

"one who believes and teaches that we should kill the innocent and helpless is deliberately striving to deface the image of God reflected in his own conscience." Ooo! That sounds very wrong!

Do you believe that atheism is impossible? I suspect that someone who does not believe in God cannot deliberately deface the image of God reflected in his own conscience.

Compare: "one who believes and teaches that we should kill the innocent and helpless is deliberately striving to deface the image of Zeus reflected in his own conscience." Since I do not believe in Zeus, I do not believe my conscience to be constituted by a reflection of Zeus. Since I do not believe my conscience to be constituted in this way, I cannot have the intention, in believing that we should kill the innocent and helpless, to deface such a reflection. If I do not have such an intention, I do not deliberately strive to bring about such an outcome.

Let's imagine that belief in God is necessary, as perhaps you believe. I still have a similar question. Someone who believes that it is permissible to kill the helpless innocent, presumably believes that it would not constitute a defacement of God's image.

So now I wonder whether it is possible to believe that such a belief would not constitute defacement of the image of God reflected in his own conscience to believe what he believes.

Since someone who believes that P believes that this belief is correct, I wonder how they might be construed as deliberately defacing the image of God reflected in his own conscience. After all: if I conceive of something as correct, then I conceive of it as favored by God. Thus, if I conceive of something as correct, I shall not see it as a way of defacing the image of God reflected in my own conscience. Accordingly I shall not count as deliberately defacing the image of God reflected in my own conscience.

Right?

Oops, typo: "So now I wonder whether it is possible to believe that such a belief would not constitute defacement of the image of God reflected in his own conscience to believe what he believes."

Should be: "So now I wonder whether it is possible to believe that such a belief would not constitute defacement of the image of God reflected in his own conscience."

Too much embedding!

Alex, compare "Someone who gets up early in the morning deliberately to see the morning star is deliberately getting up early in the morning to see the planet Venus." The morning star _is_ the planet Venus even if the person doesn't know that it is the planet Venus.

Similarly, someone who deliberately convinces himself and tries to convince others that it is legitimate to kill the innocent and helpless is defacing a something within himself and trying to deface it in those others he teaches--you can call it conscience if you prefer--which is, whether he realizes it or not, a sign that he bears the image of God. He is therefore trying to deface that within himself which is, in fact, the image of God.

Lydia:

Good. We agree. Consider your deliberate provision of water to a thirsty person. Unknown to you, the water is fatally poisonous. Would it make sense to describe you as trying to poison the thirsty person? I hope not! That would be very wrong and, I suspect, not the kind of thing you'd do. Even if you deliberately do something that (in fact) causes or constitutes the truth of some proposition, it might be false to describe you as deliberately bringing about the truth of that proposition. You are not trying to poison the thirsty.

You apparently wish to convict the advocate of the Horrid Thesis not just of being mistaken, but of having an ill will. These people are "trying to deface that within himself which is, in fact, the image of God." Perhaps there could be agents like this. These agents must take themselves to be defacing something (even if they do not know that it is an image of God). They must, moreover, desire the defacement as such... in the way in which you did not desire to poison the thirsty person.

But here the stuff at the end of my initial post kicks in.

I am dubious that these folks can be convicted of possessing an ill will.

Good. We agree. Consider your deliberate provision of water to a thirsty person. Unknown to you, the water is fatally poisonous. Would it make sense to describe you as trying to poison the thirsty person? I hope not! That would be very wrong and, I suspect, not the kind of thing you'd do. Even if you deliberately do something that (in fact) causes or constitutes the truth of some proposition, it might be false to describe you as deliberately bringing about the truth of that proposition. You are not trying to poison the thirsty.

Suppose their ignorance is a direct result of a reprobate mind...

Mike T: Then we might blame them, though not describe them as trying to bring about the thing for which we blame them.

The person in question is trying to suppress something. I believe that he knows he's trying to suppress his own conscience. The fact that he doesn't realize that his conscience comes from God does not make him less blameworthy for trying to suppress his conscience and bring others along with him.

Mike, more later.

Mike T: Then we might blame them, though not describe them as trying to bring about the thing for which we blame them.

So, you concede that the actual result of the action is, in fact, more important than the intent behind it?

My two cents:

- It is part of our human nature to pursue the good. The problems are: 1) our human limitations prevent us from always knowing what is good, and 2) it's possible to pursue the good in a wrong or disordered way. (That's derived from Aquinas or Augustine, can't remember which. I welcome the correction/clarification of all you pro philosophers.) That is to say, people who do evil things do not know they are doing evil things; their purpose and intention is to do good things. No one sets out to do things they think are objectively wrong; everyone wants to be right, and do right. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. thought they were doing the right thing by exterminating all those people. Abortionists think they are standing up for women and protecting society by killing helpless human beings. The problem is, the actions they believed were right were, in point of objective fact, wrong.

In light of this, I don't think Lydia is accusing the man who intends to kill his wife (in her original post) of ill will or bad motives. She is trying to point out that the man is objectively wrong to believe that his wife is an unbearable burden to their family and only he can save them from a terrible fate by killing her.

- For example, many of the pro-choice Catholics and Christians I've talked with support abortion rights because they do not believe abortion kills or harms the soul of that being. They admit that the embryo is human, that God created him/her, they're a person, all of it - but they rationalize the child's death at the mother's or doctor's hands as "God's will", trusting that the child's soul will go to heaven, so what's the harm in sending that soul straight into the presence of God and sparing them a life of (assumed) suffering? Wouldn't we all rather go there?

A surprising number of these folks have adopted a convenient belief in reincarnation to help rationalize abortion, imagining that God in His mercy will simply place the soul of an aborted baby into another body, a sort of heavenly recycling, with no one going to waste and no inconveniently-timed people needing to be born. In contrast, the reality these people will not or cannot accept is well put by the late Pope John Paul II: Every person is "a unique and unrepeatable manifestation of the human mystery" [emphasis mine]. The fact is, if a human being dies in the womb, or anywhere else for that matter, he/she is dead. That person is lost to us forever; he/she is never coming back. Never.

"An inquest into their deaths heard Mrs Martin had become increasingly difficult to care for but Mr Martin refused the help of social services.

Mrs Martin, a retired printer, would escape from the house they shared in Davyhulme, Greater Manchester, and her husband would have to go out to find her.

Their daughter Elaine Tong said: 'She just kept getting worse and worse. It drove my dad mad. He used to say, "When it is my time to go it will be her time because I am not leaving her behind as a burden."

Mrs Tong said: 'I said don't be playing god with my mum's life.'"

What is clear from the story is that Mrs Martin had been in need of 24 hour care for some time and that means some form of institutionalization for all except the wealthy and those with assets they have yet to spend down.

Mr. Martin had to be suffering from some serious level of diminished capacity (age, multiple strokes, diabetes, cancer and sleep deprivation).

The daughter's response to multiple threats of murder/suicide is interesting to say the least.

It would seem from the story that we would have had to have a competency hearing in order to prevent all this. This is a sad story but it isn't particularly useful in informing us as to the right of competent individuals to determine the course of their own lives.

Westley writes, "This is why I think that the assisted suicide/euthanasia agenda is a culture-changing issue that will–if it succeeds–radically and adversely transform the way we interrelate as members of society and as family members."

OK, as "members of society", just what are we willing to do to deal with a looming situation?

One of the things that amused me about the Schaivo incident was that the members of the Congress who fought to "save Terry" were the same ones who only weeks before had voted to cut the Medicaid funding on which folks like Terry depended and the folks on the street waving signs never made the connection.

So, it might be useful to lighten up on the peculiar notions of this or that theology and get down to how much are we willing to tax ourselves in order to deal with this. The issue comes down to taxation (cost spreading), as the alternative is a lottery which one rationally avoids only by the suicides you all seem to abhor.

Well, Kathleen, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to agree with you, inasmuch as your analysis would seem to imply that _no one_ can be accused of "ill will." Not even Hitler! I'm not willing to go there. When in individual cases there truly is diminished mental responsibility, that may be taken into account, though I think the concept gets thrown around too much. But if we are going to say that genocidal maniacs are "trying to do good," then our metaphysics has gotten too rarefied and out of touch with normal ways of thinking and evaluating. No, Hitler was trying to murder 6 million people. And the man in the story had the "ill will" of intending to kill his wife with an axe. Or perhaps a hammer. That's ill will enough for me.

Mike T, I have a question for you, because I can't figure out where you're coming from and suspect we're going to go around in circles until I figure this out: Do you believe that at least some people should be allowed to commit suicide? Because if you believe that all suicides should be able to be prevented, by forcibly depriving people of the means or keeping them under surveillance or whatever if necessary, then I can't understand your huge motivation to make a sharp distinction in law and practice between the legality of killing oneself and permission to provide someone else with the means to kill himself. Do you think both should be able to be stopped by the state or that the former should _not_ be able to be stopped but the latter _should_ be able to be stopped? Or do you think that in _some_ cases the former should not be stopped?

Mike T: "So, you concede that the actual result of the action is, in fact, more important than the intent behind it?"

No. ...Only that in some cases it is possible to blame someone for an act he did not intend. I presumed that these cases might include cases in which one has a reprobate mind. Another case might be one in which one kills by negligence. Here someone is blamed for an outcome he did not intend. But we do not always blame people for the undesirable, but unintended, outcomes of their choices... and rightly so.

I join Lydia in thinking that the intent behind an action is Very Important. (I don't know whether we should think of this in terms of a ranking of factors, as your way of putting things suggests.) It is possible that in every case in which we would rightly blame a person there exists a kernel of ill will. But maybe not... I might blame someone for believing that Mormonism is true. I can imagine saying: "It is a stupid belief and you should cease to have it." Does this mean that one acquires or maintains the Mormon belief -- supposing it to be stupid -- by ill will? It would seem implausible to think so.

But if we agree about the sanctity of human life, then it should go without saying that the life issues are central, overwhelming, non-negotiable, and that, really, we can never talk about them too much.

Can we talk about them too much as a tactical matter? How about if some of our political allies are pro-choice but really care about, I dunno, tax cuts or deregulating financial markets or something. If we talk about life issues so much that it alienates these allies, is that a positive good?

It would be OK to ban abortion by assembling a coalition of 40% of voters pro-life and 11% of voters pro-choice but willing to compromise for the sake of some other issue they care about more, no?

To be more concrete, is it OK or not that Republican presidential candidates in their acceptance speeches at the Republican National Convention typically forthrightly say that they are pro-life but don't dwell on it long?

If they're gonna make a coalition with us, Bill, they have to decide what that coalition is going to try to accomplish. If that coalition is going to try to pass pro-life laws or overturn pro-death laws, then they're gonna have to put up with having those issues talked about, because you don't pass pro-life laws or overturn pro-death laws without talking about the issues in question. If they are going to be "alienated" by our talking about the issues, then they are not going to be reliable coalition members, and we should learn to do without them from the outset, or else we will self-censor and get nothing in return. Nothing like losing your own soul _and_ the world, too, but that's what a lot of coalition-builders do.

The question is--are we social conservatives driving the coalition bus, or are we in the back of the coalition bus? Anyone who isn't pro-life but for some bizarre reason of his own is willing to vote as if he has is more than welcome to do so, as far as I'm concerned. But that's the only coalition I'm interested in. But it isn't the kind anyone wants to talk about.

Downplaying the life issues influences people. And it influences them the wrong way.

In other words, as my dear and much-missed blogospheric friend Zippy used to say...

No, we won't shut up.

Al, Terri Schiavo's death had nothing whatsoever to do with lack of money for her care. If everyone in the case had been a millionaire, things would have gone just exactly the same way.

But this is the usual passive-aggressive approach of the liberal--though with regard to the people killed, it's more like aggressive-aggressive. Do horrible things to helpless people. Then claim it's necessary because medicine isn't socialized enough. Then claim there is some sort of "irony" when people object both to the horrible things being done to helpless people and to the socialization of medicine. Go on pressing both more socialization of medicine and more euthanasia. Repeat ad lib. This process will also continue even after something like Obamacare passes, because really, liberals can never have enough of other people's money, or enough power. Then it will be, "Oh, you conservatives were so upset when Mrs. X was dehydrated to death over thirteen days [or killed by lethal injection, or whatever we're up to by that time], yet just a few months before your conservative Representatives had voted against a project to increase funding for Nationalized Medicine yet another umpteen percent. How _ironic_!"

Just in case you haven't seen it, you might find this case of interest:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8375326.stm

Also, while I think that someone who does a terrible action under the guise of the good perhaps should not be described as having an ill will, I think it's possible that such a person could nonetheless be evil. But this can only be because he is somehow self-deceived about the moral law. If someone is not deceived about the moral law, but is merely ignorant, and does something that better informed people would regard as immoral, then I don't think he can be regarded as having done something immoral, even if what he did was very bad.

If we talk about life issues so much that it alienates these allies, is that a positive good?

Yes. The question assumes that those talking about the life issues are doing the alienating.

No. ...Only that in some cases it is possible to blame someone for an act he did not intend. I presumed that these cases might include cases in which one has a reprobate mind. Another case might be one in which one kills by negligence. Here someone is blamed for an outcome he did not intend. But we do not always blame people for the undesirable, but unintended, outcomes of their choices... and rightly so.

That is only true when their undesirable outcomes are not the result of pure negligence or a side effect of unethical behavior. For example, I would argue it is morally licit to punish a drunk driver for full-fledged homicide if they crash into a normal driver and kill them. They already committed themselves to breaking the laws against public intoxication and chose to get behind the wheel. It logically follows that while their negligence may not be tantamount to premeditation, it is such sufficient disregard for the lives of others that they don't particularly care about the effects on others. We, as a society, too often get caught up in meaningless details like trying to split hairs over exactly what a criminal intended to do rather than simply acknowledging that the act was done with a general bad intent or wanton negligence.

Saw that, Bobcat. Just highlights how much we don't know, doesn't it?

Of course, it sounds like a downer to add this, but on my view, even if he had been unconscious all that time, it would have been wrong to kill him. This is the kind of situation, though, that just brings home to people who think otherwise that they too could fall under the law of unintended consequences--killing conscious people.

Mike T, you still haven't told me whether you think some people, even only some carefully defined group of people, should be permitted to kill themselves.

Hi Lydia,

Interestingly (to me, at least, it's interesting), on one of the philosophy listservs I'm on, one of the philosophers cautioned that we are entitled to be skeptical of the Belgian man's claim that he was conscious all along.

Wow.

For the record, I should note that I think I've been conscious for quite a while myself. I would even go so far as to claim it.

On another note, what do people make of this claim:

Even if Smith acted by his moral lights, and even if he tried as hard as he could to find out what was moral and immoral, Smith might still be of ill-will. Whether someone has ill-will does not depend on whether he consciously departs from the good, but depends instead on whether he departs from the good. Someone whose will is entirely or almost entirely unaligned with the good is evil, and it doesn't much matter who he got himself into that state.

Bobcat:

Maybe you're right that "whether someone has ill-will does not depend on whether he consciously departs from the good, but depends instead on whether he departs from the good." But we might still want to draw moral distinctions between different kinds of departures from the good. In particular, we might want to draw distinctions between someone who kills to relieve himself of a burden and someone who kills out of misguided sympathy. To make things easier, consider killing dogs. One might kill a dog in order to relieve oneself of the burden of its care. One might kill a dog in order to give the dog the best possible life. It might turn out, for example, that God has forbidden the killing of dogs -- except e.g. in self-defense. In such a case either of the two dog killings depart from the good -- and might be described therefore as expressing an ill will. But, nonetheless, we might remain interested in discriminating between the cases for the purposes of morally evaluating the act and its agent. Indeed, I think we are right to do so... not that I have an argument...

Hi Bobcat,

I realize that this is a side issue and that no one here likes me, so I won't follow up.

If you watch the video, it seems that the basis for the claim that the Belgian man is conscious is that he is responsive to facilitated communication. This is a process in which a facilitator helps the patient touch keys on a keyboard in order to spell out sentences. The facilitator is necessary because the patient lacks the manual dexterity to touch the intended keys without assistance. This technique has been shown to be wholly without merit. In experiments where the patient is shown one image and the facilitator is shown another, the patient "indicates" what the facilitator sees.

I presume that this is why your correspondent is skeptical.

Yeah, probably the whole thing with the Belgian guy is just a fake. He's not even conscious now. And the reason it's happening so suddenly is purely random. The facilitator is just writing these eloquent descriptions of what it was like for everyone to think that he couldn't hear, to try to scream but have no way of making himself heard, and so forth. And it's just a random fact that no one ever came along before to start faking these phenomena. Like as not, he's really just a "vegetable" whose hands are being manipulated by people around him to make it look like he can communicate.

Sheesh.

They would not believe if one were to rise from the dead.

Alex, I get it: If the guy bashed his wife over the head with an axe out of _sympathy_, that wouldn't be quite as bad. If he did it to relieve _himself_ of a burden, that would be bad. You haven't yet given us your opinion of axe murder when performed to relieve someone _else_ of a person the murderer regards as a mere burden.

Used to be that "being an axe murderer" was a kind of epitome of being very bad indeed. I guess the culture of death really does corrupt all our moral values.

"Used to be that "being an axe murderer" was a kind of epitome of being very bad indeed. I guess the culture of death really does corrupt all our moral values."

I am on board with the judgment that being an axe murderer is a kind of epitome of being very bad indeed. No doubt this is in virtue of the fact that murder is very bad indeed -- whether axe-involving or not. As far as I can tell, the described case is a case of axe murder -- and so very wrong indeed. Sheesh.

However, I am not sure what might be accomplished by the means of this story. Does it show that we ought purge "burden" from our lexicon? Not sure. What does it tell us about whether suicide is ever permissible? Not sure. What does it tell us about whether suicide should ever be legally permitted? Not sure. What does it tell us about whether it is ever morally permissible to kill someone who requests killing? Not sure. What does it tell us about whether it is ever permissible to kill someone who does not request killing? Not sure.

Mostly, I was focused on your inferences about the moral psychology in play among parties to the dispute about how to think about these things. It seemed to me that some of them were invalid/unsound, but nonetheless interesting. The suppression stuff is really interesting and worth thinking much more about.

PS: Mr. Zero is right about facilitated communication having an extremely spotty history. I don't know about the details of the Belgian case. But if our evidence there derives from facilitated communication, it is bad evidence. Maybe, however, there is evidence in play that does not derive from the use of facilitated communication.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Yes, there are new brain scans showing normal brain activity in the Belgian man.

...a doctor at Liege University who wrote a recent paper that detailed the case...said that in about 40% of cases in which people are classified as being in a vegetative state, closer inspection reveals signs of consciousness.

Oops.

Says Alex: "...Not sure. What does it tell us about...? Not sure. What does it tell us about...Not sure. What does it tell us about...? Not sure. What does it tell us about...? Not sure.

I think he falls under Chesterton's diagnosis: "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it."

What does it tell us about whether it is ever permissible to kill someone who does not request killing? Not sure.

This one, combined with Alex's unsureness about whether we should continue to call people "burdens," is particularly interesting. It raises the question: If Mr. Martin had instead been able to take his wife, suffering from dementia, to a clinic somewhere to be quietly put down by means of a lethal injection, thus removing this "burden" from his children after his own death from cancer, would Alex be "not sure" whether this was wrong? Is it just the brutal method of the axe murder that bothers him?

Mr. Zero wrote, "If you watch the video, it seems that the basis for the claim that the Belgian man is conscious is that he is responsive to facilitated communication."

I'm not sure whether it's true that, according to the video, the BASIS for the claim that he's conscious is his responsiveness to facilitated communication. But regardless, according to the article you linked to, the basis for the diagnosis is this: "Neurologist Dr.Steven Laureys of the University of Liege, in Belgium carried out a brain scan using state-of-the art scanning system and discovered that Houben's brain was fully functional."

As for my correspondent, I don't know the basis on which he made his claim. I sure hope it was something like you said.

As for Alex's unsurety, I can say that he's unsure that the case of the British ax-murderer shows anything important about the euthanasia or abortion debate. In fact, I bet he's pretty sure that it, in fact, doesn't show us anything about the abortion or euthanasia debate.

That said, if that's what he thinks, I disagree with him. I do think that if euthanasia, at least, were generally thought of as along the same moral lines as pre-meditated murder, then Mr. Martin either wouldn't have killed his wife, or, if he killed his wife anyway, would have done so for some other rationale.

Hi Alex,

As to your last point about still being interested in figuring out why someone departed from the good, I agree. One reason we may be so interested in their actual rationale for killing is in figuring out how they got off-good and also for figuring out how to get them on-good.

That said, and as I think you know, I do think that whenever someone does evil, they are self-deceived.

I do think that if euthanasia, at least, were generally thought of as along the same moral lines as pre-meditated murder, then Mr. Martin either wouldn't have killed his wife, or, if he killed his wife anyway, would have done so for some other rationale.

Quite right, Bobcat. Mr. Martin had clearly gotten the idea that people can be burdens and that this is such a terrible thing that bumping off the person in question is legitimate. Now, where might he have gotten an idea like that? Of course the euthanasia debate is highly relevant, here. And suicide, too, for many people do indeed want suicide to be available to themselves so that they themselves do not become burdens. Nor is it at all unknown for "ethicists" and pundits to hold that people who are going to be a burden have a duty to die. From the idea that one has a duty to die to the idea that others can make one carry out this duty even if one never happened to agree voluntarily is not, by any means, a big step.

Bobcat, as usual, speaks what is probably the truth. In particular, he is probably correct about the causal facts. That is: the axe murderer probably did what he did because of public uncertainty about the wrongness of euthanasia.

It shows that public investigation of the moral facts about some kind of action might have bad consequences. But this doesn't tell us about the moral status of the kind of action under investigation.

Lydia writes: "If Mr. Martin had instead been able to take his wife, suffering from dementia, to a clinic somewhere to be quietly put down by means of a lethal injection, thus removing this "burden" from his children after his own death from cancer, would Alex be "not sure" whether this was wrong? Is it just the brutal method of the axe murder that bothers him?"

Good questions, all. (And nice use of an implicated Peter-Singer-style relevant difference argument!) I guess I would agree that the particular method of killing plays only a small role -- deaths are typically pretty bad for those who die, despite variations in their gruesome-osity. Most every death sounds pretty grim to me, since at the end it, I'll be dead. (Of course, I would prefer the clinic over the axe -- in a least bad kind of way.) I would guess that the badness of an act of killing is proportional to the badness of the death thereby produced. So, while the axe-induced death is probably somewhat more bad than the clinic-induced death, the difference in their badness probably pales in light of the fact that each is a death (and so Very Bad). Accordingly, our judgment ought to be that each death might as well be equally bad. Therefore, our judgment ought to be that each killing might as well be equally bad. (Right?)

This line of thought requires that the differences in disvalue (for the victim) are swamped by the very great disvalue (for the victim) of the fact that in each case the victim ends up dead. We might, then, draw a significant distinction between the two methods (axe v clinic) if we decided that the disvalue to the victim of being dead is less than it typically is -- and so not such as to swamp what would otherwise be small differences. (Right?)

So, those who draw a moral distinction between axe and clinic likely think that the death itself (whatever produces it) is less bad (for its victim) than deaths typically are. Hmm... I wonder how this could be...

The occurrence of terms like "probably" and phrases like "we might...if we decided" makes me feel ineluctably, Alex, that you haven't really answered the question. So let me pose it more directly and starkly:

Do you believe that it would have been wrong for Mr. Martin to have taken his wife to a euthanasia clinic (supposing such a clinic legally to exist) to be humanely killed, the situation being otherwise as described in the article? You may, for purposes of answering the question, assume her dementia to be advanced and the difficulties for her caregivers very great.

By the way, I am not a utilitarian but a deontologist. Therefore, no, I am not going to say "right" to any hypothetical posed in such terms that an innocent person could be justly, deliberately killed if the disvalue of death to him was "less than it typically is," even if other conditions applied as well.

Bobcat, given Alex's apparently very great uncertainty--or, perhaps, his position on the other side of these issues--about the issues of euthanasia and suicide, I am astonished that in another thread you said how sorry you are that we have gotten off on the wrong foot. What foot did you expect us to get off on? You know I'm a culture warrior, on the life issues more than anything. Of course, if he were my philosophical colleague in some hypothetical department somewhere, I assume that we could discuss some paper of his in philosophical fashion and maybe even get along just fine at faculty meetings, but it's not like we'd ever be likely to be buddies.

And "Ooo! That sounds very wrong!" in his first comment was scarcely calculated to endear, putting it mildly.

I have no idea who this is, but as far as I can tell, he's a typical liberal on life issues, at least, and probably on a lot of other issues, and therefore not someone I would ever expect to have much in common with.

Mike T, you still haven't told me whether you think some people, even only some carefully defined group of people, should be permitted to kill themselves.

In general, I think the state should not spend any resources to stop suicides by people who lack chemical imbalances. It should, however, not permit others to help facilitate it. While I have sympathy for just about anyone that commits or tries to commit suicide, especially since I have tendencies toward depression myself, I think that this is a matter where Christians need to face the fact that there is a tremendous personal responsibility angle here.

And how would you know if the person had or lacked a chemical imbalance? Should I take it that on your view a suicide should not be stopped if committed by a person who seems otherwise okay in his daily life?

And consider the following legal point: If an act is legal in the fullest sense such that the state is not permitted to stop it, it is assault and probably several other crimes for someone else to stop it. For example, if your otherwise normal wife obtains pills with which to kill herself and you find them and throw them away, that's theft. If your otherwise normal son insists on throwing himself off a cliff or shooting himself and you grab him, that's assault. I have managed to convince another libertarian of the absurdity of the full-legalization position on this by pointing out that the son could call the cops on his cell phone so that they would arrest the father for wrongful imprisonment or assault for stopping him, while he went ahead and took the pills, used the gun, hung himself, or whatever. Something is obviously wrong there.

I think we have different definitions of legalize. You think I am implying a "right to suicide," when I am not arguing for that. I am merely saying that the state should not proactively seek to stop normal people from committing suicide. Nothing more than that, meaning that if the police find someone trying to jump off a bridge because they lost their job, they can intervene both for his sake and for public safety, but that it would not be defined as one of the state's general obligations to protect normal people from their own behavior in these cases.

I think Mike, that from a legal perspective your position is a bit confused. If you admit that it is legitimate for the police to stop a man from killing himself *for his own sake*, then this will apply to his taking pills as well as to his jumping off a bridge, and it can be justified only if it is a proper function of the state thus to protect himself from his own behavior. I'm not sure what the force is of your phrase "general obligations," but if you say it's legitimate for the state to do something, then this is presumably because that is part of its function. I realize that saying plainly that this is a proper function of the state is contrary to your ideas, or appears to be so. But if you do not say so, then stopping a person by force from what he wishes to do is _not_ a proper function and is an illegitimate thing to do. If you simply want the state to stop running suicide hotline numbers (because that is expending money pro-actively), that's one thing. But no one would even begin to call that "legalization" nor anything like. Bottom line: If it's okay for the state to stop you from doing something, then that something isn't legal, and it's a proper function of the state to stop you from doing it.

Hi Lydia,

About wrong feet: well, you and I differ both on issues of gay rights and euthanasia, but I don't think you've ever been anything but civil to me. Granted, I don't think I've ever been anything other than civil to you either, but I didn't know that your status as a culture warrior made it difficult for you to like those who disagree on those issues. (Well, I don't know if "difficult to like" is quite right either; whatever it amounts to, though, people who differ with you on life issues especially will find it hard to get off on the right foot with you.)

About Alex's views: I don't know whether he's a typical liberal on issues of life. Back when I knew him, and Alex can inform me as to whether things have changed, he was more or less a libertarian, although he was never a dogmatic one. I suspect that he is probably a liberal on gay rights, slightly less of one on euthanasia, and significantly less of one on abortion, though I could be wrong about that.

Finally, about the putting the woman down issue: if someone is completely a vegetable, I must admit that euthanizing--destroying, putting down, however you want to put it--seems harder for me to reject than if the person has his rational faculties but wants to die anyway. In that last case, I think I have some pretty good reasons for thinking such a request should always be denied, and should probably be made illegal. In the former case, I have an ick factor any nothing else. (I mean, something seems to be wrong, say, with gradually eating a "Vegetable" until he or she died of infection (not just wrong, but grotesque, deeply immoral, etc.), but I don't know what is. The lack of respect for the vegetable is how I would put it, but as a Kantian I struggle to figure out just what's being disrespected in such a person. His animal nature? But what are our obligations to that, as opposed to what Kant calls our "humanity"?)

if someone is completely a vegetable

Here, Bobcat, I'm going to go Wesley J. Smith on you. I think what he says in comboxes when someone makes a comment in this vein is good:

We don't use the "v" word around here.

I know this may shock you a bit, but I consider referring to a human being as a "vegetable" to be as offensive (at least) as using the "n" word to refer to a human being. The highly unfortunate fact that the adjectival form ("vegetative") has entered medical practice and law in the past twenty-five years or so does not change that fact, and even there, it's an interesting sociological point to note that there is a feeling of sidling about by avoiding the noun form.

I would note, too, cases in which a person has awakened, revealed that he could hear, and has said, "I don't want to deal with that doctor. He said I was a vegetable." This should affect us rather like a case where parents were saying extremely insulting things about one of their children between themselves ("What a hideous little dwarf Betty is. It's such a shame. She was such a pretty baby. I can't imagine who in the world will ever want to marry such a dog") and then find out later that little Betty happened to be under the tablecloth hearing every word: The parents shouldn't have been talking in such a way about their child, even in (what they thought to be) privacy.

To be sure, the company you (presumably) keep does not have the Smith convention and treats the v word as an acceptable term to use for a fellow human being. I'm trying to raise your company level.

Please, find some other description. If nothing else, as a philosopher, you should appreciate that finding another description will force you to be more precise and to defend your position. For example, I _assume_ you mean by it that such a person is not aware of anything whatsoever rather than being in what is called a "minimally conscious state," but you should have to say so and also to explain to yourself, at least, why that should make a moral difference to the kill-ability of such a person.

I'm sorry to have to note, moving to content, that your position here apparently means that you are inclined to say (or perhaps think that you are obligated to say) that it would have been okay for Mr. Martin to kill Mrs. Martin (though probably not with an axe) had her dementia been far enough advanced for you to consider her to pass the threshhold you have set for "too little consciousness," whatever that might be.

Remember: If you are a deontologist, things can be wrong in themselves. You don't have to defend their wrongness by reference to utilities at all.

I didn't know enough Kant to know that he calls "our humanity" our actual consciousness. Is that really correct? If so, that's a terrible way of using "out humanity." A live human being lacking present consciousness has his humanity just as you do. To say that he lacks it is merely to define "humanity" in a highly tendentious way and, I would point out, a rather surprising way when you come to think about it. It's just another way of trying to define the patient outside the human family, even though the patient is right there, biologically indubitably a living member of the species homo sapiens.

Hi Lydia,

As you note, "vegetable" as a term for a human with extremely low brain function (or a minimally conscious state, whatever that is), has entered the medical lexicon, which is why I used it. I was under the impression it was a technical term (for what, I didn't know; I was just trying to get my meaning across). Having said that, I can see why it offends you; after all, "red neck" and the n word could be technical terms as well, which is to say, they have clear, precise uses, though that doesn't make them permissible to use.

As for what Kant means by "humanity"; it's not clear. It could mean either the ability to set ends; the ability to set ends combined with a capacity to act morally; or having a good will (i.e., being properly disposed to the moral law). All three uses have their defenders. I take it that a being has humanity if it has the capacity to set ends, where having the capacity to set ends means being able to libertarianly freely select what you want to pursue.

Now, if it's a capacity, this means that sleeping people have it, as well as wakeful adults. Human children, at least at some level of development, also have it. What about animals? Kant says no. What about babies or fetuses? Kant doesn't say anything about this. What about people who are minimally conscious or in comas? Kant doesn't say anything about this either.

This leaves the Kantian with three options. He can bite bullet #1: on this view, we are Kantian ethicists who are also naturalists and if we are, then we have to concede that none of: very young children, fetuses, babies, animals, people in minimally conscious states, and people in comas have humanity, and so it is permissible to treat them as "mere things". (Interestingly, despite the fact that he thought animals were mere things, Kant also thought that mistreating animals desensitized one to being cruel to people. So perhaps such a Kantian naturalist could do something with that at least to prohibit wantonly murdering one-year olds. However, even if this maneuver works, it seems to reach the right results for the wrong reason.)

Alternatively, the Kantian can bite bullet #2: on this view, we are Kantian ethicists who are also transcendental idealists. That is, we think that people are ultimately noumenal, and therefore timeless and spaceless, beings who choose our entire phenomenal lives in a single, noumenal act. We still act libertarianly freely, but that's because the one noumenal choice responsible for all our other phenomenal choices is a libertarian act. Obviously, this view requires a high tolerance for metaphysics, but it at least allows one to see humans at all stages as unfurlings, if you will, of the same, inestimably valuable, noumenal self.

Finally, there is the third option, which may not require the biting of any bullets, ethical or metaphysical. This is what motivates Christine Korsgaard's Kantian vegetarianism. I don't get her view yet, but Korsgaard says that one reason to refrain from meat-eating is that eating meat disrespects our own animal nature. If I understood the view better, I might see how it allows one to combine Kantian ethics with a more plausible metaphysic while also maintaining morally decent ethical views.

Bobcat, does Kantian biting bullet #2 apply this heavy metaphysical view to human beings who never reach X level of consciousness so as to make that single choice in the real world, either because they die before they reach it or because of some birth defect preventing them from developing that level of consciousness? Is the idea that this noumenal self need not ever be actualized at any moment in time or something?

I'm not sure how your third option is supposed to relate to the killing of unconscious human beings. Is the idea that if one is a vegetarian for this reason one ought, in consistency, to oppose the killing of human beings with very little actual consciousness (at this time) for the same reason?

I gather you are determined to resolve this moral issue within what you view to be a Kantian metaphysical framework?

"Bobcat, does Kantian biting bullet #2 apply this heavy metaphysical view to human beings who never reach X level of consciousness so as to make that single choice in the real world, either because they die before they reach it or because of some birth defect preventing them from developing that level of consciousness? Is the idea that this noumenal self need not ever be actualized at any moment in time or something?"

Good question; it's not clear what Kant's view would be, but it's consistent with his view that you could noumenally choose to display yourself in such a way that you have a birth defect preventing your consciousness, or that you end up in a coma.

As for your second question, the idea would be that if you're forbidden from eating animal flesh because doing so would disrespect your animal nature, so too would destroying a fetus or destroying someone who is minimally conscious amount to disrespecting your animal nature.

"I gather you are determined to resolve this moral issue within what you view to be a Kantian metaphysical framework?"

There are two things you may mean by this question: am I committed to option 2? Or am I committed to the Kantian ethical framework? I think you mean the latter option, but I'll answer both just in case. I am partial to the metaphysical interpretation of Kant, and that's because I'm partial to idealism anyway. As for my being committed to the Kantian ethical framework, I am for now, but if it couldn't give satisfactory answers to the end-of-life issues, then I'd switch gears to either an agapeistic ethic, a Thomistic natural law ethic, or a virtue theoretic ethic.

I should take heart from your last sentence, Bobcat, but I find that it just puzzles me when put together with your earlier statement:

if someone is completely a vegetable, I must admit that euthanizing--destroying, putting down, however you want to put it--seems harder for me to reject than if the person has his rational faculties but wants to die anyway. In that last case, I think I have some pretty good reasons for thinking such a request should always be denied, and should probably be made illegal. In the former case, I have an ick factor an[d] nothing else.

Now, when you talk about "satisfactory answers to the end-of-life issues," I'm assuming you're saying that some concrete answers are unsatisfactory and therefore can be used to judge an overall metaphysical framework. But if this is the case, why is it not an unsatisfactory answer on end-of-life questions that destroying, putting down, euthananizing people with "too little" consciousness is moral?

I find it especially surprising that you don't take that tack given your inclination in laying out the Kantian options to group together the following:

very young children, fetuses, babies, animals, people in minimally conscious states, and people in comas

That's a pretty big set, I would think even by your lights. Is it not unsatisfactory to hold a position that entails that it's okay to destroy those groups of people?

Another point: In order to distinguish a healthy person asleep from a person who has suffered severe brain damage and is highly unlikely to recover consciousness, it seems to me that you must invoke some such metaphysical category as privation. The first person is not suffering privation in virtue of being asleep, for it is natural to man to sleep. The second person has suffered privation by being damaged in such a way that it is expected that he will be unconscious all the time, for the indefinite future, as being unconscious that much is not natural to man. But if you once invoke notions like what is natural to man and privation, it seems to me those same categories can be used to say that while it is _natural_ to man to develop to such a point as to be able to make choices, it is possible for some people to suffer privation such that they never develop to that point, or to lose their capacity for free choice-making. And that would seem quite obviously to allow one to make free will very important to human nature while not saying that an individual, living human being "lacks humanity" merely because as a given individual he suffers privation such that he is not able to express that natural aspect of humanity. (More trivially, it is also natural to man to have two legs, and a one-legged man is deprived of that enjoyment of natural human flourishing, but a one-legged man is still fully human.)

"Now, when you talk about 'satisfactory answers to the end-of-life issues,' I'm assuming you're saying that some concrete answers are unsatisfactory and therefore can be used to judge an overall metaphysical framework. But if this is the case, why is it not an unsatisfactory answer on end-of-life questions that destroying, putting down, euthananizing people with 'too little' consciousness is moral?"

So, here's the deal with the relation between concrete ethical questions and abstract ethical principles (which I take to be what you mean by "an overall metaphysical framework"), as far as I see things. Some concrete ethical questions have obvious right answers--it's wrong to rape a woman, it's wrong to murder a baby, etc. Some concrete ethical questions are ones where my sense of what is right is weaker, and some are ones on which I'm really confused. When it comes to euthanizing people whom we know to be permanently minimally conscious, I find myself being unsure of what to think. I don't think it should be illegal to euthanize such people, and I'm unclear about what would make it wrong to euthanize such people. Yet if it's not wrong to euthanize such people, then why would it be wrong to cut them up with a fork and knife and eat them? And yet I feel very strongly that it would be wrong to do that; but I don't know why. More important, the reason for which cutting the person up and eating him is wrong may be substantially different from the reason why euthanizing him is wrong, assuming it is wrong at all.

You later ask, "That's a pretty big set, I would think even by your lights. Is it not unsatisfactory to hold a position that entails that it's okay to destroy those groups of people?"

If Kantianism leads to the view that it's morally permissible to destroy all these groups of people, then it's completely unacceptable, and I would have no problem with abandoning it. That said, and responding to your earlier remark that "why is it not an unsatisfactory answer on end-of-life questions that destroying, putting down, euthananizing people with 'too little' consciousness is moral? ... I find it especially surprising that you don't take that tack given your inclination in laying out the Kantian options to group together the following..."; my view is this: a simple-minded Kantianism would say that any being that does not have rationality is a mere thing, and to be treated how we wish. That would mean that not only permanently minimally conscious beings, but also young children, are mere things. Because it would entail the view that young children are mere things, it is to be rejected. However, if it only committed one to the view that permanently minimally conscious beings are mere things, then it would perhaps be acceptable, because I'm not entirely sure that's the wrong answer.

I'm going to respond to your next point in another comment.

Lydia continued, "In order to distinguish a healthy person asleep from a person who has suffered severe brain damage and is highly unlikely to recover consciousness, it seems to me that you must invoke some such metaphysical category as privation."

I have no problem with that, but here's a question: imagine my view is that a healthy sleeping person has capacities X and Y, while a person with severe, permanent brain damage has only capacity Y. Because a healthy, sleeping person has capacities X and Y, he is qualitatively more valuable than the severely brain-damaged person, who has only capacity Y. The severely brain-damaged person has some value, but a value that is different in kind from the value that the healthy person has. (E.g., my cats have some value, but their value is different in kind from the value my wife has.) The question is this: do you take this view to amount to a privation view?

"The first person is not suffering privation in virtue of being asleep, for it is natural to man to sleep. The second person has suffered privation by being damaged in such a way that it is expected that he will be unconscious all the time, for the indefinite future, as being unconscious that much is not natural to man. But if you once invoke notions like what is natural to man and privation, it seems to me those same categories can be used to say that while it is _natural_ to man to develop to such a point as to be able to make choices, it is possible for some people to suffer privation such that they never develop to that point, or to lose their capacity for free choice-making. And that would seem quite obviously to allow one to make free will very important to human nature while not saying that an individual, living human being "lacks humanity" merely because as a given individual he suffers privation such that he is not able to express that natural aspect of humanity. (More trivially, it is also natural to man to have two legs, and a one-legged man is deprived of that enjoyment of natural human flourishing, but a one-legged man is still fully human.)"

I think I see why we may be talking at cross-purposes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you read Kant as saying that a being lacks humanity, then you (naturally enough) conclude that Kant is saying that such a being is not human. However, "humanity" (Menschheit) is a technical term for Kant. It would perhaps better be translated as "personhood" or "rational agency" (which is another term Kant sometimes uses). Why, then, is Kant translated as saying "humanity"? Because there is a general capacity, rational agency, that he thinks human beings, God, angels, and intelligent extraterrestrials have. However, rational agency as it's manifested in human beings is quite different from rational agency as it's manifested in God. This is because to God the moral law does not stand to him as a source of obligations, but is just description of the manner in which he acts. On the other hand, rational agency as it's manifested in human beings is imperfect; because we have sensible inclinations and a propensity to evil, the moral law stands to us as a categorical imperative. Thus, when Kant says that a fetus lacks humanity, he is not saying that it is not a human being, but rather that it does not have rationality, and so does not have the ability to freely set itself moral ends.

What I'm particularly trying to do is to point to the way in which someone who takes my position can fully agree with a statement like, "Man is a rational animal" or "Man has rational agency" while at the same time holding that a particular _individual_ member of the group "man" who does not now have rational agency has all the value intrinsic to being a human being.

Call it speciesism.

Call it, if you like, mongo or Rambo speciesism.

Because the _kind of thing_ that man is is exceptional in such-and-such ways natural to that kind of thing, all _members_ of that kind have intrinsic, overarching value such that, as long as they live, they can never be mere things, regardless of whether, as individuals, they have the capacities at a certain point in time which capacities are natural to fully developed members of their species.

It just seems to me that somewhere in here there is a slide from a statement like, "Man has rational agency," with which I would agree to a conclusion like, "Therefore, if Joe does not have rational agency, Joe does not have full human value," which I reject more emphatically than it is possible to say. And the one just does not follow from the other, at all.

If your "eating Mrs. Martin when farther advanced in dementia" example seems so bizarre to you that you're not sure it's guiding you correctly, try "Taking Mrs. Martin's heart and kidneys for transplant before she dies." It's more realistic, more the very kind of thing our ethicists would like to push, and may therefore move you back towards believing that, definitely, euthananizing living human beings who lack normal consciousness should be as illegal as killing any other innocent human being.

"Because the _kind of thing_ that man is is exceptional in such-and-such ways natural to that kind of thing, all _members_ of that kind have intrinsic, overarching value such that, as long as they live, they can never be mere things, regardless of whether, as individuals, they have the capacities at a certain point in time which capacities are natural to fully developed members of their species."

I must admit, for whatever reason, the above inference doesn't move me. I don't exactly know why, but I suspect it has something to do with figuring out why it is that man has intrinsic, overarching value in the first place. This, by the way, is why I'm so attracted to Kant: more than any philosopher I know, he does a good job of explaining why it is we must believe that man has intrinsic, overarching value: namely, that we're already committed to it, and we can't give up the belief unless we stop acting altogether--which is impossible.

"It just seems to me that somewhere in here there is a slide from a statement like, "Man has rational agency," with which I would agree to a conclusion like, "Therefore, if Joe does not have rational agency, Joe does not have full human value," which I reject more emphatically than it is possible to say. And the one just does not follow from the other, at all."

I certainly didn't mean to give the impression that that was my claim. It's much more like, "The reason man has intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency. Therefore, if Joe does not have libertarian free will and rational agency, then Joe does not have full human value."

But again, the picture must be much more complicated than this, because if this were all there was, then babies would not have intrinsic value, which is obviously false.

"The reason man has intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency. Therefore, if Joe does not have libertarian free will and rational agency, then Joe does not have full human value."

Don't you think there's an ambiguity right there in your own statement between man, the species, and a man, the individual?

Oops. Yup, there's an ambiguity. I should have written,

"The reason man has overriding, intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency. Therefore, if Joe does not have libertarian free will and rational agency, then Joe does not have fully overriding, intrinsic value."

"The reason man has overriding, intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency. Therefore, if Joe does not have libertarian free will and rational agency, then Joe does not have fully overriding, intrinsic value."

This bothers me. It may be correct to say that: The reason man has overriding, intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency, in potentia. Unless this qualification is made, it becomes very easy to rationalize the extermination of ancephalic babies, babies in the womb, or even the demented. Basing INTRINSIC value on act, rather than potency seems doomed to exclude a large segment of the population at one time or another and would be more proper if one were making an argument for extrinsic value. One musician may be better at execution than another, but how is one human better at being human than another?

The Chicken

Absolutely, Chicken. I've just now (after some years) discovered that Bobcat is inclined (though with some misgivings) to legalize the euthanising of those who are really, really deprived of free will and rational agency--perhaps those in a long-term comatose state or those with only minimal consciousness. I'm trying to argue him out of it.

Bobcat, I would say that even in your revised statement, the "therefore" just is a non sequitur. In fact, I don't think there's any way to get from the one type of statement to the type of conclusion you're talking about.

Hi Chicken,

Recall that I wrote, in the comment on which Lydia's latest comment was a comment, that "the picture must be much more complicated than this, because if this were all there was, then babies would not have intrinsic value, which is obviously false."

I'm quite open to the claim that "the reason man has overriding, intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency, in potentia." This does, of course, bring up challenging metaphysical issues, though, of what it means to have something in potentia. At a recent post at Prosblogion, Mike Almeida, et al., talk about this stuff.

See http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2009/11/a-potentiality.html

As for your excellent question, "how is one human better at being human than another?", I think there's some sense in which no human being is better at being a human than another, but isn't it also true that some humans are more deprived (i.e., suffer from more serious privation) than others? It doesn't sound at all right to my ears to say that a deaf person is less human than a non-deaf person, but it certainly seems fair to say that I'd rather not be deaf than be deaf. Thus, there's a value in being hearing-abled, or a disvalue in being deaf.

"Bobcat, I would say that even in your revised statement, the "therefore" just is a non sequitur. In fact, I don't think there's any way to get from the one type of statement to the type of conclusion you're talking about."

How about this: "The ONLY reason man has overriding, intrinsic value is that he has libertarian free will and rational agency, or the potential for it. Therefore, if Joe neither has libertarian free will and rational agency, or does not have the potential for it, then Joe does not have overriding, intrinsic value." Is there still a non-sequitur there?

Is there still a non-sequitur there?

Not really, but then, again, your revised statement has finally arrived at the point of saying that a human has intrinsic value BECAUSE he is human, since ONLY humans have the potential for libertarian free will and rational agency. When that potential cannot exist, then there is no human and no intrinsic value as a human (there may be other purely material intrinsic values, of course).

What we might run into disagreement on is what constitutes not having the potential for. Potential, here, must be used in a metaphysical sense, not a realizable action sense, otherwise, the ancephalic baby, who has a metaphysical potential to be human but not an action-based sense would not be deemed of intrinsic value.

The Chicken

Opps. I left a dangling preposition. That should read:

What we might run into disagreement on is what constitutes not having the potential for something means.

The Chicken

"your revised statement has finally arrived at the point of saying that a human has intrinsic value BECAUSE he is human, since ONLY humans have the potential for libertarian free will and rational agency. When that potential cannot exist, then there is no human and no intrinsic value as a human (there may be other purely material intrinsic values, of course)."

I think both Lydia and I would disagree with you here, chicken. I think if a space alien (say, the beings from Out of the Silent Planet, or the being from Perelandra) had rational agency or libertarian free will, it would have as much value as a human being who had those qualities. Lydia would probably agree that such a being would have as much intrinsic worth as a human being, but I think she would say this not because it has libertarian free will + rational agency, but for some other reason--say, because it is a Perelandran, or because it is created by God, or something else. In other words, I think, and I think Lydia would agree, that "being human" is intensionally a different predicate from "having, either in actuality or in potentia, libertarian free will and rational agency", even if it turns out to have the same extension.

"What we might run into disagreement on is what constitutes not having the potential for. Potential, here, must be used in a metaphysical sense, not a realizable action sense, otherwise, the ancephalic baby, who has a metaphysical potential to be human but not an action-based sense would not be deemed of intrinsic value."

It's hard for me even to think of anencephalic babies, because the situation is so tragic, but nevertheless, I don't think they have the same intrinsic value as a non-anencephalic baby, though I do think they have some value (hence, I think it would be monstrous to simply throw such a baby away in the garbage bin, or to let it starve to death, though again, I don't exactly know why I believe this).

Bobcat,
I don't know if you'll agree, but I believe this graduation lecture may have some relevance to the question of what makes humans unique:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s

The introduction takes up the first five minutes if you wish to skip over that.

Bobcat, I think I see one place where the concept of "value" is probably tripping you up here. You say that there is value in being able to hear, so that you would rather be able to hear than be deaf.

I think perhaps you are moving incorrectly from _that_ sense of "value" to a sense of a _person's_ having or lacking value. Now, it seems to me that's a fatal slip. To say that a state has value (that it is a better state to be in than some other state, all else being equal, or something of that sort) is one thing. To say that a person has or lacks value in virtue of the states he is in, is completely different and seems to me completely wrong. It does not follow from the fact that not being able to hear is a privation that a person suffering that privation *has less value* as a person than one who does not suffer it.

Interestingly, it seems to me that if you're going to make the concept of value have that sort of weight, you are going to have to say that about any person suffering any privation, including deafness, cleft palate, a minor injury that leaves permanent scars, etc.--that such persons have less value than those who do not suffer those privations. This should strike you as a reductio, even if the position itself does not seem (as it does to me) self-evidently false from the outset.

Yes, I still see a non sequitur in your statement, because "man" in the first part is "man the species." In other words, the first part says that the human _species_ has intrinsic value only because of certain characteristics natural to that species. The conclusion says that if some individual is a member of that species (we assume "Joe" refers to a member of homo sapiens, not to a dog or cat) but lacks those characteristics natural to that species, he lacks intrinsic value. But it is a perfectly consistent position to hold that the species has the value it has (which is then conferred automatically upon all its living members) because of the kind of thing God has made that species to be, where a description of that "kind of thing" would include reference to his making that species qua species rational, etc., and that no privation in the individual can eradicate that intrinsic value.

MC (Masked Chicken) allows the argument not to contain a non sequitur, because he takes "potential" in the very broad sense such that automatically any member of the species, whatever his privations, has the characteristics natural to that species potentially. I assumed that that wasn't what you meant, Bobcat, so I didn't take it that way. If one takes it that way, then one would _have_ to take it that "Joe" refers to a member of some other species--to a dog or a cat, for example--in order for the antecedant of your "therefore" sentence to describe a logically possible situation.

Welcome back to W4, by the way, MC. You were missed.

Welcome back to W4, by the way, MC. You were missed.

Maybe, I was hiding out. It was Thanksgiving. Some people can't tell the difference between my avian cousins and I, you know :)

Actually, I've been here, but some of the recent posts have been heavy on the political/economic theory and in those areas, I prefer to listen rather than comment. Actually, I try to avoid dealing with politics and economics as much as possible. I might be tempted to look over the prevailing theories again once they have convinced me that they can even get the family to work. If one can't be trusted in little things...

The Chicken

I think both Lydia and I would disagree with you here, chicken. I think if a space alien (say, the beings from Out of the Silent Planet, or the being from Perelandra) had rational agency or libertarian free will, it would have as much value as a human being who had those qualities.

I was using the term human in a general sense to refer to any being with libertarian free will and rational agency, so I would consider the plant people of the planet Imsogreen to be humans, after a fashion.

I think Lydia is correct about the shift in use of the term, "value," as assigned to a group attribute and that assigned to an attribute of the members of a group in the sense that one is transcendent (or a set property) and absolute and the other is material and relative (embedded within the set at a lower level). It goes to the question of how much can one hack away at a man's body until the soul no longer is there. Hearing has a material value, not an existential one. There is music in Heaven (the song of Moses is sung), but there is no sound.

The Chicken

"Bobcat, I think I see one place where the concept of "value" is probably tripping you up here. You say that there is value in being able to hear, so that you would rather be able to hear than be deaf.

"I think perhaps you are moving incorrectly from _that_ sense of "value" to a sense of a _person's_ having or lacking value. Now, it seems to me that's a fatal slip. To say that a state has value (that it is a better state to be in than some other state, all else being equal, or something of that sort) is one thing. To say that a person has or lacks value in virtue of the states he is in, is completely different and seems to me completely wrong. It does not follow from the fact that not being able to hear is a privation that a person suffering that privation *has less value* as a person than one who does not suffer it."

That's right, so let's come up with a name for these kinds of value. Kant would call the value a person has in virtue of being a person his "dignity" or "inner worth". Every person has the same dignity/inner worth, so no person, on Kant's view, has less value as a person than anyone else. He would call a person's value as, say, a musician, his "non-moral merit" or his "use value". On Kant's view, people's non-moral merit/use value can vary greatly. Finally, I think a person's being deaf may lower his use value, but not necessarily (after all, it didn't lower Beethoven's ability to produce great music). So let's coin a word for the value a person has in virtue of being a non-defective instance of his species. I'll give it the inelegant name, "biological completeness value". Obviously, people can differ in their biological completeness value.

OK, what gives a person inner worth? It can't be his use value or his biological completeness value, because these differ from person to person and inner worth is the same for all people. So it seems to me that whatever gives people their inner worth, it has to be some feature of them that they all--each and every one of them--has in common. My provisional answer to this is: what gives someone (a particular individual) his inner worth is that he has the capacity for freedom and rationality, either in actuality or in potentia. Your answer is that he is a member of the human species. Is this fair?

If it is fair, then what do you think would explain why intelligent, morally sensitive Martians would have intrinsic value? Is it their being members of the Martian species? If so, then how do you determine which species memberships give particular beings inner worth? Of course, you may deny that such Martians would have intrinsic value. But that would surprise me.

Well, again, you're using "capacity" and "in potentia" in such a way that they cannot apply to a person who has suffered a particular degree of privation. Other moral theorists would hold, as does MC, above, that "in potentia" or "capacity" ought to be understood in such a way that every member of a species to whom the ability is natural has that ability potentially, regardless of privation, which makes (as far as I can see) their position identical to mine. It's then just a matter of deciding on terminology.

I would say that the inner worth of a person that you are talking about (such that it is always murder to kill an innocent individual who has it, for example) supervenes on being made in the image of God. Now, alien species could also be made in the image of God. Indeed, your Lewis space trilogy examples show exactly this: Both the Green Lady and Ransom are members of species made in the Divine image, and so are the hrossa, even though they do not have human form.

I believe that we access the fact that a species qua species bears the divine image by way of discerning the capacities that are natural to that species. What Wesley J. Smith calls human exceptionalism is that set of properties *natural to the species* (though not manifested in all its members) that show us, whether we designate it with that phrase or not, that truth about the species which I refer to by saying that man is made in the image of God. Epistemically, we can tell that man was made in the image of God because men have properties like rational agency, self-consciousness, the ability to use language, creativity, and so forth, when fully developed and not suffering from privation. This could also be true of an alien race. But when this is true of a race, all its members have what you call "inner worth" in virtue of species membership.

It is conceivable and therefore logically possible (though highly, highly unlikely) that a species that is _not_ naturally made in the image of God should, in some bizarre science fiction circumstance, have an individual member that did have these abilities qua individual--a gen-u-ine talking chicken, for example. Then of course protection would extend rightly to such a surprising individual as well, in an _extension_ of human rights, not a retraction thereof.

"Do you believe that it would have been wrong..."

What I believe is not relevant to the questions at hand -- i.e. what the moral facts are re: euthanasia and suicide and what light might be shed on those facts by reflection upon the axe murder. Do you think my beliefs are relevant to these questions? Perhaps you have other questions in mind.

Here is what I do: I try to find invalidity and, if I find it, try to see what would repair it. This helps us understand why things are the way they are. Also: it helps us stay clear headed. You are invited to play along. I was trying to do this (on your behalf) in the axe v clinic case. The idea was to show the relevance of the axe murder to our deliberations about the moral status of euthanasia.

I see that you think that since consequentialism is false you conclude that my repair is no good. Fine. (Really not fine: Surely, sometimes axiology is relevant to moral evaluation... or I am a monkey's uncle. Suppose that killing a person was invariably and obviously a great boon to the person killed. I would expect, then, that killing would have a very different moral character than it actually has. Surely the (main) reason killing a person is wrong is because death is very bad for us. Presumably the reason death our deaths are very bad for us is that, for creatures like us, life is very good. So we might agree that consequentialism is false -- i.e. we might agree that axiological properties are not the only things that matter morally -- but agree that sometimes axiological properties matter morally. I am, therefore, pleased to see that you and Bobcat are working more on the kinds of values humans and human lives might possess.)

At any rate: Fine... It isn't so obvious how to construct an account that tells us when, if ever, it is morally permissible to kill a person. It isn't, therefore, clear what lessons to draw from the axe case.

PS: When I use expressions like "guess" and "maybe" I am not usually playing coy, but aim to speak literally.

Suppose that killing a person was invariably and obviously a great boon to the person killed. I would expect, then, that killing would have a very different moral character than it actually has. Surely the (main) reason killing a person is wrong is because death is very bad for us.

Nope. If I believed that killing Joe, an innocent human being, would take him instantly into the eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision, it would be just as wrong to kill him as it is. If I knew for a theological fact that all aborted babies go immediately to heaven, abortion would be just as wrong as it is.

When I speak of the intrinsic value of human lives, this is not in any way, shape, or form an endorsement of consequentialism/utilitarianism.

And I think it's interesting that, in a blog thread, you, Alex, refuse to answer my question about your beliefs regarding euthanasia and Mrs. Martin and instead regard your job to be that of some sort of blogospheric philosophical practitioner who repairs invalidity. Please. Bobcat, who seems to think the two of you are much alike, is interested in talking about the moral truth of the matter. Perhaps the contrast between his attitude and your "I'm here to help you conservative bloggers" approach, which I seem to recall having noted from the beginning, will explain even more to him about our "getting off on the wrong foot."

"Well, again, you're using 'capacity' and 'in potentia' in such a way that they cannot apply to a person who has suffered a particular degree of privation."

Yes, I am using the terms in that way, and this leads to an interesting problem for my view, I think. On my view, there might be a grey area about whether or not someone has the capacity, or the potential for the capacity, to act libertarianly freely, and to be rational. On your view, there is no such grey area. But there *may* be problems for your view too. For instance, imagine the following case: there are conjoint twins, one of whom is minimally conscious and the other of whom is fully functional. Let us assume (I hope not illicitly) that if the twins are not separated, both will die. But if the twins are separated, one of them will die. What is one permitted to do here? I take it that on your view, we cannot separate the twins because that is to sacrifice one innocent life, which is an evil, for the sake of another, and since we're not allowed to do evil that good may come, we're not allowed to carry out the separation. On the other hand, on my view, we'd be allowed to separate the twins, allowing the minimally conscious one to die to save the fully conscious one. I take it, though, that you don't regard this as a problem for your view, and you instead regard it as a reductio of mine? (Similarly, if a mother is carrying an anencephalic baby, and giving birth to the baby will result in her death, she's still not allowed to carry out an abortion, correct?)

"Other moral theorists would hold, as does MC, above, that 'in potentia' or 'capacity' ought to be understood in such a way that every member of a species to whom the ability is natural has that ability potentially, regardless of privation, which makes (as far as I can see) their position identical to mine. It's then just a matter of deciding on terminology."

I prefer your terminology to MC's, because to say that being B possess capacity C in potentia suggests, at least to my ears, that B will get C, barring unusual circumstances like B's premature death. But as far as I understand him, MC does not mean to imply this.

"I would say that the inner worth of a person that you are talking about (such that it is always murder to kill an innocent individual who has it, for example) supervenes on being made in the image of God. ... I believe that we access the fact that a species qua species bears the divine image by way of discerning the capacities that are natural to that species. ... Epistemically, we can tell that man was made in the image of God because men have properties like rational agency, self-consciousness, the ability to use language, creativity, and so forth, when fully developed and not suffering from privation."

I'm a little unclear about something. Is it just the fact that a being is a member of a species that was made in the image of God that gives it inner worth, or is "made in the image of God" short-hand for having the range of capacities that you list above? In other words, what, in your view gives a species-member its inner worth: the fact that it was made by God in his image; or the fact that it has a particular range of capacities? I take it that the former is your view, but I'm not sure.

Also, on another note: why do you think that the salient normative fact is being a member of a species whose typical member has certain capacities rather than the salient normative fact being being an individual that has, potentially or in actuality, certain capacities? Is it that you think that your view explains your, or most people's, intuitions regarding what is and isn't morally permissible/obligatory, or is there some other reason?

If I believed that killing Joe, an innocent human being, would take him instantly into the eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision, it would be just as wrong to kill him as it is.

Weird. I am glad you clarified this point. I would have thought that killing a person is typically wrong because it harms him; and typically worse than stealing a dollar from someone because it typically harms its object to a greater degree than stealing a dollar harms its object. I'll have to go back to the drawing board on that one.

Perhaps it has something to do with autonomy? If I capture someone and send him to Tahiti -- even if I ensured that he has a good time the whole time (a pleasant, virtue enhancing, etc. time) -- I have done something wrong. I would start to explain it like this: capturing and controlling people is typically wrong because people typically have a will. [Of course 'because' is hiding a multitude of questions... and I don't know how I would continue explanation. I'd probably ask Bobcat.]

Maybe killing's wrongness is different from other kinds of wrongness... and so poorly designed as a counterexample to the inference that since consequentialism is false, questions of value don't affect the moral worth of acts.

Do facts about value have no relation to our moral assessments?

I think it's interesting that, in a blog thread, you, Alex, refuse to answer my question about your beliefs regarding euthanasia and Mrs. Martin and instead regard your job to be that of some sort of blogospheric philosophical practitioner who repairs invalidity. Please.

I have neither wronged nor harmed you by testing your evidence and failing to answer irrelevant questions. But maybe you mean "interesting" to mean something other than "offensive"... maybe, for example, as a synonym for "somewhat eccentric". It is hard to read tone on these things.

You haven't wronged _me_, Alex, by refusing to answer the question. Not as far as I can tell. I suppose you might have wronged yourself. A desire to find the truth is what leads many of us into philosophy. Not everyone continues to have that desire as a chief motivation. One thing I mean by "interesting" is "revealing," as in, "I think the refusal is evidence about the answer."

I think that the Martin story ought to be a jolt in the solar plexis for those who go around nattering away about how people are "burdens," how euthanasia and suicide need to be legal so people can avoid or stop being "burdens," and so forth. One of those reality check things. Those who fail to feel any jolt and just go on nattering probably have a problem. In theological terms, we call it a seared conscience.

I prefer your terminology to MC's, because to say that being B possess capacity C in potentia suggests, at least to my ears, that B will get C, barring unusual circumstances like B's premature death. But as far as I understand him, MC does not mean to imply this.

If you believe in an afterlife, you could hold your position and believe that B will get C in the afterlife. Just a thought.

Is it just the fact that a being is a member of a species that was made in the image of God that gives it inner worth, or is "made in the image of God" short-hand for having the range of capacities that you list above?

Metaphysically, the former. But epistemically, I think many people, even perhaps most people, access that fact by noticing the capacities that are natural to the species. And people who don't believe in God may never come to refer to being made in the image of God at all. They may simply refer to something like what WJS calls human exceptionalism. I find it very much worth noting that Smith insists that he is making an entirely secular point, and he o'erleaps the individual/species issue we are discussing here without a pause. He constantly argues, for example, that human beings as a race are different from animals because of the capacities special to man (which animals don't have), yet he is adamant that people don't cease to have full human rights, worth, etc., no matter how disabled they are as individuals. I think that's a sign of healthy intuitions, and intuitions which used to be considered not even worth mentioning or discussing, so obvious were they.

why do you think that the salient normative fact is being a member of a species whose typical member has certain capacities rather than the salient normative fact being being an individual that has, potentially or in actuality, certain capacities? Is it that you think that your view explains your, or most people's, intuitions regarding what is and isn't morally permissible/obligatory, or is there some other reason?

I suppose part of what it comes down to is that, for all my bragging to Ed Feser that I'm a robust modern (rather than an Aristotelian, for example), when it comes to _natures_, I am not a nominalist. Notice even your wording here: "Whose typical member has certain capacities..." Now, not to nit-pick, but it seems to me that that's nominalist-ish language. It implies that we're just sort of doing a statistical survey which might or might not have any significance beyond the brute facts it records, rather than using our observations to get at something underlying, some notion of what is natural to a _type_ of entity. (Ed, are you reading this thread?)

I believe that the ethical ideas I'm articulating here are true to my intuitions, which I think many people pre-reflectively share (in this, I think, showing the moral law written on their hearts and the image of God in their ability to discern such matters), in particular insofar as I'm accessing the nature of the species and making that of great importance. What _sort_ of thing is man? Is it important to be that sort of thing? And then moving from there to granting importance--reverence, even--to being that _sort_ of thing, even if you are--sadly--harmed in such a way that you don't actualize that nature as it ideally should be actualized.

Of course, I should also say in fairness that I believe a proposition like, "It is always wrong deliberately to kill an innocent human being" is knowable a priori. To some extent, a lot of this discussion is like discussing mathematics. You can get at the relevant propositions from a variety of directions, and you can connect it up with other propositions, but you're ultimately just helping yourself or someone else to see an a priori truth, or a set of them.

Oh, and to clarify: The individual human being himself bears the image of God even if he is contingently deprived of the capacities in question. I think that was clear, but in case it wasn't...

"I find it very much worth noting that Smith insists that he is making an entirely secular point, and he o'erleaps the individual/species issue we are discussing here without a pause. He constantly argues, for example, that human beings as a race are different from animals because of the capacities special to man (which animals don't have), yet he is adamant that people don't cease to have full human rights, worth, etc., no matter how disabled they are as individuals. I think that's a sign of healthy intuitions, and intuitions which used to be considered not even worth mentioning or discussing, so obvious were they."

Your last claim seems like one that is empirically verifiable. So, consider the following three claims:

(1) A particular being has inner worth because it has the capacity to act freely and rationally.
(2) A particular being has inner worth because it has the capacity to act freely and rationally, or the potential there for.
(3) A particular being has inner worth because it is a member of a species the nature of which includes the ability to act freely and rationally.

You claim, if I understand you correctly, that not only is (3) true, but that it used to be seen as obvious that (3) was true. Interestingly, though, nowadays among many philosophers (1) is seen as the only kind of grounds for inner worth, whereas (2) is limited to a minority, and (3) is defended by almost no one I'm familiar with (although I'm Catholic, I'm not much familiar with the work of most contemporary Catholic philosophers).

With that in the background, when do you think (3) stopped being taken as obvious? And among which people was it thought to be obvious? Everyday people? All people except for philosophers? Or even philosophers as well? Also, what caused it to stop being obvious?

Obviously, these are big questions--worthy of a Schneewindian tome--but since you remarked that (3) used to be obvious, I imagine you have some sort of evidence for that claim to hand.

I'm especially interested because now that (3) has been excavated for my observation, I'd be interested in seeing whether Kant tacitly or explicitly endorsed it.

Position (3) has not changed as the position of the Church. The Summa, I.76.1 makes this clear:

The same can be clearly shown from the nature of the human species. For the nature of each thing is shown by its operation. Now the proper operation of man as man is to understand; because he thereby surpasses all other animals. Whence Aristotle concludes (Ethic. x, 7) that the ultimate happiness of man must consist in this operation as properly belonging to him. Man must therefore derive his species from that which is the principle of this operation. But the species of anything is derived from its form. It follows therefore that the intellectual principle is the proper form of man.

But we must observe that the nobler a form is, the more it rises above corporeal matter, the less it is merged in matter, and the more it excels matter by its power and its operation; hence we find that the form of a mixed body has another operation not caused by its elemental qualities. And the higher we advance in the nobility of forms, the more we find that the power of the form excels the elementary matter; as the vegetative soul excels the form of the metal, and the sensitive soul excels the vegetative soul. Now the human soul is the highest and noblest of forms. Wherefore it excels corporeal matter in its power by the fact that it has an operation and a power in which corporeal matter has no share whatever. This power is called the intellect.

The whole passage is worth reading. It is clear that value is attached to that which a man can have via his soul.

The Chicken

Years ago (10-15) I read a very revealing article reprinted in Right to Life News. I wish I had kept it, because I'm having to go by memory for everything here. I believe the article was originally published around 1971 in a medical journal. It was very frank. It said something to this effect: "The idea of the sanctity of every human life has been a widespread belief in Western culture and has strongly influenced the medical profession. It's a holdover from Judeo-Christian ethics, and we need to get rid of it." That, of course, is a paraphrase from memory. But I think it illustrates quite well what I was saying, Bobcat, about the common-ness of my position until fairly recently. I believe that position has been deliberately, relentlessly undermined by what Robert Bork calls the "chattering classes." They began with the eugenics movement in the early part of the 20th century, but they really started making major headway in the U.S. in the actual medical and legal professions only in the second half of the 20th. As late as the Cruzan case in the late 1980's, the medical facility _refused_ to dehydrate Nancy Cruzan and had to be court ordered to do so. Italy retains more than does the U.S. of the older vision of the sanctity of each individual human life in its medical profession up to the present day, as illustrated in a recent case (within the past year) where the minister of health in Italy said he would order all Italian govt. facilities to refuse to dehydrate a particular young woman in a coma after a court ruled that she had a right to die. She was dehydrated to death at a private clinic instead, to which she had to be transferred from a hospital where she was being cared for by nuns.

I'm sure WJS could give us a good history of the spread of personhood theory in philosophical ethics. It definitely wasn't dominant a hundred years ago, that's for sure!

(3) A particular being has inner worth because it is a member of a species the nature of which includes the ability to act freely and rationally.

I am a bit unclear about the entailment relations here. Does the 'because' in 3 indicate that if a particular being does not belong to a member of a species the nature of which includes the ability to act freely and rationally it does not possess an inner worth?

Probably, the answer to my question is 'no'... Or it had better be 'no', for familiar reasons having to do with artificially enhanced monkeys. Accordingly, one thing we know is that inner worth is not constituted by such species membership. (If it was a 'because' of constitution, then the 'because' would have the force of an only-if -- and more besides.) Instead, I would guess, at best, such species membership is a determination of the determinable property, INNER WORTH.

PS: How cool would this history book you, Bobcat, envision be!

I already answered that question according to my opinion, above, Alex. Search "gen-u-ine" on the page.

Yes--sufficient but not necessary condition.

But I think it illustrates quite well what I was saying, Bobcat, about the common-ness of my position until fairly recently.

Sadly, yes. One reason not often cited as an adjunct to the Eugenics movement was the Classification of Man movement started with Galton and pushed by Stanford, Binet, Merrit, etc. Once a number has been put to a man, his "value" becomes associated with that number. It is a small step from that to the "quality of life" argument being put forth in medical circles. One may argue that Sanger's arguments for contraception were based on quality of life arguments in some ways.

This attempt to define a quality of life misses the whole point about what it means to be human. To be human is to have a rational soul. The soul is not quantifiable and has no perceptible quality that can be damaged, except by sin (and notice how these people NEVER talk about sin), so there is no way to put a number to it. Anyone who adheres to a quality of life ethic must, sooner or later, declare themselves to be a materialist.

Materialism deals with numbers. In fact, it was Galton who developed the statistical methods used for sampling opinion. What we have, today, is morality by opinion. Humane Vitae was such a shock because people expected Pope Paul VI to roll over about contraception because so many moral theologians favored it.

Polls always tend to slide towards the visceral. Whomever controls the emotions controls polls. Morality, however, is not based on emotions, but good reason. Is it any wonder that when emotions become the basis for morality that suffering is something to be avoided?

The Chicken

I agree with Alex that such a book on these three relations would be very cool. I know one Kant scholar, Mark Larrimore, who thinks that Kant is not an individualist, but a speciest about inner worth. I.e., that when Kant said that a being had moral worth in virtue of its humanity, he meant just that--the fact that it was human made it morally worthy. Alas, I didn't get much time to ask Mark what he meant by that, though certainly remarks in _Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View_, _Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime_, and Kant's 1788 essay on teleology seem relevant, as well as his "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective", "Conjectural Beginnings of Human History", and "Towards Perpetual Peace,"

That said, I think we've gone about as far as we can on this subject. The next step is justifying why any of (1), (2), or (3) would be true in the first place, assuming that they're not meant to be self-evident.