If I understand you correctly, your position seems to be that statements like "The quadriplegic has a life less worth living than the normally abled. The human vegetable has a life less worth living than the conscious subject. The worthiness of our lives is constituted by the goods within them." are obvious, and that no reasonable person could disagree.
I suspect that Theresa May, and lots of other reasonable people, would instinctively disagree; they might agree with your observation that some lives are less desirable than others in expectation, but the question of whether a life is "worth living" seems like a different question, and you don't really make a compelling case for them being the same thing.
Whilst your disagreement might simply stem from the fact that you (presumably) are a liberal and Theresa may is not (i.e. you assign different weights to the value of individual autonomy), I wonder if you are also just using the words "worth living" differently and are therefore surprised that she doesn't reach the same conclusion as you.
Maybe. I reckon pretty much any understanding of worth living is going to have the disabled get less out of life though. I imagine May, as a meat eater, says the lives of animals are less worth living than that of humans, meaning, if a human vegetable or disabled person is to all intents and purposes either just like an actual vegetable or has the mental capacity of a cow, then, reason would force to accept some human lives are less worth living than others at pain of contradicting herself.
It would be super interesting to ask whether she thinks animal lives are less "worth living"- presumably she thinks they are "worth less", morally, but I still suspect that she wouldn't describe them as less "worth living".
I wonder if she draws a distinction between an organism's understanding of it's own existence ("my life is worth living") and wider society's assessment of it's value ("your life is worth less"); and, if so, that she is trying to say that it isn't up to wider society to make calculations or judgements about the first quantity. I don't want to put words in her mouth.
Regardless, I think there are coherent arguments about e.g. sanctity of life that make your central claim non-obvious. Interesting read though.
If people themselves admit they can chose two life paths and one is more worth living than another, then, given this is true of most people, we can see some will chose poorly, or be dealt a poor hand, meaning, some lives a more worth living than others.
Sanctity of life is think is distinct argument. I reckon Kant could get on board with my argument yet still absolutely affirm the sanctity of life.
I still haven't delineated in my head the difference between "worth living (internally)", "desirable (objectively" and "morally worthy (according to others)".
I know next to nothing about Kant, but sounds like an interesting angle.
She just asserts life is intrinsically valuable which is counterintuitive. The burden of proof is on her. She this thought from an article of mine elsewhere.
"It might finally be asserted as a brute moral fact that life is sacred and simply cannot be taken by anyone. This is very implausible. Life is not valuable in itself; rather, life is valuable in virtue of the good things it contains. As a challenge to those such as Immanuel Kant who would argue for the sacredness of all innocent life, I ask them whether or not they would support the wishes of someone who asked to be killed after falling into molten metal at a steel works. Should they answer ‘yes’ then life in itself is not sacred; rather, something within it is, e.g. pleasure and the absence of pain. 6,394 people die slowly in pain each year in the UK, and such people are the ones whose comfort, well-being, and freedom are really at stake here."
It does not matter how much defence she gives, the article on which this thread comments talks past, rather than to, the main point.
As to your quote from your other article, I see no argument there either. There is a reassertion of your position that life is not valuable in itself, backed up with a counter example that has no obvious bearing on the matter, with no explanation as to why it bears on the matter.
Lastly, I do not accept the argument that the burden of proof is on her. What you find counterintuitive, I take it to be self-evident: that human life is inherently valuable.
To argue on your own ground; e.g., why should one’s right to posses themselves be important if they themself were not of any value? You say this right is important — indeed absolute — and independent what one can or cannot do with that self.
I do not think this the intrinsic value of human life is really in dispute in the euthanasia case. The question is rather whether suicide is ever morally acceptable.
Hardly. She implies are all human life is equally worth living. I give three examples of the vegetable, quadapelgic, and, in the comment, man in molten steel. These are obviously lives which are less worth living than normal lives, and, with a scale admitted, we have good reason to think, some lives can be of negative value, or disvalue. These intuitions point to the truth of the moral statement life is not intrinsically valuable. This means, as I say in the article, assisted dying reaffirming this moral truth is no problem.
Human life as intrinsically valuable as reason not to take it is problematic for you too. If you accept animals can be killed due to their mental attributes being low, then, human who are the same as them in every mental respect should likely be up for being killed too. But this would be to admit human life is not intrinsically valuable. Of course, you could run this argument the other way around.
I think many people take the answer to your second to last statement to bear much on the answer to your last statement.
I wonder what Stephen Hawking might have commented on the topic,...
How might one feel if a potential cure was mooted to be on the brink of readiness for trial?
Might there be specific reasons why some people endure pain at the end of their lives whilst others simply slip away in their sleep after a long, healthy, and happy life?
How do those who believe in Karma consider assisted suicide? I wonder... a Buddhist once told me that, whilst a murderer racks up 'bad' Karma (meaning that equally bad things will happen to him/her at some point), the murdered victim has been set free from the dense human body that keeps us Earthbound and such release is 'good' Karma.
Maybe ending ones own life prematurely, with or without assistance, simply delays the balancing of Karma and obliges one to start another incarnation, in order to complete the cycle.
Some people are more physically oriented than others. Having worked in terminal care in the distant past, I would say that some people have such a rich interior life, such imagination, so many memories, that they ignore the fact that their physical frailty prevents them from moving at all...
How big a step would it be, especially within the constantly divided society of which we are witnessing the growth, for government to sanction the premature ending of lives which it considers worthless, without even consulting the individuals, on the basis that they would request assisted dying if they realised how selfish it was of them to eat food and drink water which might be used by someone able to work... or whatever other idiotic thinking prevails at the time.
I agree broadly, but I think you fail to realise that she and others are talking about the *subjective' value of a life. YOU would find being a paraplegic would make life very much less worth living (and so would I), but there is no way of knowing how another person in that situation would feel about it without asking it. Such matters cannot be calculated 'mathematically'. (Not that I really care what May thinks about anything, anyway!)
I agree broadly, but I think you fail to realise that she and others are talking about the *subjective' value of a life. YOU would find being a paraplegic would make life very much less worth living (and so would I), but there is no way of knowing how another person in that situation would feel about it without asking it. Such matters cannot be calculated 'mathematically'.
You are obviously correct. The whole concept of a quality adjusted life year (QALY), which is used to ration medical treatment, implicitly accepts that some lives are more worth living than others.
If I understand you correctly, your position seems to be that statements like "The quadriplegic has a life less worth living than the normally abled. The human vegetable has a life less worth living than the conscious subject. The worthiness of our lives is constituted by the goods within them." are obvious, and that no reasonable person could disagree.
I suspect that Theresa May, and lots of other reasonable people, would instinctively disagree; they might agree with your observation that some lives are less desirable than others in expectation, but the question of whether a life is "worth living" seems like a different question, and you don't really make a compelling case for them being the same thing.
Whilst your disagreement might simply stem from the fact that you (presumably) are a liberal and Theresa may is not (i.e. you assign different weights to the value of individual autonomy), I wonder if you are also just using the words "worth living" differently and are therefore surprised that she doesn't reach the same conclusion as you.
Maybe. I reckon pretty much any understanding of worth living is going to have the disabled get less out of life though. I imagine May, as a meat eater, says the lives of animals are less worth living than that of humans, meaning, if a human vegetable or disabled person is to all intents and purposes either just like an actual vegetable or has the mental capacity of a cow, then, reason would force to accept some human lives are less worth living than others at pain of contradicting herself.
It would be super interesting to ask whether she thinks animal lives are less "worth living"- presumably she thinks they are "worth less", morally, but I still suspect that she wouldn't describe them as less "worth living".
I wonder if she draws a distinction between an organism's understanding of it's own existence ("my life is worth living") and wider society's assessment of it's value ("your life is worth less"); and, if so, that she is trying to say that it isn't up to wider society to make calculations or judgements about the first quantity. I don't want to put words in her mouth.
Regardless, I think there are coherent arguments about e.g. sanctity of life that make your central claim non-obvious. Interesting read though.
If people themselves admit they can chose two life paths and one is more worth living than another, then, given this is true of most people, we can see some will chose poorly, or be dealt a poor hand, meaning, some lives a more worth living than others.
Sanctity of life is think is distinct argument. I reckon Kant could get on board with my argument yet still absolutely affirm the sanctity of life.
I still haven't delineated in my head the difference between "worth living (internally)", "desirable (objectively" and "morally worthy (according to others)".
I know next to nothing about Kant, but sounds like an interesting angle.
Your entire argument rests on a mistake.
May’s position is that all human life has an inherent value independent of the goods that are in it.
You simply assert that a life’s value is made up of the goods that are in it.
You therefore fail to engage with her position.
She just asserts life is intrinsically valuable which is counterintuitive. The burden of proof is on her. She this thought from an article of mine elsewhere.
"It might finally be asserted as a brute moral fact that life is sacred and simply cannot be taken by anyone. This is very implausible. Life is not valuable in itself; rather, life is valuable in virtue of the good things it contains. As a challenge to those such as Immanuel Kant who would argue for the sacredness of all innocent life, I ask them whether or not they would support the wishes of someone who asked to be killed after falling into molten metal at a steel works. Should they answer ‘yes’ then life in itself is not sacred; rather, something within it is, e.g. pleasure and the absence of pain. 6,394 people die slowly in pain each year in the UK, and such people are the ones whose comfort, well-being, and freedom are really at stake here."
It does not matter how much defence she gives, the article on which this thread comments talks past, rather than to, the main point.
As to your quote from your other article, I see no argument there either. There is a reassertion of your position that life is not valuable in itself, backed up with a counter example that has no obvious bearing on the matter, with no explanation as to why it bears on the matter.
Lastly, I do not accept the argument that the burden of proof is on her. What you find counterintuitive, I take it to be self-evident: that human life is inherently valuable.
To argue on your own ground; e.g., why should one’s right to posses themselves be important if they themself were not of any value? You say this right is important — indeed absolute — and independent what one can or cannot do with that self.
I do not think this the intrinsic value of human life is really in dispute in the euthanasia case. The question is rather whether suicide is ever morally acceptable.
Hardly. She implies are all human life is equally worth living. I give three examples of the vegetable, quadapelgic, and, in the comment, man in molten steel. These are obviously lives which are less worth living than normal lives, and, with a scale admitted, we have good reason to think, some lives can be of negative value, or disvalue. These intuitions point to the truth of the moral statement life is not intrinsically valuable. This means, as I say in the article, assisted dying reaffirming this moral truth is no problem.
Human life as intrinsically valuable as reason not to take it is problematic for you too. If you accept animals can be killed due to their mental attributes being low, then, human who are the same as them in every mental respect should likely be up for being killed too. But this would be to admit human life is not intrinsically valuable. Of course, you could run this argument the other way around.
I think many people take the answer to your second to last statement to bear much on the answer to your last statement.
eke*
I wonder what Stephen Hawking might have commented on the topic,...
How might one feel if a potential cure was mooted to be on the brink of readiness for trial?
Might there be specific reasons why some people endure pain at the end of their lives whilst others simply slip away in their sleep after a long, healthy, and happy life?
How do those who believe in Karma consider assisted suicide? I wonder... a Buddhist once told me that, whilst a murderer racks up 'bad' Karma (meaning that equally bad things will happen to him/her at some point), the murdered victim has been set free from the dense human body that keeps us Earthbound and such release is 'good' Karma.
Maybe ending ones own life prematurely, with or without assistance, simply delays the balancing of Karma and obliges one to start another incarnation, in order to complete the cycle.
Some people are more physically oriented than others. Having worked in terminal care in the distant past, I would say that some people have such a rich interior life, such imagination, so many memories, that they ignore the fact that their physical frailty prevents them from moving at all...
How big a step would it be, especially within the constantly divided society of which we are witnessing the growth, for government to sanction the premature ending of lives which it considers worthless, without even consulting the individuals, on the basis that they would request assisted dying if they realised how selfish it was of them to eat food and drink water which might be used by someone able to work... or whatever other idiotic thinking prevails at the time.
It's a thorny subject, that's for sure!
I'm obviously not in favour of the murder you mention in the last paragraph.
That goes without saying! 🙂
I agree broadly, but I think you fail to realise that she and others are talking about the *subjective' value of a life. YOU would find being a paraplegic would make life very much less worth living (and so would I), but there is no way of knowing how another person in that situation would feel about it without asking it. Such matters cannot be calculated 'mathematically'. (Not that I really care what May thinks about anything, anyway!)
I agree broadly, but I think you fail to realise that she and others are talking about the *subjective' value of a life. YOU would find being a paraplegic would make life very much less worth living (and so would I), but there is no way of knowing how another person in that situation would feel about it without asking it. Such matters cannot be calculated 'mathematically'.
You are obviously correct. The whole concept of a quality adjusted life year (QALY), which is used to ration medical treatment, implicitly accepts that some lives are more worth living than others.