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Back | Class 10 Index | Next Trying to answer the question "Who are you?" we singled out various levels, or aspects, of personal identity. Those include at least one's:
We also singled out the level of one's awareness or consciousness. Awareness makes the difference between normal human beings and epistemological zombies (beings that behave just like us but perceive no secondary qualities). Yet the above mentioned levels of personal identity fail to account for an important aspect of person. This missing aspect lies beyond the realm of philosophy of mind. There is something special about persons that makes us different from any other things in the world. Persons have a certain specific inherent value that other beings lack. Inherent and Instrumential Value A certain thing has instrumental value if it is valued because of its usefulness. Instrumental value is a value as a means to an end. (For instance, most people value pencils only instrumentally, since one can use them to write with.) An object has inherent value if it is valued for itself, not as a means to something else but as an end. Some people believe that everything has only instrumental value. Hence, we value food because it keeps us alive, we value sports because they keep us healthy, we even value friends merely because they give us a sense of security. Indeed, in a world of an extreme egoist everything else than oneself is perceived as having only instrumental value. However, extreme egoists miss a lot in life. True friendship does not rely only on the uses one could possibly derive from having a friend. True friendship, or love, requires that one values one's friend for herself. A person who sees only instrumental value in her friends misses the point of friendship and therefore is unable to have true friends. Such people may even believe that true friendship, based not only on instrumental, but primarily on inherent value of one's friend, is impossible in real life. In the example of friendship we can see that not every value is merely instrumental. But it is also true that many things, such as for instance gold, which we may perceive as inherently valuable, are really only of instrumental value. There is a debate within philosophy whether inanimate objects, such as landscape, planets and works of art, have inherent or instrumental value. Probably the answer depends on the perspective in which we want to address those questions. Within a very broad perspective we may use the following test. We may ask whether any of those things would remain valuable in a world deprived of human beings and of any other intelligent life. This clause assumes that not only there would be no intelligent life (including God), but also that we would know that such life would never emerge in the universe again. It is clear that works of art and landscapes would lose their value if there were no beings able to perceive them. This is true because definition of art as well as of landscapes clearly depends on intelligent beings. This dependence would be less clear about astronomic or physical objects; I would argue that the same is true about them, but the argument is long and I cannot present it here since it is not crucial for our main issue. The aim of the present discussion is to prove that solely persons have inherent moral value (not that solely persons have any kind of inherent value). Our claim assumes that there is a special kind of inherent value (namely, inherent moral value) that belongs only to persons. Whether other kinds of inherent value exist may be left as an open question. Inherent Moral Value The thesis that persons have inherent value of a specific kind can be demonstrated if we could show that certain things may not be done to persons and that it is so because of this special value which is a unique feature of persons. Hence, the task is twofold. First, we shall demonstrate that certain things may not be done to persons (and only to them). Next, that there is a special feature of persons that makes it inherently wrong to do those things to persons and that this feature cannot be found in anything but persons. This argument, if successful, would demonstrate that persons and only persons have inherent moral value. It would establish the proof that inherent moral value is a defining characteristic of persons. The thesis I defend in Part 1 of this class is that all persons and only persons have inherent moral value. Things That May Not Be Done To Persons --- parental discretion is advised.
There are various reasons why certain things should not be done to people. Some of those reasons are instrumental. For instance instrumental reasons seem sufficient not to legalize robbery. We may want to keep robbery illegal just because we think legalizing robbery would be detrimental to the society. We may also keep robbery illegal because of instrumental reasons referring to our direct self- interest, namely because we do not want to be robbed. But instrumental reasons seem to be insufficient in some other cases. I think we may agree that consumption of human flesh should be kept illegal. But I think this is true not only because none of us would want to be killed for food. Imagine the following repugnant scenario.
Although Flesher's motivation seems honest, local food-pantries refuse to accept Flesher's gift. Food and Drug Officers, together with local healthcare authorities made it clear that Flesher's flesh is good to eat. As a matter of research they were even able to establish it's approximate nutritional value. But food-banks around the country keep saying that there is something sick about the idea of eating human flesh. Flesher's supporters (united in the Flesher Society) claim that food banks are influenced by culturally well entrenched prejudice. They claim that although in general eating human flesh may be a bad idea because killing people for food would involve violations of their autonomy (or undue pressures to consent to be killed), it is not true about the Flasher's case They also agree that consumption of human flesh is likely to contribute to the spread of infectious disease, especially Hepatitis. But since Flesher's flash is healthy, we should reject prejudice and use Flesher flesh in soup-kitchens.
Eating human flesh is wrong not only because such practices might contribute to the erosion of the society and to the spread of infectious disease. It is also inherently wrong. This point demonstrates that there are certain things that cannot be done to humans. Dignity Seeing other people as a potential source of food would involve utter disrespect for them. But why should people be respected? One answer is that they want to be respected. But why should we care? Is it just because we fear that we would be disrespected if we disrespected others? If this was the case, than the German philosopher Nietzsche would be correct in his claim that morality is only for the week. Strong people would have no reason to be afraid of others and therefore they would stand above morality. But this would mean that that it is fine for the strong to rape, kill and eat human flesh. This is nonsense and respecting others is not just for the weak. Hence, we should look for other reasons not to disrespect people. We must assume that there is a feature of human beings that deserves respect. This feature may be called dignity. Actions like eating human flesh would violate this objective characteristic of persons. The form of persons, as intelligent, conscious, embodied living creatures entails dignity. Human beings may or may not be the only persons in the universe (in earlier chapters we mentioned dolphins angels and extraterrestrial as possible additions to the class of persons). Every person has dignity which is not given to it by the government or the society, but has it by its very nature. Dignity is an aspect of personal identity. Back | Class 6 Index | Next |