The Value of a human life

[Full Tilt Boogie]

<posts copied to here from this thread (http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?p=225412) in P&WE -- DMB>

Understand - but the question still stands. Who has the right and/or authority to weigh the value or contribution to society of a life?

[Pendaric]

since she has a low IQ, there isn't much loss to society if she dies.

And who are you to quantify the value of a life to society?

Jet Black doesn't come here any more, but I'm pretty sure he was trolling throughout this thread.

[Pendaric]

When all the appeals have been gone through, why does it actually cost more to keep someone alive than to give them a lethal injection?

I'm not saying that's the right thing to do or not - this is a subject I have mixed opinion on. But I don't understand the economics of it once all the legal process has been done.

[Pendaric]

Understand - but the question still stands. Who has the right and/or authority to weigh the value or contribution to society of a life?

Objectively speaking, presumably the judge who issued the original sentence and the appeal court judges who then considered it further. They have that authority and right conferred on them by the government, which has been elected by the people of the country.

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Understand - but the question still stands. Who has the right and/or authority to weigh the value or contribution to society of a life?

Objectively speaking, presumably the judge who issued the original sentence and the appeal court judges who then considered it further. They have that authority and right conferred on them by the government, which has been elected by the people of the country.

That wasn't my question - of course judges do the job they are elected and paid to do. My question is a philosophical one. The judge's role is to determine [or not] a person's guilt based on the presented evidence before him - they are not making a judgement as the value or contribution to society of a person's life - in this case, they are merely ending it due to the prevailing sentencing criteria.

[Pendaric]

Understand - but the question still stands. Who has the right and/or authority to weigh the value or contribution to society of a life?

Objectively speaking, presumably the judge who issued the original sentence and the appeal court judges who then considered it further. They have that authority and right conferred on them by the government, which has been elected by the people of the country.

That wasn't my question - of course judges do the job they are elected and paid to do. My question is a philosophical one. The judge's role is to determine [or not] a person's guilt based on the presented evidence before him - they are not making a judgement as the value or contribution to society of a person's life - in this case, they are merely ending it due to the prevailing sentencing criteria.

I thought that determining guilt was up to the jury, not the judge? Are there some circumstances in the US where that is not so?

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Understand - but the question still stands. Who has the right and/or authority to weigh the value or contribution to society of a life?

Objectively speaking, presumably the judge who issued the original sentence and the appeal court judges who then considered it further. They have that authority and right conferred on them by the government, which has been elected by the people of the country.

That wasn't my question - of course judges do the job they are elected and paid to do. My question is a philosophical one. The judge's role is to determine [or not] a person's guilt based on the presented evidence before him - they are not making a judgement as the value or contribution to society of a person's life - in this case, they are merely ending it due to the prevailing sentencing criteria.

I thought that determining guilt was up to the jury, not the judge? Are there some circumstances in the US where that is not so?

Ah, pedandtry's the theme du jour, OK. Ignore the question if it's too much.

[Pendaric]

Understand - but the question still stands. Who has the right and/or authority to weigh the value or contribution to society of a life?

Objectively speaking, presumably the judge who issued the original sentence and the appeal court judges who then considered it further. They have that authority and right conferred on them by the government, which has been elected by the people of the country.

That wasn't my question - of course judges do the job they are elected and paid to do. My question is a philosophical one. The judge's role is to determine [or not] a person's guilt based on the presented evidence before him - they are not making a judgement as the value or contribution to society of a person's life - in this case, they are merely ending it due to the prevailing sentencing criteria.

I thought that determining guilt was up to the jury, not the judge? Are there some circumstances in the US where that is not so?

Ah, pedandtry's the theme du jour, OK. Ignore the question if it's too much.

I'm not particularly trying to be pedantic.

The fact of the matter is that as far as it goes, the judge and the jury do have the right and authority to determine this under the prevailing situation. They have been given that right by the government and law of the US.

I tend to agree with FUBGs comments earlier in the thread - rights are those things which are conferred on people by the wishes of the majority, and in the case of the US the democratic system has given the right to decide on the guilt and sentencing of the accused to the judge and jury.

The jury and the judge are the plain answer to your original question of who has the right.

You may not feel that the US has made the correct choice in that matter, and I might agree with you on that, but that is a different issue.

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Sorry, but can we please get back to my question instead of wandering off on some laboured tangent? The jury and the judge have a constitutional role to fulfil - the judge's role is to interpret the law of the land based on statute and precedent, whilst the jury's job is the determination of guilt based on the available evidence - that is not up for question.

The question remains: "And who are you to quantify the value of a life to society?"

[Jobar]

Quo jure? (Who judges?)

I think we *all* do, to one extent or other. Of course not all of us can enforce our judgments.

Are you wanting to explore how and why some people are willing to make the judgment that a particular human life should be snuffed out?

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Quo jure? (Who judges?)

I think we *all* do, to one extent or other. Of course not all of us can enforce our judgments.

Are you wanting to explore how and why some people are willing to make the judgment that a particular human life should be snuffed out?

No - and I deliberately didn't use the word 'judge' - and it's got nothing to do with my abhorrence of capital punishment.

Jet Black [late of this parish] asserted that: "since she has a low IQ, there isn't much loss to society if she dies."

To which I retorted: "And who are you to quantify the value of a life to society?"

His explicit [and implicit] position was that people of low IQ are of no value to society, and that their loss to it is not something with which we should really concern ourselves.

That is the position I asked him to support.

[columbus]

The question remains: "And who are you to quantify the value of a life to society?"

This is why I am such a hard-core Pro-Lifer. Humans choosing the death of other humans, whether by abortion or environmental degradation or war, degrades life for all of us. Somehow, the term value seems always to come with the tacit qualifier "cash". No, a third world AIDS orphan, a fetus, a mongoloid child, an Alzhiemers patient, or an Afghani freedom fighter/terrorist don't have much cash value. They are probably negative cash-flow. But they are all uniquely valuable, and in my not so humble opinion worth caring for even if there is no cash profit in it for anybody.

Tom

[Paul1]

I'm going to put it this way: No she shouldn't be executed. Give me a logical rational reason as to why she should. The onus should not be on me to define reasons against the death penalty. It's stupid and I don't care to argue about a stupid form of punishment. Full stop.

[columbus]

I'm going to put it this way: No she shouldn't be executed. Give me a logical rational reason as to why she should. The onus should not be on me to define reasons against the death penalty. It's stupid and I don't care to argue about a stupid form of punishment. Full stop.
Because the human race is better off without people who plan the deaths of their close kin.

I'm not advocating this, I am a Pro-Lifer even when it comes to capital punishment. But it is an easy argument to make.

tom

[Jobar]

Nature doesn't consider us any more valuable than any other megafauna, and down through the ages human societies have always considered individual lives less valuable than the society itself. The band, the tribe, the kingdom, the nation- all those are supposedly more valuable than the individual lives of its members/citizens.

Let me make clear that I'm opposed to the death penalty- but my reason for that is economical, not ethical. It costs more in modern Western courts to execute a criminal, than it does to put one away for life. The ethical arguments do have some force- mainly the impossibility of an infallibly fair trial makes the death penalty problematical. But I don't consider human life to be infinitely valuable.

As to how we put a monetary value on an individual life- hell, insurance companies do it all the time. It may not be admirable, or even very moral- but I think that, given we live in an imperfect world of limited resources, we have no choice but to sometimes count the cost of allowing a human being- total innocent, or red-handed killer- to continue living.

And that's why I think "Who judges?" is the central and burning question here.

[jimbo]

Here's an excerpt from QI dealing with american prison statistics it's enlightening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E7wgFcCefE

[Pendaric]

As a society, we accept that some of our conveniences come at the cost of some of us dying.

Thousands of people die through road accidents each year. If we outlawed cars, or brought the speed limit down to 10 mph, we could reduce those deaths to virtually zero. We don't do this because we judge that the benefits of a working infrastructure are worth the collateral deaths that result from it.

[Barefoot Bree]

Nature doesn't consider us any more valuable than any other megafauna, and down through the ages human societies have always considered individual lives less valuable than the society itself. The band, the tribe, the kingdom, the nation- all those are supposedly more valuable than the individual lives of its members/citizens.

Let me make clear that I'm opposed to the death penalty- but my reason for that is economical, not ethical. It costs more in modern Western courts to execute a criminal, than it does to put one away for life. The ethical arguments do have some force- mainly the impossibility of an infallibly fair trial makes the death penalty problematical. But I don't consider human life to be infinitely valuable.

As to how we put a monetary value on an individual life- hell, insurance companies do it all the time. It may not be admirable, or even very moral- but I think that, given we live in an imperfect world of limited resources, we have no choice but to sometimes count the cost of allowing a human being- total innocent, or red-handed killer- to continue living.

And that's why I think "Who judges?" is the central and burning question here.

Thank you, Jobar, you've summed up my own attitudes perfectly. I think you're the first person I've ever read who admitted to not considering human life to be automatically and infinitely valuable. That attitude seems to be a taboo - but surely many must share it, or we wouldn't have the death penalty (among other things) at all. It's just not p.c. to admit it.

[Jobar]

Our individual lives are priceless to ourselves, since they're the only ones we have- assuming the Buddhists are wrong about reincarnation, of course. But if we all tried to live as if we were infinitely valuable, I think that we'd wind up living out some Hobbesian nightmare.

Deciding matters of life or death for ourselves isn't the ethical minefield that doing it for others usually is. Much of the study of ethics is about how we put a price on a human life; not necessarily a monetary price.

[Sparkles]

I think we tend to look at the value of human life in terms of the current economic paradigms, which brings about way more conflict than we need. It seems at some point we began shaping ourselves around our ideas rather than our ideas around our behavior. The main reason I think this is because of the character of our society, which I've referenced before (http://www.secularcafe.org/showpost.php?p=221607&postcount=29).

The pure logic of economics tends to dehumanize people being that the cost is inflationary and the only way cut it down is to constantly recycle the human resources with people who are young and fresh, putting a premium on the potential output rather than the expertise and generally lowered output. It also tends to be where people try to justify the worst characteristics of humanity first (Hayek, for example). However, we could examine ourselves based on the logic of our actions within these systems and ideas and then modify our behavior accordingly. By this, I mean that we could examine the logic of our behavior in our economics (to continue with the example) and the flaws would perhaps lead to a new way of life that is more harmonious and fruitful.

[columbus]

I think you're the first person I've ever read who admitted to not considering human life to be automatically and infinitely valuable. That attitude seems to be a taboo - but surely many must share it, or we wouldn't have the death penalty (among other things) at all. It's just not p.c. to admit it.
I don't know anyone who considers human life infinitely valuable, and I'm pretty Pro-Life. Lots of things will definitely result in preventable deaths, but the cost of saving everybody is too high.

I think Ford got a raw deal over the Pinto. Yes, they could have made the car safer, by re-engineering the rear under-carriage. Everyone knew that. But they didn't, as it would have added to the cost of the car. They determined that the break-even point was 200,000 dollars per life. Re-engineering would have added more than that to the cost of producing Pintos, so they didn't do it. What nobody seemed willing to discuss is that all those Pinto drivers who died in firey rearend collisions could have chosen safer cars, but didn't. The management of Ford made a decision about the market value of safety to the consumer, and came up with the figure of $200,000. (That was a lot more in the 70's than it is now)

There is a limit to the value of a human life and we make those decisions every day.

Tom