dottedmint

I admit that this probably isn't truely an abortion issue but this question was raised by a member in an abortion debate.

Also I'm not sure if there is a better place to put this issue.

The question was origionally something to the effect of...

"Why do you value the life of a fetus more than the life of a dog or some other non-human animal?"

This may not have been the exact wording but it is close enough for now.

I was unable to answer this question at the time (and still find it a tricky quesiton) so I felt it could be interesting to see what others in here feel.

One thing that I know some in here would argue is that humans are more valuable because humans have souls.

While I think this is true I am unalbe to prove that I have a soul and that my dog does not have a soul. (there are some days when he is very 'human-like')
Yet I would value the life of my kid over the life of my dog.

Why is that?

One thing that is suggested is that we value the intelligence that humans have vs that of other animals.

While this is true it is somewhat misleading because we do not value the life of an intelligent human more than a human of average intelligence.

So why do we value the life of humans more than the life of non-humans?

Is there a simple answer to this question?

Another question that was posed is...

Would we value the life of a human more than the life of some Alien species that some day came to Earth?

While I cannot speak for others in here this is my answer.....

No.

IF sometime in the future we are visited by some alien species that had similar ethics/morals/cultural standards that humans have I would say it would be wrong to somehow place a lesser value on their life vs human life.

This is of course assuming they were not here trying to take over the planet and enslave us......

So why do we value human life more than non-human animals?

I know there are some people who would claim that they don't value human life anymore than they value non-human animal life but I question their honesty.

I have no doubt that if they had to make a choice between saving their childs life or saving the life of their puppy they would save their childs life first.

So again....

Why do we value human life more than non-human animal life?

1069

Well, I'm a vegetarian, and animal life is very sacred to me.
That said, one cannot help seeing bloody, chopped-up chunks of animal flesh (often with bones jutting out every whichway) wherever one goes.
Meat is inherently a part of our culture.
It depreciates the value of animal life, at least in my eyes.

If we lived in a war zone, and routinely saw chopped up human body parts every time we stepped out the door, it would probably degrade human life in all of our eyes after awhile, because we'd become numb to it. We'd realize that humans are really just meat... that if you chopped a person up into manageable portions the way you'd chop up a pig or a cow, that person would look no different than the cuts of meat we see every day at the grocery store.

If given the option of sacrificing one of my cats in order to spare the life of an unknown person halfway around the world, I don't think I'd do it. I love my cats; they are part of my family.
However, if I had to kill one of them to save one of my kids' lives- or even kill every cat on the planet in order to save one of my kids' lives- I'd do it without hesitation.
Basically, people and animals I know personally and care about take precedence- in my personal set of priorities- to people and animals I do not know personally and am never likely to meet.
But people do not automatically take precedence over animals, in my hierarchy of importance.

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dottedmint

Hmmmm... Soylent Green ???


So even you would value your kids life more than the life of your cat....

But why?

I don't think there is really an easy answer to this....

Chuck

First of all, Anyone who believes the Bible will agree that some animals have souls too. At least they're in heaven, Wolves, lambs, leopard, goats, cows, bears. lions oxen and many more are mentioned.

Second, if your not religious and don't believe that God gave man dominion over all the Earth, man has evolved into the world's best hunter. Eyes to the front, opposable thumbs and meat cutting teeth, are my evidence. Man's tooth enamel is too thin to eat grasses constantly. I know many people chose not to eat meat, but that's unatural IMHO

Valuing human life more than others is natural too. Every species will protect their own, while very few try to protect another. Excepting of course, the cute little human interest stories about a cat nusing a baby rabbit or a pig or something like that. But wolves will protect other wolves, especially if say, a bear would attack a pack of them.

So it's only natural for man to value human life more than another species of life. This would be true in case of visiting aliens too.

Now me,,,,,,, I don't value ALL human life as much as others, or even my dogs. For example, I'd kill bin laden long before I'd kill one of my hunting dogs. And that kalid shiek mohammed? HE should be eating cheap dog food and my dogs eating his politically correct, religiously sanctioned meals instead.

Just my opinion, but I ain't running the world.

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Don't try to change my mind, and I won't try to change yours. Let's debate, and let the winner take the undecided.

1069

I'd value my kids more than your kids too, though. See how that works.
Nevertheless, I probably would sacrifice one of my cats to save your kid's life. Maybe. Probably. Yes. I would.

But to save the life of some hypothetical starving kid in Tanzania or the Ukraine or somewhere? Probably not.

I don't know; it's weird. At least I'm not hypocritical. There are only four people in this world I actually love, plus myself.
That doesn't mean I want bad things to happen to everybody else, or that I want them to suffer or be unhappy, or that I don't care whether they do.
It's just that I wouldn't take action- at the expense of myself or those I love- to alleviate their suffering or prevent bad things from happening to them.
If I could prevent bad things from happening to them or alleviate their suffering at no cost to myself or my loved ones, of course I would.

I had a friend die of ovarian cancer last year. She wasn't much older than me.
The experience taught me a lot about suffering and dying, because while I've known a few other people who died, they all died quickly and painlessly, as young people usually do- drug overdoses and car accidents.
So while my friend was dying, I thought a lot about life and death and mortality (she lasted just over a year from the time of her diagnosis).
I tried to heal her with my hands, just as an experiment. I'm not at all superstitious and I don't believe in the supernatural, but I figured it was worth a shot. My grandmother was said to have this healing power- was even sort of famous for it- so I figured, hey, it's worth a try. And my friend gave me permission to try it. But it didn't work, of course.
I thought about how- hypothetically- if I could take the illness away from her and give it to somebody else, someone we didn't know, I would do that.
I wouldn't give it to anybody I knew, and I certainly wouldn't take it myself, but I'd give it to somebody else, some stranger, if that would make my friend be healthy again.

That's the thing, though... it is all just hypothetical, because I am not a superstitious person and I know deep down that my thoughts and wishes have no effect on reality. So it's safe for me to make wishes like that- to wish I could take illness away from someone I care about and give it to a stranger instead- because I know there's no chance of this ever happening.
If I believed- objectively- that it might actually happen, then I might be more careful about making such wishes and thinking about such things.
As it is, these are just idle fancies.

We have a thread around here somewhere about whether we think some lives are more important than others, or whether we think some people have more value than others, or something like that. It was a few months ago we had that thread.
The people who were honest nearly all admitted that they assign greater value to their friends and family members than to strangers.

Kandahar

I agree with this answer, and it's the main reason I am pro-choice. A fetus has very little intelligence.

In the grand scheme of things, the difference in intelligence between an intelligent human and an average human is almost insignificant, compared to the difference in intelligence between a human and an animal.

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tecoyah

Likely, we value the Human because it thinks as we do, and is aware of what it is. We understand it "feels" as we do for want of a better term. Once this aspect of Humanity is gone, only a body is left and we often pull the plug, allowing the husk to become a corpse.
Without the ability to think as a human, at least in some rudamentary form, we do not place the same value on the creature.

dottedmint

Then does this mean that you value the life of an adult more than the life of a child?

A child (especially a newborn) has no more "intelligence" than some animals and yet I would value their life more than the animals life.

In fact there are some animals that have more "intelligence" than a newborn.

Would you value the life of the "intelligent" animal more than you would value the life of the newborn baby?

FutureIncoming

There is a Biological Answer to that question. All through Nature, it is generally observed that when animals of different species fight, it is often to the death, but when animals of the same species fight, it is seldom to the death.

Think about it. A species that constantly fights itself to the death is going to become extinct more easily than a species that prefers to fight other species to the death.

The existing species of the world are the survivors, the ones that have genetic programs sufficient to let them cope, and prosper. Thus is it Perfectly Natural for any species to favor itself over any other species.

This includes humans, a species that in addition to Natural Genetic Programming, also has high analytic intelligence and Free Will. We are able to understand the influences in our lives, be they genetic or have any other cause, and if we take the time to think about it, we can choose whether or not to submit to those influences. Free Will lets us separate Stimulus and Response, but only when we use it. Thoughtless acts tend to be as purely animal as the acts of any ordinary animal that lacks Free Will.

So. Our "base instincts" include a prejudice for human life. And our base instincts do not know that too much of a good thing is always a bad thing. That is something we humans only understand at the intellectual level, usually by learning it the hard way.

The dictum, "be fruitful and multiply" is a pure expression of that built-in prejudice for human life. But it does not say how the increasing multitudes can be fed. It does not say where they can find sufficient fresh water, or what to do with the wastes they generate. It does not even say how to fit ever-growing numbers of humans onto the land surface of the world.

A global Malthusian Catastrophe would be humans learning the hard way that too many humans is a Bad Thing.

Now. We claim that our intelligence is a major reason for declaring ourselves superior to, and masters over, all ordinary animals. What good is it if we cannot master ourselves? Some would say that this means we should resist all urges to indulge in sex. Others would say our Wills are not truly Free if we can never let ourselves say "yes". And others would say that the average human adult already resists urges aplenty, to indulge in sex. After all, when was the last time you heard about a public orgy in the middle of a city, due to humans not resisting those urges?

So sex happens, and at a rate which might actually seem reasonable for Free Wills, considering that last sentence. Next and Biologically, sex is linked to reproduction, although rather less blatantly in humans than in most other species. Humans used their intelligence to figure this out, and concluded that they had the right, because of having Free Will, to decide whether or not pregnancies should be one of the consequences of sex. Various birth-control methods were developed, to enforce the Choices made by Free Wills.
How about instead of asking, "Why do we value human life more than non-human life?", we ask, "Why should we value human life as much as human intelligence?" Because it's not obvious that we should. Indeed, the possibility of a Malthusian Catastrophe implies that it is NOT intelligent to value human life so thoroughly...mostly because about 99% of them will die if the Catastrophe is typical, so what good would it do, to value them before they die anyway?


Somewhat off-topic:
One of the odd things about birth control is that it has such a high failure rate. Name almost any other technology, and a 1% failure rate is considered to be totally unacceptable. (Inside your computer, failure to process data properly tends to occur at a rate of about 1 bit per trillion bits processed, not one-per-hundred.) While we cannot say that abortion was invented as a backup plan, for when ordinary birth control fails, we most certainly can recognize of the fact that abortion exists, and note that it indeed does qualify for use as a backup plan, when ordinary birth control fails. And since about 50% of abortions are done because ordinary birth control failed, it is quite apparent that abortion is indeed being used as a backup plan.

__________________
I'm waiting for a pro-lifer to succeed at this challenge:
Define "person" to be Universally accurate, regardless of physical nature, to distinguish people from mere animals, anywhere.
Example: if God exists, is non-biological, and is a person, then God is a person because {-definitive criteria here-}.
After that, explain how unborn humans are so different from mere animals that they qualify as persons.

OR:
What provable Objective Truth makes prohibition of abortion logical?