Inherent human value

Great Debates
1

I figure that an inherency test for human value must include complete objective and subjective value with no margin of error on either side or both sides in tandem. Value, in short, constitutes that which is selected. Inherent value constitutes that which is always selected or never de-selected. Inherent human value would by that which is never de-selected of or by a human or human or anything outside of a human - with respect to a human.

The question of whether a human is inherently valuable or whether they can work to embody inherent value, seem to be open ended questions. But, I want to submit a test that if passed, IMO, measures inherent value. Can it be passed? That’s it’s own question. The debate here is whether or not it actually measures what it claims to measure… namely: inherent human value. aka. You are an inherently valuable human being.

Now, before listing the 3 conditions, I want to be clear, that while I have my suspicions of behaviors that will and will not pass the test… it strikes me that these are mere opinions compared to the idea that this test will ultimately determine which behaviors those are. I’d like to say, for example, that this test strains out delusion – but maybe possessng delusion is inherently valuable in humans – sounds like a contradiction – but that might be the result.

Condition 1: Tell anyone that you encounter or that you possibly can, “If you ever want me to kill myself for ANY reason, just say so, and I’ll do it.”. This is transparent de-selection.

De-selection under this condition is evidence that inherent value is not possessed, is not being translated.

Condition 2: Make it as easy as possible for someone to kill you without your knowledge without them having to confront you (as they do in condition 1). This is non-transparent de-selection.

De-Selection under this condition solidifies the two aspects with which existence de-selects you – either transparently or non-transparently. To not be de-selected by these conditions shows further evidence that you have inherent value and translate this value to existence at large. It also tests the cognition against both the intent and the inanimate – both, which are mechanisms at work in your possible de-selection.

Condition 3: Make it as easy as possible for others to de-select themselves, such that anything that would make them hesitate, were they to consider it, is addressed such that this tension is not clouding the inherency being sought. As little tension as possible.

If nobody de-selects themselves under your watch on condition 3, you have passed the final inherency test, and are thus inherently valuable and are translating inherent value as a being.

The purpose of this inherency test, is to reveal what is of inherent value both in body and intent. For example, people believe that they eat food to survive. What if you don’t even exist? What if eating food has little if anything to so with survival? How are these possible delusions weeded out of a mind that considers itself aware that it exists? That is the purpose of the inherency test. I will argue that this test does accomplish this goal, that it’s the only test capable of revealing value mentally in both absolute and subjective manners without any loophole for delusion or propoganda, or room to carve out a false belief.

In a manner of speaking, this is the solution to meta-ethics.

2

This OP makes me quite suspicious.

But I roughly agree with what I think is the outlined premise, to wit, if there were no impediments to murder or suicide, the only people that could possibly remain in such a state would be those that were universally valued. Roughly agree. But there is something else these criteria select for, and that is the fastest trigger finger. I may personally be valued by every person save you, yet if I kill you I suddenly become inherently valuable? Is this really a solution to the issue, or a redefinition of “inherent”?

Let me back up a bit. First, I feel there should certainly be no impediment to suicide as such. It should be available without shame to everyone. As this is a purely abstract discussion I will not even begin to elaborate on the practical issues this raises; as a matter of principle, your life is yours to find full of purpose or devoid of it, teeming with value or wholly lackluster and worthless, etc. Without the express permission to take your own life, you are quite likely a sort of slave to other people’s ideas. Suicide is not an escape, of course, but that is not what I’m saying. It is my life to do with as I please, and so long as there are things I am forbidden from doing to myself I am a servant to other people’s desires, a means to their ends.

However, what you propose here is that this condition, if suitable, should be universal, should be an inter-subjective criterion. Not only should I be able to take my own life if I see fit, but so should I be able to take someone else’s life if I see fit. This is a strange universalization of the former principle, but I see what the reason behind it is: something that is inherently valuable can only be so if all parties agree; ergo, all parties need a method to indicate things of no value; our method of recognizing things of no value, in this case, is killing.

I think it is probably clear, though, that this criteria fails because even those with no value are able to remove those who have value in an attempt to create inherent value. As I noted a few paragraphs above, if you have a group of people that are mostly valued, there is some configuration of murder that will create your definition of “inherent” value. But, I think it should go without saying (though I’m saying it anyway), this is not “inherent” in anything about the people, only in the selection criteria. Choose a different selection criteria, and you have a different set of inherently valued individuals.

3

Rather, there is some configuration of killing…

4

Hey, why just make it easy for people to kill you? Why not just try jumping off bridges - if people really value you, they’ll catch you, yeah?

Or you could combine this plan with a test for the existence of a benevolent and interventionist God - just sit there playing Russian roulette. The longer you survive, the more God values you.

5

I suppose I don’t see a difference between a rock rolling down a hill and a person killing you, with respect to inherent value… each of these values being representative of ones interaction with the broader scope of that which exists. If you’re going to even begin arriving at a place of cognition and being where an astroid doesn’t decimate the planet (and subsequently, you), the fact that you can’t pass the inherency test with your next-door neighbor is grim evidence with respect to whether or not your intent is vulnerable to circumvention. The problem with having evidence of intent circumvention is almost tautological… in that, while you may profess linguistically that you are an intentional being, you have evidence that you are not!! Hence the inherency test, to push the absolute limit so as to gleen the difference between linguistic value and actual value. A ‘balls to the wall’ appraoch to eradicate the lingering questions of solipsism. Why do you go to the fridge for food? Some people suggest that they do this for their survival. But what does that mean? The survival of their intent? Do they even HAVE an intent? If so, what does food have to do with this… the correlation between intent preservation and the ingestion of food (assuming you even exist to ingest the food). The survival of your body? How can it be ‘your body’ if there is no intent from which to eqaute the existence of a “you”. People say all sorts of things… they have all sorts of thoughts. Does this sequence correlate at all to the behaviors observed? Does a person have more money than others because they are more valuable? Less valuable? Equal value? Do the reasons for aquiring or moving correlate to demonstrable cause and effect?

The point in final, is that a being de-selected under burden of the inherency test, is already proving ones lack of inherency with respect to any thought and combination of behavior that they represent. I suppose an additional criterion that seems obvious to me, is that you don’t kill yourself or another person… as for starters, it might not be possible to kill yourself. The problem of suicide (actual – not the ‘re-incarnation’ (whatever that means) stuff) is just as complex as the problem of eternal life – they require complete knowledge to complete with certainty, with intent. In the murder scenario… killing another person, you have determined that the value of another human being is uninherent, which falls back on you as a member of the species… you create your own death in this sense, or rather, at least assure that it’s ok to circumvent human intent, which contradicts the belief that you even have one. And this gets back to the problem of going to the fridge for food.

Finally, I think that the test is as even handed as can be with respect to what it’s looking to find… inherent purpose. It’s not looking for a continuum… someone a little ‘worse’ kills someone a little ‘better’, as you suggest. It’s a manner of thinking about how secure the criterion of this test is, which I think isn’t very arguable. People will suggest that it’s extreme, but it’s meant to test INHERENT value. What this provides an opportunity for, is to look out at the world and reflect upon what is actual with respect to purpose and reason and value. How long would you, I or any of our heroes or whatnot (or Gods even) last under the criteria of the inherency test? What does that say about what we as individuals represent? In this sense, I think the test addresses the topic of value from all directions. I personally find that anything short of adopting this test is anti-work-of-intentional-being. Being aware that you exist is hard labor. That’s part of the point too. Do others really want to subject themselves to their own liguistic solutions of ethics to people who have transcendent abstraction of existence over their own? This idea of warring against others contradicts at all points IMestimation. Warring against yourself in an effort to translate purpose to others strikes me as having the most even and objective justice possible. Everything seems to exude tautology with this test. Maybe I’m missing something.

6

The “you” part is your intent. If a person catches you from intentionally jumping off a bridge with your plan to die from jumping that bridge, you have had your intent circumvented… or rather, those people didn’t value “you”.

In the instance that you jump the bridge (in a supposedly empty forest) with the faith that people, a deity or a breeze from existence is out there to rescue you every time… this is certainly a manner of addressing the inherency test.

The reason I don’t choose this rule is because it re-enforces the private access ideology that steers individuals away from representing a purpose that translates to all being. In short, the two don’t correlate. Firstly, someone’s bound to survive, either from unknown determinism, luck, inherent value or trickery. How do we remove this non-transparency to determine that the value is inherent? We use the will of the human species linguistically, the seemingly infinite power to deny, as the criterion to measure the inherent purpose of an ambiguois situation. Surviving a billion bridge jumps isn’t going to match the extreme of that criteria. Now if someone else asks you to jump the bridge… that’s an order of deslection from an intentional being – and if you’re trying to avoid suicide intentionally (which is a way of saying “as an intentional being, if I die, it’s my fault” – taking responsibility for your life) – then this order from an intentional being is evidence of the incompleteness of your own lack of survival will, to the degree that you are of the set of intentional being and being de-selected by it.

7

Ok, what if a nasty dictator orders, over the radio and TV, all his political enemies and all the members of some ethnic group to go kill themselves. That’s hardly a good outcome, you just end up with one terrible person remaining, and a lot of good people dead.

Effectively, you’re selecting for willingness to kill and efficiency in doing so.

8

This came up last time, not that you’d know that. To keep the convesation moving along, I made some patch rule about needing to confront the person “in person” etc…

What I didn’t say at the moment was that I agree that if a ‘crazy psychopathic, sociopathic dictator’ tells a billion people on tv to do it, that yes, they should do it. The first step is accepting personal responsibility for taking the responsibility of life under ones purveiw. This step doesn’t make a whole lot of sense until one begins to examine what ideas like life, death, survival and suicide constitute. This is the personal responsibility step. The external responsibility steps include making it easy for your death to occur without your knowledge, and to make it easy for others to get out as well.

Part of understanding the inherency aspect of this test, is to understand that, this “dictator” is an existing human that utters linguistic tokens capable of being understood by you as a desire from them for your de-selection. When looking at ideas of ‘critical-mass’ with respect to inherency, it becomes clear that this person is YOUR responsibility, if you plan to have the types of options that inherency affords. That they select you (without even knowing you), is indicative that you haven’t done ENOUGH. The whole point of the inherency test is to plow through possible delusion with respect to your opinions on what you believe value is.

The first step is the most difficult. The last two steps require some effort (build the stuff), but ultimately become a form of objective monitoring systems with respect to purpose being translated. If someone exists life on your watch, you not only have to prevent all other exits, now you have the additional task of ressurrecting that consent, when the lack of options that drove them away are present, such that they can re-decide. All of these processes are necessary to run completeness with respect to surviving or dying with intent. The ‘dictator’ is a symptom of a larger disease that is found in a world where people don’t take responsibility for their own life and death cycle with respect to operating under the idea that you have an intent to manipulate such choices. That ‘dictator’ is here because of past ‘lazyness’ – unfortunately, becoming accountable for your life, working towards the actual with respect to these ideas of making conscious decisions intentionally, requires that one clearly see the situation present, and their role in accomplishing the only task set before them.

It’s ultimately not homicide that being selected. With zero homicide and suicide tension, and a species wired to ‘survive’ in some manner (as some suggest)… the test places stronger pressure on the survival aspect of the species with respect to the observation that it’s easy for us to ignore delusions because of situations self validations. These delusions literally run as broad as whether one even exists, or if they do, whether they are aware of that existence.

By standing there and groaning about being selected “Ahh, they win, they had the news camera… darn-it”. Is to not understand that they didn’t win, and by virtue of your de-selection, you didn’t win either. By refusing to do work with respect to consent, the cycle continues… the cognition of the species erodes and we provide absolutely no future for ourselves or our ‘children’ (providing a better future for children being a common excuse for many behaviors perpetrated upon others – I tend to think subconsciously that most people in the species only have children to give them an excuse to abuse/exploit other people).

Do you realy think that dictator ‘won’? Won what? If your only goal in existence is to not be selected by the ‘dictator’ and they select you… that’s a PERSONAL goal involving personal responsibility. You lost your own game of survival. The point of the inherency test is to alert to the idea that losing this personal game of survival is exactly the same as losing the game of survival anyways. People want options. What’s the way to test whether or not you’re even on the right track. You can do some of the processing internally, without accepting the test… how long would I last under the inherency test, my child, my teacher, my hero, my God? If you’re not lasting more than 5 minutes in your own brain, or even your own child! (maybe they’ll kill themselves if it’s easier)… what WORK are you doing as an intentional being? Take a look at your heroes or whatnot… Are they working or doing the opposite of work?

9

Dude, I was trying to be polite by pointing out flaws in your argument, as I understand it, but this idea is just plain stupid. If this idea was ever implemented, there’d just be a whole lot of death and no meaningful outcome.

Is this some kind of oddball thought exercise? Where are you coming from, here? Is it a joke by a classful of philosophy students on crack?

10

I see whole lot of death and arguments of no meaningful outcome already. I see that every birth is arguably an act of homicide. I see that people are not availed to the options they desire. I’ve heard the rumor that I exist.

Let me ask you this… If you place strong protections on measuring consent, how is meaning being less circumvented than it already is (there already is a lot of killing)?

What does it say about the “meaningfulness” of what you’re doing, that the only difference between you having what you have is that you make it more difficult for people to kill themselves? You give people options, and poof, your meaning becomes accountable to coersion that was previously hidden. What does that say about the meaningfullness of their consent when the options weren’t there? One could argue legally, that they weren’t even beings of consent in such an environment. And what does that make you?

What is coersion? Is it agreement? Hardly. Coersion is what occurs when options are missing. Agreement is what occurs when options are unillateral.
How are you going to find that unillateral agreement of intentional being… that ability to give you options that allow to be able to correlate your intent with aspects that circumvent it, if you spend your whole life “succeeding” by hiding options?

Do you truly argue that it’s less meaningful to raise a child who doesn’t use extremely easy methods of suicide at their disposal than a child who does not have access to those means? Even if the child does select those easy means, given that they have access, how is that less meaningful than the current state of affairs? Guess what? You didn’t translate a purpose for that child existing, with just a bit more pressure. What again was your purpose for having that child in the first place? To make a slave? Why are you having children? (you may very well be single, I’m throwing out generalizations with respect to the points I’m intending to make).

Without that pressure, how is a being even accountable to translating purpose? Ok, so you have a kid… they aren’t aware of how much tension for suicide is in their environment, and you aren’t accountable to that tension. Their minds become wired to think that survival is a matter of coersion, and then they die in 80 years or 150 years, or 100,000 years, against their consent. You don’t have the pressure to abstract inherent purpose, and you spread the disease to your child… how is this “meaningful”? Even if you can argue that it is meaningful, how is it MORE meaningful than either raising or losing a child under this pressure?

Look at the precarious line that “power” straddles with respect to their orientation. Think of a president… drop suicidal tension just a smidge and it become glaringly obvious what’s holding that power" together: Lies, ommission, delusion. If you want to peirce the heart of the pervasiveness of delusion and propoganda, as hidden and non-transparent as it gets, both with respect to yourself and others, look no further than the fundamental measuring tools of consent with respect to that which measures it in absolute and relative terms simultaneously. You arguably have one life. You arguably don’t have to lose that life. And yet demonstrably, by ignoring these measuring tools, embracing a life that allows delusion to thrive.

11

The OP is nonsense.

The desire to kill does not necessarily depend on the moral worth of the victim.

Geh, whatever.

12

Dude, you’re making sentences, but you’re not really making sense. Why don’t you hang around at the SDMB for a while and once you’ve got the hang of the place, post your updated thought exercise?

13

You stated that this would only result in meaningless killing… lots of it.
Lots of killing already occurs. How is any of it meaningful? To clarify one of the arguments of current, rampant, meaningless killing, I stated that every birth is arguably an act of homicide. How many births occur each year? In general, I’m not sure how to explain to someone who isn’t aware that they exist that they aren’t aware that they exist, or that there are methods of measuring whether one is aware that they exist. I take full responsibility for not communicating this. I’m not even sure how possible it is to communicate this.

14

It’s not, according to the way that “birth” and “homicide” are conventionally defined. A good rule of thumb is that, if you’re going to use words in a way that differs from common usage, you should make sure you very clearly define those terms before using them.

15

How is birth conventionally defined?

Let’s just say, when a human is first severed from any sort of tether (umbillical for example), or when a child first breathes air through its respiratory system. This is still extremely vague – but I’ll accept it for purposes of discussion.

How is murder conventionally defined?

Intentionally engaging in an act that is known to cause human death, prior to or without that humans consent. How’s that for a quick definition?

To clarify…
Birth isn’t the leading cause of preventable death… that would be any activity that can compell pregnancy, or rather, the formation of a zygote.

16

Homicide is generally defined as the voluntary killing of a human being or something like that. But fertilization of an egg and giving birth doesn’t end a person’s life…it starts it.

17

I’d render problematic the valorization model manifestly implict in the independently considerable objectivities and subjectivities to which fundamental transcendental faultlessness is rigorously ascribed as prerequisite stipulation. The inherency of value distilled procedurally thence necessarily sustains perfection indiscernable with regards to the subjective contingency as incorporated in the primary term of your introductory explication and definitive precondition, save for hypothetical mechanisms for transliterating subjectivities to falsifiable objective parameters, which I doubt you have.

And do you really need to write like a goddam poststructuralist theorist?

18

And without providing the option to that being of being able to not end it, particularly in the instance where mortality is considered by most to be 100%, this is an intentional act of homicide. If you don’t bring a person here, they cannot die… at a minimum, this is manslaughter. Getting behind the wheel with .5 blood alcohol with a passenger isn’t an act of intentionally killing someone either… but C’MON !!! You are an intentional being aware of cause and effect! You as a scheming parent to be, are expected to take responsibility for the consent of beings in your purveiw.

What’s critical with whether something is murder or not, is NOT the act of killing. It is whether that killing was consented. All the definitions of “starting life” as an act of homicide can be circumvented IF you make it easy for the child to leave at all times. The only way to get around this is to calculate the possible consent of the child as being oreinted at any moment such that it does not want to be here… and to remove as much tension as possible to grant this decision… so that coersion isn’t a question. That’s the very least that can be done, considering that birth is an act of unconsent with respect to the child… where the act of murder can already be defined as plucking a being from oblivion (which cannot be undone!!).

19

I’m not exactly sure what the OP is getting at, but I think the question boils down to: If a society existed in which murder was freely allowed, certain people would be eliminated quickly while others would stick around for a long time - possibly rising into positions of leadership. If we studied these “sucessful” individuals, what sort of traits would they posses and could these traits [which allowed them to survive] be considered a measure of “inherent human value”?

I think it is indeed a very interesting question.

20

They would be warlords. We see this time and again in countries where law and order have broken down and there is no punishment for crimes but what the victims and their friends can extract by force from the perpetrators.