Moral Value

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"

[Declaration of Independence of the U.S.A]

It is my hope that after reading the following argument, you will consider the above quote to be both inherently flawed yet also of immense practical value.

In the jargon of logic, we use the word 'axiom' to denote the first half of that quote; a truth that is held to be self-evident. The reasoning stems from the notion that it is simply impossible to make any kind of claim without first making some kind of assumption, even if that assumption is something as simple as 'I assume that this is not a dream'. A document which first clearly lays out the axioms upon which further claims are made is one which would appear to be well reasoned, but I think it's quite clear that the second part of the quote simply cannot be true. If nothing else, it is evident to all with eyes that all men look different to one another. It is evident, also, to those with ears that men generally have differences of opinion too. But at the risk of appearing trite, it's reasonable to suggest that most people would probably interpret the phrase further, and that what is meant is that all men are considered to be equally valuable and should therefore have equal rights. I intend to demonstrate that all men are not in fact equally valuable, and to further demonstrate that this does not necessarily mean they should have unequal rights. To avoid the danger of losing the more pragmatic readers here, I want to assert that this does not mean the discourse is meaningless because 'rights' are not the only issue at stake, your moral compass is my primary target.

I love google images!

The first point to contend with is this sticky notion of 'value'. It's easy for us to think that things can have absolute value, but careful thought can very quickly unravel this misconception. A 20 dollar note appears to have absolute value, after all your 20 dollar note is no more or less valuable than mine. Economists are of course acutely aware that the value of your 20 dollar note lies in its capacity to purchase your fruit, taxi fare, or film ticket. But the prices of those commodities vary with respect to the state of the domestic economy and with respect to the power of foreign economies. So perhaps money was a poor example? After all, money is just a voucher designed to lubricate the mass exchange of goods and services. But even those goods and services have relative value. An apple is more valuable to a hungry man than a full one. The point to note, therefore, is that value is something which is ascribed by an individual rather than something which belongs to the item or service in question. Pizza is worth more to me than fried liver because I can't stand fried liver, but I know people for whom that is not true.

The question of moral value, therefore, must also be relative. And this is quite clearly true, despite societal norms. The ten commandments of the Christian religion must be more valuable to a Christian than they are to me. My personal well being is more valuable to me, than it is to a stranger. But how does this apply in the moral domain? how can one human being be worth more or less than another?

Well, while you may not be consciously aware of it, your unconscious mind is constantly judging (and re-evaluating) the value of the people which surround you. Most of us consider our family to be more valuable to us than strangers, and this must be because we have either consciously or unconsciously determined them to be so. My experience has been that most people have not written a list of traits which they respect and subsequently found that these traits are more common in their family members than in the general populace. This implies that the decision to value your family seems to have been made on an unconscious level. But how is the unconscious mind making these decisions? Does my unconscious mind respect the same qualities that my conscious mind respects? If I value beauty,  compassion, and intelligence, then surely so will my unconscious mind?

There are obvious reasons to believe that your unconscious and conscious mind agree about many things, but there are also good reasons to believe there will be differences. This study (http://www.yale.edu/acmelab/articles/bargh_chen_burrows_1996.pdf), for example, demonstrates that our unconscious minds are probably more racist (and stereotyped in many other ways) than our conscious minds will allow us to admit (if you're too lazy to read the paper then this paragraph on wiki will give you the cliff notes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)#In_daily_life). I am aware that this is a surprising result for many people, but it is one of many studies which indicate that we are largely ruled by our unconscious minds.

This evidence forces us to make an uncomfortable admission: we are unconsciously judging everyone around us and we, for the most part, have no idea what reasoning those judgements are based on. Worse than that, we know that the only reasoning our unconscious minds could possibly use is the accumulation of its experience. Does that mean I have to feel guilty about watching action films because the violence encourages my subconscious mind to hurt other people? well yes and no. Watching one violent film is unlikely to change my entire perspective on violent behaviour, but it will have a subtle normalising effect over time, so perhaps I should have the presence of mind not to watch violent films every day.

But surely, just because I'm aware that person A is more intelligent than person B doesn't mean that I have to believe that person A is worth more than person B and should be treated differently? True! but that's because intelligience is just one of a myriad of traits I value and respect. How could I value someone who is intelligent but has no compassion? I could respect the trait of intelligence, but it would be difficult to value the individual entirely. A simple thought experiment highlights the point well:

you are kidnapped and your captor asks you to decide who, out of two people, is to be murdered. The first is Hitler/Stalin etc. (pick your preferred evil archetype) and the second is Mother Teresa/princess Diana etc. (pick your preferred good archetype).

Even though we're uncomfortable with being forced to make this decision, the 'right' answer is entirely clear to us. So if almost everyone agrees on the answer to this question, there must be some basis on which everyone has made this judgement, i.e. the qualities of one individual were regarded more positively by most people than the qualities of the other individual. If the differing value of human life is true in this extreme scenario then there is no reason, in principle, why it should not also be true in any lesser scenario.

Before marching off to judge other humans, however, I would argue that the practical benefits of treating all other humans as equal are so great (e.g. the abolishment of slavery), that it is counter-productive to highlight the differences in most of our daily lives. It is true to say that some people are more valuable to humanity than others, but we might not have enough information to make a reasonable judgement, and even when we do everyone in society benefits so much by treating all other humans as equal there's usually no practical reason to attend to the differences. It's a bit like trying to choose between two nearly identical cakes in a cake shop. There's a point at which the time you waste trying to decide which cake is better outweighs the difference in tastiness. If you spend too long trying to decide which one you want your lunch break will be over and you wont have time to buy either one. The differences in moral value between people are usually so slight, or so complex and difficult to quantify, that if you focus on them you lose out on the creamy frosted tastiness of equality.

I'll take a couple of equality cakes to go please!

So maybe you think to yourself "the discussion has no value! you show that people are not equal but suggest that I act as if they were". It is important to keep the differences in perspective, but it's also important to consider how we value other humans. To defer judgement to our unconscious minds is a morally untenable position to take: firstly because it is either cowardly or lazy, and secondly because it seems to miss the broader implications of the discussion. In every day life people really are making these judgements! Healthcare organisations are deciding where to apportion their resources. Should they put more money towards developing new treatments for blood cancer or bone cancer? Why does one group of individuals have more right to survive than the other? 'But I'm not a doctor!' you might say. But you probably are part of a democratic society in which you have a right to an opinion, and a responsibility to express it. But the implications of this discussion go deeper still. Politicians decide who should pay more tax which, while generally not causing the end of lives, certainly affects the quality of them. If taxing the poor more than the rich caused the nation to be wealthier (by encouraging foreign investment, for example), would that be the right thing to do? It wouldn't feel fair, but everyone would be better off.

Ultimately we must extend this argument and ask ourselves: do we value what's fair, or do we value what works? When what's fair also works we're in luck, but reality doesn't always give us this option. I think that there are times in life when we have to give up our childish notions of what's fair and simply be pragmatic. It's not that justice is inherently a naive conception, it's simply that it's not always the best tool for the job.

Oh, and just enjoy whichever cake you happen to get.