At what age do you all think people have the greatest moral status? I’m tempted to say that young children (maybe aged 2-10 or so) are more important than adolescents, adults, or infants, but don’t have any particularly strong arguments for why that might be the case.
I don’t think children actually have greater moral status, but harming children or allowing children to be harmed carries more evidence of depraved/dangerous mental state because it goes against the ethic of care we are supposed to naturally feel toward children.
If you think in terms of QALYs, that could be one reason to prefer interventions targeted at children. Your average child has more life to live than your average adult, so if you permanently improve their quality of life from 0.8 QALYs per year to 0.95 QALYs per year, that would result in a larger QALY change than the same intervention on the adult.
This argument has numerous flaws. One which comes to mind immediately are that many interventions are not so long lasting, so both adults and children would presumably gain the same. It also is tied to particular forms of utilitarianism one might not subscribe to.
this may be an odd counter position to the normal.
I think that adults are more morally valuable because they have proven their ability to not be murderous etc. Or possibly also to not be the next ghandi. Children could go either way.
Could you explain this a little more? I don’t quite see your reasoning. Leaving aside the fact that “morally valuable” seems too vague to me to be meaningfully measured anyway, adults aren’t immutably fixed at a “moral level” at any given age. Andrei “Rostov Ripper” Chikatilo didn’t take up murdering people until he was in his forties. At twenty, he hadn’t proven anything.
Bob at twenty years old hasn’t murdered anybody, though Bob at forty might. Now you can say that we have more data about Bob at twenty than we do about Bob at ten, and therefore are able to make more accurate predictions based on his track record, but by that logic Bob is at his most morally valuable when he’s gasping his last on a hospital bed at 83, because we can be almost certain at that point that he’s not going to do anything apart from shuffle off the mortal coil.
And if “more or less likely to commit harmful acts in future” is our metric of moral value, then children who are abused, for example, are less morally valuable than children who aren’t, because they’re more likely to commit crimes. That’s not intended to put any words in your mouth by the way, I’m just saying that when I try to follow your reasoning it leads me to weird places. I’d be interested to see you explain your position in more detail.
children who are abused, for example, are less morally valuable than children who aren’t, because they’re more likely to commit crimes
That reminds me of a scene in Psycho-Pass where...
...va gur svefg rcvfbqr, n ivpgvz bs n ivbyrag pevzr vf nyzbfg rkrphgrq ol gur cbyvpr sbepr bs n qlfgbcvna fbpvrgl, onfrq ba fgngvfgvpny ernfbavat gung genhzngvmrq crbcyr ner zber yvxryl gb orpbzr cflpubybtvpnyyl hafgnoyr, naq cflpubybtvpnyyl hafgnoyr crbcyr ner zber yvxryl gb orpbzr pevzvanyf va gur shgher.
I am not keen on a dystopian thought police. We have at the moment a lot more care given to children than to adults. For example children’s hospitals VS adult’s hospitals.
The idea is not drawn out to further conclusions as you have done, but I had to ask why we do the thing where we care about children’s hospitals more than adult’s hospitals, and generally decided that I don’t like the way it is.
I believe common behaviour to like children more comes out of some measure of, “they are cute” and is similar to why we like baby animals more than fully grown ones. Simply because they have a babyness to them. If that is the case then it’s a relatively unfounded belief and a bias that I would rather not carry.
Adults are (probably) productive members of society, we can place moralistic worth on that life as it stands in the relative concrete present, not the potential that you might be measuring when a child grows up. Anyone could wake up tomorrow and try to change the world, or wake up tomorrow and try to lie around on the beach. What causes people to change suddenly? Not part of this puzzle. I am confident that the snapshot gives a reasonably informative view of someone’s worth. They are working hard in EA? That’s their moral worth they present when they reveal with their actions what they care about.
What about old people? I don’t know… Have not thought that far ahead. Was dealing with the cute-baby bias first. I suppose they are losing worth to society as they get less productive. And at the same time they have proven themselves worthy of being held/protected/cared for (or maybe they didn’t).
The urge to protect and prioritize children is partly biological/evolutionary—they have to be “cute” otherwise who’d put up with all the screaming and poop long enough to raise them to adulthood? The urge to protect and nurture them is a survival-of-the-species thing. Baby animals are cute because they resemble human babies—disproportionately big heads, big eyes, mewling noises, helplessness.
But from a moral perspective I’d argue that there is a greater moral duty to protect and care for children because they can neither fend nor advocate for themselves effectively. They’re largely at the mercy of their carers and society in general. An adult may bear some degree of responsibility for his poverty, for example, if he has made bad choices or squandered resources. His infant bears none of the responsibility for the poverty but suffers from it nonetheless and can do nothing to alleviate it. This is unjust.
There’s also the self-interest motive. The children we raise and nurture now will be the adults running the world when we are more or less helpless and dependent ourselves in old age.
And there’s the future-of-humanity as it extends past your own lifetime too, if you value that.
But of course these are all points about moral duty rather than moral value. I’m fuzzier on what moral value means in this context. For example the difference in moral value between the young person who is doing good right now and the old person who has done lots of good over their life, but isn’t doing any right now because that life is nearly over and they can’t. Does ability vs. desire to do good factor into this? The child can’t do much and the end-of-life old person can’t do much, though they may both have a strong desire to do good. Only the adult in between can match the ability to the will.
I’d argue that there is a greater moral duty to protect and care for children because they can neither fend nor advocate for themselves effectively.
I would advocate a “do no harm”, attitude. Rather than a “provide added benefit” just because they are children. I wouldn’t advocate to neglect children, but I wouldn’t put them ahead of adults.
As for what we should do. I don’t have answers to these questions, I suspect it comes down to how each person weighs the factors in their own heads, and consequently how they want the world to be balanced.
Just like some people care about animal suffering and others do not. (I like kids, definitely, but moral value is currently subjectively determined)
It depends very much on the context. In many instances where we want to save lives QALY are a good metric. In other cases like deciding how should be able to sit down in a bus, the metric is worthless.
At what age do you all think people have the greatest moral status? I’m tempted to say that young children (maybe aged 2-10 or so) are more important than adolescents, adults, or infants, but don’t have any particularly strong arguments for why that might be the case.
I don’t think children actually have greater moral status, but harming children or allowing children to be harmed carries more evidence of depraved/dangerous mental state because it goes against the ethic of care we are supposed to naturally feel toward children.
If you think in terms of QALYs, that could be one reason to prefer interventions targeted at children. Your average child has more life to live than your average adult, so if you permanently improve their quality of life from 0.8 QALYs per year to 0.95 QALYs per year, that would result in a larger QALY change than the same intervention on the adult.
This argument has numerous flaws. One which comes to mind immediately are that many interventions are not so long lasting, so both adults and children would presumably gain the same. It also is tied to particular forms of utilitarianism one might not subscribe to.
this may be an odd counter position to the normal.
I think that adults are more morally valuable because they have proven their ability to not be murderous etc. Or possibly also to not be the next ghandi. Children could go either way.
Could you explain this a little more? I don’t quite see your reasoning. Leaving aside the fact that “morally valuable” seems too vague to me to be meaningfully measured anyway, adults aren’t immutably fixed at a “moral level” at any given age. Andrei “Rostov Ripper” Chikatilo didn’t take up murdering people until he was in his forties. At twenty, he hadn’t proven anything.
Bob at twenty years old hasn’t murdered anybody, though Bob at forty might. Now you can say that we have more data about Bob at twenty than we do about Bob at ten, and therefore are able to make more accurate predictions based on his track record, but by that logic Bob is at his most morally valuable when he’s gasping his last on a hospital bed at 83, because we can be almost certain at that point that he’s not going to do anything apart from shuffle off the mortal coil.
And if “more or less likely to commit harmful acts in future” is our metric of moral value, then children who are abused, for example, are less morally valuable than children who aren’t, because they’re more likely to commit crimes. That’s not intended to put any words in your mouth by the way, I’m just saying that when I try to follow your reasoning it leads me to weird places. I’d be interested to see you explain your position in more detail.
That reminds me of a scene in Psycho-Pass where...
...va gur svefg rcvfbqr, n ivpgvz bs n ivbyrag pevzr vf nyzbfg rkrphgrq ol gur cbyvpr sbepr bs n qlfgbcvna fbpvrgl, onfrq ba fgngvfgvpny ernfbavat gung genhzngvmrq crbcyr ner zber yvxryl gb orpbzr cflpubybtvpnyyl hafgnoyr, naq cflpubybtvpnyyl hafgnoyr crbcyr ner zber yvxryl gb orpbzr pevzvanyf va gur shgher.
(rot 13)
Yes, that’s the sort of idea I was getting at—though not anything so extreme.
Of course I don’t really think Elo was saying that at all anyway, I’m not trying to strawman. I’d just like to see the idea clarified a bit.
(We use substitution ciphers as spoiler tags? Fancy!)
I am not keen on a dystopian thought police. We have at the moment a lot more care given to children than to adults. For example children’s hospitals VS adult’s hospitals.
The idea is not drawn out to further conclusions as you have done, but I had to ask why we do the thing where we care about children’s hospitals more than adult’s hospitals, and generally decided that I don’t like the way it is.
I believe common behaviour to like children more comes out of some measure of, “they are cute” and is similar to why we like baby animals more than fully grown ones. Simply because they have a babyness to them. If that is the case then it’s a relatively unfounded belief and a bias that I would rather not carry.
Adults are (probably) productive members of society, we can place moralistic worth on that life as it stands in the relative concrete present, not the potential that you might be measuring when a child grows up. Anyone could wake up tomorrow and try to change the world, or wake up tomorrow and try to lie around on the beach. What causes people to change suddenly? Not part of this puzzle. I am confident that the snapshot gives a reasonably informative view of someone’s worth. They are working hard in EA? That’s their moral worth they present when they reveal with their actions what they care about.
What about old people? I don’t know… Have not thought that far ahead. Was dealing with the cute-baby bias first. I suppose they are losing worth to society as they get less productive. And at the same time they have proven themselves worthy of being held/protected/cared for (or maybe they didn’t).
The urge to protect and prioritize children is partly biological/evolutionary—they have to be “cute” otherwise who’d put up with all the screaming and poop long enough to raise them to adulthood? The urge to protect and nurture them is a survival-of-the-species thing. Baby animals are cute because they resemble human babies—disproportionately big heads, big eyes, mewling noises, helplessness.
But from a moral perspective I’d argue that there is a greater moral duty to protect and care for children because they can neither fend nor advocate for themselves effectively. They’re largely at the mercy of their carers and society in general. An adult may bear some degree of responsibility for his poverty, for example, if he has made bad choices or squandered resources. His infant bears none of the responsibility for the poverty but suffers from it nonetheless and can do nothing to alleviate it. This is unjust.
There’s also the self-interest motive. The children we raise and nurture now will be the adults running the world when we are more or less helpless and dependent ourselves in old age.
And there’s the future-of-humanity as it extends past your own lifetime too, if you value that.
But of course these are all points about moral duty rather than moral value. I’m fuzzier on what moral value means in this context. For example the difference in moral value between the young person who is doing good right now and the old person who has done lots of good over their life, but isn’t doing any right now because that life is nearly over and they can’t. Does ability vs. desire to do good factor into this? The child can’t do much and the end-of-life old person can’t do much, though they may both have a strong desire to do good. Only the adult in between can match the ability to the will.
Yes. I agree with most of what you have said.
I would advocate a “do no harm”, attitude. Rather than a “provide added benefit” just because they are children. I wouldn’t advocate to neglect children, but I wouldn’t put them ahead of adults.
As for what we should do. I don’t have answers to these questions, I suspect it comes down to how each person weighs the factors in their own heads, and consequently how they want the world to be balanced.
Just like some people care about animal suffering and others do not. (I like kids, definitely, but moral value is currently subjectively determined)
It depends very much on the context. In many instances where we want to save lives QALY are a good metric. In other cases like deciding how should be able to sit down in a bus, the metric is worthless.