I’d like to make it clear that this discussion is about how to determine the performance of a health care system. Not the metaphysical value of human life in its various combinations and permutations.
That’s odd, it seems to me that you introduced the idea back here, as noted elsethread.
Some of the assumptions behind my proposal is that 1) lower disfunction in the served population is a positive outcome from a health care system, and 2) lengthening lifespan in the served population is a positive outcome from a health care system.
Sure. It does not follow that these are the only things that matter, though. Taken alone, these would authorize killing people to use their organs to save others. We recognize that’s a bad idea not just deontologically (“murder is wrong”) but consequentially also (“it wouldn’t work out well, doing that would cause problems beyond the immediate neighborhood being contemplated”) and, for that matter, categorically (“if you murder person A, this implies you don’t value individual life, so why are you saving persons B through F?”) and acausally (“if we lived in a world where we did things like that, other people would do stuff to us that we wouldn’t like”).
The reason I need a counterproposal from you, at least a partial one, is that so far what you have said amounts to “boo on not valuing disabled people, but I can’t go as far as to say that your proposal isn’t the best one possible.”
Okay, here ya go: “Instead of trying to decide whose life is more valuable, when you possess a life-saving resource and encounter a life that (to the best of your knowledge) is in need of saving, you save that life.”
In business terms, “first come, first served.”
In hippie terms, “love the one you’re with.”
In timeless terms, “if you don’t save a life when you have the chance, then what makes you think that future-you would ever choose to save a life?”
In progressive terms, “if not now, when?”
Take the Schelling point. Discard the assumption that you know (or should know) how to value one life over another. In the (statistically impossible) case of simultaneous arrivals, pick arbitrarily. This avoids setting yourself as judge over other people, and thus avoids all the problems mentioned above, including the acausal ones; and it thereby avoids licensing ableism or killing one to save five.
That’s odd, it seems to me that you introduced the idea back here, as noted elsethread.
Sure. It does not follow that these are the only things that matter, though. Taken alone, these would authorize killing people to use their organs to save others. We recognize that’s a bad idea not just deontologically (“murder is wrong”) but consequentially also (“it wouldn’t work out well, doing that would cause problems beyond the immediate neighborhood being contemplated”) and, for that matter, categorically (“if you murder person A, this implies you don’t value individual life, so why are you saving persons B through F?”) and acausally (“if we lived in a world where we did things like that, other people would do stuff to us that we wouldn’t like”).
Okay, here ya go: “Instead of trying to decide whose life is more valuable, when you possess a life-saving resource and encounter a life that (to the best of your knowledge) is in need of saving, you save that life.”
In business terms, “first come, first served.”
In hippie terms, “love the one you’re with.”
In timeless terms, “if you don’t save a life when you have the chance, then what makes you think that future-you would ever choose to save a life?”
In progressive terms, “if not now, when?”
Take the Schelling point. Discard the assumption that you know (or should know) how to value one life over another. In the (statistically impossible) case of simultaneous arrivals, pick arbitrarily. This avoids setting yourself as judge over other people, and thus avoids all the problems mentioned above, including the acausal ones; and it thereby avoids licensing ableism or killing one to save five.
Suggested reading on argumentation:
Privileging the Hypothesis
You’re Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof