I believe that it does not matter how much pain and suffering exist in the universe. (Ditto pleasure, happiness, eudaemonia & fun.)
Note that I still believe it is wrong to disable a person or to distract him from his activities or his plans, and it is almost always impossible to inflict pain or suffering on a person without causing disability or distraction.
I believe that the value of a human life derives exclusively from the human’s willingness and ability to contribute towards a non-human end (which of course I am not going to attempt to define in this comment). In other words, a human has zero intrinsic value.
Note that I still believe that people in a position of power over other people are much too likely to take away those people’s lives and freedoms and that they usually have some unsatisfactory justification of those takings in terms of one far-reaching moral end or another. Consequently, in all ordinary situations one should act as if human lives and human freedoms do have nonzero instrinsic value.
I believe that it does not matter how much pain and suffering exist in the universe. (Ditto pleasure, happiness, eudaemonia & fun.)
Note that I still believe it is wrong to disable a person or to distract him from his activities or his plans, and it is almost always impossible to inflict pain or suffering on a person without causing disability or distraction.
I believe that the value of a human life derives exclusively from the human’s willingness and ability to contribute towards a non-human end (which of course I am not going to attempt to define in this comment). In other words, a human has zero intrinsic value.
Note that I still believe that people in a position of power over other people are much too likely to take away those people’s lives and freedoms and that they usually have some unsatisfactory justification of those takings in terms of one far-reaching moral end or another. Consequently, in all ordinary situations one should act as if human lives and human freedoms do have nonzero instrinsic value.