I do not know what "All humans are of equal value" means, when humans are dependent on one another. If Alice is about to save Bob's life, than surely Alice has more value than Bob, in that removing Alice removes both Alice and Bob. Similarly, if Alice is about to kill bob, then kill herself, then it seems we should say Alice has negative value.
If your position is that all humans have equal terminal value, then those who save lots of lives are of much greater instrumental value than those who do not.
Excellently put. But polymathwannabe gives us the interesting question of whether the punishment for murder should be tied to the instrumental utility of the victim, rather than their terminal value as a human being.
I would say no, for at least two reasons.
The first is that quantifying the instrumentality of a particular person with confidence is functionally very challenging and existentially problematic. If a thorough review of these researchers' work established that they were pursuing unhelpful avenues of investigation, and that the new wave of sci...
As most of you may already know, the plane that recently crashed on disputed Ukrainian soil carried some of the world's top HIV researchers.
One part of me holds vehemently that all human beings are of equal value.
Another part of me wishes there could be extra-creative punishments for depriving the world of its best minds.
Opinions?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/joep-lange-dead-aids-expert-plane-crash_n_5597834.html