What's the "value" of a human life? Are some worth more than others?

[Shadowferal]

When the boat sinks it's still women and children first.

That being said, if it's a choice between people the one you love will have more "value" than the one you don't.

[ellieg]

This is my whole point: The first part of the OP's question "What is the value of a human life?" is fine. The problem is that without agreeing on an answer to that bit, it is impossible to answer part 2 "Are some worth more than others?". It's like asking "Is red better than blue?"; without defined parameters through which relative value can be assigned to both 'red' and 'blue', any determinations are bound to be subjective and of no worth at all when it comes to actually answering the question; if I like blue but somebody else likes red, neither of us can be wrong because our judgements are based on preference. For the question to be meaningful, there has to be a falsifiable element i.e. 'Is red better than blue for visibility at night?'. This gives us measurable parameters which can be used to determine the relative strength of arguments X and Y.

Tl;dr - to have a meaningful discussion as to whether one human life can be seen as being more valuable than another, value must mean something more specific than 'subjective value', or 'preference'.

I don't think you will ever get your answer. Value of anything is subjective.

[Kuntantee]

I disagree.

If you could perfectly understand that one person has the potential to return nothing positive to a society and one that has the potential to be a net positive; the net positive is worth more.

However, from a moralistic standpoint, I think this is abhorrent due to the subjectivity of morals.

How are you going to understand the net positive if the system is chaotic?

[Rudkobing]

It depends on what country you live in.

[ellieg]

The value of a £5 note is £5. It has monetary value. Similarly, life can have value in a moral sense, or by virtue of relative utility and so on. It can even have different types of value all at once.

You're totally wrong about value being subjective. In fact, saying 'value is subjective' doesn't even make sense because you're talking about 'preference', not value. If value does not have a 'value', that is to say something which it objectively is, then you have no referent and could just as easily call it any word you like without it making any difference whatsoever. Terms have meanings, and without agreed upon definitions they are absolutely useless as linguistic or sylogistic tools i.e. the word means a thing in much the same way that 'house' denotes a house, and is logically distinct from 'squirrel', which denotes a squirrel. If a term is defined subjectively, then necessarily it does not mean anything, and therefore is necessarily is not a term, as a term is 'a word which denotes a specific thing'.

You would be right to say that 'people can have different definitions of value' - I agree with you there. You are 100% wrong to suggest that 'there can be no agreed upon definitions as to what value is'. There can be multiple definitions, sure, but they are not all logically exclusive. Value itself is not subjective, because value itself *requires* a definition to be meaningful as a term. The subjective part is which specific ideas of what value is carry more weight, but even then there are enough falsifiable elements shared between various definitions to allow for a meaningful debate, philosophically speaking.

Tl;dr: The value of anything is by no means purely subjective in any way whatsoever. It is possible to have a discussion about value, it just requires well-defined terms. In most things philosophical, in fact, "it's subjective" is just a cop-out that people use when they don't know enough about the subject to know which bits aren't subjective, and can be debated.

Yes $5 = $5. But to me, that $5 is nothing. To a hobo or a child, that $5 is everything. To someone in a foreign country, an American $5 doesn't really mean shit if no one accepts it. But yes, you are right, $5 = $5 of monetary value. Im just saying, you are never going to get an objective answer of how much a human life is valued because there is none. IT has to do with feelings and feelings aren't objective.

As for terms, they mean things but they are subjective as well. A house to me means my 2 bed room apartment. A house to you could mean a mansion. A house to a hobo is his box. They are all houses, but they are viewed differently.

[Draco-Onis]

No life has any value. Or won't in the future when they have machines that can do literally everything. Human lives have value only in so much as to what they can do or contribute. But we're told that people who can't do anything (ex: mentally disabled, physically disabled, etc) have tons of value when really we all know that isn't true.

So people like Stephen Hawkins, Beethoven, Isaac Newton, John Forbes Nash Jr. have less value due to their disabilities?

[unbound]

Like most of life's interesting questions, there is no easy answer...and, whether you like it or not, emotion is part of the equation. After all emotion is what keeps most of us together and developed the pack mentality that has led us to dominate the planet (sorry to bring up an obvious truth for those that believe Ayn Rand).

Do some lives matter more than others? Only a fool would say no. Obviously a good person that contributes to society has higher value than, say, a serial murderer. How much more? Again, there is no easy answer to describe that.

Does that mean that it is okay to sacrifice some to benefit others? That is a very long and very complex discussion. We sacrifice military personnel all the time to defend our nation and our national interests. Unfortunately, we have sacrificed military personnel for economic interests as well...was that right? Again, that is a very long and very complex discussion.
Part of the reason for the complexity of the discussion is what really indicates a better value, and how much more value should certain individuals get. For example, many of the rich got their wealth by greedily keeping more for themselves and keeping the benefits of success from reaching lower level resources...are those people really more valuable? Is greed and lack of empathy toward other people really something that you want to encourage? How do you differentiate between the majority of rich that get their wealth through immoral means vs the minority of rich that get their wealth through actual hard work (it is not an easy determination as much of this involves grey areas legally and morally)?

Then you have some practical realities that make this an even more difficult discussion. The Dunning-Kruger effect makes it very difficult for people to understand their actual skill which would affect their value. About two-thirds of people over-estimate their ability (and therefore their value - http://www.skepticblog.org/wp-conten...ing-Kruger.png ). No one believes that they are below average...how do you have that discussion with those people? What if you are one of those people (statistically, you probably are one of those people)?

[Shadowferal]

Sure, young people are worth more than older ones, they have more in front of them.

And the older, more knowledgeable, more experienced person?

[Lodreh]

Oh, I'd say 'bout tree-fiftee.

[ellieg]

Some arguments are more forceful than others though - inductive validity vs deductive. It's ridiculous to say that there can be no objectivity in discussions relating to anything that has a subjective element because then we basically have to say that mathematics is the only thing we can truly be certain of. The fact is that some subjective determinations carry more weight than others.

Case in point: "Is it wrong to kill a child for fun?". By all rights, this question is subjective; a child murderer might say no, and if you're right in saying that all conclusions are equally valid when discussing topics which are subjective, then we shouldn't judge child murderers because they are equally justified in saying that child murder is right as we are in saying that it is wrong - it's subjective, after all. Clearly, however, there are issues of the denial of personal agency over the decision of whether to keep living, the forced discontinuation of any goals, aspirations, preferences, the actual pain inflicted by the murder and so on and so on. These factors influence determinations of the moral character of child murder for fun. Without going into loads and loads of detail, because it's pretty much obvious, "child murder for fun is wrong" is undeniably the stronger answer to the question.

I wish I could give a more comprehensive answer which covered more bases so I could explain exactly why it is possible to construct a coherent value system, applicable to human life, which produces more forceful judgments than preference alone...but I'm at work, so I'll just leave the child murder example with you, and hopefully you can extrapolate how that could apply to other areas of discussion.

"It's subjective" is never a good answer, and it's basically always wrong. Not to mention how boring it is as an intellectual stance.

Imo, math is the only 100% objective thing in the world.

Yes, murdering a child is wrong, but only because we recognize that in our morals. In a different society, it might not be. Im going to preface this by saying I do not believe in murdering children, im just trying to prove a point. We murder insect children all the time. In a different society that would seem crazy. all life has value. I get what youre saying, but idk how you could objectively determine the value of a human life. Like what factors go into it to say this human is worth $54?

[Asrialol]

You don't put value on human life.

Of course you do.

A human body is worth what, around §50M on the black market in terms of organs.

If one were to measure the value of a human, then one would have to consider how that human contributes to society. Larger contribution, more value. Thus half of the worlds population (the poor) has a low value right off the bat.

[Powerogue]

I'd say we all have inherent worth, that we can either build on (by helping others and generally contributing to the well-being of society) or tear down (by doing the opposite).

You could think of it as two variables, X+Y, X being the inherent value of being human, Y being how much value you have to society, as a positive or negative number.

[BuckSparkles]

I wonder why this wasn't posted yet.

Was that intended to be funny?

[ls-]

Few bucks, IMHO. People are getting killed for a nice pair of shoes or a hat, so...

[Ryme]

How are you going to understand the net positive if the system is chaotic?

You can't, which was my initial point you can't assign any value here since we currently can't possible quantify any of these things.

[Deleted]

It is one of those tricky questions, because value is so hard to put on people. There is a good one with a billionaire that helps the entire country and is just the epitome of support, if he/she falls ill and a doctor saves him/her, is the doctor worth more suddenly?

[Jessicka]

All life is valuable. Inspiration and ingenuity can come from anywhere.

[Underverse]

I would say that the value of a human life can be calculated using their propagative value and potential. So, old people with no skills and no family have less value than, say, Stephen Hawking.

But that being said, because of the word potential, pretty much everyone has value. In some cases, potential can be negative (also known as risk), such as with repeat rapists or murderers. So they would have less value, maybe enough to push them into the negative.

[Narwal]

I always found this to be an interesting question and one no one can really answer without getting their emotions and bias (we are human ourselves after all) involved.

Some people will say that every life is valuable and that even questioning this is wrong. Others are capable of saying that Humanity is so widespread that a human life is so common that it's value is perhaps more valued on what the person is capable of in life, or his/her contribution to the world.

Let's try to look at it as objectively as we can and answer this question for ourselves: what do you think a human life is actually worth? And are some human lives worth more than others?

Edit: Please don't make this about race or culture. Just focus on the human perspective.

Depends the value system you are ranking each person against. Some examples:

1) Monetary value - easy, this value is already assessed on people, see magazines ranking richest people in the world. For those too young to have value, you could formulate an equation for averages, which would include such factors as family/house/education situations.

2) Emotional value - this changes the value of each person based on the user doing the evaluating. Each person would be assessed a formulaic value, where you plug in the person evaluating, with weighing something like: loved ones > acquaintances > everyone else > enemies.

3) Human race advancement value - This would be an objective measurement of the value this person brings to the advancement of the species. Clearly this would weigh the highly intellectual above others.