Topics Value

Question Why is it that even though we cannot predict how long a person's life would be, the value of a person's life generally decreases as their age increase? I have in mind an assumption of the measurement of a person's life as what order of priority others would place in trying to save that person's life. For example if person A and person B's lives are both in equal danger and person C decides saving person A's life is of higher priority than saving person B's life, then person A's life is rated as having higher value than person B's life. For example, people would value a 2 years old life more than the life of a 60 year old person, regardless if the 2 year old only have 2 more year to live and the 30 year old have another 20 years. I speculate that the reason why the value of a person's life is inversely proportional to their age is because as a person age they have been able to experience and enjoy more of life. However, I disagree that a person's age can be an accurate measure of how much of life they have been able to enjoy. I would appreciate it if I can get some opinion on this.

Accepted:
March 1, 2006

Comments

As the old joke goes...Hey! I resemble that!

As someone pushing 60 myself, I guess my first reaction is to say that I most certainly do not think my life now has less value than that of a 2-year-old. Nor do I think the value of a human life is measurable in terms of how many (more) years the person will live.

Answers to this sort of question will differ on the basis of which style of moral theory one applies to it. In one sort of moral theory (consequentialism), a human life will be valuable in terms of the overall balance of benefits and harms that derive from it--really good people will have really valuable lives and really bad people will have lives that have negative value. A really bad 20-year-old, in this view, would have a life that was worth less than Mother Teresa's life, even when she was getting very old. In other accounts, all human lives are equal in value. So, according to Kant's categorical imperative, we should treat all people as if they were ends only, and not means to ends. One's age would not seem to be a factor in this way of estimating things. In virtue theory, the value of one's life would depend upon that qualities of one's character. So again, in this view, a good person (of any age) would have a more valuable life than a bad one (of any age).

At any rate, I am inclined to think that the relative values of human lives (if there really are different values to different human lives) will not be determined solely by age. But maybe I just say that because...well...I am getting on in years!