If we think of membership in the special class that respect recognizes as
irrevocable once it has been gained, the problem of how respect can be owed to creatures that have lost the features requisite for class membership can be dealt with more easily. However, it does not seem that this sort of analysis helps us solve the problem of the obligations that we think we have towards those who never had the requisite features (and thus are not ‘suffused’ with the value of that feature), and yet are similar enough to those who do that we feel we ought to respect them. (For example, think of children that are born severely brain-damaged. The case of children such as these was the second problem with Wood’s account that we put off earlier in this paper). Can an analysis of respect like the one I’m offering give a satisfactory answer to this problem?
In order to answer this question, we should first consider how our intuitions do in fact run in these sorts of cases. Is it true that we would want to say that there are ways of treating brain-damaged infants that constitute disrespect? Is it true that we consider obligations of respect to hold in these sorts of cases? If not, this may not really be a problem-case for accounts of respect; but if so, any account of respect (including the one I am offering here) needs to give a satisfactory account of this obligation.
Consider the following case: a child is born with brain-damage so severe that she is not sentient in any robust sense, and is merely physically (and not mentally) alive. The doctor determines that she could continue to live for years in this state. However, there are other infants in the hospital with severe birth defects of a purely physical, and not mental, nature (children with severe kidney disease who will die soon without a
transplant, for example). There are no infant kidneys immediately available for transplant, and it is likely that these babies will die.
What if the doctor in this case decides that he should kill the brain-damaged infant in order to use her kidneys to save the other children? Whether this is permissible is without doubt a controversial philosophical question, and I will not attempt to answer it here. The issue that I wish to raise with the example is this: among all the considerations the doctor has to weigh, is there a question of whether this course of action is in some way not “the right way” to treat the brain-damaged infant? Would it be reasonable to say, regardless of the wishes and interests of the infant’s parents, of the doctors, of the other infants and their parents, etc., that there is a question of whether this is an
inappropriate way to treat the brain-damaged infant? If this is a sensible question, and I think it is, then it seems that we have an intuition (however weak it might be) that there may be limits and requirements on our behavior towards this child that are not grounded in moral requirements that we have with regard to anyone other than the child herself. In other words, the infant herself is an object of moral consideration in her own right. There are ways of treating her that are appropriate, and ways of treating her that are not
appropriate (i.e., there are things we can do to her that are acceptable, and some that are not), simply because there are standards for how she must be treated.
Of course, there are many moral questions for the doctor to consider in this case. For example, the interests of the parents, and a due deference to their wishes, are an important factor in the doctor’s decision. If the parents were to tell the doctor that under no circumstances do they want the life of their child to end, one could argue that the
doctor does something wrong to the parents if he kills the child anyway74. One could describe the wrongness that is done in many ways – as a failure of respect, as a serious harm, etc. – but however one conceives of this wrongness, one may have the intuition that something wrong has been done if the wishes if the parents are disregarded.
The question here, however, is not whether this sort of wrongness can be
identified in this case. The question for us is whether or not, setting questions about this sort of wrongness aside (i.e., setting aside moral questions concerning the
interests/wishes of those other than the infant herself), there is any moral question left at all. Is there anything about the infant herself that sets requirements on our behavior towards her? For many people the intuition is that there is: it seems that we think one of the questions facing the doctor is whether or not this is an acceptable thing to do to the infant herself; is this an acceptable way to treat the infant? And this is a question about what sorts of behavior are appropriate given the kind of creature she is. They are questions that concern obligations to her, and not to any rational creature connected to her.
Whether the child feels pain will, also, in most circumstances, be material to these questions. But for our purposes, we have supposed that the child does not, in fact, feel pain – does this mean that the question of whether there is behavior towards her that is appropriate disappear? One way to answer this question is to ask whether our concern in this case would disappear if we supposed that the infant could feel pain, but that the doctor could end the infant’s life in a completely painless way. Does the problem disappear if we suppose the death to be painless? It does not appear to -- or, at the very
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Of course, one could argue that there is no wrong done to the parents in this case, and that the doctor has every right to refuse extreme measures when resources are scarce. I do not wish to argue for either position
least, it does not seem unreasonable to think that the question still remains. It is instructive, then, that even if the child cannot feel pain, the question of whether it is possible to mistreat her does not necessarily disappear. This shows that the question of whether there are appropriate ways to treat her is in our minds a sensible one, even leaving questions of pain aside – and this means that this can potentially be a question of whether we have obligations of respect towards the child.
Since the case we have been discussing is an extreme one (the child in this case is non-sentient), one may say that the question of whether or not it is okay to kill her to save the life of another is easy to answer. It may be argued that because this child is not sentient, our intuition that it is wrong to kill her is weak at best. However, even if you think that the question is not hard to answer (i.e., even if the intuition that it is wrong to kill her fades in such an extreme case), the fact that it is not obviously wrong-headed to ask the question is at least instructive. It is at least instructive that one might be tempted to say, “She’s still human, after all”. Consider the fact that if this infant were to die, there are certain ways of treating her body after death that we would think are unacceptable. For example, it would seem unacceptable to throw her body away rather than doing what one normally does with the bodies of those who have died. And again, this is not because it would show some sort of disrespect to those who are connected to her, for even if it were those connected to her that sanctioned this action, it would seem that there is something “not right” about it.
Or, consider the fact that even if one thinks that the doctor should be able to kill this infant in order to save the life of others, it still seems that there are ways of treating the infant while she is still alive that are acceptable (and some that are unacceptable)
apart from considerations of the feelings of those connected to her. For example, we would consider it unacceptable for the hospital staff to throw the infant around like a football in their spare time, whether or not her parents would approve of such a thing. That she is a human infant seems relevant to what we can do to her, despite her lack of all the features that we consider to be the distinctive (and valuable) features of human
beings. Most people would agree that human infants simply should not be thrown around like footballs. And the thought seems to be that it is wrong to treat human infants in such a way simply because they are human infants. Of course, there are many ways to account for why we think this that have nothing to do with the infant being owed respect. I will briefly discuss two such ways, explaining why they are ultimately unsatisfactory, before offering a different way of accounting for these intuitions that establishes the infant as a proper object of respect.
One might account for this intuition by saying that the only reason we have it is that the child looks exactly like the sort of child towards whom we do owe respect. One could say that the reason we feel at least some compunction about killing the child in order to save another is because she seems exactly like the sort of creature towards whom we have very strong moral obligations. One could argue that our intuitions are merely an example of our tendency to over-generalize. That is, one could argue that this infant is treated in ways that are not required simply because of her similarity to those to whom we do have obligations, and that our intuitions are merely regrettable mistakes of over- generalization. Let us call this the Mere Mistake Explanation.
If one were to argue according to the Mere Mistake Explanation, the implication would be that our attitude to the brain-damaged infant is unjustified and perhaps silly. In
fact, one ought to do one’s best to get rid of the intuition, since it is simply a mistake. Alternatively, one could think that this intuition is a mistaken over-generalization, but argue that it is not a regrettable one. One could maintain that this sort of over-
generalization is important for morality because it protects against making unwarranted exceptions to moral rules. If we didn’t treat all like creatures the same, but made
judgments about our moral obligations to creatures on a case by case basis, we might start to make exceptions when we shouldn’t. Thus, one could argue, seeing all similar
creatures as being owed the same sort of consideration protects against wanton or mistaken disregard for moral rules, and so over-generalization is in fact a good thing. If one took this sort of view, one could explain our intuitions in this case by claiming that they are a sort of moral safeguard. Our intuitions, then, wouldn’t show that we should treat the infant with respect because she is owed such consideration, but would instead show that we have learned to err on the side of caution and act as if all human beings have the same moral status, even if they do not. Let us call this the Safeguard
Explanation.
The Safeguard Explanation seems to account for our intuitions better than the Mere Mistake Explanation. For example, it better explains why our attitude towards the infant persists even when we learn that she is brain-damaged, unlike the response we would have if we learned she were a cardboard cut-out. For according to the Safeguard Explanation, our intuition regarding the infant isn’t a mere mistake on the order of
mistaking a cardboard cut-out for a human being. Our attitude towards the infant persists because she is biologically human, and it is better (for pragmatic reasons) to treat all human beings as if they have moral status, even if they do not.
But is it right to say that our tendency to generalize in this way is merely a moral safeguard? If we accept the Safeguard Explanation, we encounter a problem: despite the usefulness of this attitude, the fact still remains (on the view that I have outlined) that the class of creatures to-be-respected has not been defined by merely being human, but rather by the possession of rationality, the value-conferring feature that she lacks. Thus, despite our feeling that we need to treat her as if she is owed the regard that is owed to members of the class, our reason for treating her this way cannot be that she is owed this regard as an actual member of that class (for she lacks the requisite value). The pragmatic worry that allowing ourselves to treat her differently may lead us to fail to respect those who are members of the class is the only reason we can give for treating her this way, since she just does not meet the criteria for membership in the class. Because of this, the
explanation does not select the infant out as actually deserving respect (as much as any other person is), since treating her as we would other infants is ultimately a moral safeguard that is not grounded in what is owed to her. And since the infant does not, in fact, have the status that respect recognizes, the account of our behavior offered by the Safeguard Explanation does not seem fully in line with the content, and persistence, of our intuitions regarding her.