What Is the Value of Humanity?
excerpt from Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire, pp. 28-35
The end is nigh … possibly. On any given day the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, might notify the world that a newly discovered asteroid or comet, the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and ended the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Reptiles), is bearing down on Earth. This could foretell the imminent end of the current, Cenozoic Era (the Age of Mammals). Only if the discovery were early enough to allow the space-faring nations time to mount an effective deflection mission (which could require decades), or if they had been prudent enough to build a deflection infrastructure prior to any such discovery, would humanity have a hope of continued survival.
I think about that scenario a lot, as someone knowledgeable about astronomy and planetary defense. I have argued that our efforts to date, while impressive, remain absurdly inadequate to protect our species from extinction.1 “Absurdly” because, for the first time in the history of the planet, it is well within the means of Tellurians (aka Earthlings) to ward off this ultimate catastrophe, yet we dither due to widespread scientific illiteracy and the vagaries of politics and so forth. Analogous situations exist for climate change and other natural or human-made perils. Shouldn’t it be obvious that meetable threats to human extinction trump just about any other concern human beings might have? Thus have I assumed in my arguments for humanity’s embarking on a more robust (and costly) planetary defense.
But when I replace my policy analyst’s hat with a philosophical one, I realize that my assumption has been – to use a Socratic word – unexamined. Does it really make sense to assume that the value of humanity is, for all practical purposes, infinite, and hence humanity’s demise would have infinite negative value? A moment’s reflection reveals that it does not. Think of the analogy of personal death. Since death ends everythingfor a human (or other living) being, we might suppose that it too has infinite negative value, if only for that person (since we seem far more cavalier about the deaths of others). Yet it is a commonplace that many (most? all?) human beings value other things more highly than even their own continued existence. “Give me liberty or give me death,” proclaimed Patrick Henry. And I for one am convinced that I would readily choose my own death in preference to wasting away in a nursing home. Thus, we may value supremely an abstract ideal, or the life or happiness of a loved one, or a stateof our own existence, and so on, over (our own) existence itself.
But when it comes to species extinction, is not something more (and besides sheer quantity) at stake? Indeed, is not one reason for our personal death being acceptable to us precisely the thought that humanity as such will perdure? During the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were poised to annihilate each other and everybody else, Jonathan Schell in an article in the New Yorker2 coined the notion of a “second death.” For not only would every living human being be killed in the envisioned nuclear holocaust, but, as a further consequence, countless billions of descendants would never come to be.
But this is not the whole of it, since it has anyway been the case that countless billions of (potential) descendants have been pre-empted by other descendants who were born instead. (As I never tire of pointing out, hardly any of us alive today would have been born had not Hitler existed. But billions of others might have been born instead.) So more to the ethical point of a second death is that the elimination of all descendants degrades our own present existence by denying us a heritage and the continuation of countless projects we value.3 It is in this sense that the extinction of Homo sapiens would be the second death of any individual human being who died, for not only would that person cease to exist but their memory and their influence and the objects of their love and concern would perish as well.
Still, this does not clinch the case for the infinite value of humanity. For one thing, note that the value in question is wholly relative. Humanity has no value as such, for the simple reason that nothing does. So-called objective value is a fantasy. For there to be such a thing, we would have to imagine either a Supreme Being who somehow assigned values (“and God saw that it was good”), although even then such valuations would only be relative to Him, since a different supreme being might have found different things pleasing to Her taste; or else value inheres in things simply in virtue of what they are. And it does seem natural to conceive of value in the latter way; for example, the music of Beethoven is glorious “in itself,” and not merely because some people happen to like it.
But the longer I ponder such phenomena, the more difficult it becomes for me to comprehend what it could mean for something to be valuable in itself. J. L. Mackie (1977) famously called the idea “queer.” As difficult as it may be to put aside one’s own preferences, such as for Beethoven’s music, it is nevertheless possible to understand that human beings belonging to a different culture, not to mention extraterrestrial aliens constituted wholly differently from ourselves, would fail to find value in Beethoven’s music or might even disvalue it. Just so, humanity: The value of our species is there for us, but it is not to be expected that our species has value “in itself,” nor even for other species or beings. All the more can this be said about our supposed infinite value.
On the contrary, Homo sapiens is easily enough seen to be the scourge of the Earth. Single-handedly we are bringing about an epochal extinction of other species, as Elizabeth Kolbert (2014) explains,4 and we torture and kill tens of billions of domestic animals every year solely to satisfy our palates. Not only that, but we are our own worst enemy, bringing untold suffering on our own species through every manner of physical and psychological torment or neglect. If humanity did have infinite value, it would more likely be negative value.
So does humanity have value, and if so, of what kind and in what sense? The question is not merely academic. For me it has had quite practical significance, since I am an active advocate for two relevant "causes”: animal rights and planetary defense. So on the one hand I decry the cruelty of humanity and strive to protect other animals from humanity’s inhumanity, and on the other hand I strive to protect humanity from extinction by space rock. This conflict is made even more acute by my sense that humanity will never stop exploiting other animals (not to mention other humans), and in fact will keep doing so to a greater and greater extent (due both to our ever increasing numbers and to our ever increasing appetites facilitated by our ever more powerful technologies). So how could I possibly justify my involvement in a campaign to preserve our species?
It might be supposed that preventing an asteroidal or cometary impact would also be good for nonhuman animals since many, even most of them would also be eliminated by such an impact. But given that humanity itself is equivalent to such an impact in our dire effects on other animals, I think it is arguable that our removal would give other species a fighting chance to regroup. Furthermore, the disappearance of domestic species would for the most part be a blessing to them, who languish in factory farms and meet their end in slaughterhouses. So the question remains: How can I justify wanting to save the very species that is only tormenting and destroying the other species I care so much about?
The simple answer is: I cannot justify this contradiction of motives at all. But, curiously, this no longer bothers me in the slightest. The reason is analogous to what I have said about the objective value of humanity, that is, that humanity has no such value because nothing does. Similarly, I cannot justify my collection of commitments because no commitment can be justified in this way. Just as there is no value as such in the universe, so there is no justification about motives as such in the universe. Whatever values and justifications for actions there are will always be relative to some desire.
Now, desires can themselves be justified or unjustified in a sense, namely by reference to the rationality of relevant beliefs.5 For example, if I desired an ice cream sundae because I believed it would help me to lose weight, and that belief was due to my having uncritically accepted the bald claim of some huckster, then my desire would hardly be justified. But if I desired an ice cream sundae despitemy complete understanding of its possible effect on my weight, and of all other considerations relevant to an everyday dietary choice – even including the sundae’s dependence on exploited cows – then my desire would be rational … and hence also my eating the sundae. But, again, this does not make eating ice cream sundaes inherently justified, since one could easily imagine a rational desire not to do so.
So no action or commitment is justified, or unjustified, as such, and hence there is no absolute or objective contradiction in being committed to courses of action that are in opposition to each other. What could be more natural than having conflicting desires, even, as I’ve argued, rational ones? It is probably impossible not to have such desires, since any nonidentical desires will have opposed implications for action. Thus, if you love your father and your mother, it may come to pass that you want things that conflict, for example, if your dying parents live on opposite ends of the Earth and you want to see both of them one last time.
This, then, is how I conceive my commitments to animal rights and planetary defense. I desire both, and quite rationally, I believe; yet this duo of desires motivates actions with opposing tendencies or consequences, since the one causes me to strive to protect nonhuman animals from human depredations, while the other causes me to strive to protect humanity from extinction and thereby helps preserve the status quo of animal exploitation.
Why do I continue to harbor both desires even after becoming aware of this absurdity? Simply because I am a psychological being, whose mental composition is the result of numberless contingencies. Perhaps my strong desire to liberate animals from human exploitation has its roots in nature documentaries I watched on television as a child, combined with studying philosophy and reading Peter Singer at an impressionable age, etc. Meanwhile, my strong desire to lobby for planetary defense likely derives from a lifelong fascination with all things astronomical, beginning with childhood trips to the planetarium with my uncle, as well as from vivid appreciation of countless achievements of human genius, nobility, daring, and passion, like flying to the Moon, hiding Jews from the Nazis, the works of Darwin, van Gogh, Kant, Gödel, and, yes, Beethoven, and, finally, from an acute awareness of the preciousness of human consciousness and intelligence in light of its possible uniqueness in the universe (as is suggested by the so-called Fermi Paradox).
Thus, I feel no imperative to reconcile my disparate desires; that would be to “adore” a “foolish consistency,” in Emerson’s phrasing. So long as contradiction is avoided in their factual bases, the desires that result from our reflections pass rational muster; and whatever contradictory tendencies result therefrom in turn, are easily explained by the random sources of our deepest desires.
Where does this leave the value of humanity? Again, the preservation of our species (or of the polar bears) has no value as such. But for me, and I suspect for most of my readers, it has, despite deep misgivings about human rapacity, a very high value. However, the Copernican process has not reached its end. For just as the heliocentric hero demoted us from the center of the universe, and ethical ponderings have cast further doubt on our worth, humanity may fare yet more poorly even in the purely subjective realm of arbitrary and conflicting values. For contrary to what my latest remarks about impressive human achievements might suggest, a respectful appreciation of humanity’s uniqueness does not guarantee a high valuation relative to other things.
Indeed, if I myself valued humanity as much as my awe and admiration might suggest, wouldn’t I be making far greater efforts or sacrifices on behalf of planetary defense than I already am? It’s true that I devote considerable time to trying to raise people’s consciousness about the impactor threat; but have I put aside everything else? Certainly not. For one thing, of course, I still devote considerable time to promoting animal rights. But even that gives the wrong impression, for although I think of myself as passionately committed to both causes, my life remains filled with far more mundane pursuits and pastimes, such as reading novels purely for pleasure, or spending time with friends, unlike what we might expect of the driven monomaniac (aka tireless advocate). It is also the case that the manner in which I pursue my favorite causes is tightly constrained, since I opt to focus on writing about them, an occupation I love, rather than giving speeches or making media appearances, which would disrupt my relaxed and productive routine. That writing is at the fore rather than astronomical threats or animal exploitation is also attested by my spending at least as much time writing about the subjectivity of value – witness this very book – out of sheer fascination for the topic.
And there is more (or less). Continuing from my earlier observation that we humans do not place infinite value on our individual lives, it seems pretty clear, once you think about it, that we often value our own lives very little indeed. How else to interpret the priorities that characterize so much of everyday life, with poor diets and other unhealthful habits the norm? Just so, our valuation of humanity as such. It is not only that we might prefer Armageddon to an endless regime of tyranny and deprivation if that were the only way to assure an effective planetary defense (by directing all possible resources to attempting to accomplish it, analogous to but exceeding the totalitarian mobilizations of World War II). I feel confident to assert that the world populace would be unwilling to allow even for their income tax to rise by a mere 5 percent in order to construct the requisite infrastructure ahead of time that would assure our ability to deflect an extinction-size asteroid or comet should one ever be discovered heading our way with little advance warning.6
In sum: It is hard to exaggerate the absurdity of human priorities if one assumes that there are objective values in the universe. But if one gives up on that fantasy and attends instead to human psychology and the evolutionary forces that brought our psychology into being, our priorities make perfect sense. Thus, the value of humanity is swallowed up by human nature. There certainly is no “should” about prioritizing planetary defense over a tax break, nor the suffering of nonhuman animals over the human pleasure of consuming a juicy hamburger.7 Any of these values are whatever we make of them; and if one wants to increase the value of humanity, or of animality – that is, in human eyes – the only sure route is to understand the way human minds work and then try to steer them in the direction you desire.
1 See for example Marks (2015b).
2 Subsequently published in Schell (1982).
3 Cf. Scheffler (2013).
4 And as she put it so aptly in Wiener (2014): “Scientists say now we’re the asteroid.”
5 This discussion resumes in “Explanations and Reasons” in Chapter 3.
6 This surely came as a surprise to me when a former colleague first pointed out the obvious. Thank you, Ted Roupas.
7 Nor of pushpin over poetry (TOTH to Jeremy Bentham, and pace John Stuart Mill).