Are children more valuable than adults?

I also get aroused by family photos, so I would probably kill the child.

Or something.

Point One: The protection of children is effectively encouraged by the seemingly innate (?) human tendency to attach special value to children's lives.

Point Two: The protective urge that motivates this tendency is experienced emotionally, in our feelings toward children.

Point Three: The protection of children has profound social value and therefore should be prioritized.

Conclusion: We should respect the feelings that incline us to value the lives of children over those of adults. The intellectual measure of supposed life-value is a secondary concern.

she went underwater to climb in the shark so she could keep warm & drink its blood

So what you're saying is that we should protect children because it makes us feel good (presumably due to some evolved urge to do so) and because it's of social value.

But we have all kinds of possible innate urges that aren't necessarily that productive. For example we might be innately inclined to prefer members of our own social group, race etc. (studies show that even babies do this).

And is it really true that the protection of children at the expense of the well-being of adults is of profound social value? One could argue that society has expended more resources in making the adult into a (presumably) productive member of society and therefore it will take more resources to replace them. Of course there are many other aspects that go into it but ultimately I don't think it's clear that protecting children at the expense of adults is of profound benefit to society.

Could it not be that the attitude of protectiveness towards children is just a prejudice we have? It's also been the common view in society that women need to be saved first on sinking ships and what not. It could be argued that this attitude might also be at least in part an evolved attribute since women are a more precious resource than men in terms of reproduction. But in today's world of striving for equality we might question such attitudes, might we not? As a feminist and a proponent of equal standing for women, I for one will not rest until as many women drown on sinking ships as men do.

But anyway, putting that aside, suppose we weren't living in a society. What about other notions of value than the utility to society. What are people's intuitions/rational positions on an individual level. Which would be more worth saving then? Would it be the adult for the reasons of having garnered more information and complexity which I outlined in the previous post. Or perhaps it is the child for the reasons well summarized in the philosophical maxim "you've had a good go, now let someone else have a turn"? Are there other reasons?

Perhaps I should mention that I'm not advocating for any particular position here. Just interested to see what people's views are.

>>>It's also been the common view in society that women need to be saved first on sinking ships and what not. It could be argued that this attitude might also be at least in part an evolved attribute since women are a more precious resource than men in terms of reproduction. But in today's world of striving for equality we might question such attitudes, might we not? As a feminist and a proponent of equal standing for women, I for one will not rest until as many women drown on sinking ships as men do. <<<

It's actually women AND children - although this has been shown to be a myth in any event as more men than women have survived sinking ships.

Where does the notion arise that, when a ship sinks, women and children come first?
It appears to have started when the HMS Birkenhead ran aground off South Africa in 1852, but the notion became widespread after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The captain explicitly issued an order for women and children to be saved first. As a result, the survival rate for women was three times higher than for men.

This idea of chivalry at sea has gained mythological status, but you’re the first person to examine if it’s true for many other maritime disasters. What did you find?
We went through a list of over 100 major maritime disasters spanning three centuries to see if we could find data on survival rates of men and women. We ended up with data on 18 shipwrecks, involving 15,000 passengers. In contrast to the Titanic, we found that the survival rate for men is basically double that for women. We only have data on children for a limited number of shipwrecks, but it is evident that they have really bad survival prospects: just 15 per cent.

What about the noble ideal that the captain and crew put the passengers first and go down with the ship?
What we can see clearly is that the crew were more likely to survive than passengers, with 61 per cent surviving, compared to around 37 per cent of male passengers. On average, the captain was more likely to survive than the passengers.

So this notion of chivalry at sea is a myth?
Yes. It really is every man for himself.

Why do you think we bought into the “women and children first” belief?
The Titanic has been so extensively studied and it confirmed the myth. There was little empirical evidence against it. Lucy Delap of Cambridge University argues that this myth was spread by the British elite to prevent women obtaining suffrage. They said, look at the Titanic, there is no reason to give women the vote because men, even when facing death, will put the interests of women first.

In fact, you’ve found that, in general, women fare worse on British ships?
Yes, It has been claimed that “women and children first” is just a British phenomenon. But we found a lower survival rate for women on British ships than on ships of other nations.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22119-sinking-the-titanic-women-and-children-first-myth/



Back to your question though, if one to were to just base it on value then most probably the adult would be the most rational choice, as the adult has already and would most likely still contribute to society. In fact, if you were to take your sinking ship scenario further and have both the adult and child wash up on a desert island, the child would most likely not be able to survive without the adult. Very young children need adults - by this I mean you couldn't save them all at the expense of adults.

However, the innate urge to save children is strong and have been shown by women themselves. Several terminally ill women or women who have become ill during childbirth have often made the decision to save the child at the expense of themselves.

I would question the study and 'conclusions' drawn by Mikael Elinder. There was a caste system in place for the passengers. Those in the lower caste would not enjoy the privileges and resources available should the ship encounter problems. If Elinder addressed this in his study, then fine.

The original question had the qualifier, "all else being equal". Sadly, societies have too many tipping the balance in their favor. And the hypothetical ends up drawing upon real life that is inherently biased.










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Est modus in rebus sunt certi denique fines quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum Goldilocks

It's actually women AND children - although this has been shown to be a myth in any event as more men than women have survived sinking ships

Yes it's women AND children but we had already covered children and I brought up women as an illustration of another type of possible instinct that we might have and whose utility is more debatable. I'm also aware of the study you mention but to be honest I'm not sure how persuasive it is. They don't appear to have estimated the significance of any confounding factors. Firstly, how many women could swim in those days as opposed to men? My hunch is that fewer women were taught to swim than were men but without data on the subject it's impossible to say how much of the difference they found can be accounted for by this fact. Secondly, even if both sexes were taught to swim at the same rate other factors clearly have an impact on ability to swim. For example, women might have been likely to be wearing elaborate dresses that could have impeded their ability to swim. Also, men may have been in better physical shape in those times as it wasn't seen as appropriate for women to engage in a lot of sports, for example (the fact that the authors found that the survival rate of women improves with time may be a signal of this). Finally, men are on average biologically somewhat better equipped to swim faster or longer distances.

There may also have been factors other than the ability to swim at play. For example it may have been necessary to break a jammed door to one's cabin in order to get out of the ship, which fewer women on average would have been able to do than men. Or one may have needed to run very fast through the ship (again both biology and clothing might have disadvantaged women). All of these factors may contribute to why more men on average ended up surviving and without empirical data on the significance of these effects, I would argue that simply counting the survivors doesn't necessarily tell you that no imperative to prioritize women's safety was present. These factors also would explain why the crew are more likely to survive--they are better swimmers, in better shape and better prepared to deal with such a situation. The authors even mention some of these factors although they then seemingly proceed to ignore them in concluding that because fewer women survived it means that no imperative to try and save women was present. In reality it only shows that such an imperative, if present, is not strong enough to compensate for these other effects and without trying to estimate the magnitude of these confounding factors it's difficult to say how significant this finding is to our discussion. Also, for some of their other hypotheses, like how different circumstances affect these numbers the sample size isn't great, though they do actually find that the survival rate of women does improve if the captain orders "women and children first". Suffice to say that the bumper sticker summary that one of the authors gives, that it's "every man for himself", is far from certain.

But let's say it is and that when one's own life is at stake people don't necessarily act in accordance with their best intentions, that doesn't negate the fact that we do hold these views in other situations (another example is when there are some casualties in some calamity reporters make a point of saying 'among them x women and y children' signifying that we do consider these as especially important). By the way, I mentioned the sinking ship thing mostly because it's a well known manifestation and to set up the joke at the end of that paragraph. Ultimately I'm not asking whether you would choose a child over your own life but whether you would choose an unknown child over an unknown adult.

Back to your question though, if one to were to just base it on value then most probably the adult would be the most rational choice, as the adult has already and would most likely still contribute to society. In fact, if you were to take your sinking ship scenario further and have both the adult and child wash up on a desert island, the child would most likely not be able to survive without the adult. Very young children need adults - by this I mean you couldn't save them all at the expense of adults.

However, the innate urge to save children is strong and have been shown by women themselves. Several terminally ill women or women who have become ill during childbirth have often made the decision to save the child at the expense of themselves.

Indeed, the innate urge might be strong but I would like to leave that to one side and poll people's rationalizations apart from it. We might have an innate instinct that salt, sugar and fat are really good but we can conclude rationally that they aren't that good for us, at least not how they manifest in today's world. Rather, I would like to try and get at what people think matters in being a person. Is it richness of past experience or potential for future ones? Is it something else entirely?

Also, I would like to know what people would do in the following trolley scenario:
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/106

So what you're saying is that we should protect children because it makes us feel good (presumably due to some evolved urge to do so) and because it's of social value.
Close. I'm saying that the feeling is consistent with social value, and thus is worth heeding.

And is it really true that the protection of children at the expense of the well-being of adults is of profound social value? One could argue that society has expended more resources in making the adult into a (presumably) productive member of society and therefore it will take more resources to replace them.
Reduction of the question to a simplified cost-benefit exercise isn't productive. We can't balance, quantify or even identify all the relevant variables. It's a fool's errand.

Biologically, the protection of young has obvious evolutionary value, so long as sufficient resources are available. With that in mind, I suppose one could argue that the human race has crossed the threshold, and we should therefore begin eating our young. Outside their comedy value, I'm not interested in modest proposals. I believe that the precept that "children must be protected" has social value as a cornerstone of our sense of ethics, morality, justice and decency. Our treatment of children reifies our beliefs about the obligations and limits of power. Discard all that, and we have to start over at nihilist ground zero, likely with some meaninglessly abstract cost-benefit analysis.

Could it not be that the attitude of protectiveness towards children is just a prejudice we have?
Yes, of course. That's exactly what it is.

suppose we weren't living in a society. What about other notions of value than the utility to society. What are people's intuitions/rational positions on an individual level. Which would be more worth saving then?
I'm not trying to be difficult, but I believe that we think as we do largely because we have been socially conditioned to do so. We therefore cannot (literally cannot) separate what we think and feel - and perceive - from society. In that sort of abstracted isolation, we simply do not exist.

For the sake of argument, I'll say that the value of life rests largely in its possibilities. At the moment of birth, almost anything is (or at least seems) possible for us. In the moment before death, our options are few. Between those points, the avenues available to us become ever more limited, undeveloped possibilities dropping away like dead skin. The more valuable being is the one who might do more.

When ya cat stuck and u throw ham on it

Close. I'm saying that the feeling is consistent with social value, and thus is worth heeding.

I don't really understand what this means.

Reduction of the question to a simplified cost-benefit exercise isn't productive. We can't balance, quantify or even identify all the relevant variables. It's a fool's errand.

So because we can't quantifiy all the relevant variables we must therefore simply accept that it is of "profound social value" and leave it that? That seems peculiar to me. I don't claim that material resources are the only thing that matters, and I said as much, but I gave it as an example of one aspect that might tip the scales in favour of adults. There are undoubtedly many other factors there but I would think that you do need to quantify them in order to be able to make the claim that favouring children over adults is of profound social value as you did. Without the evaluation of the factors that are involved how can one know that a society where adults are saved in trolley problems actually does not benefit the society down the line, including the welfare of children, more than in a society where the reverse happens?

Biologically, the protection of young has obvious evolutionary value, so long as sufficient resources are available. With that in mind, I suppose one could argue that the human race has crossed the threshold, and we should therefore begin eating our young. Outside their comedy value, I'm not interested in modest proposals. I believe that the precept that "children must be protected" has social value as a cornerstone of our sense of ethics, morality, justice and decency. Our treatment of children reifies our beliefs about the obligations and limits of power. Discard all that, and we have to start over at nihilist ground zero, likely with some meaninglessly abstract cost-benefit analysis.

I don't follow this line of reasoning at all. What does evolution has to do with this? In fact, what is of evolutionary value is the protection of one's own young and there are in fact instances where eating children is perfectly in line with evolution such as in competitive infanticide by rival males (see also the Bruce effect for a possible response by the female, and the Cinderella effect for a proposed manifestation in humans). Not that this has bearing on the question of whether we should be doing this. What I'm talking about is hardly a modest proposal.

"Children must be protected (over adults, I should add)" may indeed be a cornerstor of our society but this doesn't mean that we can't entertain other possibilities. To come back to my earlier example, it used to be a cornerstone of our culture that "women should be protected" but one might argue that that's not necessarily an entirely healthy attitude to hold as it could be seen as a form of benevolent sexim and as infantilizing women. Again, I'm not aruguing for either position here but the point is that it is something that can be questioned. Also, of course, the situation with women and children is different as it makes sense to infantalize children, it's right there in the name, but the point I'm making is that just because some attitude has been regarded as a moral fixture in our culture it doesn't mean that it can't be subject to change or debate.

But in any case, you suggest that all of this will be a slippery slope to some cold cost-benefit analysis, but I should point out that I posed the question without framing it in terms of cost-benefit consideration at all and I would argue that it is you who took it into that realm by suggesting that the social value is of importance here. Is that not a form of cost-benefit analysis?

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I believe that we think as we do largely because we have been socially conditioned to do so. We therefore cannot (literally cannot) separate what we think and feel - and perceive - from society. In that sort of abstracted isolation, we simply do not exist.

You only think that because you've been socially conditioned to. In reality it isn't true at all. Wait... damn!

Seriously though, it may or may not be as you say but we can at least try and separate different aspects of our mental life. 'For the sake of argument', as you proceed to say.

For the sake of argument, I'll say that the value of life rests largely in its possibilities. At the moment of birth, almost anything is (or at least seems) possible for us. In the moment before death, our options are few. Between those points, the avenues available to us become ever more limited, undeveloped possibilities dropping away like dead skin. The more valuable being is the one who might do more.

Thank you, this is more in line with what I was looking for initially. I have to say I don't really know what to think myself, hence this question. A part of me laments the loss of possibility if we choose the adult while another part deplores the disappearance of a more rich web of experience and thought that would perish if we choose the child.

But ok, let's say the possibilities are more valuable. Here's a further problem for you:

A train is speeding with no breaks on a dead end track and will crash killing the 100 passengers on board which includes your mom. However, you can pull a lever and divert the train onto one of two additional tracks where the passengers will be safe. On one of these an evil philosopher has tied a pair of identical twins and on the other a pair of fraternal twins. Do you pull the lever, and if so, which way?

Arguably the fraternal twins have more possibilities between them than the identical twins whose futures will be more similar (to whatever extent) due to their (near) identical genomes.