CMV: Mentally Ill persons should be executed and have their organs harvested

They produce minimal value to society while necessitating the upper range of an average person's resource consumption in order to keep them alive and stable.

They are a burden whose offspring will likewise be disadvantaged in society.

In the metaphor of cells, mentally ill persons are akin to cancer cells - where in the cellular microcosm they are eliminated by the body's immune system, we as a society tolerate and even at times celebrate the mentally ill.

To execute and harvest the organs of a MIP would be a net benefit to society and the individual, who is freed from suffering.

Two well-known issues with your utilitarian view:

- In this case, there is almost always more value to someone's multiple organs that can save multiple lives than to one person's life. Thus, it would be morally acceptable to murder people in general to gather their organs. According to your calculations, it should be especially important if, say, the president is dying, making it imperative to murder a homeless person immediatly to save the president's life by providing an organ if needed... This doesn't seem right, does it?

- The utility monster thought experiment (someone having infinitely high utility, giving "value to society" to an infinite extent, would be morally right to monopolize all resources for himself)


Besides, the very concept of mental illness is highly subject to debate. Remember homosexuality used to be considered as one. Basing a right to murder on a poorly defined concept is VERY dangerous.



Oh and of course there are several metric tons of objections to your point based on several moral points of view that I will not hold because they may be dubious in their foundation, but "murdering people isn't okay" is a pretty universal tenet xD.

neat bait

Wow i cant believe this post comes from a human.

Im mentally ill and this post disgusts me.

Well one can make the utilitarian argument from a positive value perspective, but one also can look at it from a negative value perspective with respect to society (eg. trimming the fat).

You can say then that this also lumps people with physical disabilities, but it is evident the mind is the greatest value producer (eg. Stephen Hawking), even greater than physical ability.

So filtering for non-value producing agents in the lens of utilitarian theory, the mentally ill are at the very top of this list. Sure, some may be able to be utilized for manual labor, but their lifetime market value is negligible in comparison to that of machines we could build to complete their potentially assigned tasks.

Moral justifications aside, the bare logic makes sense.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HatMajor

Well one can make the utilitarian argument from a positive value perspective, but one also can look at it from a negative value perspective with respect to society (eg. trimming the fat).

You can say then that this also lumps people with physical disabilities, but it is evident the mind is the greatest value producer (eg. Stephen Hawking), even greater than physical ability.

So filtering for non-value producing agents in the lens of utilitarian theory, the mentally ill are at the very top of this list. Sure, some may be able to be utilized for manual labor, but their lifetime market value is negligible in comparison to that of machines we could build to complete their potentially assigned tasks.

Moral justifications aside, the bare logic makes sense.

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There is so much wrong in this I do not know where to start lol. I will start with the concept of "value production":

- Mentally ill people are not automatically "non-value producing agents". One can be "mentally ill" (again, this would need to be defined correctly) and yet be functional. This statement is thus not only inaccurate, but also honestly quite offensive.
- Since when is it evident that the mind is the greatest value producer? Without physical ability, we literally wouldn't eat. I also highly value intellectual pursuits, but if noone does physical stuff, noone is going to think at all, because we're all going to be dead of hunger...

All of this evacuates what even is important in the end. You seem to be excluding human dignity from the equation, but this is infinitely far from being self-evident. According to what you're saying, what stops us from just being mindless murderers? Since you're excluding any kind of compassion, it seems the logical conclusion is that we should be in a state of constant war à la Thomas Hobbes...

If you consider everyone as pure utility values, what stops us from considering you are holding psychopathic views that threaten society's cohesion and individual rights, and thus should have your organs harvested "for the greater good"? I am not saying that this is what should happen (obviously lol), but rather that if I follow your logic, it leads to that.

Great.

You make two interesting points and a strawman (redirected to rankings of physical/mental values from the intrinsic value of intelligence).
1) How can we classify 'mentally ill'? I agree, the classification is on the surface, broad.
2) The moral question.

It is possible for basic mental ability and intelligence to be measured via objective reasoning exams or similar. Granted, these tests are not microscopically precise, but they do grant the examiner enough top-down insight on basic mental ability. For the purposes of our filter, we can bar the examination threshold to a relatively low passing requirement, enough that it would give us the insight to identify individuals incapable of value production. This way, the false positives are reduced to a negligible/non-existent number, in exchange for a higher number of false negatives (call it the buffer). The specifics of this examination can debated and scientifically constructed through phases of research and expert opinion (psychologists, mental health professionals, etc).

The moral question is a tougher one to answer. We are animals after all, and resources are not unlimited. In the lens of a society, a non-producing agent who is incapable of creating value is a liability and an unjustifiable expense on a society's balance sheet. These agents oftentimes occupy the upper percentiles of a theoretical value consumption chart; the expense is not only unjustified, but also excessive. You can call it psychopathic, callous, whatever it may be, but the math simply does not work out. We can follow 'moral values' that blindly deny the science and can lead to societal decay, or we can objectively observe value metrics and adjust to items that lead to societal growth.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HatMajor

Great.

You make two interesting points and a strawman (redirected to rankings of physical/mental values from the intrinsic value of intelligence).
1) How can we classify 'mentally ill'? I agree, the classification is on the surface, broad.
2) The moral question.

It is possible for basic mental ability and intelligence to be measured via objective reasoning exams or similar. Granted, these tests are not microscopically precise, but they do grant the examiner enough top-down insight on basic mental ability. For the purposes of our filter, we can bar the examination threshold to a relatively low passing requirement, enough that it would give us the insight to identify individuals incapable of value production. This way, the false positives are reduced to a negligible/non-existent number, in exchange for a higher number of false negatives (call it the buffer). The specifics of this examination can debated and scientifically constructed through phases of research and expert opinion (psychologists, mental health professionals, etc).

The moral question is a tougher one to answer. We are animals after all, and resources are not unlimited. In the lens of a society, a non-producing agent who is incapable of creating value is a liability and an unjustifiable expense on a society's balance sheet. These agents oftentimes occupy the upper percentiles of a theoretical value consumption chart; the expense is not only unjustified, but also excessive. You can call it psychopathic, callous, whatever it may be, but the math simply does not work out. We can follow 'moral values' that blindly deny the science and can lead to societal decay, or we can objectively observe value metrics and adjust to items that lead to societal growth.

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I am not addressing all the possible objections to your posts, simply because they are legion lol, but just giving a few. I didn't even think of how you would measure who deserves to live and who doesn't because... that's a bloody horrible thought. The paragraph about it is actually entirely outside of the objections I had voiced, even though it absolutely brings up an issue - but I'd say that issue is secondary, because it implies we accept the premise that utilitarian murder is fine, which is ?!?!?!?!.
And now, I am just realizing you meant that measuring "mental ability", whatever that means, was meant to address mental illness. Being dumb (because that is what you're referring to, apparently) is not a mental illness, as far as I know?


The moral question is the main element here, though. Two subdivisions to your answer:

- Why would... "supporting" disabled people (because that is what you seem to be saying, moreso than "mentally ill people") be an unjustifiable expense - according to which principles? What makes one's existence justified? You cannot escape this question, especially not when you're making such dangerous statements.

- Science does not provide answers about what should be done. It does not tell you what "societal decay" is - religious people will say it is the decline of faith, Enlightenment folks will tell you it is about the lack of knowledge in society/humanity, others will say it is about global happiness, more will mention justice, and so on. You need philosophy to do that. Science is merely a tool to achieve whatever goals your philosophy sets; it cannot set your goals by itself, because that's simply not its role: one cannot scientifically conclude that X ought to be done over Y because it is a better result, because the concept of "better" is not verifiable in any empirical way. Saying that science tells us that X is better is a shorthand for "science tells us that if we want to attain goal A (for reasons that were previously established by means of philosophy), X is the way to go" - nothing more. If you want to say we ought to do something, you NEED morality, i.e. something that tells you what is good in human actions and what isn't. You have a morality system underlying your statements, even if you don't call it that way, because you most definetly have a basis for your conception of what is good for society (be it right or wrong, you have one; else, you would not prefer any state of affairs to any other).

Obviously, by the good of society, I mean technological progress which breeds science, forming a positive reinforcing cycle. Ray Dalio interprets this well in his book that describes the rise and fall of empires, or, society: education brings technology brings innovation brings financial success brings education (to paraphrase). So evidently intellectual acumen is cornerstone to the cycle and societal evolution through time.

It is a difficult moral question.

We could go on and on to and fro but it seems that personal moral baseline is the guide for the sake of our argument. Obviously, I think the examination threshold should be set so low that there can be no debate to be made on the standing of mental acuity, but even then crevices for corruption and homicide exist. It would be a dangerous path.

Frankly, I think the threshold I am referring to is so low that it would be beneficial for all parties involved, but the adoption question and the moral question stand unfulfilled.

The initial intent is progressive, but anything further is regressive and extremely dangerous.

@Marshmallow Marshall

You ate the obvious troll bait lmao

Locking this thread.