on intrinsic value.

“I was jealous of everyone. I compared myself to every single girl that walked by me. Within the first week of high school any scrap of self-esteem I had left fell by the wayside. I turned my focus on trying to look good. If I wasn’t popular, cool, funny, smart, or vivacious like other girls my age, I yearned desperately to be pretty. As if it would make up for the lack of everything else. That’s when I definitely changed my food intake.”

“It’s almost like each person has something distinctive about themself [sic], like this person is an artist, this person is so smart. I’ve always felt like my eating disorder is what I can do, this is mine.”

Amy P. on her struggle with bulimia
(from A&E’s Intervention 03/20/10, part 1)

Obviously persons are nothing but a bundle of “their”* qualities.




*Possessive pronoun misuse.

defending the helpless.

I suppose the following might be a moot point now, but the point is worth making anyhow. Often in discussions (arguments) about government health care, the “anti” position gets put on the defensive with the following line of reasoning:

The Health Care Moral Guilt Argument (HCG)

Pro: Don’t you think you have an obligation to help those in need?
Contra: Yes.
Pro: But if you don’t support the health care bill, aren’t you implicitly refusing to help those in need?
Contra: How so?
Pro: Well, you acknowledge that if the bill were to pass, the people who cannot otherwise afford the health care they need will thereby be able to get it.
Contra: I suppose.
Pro: But then it seems by consciously opposing the bill, aren’t you consciously refusing to help those in need?
Contra: Uh… I guess.

Usually at this point I start mumbling Lockean arguments about the role of government. So instead of changing the subject, I’m going to try to respond to this “argument”.

Suppose that congress decided to enact a bill that was dedicated to ending world hunger, and this bill will increase our income tax to 50%. Suppose you didn’t support the bill, and in response, one of its true believers puts you on the spot with the following:

The World Hunger Moral Guilt Argument (WHG)

Pro: Don’t you think you have an obligation to help those in need?
Contra: Yes.
Pro: But if you don’t support the End World Hunger bill, aren’t you implicitly refusing to help those in need?
Contra: How so?
Pro: Well, you acknowledge that if the bill were to pass, the people who are starving to death will get the food they need.
Contra: I suppose.
Pro: But then it seems by consciously opposing the bill, aren’t you consciously refusing to help those in need?
Contra: Uh… I guess.

It’s my conviction that the inference in WHG that backs the Contra position into a corner is the following:

(1) If you are obliged to help those in need, you must always support a government bill that promises to help those in need.
(3) I am obliged to help those in need and X is a gov't program that will help those in need.
(4) I must support X.

But, I think in the case of WHG, (1) is false, and therefore (1) is sometimes false. For why think that just because one ought to help those in need, one ought to support a plan like the End World Hunger bill, which will increase the income tax rate to 50%? The upshot is that just because one thinks that she is obliged to help those in need, it doesn’t necessarily follow that one must support a government program that will help those in need. And if (1) is false for WHG, what is it about the HCG case that makes it true in that case? Until someone can show me that HCG and WHG are substantively disanalogous, I submit that either (1) is false for HCG as well, or (perhaps more modestly) just because one acknowledges that she has an obligation to help those in need, one is not ipso facto obliged to support government programs that will help those in need.