Equal Moral Worth

Thanks for the continued conversation, here, here, and here.  Eduardo is correct in viewing my position as absolutist - every human organism has equal moral worth.  But, I don't see this claim as necessarily inconsistent with or prohibitive of making distinctions and favoring some human organisms over others. 

Our universal and inviolate dignity as humans is realized within particular communities, and I may favor, may even have a duty to favor, those within my community over those outside my community.  I feed, clothe, shelter, and educate my children before I feed, clothe, shelter, and educate someone else's child while recognizing the inherent and equal moral worth of the other child.  My children are directly my responsibility, while someone else's child is only indirectly or more remotely my responsibility.   I think this partially answers Eduardo and shows that the absolutist (and in my mind nonnegotiable) claim of equal moral worth is not inconsistent with distinguishing between humans and favoring some over others.  But, I suspect I haven't fully responded, so I'll press on a little farther.

We distinguish between people all the time, favoring some over others.  If our 24 hour news cycle (as it relates to murder and kidnapping) is indicative, we, as a society, favor children and attractive young white women.  Sometimes in my constitutional law class, when we are discussing the limits of the law to address prejudice, I'll ask my students to think about how they read stories about crime in the local newspaper.  Many, with rigorous honesty, will admit that they pay more attention to crimes committed against people like them whether on racial or, more likely, socio-economic grounds as identified by neighborhood.  We favor, I think, those we identify with.   Eduardo's hypothetical detached firefighter identifies more with the infants than with the tiny human organism in the petri dish, and will, therefore, save the infants before their younger brothers or sisters.  He will also, I hasten to add, probably choose to save the infants over their disabled great-grandparents.  He has been culturally conditioned to make these choices.  Whether these choices are justified, I leave to others.

If we fail to see the equal moral worth of all human organisms, we will rationalize assigning less worth to some subset (blacks, Jews, fetuses, the disabled, the elderly) of humans in order for us to exert power over them in the name of some other real or imagined good.  Even when we recognize the equal moral worth of all human organisms, we (or, at least I) must struggle with the temptation to favor those who are most like me.  The lawyer wanted to justify himself so he asked Jesus, "who is my neighbor?"