Recently I have been spending most of my time on the subject of philosophy of mind. Questions concerning the nature of human beings are fascinating but have immense ramifications for our value and teleology.

Paramount to any morally and intellectually sensitive person is this: what makes a human being valuable? Human beings are evidently material beings. Theists and non-theists may go back and forth on whether that tells the entire story about human beings. Nevertheless from our basic epistemic starting point, we are material beings made of the physical stuff that comprises the world. But we have no reason to think that material things or organisms bear inherent value. That is to say, it is not clear that physical stuff should be deemed inherently valuable.

What then makes a human being valuable? We may rephrase this: what grounds the value of human beings? If you’re not clear on what this means, perhaps envision a thought experiment where the lives of human beings are at stake. You are tasked with saving the lives of these people. One would go great lengths, think through various possibilities, and weigh the costs of what it would take to save those lives. The question remains why?

For a non-theist answers may be grounded in rationality, or capacity for loving relationship, capacity to experience pleasure or pain. Typically, for theists, both Jewish and Christian this question finds its answer in doctrine of the imago dei. Human beings are created in the image of the divine. But does this answer the question? It remains in dispute what the image of God actually is, positions can be roughly divided into functionalist and structuralist camps. Functionalist accounts describe the image of God as a vocation or function that is carried out. Structuralist accounts describe it as some feature of human nature (freedom, moral agency, rationality etc…).

Notice however all these play an important part in human nature as much as they feature in our conscious experience. I take it as self-evident that conscious experience is valuable in and of itself.1 Our power to exercise freedom (to make the world other than it would have been), or power to exercise moral agency (to bring about good or perform a moral duty) are conscious acts. These require deliberation and apprehension. We should be clear that these are distinct from consciousness itself, and so while they require consciousness to make them realizable they cannot be collapsed into consciousness.2 In the way of speaking, everything we take as immediately real, we do so because it plays a role in our conscious experience.

But can consciousness itself ground human value? Most can agree that consciousness is supremely valuable. But it cannot ground human value. Suppose I am knocked unconscious or fall into a dreamless sleep. Surely I have not lost my value! This helps sharpen our observations. For in those moments, I retain the capacity for consciousness. This is what is common for all human beings, despite whether they are able to make important moral choices or are significantly hindered in exercising freedom. It is our capacity for conscious experience and action that grounds our value not conscious experience or action itself.

Most people recognize that the experience of going for a fall hike, or enjoying a delicious steak, or receiving an act of kindness are goods in themselves. However in Christian theism boldly claims that there is a good that outstrips all of these.3 It is a conscious experience of God. Participation in God or union with God is under girded by conscious experience of God. Perhaps this is what grounds human value as exceptional,4 our capacity for conscious experience of God.

These thoughts are by no means novel, and are more of a rough plotting of an idea than a final answer. But I believe they touch on something that is fundamentally true. Neither do they remain to be some abstract philosophical pondering. For how many people have wondered in their darkest moments, what makes us valuable? You may even be at the end of the road, thinking, why am I valuable? Because you have a supreme gift, the capacity for conscious experience. That is no small thing. And above that, you have the capacity for conscious experience of God. That above all, makes life supremely worth living.

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[1] This also leaves out whether consciousness is something which can be accounted for by physical facts or must be something non physical. It does require that mental properties are real, contrary to the eliminativists. 

[2] Think for instance of an artificial intelligence that is created to perform all of the same tasks that human beings can. Maybe it looks exceptionally human too. Not only this, but it is programmed with the same responses appropriate to those situations. It seems that human beings remain much more valuable. The differentiating factor is that we have a mental life, whereas the machine does not.

[3] Obviously this may apply to theism more broadly, but Christian theism focuses on union with or knowing God. This is especially accentuated in the idea of theosis.

[4] Surely the same would follow for other beings who might have the same capacity.