- Human beings have innate emotional responses that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.
- Humans innately favor and seek to preserve the lives and well-being of themselves and their kin more than the lives and well-being of strangers and unrelated tribes.
- Humans evolved to have innate emotional responses and prefer the benefit of their kin because they enhance fitness and confer reproductive advantages . Otherwise, those traits remain vestigial or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
- The innate emotional responses and evolutionarily instilled preferences for fitness or reproductive advantage are instrumental goods.
- The concept of human dignity means that every individual life is of absolute value in-and-of-itself, and not contingent on its instrumental value to any other individual or group.
- Instrumental goods cannot ground absolute and non-contingent values.
- None of the innate emotional responses or evolutionary preferences can ground human dignity.
In addition to the above:
- Each of the innate emotional responses (that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.) either enhance fitness, confer reproductive advantages, remain vestigial, or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
- Determining which emotional response should serve as the ground for human dignity requires a means by which evaluate the value of each.
- None of the emotional responses can be used as the means for evaluating emotional responses without engaging in circular reasoning.
- Therefore, some standard other than innate emotional responses, like empathy, must serve as a rational foundation for human dignity.
