Do we value ‘life’ even if unconscious, or do we value life only as a vehicle for consciousness? Our attitude to the doctrine of the sanctity of life very much depends on our answer to this question.
Jonathan Glover, Causing Death and Saving Lives, London, 1990, p. 45
Do we really think what we are currently confronted with is worth protecting with some creative obscurantism? Do we think, for instance, that vast resources should be set aside to preserve the imaginary prospects of a renewed mental life for deeply comatose people, while there are no resources to spare to enhance the desperate, but far from imaginary, expectations of the poor? Myths about the sanctity of life, or of consciousness, cut both ways. They may be useful in erecting barriers (against euthanasia, against capital punishment, against abortion, against eating meat) to impress the unimaginative, but at the price of offensive hypocrisy or ridiculous self-deception among the more enlightened.
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, Boston, 1991, p. 454
It is not human life only, not human life as such, that ought to be sacred to us, but human feelings. The human capacity of suffering is what we should cause to be respected, not the mere capacity of existing.
John Stuart Mill, ‘Capital Punishment’ (April 21, 1868), in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 28, p. 270