A new argument for antinatalism

Bartricks

I think there are lots of arguments for antinatalism and a thoroughgoing case would appeal to numerous of them. What I am going to do here is just focus on one argument that, I think, is original. (I am fairly familiar with the literature - with Benatar and Shiffrin and such like).

First, some distinctions: we can distinguish between deserved, undeserved, and non-deserved suffering. Likewise for pleasure.

Generally speaking it is morally good if someone gets what they deserve and bad if they do not. It can also be good if someone gets some non-deserved pleasure, and bad if someone gets some non-deserved pain. But - and again, this is a generalization - the goodness of pleasure is greater when it is deserved and the badness of pain is greater when it is not deserved.

I'll give some examples to illustrate. If I punch a wall in frustration at just how stupid some people can be, then that will cause me some suffering. But that suffering seems to be of a non-deserved kind. By contrast, if I punched someone else in frustration at their stupidity, then the suffering that would create would be of an undeserved kind - the person I hit did not deserve to suffer. Even if the quantity of suffering that these two acts create is identical, the first kind seems far less morally bad than the second. Why? Well, because the suffering caused by the first act was of a non-deserved kind, whereas the kind caused by the second was of an undeserved kind.

Now to acts of procreation. It is undeniable that, by subjecting someone to a lifetime's existence in this world, one will be creating lots of undeserved suffering. There's the suffering that can reasonably be expected to attend any human life. And then there's all the suffering we humans inevitably visit on others, not least other animals, in the course of our lives. All of that is undeserved suffering. And there's a lot of it. And it's very morally bad.

What about all the pleasures though? Well, although one will also be creating pleasures by procreating, those pleasures - most of them, anyway - do not seem deserved. They are of the non-deserved variety. For just as it would be implausible to think that, prior to being born we deserve to suffer, so too it would be implausible to think that prior to being born we deserve pleasure. Prior to being born, we don't deserve anything.

So, an act of human procreation can therefore be expected to create undeserved suffering and non-deserved pleasure. I personally think it's quite obvious that they can be expected to create consideable undeserved suffering, and a much lesser quantity of non-deserved pleasure. But even if - implausibly - we assume that they create equal quantities of both, they would create more moral bad than moral good. For undeserved suffering is the worst kind, morally speaking. Whereas non-deserved pleasure, though good, is not especially good. And in most other contexts we seem to recognize that it doesn't offset the creation of undeserved suffering.

So, what do you think? Does the fact that acts of human procreation can reasonably be expected to create lots of undeserved suffering and non-deserved pleasure imply that they are overall morally bad?

NOS4A2

I think it’s a good argument. I’m not keen on the literature, but I’ve never heard it before.

Personally I would depart from the argument at the premise one should feel morally responsible for suffering by creating life, but it might be convincing to those who are able to reduce life to suffering.

khaled

↪Bartricks

Well, although one will also be creating pleasures by procreating, those pleasures - most of them, anyway - do not seem deserved. — Bartricks

You didn't distinguish what a "deserved", "non-deserved" and "undeserved" pleasure is. Maybe an example from each?

Does the fact that acts of human procreation can reasonably be expected to create lots of undeserved suffering and non-deserved pleasure imply that they are overall morally bad? — Bartricks

If you're only considering the child and parent, yes. But it becomes less clear when you generalize to the consequences of both acts. If you are a good parent, your child can be expected to alleviate a lot of undeserved suffering throughout their lifetime as well as create a lot of pleasure. By not having them, you are thus still causing undeserved suffering, to the people they would have helped.

Kenosha Kid

If I punch a wall in frustration at just how stupid some people can be, then that will cause me some suffering. But that suffering seems to be of a non-deserved kind. — Bartricks

Seems perfectly deserved to me.

Like more traditional arguments for antinatalism, this looks circular. The asymmetry detected is in fact entered by hand. A person treats people with kindness and as a result, on her birthday, is thrown a lovely surprise birthday party which she takes pleasure in. But we define this pleasure to be undeserved without reason, making it qualitatively the same as a bully who steals a winning lottery ticket.

More broadly, the argument rests on the notion of justice as being central to ethical decisions about reproduction, although you claim an unjustified link to morality here in a second circular argument:

And then there's all the suffering we humans inevitably visit on others, not least other animals, in the course of our lives. All of that is undeserved suffering. And there's a lot of it. And it's very morally bad. — Bartricks

No matter how coherent the argument beginning from this premise, the argument can be dismissed as being not well-grounded: justice is not a concern in the ethics of reproduction.

baker

So, what do you think? Does the fact that acts of human procreation can reasonably be expected to create lots of undeserved suffering and non-deserved pleasure imply that they are overall morally bad? — Bartricks

In some schools of Buddhism, they would probably something like that, yes.

baker

justice is not a concern in the ethics of reproduction. — Kenosha Kid

For whom? Says who?

Kenosha Kid

For whom? Says who? — baker

Says anyone who doesn't consider justice when deciding whether it's ethical to reproduce. Anyway, Says who? is not an argument for accepting a proposition. Since the proposition is presented without grounds, and no grounds are obvious, it can be dismissed without grounds.

TheMadFool

Firstly, the distinction undeserved and non-deserved doesn't make sense. In both cases the individuals concerned don't, by some metric, fail to rightfully experience pleasure or pain. What's the difference then?

Secondly, antinatalism must make its case based on either absolute terms (life is suffering) or the alleged hedonic asymmetry (life has more suffering than happiness). Your argument is a variation of the latter.

You introduce a new variable into the hedonic equation viz. deservedness of pleasure/suffering. Considering the fact that this notion figures prominently in the weltanschauung of the majority, hats off to you. After all, speaking from a religious point of view, the ticket to heaven has to bought with good deeds and the passage to hell has a similar arrangement although the currency in this case is immoral conduct.

It's true that undeserved suffering is the worst kind and also true that undeserved pleasure isn't as enjoyable. Does the world generate more of these kinds of hedonic states than deserved suffering and deserved pleasure? I don't know but...there's always a but...take note of the fact that given our circumstances, the first order of business is to get pleasure and avoid suffering; we can leave the deservedness question for another time...perhaps a couple of thousand years in the future. Before we tear our hair out on the matter of ice cream flavors, there has to be ice cream first.

Constance

So, what do you think? Does the fact that acts of human procreation can reasonably be expected to create lots of undeserved suffering and non-deserved pleasure imply that they are overall morally bad? — Bartricks

A utilitarian measure, and not sure about the premise that a person's life realizes more pain over suffering is sound. But then, the entire argument ignores the qualitative distinctions between pleasures and pains, as well as in the grounding these have in ways unseen. The dismissal of undeservedness or deservedness antecedent to being thrown into an existence is an assumption that needs to be argued.

Constance

After all, speaking from a religious point of view, the ticket to heaven has to bought with good deeds and the passage to hell has a similar arrangement although the currency in this case is immoral conduct. — TheMadFool

Not good deeds, good intentions. But then, this goes further: good intentions affirm the good, but what is this? Metaethical questions always haunt in the presuppositions that underlie talk about utility. this makes the whole affair sound preposterous in terms of sound think, for there one is arguing, and at the center of it all is a term that one cannot even begin to fathom. A bit like talking about economics but having no working definition of wealth.

baker

On a general note: What is the purpose of antinatalist arguments?

To convince people at large not to have children?
To justify why one doesn't have children?
?

Because the purpose of an antinatalist argument factors in its content.

Bartricks

↪Constance

A utilitarian measure, and not sure about the premise that a person's life realizes more pain over suffering is sound. But then, the entire argument ignores the qualitative distinctions between pleasures and pains, as well as in the grounding these have in ways unseen. The dismissal of undeservedness or deservedness antecedent to being thrown into an existence is an assumption that needs to be argued. — Constance

Although I think it is almost certainly the case that an average human life will cause much more suffering than pleasure overall, I was very clear in saying that I would not assume this and would instead assume that the quantities are equal. That is, I will assume - for the sake of argument alone - that the average human life creates as much pleasure as pain.

I do not ignore qualitative distinctions, they're simply not relevant to the argument I am making and so I didn't mention them (for the point is about our deservingness of the pains and pleasures involved, a point that cuts across qualitative distinctions).

As to this: "The dismissal of undeservedness or deservedness antecedent to being thrown into an existence is an assumption that needs to be argued". That too is both incorrect and irrelevant. It is incorrect because the burden, surely, is on you, not me. That is, the default is not that we are born positively deserving to suffer, or born positively deserving pleasure; the default is that we are born 'innocent' - that is, we do not positively deserve to suffer, nor do we positively deserve pleasure. If you think we are born deserving to suffer, or born deserving pleasure, then you need to provide us with some justification for that belief.

But anyway, it's beside the point. For whether we are born deserving to suffer or not, my question was a 'what if'. So, 'if' people are born innocent, and 'if' the quantities of pleasure and pain a life creates are equal, then does the fact that most of the pains will be positively undeserved whereas most of the pleasures will be non-deserved imply that such acts are morally bad, other things being equal?

TheMadFool

Not good deeds, good intentions. But then, this goes further: good intentions affirm the good, but what is this? Metaethical questions always haunt in the presuppositions that underlie talk about utility. this makes the whole affair sound preposterous in terms of sound think, for there one is arguing, and at the center of it all is a term that one cannot even begin to fathom. A bit like talking about economics but having no working definition of wealth. — Constance

Indeed, good intentions and not good deeds but Christian morality revolves around deeds, don't they?

Bartricks

↪baker

Contrary to what you assert, it is not relevant. The soundness of an argument is unaffected by the motives of the arguer.

baker

Christian morality revolves around deeds, don't they — TheMadFool

Depending on the Christian sect.

baker

Contrary to what you assert, it is not relevant. The soundness of an argument is unaffected by the motives of the arguer. — Bartricks

I'm not talking about soundness, but content.

Surely you can imagine that you will provide a different line of reasoning if you are asked why you personally don't have children, as opposed to if you're asked to explain why people at large or some particular person or group of persons should not have children.

TheMadFool

Depending on the Christian sect. — baker

Can you break it down for me? How many Christian sects are there and which Christian sects subscribe to which beliefs. You can keep it short and stick to the relevant bits.

Bartricks

↪khaled

You didn't distinguish what a "deserved", "non-deserved" and "undeserved" pleasure is. Maybe an example from each? — khaled

Imagine someone who is living a kind, generous and honest life. That person, I'd say, deserves to be happy.

Or imagine someone who, through no fault of their own, has suffered considerably up to now. That person deserves to be happy.

So, one way of coming to deserve pleasure is through one's deeds, and one way is through being a victim of undeserved suffering. No doubt there are other ways too, those are just the ones that occur to me.

When it comes to undeserved pleasure - well, the case that comes to mind is that of Dr Mengele. Dr Mengele performed many horrific experiments on concentration camp victims. But he escaped after the war and lived the rest of his life in, it would seem, happy retirement in south america. His happiness was positively undeserved. That is, the fact Dr Mengele had a happy life is not a fact that makes the world a better place, but a worse one. Why? Because he did not deserve to be happy. His pleasure, then, is positively undeserved.

And as for non-deserved pleasure - well that's just pleasure that sits in the middle of the 'deserved pleasure/undeserved pleasure' spectrum. So if I'm just walking down the street and I find some money or am given a nice compliment or something - well, it's not that I positively deserve the pleasures those things give me (it doesn't seem 'unjust' if I go for a walk and no one gives me a nice compliment, for example, or I don't find any money). So those pleasures - which I think will be the vast bulk - are non-deserved. They're good - I'm not saying anything against them. But they're not positively deserved, at least not typically.

Constance

Indeed, good intentions and not good deeds but Christian morality revolves around deeds, don't they? — TheMadFool

If I invest in the stock market, make a fortune and incidentally support a company that does good deeds, it isn't reasonable to say I have some stake in the goodness of the deeds; and then, I scrimp and save to support Doctors Without Borders, but find I have been hoodwinked by some intermediary and all the money went into some billionaire's pocket, regardless of my money's "deed" I am on morally superior ground.
But this is simply a reasoned point. Does Christianity talk like this? It's somewhat debatable for them, considering how morally ambiguous it has been. Assuming a version of Christianity that isn't bats^^t crazy, I think this reasoning applies. I take Kierkegaard to be the source of wisdom for all things Christian, and I think he would agree.

Bartricks

↪baker

Not relevant. This thread is about whether an act that creates equal quantities of undeserved pain and non-deserved pleasure is good or right.

Cobra

The only argument I see we can make for this is that no one deserves to endure suffering that has no utility. Suffering without any utility applies to every single conscious/moral agent, but this is only because no one deserves to be alive at all, and nature is not a conscious agent that "inflicts" rewards/punishments on people.

TheMadFool

If I invest in the stock market, make a fortune and incidentally support a company that does good deeds, it isn't reasonable to say I have some stake in the goodness of the deeds; and then, I scrimp and save to support Doctors Without Borders, but find I have been hoodwinked by some intermediary and all the money went into some billionaire's pocket, regardless of my money's "deed" I am on morally superior ground.
But this is simply a reasoned point. Does Christianity talk like this? It's somewhat debatable for them, considering how morally ambiguous it has been. Assuming a version of Christianity that isn't bats^^t crazy, I think this reasoning applies. I take Kierkegaard to be the source of wisdom for all things Christian, and I think he would agree. — Constance

Come to think of it, it's a mistake to look at the issue in an "either...or..." way. We could take both - thoughts and deeds - into account when we judge the moral status of people.

Isaac

by subjecting someone to a lifetime's existence in this world, one will be creating lots of undeserved suffering. — Bartricks

Therefore by your own definition their pleasure is deserved.

one way [to deserve pleasure] is through being a victim of undeserved suffering. — Bartricks

Bartricks

↪Cobra

It seems to me that you are conflating 'deserved' suffering with 'justified' suffering.

Sure, it can sometimes be morally justified to make one person suffer for the sake of the welfare of others. But that doesn't mean that the person who suffers 'deserved' to suffer.

Whether some suffering is deserved or not can make a big difference to whether we are justified in bringing it about. For instance, the suffering we cause to criminals when we incarcerate them is suffering that we are justified in subjecting them too in part, at least, because they deserve it.

And the major reason why we insist on a presumption of innocence in a trial is precisely because if we incarcerate someone innocent, then we will be subjecting someone to undeserved suffering.

So the moral significance of some suffering is radically affected by whether or not it is deserved. And as the presumption of innocence shows, we typically consider it extremely important not to be the agents of undeserved suffering.

Applied to procreation: procreating undeniably creates a large amount of undeserved suffering. Even in the unlikely event that procreating creates an equally large amount of pleasure, most of that pleasure is going to be non-deserved. And that, I think, is going to operate to make procreative acts immoral, other things being equal.

Bartricks

↪Isaac

No, not necessarily or likely. You're mistakenly assuming that I am talking exclusively about the pains and pleasures contained in the life of the one who has been subjected to a life. They're in the mix, but I am talking about all the pleasures and pains that a life here can reasonably be taken to create.

But even ignoring that, it won't make much of a difference. Assume, very implausibly and just for the sake of argument, that every experience of pleasure in your life is deserved due to a prior experience of an undeserved pain. I don't think that's going to make it ok to have created those pains and pleasures.

Imagine, for instance, that we can reasonably expect that if Tim is unjustly imprisoned for murder, he will commit a murder in prison that will subsequently justify us keeping him there. Is it right and good for us to imprison Tim? Surely not. The fact that 'if' we imprisoned him he would subsequently become deserving of that imprisonment doesn't seem to cut it. What seems important is that Tim is innocent and doesn't deserve to be imprisoned. Pace Shakespeare, all is not well that ends well.

baker

Not relevant. This thread is about whether an act that creates equal quantities of undeserved pain and non-deserved pleasure is good or right. — Bartricks

You want to meaningfully talk about pleasure and good/right without reference to people??

baker

How many Christian sects are there and which Christian sects subscribe to which beliefs. — TheMadFool

In general, it is the Protestants who value faith above deeds, and the Catholics who place a greater value on deeds than do Protestants.

See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_works

Cobra

What is the difference here between these two? I don't think you're saying anything particularly interesting here other than we should not hurt others to where there's no utility in doing so. I think we are in some form of agreement.

Sure, it can sometimes be morally justified to make one person suffer for the sake of the welfare of others. But that doesn't mean that the person who suffers 'deserved' to suffer. — Bartricks

Whether some suffering is deserved or not can make a big difference to whether we are justified in bringing it about. For instance, the suffering we cause to criminals when we incarcerate them is suffering that we are justified in subjecting them too in part, at least, because they deserve it. — Bartricks

I'm just saying no one deserves to suffer where there is no utility, not particularly talking about 'justified' suffering, but suffering that serves no optimization benefit.

Someone desiring to be raped doesn't need to be, even if they put themselves in position to be vulnerable to it.

Bartricks

↪Cobra

I don't think you're saying anything particularly interesting here other than we should not hurt others to where there's no utility in doing so. — Cobra

But that's not what I'm saying. I am unclear how you got that from anything I said. I have not expressed a commitment to utilitarianism. indeed, far from it - I draw a distinction between deserved and undeserved pleasure/pain, which is a distinction that no classic utilitarian would recognize (to the discredit of the theory). Desert is typically said to be a 'deontological' notion, precisely because whether or not you deserve something is not a function of the consequences of giving it to you. So, the fact that giving me X would maximise happiness does not entail that I deserve X.

Nevertheless, I agree that the premises of my argument are uninteresting in that they are quite uncontroversial. Most recognise that moral desert exists and that whether a pleasure or a pain is deserved or not makes - or can make - a radical difference to the moral justifiability of an act that creates it.

But my conclusion - that antinatalism is true or at least lent weight by what I have argued - is, of course, extremely controversial. And I suppose I'd say that the interest lies both in this - that is, that some very uncontroversial and highly plausible premises imply a controversial and widely disbelieved conclusion - and the fact that the argument in question is a novel one.

Echarmion

Now to acts of procreation. It is undeniable that, by subjecting someone to a lifetime's existence in this world, one will be creating lots of undeserved suffering. — Bartricks

I think there is a problematic assertion here, which is present in most anti-natalist arguments, that by creating a person you thereby also create their eventual suffering. Of course suffering is a predictable consequence of existence as a human. However, suffering is a personal experience. It's not a physical property, of which it could be said that if another person has it, the total amount of suffering has therefore increased.

We wouldn't say that, the more people in the world that experience the colour red, the more redness there is. Suffering is bad, but suffering does not, by that token, get worse if someone else also experiences it.

Bartricks

↪Echarmion

I don't see what's problematic in that assertion. You say that suffering is a personal experience. Yes, nothing I've said supposes otherwise. You say it is not a physical property. Again yes, but nothing I've said assumes otherwise.

Pain is essentially experienced. That is, it exists 'as' an experience. ("I'm experiencing some pain, but am I actually in pain?" makes no sense).

But this is all by the by. What's relevant to my case is that a) pain often matters morally (that is, the fact an act will create some pain is often a fact about an act that has great moral significance), and b) that whether pain/pleasure is deserved or undeserved also makes a great difference to whether an act that promotes it is right or wrong.

A new argument for antinatalism

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