Category: General (Page 2 of 5)

In her book The Risk of a Lifetime Rivka Weinberg explores How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible.
As the headline implies she thinks that procreation is a risk of a lifetime, and as the subheading suggests, it is a permissible risk but under certain conditions.
Since the road she takes to explain How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible goes through various issues which I have already addressed in previous texts, such as her Hazmat Theory Of Parental Responsibility, the Non-Identity Problem, David Benatar’s Quality Of Life Argument, Seana Shiffrin’s consent argument, and Rawls theory of justice, here I’ll focus on the core of her book – the ‘Principles of Procreative Permissibility’.
For a more complete critical observation of the rest of the ideas she addresses in the book, please read the texts I have just referred to.

The Principles of Procreative Permissibility

Despite that the very first sentence of the book is: “Everybody is somebody’s fault” and despite that shortly after she writes:

“It’s mind-blowing, really. Here we are, in our strange and vast universe, living with many unknowns, uncertainties, and difficulties, and what do we do? We decide to create a creature like ourselves, a sentient, conscious person, with full moral status and a future largely unknown except for the fact that the person will be helpless and dependent for a very long time. How odd of us. Who do we think we are, anyway? Where do we get off? When we procreate, what are we doing and why are we doing it? (p. 15)

Her book is not at all an antinatalist one and she doesn’t think life is a predicament. But she also undauntedly rejects the common notion that life is a gift. As opposed to gifts, which are given for free, can be enjoyed or ignored, but very unlikely to harm the recipient, Weinberg argues that life is not free, it can’t be ignored, and it can definitely harm the created. One has to work hard to enjoy life, and if one ignores life, one is likely to suffer, and of course for many created people life is extremely harmful. So life, even when considered good, is not a gift.
But more importantly, life according to her is not a gift, nor a benefit bestowed by parents on their children, because no one needed, wanted or had an interest in being created before it happened, and no one existed in any other form before being created so no one can be benefited by being created. In her own words: “the future person does not have a good or any state at all to improve, benefit, or better until after the procreative act is complete” (p. 20)
She agrees that procreation is not and can’t at all be an action for the sake of the created people, but is an action for the sake of the parents, as the children are not subjects of interests before they are being created, so how can their creation be for their own sake?

So procreation according Weinberg is not a gift, but it’s also not a predicament, it is a risk, a risk of a lifetime that people choose to impose on other people, and necessarily for their own benefit since being created is never in the interests of a person before it exists. And since this is the setting of creating a person, according to her, meaning, basically a selfish action that imposes a lifetime risk on another person, it needs to have a very good reason.

Weinberg suggests that procreation is a risk that can be justified by two principles she calls the ‘Principles of Procreative Permissibility’:

Motivation Restriction: Procreation must be motivated by the desire and intention to raise, love, and nurture one’s child once it is born.

Procreative Balance: Procreation is permissible only when the risk you impose as a procreator on your children would not be irrational for you to accept as a condition of your own birth (assuming that you will exist), in exchange for the permission to procreate under these risk conditions.

Weinberg uses a Kantian/Rawlsian framework for constructing these principles, explaining that the Kantian framework is suited to questions of procreative permissibility because it emphasizes the treatment of all persons as ends in themselves and stresses the importance of proper motivation. And the Rawlsian framework is particularly useful for questions of procreative permissibility because it is constructed to yield just principles in cases of distributive conflicts of interests and deliberated about under conditions constructed to reduce bias. She is aware that it is not common to think of procreation as a distributive conflict of interest, but argues that it is one:

“prospective parents have an interest in procreating whenever they please, and future children have an interest in excellent birth conditions. These interests are often in conflict. For example, if parents procreate while they are unemployed, their children will bear some of the costs of their parents’ procreative freedom. If we restrict procreative permissibility only to cases where the future children are likely to have extremely secure economic situations, people who cannot offer this to their children will bear the costs of the security of future children (a category that, in this case, will not include their own children).” (p.7)

In the following text I’ll address her first principle, and in the second part I’ll address the second one.

An End To Others Being Means

With heavy reliance on a Kantian ethical framework Weinberg considers the motivation behind procreation and the treatment of all persons as ends in themselves, to be extremely crucial:

“Just as Kantian contractualism emphasizes the importance of being properly motivated, we have determined that proper procreative motivation is crucial to its permissibility. Proper procreative motivation is important because it helps to ensure that we are procreating in ways that are not disrespectful to children or inconsistent with our broadly liberal values of autonomy, respect, and equality. For example, procreating because one wants to engage in the parent-child relationship as a nurturing parent would be an acceptable procreative motive, but procreating to impress the neighbors would be a problematic procreative motive, regardless of outcome, because it does not treat the future child as a person deserving of respect and value in her own right.” (p. 154)

However, there seems to be a basic and fundamental oxymoron with forcing existence on other people and treating them as ends in themselves. While we should, and hopefully can, treat existing others as ends in themselves, creating others without them desiring, needing, wanting, or having any interests in being created, can’t be treating them as ends in themselves, as they didn’t exist before their existence was forced on them. Weinberg totally rejects people’s false statement that they are creating other people to benefit these people, so how is it that it is impossible and logically implausible to create someone for its own benefit but not that it is impossible and logically implausible to create someone as an end in itself?

The fact that these ends are to raise, love, and nurture their child once it is born, doesn’t make them means to the child’s end, or the child to be an end in itself. The desire and intention to raise, love, and nurture one’s child once it is born, is still the parents’ desire and never the child’s, since before being created there is no child to have any desire.
Treating a child as an end in itself once it is born doesn’t retroactively make the creation of that child an end in itself. The child was still necessarily born for others’ ends.

In order for a person’s creation to truly be for its own end, it is insufficient for the parents to treat their child as an end in itself, nor for that person to find an end of its own to its own existence, but that the answer to the question ‘why was I created?’ be ‘since I had an end X’. Clearly there is no such option since no one has its own ends before existing. The answer is always ‘since my parents had an end X’. A person can absolutely say ‘now that I exist I have an end X’ and it can absolutely be a reason for its existence after being created, but it can’t be a reason for its creation. No matter how many ends a person would find along its existence, the end of its creation will always be its parents’.

Therefore I find it hard to see how procreation can be defended using a Kantian framework since people are never created as ends in themselves but always as means to their parents’ ends. Being created is never needed or desired by the person being created. It is forced on each and every person, always, and necessarily for motives of others. Or if to go back to the first sentence of the book – “Everybody is somebody’s fault”…

The case in point is about creating people, not about how to treat people after creating them was already decided.
It seems that as far as Weinberg goes the instrumentalization bound with creating people can be covered up if their parents intend to treat them as separate and valuable persons in their own right after they were created. Obviously, treating a person as worthy of respect of its own after being created is highly crucial, however it shouldn’t retroactively change the instrumental circumstances of its creation. It is impossible to create someone not as a mean to others’ ends. And no matter how that person would be treated after being created, nothing can retroactively change that fact.

Weinberg mentions along the book some awful motives for procreation, probably as a rhetoric exercise, hoping to put a positive spin on the motivation she claims can make it permissible. But arguing that – creating a person if there is no intention or ability to ensure that the child would feel self-respect, that she is entitled to love and consideration in her own right – is wrong, doesn’t make the opposite right. They both can be wrong, despite one of them being much worse than the other.
I agree that it will be hard for a child to develop basic self-respect if s/he is not treated as worthy of respect, but that is a good reason to treat people as worthy of respect, and not at all a reason to create people in the first place. Furthermore, the risk imposition, the selfishness, the paternalism, the pointlessness, the pain, the frustration, the stress, the boredom, the sickness, the death and the fear of death, are all still there. All that mentioning some horrible reasons to create a person can prove is that there are certainly even worse reasons to create a person than the ones she suggests, but it can’t prove that her reasons are permissible.

If I want to do something that involves someone else, let alone when that person has no interest in that something happening before it does, I must make sure that at least that person will not be harmed by my desirable action. There is no such option when people are creating people. In fact, it is the opposite, we can be sure that all created people will be harmed, and no motivation and intention to raise, love, and nurture them can ensure that they won’t.

In addition, good intentions do not guarantee good performances (wanting to be a respectful and loving parent does not guarantee succeeding in being one), even allegedly succeeding in treating people as separate persons in their own right, and as entitled to respect and being valued for their own sake, doesn’t ensure good outcomes. Awful and unrespectful relationships between parents and children don’t have exclusivity in misery. There are plenty of other causes and reasons for misery, and there are many miserable children of parents who sincerely tried to be as respectful and as loving as possible. It is simply not at all a guaranteed recipe as life throws plenty of shit at people, and parents are absolutely helpless in protecting their children from all of it.

Wrong Motivation

Besides being irrelevant and insufficient when it comes to questions of creating new people, and besides being selfish and instrumental as well, the mere desire for a relationship which is highly, inevitably, and prolongedly – unequal, paternalistic and controlling – is highly questionable.

Doesn’t the fact that most people don’t want to adopt but desire a biological child of their own, arouse suspicion that it might not be merely the desire to raise, love, and nurture a child? Isn’t it obvious that there is another motive here which involves hubris or narcissism, as people seem to insist on seeing their own genes being spread, on creating an extension of themselves, a mini-me, or something of this sort?
And shouldn’t the fact that the few who are willing to adopt, disproportionally prefer a baby and not a grown child (despite knowing that most of the other people who are willing to adopt prefer to adopt a baby as well, so if they will insist on adopting a baby, parentless grown children might never be adopted), set alarm bells ringing regarding people’s real motives as clearly they prefer that the person they supposedly want to raise, love, and nurture would be as little, as dependent and as cute as possible? Isn’t it because the younger and the more dependent their child is the easier the imprinting process would be? Doesn’t it at all involve ensuring that their child would be more likely to love them back and to fill them with a feeling of power and competent (as after all they are supposedly able to take care of all of someone else’s needs, a feeling that is not available for them with bigger and more independent children)? Doesn’t that preference have something to do with them wanting a cute gadget to love, all the more so one that is way more likely to be an extension of themselves than a grown child is expected to be?
Would people create new people if they were born independent, speaking, intellectually equal adults? No way. And that means that at least part of what they desire is an unequal, paternalistic and controlling relationship.
And of course this case is not even of participating in such a relationship but of creating one, all the more so exactly because that’s what it is (again, people would not create independent, speaking, intellectually equal adults).

So even if that was truly the motivation of parents, there is something awfully wrong about it. And unfortunately, usually, the motivation is even worse than the one Weinberg refers to.
I fail to comprehend how a desire and intention to raise, love, and nurture one’s child once it is born can justify the blunt and unambiguous elements of imposition, selfishness, and instrumentalization, bound with its creation. Elements which Weinberg is well aware of:

“even if the child’s life is good for the child once the child exists, it is still not a benefit to the child to have been procreated. That’s why we cannot easily claim to create a child to further the child’s interests. The child has interests only if the child exists; otherwise we have no real subject for interests at all. Therefore we do not further the child’s interests by bringing it into existence. We must face the fact that we don’t procreate for the sake of our children. We procreate because we want to. Hopefully, we want to because we want to engage in the parent-child relationship as a parent and participate in a family. Thus we come to an understanding of how we may procreate with a justifiable motive. The parental motive seems justifiable because acting on it may satisfy a unique and legitimate interest of existing people and, arguably, may do so in a way that can be respectful of the future child before the child is conceived and beneficial to the child once the child exists.” (p. 39)

If humans have such a strong motivation to express their desire to love and take care of others, why not directing it towards whom who are in real need instead of creating new unnecessary needy people? By that they are adding insult to injury, since they are devoting most of their time, energy and resources to needs that they have unnecessarily created, instead of to the various needs that were already there. So in that sense, creating new people is not only disrespectful towards the created people, as they are created to serve as mediums for the expression of their creators’ desire to love and take care of others, but it is also disrespectful towards existing people in need who are treated as if their need is less important than a created unnecessary need.
And it all comes with a very high price, imposing unnecessary lifetime risks on others, treating children as means to others’ ends, forsaking people in real need, and creating additional and unnecessary units of suffering, exploitation and pollution.

It is hard to call something a truly and authentically loving relationship when one side is totally depended on the other. The child being absolutely needy and helpless, develops attachment to its parents because they provide vital first aid, mainly through feed and a sense of protection. And that positive association is being formed regardless of any intrinsic quality of the parents. It is not a choice or a preference, but more like a conditioned reflex. This is more like a fixed attachment, an imprinting, than anything authentic.
It is such an unequal, paternalistic and commanding relationship that it needs to be condemned not perpetuated and justified. The fact that it is very common, natural and universal doesn’t make it right.
A structurally unequal and dominating relationship is not justified because these features are natural and inevitable. In fact, since this relationship is naturally and inevitably structurally unequal and dominating, creating it must be avoided.

Procreation involves a dubious motivation and it is wrong to describe it as if it can be a product of a pure desire to raise, love and nurture another person. It is mainly a biological impulse, that can be controlled, is unnecessary, and necessarily has tremendous prices.

Creating a person is creating a biological gadget, even if its creators don’t treat it as one. It is a biological gadget that is supposed to provide its creators love and satisfaction, a sense of power and competence, a purpose for their existence, to ease their existence’s pointlessness, to ease their boredom, to give them a reason to do staff, to recover and maintain their relationship, normalize them in the eyes of society and etc. These motives are rarely openly stated but they are some of the real reasons behind procreation and often behind the motivation to raise, love and nurture one’s child once it is born.

Disrespectful Unequal and Nonautonomous

Having a so called proper motive may be important to ensure that the parents are not disrespectful to their children or inconsistent with broadly liberal values of autonomy, respect, and equality, after the person was created, but it can’t retroactively change the fact that that person was created for its parents’ ends, without equally respecting that person’s autonomy. These values are some of the crucial factors for insuring a respectful treatment of an existing person, but practically they are hardly relevant even for existing children, as they are not really treated as equally respectful autonomous people, and they are not even theoretically relevant for non-existing people.

Unilaterally forcing someone into a relationship which that person can’t really get out of isn’t being respectful of that person. Once existing, a person can’t undo its own existence, undo or change the genetic makeup forced on that person, undo or change the environmental conditions forced on that person, or undo or change the relationships forced on that person.
And there is not even a clean, safe and respectful exit option from any of that, so how is it respectful of the person created?

Suicide, which is not by all means undoing existence, as explained in the text about suicide, is a horrible, harmful, scary and dangerous option. Disconnection from the forced relationship is only optional from a certain age and even then it is always complicated as people are not psychologically built to disassociate from their family, it always comes with a price, and even if it didn’t, it can’t retroactively cancel out the crucial and irreversible effects a family has on a person. Weinberg may wonder why would anyone even want to have these options if its parents really loved and nurtured that person? And maybe most wouldn’t, but some might, and anyway the point is not statistical but fundamental, forcing someone into a situation with no exit options is trapping, not respecting. If there is no respectful exit, how can there be a respectful entrance?

It sure sounds highly disrespectful to create someone to impress the neighbors (one of Weinberg’s examples, which was earlier mentioned), but is it really fundamentally different, in the instrumentalization sense, than the case of procreating because one wants to engage in a parent-child relationship as a nurturing parent? I am not saying it is the same, or that it is equally bad, it is not, but I am wondering how is creating someone as a love and nurture gadget for its parents, so fundamentally and even categorically different than many other selfish motives?
I understand that that person may feel more respected if its parents say that they wanted to raise, love, and nurture a child and not that they wanted to impress the neighbors if are asked why did they create him/her. However, if that person thinks a little bit more deeply about it, the parents wanted to raise, love, and nurture a child, they didn’t want to raise, love, and nurture him/her specifically, and it is them who wanted to raise, love, and nurture a child, not him/her specifically who wanted to be raised, loved and nurtured. So I understand why it feels more respectful than most other reasons, yet I fail to understand why this motive is categorically different.

Impressing the neighbors sounds awfully selfish and instrumental, but a desire and intention to raise, love, and nurture one’s child once it is born is also selfish and instrumental as in both cases it is not the created person’s need or desire but its parents’. In both cases a person was created unilaterally and according to the parents’ will. The fact that the created person didn’t have a will to consider before being created doesn’t mean that it was nevertheless respected because it will be respected after that person is created. The respect in case should be regarding its creation not its nurture. Respecting someone’s will in existence doesn’t retroactively respect someone’s will in being created, and since there is no will to be created, creating a person can’t be respectful but only forceful.

The desire for a relationship which in its essence is highly unequal and paternalistic, is wrong, and as opposed to her claim it is disrespectful to children and inconsistent with broadly liberal values such as equality, respect and autonomy. Weinberg argues that there are many cases of paternalism that we find justified, but that doesn’t mean that paternalism is unproblematic, only that it is sometimes necessary. It is still a problem and when it is justified it is probably because it is the lesser of two evils. It is justified since without it, someone is going to be harmed. Paternalism towards existing people who lost their ability for autonomy isn’t like creating people who have no ability for autonomy. The fact that we are bound to accept that there are some cases that paternalism is necessary isn’t by any means a justification to create more of it. We need to try and prevent paternalism as much as we can, not justify the creation of more and more of it because sometimes it is necessary. And it is never necessary to create an unnecessary situation which is known to be inherently and inevitably paternalistic.

Some argue that this paternalism is only temporary, but it is for a very long time, it is not at all necessary, and it is not a case of the lesser of two evils for these people. As opposed to the case of paternalism towards existing people, in the case of procreation the choice is not paternalism or harm, as no one is harmed by not being created.

And I disagree that the paternalism is temporary, since by the time the created people become supposedly autonomic they are already deeply designed by their genetic makeup, their surroundings, their so far life experiences (mainly earlier formative experiences), and of course by their parents who usually conduct it all. So how autonomic can a person exactly be when almost everything about that person was predesigned by various crucial factors that determine who that person is and who that person can be, from many aspects. People choose practically nothing of almost each and every crucial factor that has made them who they are, so how can they ever be who they really are? How can they really be autonomous?

There are various elements of coercion in parents-children relationships, there is no option for children to choose until a relatively late stage in their life, and even then these choices are made out of a very particular position which wasn’t chosen by them. The fact that people can’t choose, shape or even influence their own existence conditions including their genetics, their environment, their family, and their early formative experiences makes their creation even more wrong, disrespectful, and inconsistent with broadly liberal values of autonomy, respect, and equality.

Someone’s existence is always a result of an action that doesn’t respect the created person’s independence as a person because consent is never given by that person, the person never chooses anything about its own existence, including the very fact of having one, the person doesn’t have a safe and harmless way of ending its own existence, the person can’t choose its parents, the rest of the family, its neighborhood, its society and etc.
These things are always being selected for everyone. The most affected person never gets to choose anything, and that is always wrong and disrespectful.

Most of the critical things are determined for a person before it becomes an autonomous entity, therefore s/he never really is one in a deeper sense. And that is under the more liberal view, the more inclined you are towards nature in the famous nature vs. nurture debate, the less relevant the autonomy option is. However since no one really chooses one’s environment, it doesn’t really matter whether it is more nature or more nurture, as it is definitely not autonomy. No one really has autonomy over one’s life. No one really freely chooses its own projects, goals, meaning or even its own character.

This is inherent to human life and it is unavoidable. Of course there can be differences, clearly people raised by parents who highly emphasis their autonomy and choice are more likely to become more independent compared with people who were raised by controlling and strict parents. However no parents can avoid controlling their children and highly affecting their autonomy. They are deciding everything for their children, particularly at early ages. They decide for them where they live, they often unilaterally change where they live, they decide what they will wear, what they will eat, what they do, what they don’t do, who to be with, who not to be with and etc. And if parents really want to create autonomous people they must constantly and impartially expose them to an immense variety of options, which is obviously totally unrealistic, and it would only partially deal with only part of the problem which is the environmental effects. It won’t deal with many other environmental effects that parents have absolutely no control over, and it won’t deal with the genetic makeup that no one has chosen but everyone must endure.

Every aspect of children’s lives is controlled by their parents, but what I am mostly bothered with here is not the structured and inherent paternalism but that in many senses people are significantly designed by their parents, and by many other factors which they have not chosen or can retroactively affect. The more profound aspect of non-autonomy is that people don’t get to choose who they are, who they will be, who they can be, who they want to be, their boundaries and etc. This is not a temporary coercion but a lifetime one.

Procreation is creating a person. A person that not only has not chosen to be created, but also has not chosen anything involved with its creation nor most of the most crucial elements in determining who that person is. Procreation is creating a person who is forced to be the carrier of certain genetic makeup, environment, and formative experiences, without any option to really evade their crucial effect, an effect that in one way or another will be part of every choice that person would ever make. Way more than totally controlling their lives until a certain age (as important as it is in itself), that is the profound coercion and non-autonomy that is intrinsically involved in creating a person.

In conclusion, I disagree with Weinberg that this motivation ensures that people are procreating in ways that are respectful to children or consistent with broadly liberal values of autonomy, respect, and equality, or that this motivation is categorically different in the sense of treating children as means to others’ ends. I think that this motivation is nevertheless disrespectful, unequal, non-autonomous, and instrumental.
But even if I agreed with Weinberg, and even if such a motivation could have been genuine (and not extremely problematic, to say the least, and not disrespectful to children, and not inconsistent with broadly liberal values of autonomy, respect, and equality), what does it say about procreation if one of the two principles of procreative permissibility is what should have been the most self-evident reason for procreating? It is awfully sad that people need to be told that they must be motivated by the desire and intention to raise, love, and nurture one’s child once it is born, and not by any other motivation, when they are planning to create a person.
The fact that she seriously argues that such a motivation must be initial to procreation only strengthens antinatalism as it is supposed to be extremely clear. And the fact that not only is it rarely the motivation, but that usually there is not even a feeling or need to come up with explicit motivations for procreation, or any thought about such a profound and crucial decision whatsoever, makes antinatalism even stronger. It indicates on the ease with which people are imposing risks of a lifetime on other people. And that disrespectful ease means that people are far from being responsible enough in order to put the fate of others in their hands.
If humanity has reached the 21^st century and it needs a philosopher to dedicate a whole book to explain people under which circumstances procreation may be permissible, and these would be that they are motivated by the desire and intention to raise, love, and nurture one’s child once it is born, then clearly procreation mustn’t be permissible under any circumstances.
If it needs to be explained methodically and while eliminating unjustified and false motives it means that procreation mostly happens for unjustified and false motives. And if it mostly happens for unjustified and false motives there is a problem with the agents, since it is not that the “justified” and “right” motives are complicated, but rather that they should have been absolutely self-evident. But they are absolutely not. And that is extremely worrying.
If such an obvious factor must not only be mentioned but is one of the two formulated principles, then obviously there is something terribly wrong with the reasons people procreate and have been procreating so far. And if something is so wrong with the reasons people procreate and have been procreating so far, then maybe she doesn’t need to make the effort and formulate principles that can justify it, but conclude that people better never to have breed.

The second part of this text addresses Weinberg’s second principle of procreative permissibility: Procreative Balance

References

Benatar David. Better Never to Have Been (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Shiffrin, S.V. Wrongful life, procreative responsibility, and the significance of harm. 1999
Legal Theory 5: 117–148

Weinberg, Rivka. Existence: who needs it? The non-identity problem and merely possible people
2012 Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702

Weinberg Rivka The Moral Complexity Of Sperm Donation

Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) doi:10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00624.x

Volume 22 Number 3 2008 pp 166–178

Weinberg Rivka. The Risk Of A Lifetime (Oxford University Press, 2006)

According to the book History of Antinatalism – How Philosophy Has Challenged the Question of Procreation, philosophy has started to challenge the question of procreation more or less since philosophy has started to challenge any question. The first mentioned and quoted philosophers in the book are the first philosophers mentioned and quoted in any book, meaning the pre-Socratics, including whom who is considered to be the first philosopher in history – Thales of Miletus who was born according to estimation between 624 to 620 BC, as well as Heraclitus (540-470 BC), Parmenides (515-450), and Anaxagoras (500-428 BC), and ancient Greek playwrights such as Sophocles (495-406 BC) and Euripides (480-406 BC). The book’s editor considers Thales to be not only the first philosopher to challenge the question of procreation but to be the first antinatalist, since when he was asked why he is childless, he replied ‘because I so love the children’.
The book is full of examples such as this, as well as many indirect but significant contributions to challenging the question of procreation, from several philosophers, in the course of almost 3,000 years. From the mentioned Thales, to Aristotle to whom an entire chapter is devoted, to Blaise Pascal, Leibniz, Montesquieu (“we should bewail people when being born and not after their death“), Schopenhauer obviously, Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, to explicit and unmistakable antinatalist philosophers such as Peter Wessel Zapffe and Emil Cioran, and until present day antinatalist philosophers.

However, as impressive as this detailing of the history of Antinatalism is, the fact that the philosophical challenges of the question of procreation are ancient, and were made by various thinkers, from various thought traditions, including plenty of religious ones, is actually very depressing since it means that many people, from various different cultures and thought traditions, including religious ones, had plenty of time to seriously challenge procreation, yet they haven’t.

I find the book very frustrating not because its content is too premature to be considered antinatalism, or because it turns out that philosophy has not seriously challenged the question of procreation, or since the ideas mentioned in it are merely proto-antinatalism and not more, or because the promise of an old and rich history doesn’t live up to expectation, but exactly because it does. The history of the philosophical challenges to procreation is indeed ancient and many of them are quite impressive, and the ones taken from the New Testament and from Christian theology are also very surprising. Notwithstanding, it is all very saddening, since none of it made a significant practical impact.
There is something very depressing about the fact that philosophical challenges to procreation go so way back and are so culturally extensive, yet they haven’t infiltrated the public.

In the chapter devoted to Christianity there are many quotes that I found surprisingly sympathetic to antinatalistic ideas. However, the fact that many ideas in Christianity are sympathetic to antinatalistic ideas and yet de facto Christianity is a very pro-natalistic ideology, is a very strong indication for people’s desires and limitations. That is especially the case with the concept of hell which should have been, and still must be, a very strong antinatalistic argument yet it absolutely isn’t. However, since I have already addressed this issue in the former text, and since the book focuses more on Christian Scriptures and Christian theology than the concept of hell, I’ll not get in to it here. And as for christian texts, it doesn’t matter that much what is written in the Scriptures, the Gospels and theological books but what people practically see in them, and they usually see what they want or what is in their interests. For example, Jesus advocated for simplicity, humbleness, and peacefulness, but allegedly in his name people engaged in countless wars, and accumulated inapprehensible wealth. No religion is more capitalistic than Protestantism, and no religion is more ostentatious than Catholicism. People, as usual, interpreted things as they desire.

Even if early Christianity, that of the Gospels, had truly contained many antinatalist tendencies, it clearly evolved into an extremely pro-natalist ideology, with the Catholic Church officially forbidding the use of contraception and abortion. And one must be highly conspiracist to believe that such a radical shift was possible despite that people’s natural dispositions were compatible with these ideas. It is much more plausible that if anything, it is the ideas of early Christianity which didn’t quite suit people’s natural tendencies which are not exactly celibacy and asceticism, and the later ones were way more fitting, evidently, they have been extensively endorsed and remain up to this day.

People don’t need a religious propaganda about family and fertility, they have a built-in biological one. Long before Christianity emerged, humans have lived in a familial structure and were highly inclined to procreate. And except for some marginal extraordinary examples, that is basically cross cultural and from time immemorial. It is not as if before Christianity most humans throughout history have lived solitarily and abstinently, but exactly the opposite. Unfortunately humans are naturally very social and sexual animals. Celibacy, continence, chastity and barrenness are completely unnatural for humans. Familialist and fertilist religious propaganda is needless, it is literally preaching to the quire.

Since people naturally desire to procreate they stress the pro-natalistic aspects and conceal or ignore the antinatalistic ideas. They always do that when they are facing demands they find undesirable. Especially when they are asked to stop doing things they want to keep doing. For example, one of the most common ways they justify the consumption of animal products is that humans are animals and animals eat each other, thus it is natural for humans to eat animals. Even if for the sake of the argument we’ll accept that it is natural – and ignore the fact that none of the ways humans consume animals is natural, that none of the animals that humans are consuming are natural, that there is nothing natural about adult humans consuming the milk of another species (it is unprecedented in the natural world), and of course that even if it was natural it wouldn’t make it ethical since naturalness has nothing to do with goodness or rightness as something can be natural yet terrible (and the fact is that most of the natural things are indeed terrible) – humans are contradicting themselves when at the same time, often literally in the same conversion, they are also claiming that they are not at all animals or at least a special kind of species, a superior one and therefore deserve a special treatment and a special place on earth, and shouldn’t be treated  equality to animals. How does it settle? It doesn’t. And it doesn’t need to, since as conceptually wrong as speciesist humans are, practically they are right that they are a superior species, and a superior species doesn’t have to be conceptually right, rational and consistent as long as its mastery and power is not threatened, as long as it makes all the decisions anyway. People don’t do what is right and consistent but what is worthwhile and desirable… for them.

Obviously we can’t expect masses of people to stop procreating, let alone all together and entirely, because they have heard or read some philosophical fragments. But we can expect that societies won’t become so pro-natalist because its members have heard and read some philosophical fragments. Yet all societies did become pro-natalist. It is not that people were convinced by these philosophical fragments but didn’t stop breeding as a result of the need for helping hands, because their sexual desire overpowered their perceptions, and because during some eras among some societies it was a civic duty to produce new citizens, it is that they weren’t convinced. Otherwise as soon as people had alternatives they would have stopped breeding, otherwise births wouldn’t have been celebrated but treated as something that happen since people have sex and because people need working hands and because nations need soldiers. But people didn’t stop and births were always celebrated. Had some of these ancient ideas had some presence in some of people’s minds, on the practical level procreation probably would have only very slightly decreased before the contraception age, but on the theoretical level it should have been viewed entirely different a long time ago, and for the last two hundred years it should have been decreasing. None of that had happened.

It is probably a good place to clarify that I am not suggesting that the book implied that if people would realize how ancient and extensive the history of antinatalist ideas is, they would be convinced by them, or anything like that. It is a history book, surely one that was written by people with a very clear agenda, but it’s still a history book, not a book-length pamphlet aiming at convincing the readers that antinatalism’s antiquity origin is somehow evidence of its trueness. I am discussing such a claim while addressing the book not because it was made along it, but because that is one of the more probable practical implications to take from it.
And we can often observe such a move in relation to animal rights. Many activists and writers are pointing out that compassion towards animals is actually ancient, mainly by quoting all kinds of prominent historical figures, as well as mentioning that some of them such as Pythagoras, Plato, Plutarch, da Vinci, Newton, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Bronte, Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, Tolstoy, Kafka, Van Gogh, George Bernard Shaw, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer and Albert Einstein were vegetarians. But it seems that they don’t realize how depressing it is that such a basic idea wonders around for so long yet is still so far from becoming the norm. And vegetarianism (not even veganism) is way more basic and easy than antinatalism.

The question of procreation may be seriously challenged since ancient times, but it had only started to be significantly challenged by the public in the late 60’s, and that is mainly by environmentalists concerned about overpopulation (some may go earlier for that matter to Thomas Malthus though I don’t know how effective his warnings were on the practical level). And as important as the environmental concern is in itself, and as important as the fear of world hunger is in itself, and both most certainly are, these are not philosophical challenges to procreation. They are obviously extremely important ethical questions but since they are ethically circumstantial and not fundamental, it is not really the same category. But obviously you are the last people who need to be reminded that overpopulation is very far philosophically from antinatalism, and even if one anyway counts it in, at least as part of challenging the question of procreation, as aforementioned, concerns about overpopulation definitely don’t have a long history but started to engage parts of the public only in the mid-seventies. And by some parts of the public I unfortunately mean very few people. Even nowadays, in the climate change era, most of the environmentalist groups don’t dare to suggest that people should have fewer children.

The only philosophical challenge of procreation that truly had a serious effect on the actual number of people who decided not to procreate is Liberalism, and its effect is indirect. The philosophical tradition of Liberalism which put the individual in the center of attention as opposed to the nation, society, god and etc., made people realize they don’t have to procreate if they don’t want to, because it is their desires that count most. And many people indeed decide not to procreate because they don’t want to. Nowadays, people don’t feel the same level of social and religious pressure to procreate as people felt just until a few decades ago, and some of these people feel that they don’t want to procreate because it might collide with other life choices they find more attractive than becoming parents, or that they don’t want to become parents because they find becoming parents undesirable. People have various options to manage their lives and some don’t include or might collide with being parents.

Having said that, pro-natalists social pressures are still very powerful, and most people still want to procreate, and not because of external pressures, but because of internal ones.

And anyway, Liberalism is not a philosophical challenge to the question of procreation, but a philosophical challenge to the question of choice, so in relation to procreation, it may challenge social pressure on people to procreate despite that they don’t want to, as well as challenging social pressure on people not to procreate despite they do want to (LGBT people, or ethnic minorities which are prevented from fertility treatments, ova donations, sperm donations and surrogacy, for example). So liberalism per se is most certainly not a philosophical challenge to the question of procreation, and in liberal societies, it is often the case that liberal notions are in fact a challenge to antinatalism.

More people in more areas of the world having more choices regarding procreation is obviously a very welcome social change as otherwise there would have been many more people in the world, and correspondingly many more victims. But that is not an evidence of the success of antinatalists ideas. The reproduction decrease in many areas of the world in the last couple of decades is not an evidence for antinatalists ideas finally starting to be implemented after a long history of them being merely theoretical, it is not due to late blooming of ancient antinatalists ideas, but mostly due to contemporary social, cultural and economic processes, and if philosophy had anything to do with it, it is the indirect effect of liberalism, not the direct effect of moralism.

The fact that most of the people who abstain from procreation are doing it because they don’t want to, and not because they think that ethically no one is allowed to, doesn’t really leave that much room for optimism. And the fact that both ideas: that one doesn’t have to procreate, and that one must not procreate; have a very very long history, yet both, even the child-free notion, are still relatively marginal; actually creates even more room for pessimism.
A long history of a philosophical idea doesn’t guarantee its implementation in the future.

Of course I am not suggesting that books about the history of ideas shouldn’t be written, they have a purpose and a benefit, however we must also consider their depressing aspect.
We must consider that the longer the history of very logical and basic ideas, the smaller their chances to become the norm. The fact that some ideas are out there for such a long time but were never picked up by the masses, can be an indication that as logical and basic as they may be, they are undesirable by the majority. Environmental ideas for example also have a very long history. And as opposed to antinatalism and antispeciesism, which I can understand why they are viewed as conceptually threatening to some people as both are anti-anthropocentric (on the face of it, it seems as if it is mostly antispeciesism but since antinatalism practically necessarily results in human extinction it is also an anti-anthropocentric view), protecting the environment is not necessarily anti-anthropocentric, it can be quite the opposite if it is presented as protecting the human race’s home (despite that it is only one species out of about 8.7 million other species). So environmentalism is not necessarily contradictive to anthropocentrism, and it is hard to think of other reasons why despite it being so basic and logical and historical, it is still such a marginal viewpoint.
And if you think that it is not really that marginal, as many people would agree that protecting the environment is important, surly much more than people who agree with antinatalism and antispeciesism, then consider that many people may also say that people have a right not to procreate and that animals have a right not to be tortured, but both are empty statements since to really agree with antinatalism is to not breed and to agree with antispeciesism is to not consume animal products, and in the same line of thought, considering how important and urgent environmental issues are, agreeing that protecting the environment is important is also an empty statement, as clearly the planet is under severe climate change and people know this for decades now, yet they still consume animal products despite their immense carbon footprint, they still use private cars on a daily basis, and many use airplanes occasionally, most don’t recycle, and of course, keep creating more people despite that it is the worst thing that a person can privately do in terms of climate change.
And that is because people are egocentric and most are also egoistic and very small minded. They are extremely concentrated on their small little lives here and now, therefore it is highly unlikely that the history of ideas would wake them up. But it should wake us up. It should wake the few people who do care, and who are not concentrated on their small little lives here and now, but on everyone’s lives, everywhere, at all times.

History books must make us realize that caring for others always has been and always will be a marginal position. Ethical ideas such as antinatalism would never prevail.

For me, the main practical function of a book such as History of Antinatalism, is as an alarm clock. We need to read this history book with an eye to the future. We must think that the worst thing that can happen is that the chapters about current antinatalism would become in the future additional chapters about the history of antinatalism, instead of being the last ones. We must think that this book should be the first and last history of antinatalism book, because another history of antinatalism book in the future means that antinatalism has failed, as for it to succeed there must be no future.

References

Kateřina Lochmanová et al. History of Antinatalism: How Philosophy Has Challenged the Question of Procreation (2020) ISBN 9798645624255

The following text is a sort of appendix to the critical review of Julio Cabrera’s book Introduction to a Negative Approach to Argumentation – Towards a New Ethic for Philosophical Debate. If you somehow got here before reading the main text , please read it first, otherwise it would be counterproductive.

In this text I focus on the ‘negative approach to argumentation’ potential implication of being so tolerant towards others’ views to the point of Ethical Subjectivism and Moral Perspectivism.

Cabrera understands that his approach may be interpreted as a form of, or at least as an intensification or indirect support of Moral Skepticism, Ethical Subjectivism, Moral Relativism and even Moral Nihilism, so he tries to explain why it is none of the above.

Regarding Moral Skepticism he writes:

“the negative approach is neither dogmatic nor skeptical; its attitude is eminently pluralistic. Contrary to dogmatism, the negative approach does not accept any unique or absolute truth about any matter whatsoever. But, contrary to skepticism, it does not think that this is a reason to suspend judgment or abandon philosophy. The negative approach is pluralistic in the sense of considering–against skepticism–that every philosophy succeeds in achieving truth in some aspect of it; but–against dogmatism–this does not mean that all other philosophies are false and must be discarded. In the negative approach, dogmatist philosophies do not fail, they all succeed; but, against dogmatism, such success does not eliminate other philosophies, also successful in their own terms. The negative approach adopts pluralism against dogmatic and sceptic monism.” (Page 167)

Regarding claims that his negative approach is a form of Nihilism he argues:

“Different from nihilism and frivolity, the negativist position firmly and seriously (and tragically) believes in the value and interest of the line of argumentation being sustained, connected to some specific Gestalten, even though–unlike the affirmative approach–it no longer believes that this is the unique true line, and that the alternatives are simply wrong and must be defeated. No line of argument can refute another by the mere fact of being sound, because many lines of arguments about the same matter are sound, even when opposed to each other.” (Page 183)

I agree that his stances are not skeptic or nihilistic as he doesn’t claim that it is impossible to validate moral stands nor that moral stands are all wrong or irrelevant or meaningless as it is according to moral theories such as Moral Skepticism, Moral Nihilism, Emotivism and Error Theory. If anything it is to the contrary, it seems that according to him, not none but every moral stand is valid as the next one, as long as it is honest, and can be rationally explained from the position and perspective (Gestalten) of its holder. Therefore it would be wrong to infer that all moral stands are wrong such as in Error theory and Moral Skepticism, or that moral stands are meaningless as in Moral Nihilism. However it can be inferred that arguing about different moral stands is meaningless since they are all right from the perspective of their different arguers. So, if anything, his approach is more a form of Moral Relativism and Ethical Subjectivism, but not in a sense that moral statements can’t be true or false, but rather that they are always relative to a certain perspective. In fact, he explicitly claims that his negative ethics is perspectivistic.

And indeed it is hard not to consider statements such as ‘philosophies do not fail, they all succeed in their own terms’, as a form of Moral Relativism, Ethical Subjectivism and Moral Perspectivism.
And even more so claims such as these:

“The pluralism of the negative approach is mostly based on the Gestalt theory–traditionally a theory of perception–applied into the field of concepts, as was explained in previous chapters (particularly in Chapter 4).  The negative approach states that the parties in a discussion are never speaking of strictly the same thing; it is highly unlikely that two arguers have exactly the same premises and the same Gestalten about everything. This also means that there is no “contradiction” between them in a strictly formal sense: if two parties come to the results A and non-A, it is not difficult to show that the premises, the argumentative process and the forms of sequitur employed by A are not the same as the premises and forms of argument of non-A. But because of this, there is no full communication between them either but, at most, some sort of interaction, where each party pays attention to and selects particular pieces of sectors of the other party’s statements. Both partially overlap generating a fragmentary and self-centered understanding of the subject being discussed.” (Page 167)

And:

“The philosophical ideas that appear on our horizon are never direct records of reality; rather, they are inevitability organized in a particular way; they allow some things to be seen and produce complete blindness for others.”  (Page 167)

And:

“Philosophical ideas are formulated in a particular way and shape, in relation to proximity, similarity and combination just like in the field of perception. When we try to persuade another person of our point of view, we try to change their organization of objects, but these attempts deal frequently with insuperable limitations; so that, after all, each of the parties firmly keeps their own Gestalt rather than accepting the other’s.” (Page 168)

It is hard to see how that doesn’t result in Moral Relativism and/or Ethical Subjectivism.
Obviously we can disagree with Cabrera’s premises in the above paragraph, but if we accept them, then it is not clear why this approach, in the most far reaching case, is excessively tolerant towards alternative views, and not simply absolutely tolerant towards any other view, as according to him, each point of view is actually an expression of a particular way and shape that objects are organized by people. So, if there is no right or wrong Gestalt how can there be a right and wrong philosophical idea that is derived from each person’s unique Gestalt?
And if “the philosophical ideas that appear on our horizon are never direct records of reality; rather, they are inevitably organized in a particular way; they allow some things to be seen and produce complete blindness for others”, how can anyone judge any philosophical idea? If no one has access to reality as it is, and everyone has blind spots, no one can judge anyone’s philosophical ideas. Where is the room for criticism under this formulation? How can anyone negate any standpoint? How can anything be wrong and right? How can anything be defined as cruel or harmful as it all depends on each agent’s Gestalt? And once a person follows the rules mentioned in the main text , basically everything goes, no matter how harmful and cruel it may be.

Cabrera’s approach is not Moral Nihilism or Moral Skepticism as he acknowledges the existence of moral values and their meaning, only that according to him they are relative. And not relative to particular social norms as Moral Relativism suggests, but relative to the particular perspective of each arguer, and so it is hard not to view it as Ethical Subjectivism or Moral Perspectivism. What ground does ethics have if anyone can do anything one wants as long as it can be explained according to that person’s Gestalt?

Cabrera tries to explain why nevertheless it isn’t:

“Gestalten, as conceptual organizations and perspectives, are neither “objective”–in the sense of completely external and independent from all human organization–nor “subjective”, in the sense of purely psychological, internal, personal, or private constructions. When looking at the famous images of gestalt theory (the duck and the rabbit, the old and the young ladies, the two jars and the two faces), we can see that all of them are perfectly objective, no matter which side is being selected for observation. Anyone can visualize the other figure by making a perceptual effort. The two figures are over there, they are real and not illusory, but they heavily depend on some perspective in order to be seen; these objective things can only be seen from a particular perspective, but this does not turn them “subjective”.
Therefore, there is a midpoint between objectivity and subjectivity to be explored, a kind of objectivity mediated by perspectives, an objectivity that is only possible through some kind of look on reality that everybody can, in principle, assume. Figures do not appear without some effort–perceptive or conceptual–but once the figure appears, it is perfectly objective. ” (Page 168)

This explanation is rather ambiguous in my view. And it doesn’t seem to be consistent with his former claims. If the midpoint between objectivity and subjectivity is where everyone can visualize the other figure by making a perceptual effort, then it is not accurate that there are blind spots. How is this claim compatible with his claims regarding blind spots? If there is something that I can’t see, how can I assume it? and if I can, why can’t I treat it as objective given that his criteria for objectivity is if there is ‘a kind of objectivity mediated by perspectives based on the possibility of everybody, in principle, to assume other perspectives’? If there is a kind of objectivity mediated by perspectives, an objectivity that is only possible through some kind of look on reality that in principle, everybody can assume, regarding philosophical positions; why can’t we assume it regarding philosophical discussions? Why can’t we try to show our opponent our look on reality given that everybody can, in principle, assume it, and therefore expect that person to be convinced by our arguments? If what can turn a seemingly subjective perspective into an objective one is that everyone can visualize the other figure by making a perceptual effort, then why can’t we treat it as objective during a debate? If objectivism is possible, we must make efforts and reach it. If it isn’t, then we have subjectivism. If after being exposed to my opponent’s thought process, I am not convinced by the arguments, then either they are wrong, or the premises are wrong, or my way of thinking is wrong; but it can’t be that they are all right. And if they are, then how is it not Ethical Subjectivism?
At most, Cabrera offers a psychological explanation for why so many discussions end in an impasse. But I fail to see the philosophical explanation for that claim.
I may understand why someone is sure that s/he has a right to eat another animal, but I fail to understand how any psychological explanation for that position can somehow provide a valid philosophical justification for that position.
Had Cabrera only argued that it is impossible to convince someone with a different Gestalten, I would have unfortunately mostly agree, but his argument is way more subjectivist and ethically dangerous, as he argues that someone with a certain Gestalten is right just as anyone else with a different Gestalten. It may be true that it is hard to convince a psychopath that harming others is wrong, but it is a whole different story to argue that a psychopath is right from its own Gestalten.
In any case, his reference to the point is too minimal in my view, as obviously it is an extremely important issue.

Regarding Moral Relativism he writes:

“Philosophical communities in general are more afraid of relativism, of the possibility of different and opposite positions all being true (the frightening “anything goes”), than of the opposite idea–absolutism–according to which just one position is true (our own, of course) and all the others are wrong (“only one goes”). As we saw before, changing perspectives is seen as irresponsible and dangerous by many. But this is controversial because the connections between dogmatism, fanaticism and tyranny have been blatantly evident through all human history. Totalitarianisms have historically been based on absolute certainties rather than on sceptical doubt. Totalitarianisms were never sceptical; on the contrary, fanatic people believe without restrictions in some absolute and unchangeable truth. Meanwhile, the negative approach does not assume any kind of “subjective relativism”; it could be better defined as an objective or Gestaltic relativism. Argumentation relies on Gestalten, but Gestalten are objective. It could also be said that the negative approach adopts a sort of Gestaltic or perspecitivstic realism.” (Page 168)

I don’t see the difference between “subjective relativism” and “objective or Gestaltic relativism” on the practical level. Under both formulations I am bound to accept the position of the other as being as valid as mine, no mater how cruel and harmful it is.
Secondly, though it is true that absolutism brought and brings horrors with it, so does relativism, only that its pluralistic coating makes it seem as a much better option than absolutism. But actually what is the difference between doing what I want no matter how cruel it is because I am absolutely right and you are absolutely wrong, and doing what I want no matter how cruel it is because I am right from my perspective and you may be right from yours? Consuming animals who are forced to live the worst lives imaginable because speciesism is absolutely right, or because consuming animals is absolutely right for me, doesn’t matter much to the suffering animals. Obviously under totalitarianisms the one in power holds the absolute truth and that’s obviously worse, but under totalitarianisms there is no room for argumentation anyway so it is an irrelevant example. When argumentation is possible, I don’t see the fundamental difference between absolutism and “anything goes” in relation to the option of me convincing my opponents.
It seems as if it is better to believe that everything is true than that there is only one truth, however in relation to argumentation, both lead to a total impasse. In both cases arguing is pointless. If a counter-argument can be found against my argument by someone who believes there is only one truth then the absolute approach leads to an impasse, and alternatively, if by definition a counter-argument is as good and as right as mine then the negative approach also leads to an impasse.

It is not that Cabrera argues that as long as I can’t see things from the other’s perspective and the other can’t see things from mine, I’ll never convince that person (a valid claim which could be categorized as Moral Pessimism), he argues that since I can’t see things from the other’s perspective and the other can’t see things from mine, we are both right. It is not even that we’ll never know who is right, but that we both are. How is that not a form of Moral Relativism or Moral Perspectivism?

But Cabrera rejects the idea that the negative approach is relativist, as well as rejecting moral relativism itself. He makes the common claim that moral relativism is self-refuting for the obvious reason that if all standpoints are relative, then by definition moral relativism can’t be objectively right but only relatively right, and so can’t make the case that everything is relative (if everything is relative then the claim that everything is relative is also relative and not objectively right).
In addition, according to moral relativism, standpoints claiming to be objectively right can’t be refuted by moral relativism as each stand can be right in relation to its own context. So paradoxically, moral relativism confirms stands that contradict it.

But in his view the same does not apply to his negative approach to argumentation theory:

“the more developed answer to the accusation of self-contradiction runs like this: all what was here said about the negative approach to argumentation is also applied to the discussion around affirmative and negative approaches. The negative approach is only a position among others. If this were not the case, the negative approach would really be self-refuting. The discussion between the affirmative and negative approaches to argumentation is inserted within the web of arguments, and it also depends on presuppositions and admits endless counter-argumentation. The fact that the negative approach will always have to face relevant counter-arguments from the affirmative side is exactly what makes the negative approach self-confirming instead of self-refuting. The negative approach accepts self-reference and self-inclusion as a serious commitment, not as a form of literary frivolity. Not only does the negative approach accept self-inclusion but it actually needs to do so; because if it did not include itself in the endless process of argumentation, the negative approach would be indeed self-contradicting and a curious and unjustifiable exception of the negative approach itself.” (Page 175)

If the negative approach is immune to self-refuting it is because it is so general and tolerant that it actually says very little. It is so inclusive that it doesn’t really leave anything out so there is no wonder that it is hard to find it self-refuting as what does it actually argue for that can be refuted? On the face of it, a theory that claims that the other theories are right just as much, and that counterarguments can always be found against any argument, is hard to be refuted because it leaves so much room for every other possible claim, including ones that seemingly contradict it.
It can’t be that a claim that practically claims that other claims might be right just as much, is true, because some of the claims that it confirms refute it. So one of them must be true. He claims that this is not the case because his approach is ready to accept any valid counter-argument. But the fact that an approach is ready for counter-arguments by stating that it is, doesn’t make it resistant to self-refuting, especially since if some counter-arguments that contradict it are true, then it is wrong. To claim that such attempts to contradict the negative approach actually confirm it because that is exactly what it claims – that there would always be counter-arguments, so counter-arguments approve not disprove it – is no more than sophistry.

To avoid self-refuting Cabrera should have claimed that it is not a meta-philosophy but just another claim, but obviously the negative approach can only be understood as a meta-philosophy. If it is just another claim about all the other claims being refutable and therefore so is it, then it can’t be a claim about all the other claims. It is just a mind game, merely a logical performance devoid of meaning.
It can’t be that the claim that there is one truth and the claim that there is no one truth, are both right. If the claim that there is only one truth is right then the one that there is not only one truth is wrong, and if the claim that there is not only one truth is right but all of them are right then the claim that there is only one truth is wrong and also the claim that all the claims are right because as just said, the one that there is only one truth is wrong. The negative approach states that there are no wrong claims but some are claiming that they are the only ones who are right so they must be wrong at least for claiming that, but obviously that would make the negative approach wrong for claiming that there are no wrong claims. In other words, Cabrera’s claim that the claim that everything can be right confirms the negative approach, is paradoxical since ‘everything’, by definition, includes opposite claims that contradict the negative approach.

I can’t see how the negative approach doesn’t repeat the same mistake that moral relativism makes.
The fact that as opposed to relativism the negative approach doesn’t aspire to be universal doesn’t mean it is not refuted when it is refuted.

Cabrera however argues that the very fact that people would argue with him confirms his view:

“It is always possible to counter-argue against the negative approach from the prevailing affirmative perspective. Many readers of this book will certainly have taken abundant notes in order to reply to a great number of my declarations, claims and statements about diverse issues during their reading. They may not have been convinced by my arguments and will also be able to produce many counter-arguments supporting the affirmative approach, to which I can also reply (if I am still alive, if nobody prevents me from doing so, if I am not arbitrarily excluded from the discussion, and so on). But such an endless confrontation between the affirmative and the negative approaches precisely illustrates the negative theses about argumentation. The fact that the affirmative approach will always have many objections to the negative approach makes the point of the negative approach: any debated matter is subjected to endless argumentation, including, of course, the confrontation between the affirmative and the negative approaches to argumentation.
But–somebody could still argue–if this is so, the negative approach was proved to be absolutely true, against its anti-absolutist conviction. Because if the negative approach proves that even dogmatic affirmative philosophies are also Gestalt-dependent, then the negative approach is absolutely true. But this is again an affirmative way to evaluate the situation. In the negative approach, the main thesis of the Gestalt-dependent nature of all philosophies is not an absolute thesis either, because it also depends on presuppositions that other lines of argument could reject or deny. Even the perspectivistic view is perspectivistic. There is not any neutral space where the negative approach could be proven as absolute; but this is the situation of any other theory of argumentation (and possibly of any philosophical theory in general). This shows that both the affirmative and the negative approaches can be endlessly defended and that none of them can eliminate the other. The negative approach is not defended as a universal truth, but as a result of a particular argumentative line which can be proved tenable. But the same happens with the other positions, in spite of their own anxiety for uniqueness.” (Page 175)

To me at least, it is a form of Ethical Subjectivism. It can be formulated more or less as follows:
1. Different people have different perspectives
2. The moral perspectives of people determine what is right according to them, meaning if the moral perspective of a person says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least from that person’s perspective
3. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one moral perspective as better and righter than another. There are no moral truths that apply to all people at all times
4. Any person’s moral perspective has no special status but is merely one among various moral perspectives
5. It is wrong of us to judge other moral perspectives. We should always be tolerant of them

Or in other words, different people have different moral perspectives. Therefore, there is no objective truth in morality. Right and wrong are only matters of perspective, and perspectives vary from person to person.
And if to give a practical example, Pro-natalists believe it is right to procreate, whereas antinatalists believe it is wrong to procreate. Therefore, procreation is neither objectively right nor objectively wrong. It is merely a matter of perspective, which varies from person to person.

But Cabrera insists that the negative approach isn’t a form of Moral Subjectivism:

“Traditionally, subjectivity was conceived as multiple and objectivity as unique. The negative approach subverts this: objectivity is as diversified and multiple as subjectivity. We can reach objectivity in many different ways. The negative approach does not accept a unique objectiveness imposed on everybody in all contexts and lines of thought, independently from presuppositions and perspectives. In the negative approach, each philosophy sees some aspects of the world and they are perfectly objective within their own perspectives. We cannot capture the world from all sides (like God, supposedly), but always from a particular angle. But our perspectives are not “subjective”, in the sense of private and not valid for others. Everybody can see the duck if they are disposed to make the perceptive effort to stop seeing the rabbit; and everybody can see, for example, the death penalty as a revenge if they make the conceptual effort to stop understanding it as an act of justice. But stopping does not mean eliminating; each organization unveils some aspects of the world, but it does not refute the others; it simply offers an invitation to see things in other ways.” (Page 169)

According to this there are no real blind spots but spots who may be intentionally or unintentionally covered, and it is possible to uncover them. In that case why not act so to remove the cover and then go back to the affirmative approach? Why go all the way to Moral Perspectivism?

It feels like Cabrera is trying to have it both ways so to speak. You can’t argue against the affirmative approach claiming that there are different perspectives which are a result of different gestalts and that there are blind spots and that it is impossible to see others’ viewpoints; but when facing subjectivism, argue that it is possible to see others’ viewpoints. If it is possible to see others’ viewpoints if one wants to, then it is a question of will and that makes the case a psychological one and not philosophical. The question of will is a very important question, probably more important than the one raised here, but that is not the issue. The question is can people view things like others do or not. If they can’t then the negative approach is a form of Ethical Subjectivism, and if they can, besides emphasizing what every activist already knows very well – that it is tremendously hard to convince other people, especially when it comes to ethical issues, what is the point and added value of the negative approach?

It seems that all in all, the negative approach to argumentation is a form of ethical subjectivism because it supports the claim that there is no unique viewpoint from which moral norms are rationally compelling and universally binding. The truth of a particular moral stand cannot be evaluated according to an absolute truth, but according to each person’s perspective. There is no point beyond a personal perspective from which we can judge others in a way that is not relative to our own position. Moral statements are made true or false by the perspective of the arguers. They are actually personal statements about the perspective of arguers regarding a particular issue.

Ethical Subjectivism is sometimes defined as – people’s moral stances are based on their feelings and preferences but nothing more. Under this definition Cabrera is not an ethical subjectivist, since he thinks that there are things that are good and that there are things that are bad, only that we can’t determine what is good and what is bad because it is relative to the arguer perspective. But that is not the only definition of Ethical Subjectivism. It can also be defined as an ethical position that claims there is no such thing as “objective” right or wrong, and people are always right or wrong according to their own perspectives on the matter as long as they are honest and their views are not solely based on their emotions or their biased preferences but are also rationally grounded. According to that definition, when people are making ethical claims they are not just saying something about their feelings, but are making a rational claim about their ethical stands according to their Gestalt, which according to Cabrera therefore cannot be refuted by the other side. The negative approach to argumentation may be a more advanced and sophisticated version of Ethical Subjectivism, but I find it hard not to view it as a version of it at all.

Along this text I have argued against Cabrera for ambiguity, self-refuting claims, and for providing, at most, a psychological explanation for argumentation impasse but not at all a philosophical explanation for it. However, the most crucial criticism over Cabrera’s book Introduction to a Negative Approach to Argumentation – Towards a New Ethic for Philosophical Debate is that it doesn’t at all provide any new ethics for philosophical debate, but rather voids any content of philosophical debates about ethics. An ethical thesis which seriously suggests that everything can be right, implies that nothing can be wrong. In the better case it is simply contentless and useless, and in the worst case it is just a more sophisticated version of Ethical Subjectivism.
And if more or less everything can be right in its own way, there is no justification to change others’ positions, as they may be right; and if there is no justification to change others’ positions, then there is no justification to change many things that currently exist in the world; and that means that the world can stay more or less as it is and I can’t think of anything more unethical than that.

References

Cabrera Julio, A Critique of Affirmative Morality: a reflection on death, birth and the value of life
(Brasília: Julio Cabrera Editions 2014)

Cabrera Julio, Introduction to a Negative Approach to Argumentation – Towards a New Ethic for Philosophical Debate
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2019)

The following text is the third critical review of a book by the philosopher Julio Cabrera.
The first one addressed his outstanding book A Critique of Affirmative Morality.
The second one addressed his book Because I Love You, You Will Not Be Born!
And this one addresses the book Introduction to a Negative Approach to Argumentation – Towards a New Ethic for Philosophical Debate.

After criticizing what he refers to as ‘affirmative ethics’ and the very possibility of being ethical in his monumental book A Critique of Affirmative Morality, Cabrera criticizes what he calls ‘the affirmative approach to argumentation’ and the very possibility of making a universally true argument that everyone must logically accept. In a way, his book about affirmative morality is kind of lamentation for ethics, and the book which is the subject of this text does a similar thing to argumentation. In his book about ethics he writes that morality necessarily leads to an impasse, and in this book that argumentation necessarily leads to an impasse.

The Affirmative Approach to Argumentation

Cabrera is critical of philosophy’s ‘Affirmative Approach to Argumentation’ which according to him seeks a unique universal “truth” in argumentation while aiming at proving wrong any opposing view or the option of several “truths”.

Cabrera wonders how is it that the greatest minds of all history haven’t yet reached the right answer about so many philosophical questions, and suggests that it is because so far philosophy aimed at one true answer and rejected the possibility of multiple answers.

“The “affirmative approach” consisting basically of thinking that philosophical queries have a right solution, or, at least, an adequate approach among many others that are inadequate or wrong. What we notice, even with “great philosophers” in classic and present times, is a remarkable concentration on their own positions, as they maintain a strong belief that they are providing an adequate approach to the debated questions and they reject, sometimes summarily, the alternatives. The affirmative approach sustains a meta-philosophical view of the plurality of philosophies as a scandal and a mistake which must be resolved in some way.” (Page 4)

And the way philosophy suggests to resolve that mistake, is according to Cabrera, by an affirmative argumentation process. Any argument theory has to go through six steps, one way or the other, which are:
(1) Determining the existence of an argument – first there is a need to check whether there is, in fact, an argument at all, as it could be that the case is of an unstructured mixture of statements, or a declaration of intentions, or an emotional expression.
(2) Determining the existence of an arguer – there must be someone who advances the argument and defends it, taking the burden of proof and assuming the responsibility for the argument.
(3) Reconstructing the argument – the arguer has to try to reconstruct the argument in question through argumentation schemes showing whether there is only one argument or many, which argument is central, whether an argument is a sub-argument of another, which are the relevant premises and which are the expected conclusions and so on.
(4) Making terms and premises clear – the arguer has to question whether there are terms to be clarified or defined in the reconstruction carried out in step 3; it is also necessary to expose the assumptions and the premises whose truth will be accepted without argument.
(5) Testing the argument’s correction – do conclusions effectively arise from premises and assumptions? How about the quality and reliability of the inferential passage? Is the argument convincing, cogent, overwhelming? Does it set forth its conclusion?
(6) Testing the aims of the argument – the argument might not have any impact on the audience being targeted and in that case, if purposes are not accomplished, the argument fails. The agreement or assent of the target audience can be crucial to many types of argumentation and, perhaps, to all of them.

The main reason Cabrera criticizes the affirmative approach and suggests an alternative approach to argumentation, is not because of fundamental flaws he inspects in the above formulation. He agrees that this is basically how argumentation should be performed, however he is crucially concerned with what actually happens in real philosophical arguments.
Cabrera inspects a major flaw in the affirmative approach to argumentation not necessarily as a result of major flaws in formal or informal logic, but in the insistence that inspecting arguments with ideal norms of logic would provide one right answer that no one can counter argue, a scenario that according to him never happens, and can never be guaranteed.

The affirmative approach to argumentation is affirmative in the sense that according to it, the answer to the question – can philosophical questions be resolved by argumentation, is affirmative, while according to Cabrera the answer is negative.
Naturally, each side of the argument aspires to assume the best arguments, but according to Cabrera an argument can be considered right or wrong only from a certain perspective, and there is no neutral or objective authority (such as God or a super-computer) that can decide between different perspectives as to which of them is the unique one for solving the philosophical issue.

Therefore, according to Cabrera, endless confrontation and conflict between arguments and counter-arguments is intrinsic to the very process of argumentation, which usually ends in an impasse.
Cabrera emphasizes that the problem is not necessarily that argumentation does not follow rules, but that in each one of the six steps of argumentation specified above, each side can use each step to open new lines of counter-argumentation, following the rules. Cabrera exemplify:
“Let’s take, for instance, step number 1, the very existence of an argument. From certain perspectives and assumptions there exists an argument which is perfectly inexistent from other perspectives and assumptions;”. (page 21) According to Cabrera whether there is a real issue to be subjected to argumentation is not something that can be decided in absolute terms, and he exemplifies: “in a debate on abortion, for example, the very “abortion problem” might not even exist for a religious arguer who considers the criminal nature of preventing the development of a foetus totally evident. For him, there is nothing to be argued at all.” (page 21)
And indeed we see that quite often in antinatalist debates, many pro-natalists are not convinced that there is a problem to begin with. As far as they’re concerned, life is good and it is good to make more of it.

And that’s only the first step. The second step – who has the burden of proof, is another example for something we often encounter in antinatalist debates as many antinatalists argue that the burden of proof is on the people who choose to procreate since the burden of proof applies to anyone who makes a positive claim, and pro-natalists simply presuppose that procreation is good despite that it was never questioned, let alone proven to be good.
Pro-natalists on the other hand argue that the burden of proof is actually on antinatalists as they are the ones who are challenging a perceived status quo, they are asking people to stop doing something so natural and that was done since forever.

Cabrera argues that the “Affirmative approaches to argumentation assume a highly rational conception of a human being, as a cooperative agent disposed, in principle, to engage in a critical discussion aiming for a reasonable solution to differences via argumentation and, when necessary, leaving their subjective and personal interests aside.” (Page 54), while actually and frustratingly, everything can be, and practically is, counter-argued according to the motives and the perspective of any opponent to any position.
In Cebrera’s words:

“Whatever our attitude may be concerning these stances, however unusual or even extravagant, one cannot deny that the defenders of these positions are able to advance arguments in their favour that can be regarded, under certain assumptions, as strong and deserving of reply. It is always possible to oppose an argument. Therefore, the very notion of a “counter-argument” must change in the negative approach, because counter-arguments are always available for any given argument; if counter-arguments are not advanced, this is not due to strictly argumentative reasons. There seems to be no argument without potential counter-arguments. Terms, premises or sequiturs can always be challenged or rejected, however well-defined or “sound” they may appear to their defenders.” (Page 24)

And to make things even more frustrating he argues that:

“The same way that it is possible to look at something without really seeing it, or hearing without listening, so it is possible to understand one concept without thinking with it; in a sort of conceptual blindness. Similarly, as some visual organizations of pieces make some particular perceptual associations easier and others more difficult, some organizations of concepts promote some specific kind of thinking and make others difficult or even block them completely.” (Page 33)

So according to Cabrera: “An informal logic theory that applies only to cases where there are expressive agreements at the point of departure, and therefore high expectations that one side will simply accept its defeat at the end, seems a rather narrow scope theory.” (Page 71)
In reality crucial problems do not arise only because and when arguers “do not follow the rules” or because they “commit fallacies”, but disagreements, misunderstandings and impasses are or can be preset at every moment during the process of argumentation, even when all the rules are strictly followed.

For these reasons and more, he argues that the affirmative approach to argumentation is false and a negative approach to argumentation is needed.

The Negative Approach to Argumentation

The fundamental ideas of the negative approach are as follows:
Arguments cannot be solved in a unique, correct way. Arguments can be solved correctly in many different ways. Contradictory conclusions don’t eliminate each other but both may be true at the same time, according to their own conceptual organizations (Gestalten), as long as they follow the steps required to present a possible line of argument. There are many ways of being right and not only one. There are always other lines that can act as a counter-argument to the line initially presented, therefore philosophical discussions are endless.
In the negative approach, the other arguers are not enemies who, with their lines of argument come to destroy mine, but only arguers who reason following other possible lines of argument, and that, from other assumptions, reasonably arrive at other outcomes different from mine.
The domain of argumentation therefore has no self-support. (Page 37)

And the general features of the negative approach to argumentation are:

“(1) We do not know what reality is, or even whether it is unique or multiple; but we know that reality presents itself as shattered and organized in many ways, all of them subjective, none of them unique. (The ontological thesis.)
(2) The different philosophical theories unveil and point to different aspects of reality, but only from their respective organizations. Thus, none of them fails, all of them succeed. They only fail in their attempt to depict the sole truth, transforming their perspective in “what the world really is”. (The epistemological thesis.)
(3) All philosophical theories are tenable in their own terms and they are systematically wrong or inadequate in other theories’ terms, but there is no neutral domain where this tenability could be conclusively and absolutely settled or decided. (The logical thesis.)
(4) Our theories are only perspectives among others, positions among others, without any kind of privilege. They are not the best theories just for being our theories, and they are not correct just because we were able to formulate them properly. In the negative approach, the impression that one’s own theory must be the best and others’ wrong, is nothing except a psychological delusion with no logical support. (The psychological thesis.)” (Page 39)

As opposed to the affirmative approach which assumes that at some point one arguer must prevail over the other by providing the better arguments, the negative approach sustains that all arguments have flaws that can always be stressed by counter-arguments. And counter-arguments according to Cabrera, can’t eliminate or rebut the arguments they challenge since they too are only additional arguments in the web of arguments. They can only reshape, reformulate or relocate an argument in relation to other arguments.
In that sense, and given that there is no external objective unbiased authority that can decide, philosophical discussions according to the negative approach are virtually endless. They end as a result of fatigue, frustration, lack of motivation or interest and etc., but not because one of the standpoints rebutted and eliminated the other.

Therefore Cabrera’s negative approach aims to:

“present and develop the logical position that we assume when we learn to “look around” beyond our own stances, seeing the alternative and decentralizing our own viewpoint, abandoning the intention to occupy the privileged space of unique truth. The negative approach prefers to place ones’ own perspective within a very wide and complex holistic web of approaches and perspectives that speak and criticize mutually without discarding one another, even when each position may fiercely maintain its own perspective supported on defensible grounds.” (Page 5)

One of the problems with that aim is that it is technically impossible to really get out of one’s subjective view. In the best case, one can only realize that its view is subjective and there are other views which might be right just as much from their point of view. But there is no real option for “decentralizing our own viewpoint” as each person’s view is necessarily a centralized one, even the very view of decentralizing one’s own viewpoint. Even when a person is trying to view others’ views it is done from that persons’ viewpoint. No one can really launch itself to other people’s conceptual organizations (Gestalten) and assumptions. This approach can be a good practice for understanding others and even to convince others of one’s own viewpoints, but these are public relations and activism claims, not philosophical ones. The problem of the centrality of our own viewpoint and its effects on the way that everyone absorb information and other viewpoints, can’t be solved by stating there is a need to “decentralizing our own viewpoint”, as this is by definition a mission impossible. It can be effective against dogmatism but it can’t be a recipe for how to do philosophy since if the idea is that every philosophical position is necessarily a result of the standing point of the person holding that philosophical position, then the look on other philosophical positions would still be from the standing point of the person looking at other positions. The decentralization would necessarily remain centralized. We need a decentralization of the decentralization to really decentralize our own views. This aspiration is an endless regression of decentralization.

But of course, the main problem with the negative approach to argumentation is not that it is technically problematic, but that it is utterly ethically problematic, being too tolerant towards alternative viewpoints no matter how cruel and harmful they may be. That flaw is clear to Cabrera who argues that the opposite approach is worse:

“In affirmative approaches, the crucial problem is to be too intolerant concerning the alternative. The crucial risk of negative approaches is just the opposite, being too lenient about them. Both approaches are problematic, and must decide not by a totally risk-free approach, but by a risk we are well equipped to deal with. The option taken by this author is that it is better–logically and ethically–to have an excessive tolerance than an excessive intolerance. But this is not absolute either, just an option in a world where there are no absolute and risk-free solutions totally satisfactory to all parties involved.”

However, I am not sure that the case is of the negative approach to argumentation merely being excessively tolerant. I think that for many it may seem as a theory that goes way further than that. Cabrera understands that his approach may be interpreted as a form of, or at least as supportive or an intensification of Moral Skepticism, Ethical Subjectivism, Moral Relativism and even Moral Nihilism, so he tries to explain why it is none of the above.
To not make this text too long and too complicated, as well as not to deviate from the main and more interesting issue of the book, I decided to add an appendix to this text with some relations to the issue of the negative approach to argumentation being too tolerant to the point of Ethical Subjectivism, Moral Relativism, Moral Perspectivism and etc. You can find it here.

So assuming, at least for the sake of the argument, that the negative approach is truly none of the above, its derived practical conclusion is still very disappointing. Similar to the book A Critique of Affirmative Morality, in this book as well, the criticism is super radical and the descriptions of reality are very sharp and raw, however the conclusion is feeble and deficient. After shredding affirmative ethics and any option to live ethically in A Critique of Affirmative Morality, his conclusion and suggestion derived from negative ethics was merely ontological minimalism. And in Introduction to a Negative Approach to Argumentation, his conclusion and suggestion derived from the negative approach to argumentation is merely a pluralistic stance towards other philosophical ideas and adopting what he calls the Tragic Negativism.

Tragic Negativism

According to Cabrera, argumentation is not a scene of debate between right and wrong but actually a tragedy:

“The attitude that I prefer to assume in this book concerning the negative approach to argumentation is in-between nihilism and indifference. I call it argumentative negativism. It could also be called tragic negativism, in the sense that the difference between tragedy and drama is that in drama one of the parties is good and the others are bad (heroes and villains), whereas in tragedy we find good people on both sides. This means that, in tragedies, someone good and fair will inevitably suffer or die. In the domain of arguments, tragedy appears when we know that we are rejecting a perfectly plausible and tenable posture; we reject it not for being bad, but because we prefer to sustain another perspective maybe incompatible with the other. Like in tragedies good people die, in tragic argumentation good lines of arguments are rejected.” (Page 182)

The tragic arguer is aware that:

“there are dozens of circumstances and contextual elements of character, prevailing values, education, influences, simplicity, fertility, life assistance, social or cultural pressures, pure aesthetic taste, laziness, error, etc., which lead us to prefer one philosophical position over others. We are not driven to it only by the pure force of reasoning; and if somebody demands that we justify our presuppositions, new lines of argument will have to be opened.” (Page 185)

Having said that, according to Cabrera, the negative approach doesn’t mean one cannot adherently hold moral positions:

“The negativist view does not prevent us from arguing vehemently and convincingly in favor of some position to which we strongly adhere. We, for instance, may take a position in ethics favorable to pointing out the moral problems of procreation, abortion, the value of human life and correlated objects we can take a very determined stance on these issues and others, putting all kind of objections to optimistic postures concerning human life. But we do this because we decided–for a series of reasons–to take this line of argument and not another, not in order to defend an objective, unique and irrefutable truth, eliminating alternatives. We simply feel ourselves affectively and intellectually very close to this type of position and adopt it. (although this offends our intellectual narcissism: we would have preferred to have chosen our positions based on deep and necessary reasons.)” (Page 186)

But I don’t understand how one is supposed to adherently advocate for moral positions realizing that others may be right from their own standpoints? If they are right then I am wrong trying to convince them. The negative approach says that it is ok to vehemently hold moral positions while it’s supposed to neutralize or at least dramatically weaken any attempt to convince others, because from their own standpoints they might be right.

People can’t adherently advocate for moral positions under the realization that their position is just another one among many other ideas and it might be wrong just as much. It indeed might lead to indifference, as Cabrera suggests, or to a mental state in which argumentation is actually an intellectual mind game, a rhetoric contest, instead of a crucial ethical discussion.
And evidently Cabrera writes that “Discussions do not have to become a matter of life and death.” Only that all ethical discussions are matters of life and death. It is not the only peculiar claim in the book but it is probably one of the strangest as it is coming from the person to whom mortality is of the most central arguments against procreation. How can a discussion about procreation be anything other than a matter of life and death? And obviously you don’t have to include mortality as one of your central reasons for being an antinatalist for it to be a matter of life and death, as it is in the name. Regardless of the mortality issue, creating a new life is by definition a matter of life and death. And the same goes for abortion, ending life, capital punishment, animal rights, racism, feminism, and every other important ethical issue. They all are matters of life and death and that’s how we must treat them in ethical discussions.

Perhaps Cabrera’s cynical approach comes from his position about argumentation’s origin:

“Arguing is part of our mechanism of survival; we need to argue as much as we need to breathe. Argumentation aims to construct a position that is both an expression of our personality and an explanation of some relevant aspect of reality. In this delimitation of my own argumentative space, the animal drive of life makes me want to destroy other positions or show they are wrong and should be replaced by mine. Thereby I fail to see that others are doing the same as I do: expressing themselves as singular beings, constructing their values, trying to point to aspects of reality from different perspectives. The problem is that such constructions are mutually opposed and this fact encourages the idea that one of them has to prevail over the others by eliminating or replacing them.” (Page 190)

In other words, arguments are mostly if not entirely about the arguers and hardly if any about the issues. People do not use arguments simply for the pure desire to “resolve differences of opinion”, but as a form of defining themselves. They choose values to distinguish themselves, and are using argumentation as a form of expressing themselves and creating rapports with other people.

In Cabrera’ words:

“being a good arguer powerfully increases our self-esteem, especially through the victories we reach in discussions. The rational conception–the more usual in books of logic, even informal–address humans as if they were in a very comfortable and controlled situation where they can be reasonable and objective, with little sensibility to the frictions and insecurities of existence, to the uneasy and arduous domains where humans have to make their arguments through crucial decisions while trying to build their own value.
In logical studies, in particular, we easily forget that we are human animals, sensible beings with a vulnerable body and urgent needs. Our argumentation practices are not placed in a clean and quiet heaven but in concrete circumstances of hard living. We are forced to be defensive and expansive (and even dangerous in some situations) to others; we cannot be totally objective or neutral, but we need to be partial (or even tendentious) in order to survive, not, say, by hunger or physical pain, but by the need to protect our intellectual productions and to create an intellectual prestige within our very demanding communities; we need good self-esteem and intellectual recombination in the same way we need bread.” (Page 57)

I am not yet cynical enough to think that about all arguments, but I agree that this description is unfortunately mostly true.
And I also agree with the pessimistic premise of the negative approach to argumentation that arguments are never resolved, let alone universally and permanently:

“Two human beings engaging in a discussion about philosophical question are naturally and perforce going to differ in substance and method on almost any topic. What is the point in trying to impose one’s own perspective? I see no reason for trying to destroy the other’s lines of thought, even if regarded as absurd, untenable or dishonest.” (Page 6)

Of course there is a reason for trying to destroy the other’s lines of thought but not because it is absurd, untenable or dishonest, but because the other’s lines of thought might be extremely harmful. What is the point in trying to impose one’s own perspective? The answer is that maybe it would reduce suffering in the world.
But the more interesting and relevant question is not if there is a reason for trying to destroy the other’s lines of thought but is that option reasonable? And the answer in most cases is unfortunately No. And if two human beings engaging in a discussion about a philosophical question are naturally and perforce going to differ on almost any topic what is the point of having it in the first place?

A Psychological Negative Approach to Argumentation

You don’t have to agree with Cabrera’s radical philosophical argument regarding argumentation, but you have to agree with what can be seen as a radical psychological argument regarding argumentation.

“The crucial phenomenon is that, whatever our topic of reasoning, the opponent will have always a reply at hand, and we will have a reply to his/her reply if we are not prevented from counter-arguing by external means (violence, illness or death). Even the most seemingly indefensible stance, which would appear to have been totally impaired and unable to provide a counter-argument–by the accumulation of evidence–can always emerge from the ashes and present a defense.” (Page 18)

That means that even if we’ll be able to construct a much more valid and coherent argument than our opponent (which might construct a poor and incoherent argument), as far as the bottom line goes, it doesn’t matter if Cabrera is right that we don’t convince the other side because s/he is actually right from its own perspective or despite that s/he is wrong, as practically we are failing in convincing others.

I disagree with Cabrera that the reason we fail to convince others is because their arguments are right from their perspective. I think the reason is not their philosophical arguments but their psychological motives. Cabrera criticizes the affirmative approach for treating people as rational beings but it seems that he is making the same mistake. Most people are not convinced by our arguments because they are motivated to sustain their positions which reflect what they desire, not because they see things differently and cannot see them as we do.

It seems that he thinks that different stances can be equal in a metaphysical and logical sense and I think they can’t. But I do think they can be equal in a psychological sense. Meaning, different standpoints can be right or wrong from an objective and logical point of view, but at the same time the very same standpoints can be equally strong from the psychological point of view of each arguer, in the sense that opposite sides can hold different standpoints in an equal strength despite one being philosophically weak and the other philosophically strong. I am not a pluralist when it comes to moral stands but I believe that my opponent may hold its stance in an equal strength to me holding mine, and that we can never resolve our argument as long as the motivations differ.

Even if, like me, you disagree with the negative approach to argumentation on the philosophical level, you must agree that there is certainly much value in its arguments on the psychological level. Even if, like me, you disagree with the philosophical argument that the other side may always be right because it has its own perspective on the issue, clearly the claim that the other side won’t be convinced because it has its own perspective on the issue, is almost always right. I don’t think that it stems from one side holding an argument that is as rational and as valid as the argument of the other side, but from having as strong motivation to keep its arguments as the other side. And strong motivations are stronger than strong arguments, since arguments at least theoretically can be reconstructed, but it is hard to change a motivation, let alone using rational tools. The power of pro-natalism is not argumentative but motivational.
I don’t share the view that it is impossible to defeat arguments, but I do think that it is almost impossible to defeat motivations.

Cabrera argues that just like in the case of ethics:

“the affirmative approach thinks that ethical defects are the product of some internal malice of human beings. The negative approach to ethics holds that it is the external situation in which humans are placed that causes ethical defects. It is not that humans were placed in a good world that they destroyed, but they were placed in an adverse world whose difficulties cannot be morally resolved. The same occurs in logic: the affirmative approach holds that arguments can be perfectly resolved, but that humans obstruct this resolution with their fallacious behavior. The negative approach to logic holds that humans were placed in a situation that cannot be resolved by argument, where any argument they present will have to face endless counter-arguments.” (Page 41)

Cabrera seems to blame the situation and not the people, but it is not as if people yearn for the truth only that the truth doesn’t exist, but that people are not really that into the “truth”. They are into what they are into and if that is opposite to the “truth” then not their desires but the “truth” is compromised for the sake of the desires. When people encounter an inner conflict they usually rearrange the “facts” so they would suit their desires, not the other way around. People are not truth seekers, they are motivated by inner psychological and biological derives.

People are not the major victims of the state of moral impasse, the creatures who people severely affect, are. Even if the situation would change, for example by developing a super intelligent entity that would function as an external objective authority which would make moral decisions for people instead of them arguing forever, people’s motivations would still prevail. For example, people don’t eat meat because their Gestalt makes them think that this is the right thing to do, evidently, different people from similar Gestalts, reach different conclusions regarding eating animals. People eat animals because they want to, not because they think they ought to. The same goes for procreation. People don’t breed because they think it is the right thing to do, in fact most breed without thinking it over at all. And they do so because they want to and are built and designed for it.
People’s positions are founded on the basis of their desires, not the other way around. Humans rationalize their desires, their desires are not a product of their reason.

I highly disagree with the implication that humans are innocent beings who are forced into a horrible situation, and think that they are horrible beings who are forced into an impossible situation which they made much much worse. However, the bottom line of the case in point is that it is truly a situation that cannot be resolved by argumentation.
People are forced into a situation in which they are asked to make claims about moral issues as if they are objective, nonbiased, non-motivated, weren’t educated and indoctrinated in certain ways, and have no prior information and inclinations – despite that it is impossible.
I don’t exempt people from responsibility as most of them are lazy, ignorant, shallow, and are not willing to make even the tiniest effort to educate themselves or even listen to the other side before making judgments, however, I agree that even if they did, the situation would still be impossible.

Cabrera’s statement in the last quote is an admission of a known in advance failure. And therefore a very good reason to never procreate. Even if you are sure that humans are innocent beings who are forced into a horrible situation, and all the more so if you agree that humans are horrible beings who are forced into an impossible situation which they made much much worse, in any case antinatalism is the self-evident conclusion. People must stop procreating so to avoid the need to determine moral issues which they anyway can’t resolve.
That argument may sound contradictive as seemingly this is a determination in favor of antinatalsim derived from the inability to make an argumentative determination, however, I am not claiming here that we must determine in favor of antinatalsim because it is the right moral stance (although in my view obviously it is), but because we must avoid the need to determine moral issues since it is impossible according to the negative approach, and antinatalsim eventually leads there. From that perspective, antinatalism is merely the mean to avoid the inevitable impasse consequence of trying to determine moral issues, and not a decision in favor of a specific moral stance.

Another aspect of the impossibility of ethics is, as before mentioned, that as opposed to the affirmative approach, in the negative one “arguments can be carried on indefinitely by both parties, not only because participants are strategic, fallacious or acting in bad faith, but because arguments and counter-arguments can always be advanced from each party without reaching a strict argumentative solution.” (Page 42)
If the fact that argumentation is bound for eternal dispute without ever being resolved had no negative effect on anyone in the world, then existence would still be senseless, purposeless, pointless and amoral, but at least not so ethically horrifying as it actually is. The fact that moral discussions are bound for eternal dispute without ever being resolved and they do have a tremendous negative effect on trillions of sentient creatures, is what makes Cabrera’s claims additional reasons to why this world can’t be morally justified.

The idea that there is no real option to conduct philosophical discussions, especially ethical ones, shouldn’t derive to pluralism but to fatalism. The fact that humans are incapable of understanding the world they live in, and are totally incapable of reaching agreed upon moral decisions, has dire consequences that daily affect billions of suffering creatures.

Although I disagree with Cabrera’s philosophical pluralism conclusion, I do agree with most of his claims regarding argumentation from the psychological angle. Therefore I see no point in addressing the general public, trying to convince each person to be an antinatalist. Instead, I am trying to convince antinatalists to forsake the futile attempt of addressing the general public trying to convince each person to be an antinatalist, and focus on ways to make the general public antinatalist regardless of each person’s opinion about antinatalism.

Due to all the reasons Cabrera specifies along the book regarding the pointlessness and impossibility of convincing everyone to accept a certain position no matter how right it is, I am calling antinatalists not to be ‘tragic arguers’ but effective activists. Desert the senseless attempt to change the minds of all people and focus on changing their reproductive parts. We will not prevent procreation by argumentation, but we might do so by non-argumentative means.

Cabrera ends his book with the following paragraph:

“Ultimately, maybe argumentation is not the proper field for deciding crucial questions (as, say abortion, the abolition of slavery or the death penalty); argumentation does not occupy, as traditionally said, the place of reason and objectivity, but a new place for human passions and a will to expand, now expressed in rational terms. We may be totally convinced of our point of view (for example, that in abortion we always kill a human being, that the abolition of slavery was not due to ethical reasons but to economic calculation, and that the death penalty offends human dignity). We can sincerely think that our arguments are really stronger than the opposite ones and see them as simply displaying the truth and rejecting error. But the brute fact is, that in front of us there is always the possibility of another arguer having counter-arguments and oppositions to each one of our points, and that we have no neutral space to decide that our strong convictions definitively settle the matter. This may suggest that argumentation is not the ultimate domain to resolve differences, especially when they are strongly controversial; that a domain beyond argumentation should be opened, not eliminating argumentation but going beyond it in a way that is different from merely kicking the board.” (Page 195)

Given that the “game” is pointless and absurd, and that it is not at all a game but a real immense and endless tragedy, kicking the board is exactly what we must do. I totally agree that argumentation is not the proper field for deciding crucial questions and that a domain beyond argumentation should be opened, but not one that is different from merely kicking the board, but one which aims exactly for that – kicking the damn board so hard that no sick game could ever be played again.

References

Cabrera Julio, A Critique of Affirmative Morality: a reflection on death, birth and the value of life
(Brasília: Julio Cabrera Editions 2014)

Cabrera Julio, Introduction to a Negative Approach to Argumentation – Towards a New Ethic for Philosophical Debate
ambridge Scholars Publishing 2019)