Category: General (Page 6 of 6)

After making the claim – that as long as life contains even the smallest amount of bad, coming into existence is a harm – Benatar turns to show that all human lives contain much more bad than is ordinarily recognized. His motivation is that “If people realized just how bad their lives were, they might grant that their coming into existence was a harm even if they deny that coming into existence would have been a harm had their lives contained but the smallest amount of bad.” In other words, it is much harder to dismiss his conclusion considering how bad life actually is. However he argues that “this chapter can be seen as providing a basis, independent of asymmetry and its implications, for regretting one’s existence and for taking all actual cases of coming into existence to be harmful.”

Being aware that most people deny that their lives are bad, Benatar focuses most of the chapter to answering the question, how can it be a harm to come into existence if most of those who have come into existence are pleased that they did? His answer is that their self-assessments are completely unreliable indicators of life’s quality, mainly due to a number of psychological features which distort their ability to make objective assessments of the actual quality of life and constitute instead a fallacious positive assessment.
The following are the 3 mechanisms Benatar mentions, along with a brief explanation of each, taken from the book.

1. The Pollyanna Principle

“The first, most general and most influential of these psychological phenomena is what some have called the Pollyanna Principle, a tendency towards optimism. This manifests in many ways. First, there is an inclination to recall positive rather than negative experiences. For example, when asked to recall events from throughout their lives, subjects in a number of studies listed a much greater number of positive than negative experiences. This selective recall distorts our judgement of how well our lives have gone so far. It is not only assessments of our past that are biased, but also our projections or expectations about the future. We tend to have an exaggerated view of how good things will be.” (p.65)

And here is another educating description of how selective perception and memory contribute to the perception that life is good, taken from an article called Bad is Stronger than Good:

“As Taylor (1991) argued, the human psyche has powerful mechanisms for retrospectively minimizing bad experiences. Although both good and bad feelings may fade with time, the bad ones are actively suppressed; whereas the good memories may be cultivated and sustained (e.g., through reminiscence). By the same token, people may treat bad experiences as isolated events while integrating good ones into an ongoing general perception of goodness. In this way, individuals may sustain a broadly favorable view of their lives.
These considerations are quite consistent with the view that the good life consists of a consistent pattern of good outcomes, even if these are individually relatively small and weak. A few bad outcomes can be minimized by making external attributions or regarding them as unimportant, thereby preserving the subjective impression of a stable pattern of good outcomes. As long as the individual perceives that pattern of consistent goodness, life may seem strongly good overall even if nothing strongly good ever happens.” (Baumeister, R and Bratslavsky, E and Finkenauer, C and Vohs, K, 2001, p.36)

Some may argue that the very fact that people have a structured optimism bias, practically makes their lives better since reexperiencing past events in a better way actually makes them feel better even though it is false. That might be true, but it is crucial to remember that the issue here is not should existing people continue to exist, but should existing people force others into existence. Therefore, even if bad experiences are remembered as better than they actually were, which makes them less bad for the ones who have experienced them, it can’t make similar experiences less bad for the ones who haven’t yet experienced them. For them these experiences would be as bad as they really are. It may be that in the future they too will remember these events as less bad than they actually were, but even if so, it won’t make these experiences less bad when they actually experience them, and as opposed to existing people which in their case it’s too late, these kinds of bad experiences can be prevented in the case of non-existents.
Anyway, the main problem with the false assessment is its ethical implication. If people think that life is much better than it actually is, it would be much harder to convince them not to create new people.

2. Adaptation

“When a person’s objective well-being takes a turn for the worse, there is, at first, a significant subjective dissatisfaction. However, there is a tendency then to adapt to the new situation and to adjust one’s expectations accordingly.
As a result, even if the subjective sense of well-being does not return to the original level, it comes closer towards it than one might think…
Because the subjective sense of well-being tracks recent change in the level of well-being better than it tracks a person’s actual level of well-being, it is an unreliable indicator of the latter.” (p.67)

Like in the case of the Pollyanna principle, some may argue that if people can adapt and adjust, then life is not that bad even when it is not easy. But why condemn people to such a state in the first place? Why force them to adapt to a bad situation when it is absolutely unnecessary?
It is so cruel to say that life is hard on everybody and they are all managing and they all adjust, since not everybody adjust, and since no one should adjust to a situation they don’t choose or haven’t agreed to come into before they were forced to. Why knowingly create someone who would have to adjust to bad situations, instead of easily avoiding any bad situation that person would be forced to endure? Why create someone who would want things all the time, which obviously not all of them would be obtained and the question is only how frustrated that person would be? And why create desires which wouldn’t exist otherwise? Wanting is not good since it means that there is a deficit, otherwise it wasn’t a want but a satisfaction, and sentient creatures, and most certainly humans, always want. And they don’t get what they want most of the time. Statements such as life is a compromise, or that we don’t always get what we want in life, are so common, and yet people consciously choose to throw other people into the position in which they must always compromise and never get everything they want. Why create a need when it is not necessary?

3. Comparison with Others

“It is not so much how well one’s life goes as how well it goes in comparison with others that determines one’s judgement about how well one’s life is going. Thus self-assessments are a better indicator of the comparative rather than actual quality of one’s life. One effect of this is that those negative features of life that are shared by everybody are inert in people’s judgements about their own well-being. Since these features are very relevant, overlooking them leads to unreliable judgements.” (p.68)

This feature is one of the most cynical, oxymoronic and cruel aspects of the issue. That is so since, if to put it bluntly, it means that as long as everyone’s life is miserable, everything is fine. According to this feature, parents shouldn’t be worried that their children would have bad lives, but that someone else would have a good one, since then they and their children would realize how bad their lives actually are. This world is so cynical and cruel that people’s desire to procreate is not threatened by the chance that their children would be miserable, but by the chance that others’ children would be a little bit better.

Life Addiction

Unfortunately, it is almost pointless to throw psychological theories on people since the trick about these psychological biases is that they prevent people even from noticing their utterly biased perception regarding the very existence of these biases, not to mention a more objective and reliable assessment of their own existence. It is a deadlock.

It is hard to see any of that changes since, as Benatar himself claims, these psychological features have a strong evolutionary advantage:

“The above psychological phenomena are unsurprising from an evolutionary perspective. They militate against suicide and in favour of reproduction. If our lives are quite as bad as I shall still suggest they are, and if people were prone to see this true quality of their lives for what it is, they might be much more inclined to kill themselves, or at least not to produce more such lives. Pessimism, then, tends not to be naturally selected.” (p.69)

People won’t be convinced that they shouldn’t procreate because their children would experience the daily discomforts Benatar specifies along the chapter, no matter how abundant and prevalent these are, and they would certainly not avoid procreation because they are biased to optimism. People procreate even when the chances for serious lifelong maladies are very high (for example in the case of genetic diseases or even when problems are observed through ultrasound).
Even people who have had horrible lives don’t hesitate and procreate despite that they know firsthand how easily life can become nightmarish. Procreation is way stronger than rational arguments, and people are anyway not very rational.

Another factor which I find crucial in affecting people’s perceptions, which is also another kind of a psychological mechanism, is that it is hard to imagine non-existence. Not that it should be a required part of making life assessments, but it seems that Benatar’s argument – that life is much worse than people think it is and therefore coming into existence is a very serious harm – necessitates that people would think that their lives are not worth living. No matter how many times he explains that the two differ, I think that people find it hard to distinct and so reply to his argument by an answer to a question he doesn’t ask. They confuse the claim that it is better never to have been, with the claim that their lives better not continue in one case, and the less confused who understand the difference between not continuing their lives and not starting them, find it hard not to imagine losing what they have experienced if their lives had never started, though clearly this is not what would have happened had they never existed.
The source for the second confusion makes sense to me since it is hard to imagine non-existence as a preferable position. Most people find it hard not to imagine non-existence as something bad, as a deprivation, as some sort of mental prison, a state in which their consciousness floats outside of existence or something of this sort. Non-existence is not only a state they find hard to imagine, it is not a state at all. People can’t put themselves in such a position because it literally doesn’t exist. Non-existence is not a comparable state with existence. So they imagine other states in which they would be deprived of everything they experienced during their existence. Despite that this is not the case, this is the intuition of many. Non-existence is not an existential alternative for a bad life and therefore prioritization in this case is irrelevant. It is irrelevant to ask someone if they rather never to have been since there is no such option for an existing person. And since the intuition behind the question ‘whether it’s better never to have been’ is: is it better that the life you have lived so far would have never started, the answer of many is no. But it’s an answer to the wrong question. When someone exists they inevitably weigh their own life as if this is what the question refers to. This false intuition makes them think that since they feel their lives are worth living, then their children’s lives would be so as well. That is despite that Benatar explains and emphasises the difference between living and non-existence. Still something in the structure of his argument makes people think about it wrongly.

This question is problematic from another angle. Even when people are asked to make life assessments, they rarely do it via some sort of hedonistic balance, they don’t compare bad and good experiences, but to them life is just what it is. It is a journey everybody has to take, nobody really chose and only few chose to quit. It is just something one has got to do. It is what it is. There is no alternative.
People think it is better to live hard lives than missing them, even though they won’t miss a thing had they never had a life. Nobody is harmed by a great life that nobody lived. But someone is definitely harmed by living a horrible life.

Biased assessments and the difficulty to imagine non-existence are not the only problems. Many people feel that they are not even qualified to make life evaluation, a task preserved, according to them, only to god, and their god is very pro-natalist. Some of them believe that the suffering on earth would be compensated in the afterlife, and so generally accept the existence of suffering in this life. They usually don’t ponder over whether their children would share the same belief system, and so condemn them to suffer existence for the sake of salvation in the afterlife despite that before they were born, their children need not to be saved from anything.

Life is much worse than people tend to think, but even if they weren’t, each bad moment happening during them is unnecessary. Every pain, every sickness, every fear, every frustration, every regret, every broken-heartedness, every moment of boredom and etc. are all needless. They exist only because the person experiencing them exists. They exist because the parents of that person have forced existence on that person, as well as forcing that person’s existence on others. There is no good reason for that to happen. Every problem could have been easily prevented instead of being difficultly solved, if solved at all. People exist because it was decided for them to exist by other people, not because it is necessary in any way. People can choose whether to create a sentient creature who would necessarily suffer, and they chose that it would. They chose that that person would experience pain, frustration, fear, boredom, death and the fear of dying for most of their life, they chose it would get disappointed, sick, rejected, and humiliated.
Yes, that person may enjoy parts of life too, but that is not mandatory, while it is mandatory that this short list of bad things will happen at some point, at least once in that person life. Pleasure is optional, happiness isn’t, and suffering is inevitable. Why would anyone willingly force a sentient creature into this condition?

The fact that people who are living horrible lives still don’t think they were better never to have been, is not an indication that life is not that horrible, but exactly the opposite. It goes to show how deeply trapped humans are in the life mechanism. People are victims not only of their biology but also of their psychology. They would adapt and adjust themselves and their expectations according to how bad the lives they are forced to endure are. Low expectation, adaptation ability, and the fact that everyone else’s lives is not much better, can’t justify bad situations which shouldn’t have been created in the first place.
But an even sadder fact is that humans are not really looking for justifications to procreate. Most just do. They don’t even really need mechanisms to sooth their worries about the future of their children, because as inevitable as it is that bad things would happen to their children, it rarely crosses their minds. Unfortunately people are that apathetic to the fate of others, even when it comes to their future children, and definitely when it comes to the rest of the victims of procreation.

The Harm to Others

The fact that life is much worse than people tend to think, is not only relevant to the claim that creating a person harms that person, it is also very relevant to the central antinatalism argument of this blog – the harm to others. That is because as long as people think that life is good, the greater the chances they would create more units of suffering, exploitation and pollution.
Since most humans, more than 95% of them actually, are not even vegans – the most basic and primal ethical decision one must make – procreation is practically letting a mass murder on the loose. When procreating people are choosing that more fish would suffocate to death by being violently sucked out of water, that more chickens would be cramped into tiny cages with each forced to live in a space the size of an A4 paper, that more calves would be separated from their mothers, and more cow mothers would be left traumatized by the abduction of their babies, it is choosing more pigs who suffer from chronic pain, more lame sheep, more beaten goats, more turkeys who can barely stand as a result of their unproportionate bodies, more ducks who are forced to live out of water and in filthy crowded sheds, more rabbits imprisoned in an iron cage the size of their bodies, more geese being aggressively plucked, more male chicks being gassed, crushed or suffocated since they are unexploitable for eggs nor meat, more snakes being skinned alive, and more crocodiles and alligators being hammered to death and often also skinned alive to be worn, and more mice, cats, dogs, fish, rabbits, and monkeys being experimented on.

Benatar sums the chapter with the following paragraph:

“everybody must experience at least some or other of the harms in the above catalogue of misery. Even if there are some lives that are spared most of this suffering, and those lives are better than I have said they are, those (relatively) high-quality lives are exceedingly uncommon. A charmed life is so rare that for every one such life there are millions of wretched lives. Some know that their baby will be among the unfortunate. Nobody knows, however, that their baby will be one of the allegedly lucky few. Great suffering could await any person that is brought into existence. Even the most privileged people could give birth to a child that will suffer unbearably, be raped, assaulted, or be murdered brutally. The optimist surely bears the burden of justifying this procreational Russian roulette. Given that there are no real advantages over never existing for those who are brought into existence, it is hard to see how the significant risk of serious harm could be justified. If we count not only the unusually severe harms that anybody could endure, but also the quite routine ones of ordinary human life, then we find that matters are still worse for cheery procreators. It shows that they play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun—aimed, of course, not at their own heads, but at those of their future offspring.” (p.92)

When considering the harms to others, people play Russian roulette not with a fully loaded gun but with a fucking machine gun, aimed, of course, not only at the heads of their future offspring, but at the heads of everyone who would ever be hurt by their future offspring.

References

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

Benatar, D. Every Conceivable Harm: A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism
S. Afr. Journal Philos., 31 2012

Benatar, D. Grim news for an unoriginal position Journal of Med Ethics 35 2009

Benatar, D. Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics
Journal of Ethics 2013

Bradley, B Benatar And The Logic Of Betterness Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 2010

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

Harman, E. Critical study of Benatar (2006). Nouˆs 43: 776–785.

McGregor, R & Sullivan-Bissett, E, ‘Better No Longer to Be: The Harm of Continued Existence’ South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1, 2012 pp. pg.55-68

Parfit, D. Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)

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

Expecting the criticism regarding his basic asymmetry, most specifically regarding the following: “The absence of pain is good even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone; but the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation”, Benatar argues that people who wish to state that just as the absence of pains in non-existence is good, the absence of pleasures is bad, must consider the repercussions that this move entails. Among them is that they would then not be able to make the value judgments that they do regarding four other asymmetries that he mentions in the book, which he claims, can only be explained by his basic asymmetry.
In his words (taken from his article Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics), “My basic asymmetry has the virtue of simplicity. It provides a single, unifying explanation for all the other asymmetries. In this way it is preferable to a strategy of mustering a range of explanations for the various asymmetries.” (p.127)

I find it hard to be convinced by an argument with an essential logical problem only because it provides a unifying explanation for other arguments. It is hard to be convinced by a supportive argument for a basic argument, which basically says that if we reject the basic one, we don’t have an explanation for other arguments. What we ought to do is try and find other explanations for the other asymmetries which are not based on his basic asymmetry. That’s what I’ll try to do here.
But before you continue, it is highly recommended to first read the text dealing with Benatar’s basic asymmetry if you haven’t read it yet, and especially if you disagree that it has a basic flaw.

(i) The Asymmetry of Procreational Duties

“While we have a duty to avoid bringing into existence people who would lead miserable lives, we have no duty to bring into existence those who would lead happy lives.” (p.123)

First of all unfortunately it is not accurate that there is a duty to avoid creating people who would lead miserable lives. I wish there was such a duty but I think there isn’t one since the focus is very much on the existent – the prospective parents – and not their future children. People don’t think much about the future of the ones who haven’t been born yet, but about the future of the parents. The relevancy of that to this specific asymmetry is that people’s common intuition is that nobody has to create a new person if they don’t want to, even if that person is likely to be happy (I’ll ignore for the sake of the argument the fact that any estimation of one’s happiness is totally groundless and extremely fragile). It’s the parents’ desire that counts. Even if the future person is expected to lead a miserable life, it’s still the parents’ choice.
Only in very extreme scenarios we can talk about a duty, if duty is at all on the agenda.
Certainly most ethicists would agree that people have such a duty, and maybe some pro-natalists would claim so in a hypothetical scenario, but if it was their case, or their family or friends’ case, in which the parents wanted a child despite an early detection of serious health issues, they would have probably supported the decision, and certainly wouldn’t claim that there is a duty not to do so.

Most people think that the decision to create a child with expected serious health issues is the parents’ choice, despite that the price would be paid, first and foremost, by the child, and also by society and not only by the parents.
So the interim conclusion is that practically, and among the general public even theoretically, it is not at all obvious that there is a duty to avoid creating people who would lead miserable lives.

And regarding the other part of the asymmetry, if there actually was a duty to create those who would lead happy lives, then prima facie, healthy and relatively wealthy people would have a duty to create the maximum possible people to the point it would wear out their ability to provide them with good starting conditions. And on the other hand, if there was a duty not to create those who would lead miserable lives, then people with health issues and inability to provide their future children a good starting point, would have a duty not to create new people at all. I think that most people would find both implications unacceptable and if so it means that there isn’t really “a duty to avoid bringing into existence people who would lead miserable lives”, and also “no duty to bring into existence those who would lead happy lives”. As earlier mentioned, most people think that what matters most is what the parents want, not how the children would feel. They are concerned with the parents’ present, not with their children’s future.

This view stems from the liberal reasoning that people are first and foremost obligated to promote their own happiness and fulfill their own desires. Therefore it is wrong to pressure them to create new people even if they would lead happy lives, and it is also wrong to pressure them not to bring people who would lead miserable lives, in fact, the perception is that if that’s what they want, they should be supported. People who do so are in many cases considered heros. That is despite that they, and mostly their children, are struggling with a problem they unnecessarily chose to create. Procreation is not about what children would need and about what they absolutely don’t need, but about what their parents want and about what they absolutely don’t agree to give up.

Creating people who would lead miserable lives, is making the parents miserable as well. Creating those who would lead happy lives, is making the parents miserable if they don’t want to create anyone. If there was a duty to bring into existence those who would lead happy lives even if the parents don’t want to, then they (the parents) wouldn’t lead happy lives.
People think that there is no duty to create those who would lead happy lives, not because they share Benatar’s claim that the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation, but because causing someone who doesn’t want children to have them anyway is wrong.

So in the more liberal parts of the world there is no duty to create those who would lead happy lives, but not because people think that the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation, but because people think that it is the parents’ interests that counts. And in other parts of the world there is a duty to procreate (pretty much regardless of the expected consequences). Perhaps a duty might feel too far-reaching, but there is definitely peer pressure to do so. In many cases this peer pressure is very close to a duty, for example in societies where procreation is a divine decree, or societies who feel they need soldiers or more working hands, or somebody to take care of the aging population in the rare cases of negative population growth, or simply because it is socially unacceptable not to have children. Probably an enormous amount of people were forced into horrible lives, by people who didn’t want to create new people but had no choice, even after the contraceptive age, not to mention before it. Most societies still look at healthy couples who are not extremely poor, as selfish if they choose not to create new people.

Even if there was a duty not to create those who would lead miserable lives, it doesn’t necessarily support Benatar’s basic asymmetry. People can think that it is wrong to create those who would lead miserable lives without thinking that the absence of bad is good even if there is nobody to benefit from that absence. It’s plausible to think that it is bad to bring misery into the world, despite that it is not good not to do it (in case there is no one to benefit from the absence of that misery). Misery can be valued as bad without the absence of it being good. We don’t think that people are doing something good when they choose not to hurt someone, though we certainly think that people are doing something bad when they do. Not raping is not good despite that raping is extremely bad. People are supposed to not hurt others, not hurting others mustn’t be valued as good, but as obvious. So it is plausible to think that there is a duty not to create those who would lead miserable lives, without that being good. For a duty to make sense, it is sufficient that it would be bad if it is not applied, it is not necessary that the opposite case would be good.
It takes a truly horrible world that not harming someone is considered good. It’s supposed to be the ethical default. Avoiding procreation isn’t good but the ethical default. We shouldn’t thank people who haven’t procreated. Only in a fucked up world like ours, not committing the greatest crime an individual can commit, is being thanked for. People who don’t procreate are not doing a good thing but the ethically obvious thing. People who do procreate are doing a bad thing and they must be stopped.

Another explanation for the first asymmetry can be that it truly relies on a more basic asymmetry, but not Benatar’s. That is that there is a duty not to harm others, but not to benefit others. The happiness of every person is theirs and their close ones’ responsibility, and there is no duty to bestow happiness on other people. On the other hand, there is a duty not to cause harms. There is a duty not to cause someone pain but not a duty to invest one’s own energy, time and efforts to make someone else happy. This basic asymmetry relies on an even more basic perception which is that it is much more important to avoid harms than to gain pleasures. It is more important for almost each and every human, and probably each and every other sentient creature, to avoid feeling pain, than to feel pleasure. And if this is the case with each one of us, the same logic must be applied regarding non-existing people.
There is no duty to create others even if they would lead happy lives since not doing so will not harm anyone, but there should be a duty not to impose pain, frustration, death, the fear of death, illnesses, boredom, anger, anxiety, regret, disappointment, suffering and every other negative experience imperative to existence, on others.

And finally, there is something problematic in the framing of this asymmetry. Saying we have a duty to avoid creating people who would lead miserable lives, means that we know that’s what’s going to happen (for example because we know of foreseen serious health issues or seriously poor social starting conditions). However, we have no way of knowing that someone would lead a happy life. There is absolutely no guarantee that someone would lead a happy life even if the starting conditions are great from all possible aspects. People know that there are infinite ways in which life can easily turn from happy to miserable (and of course actually being happy is extremely rare to begin with). So we have certainty regarding one claim and uncertainty regarding the other and that is a significant parameter.
The asymmetry would have been much more challenging was it that we have a duty not to create new people under conditions such as war, famine, or extreme poverty, but without stating that these people would lead miserable lives. I think that the intuition would have been different in that case. Not because these examples are not viewed as miserable, as they certainly are, but because telling people that they have a duty not to procreate during wartime, famine, or extreme poverty sounds to many people unfair towards people who want children, regardless of the lives these children are forced into. That formulation of duty would be at least much less popular, if not rejected by most people. Some of the justification would probably be that these starting conditions may not be ideal but they don’t necessarily mean that these people would lead miserable lives. And that is strengthening the argument that certainty plays an important role here. Once the people are defined as leading miserable lives, it is easier to say that there is a duty not to create them, as opposed to bringing people into existence of dire conditions.

(ii) The prospective beneficence asymmetry

“It is strange to cite as a reason for having a child that that child will thereby be benefited. It is not similarly strange to cite as a reason for not having a child that that child will suffer.” (p.123)

Of all the four supporting asymmetries Benatar suggests, I think this one is the least commonly accepted among people. I don’t think it is considered strange to cite as a reason for having a child that that child will thereby be benefited. It is obviously absolutely fallacious, but not strange to cite as an excuse. In fact it is quite common. People certainly wrongly think that it is not strange to reason having a child so that child will thereby be benefited, despite that it is absolutely senseless to create someone who would need things, to benefit that someone with some of them, despite that had that person not existed there would have been no need for anything. That paradox goes under their radar. I don’t think there is asymmetry here but symmetry. People don’t think it is strange to cite as a reason for having a child that that child will thereby be benefited, and they don’t think it is strange to cite as a reason for not having a child that that child will suffer. Antinatalists find it strange and for many reasons, but the supporting power of the four asymmetries lies on how common they are among non antinatalist people, and I think that this one is just not common.

Not only that many don’t find it strange, some actually do cite as a reason for having a child that that child will thereby be benefited. As mentioned above, this is obviously absolutely fallacious, benefiting others is never the reason. As argued in a former post, if that was really the motivation behind people’s decisions, then they can benefit existing people. They can increase the pleasures of people to whom it was already decided without their consent that they would exist and therefore suffer and die. If people want to benefit others so much, they can do so with ones who can give their consent, and their inevitable suffering was already chosen for them by their parents. Why not focusing on people who already exist and suffer? Why create new people who might benefit but would certainly be harmed, instead of benefiting existing people without harming them on the way? The answer is that obviously it is just an excuse. Nobody is procreating to benefit anyone. You can’t benefit someone who doesn’t exist and is not harmed by not existing. Non-existents are not trapped in glass containers outside of existence pleading that someone would bring them in. There is nobody in “non-existence”, so there is no one who needs to experience anything. There is nobody who needs to be created to be bestowed with benefits or to balance good and bad. People don’t procreate to benefit others but to benefit themselves. But the fact that this claim is utterly bogus doesn’t mean they find it strange to cite it, or use it themselves.

Many pro-natalists don’t find it strange and many antinatalists find it bogus and morally illegitimate but not necessarily strange. And those who do, don’t necessarily think that the explanation to this asymmetry is Benatar’s basic asymmetry (the absence of suffering is good even if there is no one to benefit from this absence, but the absence of pleasure is bad only if there is someone who is deprived of this absence). Many antinatalists think that absence has no value for non-existing people in any case, only that creating people would certainly cause at least some harm, and not creating people would certainly not cause any harm. That is a sufficient antinatalist argument, and in my view it can explain all the supporting asymmetries without Benatar’s basic asymmetry.

Antinatalists find it strange to cite as a reason for having a child that that child will thereby be benefited, because it is untrue (the reasons for procreation are benefiting the procreators, not someone who doesn’t exist yet), because it is invalid (it is logically impossible to benefit someone who doesn’t exist yet), because while we accept causing a harm to prevent greater harms we prohibit causing harms to bestow benefits, because there is no one who is impatiently longing to be born and who the people who decide to force into existence are saving from unbearable waiting, because while it makes sense to argue that one doesn’t want to cause someone suffering (as there is no life without suffering), it doesn’t make sense to argue that one wants to benefit someone who doesn’t exist yet. But one needs to be antinatalist to think so.
Among antinatalists there are some who think that every harm makes procreation immoral, and others who think that the chances that the child would benefit are null given the nature of pleasures compared with the nature of pains. Others think that there is an option in which the child would benefit but it is prohibited to take risk on someone else’s life. Others think that it doesn’t matter how sure we are that a person would benefit from coming to existence, it is prohibited to harm someone without consent. And others think it doesn’t matter how sure we are that a person would benefit from coming to existence since others would surely be hurt by that person’s existence and so it is morally prohibited. None of these options require any explanatory relation to Benatar’s second supporting asymmetry, or that the second supporting asymmetry would be accurate in itself, or that his basic asymmetry would be accurate in itself.

Since one of the main aims of this blog is to put the focus of antinatalism on the harm to others, it is essential to point out that not procreating is a good decision for the reasons mentioned, but also because it is a great benefit, not for the non-existent of course, but for other existing beings. Every procreation makes this world even more hellish, therefore every procreation avoidance benefits not the non-existent but the existing creatures who would be harmed had that procreation not been avoided.

(iii) The retrospective beneficence asymmetry

“When one has brought a suffering child into existence, it makes sense to regret having brought that child into existence—and to regret it for the sake of that child.
By contrast, when one fails to bring a happy child into existence, one cannot regret that failure for the sake of the person.” (p.123)

I fail to understand why this asymmetry can serve as an explanation to the claim that absence of pleasures is bad only if there is someone for whom this absence is a deprivation, but the absence of pain is good even if there is no one to benefit from this absence, when it is not really about the difference between the absence of pain and the absence of pleasure, but about the difference between existing persons and the absence of persons.
It shows that it makes sense to regret something for an existing person’s sake, but not for a non-existing person’s sake. That doesn’t explain his basic asymmetry, it is just common sense. It makes sense to regret creating a suffering child for the sake of that child because that child exists, not because the absence of suffering is bad even if there is no one to benefit from that absence. There is someone who would benefit from the absence of this suffering and that is the existing suffering child.
By contrast, it doesn’t make sense to regret the failure to create a happy child for the sake of that person since it makes no sense to refer to non-existing persons any sake, good or bad.

The asymmetry stems from the premises, the suffering person in this asymmetry is not counterfactual, there is an actual existing victim for whom it would be better never to exist, however the happy person is counterfactual.

For this asymmetry to support the basic one, it should argue that it makes sense to be happy for not creating a miserable child for the sake of that child. But this is not how Benatar frames this asymmetry and it is not by chance. He knows it means ascribing interests to a non-existing person. It’s true that non-existents are not harmed by not existing despite that their lives would have been happy, and so allegedly support Benatar’s basic asymmetry, but it is also the case that non-existents are not benefiting by not existing despite that their lives would have been miserable.

The regret for creating a suffering child is on the basis of the actual suffering of someone’s actual existence, not on the basis of the logical conclusion that it is always better never to have been, derived from a hypothetical comparison between actual and counterfactual scenarios. For this asymmetry to have a strong explanatory power regarding the basic asymmetry, it should have argued that it makes sense to regret having a child experiencing even the smallest harm, since had that child not existed, there would be no harms whatsoever, and no deprivation of any pleasure. That may be a strong case of its own, but it would also be extremely unpopular. The vast majority of people need a formulation such as the one Benatar suggests in this asymmetry, meaning that there would be an existing suffering person, leading a miserable life. Only a fraction would be sufficed with the least harm possible.

Another aspect of the explanation why people don’t tend to regret failing to create a happy child for the sake of that person, is that there is no way of knowing whether that person would truly be happy. It would be a regret devoid of meaning. It can only be truly relevant in a science fiction sense, meaning if one can tell beforehand that their children would be happy.
As opposed to that scenario, it makes sense to regret creating a child who we know is suffering. We have an existing suffering child on one hand, which is not a speculation, not a potential, but an actual person whom we know is a victim, and a potentially happy child on the other. This asymmetry is also based on the certainty of one case, and the speculation of the other.

Lastly, since the aim of this asymmetry is to support the basic one which claims that The absence of pain is good even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone; but the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation, we can try to overturn the retrospective beneficence asymmetry using content instead of regret. But then I think it wouldn’t serve as supportive argument for Benatar’s basic asymmetry. It would go something like this: it doesn’t make sense to be happy that a happy child was created for the sake of the child, since that although it is good that existing people enjoy their lives, there is no advantage of existence over non-existence since there would not be a deprivation of all the pleasures of the happy person in the case of non-existence, and since even happy lives contain at least some pain, so that child was better off not existing, and we shouldn’t be happy about placing someone in a worse possible condition. By contrast, it makes sense to be happy that a suffering child wasn’t created for the sake of that child.
Under this formulation of the claim, I think most people (and definitely all non antinatalist ones) would highly disagree with the first premise, and the second one is plainly ascribing interests to a non-existing person, a position which Benatar himself finds unacceptable.

(iv) The asymmetry of distant suffering and absent happy people

“We are rightly sad for distant people who suffer. By contrast we need not shed any tears for absent happy people on uninhabited planets, or uninhabited islands or other regions on our own planet.” (p.123)

Like in the former asymmetry, in this case as well the suffering is of existing people while the happiness is of non-existing people. That doesn’t support the claim that the absence of pain is good even if there is no one to benefit from that good, since there are people who are suffering.
Even if that asymmetry shows that people who think that the absence of pleasure is bad are not consistent since they should shed tears for absent happy people on uninhabited planets, it doesn’t deal with the problem of the absence of suffering as a good thing even if there is no one to benefit from that absence. Like the former asymmetry this asymmetry proves that the presence of pain is bad for existing people (quadrant 1 of the original asymmetry) not that the absence of pain is good even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone (quadrant 3 of the original asymmetry), as there are suffering people in this case.

The fact that certain places are uninhabited means there is no pleasure and no pain there. So we are supposed to be neutral regarding them. We shouldn’t be happy that there is no pain there nor be sad that there are no pleasures there. There is no one for whom to be neither happy nor sad. On the other hand, the case of the distant suffering people is unmistakably bad. Of course we regret its existence.
Even pathological optimists who think that it is a pity that there are uninhabited planets (because the absence of pleasures is bad), must think that the case of existing distant suffering people is sadder, because the distant suffering people exist and the happy people on uninhabited planets don’t.
The asymmetry should compare hypothetical thoughts with hypothetical thoughts and concrete cases with concrete cases, but then the argument would be much less convincing.

In the distant place there are suffering people, and it is not that in uninhabited planets there are no pleasures but there are no experiences at all. Life contains both pleasure and pain (and even that is under an extremely charitable manner), so even if these uninhabited planets and islands weren’t absent, they would contain both pleasure and pain. So this asymmetry is wrongfully formulated. The asymmetry formula misleads us to think that for some reason when uninhabited planets will be inhabited they would be happy. But there is no reason to think so. In fact it is strange that Benatar from all people, presents life as if they are good as long as they weren’t specifically defined as miserable. He obviously doesn’t think so, yet this notion is present in all four asymmetries. If there were life on mars they would probably be miserable, and same goes for life on uninhabited islands, just like any other place on earth. Life shouldn’t be specifically defined as miserable for us to think that they are at least not happy.

In the basic asymmetry there are no specific cases but potential, and here there is a specific case of suffering so clearly we must be sad that this is the case. This is not a challenge even to people who think that pain and pleasure are equal and so in order to determine whether someone’s existence is justified we must weigh them up, since clearly in one case the suffering override happiness, and in the other case we don’t know so we have no reason to be sad or happy. Those who think that pain and pleasure are not equal certainly have a reason to be happy for every uninhabited planet and island, since it is more likely that these places would have been more miserable than happy. That is of course even more so for those who think that pleasures are not at all good, or even if they were, that they can never balance the pains.

Having said that, we can say that we are happy that suffering was avoided not because it is a benefit for non-existing persons but because us existing know that if these persons were forced into existence they would have suffered. We are happy because we know that something which would have been bad for someone was avoided, not because something good can happen to a non-existing person.
But anyway, for existence to be bad there is no need that non-existence would be good, or better, or even a valuably relevant option. The non-existing are not in any state. There is no such state as non-existence. There is only existence and existing creatures are suffering and causing suffering to others. Procreation is always wrong not because non-existence is good, but because existence is horrible.

References

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

Benatar, D. Every Conceivable Harm: A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism
S. Afr. Journal Philos., 31 2012

Benatar, D. Grim news for an unoriginal position Journal of Med Ethics 35 2009

Benatar, D. Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics
Journal of Ethics (2013)

Bradley, B Benatar And The Logic Of Betterness Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 2010

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

Harman, E. 2009. Critical study of Benatar (2006). Nouˆs 43: 776–785.

McGregor, R & Sullivan-Bissett, E, ‘Better No Longer to Be: The Harm of Continued Existence’ South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1, 2012 pp. 55-68.

Parfit, D. Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)

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

The second chapter of the book contains the heart of Benatar’s theory and by far the most controversial argument he makes. In fact even many antinatalists disagree with the argument he makes in this chapter including myself. I’ll briefly present the argument, some of its main criticisms, and why despite its essential flaw, it is nevertheless always a harm to create new people.

The following is Benatar’s Asymmetry Argument taken from the second chapter of the book called ‘why coming into existence is always a harm’, and to do justice to it, I’ve chosen a relatively long quote:

“We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child—pain, disappointment, anxiety, grief, and death. For any given child we cannot predict what form these harms will take or how severe they will be, but we can be sure that at least some of them will occur. None of this befalls the non-existent. Only existers suffer harm.

Optimists will be quick to note that I have not told the whole story. Not only bad things but also good things happen only to those who exist. Pleasure, joy, and satisfaction can only be had by existers. Thus, the cheerful will say, we must weigh up the pleasures of life against the evils. As long as the former outweigh the latter, the life is worth living. Coming into being with such a life is, on this view, a benefit.

However, this conclusion does not follow. This is because there is a crucial difference between harms (such as pains) and benefits (such as pleasures) which entails that existence has no advantage over, but does have disadvantages relative to, non-existence. Consider pains and pleasures as exemplars of harms and benefits. It is uncontroversial to say that

(1) the presence of pain is bad,

and that

(2) the presence of pleasure is good.

However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not seem to apply to the absence of pain and pleasure, for it strikes me as true that

(3) the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, whereas

(4) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.” (p.29-31)

“Figure 2.1 is intended to show why it is always preferable not to come into existence. It shows that coming into existence has disadvantages relative to never coming into existence whereas the positive features of existing are not advantages over never existing. Scenario B is always better than Scenario A.” (p.48)

That is basically how he concludes that it is always better never to come into existence.

When Benatar argues that the absence of pain of non-existent people is good and that the absence of pleasure of non-existent people is not bad, he is not making an impersonal evaluation (an evaluation that something is good or bad without being good or bad for somebody), rather he is making judgments whether being created is in the interests of the created person or whether it would have been better for that person to have never been. Therefore, one of the most common criticisms of Benatar’s asymmetry argument is that he ascribes interests to non-existent persons. Many people have difficulty making sense of the idea that never existing can be better for a person who never exists, because there is no subject for whom never existing could be a benefit. In other words, they wonder how can the absence of pain be good, if there is no one for whom it would be good? For something to be good, it needs to be good for someone, and in non-existence there is no someone. Only existing beings can be deprived of something. Hypotheticals are abstractions with no feelings nor preferences nor nothing. How can it be in the interest of not-existent not to exist, if only actual beings have interests?

Predicting this objection, Benatar writes in the book:

“Now it might be asked how the absence of pain could be good if that good is not enjoyed by anybody. Absent pain, it might be said, cannot be good for anybody, if nobody exists for whom it can be good.
The judgement made in 3 (the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone) is made with reference to the (potential) interests of a person who either does or does not exist. To this it might be objected that because (3) is part of the scenario under which this person never exists, (3) cannot say anything about an existing person. This objection would be mistaken because (3) can say something about a counterfactual case in which a person who does actually exist never did exist. Of the pain of an existing person, (3) says that the absence of this pain would have been good even if this could only have been achieved by the absence of the person who now suffers it. In other words, judged in terms of the interests of a person who now exists, the absence of the pain would have been good even though this person would then not have existed. Consider next what (3) says of the absent pain of one who never exists—of pain, the absence of which is ensured by not making a potential person actual. Claim (3) says that this absence is good when judged in terms of the interests of the person who would otherwise have existed. We may not know who that person would have been, but we can still say that whoever that person would have been, the avoidance of his or her pains is good when judged in terms of his or her potential interests. If there is any (obviously loose) sense in which the absent pain is good for the person who could have existed but does not exist, this is it. Clearly (3) does not entail the absurd literal claim that there is some actual person for whom the absent pain is good.” (p.30)

 And later in an article called Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics:

“Now it is obviously the case that if somebody never comes into existence there is no actual person who is thereby benefited. However, we can still claim that it is better for a person that he never exist, on condition that we understand that locution as a shorthand for a more complex idea. That more complex idea is this: We are comparing two possible worlds—one in which a person exists and one in which he does not. One way in which we can judge which of these possible worlds is better, is with reference to the interests of the person who exists in one (and only one) of these two possible worlds. Obviously those interests only exist in the possible world in which the person exists, but this does not preclude our making judgments about the value of an alternative possible world, and doing so with reference to the interests of the person in the possible world in which he does exist. Thus, we can claim of somebody who exists that it would have been better for him if he had never existed. If somebody does not exist, we can state of him that had he existed, it would have been better for him if he had never existed. In each case we are claiming something about somebody who exists in one of two alternative possible worlds.

When we claim that we avoid bringing a suffering child into existence for that child’s sake, we do not literally mean that nonexistent people have a sake. Instead, it is shorthand for stating that when we compare two possible worlds and we judge the matter in terms of the interests of the person who exists in one but not the other of these worlds, we judge the world in which he does not exist to be better.” (p.125-126)

I agree obviously with the common objection that the non-existent can’t be benefited. However, this is not the main problem with Benatar’s asymmetry. The main problem is not that a person exists in one world but not the other, and not even that the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, but that in the same world, the one in which the person doesn’t exist, when it comes to the absence of pain the person is treated as if s/he exists (otherwise the absence of pain can’t be good for him/her) but when it comes to the absence of pleasures s/he is treated as if s/he doesn’t exist (otherwise the absence of pleasures would be bad for him/her, and the only reason it isn’t is because the non-existent is not deprived of pleasures). In other words, the claim that the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone, is a counterfactual claim (statement which expresses what could or would happen under different circumstances). Meaning, if that person were to exist pain would be bad for that person. However, he doesn’t use the same standard when it comes to the absence of pleasures. If pain would be bad if someone would exist in quadrant 3 in figure 2.1 than how come pleasure wouldn’t be good if that person would exist in quadrant 4? Just as pain would be bad for person X if existed, so would pleasure be good if person X existed. Just as the non-existents are not in a position to miss any pleasure, they are also not in a position to be relieved from not experiencing any pain. Since his argument is counterfactual, the absence of pleasure should be valued as bad for the non-existent, just as the absence of pain is valued as good for the non-existent.

So even if we accept his explanation regarding ascribing interests (or at least counterfactual preferences) to the non-existent, I still can’t figure how he can use one standard for quadrant 3 and another for quadrant 4. It can’t go both ways, if pleasure is good then its absence is bad. If one wants to argue that the absence of pleasure is not bad since there is no one to be deprived of them, then the same standard must be applied in the case of the absence of pain, meaning it can’t be good if there is no one to enjoy its avoidance. So the absence of pain can be valued as ‘not good’ and the absence of pleasure can be valued as ‘not bad’, but then the matrix is symmetrical, and obviously the argument loses its point.

If the problem is still not clear enough, here is an explanation by another antinatalist philosopher called Julio Cabrera (whose ideas I am referring here) who disagrees with Benatar’s asymmetry argument:

“If the counterfactual conception of a “possible being” is used in the same way when assessing the absence of pleasure and the absence of pain, the alleged asymmetry would not follow. What is happening here is that in certain moments of his argumentation, Benatar uses a different notion of “possible being”, a concept that could be called “empty”, according to which a “possible being” would be the one that simply is not present in the world and neither is counterfactually represented. Clearly, these two concepts are incompatible: when using the counterfactual conception, it is irrelevant that the being is not present in the world, since he/she is counterfactually represented; and when using the empty conception, it is irrelevant making considerations of any kind about the possible being because, in this conception, there is no such a being at all. Benatar allows the “counterfactual conception” of a possible being when dealing with the absence of pain, but he imposes the “empty conception” when dealing with the absence of pleasure.

Ideally, someone could say (using the empty conception) that for the absence of pain to be good, there has to be someone for whom this absence is enjoyable, and (using the counterfactual notion) that the absence of pleasure is bad even when there is nobody to suffer from it. If the “possible being” is conceived in (3) in the empty conception, the absence of pain would not be good (or bad), and if the “possible being” is conceived in (4) in the counterfactual conception, the absence of pleasure would not be not bad, but bad. This would be establishing the asymmetry of the way around of Benatar, and with the same drawbacks. In fact, to stay within the logical requirements, it would be right using both for the absence of pleasure and the absence of pain, the same conception of “possible being” whatever it is (counterfactual or empty). What is illegitimate is to mix them within the same line of reasoning.” (Cabrera 2014, p.219-220)

One way to show that the main problem with Benatar’s asymmetry argument is not that it attributes interests to non-existent, but that it ascribes two different categories to the two quadrants (quadrant 3 and 4) which are on the same column (and so should have been treated the same in a categorical sense), is to rephrase it so it would ascribe the same category to the two quadrants. Then the conclusion would be something like: The non-existent doesn’t benefit from the absence of pain since there is no one for whom it would be a benefit, but the non-existent also doesn’t lose from not existing since the non-existent is not deprived of any pleasure.
But even with this formulation of the argument, anyone who thinks that pleasures are good can reply that even if missing pleasure is not bad since no one is deprived of them, creating someone who would experience pleasures is good, given that pleasures are good by themselves.
Many pro-natalists can argue that their claim isn’t that they are harming someone by not bringing them into life of pleasures, but that they are benefiting someone in doing so. They may claim that they are not motivated to procreate since otherwise they are wronging someone who could have enjoyed pleasures, but that they are bestowing someone the opportunity to experience pleasures. This argument is not addressed by Benatar’s asymmetry argument.
Of course, there are many other arguments against this pro-natalist claim, such as that there is no way to guarantee that someone enjoys one’s life, that there is no way to avoid suffering, that there is no way to guarantee that the pleasures would outweigh the suffering, that there is no way to obtain consent, that while it is morally justifiable to cause someone suffering without their consent if it is impossible to get one in order to reduce the suffering of that person, it is morally wrong to cause someone suffering merely to benefit that person, and of course, that not only that there is no way to guarantee that the created person won’t experience suffering, it is absolutely guaranteed that that person would cause suffering to others. So even if it was true that people are creating new people because they want to benefit them, while doing so they are making the lives of existing sentient beings even worse than they already are, and therefore procreation is never morally justified.

I wrote ‘even if it was true that people are creating new people because they want to benefit them’ because it is never the reason, and that is also important and relevant to mention. If increasing pleasures was really the motivation behind people’s decisions, then they can increase the pleasures of existing people. They can benefit people to whom it was already decided without their consent that they would exist and therefore suffer and die. If people want to benefit others so much, they can do so with ones who can give their consent, and that their inevitable suffering was already chosen for them by their parents. Why not focusing on existing people who already exist and suffer? Why create new people who might benefit but would most certainly be harmed, instead of benefiting existing people without harming them on the way? The answer is that obviously it is just an excuse. Nobody is procreating to benefit anyone. You can’t benefit someone who doesn’t exist, and someone who doesn’t exist is not harmed by not existing so need not to be saved. Non-existents are not trapped in glass containers outside of existence pleading that someone would bring them in. There is nobody in non-existence, so there is no one who needs to experience anything. There is nobody who needs to be created so it can be bestowed with benefits or to balance good and bad. People don’t procreate to benefit others, but to benefit themselves.

However, although there are anyway other more sound and convincing arguments for antinatalism (such as the ones mentioned above), the asymmetrical argument does work, but in a different formulation than Benatar’s.
Besides the mentioned problems with his version, like some other antinatalists, I think that pleasures are not really intrinsically good but addictive falsehood smoke screen illusions, which trap sentient beings to an endless, pointless and vain seek for more of them. Pleasures are in the best case instrumentally good which mostly ease some of the pains of life, but far from all of them. Pleasures are not intrinsic, and that is since basically they stem from wants. Pleasures are preceded by wants which are the absence of objects desired by subjects. People want because they are missing something. They seek pleasures to release the tension of craving. Craving or wants, are at least bad experiences if not a sort of pain. Pleasures are short and temporary, and compel a preceding deprivation, a want or a need, which is not always being fulfilled, rarely to the desired measure, and almost never exactly when wanted. And even when desires are fulfilled, the cycle starts again. Maybe some would find pain as not the most accurate term for this case, but frustration definitely fits.

Bad experiences almost always precede pleasures, but it is even worse, pains are the natural default state. If one would stop all action, pains would attack very shortly in the form of hunger, thirst, boredom, loneliness, physical discomfort, thermal discomfort and etc. Pain comes if one does nothing, it is the default state. Pleasures don’t come if we do nothing, they usually require effort, and usually only for a brief positive experience.

Pain is a very vicious tyrant, it forces us to react. Some of the reactions are found satisfying and therefore we mistakenly call them pleasures, but it is only a manipulative system which requires a preceding deprivation, and compels a following deprivation of the next “pleasure”.
That doesn’t mean, if to take the common and intuitive example of food, that the pleasures from food stem from the pains of hunger. Some do argue that, but since quite often people take pleasure in food when they are not hungry, and in many cases their pleasure from it is experienced as a stronger feeling than the pains of hunger (usually the case in the rich world), this is not how I think this argument should be based. It is inaccurate to balance the feeling of hunger before a meal and the feeling of pleasure during it, but all the pains, and all the hard work preceding the pleasure, with the consequent gains. And in relation to food, the balance should be between all the efforts and frustration put in so food can even be available for someone, with the pleasure it provides. Then, it is hardly likely that it was worth it. Not only the pains of huger should be compared with the pleasures from food but also all the labor of providing it.
And that’s only a more accurate balancing between the negative and positive within the same person. The case of food particularly is the last example that can be referred to as a balance between a person’s hunger and pleasure from food. Food is by far the biggest source of suffering in the history of this planet. Therefore the pleasure from food must be balanced with all the suffering caused to produce it. The case of food is totally distorted without considering all the involved exploitation, pollution, demolition, plunder, murder, and enslavement. All the exhausting labor of all the people along the production chain of food in our globalized capitalistic world, must be considered, and obviously, and without any comparison, all the animals’ suffering. All the pleasures from all the food in one’s life can never be balanced with even one second in any factory farm.

Another common example pro-natalists give is sexual pleasure. In this case, same as in the case of food, I disagree that the pleasure from sex is merely the relief from the pains of sexual desire. I think that like in the case of food, it is wrong to compare the pleasure from sex with pains of sexual desire prior to the sexual act, but if anything, to compare all the pleasures from all the sexual acts with all the frustrations of all the sexual desires. Comparing specific anecdotes would give the wrong impression that the pains of sexual desire are equivalent to the pleasure from sex which I think is not the case, and also that every moment of sexual desire ends up with sexual pleasure which is far from being the case. A much more over-all balancing between sexual satisfaction and dissatisfaction is required to determine whether sex can be considered as pleasurable, and even that would be only partial. We must also consider all the efforts put in by people so sex can even be an option. This is not the place to dig into that but I suppose it is obvious to you that people and other animals invest immense amounts of time and energy just to be in the position that sex would even be an option. All these efforts must also be considered before sex is labeled as pure pleasure.
And of course, again, like in the case of food, the harms to others must be considered as well (if not primarily). Not only the harms by the production and waste of the many peripheral devices involved in sex, nor the potentially greatest harm of sex (when unsafe) which is that another person might be born, but what it makes people do to each other.

Sex is mentioned as one of the various examples proving that bad experiences have a much stronger effect than good experiences, in the article Bad Is Stronger Than Good, which I address here. Here is part of the explanation:

“Sexuality offers a sphere in which relevant comparisons can perhaps be made, insofar as good sexual experiences are often regarded as among the best and most intense positive experiences people have. Ample evidence suggests that a single bad experience in the sexual domain can impair sexual functioning and enjoyment and even have deleterious effects on health and well-being for years afterward (see Laumann, Gagon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Laumann, Paik, & Rosen, 1999; Rynd, 1988; note, however, that these are correlational findings and some interpretive questions remain). There is no indication that any good sexual experience, no matter how good, can produce benefits in which magnitude is comparable to the harm caused by such victimization.” (p.327)

This example is not only a very strong indication that bad is stronger than good but also that sex is far from being a source of pure pleasure. Sex is also an infinite source of pain. It is true that some of it is not merely sexual originated, for example rape is mostly about power and dominance, but not only, and rape is not the only sexually related way people hurt each other. It is probably the worst one on the scale, but there are plenty of other ways, from lies and manipulation to extortion and humiliation. The limits are set by the human imagination. To consider sex as a source of pleasure, like in the case of food, is ignorant if not cruel.

According to the “set point” theory of happiness, which many psychologists find convincing nowadays, mood is homeostatic. That means that even desirable things which people do manage to obtain, are satisfying at first, but eventually people adapt to them and return to their “set points”. Therefore they usually end up more or less on the same level of wellbeing they were before. That’s why some argue that people actually run on hedonic treadmills.
Pleasures are unguaranteed, brief, and at some point become boring and ineffective. There is no chronic pleasure, but there is definitely chronic pain. And it is quite abundant. Pain is always guaranteed.
People pursue pleasures not necessarily due to their great positive power, but due to the great negative power of cravings for them when they are absent. Strong addiction is not necessarily indicative of the pleasure of having, but can definitely be about the great pains of not having.

We are forced to want pleasures, and wants are not good. That is not only because wants are not always being satisfied, but also and mainly because usually, when wants are satisfied, it is at the expense of others. Procreation is immoral not only because it is imposing existence on a creature who is designed by default to feel pain, but also and mainly because it is imposing pain on many others as a result of creating that someone. Not every want is principally at the expense of others, but practically it is safe to say that almost all of them are, definitely in the consumerist society. Materialistic desires are usually at the expense of animals and poorer humans. Animals are paying the price for human pleasures not only by being directly consumed, but also by the interminable production of new goods and the throwing away of old ones into their habitats.

In many cases, people are trying to fulfill non materialistic wants, or to compensate for general frustration with consumption of commodities. And even when they don’t, it is in many cases at the expense of other people. It is rarely the case that two people want exactly the same things all the time. In most cases they don’t. In the least worse case they compromise, in the worst ones pressure, manipulations and intimidation are used. Or that all sides live with frustrations. There is no way to win. Nobody lives as they want. Nobody is happy. Everybody is frustrated to some degree. It usually goes under our radar since we are so used to frustrations, and since people tend to internalize the realistic scope of their desires’ fulfillment. But that doesn’t mean they don’t desire totally different things in life. Things they will never get.

Pleasure is not good that should be balanced with pain, but a perpetual need to satisfy unnecessary desires. It is better not to dig the hole in the first place than exert oneself all lifelong with no chance to ever fill it up, and with no point anyway other than that it would be full.
The hypothetical option of providing solutions can’t serve as a justification for creating the problem.

As convincing as I personally find the claim the pleasures are not good, or at least not intrinsically good but merely instrumentally good (easing bad experiences such as pain, boredom and frustration), I can understand why it’s debatable. However the claim that pain is much more important than pleasure is undoubtedly undebatable.
Benatar asked in one of the interviews he gave, would you take one hour of the best pleasure you can imagine in exchange for 5 minutes of torture? Probably no one would take it. And that’s just one example of a thought experiment aiming to show that people’s intuition is that pain is more important than pleasures. Other thought experiments are designed to demonstrate a similar intuition – that avoiding causing someone pain is more important ethically than making someone happy. A generic offhand example could be something like, imagine two worlds, one in which people are in a neutral state, and the other in which people are suffering. We have one button which can increase the pleasure of people in the neutral world and one button that can decrease the suffering in the other world. Even if the pleasure button is 10 times stronger than the pain reliever button, most people would probably go for the pain reliever button, and probably all of them would in the case of equally strong buttons. If you find these kind of thought experiments insufficient, or the appeal to intuition itself as insufficient, and you feel you need some harder science, in the next post I elaborate in detail some scientifically based indications of why suffering is much more important than pleasure.
Anyway, even if one objects to the perspective that pleasure is not good, a non-biased observation must anyway lead to the conclusion that missing unnecessary pleasure is much less bad than forcing unnecessary suffering.

Given that pleasure is not at all good but in the best case actually easing pain, or that it is good but much less good than pain is bad, under both of these alternative perceptions of pleasure, there is an asymmetry since the columns of existence are: pain is bad, and pleasure is not good (or at least not as good as pain is bad), and the columns of non-existence are: the absence of pain is not good (because there is no one to enjoy that good), and the absence of pleasure is not bad (because pleasures are not good and even if they were, there is no one to be deprived of them), so we can argue that non-existence is not good and not bad, and that existence is bad. That is since even if good experiences do exist, and even if they are intrinsically good and not merely instrumentally good, bad experiences are much stronger than them. So in any case it is indeed better never to exist.

Once one realizes that suffering is much more important than pleasures, even without being convinced that pleasures are not even good by themselves but are merely temporary pain relievers in the better case, or frustration enhancers in the worst case, then indeed there is an asymmetry. It is a slightly different formulation than Benatar’s, but it’s definitely an asymmetry which should definitely bring everyone to the rational conclusion that creating someone is always a harm. But do you think people would find that convincing? Absolutely not. Even if you add other valid and sound antinatalist arguments such as the lack of consent, risk aversion, rights violation, and of course the most important one – the harm to others, people won’t be convinced.

So why am I investing so much time writing about antinatalism if I think it is pointless to try and convince others to stop procreating? Because I am not aiming at the general public. I know they are hopeless. I am not trying to convince them to stop procreating, I am trying to convince you that procreation is such a serious crime – the greatest crime an individual can commit – that we must do much more than raise awareness. I am trying to convince you to skip the futile attempt of convincing all humans to stop breeding, and look for ways to make all of them incapable of breeding. People will never do it by choice. They will never stop breeding until we make them. It is not about finding the best antinatalist argument, it is about finding the best way to somehow sterilize them all.

References

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

Benatar, D. Every Conceivable Harm: A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism
S. Afr. Journal Philos., 31 2012

Benatar, D. Grim news for an unoriginal position Journal of Med Ethics 35 2009

Benatar, D. Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics
Journal of Ethics (2013)

Bradley, B Benatar And The Logic Of Betterness Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy 2010

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

Harman, E. Critical study of Benatar (2006). Nouˆs 43: 776–785.

McGregor, R & Sullivan-Bissett, E, ‘Better No Longer to Be: The Harm of Continued Existence’ South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 1, 2012 pp. 55-68.

Parfit, D. Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)

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

Disclaimer:
In spite that the following six-part review of David Benatar’s Better Never To Have Been, is quite critical, that is by all means not in conflict with my deep respect and acknowledgment of the priceless contribution of his work, as well as of his courage, originality, patience and persistence, which I find admirable and inspiring.

The book Better Never To Have Been by the philosopher David Benatar, published in 2006, is considered to be the most important antinatalist book so far. It is definitely not the first book that seriously discusses the ethics of procreation, but it is probably, so far, the most comprehensive attempt to constitute an antinatalist theory. Therefore the book, the theory, and its critiques, deserve a thorough review in an antinatalist blog such as this, and it also serves as a good starting point for it.

Each chapter of the book requires a distinct attention so I’ll address each one in a different post, starting with the introduction, or more accurately with the explanation he makes in the introduction, for why he chose to focus on humans.

But before that, a very brief explanation of the central idea of his book is necessary:

“The central idea of this book is that coming into existence is always a serious harm. That idea will be defended at length, but the basic insight is quite simple: Although the good things in one’s life make it go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence.” (p.1)

That is basically and briefly how Benatar came to the conclusion that it is better never to have been. But since this case is the topic of the next chapter I’ll elaborate about it in the next post.
This post deals with Benatar’s decision to focus his argument on humans, and here is his explanation why:

“Although I think that coming into existence harms all sentient beings and I shall sometimes speak about all such beings, my focus will be on humans. There are a few reasons for this focus, other than the sheer convenience of it. The first is that people find the conclusion hardest to accept when it applies to themselves. The focus on humans, rather than on all sentient life, reinforces its application to humans. A second reason is that, with one exception, the argument has most practical significance when applied to humans because we can act on it by desisting from producing children. The exception is the case of human breeding of animals, from which we could also desist. A third reason for focusing on humans is that those humans who do not desist from producing children cause suffering to those about whom they tend to care most—their own children. This may make the issues more vivid for them than they otherwise would be.” (p.3)

I understand that when focusing on humans, Benatar wishes to directly tackle antinatalism’s greatest challenge which is humans’ procreation. But by doing so he actually confirms humans’ false perception that their lives are truly the most worthy lives. The logic of the argument that if humans are convinced that even their “supreme” lives are better off not starting, then this is certainly the case with other sentient creatures, works only if you insist to focus just on the expected wellbeing of the one who wasn’t born yet. This is ethically false. Ethics is supposed to be about how one must treat others, not what’s best for one. The flaw with focusing on the one who wasn’t born yet, becomes especially clear when the focus of the focus on the one who wasn’t born yet, is on humans. It is wrong and speciesist since it omits all the victims of humans, and focuses on the welfare of the most harmful species ever, which given its tremendous harmfulness, its opinion on the matter should actually be the last one to consider. It is the victims who should have primacy, but when the focus is on humans, most of them don’t even have a say. When humans are at the center of the issue, most of the victims are totally omitted. And that doesn’t reinforce antinatalism, but significantly weakens it.

The logic behind Benatar’s first reason for focusing on humans is that, since people find antinatalism hardest to accept when it applies to themselves, if they would accept the conclusion that even if their lives, which they think are superior to any other animal life, are better off not starting, than obviously the same conclusion must be applied to other sentient creatures. The idea is that if the creatures who are sure that their lives are the most worthy, understand that they aren’t actually worthy, then clearly the lives of all the others aren’t worthy as well. But humans are not the creatures whose lives are most worthy but exactly the opposite since they are by far the creatures who are responsible for most of the suffering in the world. Humans are the ones who are responsible for the fact that trillions of sentient creatures’ lives are a continuous misery. Ethically, the procreation of humans is not the hardest nut to crack but the easiest. If Benatar wants to reinforce antinatalism on the basis of the claim that even the creatures whom their lives are the most worthy – are actually not worthy, he should have picked the species with the least harmful impact on others, a species who feeds on plants only, is satisfied with small habitat and little resources, unaggressive, non-hierarchical and etc. It is not easy to find such an example, but that would be the hardest nut to crack. With humans, it is the most clear and obvious conclusion. To think otherwise is to totally ignore the unavoidable and enormous harms to others, harms which are inherent in the creation of each new human. If a procreation convention of all the species on earth was held, undoubtedly it would be voted unanimously (except for humans of course) that humans must never procreate. Ever.

Already in the first reason for why he focuses on people lays the biggest problem with the common antinatalist arguments and with this book specifically. The focus on people is the outstanding example of the omission of the harms to others when discussing the ethics of procreation, as people’s harms to others are incomparably greater than any other animal on earth. So when considering the ethics of procreation with humans in focus, it is especially significant to consider the harms to others.
It’s clear to me that Benatar’s ethical framework is whether coming into existence is a benefit or a harm for a non-existent person. But if this is the only question in case then this ethical framework is unethical. An ethical decision must consider all the affected individuals of that decision, not just one. Placing the expected wellbeing of the unborn in focus when considering the ethics of procreation might be very intuitive, but it is also extremely partial. There is a whole world that the person in focus would be born into. A whole world of sentient creatures who would be affected by the existence of that person. When considering all the expected affected individuals by the procreation of a human – the most harmful creature ever on this planet – then the answer to the question whether creating a new human is always a harm is most definitely YES.

Regarding the second reason for why he chose to focus on humans, although it is true that “the argument has most practical significance when applied to humans”, that doesn’t mean that human suffering should be the motive behind it. In fact it serves as a much weaker one, given that currently almost each and every human, regardless of how horrible their lives are, believes (absolutely falsely but still) that their lives are most definitely worth starting. When humans’ suffering is the criterion, it is not surprising that one of the most common counterarguments to Benatar’s conclusion is that he is wrong about how horrible humans’ lives are, evidently most are happy that they were born. This is not really a valid counterargument to Benatar’s argument as I’ll try to explain in the post about the third chapter of the book, but it does reveal that Benatar’s argument is rather weak and invites this expected reply.
But if the focus is on every sentient creature, then given that what makes the lives of trillions of them extremely and undoubtedly horrible is the existence of humans, and given that indeed the argument has most practical significance when applied to humans, humans mustn’t procreate.
That is a very strong case at least against human reproduction. If the suffering humans inflict on others is the motive behind antinatalism, arguing that humans’ lives are not as bad as Benatar argues, is irrelevant. Humans mustn’t procreate even if they could theoretically insure that the lives of their children would be only happiness and bliss, because of all the harms they would inflict on others.

Benatar’s third reason to focus on people makes much sense, but only on the face of it. Practically people don’t care about the fate of their own children, and therefore keep making them with no good reason except their selfish desire to have them, and with no guarantee whatsoever that they will have good lives.
Benatar argues in the introduction that:

“Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a baby. They just make one. In other words, procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to bring people into existence.” (p.3)

I agree that creating new people is rarely thought to even require a justification, and that most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a new person. But unfortunately I disagree that procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to create people. Though it is true in many cases, I think that usually, people do decide to create new people. And that makes them even worse than if they were doing it unintentionally or just as a “consequence of sex”. The fact that people are intentionally choosing to force new humans into existence, despite the harms they would have to endure, and despite all the suffering they would inflict on others, makes them even more careless and cruel.

Humans’ carelessness, even for their own children, and their cruelty in general, are of the strongest reasons why trying to convince people not to procreate is useless, and why we must find ways to stop humans from procreating regardless of their opinion about it. Just as they disregard the opinion of their children, and all of their children’s victims. That is not so to teach them a lesson of course, but because it is the only way to stop this never-ending crime.

References

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