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