User:Mashaunix/Sandbox

Dries: In the following correspondence, I will defend the idea that giving birth to children is morally wrong. My main source for this argument is David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, which puts forward a form of anti-natalism. Benatar's main argument is described by Elizabeth Harman as follows: “(a) The presence of pain is bad, and the absence of pain (in the absence of anyone who would have experienced the pain) is good. (b) The presence of pleasure is good, but the absence of pleasure (in the absence of anyone who would have experienced the pleasure) is not bad (nor, of course, is it good)” The conclusion of this line is that not giving birth to a person is good, for it spares someone from the pain this person would experience, and in no way bad, for the absence of pleasure is not bad. Giving birth to a person is therefore wrong.

Albert: Your argument reads as follows, Dries: because the presence of pain is bad but the absence of pleasure is not bad, it is better not to be born; and because it is better not to be born, it is therefore wrong to give life. I will focus on the first half. Pain and pleasure are not persuasive to me because I am not a hedonist. That is, I do not see human beings as experience machines for whom good and bad consists in pleasant and unpleasant states of mind. Instead, I consider the human good to consist in meaningful activities realized across the totality of a life. Some balance between pain and pleasure is a necessary condition for such activities (for if we were always in pain -- or always in pleasure, for that matter -- we could never do anything) but not their primary essence or motivation. From this point of view, even a life full of pain will be redeemed by some acts of creativity or kindness or wisdom, so that it will have been better to be born after all. This is my initial answer. But let me go a step deeper. What is pleasure, good, or meaning, what is pain, evil, and absurdity? One needs to be alive first, and see for oneself, before one can even begin to understand these values. They are not written into the fabric of the universe with an iron pen, for you to read out and declare to all future generations, as if saying: “We have seen the eternal truth of this world and let us tell you, it is bad. There is not one among you who wants to be born into it!” For the unborn want nothing, and will know nothing of your ‘truth’ about this life. They have to be born, walk the path of pain and pleasure themselves, and form an attitude towards it, just like you have. In other words, neither life nor its inevitable pain intrinsically have or lack value. Life itself is the process of realizing value through pain. You cannot say in advance to the unborn that it will be better for them to remain unborn. Life itself is the process of discovering whether it has been worth it.

Dries: What interests me in your response is the necessity of pain for achieving or pursuing what you call meaningful activities. These meaningful activities in particular are a very abstract concept, of which I doubt humans themselves would even know if they experienced one. It feels like a very poor wager to give birth to a child in the hopes that the pain it will experience will lead up to a meaningful activity, if that activity is even knowable to this very person. This leads me to your next point about a life full of pain which is to be redeemed by some rare occasions of joy. Would you regard a terrible life filled with pain and abuse as worthwhile or ‘good’ just because the pain is interrupted by moments of happiness or authenticity? I would personally regard this as a life better not to be lived, for there is great asymmetry between pain and suffering on the one hand, and the rare moments of bliss on the other. In the second paragraph you talk about the relation between being born and realizing the value of life and pain. This brings me back to the question of a terrible life. In my reading your argument also applies to the worst life thinkable. Let us take the following scenario. Say you know the life of your child will be a terrible one with little to no joy and abundant amounts of pain. Would it be moral to give birth to a child in this case? The path of pain and joy would still apply and the child will be able to form its own attitude towards its suffering. However, I would find it very hard to believe giving birth to an awful life is not morally wrong. As to life itself being the process of discovering whether it was worth it, this again feels like a very risky wager. What if the discovery implies that it is not worth it at all. Does this mean everyone stuck in an unhappy life has to resort to suicide? Or do they have to keep on waiting for some sort of redemption, unsure if there is going to be one at all?

Albert: I readily concede that giving birth is a ‘risky wager’ as you say. For indeed every human life will have its great portion of pain. And there is a strong possibility that the child-to-be will shrink through that suffering into this nihilistic attitude, this judgement of life as absurd, which you express. Yet I maintain that this result is not inevitable. Neither you nor I can say in advance whether a specific child will remain stuck in such despair, or whether it will ultimately overcome suffering through what I am calling meaningful activities. And by these I do not mean experiences of happiness, joy, or bliss (mere synonyms for pleasure), but authentic acts of creating, sharing, understanding, which gradually transform life into something other than a thirst for pleasure. Again, many will never realize this, never know life as anything but a quantity of pain. But if they delude themselves into thinking that this is inevitable for all, and that they must therefore kill the opportunity of all future children to have a new go at this challenging game we call life -- that to me is morally wrong. But what meaning can my abstract words about overcoming have for a genuine antinatalist? Such a person has already ruled out the possibility of a game truly worth playing. To entertain such a possibility, one would somehow have to pass through antinatalism and come out alive on the other side. For what is at stake here are not reasonable arguments, but one’s own fundamental life attitude. Do you say yes or no to existence? Should there be something or nothing? Do you hope or despair? Indeed, is creation good or evil? If you have already chosen, no argument will persuade you to see the gift of life as anything other than a mistake. Thus antinatalism primarily concerns one’s own life, not arguments about the life of future children. This is clear from the very fact that its stated moral aims are utterly impracticable, even self-defeating. How could you ethically bring about a world where no one gives birth? Even if most people were ‘right’ and listened to your supposedly rational argument, precisely those you consider wrong (and therefore least fit to raise children) would still procreate. You would have to sterilize all humans, and perhaps all animals also, yet even still other life would remain to grow and suffer. No, the only logical result of your position is that the entire cosmos must blow out in an instant, a universal suicide of being. That is the real depth of the negation you express: see that and you may yet come through to the other side! We will await you here.

Dries: In reasoning against antinatalism one must be careful not to mistake this position for a position which advocates for the sterilization of all humans or some sort of large-scale suicide pact. Antinatalism is not antilife, antinatalism is antibirth. My position in this debate does value life. After all, I am still here typing these words. My position in this debate is that giving birth, essentially forcing a new individual into life is immoral. This does not mean it has to be made illegal. Antinatalism is not synonymous with forced sterilization. Nor does antinatalism defend suicide or nihilism. I do not want the entire cosmos to blow out in an instant as you named it, for I came into this life and value it highly. There is a huge difference between thinking all should perish and thinking no new life should be created. I feel like this is a difference overlooked in some of your attacks on antinatalism. Benatar states the following in his aforementioned book: “Unless people’s lives are not worth continuing, cutting their lives short makes their lives still worse—one adds an early death to all the other harms of coming into existence. But extinction need not be brought about this way. Indeed, desisting from creating further people is the best way of ensuring that future people’s lives are not cut short.” (Benatar, 2006) Something important to realize is that antinatalism is not a new way of formulating nihilism. One can think something has value and still think it is morally wrong to create more of this very thing. We do this all the time with things we deem harmful to themselves or the world around them. So when you ask the question about saying yes or no to existence, my answer would be no. No to new generations. No to procreation. However, this does not mean saying no to the lives that have already been brought into this world, for the individuals to whom these lives belong would only be more miserable if these very lives were to be taken from them.