No.
But that's a claim I'll have to back up later on. However, there are some people who would answer that question in the affirmative. They would say that life is so bad. So bad, in fact, that it isn't worth living. So bad that conscious life (or at least life with consciousness like our own) should choose to die out. In fact, these people claim that life is so bad that it is actively immoral to have children, because doing so only perpetrates this bad condition.
These people fall under the broad philosophy of anti-natalism. They think of themselves as standing opposed to "natalists", or people who are actively or passively pro-birth. The term 'natal' (as in prenatal care, post-natal ward, natality report) refers to one's birth. An anti-natalist is someone who, roughly speaking, thinks that no one should ever be born. Note that this has next to nothing to do with the abortion debate. The question here is not "Is it ever okay to terminate a fetus?" Rather, the question is: "Is it ever okay to conceive a child at all?"
For creatures who evolved to continue passing on their genetic information (which, to be fair, is all life and not just human beings), this is admittedly a shocking perspective. After all, even beyond our ingrained imperative to reproduce, there is a general consensus that the continuance of the species is a good thing. We value families enough to want to fight for paid maternity and paternity leave, and we want to try to mitigate the effects of global warming so that our descendants can live in relative comfort...and live at all. When we see a pregnant woman smoking or drinking we become angry because she's risking severe harm to the child. When we hear about families in Syria (and especially children) being bombed, we are upset.
As a species we tend to find ourselves particularly disposed towards sympathy for families and a desire to see the human race continue. Even many curmudgeons like me, who have no desire whatsoever for children and aren't particularly affected by them, have a desire for the species itself to persist.
Thus anti-natalism hits us where it hurts; in our ingrained desire to believe that this existence is worth it. That we should keep going. That we should try to secure a future for the next generation. It hijacks some of our moral intuitions to do this. For instance, it hijacks our ingrained tendency to evaluate the interest of others, and it hijacks our ingrained aversion to suffering, pain, and death, which we shall explore more in a moment.
Anti-natalism is, I admit, an internally consistent theory (mostly). I initially had a difficult time figuring out just where I thought it went wrong. I even came close to agreeing with the theory, given that I couldn't accept my knee-jerk reaction as evidence that it was wrong, and for a time couldn't really think of a reason to discount it.
However, I ultimately came to see the philosophy of anti-natalism as not merely dark, but profoundly wrong. And I do not mean morally wrong. Let me be clear here, I am not arguing from an assumption that human life is the moral good, or that it must continue. I find straightforward moral claims suspect enough, and I am even more skeptical when we want to quickly dismiss a theory as wrong specifically because it is morally offensive.
Rather, I think that anti-natalism is wrong because it fails as a theory. It contains an internal incoherence (born partly from a set of contradictions that gum up the works, as well as from a general vagueness that sabotages the theory's pretense towards mathematical certainty) which renders it an inaccurate system of belief. This is why I want to take the time to denounce it; not because it threatens the species (it doesn't; it is an extremely minority view) or because it offends me (again, it doesn't; I don't even want children). I want to denounce it because, in the end, I think it is a sloppy argument masquerading as a serious, analytical one, and I don't want to let that slide.
This will be a lengthy post, and there will probably be a part two and maybe even a part three. I want to take my time here and really explore this idea. As I tried to do in the podcast, I will attempt to be as fair as I can be. So, let us begin.
Essentially, anti-natalism argues that life is, on balance, a bad thing. There are several variations of anti-natalism, each one specifies a different malady that renders life problematic and a different nature of its inherent badness. In no particular order, the main variations I've found are:
So with that in mind, let's take a look at two of the key arguments that crop up quite early in the Peterson/Benatar debate. I want to look at one basic claim that Benatar makes, which is that life is fundamentally unbalanced in the favor of badness/suffering. To do this, we'll break that major claim down into two smaller arguments. First, we'll look at Benatar's claim that there is more bad in life than good. Next, we'll look at his claim that bad things outweigh good things. Finally, we'll look at some underlying assumptions that wreck the notion that this theory is a simply rational approach to the problem of life.
Of course, adding to the particularly acute suffering that humans face is the fact that we are more aware of our lot than any other animal that we know of. For us, suffering isn't just what's happening right now; we can abstract ourselves out into the future and get a sense for our suffering's longevity and the eventual termination in death, which leaves us with that future-oriented sense which we call dread. And we are simultaneously all too capable of imagining how nice things could have been, maybe even should have been, which adds an extra layer of bitterness and tragedy to our suffering. Presumably, a pig would not experience these feelings of woe-is-me and if-only while being slaughtered; it would simply experience the immediate pain and fear of the moment. Thus, while both humans and other animals suffer pain, humans have an extra psychological and emotional depth to our suffering which makes it arguably worse.
Now, one can counter Benatar and say that life has lots of nice things in it too. Love, friendship, pleasant walks in the park, beautiful sunsets, pretty flowers, music, movies, artwork, etc. So, yes, there are plenty of horrors out there, but there are plenty of good things too.
Benatar answers this by, at various times, saying two things:
1.) That there is still more suffering than pleasure, as in more instances of suffering than instances of pleasure.
2.) That any given instances of suffering 'outweighs' any given instance of pleasure, such that even if we experienced two instances of pleasure and one instance of suffering, the suffering would win out.
Let's tackle these two arguments in a bit more detail.
So, if Benatar only said that he believes there's more bad than good in the world, I might leave it be. I might even agree with him. But that's not all he says; he says that the comparison is so lopsided that life itself is conclusively bad, and thus fundamentally not worth living. This is an intuitively more serious claim than simply saying that there's more bad than good. He then goes on to conclude that procreation is actively immoral and that we should willfully go extinct as a species. This is an even more intuitively radical claim, as it literally advocates for the doom of humanity.
Now, because he starts from a place of intuition and then draws intuitively serious conclusions (and because, to be fair, we're okay with allowing at least the foundations of our arguments to start with intuition), I shall share an intuition of my own: If the terminus of your argument is that conscious life is fundamentally bad, and that we should voluntarily go extinct because producing more conscious life is fundamentally immoral, then you had better have some precise and rock-solid data to bring to the table. That isn't the sort of claim that you get to just make and then back up with further intuitions or gut-based reasoning. If the fate of the species is on the line, then you must present an air-tight case.
So then, let's get serious.
I would ask Benatar the following in regards to his general claim that life features more bad than good, that is more bad 'units' than good 'units; what is the precise unit-numerical metric are we using to determine just how much more bad there is than good? How do we divvy our experience up into these countable units?
For example, imagine that I go on a date with my fiancee and we have a lovely time. We enjoy a great dinner, have a wonderful conversation, and afterwords we go on a pleasant star-lit walk through the park. Next, imagine that the following day I have a bad morning; I stub my toe, forget my wallet at home, spill hot coffee on my shirt, and have a mild headache.
How many units of goodness are we counting in the good date? How many units of badness are we counting in the following bad morning?
Does each bite of the pleasurable meal count as an individual unit of goodness? Or is it just the whole meal? Why one way or the other?
Does each spoken word in the good conversation count as an individual unit of goodness? Or just the conversation as a whole? Why one way or the other?
Does the spilling of the coffee count as one unit of suffering, or two (one for the pain, one for the stain)? Why one way or the other?
Does stubbing my tow count as one instance of suffering? Or does each pulse of pain until it goes away completely count as a separate instance of suffering? Why one way or the other?
Furthermore, what is the conversion rate? Exactly how much good does one unit of bad cancel out, and vice versa? And, intimately tied to this, are we counting all good units as equally good (and all bad units as equally bad), or is there a gradation of goodness and badness such that no two units automatically equal each other in terms of their value?
I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. There is (insofar as I'm aware) never a good delineation of how we are tallying good vs. bad in this moral calculus. Benatar just says that there's "more" bad than good. Perhaps there is a section of his book which would alleviate my confusion, but in all the videos I've watched (and comments I've read) by anti-natalists, Benatar included, I never find a good, reasonable, solid foundational measurement metric by which we're supposed to tally, compare, and compute goodness vs. badness.
Early on in his argument with Peterson, Peterson calls Benatar out on this and asks (under different circumstances) what Benatar is using as his measurement for suffering vs. pleasure. Benatar tries to slide out from under this criticism by claiming that he does not need to be specific in his calculation as to just how much good and bad there is. He even admits that trying to do so would be ridiculous. Instead, Benatar states that all he has to do is show the preponderance of bad over good in general in order to deduce that conscious life is bad.
To his credit, Peterson does not let this line of argumentation go unnoticed and he continues to push, pointing out that if Benatar wants to treat his conclusions as if they are arithmetically sound (that is, just as rock-solidly logically valid and sound as saying 2+2=4) then he has to have a clear and objective measurement system. Something vague and general won't get him something precise and absolute.
Frankly, I agree with Peterson on this point. If Benatar wants to claim that his arguments conclusively indicate the immorality of procreation on the grounds that life is overall bad, then I think it fair to ask for some detailed calculations instead of "general" accounts.
Again, this wouldn't be much of a problem is Benatar was just going the ol' broody existentialist route of pointing out how weird and awful life can be in between drags on his cigarette. But he isn't doing that. He isn't writing vague misanthropic poetry about suffering, or simply discussing how unfair existence is. He's trying to make an analytically rock-solid case that conscious life is so conclusively awful that it positively should not exist, and that continuing conscious life is actively immoral.
And, again, if he's going to make this kind of serious claim, then I think it reasonable to demand some rock-solid numbers (or at least a measuring-unit equivalent) to back up his deductions. Otherwise, this isn't a rock-solid deductive process which conclusively shows that life is bad or that procreation is immoral. Rather, it's just intuition stacked upon intuition, all disguised as deduction or moral calculus by means of the assertive analytical style of argumentation. It's little more than mood masquerading as moral rationality.
Now, as Benatar states, it would be ridiculous to try and calculate badness vs. goodness down to a precise unit-by-unit level. But then again, I think it is ridiculous to try and give precise value weights to the phenomenon of 'conscious life', period. I find Benatar's whole program of attempting to determine if life is net anything, be it net good or net bad, to be a silly indulgence in hyper-simplification doctored up in the rhetorical style of analytic argumentation. However, my skepticism that Benatar's argument isn't born of pure reason isn't enough to discredit it. But then, nor is his mere assertion that he needn't provide sound calculus backing up his shocking claims enough to dismiss intuitive objections to his philosophy.
If we are going to try and claim that it is possible to determine with arithmetic certainty that conscious life is fundamentally bad, then there had better be clear units of measurement involved.
There are several problems:
In my analysis, I tried to make the following points:
A.) That Benatar's argument has intuition at its very foundation, and that this means we can start our criticism from an intuitive standpoint as well. Thus, I can say, intuitively, that if he's going to claim that he can deduce with certainty that conscious life is a net bad, and that it is immoral to procreate, then I can say that, intuitively, this is a more serious claim than many other philosophical arguments, and will thus require rock-solid measurement to prove its points.
B.) Following from A, I think that Benatar only dodges calls by Peterson and others for a definitive metric which he's using to measure and compare goodness and badness. As far as I know, he never presents a solid measurement. His argument thus remains rooted in vagueness, which leads me to surmise that it is likely rooted in something like his emotional disposition more than in the lauded realm of objective fact.
C.) Benatar's idea that there is an asymmetry between maximal goodness and maximal badness implies a similar asymmetry running all the way through all lesser instances of goodness and badness. But this leads to ridiculous scenarios wherein seemingly obviously unbalanced instances where goodness overwhelms badness have to be forcibly re-evaluated. An example would be something like having to pretend that its a serious moral and existential dilemma whether or not it would be worth it to trade having a very mild headache for a full day of unhindered joy.
D.) Benatar's assertion that no rational person would chose to experience a moment of pure good in exchange for a moment of pure bad is dubious at best, mere assertion at worst. I find it beyond easy to imagine many people willingly accepting this experience out of sheer curiosity, and not for the pleasure intrinsic in the good moment itself.
E.) Ultimately, I think that Benatar (and anti-natalism as a whole, with the exception perhaps of Julio Cabrera and some others) suffers a fatal flaw of refusing to consider any value framework beyond simple hedonism. Sure, they will say that they are using a logical framework based on objective moral facts. But the facts that they present almost invariably boil down to hedonistic calculations, and even these are hyper-rationalized into levels of abstraction that make any deductions based on them unmapable onto the real world. So its a simplistic moral framework to start with, but it is stretched beyond its limits in an effort to make it into something more 'fundamental' and metaphysical than mere hedonism.
I may have more to say on the philosophy of anti-natalism at a later date, as it is a genuinely fascinating topic and I've not at all exhausted the arguments here or in the podcast. But for now, these are my thoughts.
Thank you!
But that's a claim I'll have to back up later on. However, there are some people who would answer that question in the affirmative. They would say that life is so bad. So bad, in fact, that it isn't worth living. So bad that conscious life (or at least life with consciousness like our own) should choose to die out. In fact, these people claim that life is so bad that it is actively immoral to have children, because doing so only perpetrates this bad condition.
These people fall under the broad philosophy of anti-natalism. They think of themselves as standing opposed to "natalists", or people who are actively or passively pro-birth. The term 'natal' (as in prenatal care, post-natal ward, natality report) refers to one's birth. An anti-natalist is someone who, roughly speaking, thinks that no one should ever be born. Note that this has next to nothing to do with the abortion debate. The question here is not "Is it ever okay to terminate a fetus?" Rather, the question is: "Is it ever okay to conceive a child at all?"
For creatures who evolved to continue passing on their genetic information (which, to be fair, is all life and not just human beings), this is admittedly a shocking perspective. After all, even beyond our ingrained imperative to reproduce, there is a general consensus that the continuance of the species is a good thing. We value families enough to want to fight for paid maternity and paternity leave, and we want to try to mitigate the effects of global warming so that our descendants can live in relative comfort...and live at all. When we see a pregnant woman smoking or drinking we become angry because she's risking severe harm to the child. When we hear about families in Syria (and especially children) being bombed, we are upset.
As a species we tend to find ourselves particularly disposed towards sympathy for families and a desire to see the human race continue. Even many curmudgeons like me, who have no desire whatsoever for children and aren't particularly affected by them, have a desire for the species itself to persist.
Thus anti-natalism hits us where it hurts; in our ingrained desire to believe that this existence is worth it. That we should keep going. That we should try to secure a future for the next generation. It hijacks some of our moral intuitions to do this. For instance, it hijacks our ingrained tendency to evaluate the interest of others, and it hijacks our ingrained aversion to suffering, pain, and death, which we shall explore more in a moment.
Anti-natalism is, I admit, an internally consistent theory (mostly). I initially had a difficult time figuring out just where I thought it went wrong. I even came close to agreeing with the theory, given that I couldn't accept my knee-jerk reaction as evidence that it was wrong, and for a time couldn't really think of a reason to discount it.
However, I ultimately came to see the philosophy of anti-natalism as not merely dark, but profoundly wrong. And I do not mean morally wrong. Let me be clear here, I am not arguing from an assumption that human life is the moral good, or that it must continue. I find straightforward moral claims suspect enough, and I am even more skeptical when we want to quickly dismiss a theory as wrong specifically because it is morally offensive.
Rather, I think that anti-natalism is wrong because it fails as a theory. It contains an internal incoherence (born partly from a set of contradictions that gum up the works, as well as from a general vagueness that sabotages the theory's pretense towards mathematical certainty) which renders it an inaccurate system of belief. This is why I want to take the time to denounce it; not because it threatens the species (it doesn't; it is an extremely minority view) or because it offends me (again, it doesn't; I don't even want children). I want to denounce it because, in the end, I think it is a sloppy argument masquerading as a serious, analytical one, and I don't want to let that slide.
This will be a lengthy post, and there will probably be a part two and maybe even a part three. I want to take my time here and really explore this idea. As I tried to do in the podcast, I will attempt to be as fair as I can be. So, let us begin.
Laying Out the Theory
I will now try and lay out, in brief, what I understand anti-natalism to be, as well as some key points that feed into the theory as a whole. There are many anti-natalists; there is an active forum on Reddit, an active YouTube community, and multiple books that argue in favor of this philosophy. Some notable authors include David Benatar and Julio Cabrera. I have not purchased or read any of their books yet. My understanding of anti-natalism comes from listening to a debate between Benatar and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, as well as listening to other talks by Benatar, other anti-natalists, and doing online research into his arguments and the arguments of those in the same camp. I intend on eventually reading at least Benatar's book, but it isn't particularly high up on the reading list.Essentially, anti-natalism argues that life is, on balance, a bad thing. There are several variations of anti-natalism, each one specifies a different malady that renders life problematic and a different nature of its inherent badness. In no particular order, the main variations I've found are:
- Pessimistic Anti-Natalism: The belief that humanity is intrinsically morally rotten, and that we will always find ways to hurt ourselves, hurt others, and hurt other forms of life that we encounter. Because humanity will always be immoral, and because (due to things like limited knowledge or limited foresight, desperation, etc.) no one can be completely moral even if they try, humanity should opt to got extinct.
- Ecological Anti-Natalism: The belief that humanity, as one species among many, in uniquely unbalanced and bad for the environment. Ergo, to save the ecological system as a whole, humanity ought to go extinct.
- Benevolent Anti-Natalism: The belief that life has too much suffering, and that suffering outweighs pleasure/the Good to the point where it is always a net bad. Ergo, if we care about future generations at all, the kindest thing to do is to spare them this existence and, as a direct result, let the species go extinct.
While I would like to say something about each form of anti-natalism, I will focus for now on benevolence-based anti-natalism.
So with that in mind, let's take a look at two of the key arguments that crop up quite early in the Peterson/Benatar debate. I want to look at one basic claim that Benatar makes, which is that life is fundamentally unbalanced in the favor of badness/suffering. To do this, we'll break that major claim down into two smaller arguments. First, we'll look at Benatar's claim that there is more bad in life than good. Next, we'll look at his claim that bad things outweigh good things. Finally, we'll look at some underlying assumptions that wreck the notion that this theory is a simply rational approach to the problem of life.
Claim: There is more Bad in Life than Good
One of the foundational claims of anti-natalism is the idea that there is too much suffering in the world. Benatar frequently sites the many nasty things that happen to a large number of people (and other conscious animals) on a regular basis. This list includes the usual suspects; disease, parasites, the slow breakdown of aging, natural disasters, predation, and good old fashioned resource scarcity. To human beings we can add things like war, murder, and intentional violence of any sort.Of course, adding to the particularly acute suffering that humans face is the fact that we are more aware of our lot than any other animal that we know of. For us, suffering isn't just what's happening right now; we can abstract ourselves out into the future and get a sense for our suffering's longevity and the eventual termination in death, which leaves us with that future-oriented sense which we call dread. And we are simultaneously all too capable of imagining how nice things could have been, maybe even should have been, which adds an extra layer of bitterness and tragedy to our suffering. Presumably, a pig would not experience these feelings of woe-is-me and if-only while being slaughtered; it would simply experience the immediate pain and fear of the moment. Thus, while both humans and other animals suffer pain, humans have an extra psychological and emotional depth to our suffering which makes it arguably worse.
Now, one can counter Benatar and say that life has lots of nice things in it too. Love, friendship, pleasant walks in the park, beautiful sunsets, pretty flowers, music, movies, artwork, etc. So, yes, there are plenty of horrors out there, but there are plenty of good things too.
Benatar answers this by, at various times, saying two things:
1.) That there is still more suffering than pleasure, as in more instances of suffering than instances of pleasure.
2.) That any given instances of suffering 'outweighs' any given instance of pleasure, such that even if we experienced two instances of pleasure and one instance of suffering, the suffering would win out.
Let's tackle these two arguments in a bit more detail.
Argument One, Sub-Point One: There is more suffering than pleasure in the world
Benatar relies a lot on intuition. He might not immediately agree to this, but we'll come to see in a while that he does. So, I don't feel so bad using a bit of intuitive reasoning here myself; after all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.So, if Benatar only said that he believes there's more bad than good in the world, I might leave it be. I might even agree with him. But that's not all he says; he says that the comparison is so lopsided that life itself is conclusively bad, and thus fundamentally not worth living. This is an intuitively more serious claim than simply saying that there's more bad than good. He then goes on to conclude that procreation is actively immoral and that we should willfully go extinct as a species. This is an even more intuitively radical claim, as it literally advocates for the doom of humanity.
Now, because he starts from a place of intuition and then draws intuitively serious conclusions (and because, to be fair, we're okay with allowing at least the foundations of our arguments to start with intuition), I shall share an intuition of my own: If the terminus of your argument is that conscious life is fundamentally bad, and that we should voluntarily go extinct because producing more conscious life is fundamentally immoral, then you had better have some precise and rock-solid data to bring to the table. That isn't the sort of claim that you get to just make and then back up with further intuitions or gut-based reasoning. If the fate of the species is on the line, then you must present an air-tight case.
So then, let's get serious.
I would ask Benatar the following in regards to his general claim that life features more bad than good, that is more bad 'units' than good 'units; what is the precise unit-numerical metric are we using to determine just how much more bad there is than good? How do we divvy our experience up into these countable units?
For example, imagine that I go on a date with my fiancee and we have a lovely time. We enjoy a great dinner, have a wonderful conversation, and afterwords we go on a pleasant star-lit walk through the park. Next, imagine that the following day I have a bad morning; I stub my toe, forget my wallet at home, spill hot coffee on my shirt, and have a mild headache.
How many units of goodness are we counting in the good date? How many units of badness are we counting in the following bad morning?
Does each bite of the pleasurable meal count as an individual unit of goodness? Or is it just the whole meal? Why one way or the other?
Does each spoken word in the good conversation count as an individual unit of goodness? Or just the conversation as a whole? Why one way or the other?
Does the spilling of the coffee count as one unit of suffering, or two (one for the pain, one for the stain)? Why one way or the other?
Does stubbing my tow count as one instance of suffering? Or does each pulse of pain until it goes away completely count as a separate instance of suffering? Why one way or the other?
Furthermore, what is the conversion rate? Exactly how much good does one unit of bad cancel out, and vice versa? And, intimately tied to this, are we counting all good units as equally good (and all bad units as equally bad), or is there a gradation of goodness and badness such that no two units automatically equal each other in terms of their value?
I could keep going, but I think I've made my point. There is (insofar as I'm aware) never a good delineation of how we are tallying good vs. bad in this moral calculus. Benatar just says that there's "more" bad than good. Perhaps there is a section of his book which would alleviate my confusion, but in all the videos I've watched (and comments I've read) by anti-natalists, Benatar included, I never find a good, reasonable, solid foundational measurement metric by which we're supposed to tally, compare, and compute goodness vs. badness.
Early on in his argument with Peterson, Peterson calls Benatar out on this and asks (under different circumstances) what Benatar is using as his measurement for suffering vs. pleasure. Benatar tries to slide out from under this criticism by claiming that he does not need to be specific in his calculation as to just how much good and bad there is. He even admits that trying to do so would be ridiculous. Instead, Benatar states that all he has to do is show the preponderance of bad over good in general in order to deduce that conscious life is bad.
To his credit, Peterson does not let this line of argumentation go unnoticed and he continues to push, pointing out that if Benatar wants to treat his conclusions as if they are arithmetically sound (that is, just as rock-solidly logically valid and sound as saying 2+2=4) then he has to have a clear and objective measurement system. Something vague and general won't get him something precise and absolute.
Frankly, I agree with Peterson on this point. If Benatar wants to claim that his arguments conclusively indicate the immorality of procreation on the grounds that life is overall bad, then I think it fair to ask for some detailed calculations instead of "general" accounts.
Again, this wouldn't be much of a problem is Benatar was just going the ol' broody existentialist route of pointing out how weird and awful life can be in between drags on his cigarette. But he isn't doing that. He isn't writing vague misanthropic poetry about suffering, or simply discussing how unfair existence is. He's trying to make an analytically rock-solid case that conscious life is so conclusively awful that it positively should not exist, and that continuing conscious life is actively immoral.
And, again, if he's going to make this kind of serious claim, then I think it reasonable to demand some rock-solid numbers (or at least a measuring-unit equivalent) to back up his deductions. Otherwise, this isn't a rock-solid deductive process which conclusively shows that life is bad or that procreation is immoral. Rather, it's just intuition stacked upon intuition, all disguised as deduction or moral calculus by means of the assertive analytical style of argumentation. It's little more than mood masquerading as moral rationality.
Now, as Benatar states, it would be ridiculous to try and calculate badness vs. goodness down to a precise unit-by-unit level. But then again, I think it is ridiculous to try and give precise value weights to the phenomenon of 'conscious life', period. I find Benatar's whole program of attempting to determine if life is net anything, be it net good or net bad, to be a silly indulgence in hyper-simplification doctored up in the rhetorical style of analytic argumentation. However, my skepticism that Benatar's argument isn't born of pure reason isn't enough to discredit it. But then, nor is his mere assertion that he needn't provide sound calculus backing up his shocking claims enough to dismiss intuitive objections to his philosophy.
If we are going to try and claim that it is possible to determine with arithmetic certainty that conscious life is fundamentally bad, then there had better be clear units of measurement involved.
Argument One, Sub-point Two: Any given instance of suffering outweighs any instance of pleasure
One of the stranger (and more telling) claims that Benatar makes is that the bad in life is worse than the good. That is, if you have one unit of good/pleasure and one unit of bad/suffering, then the bad/suffering wins out and the situation is a net bad. To illustrate this, Benatar states that if you present someone with an opportunity to experience two minutes of the greatest pleasure possible but they also had to experience one minute of the worst possible suffering, that "most rational people" would not take the offer.There are several problems:
- If the greatest possible pleasure (maximal pleasure) is not just negated but overwhelmed by the greatest possible suffering (maximal suffering), then I think it is safe to assume that this asymmetry goes the whole way down such that any comparison of some non-maximal suffering and non-maximal pleasure will also see the suffering win out. The reason I say this is that if the maximal instances of these opposites are asymmetrical (that is, they don't cancel each other out, but one "wins" over the other one) then there is no reason to assume that their lesser instances would not exhibit the same radical asymmetry.
But this leaves us with obviously preposterous scenarios, such saying that a very mild headache is worse than a day of unhindered joy. Obviously, I think it is safe to say that a great many people would be able to easily and rationally chose to have a day of unhindered joy if the only price was a very mild headache. - I am suspicious of arguments that include the phrase "any rational person". It usually means that the author is assuming that their own particular set of values and preferences are intrinsically rational. For instance, another claim made by Benatar (which I'd like to cover in more detail later on) is that it is in the best interest of those who do not exist that they never begin to exist. I could easily state that "No rational person would not want to exist". Or I could say "No rational person would assume that a non-existing person could have 'interests'". In point of fact, Benatar thinks that he has a reasonable response to both of these very claims, but the point is that the claim "No rational person would X" is usually, though not always, a sloppy way to sneak a blunt assertion into an argument under the guise of rationality. In my example, I'd be sneaking in the blunt assertion that existence is better than non-existence or that interests can only be applied to already living things. And where there are blunt assertions, I detect the scent of ultimately circular reasoning.
- Ultimately, I think that Benatar's gambit shows more a lack of valuative imagination than it any indication that badness outweighs goodness. When listening to Benatar talk he typically betrays an underlying assumption of hedonism. This basic valuative framework is clear in his assessment of how people ought to look at good and bad, which he frequently describes as pleasure or suffering. He tries to argue that he's not using a merely hedonistic calculus of good vs. bad, but in practice all of his examples seem to boil down to simple pleasure vs. pain in some form or fashion.
Truth be told, I think that if we had a machine that could test Benatar's wager - which is that people would not trade a moment of pure bliss for a moment of pure suffering - then I think that we'd find plenty of people who were willing to try the machine in pursuit of a meta-good. For example, this meta-good could be nothing other than good old fashioned human curiosity. I would be willing to bet that you'd find many people who would not evaluate the overall experience machine based on simple pleasure/pain ratios, but would rather look at the totality of the experience of both maximal pleasure and maximal pain as a single event to sate their curiosity. The satisfaction of this curiosity does not really constitute a 'pleasure', per se, and if we assert that it does, then we've just stretched the boundaries of 'pleasure' to be 'anything that someone values', in which case hedonism is begging the question.
In Conclusion
It can be hard to keep an analysis of anti-natalism clean cut. The claims it makes touch on quite a few different strands of philosophy, from ethics, to metaphysics, to epistemology. I tried to keep this write up basic by focusing on the basic claim that "bad" in life (however we're defining that) outweighs "good" (however we're defining that, too).
My analysis broke down into looking at two prongs of Benatar's overall argument.
1.) That instances of bad outweigh instances of good. (The bad outnumbers the good)
2.) That any given instance of bad is worse than an instance of good. (The bad outweighs the good)
2.) That any given instance of bad is worse than an instance of good. (The bad outweighs the good)
In my analysis, I tried to make the following points:
A.) That Benatar's argument has intuition at its very foundation, and that this means we can start our criticism from an intuitive standpoint as well. Thus, I can say, intuitively, that if he's going to claim that he can deduce with certainty that conscious life is a net bad, and that it is immoral to procreate, then I can say that, intuitively, this is a more serious claim than many other philosophical arguments, and will thus require rock-solid measurement to prove its points.
B.) Following from A, I think that Benatar only dodges calls by Peterson and others for a definitive metric which he's using to measure and compare goodness and badness. As far as I know, he never presents a solid measurement. His argument thus remains rooted in vagueness, which leads me to surmise that it is likely rooted in something like his emotional disposition more than in the lauded realm of objective fact.
C.) Benatar's idea that there is an asymmetry between maximal goodness and maximal badness implies a similar asymmetry running all the way through all lesser instances of goodness and badness. But this leads to ridiculous scenarios wherein seemingly obviously unbalanced instances where goodness overwhelms badness have to be forcibly re-evaluated. An example would be something like having to pretend that its a serious moral and existential dilemma whether or not it would be worth it to trade having a very mild headache for a full day of unhindered joy.
D.) Benatar's assertion that no rational person would chose to experience a moment of pure good in exchange for a moment of pure bad is dubious at best, mere assertion at worst. I find it beyond easy to imagine many people willingly accepting this experience out of sheer curiosity, and not for the pleasure intrinsic in the good moment itself.
E.) Ultimately, I think that Benatar (and anti-natalism as a whole, with the exception perhaps of Julio Cabrera and some others) suffers a fatal flaw of refusing to consider any value framework beyond simple hedonism. Sure, they will say that they are using a logical framework based on objective moral facts. But the facts that they present almost invariably boil down to hedonistic calculations, and even these are hyper-rationalized into levels of abstraction that make any deductions based on them unmapable onto the real world. So its a simplistic moral framework to start with, but it is stretched beyond its limits in an effort to make it into something more 'fundamental' and metaphysical than mere hedonism.
I may have more to say on the philosophy of anti-natalism at a later date, as it is a genuinely fascinating topic and I've not at all exhausted the arguments here or in the podcast. But for now, these are my thoughts.
Thank you!