I feel like if our ethics tells us procreation is unethical we may want to re-evaluate the foundations of ethics.
Don't we reason about these things exactly to arrive at conclusions that go against our intuitions or feelings? If we decide that the reasoning is flawed merely because we don't like the conclusion, we might as well not reason at all.
If human procreation is immoral simply because it creates suffering for "sentient" beings, then it's this particular line of ethics that needs to go extinct, rather than humanity itself.
"The rules we invented for ourselves say that we shouldn't continue existing" seems like a mindset that natural selection will handle by itself though.
You're not accurately describing the argument the linked article is making, but even so, is the argument you're making that creating suffering for sentient beings is not morally wrong?
>"The rules we invented for ourselves say that we shouldn't continue existing" seems like a mindset that natural selection will handle by itself though.
This is completely orthogonal to whether the argument is correct. Natural selection isn't moral; it just is.
Page quote: "Benatar's antinatalist philosophy: sentient beings are harmed when they are brought into existence, and it is therefore wrong to procreate."
The absolutism and anthropocentrism inherent in that statement renders his whole argument kind of silly. The existence of life itself is inevitably going to cause harm, regardless of how self-aware that particular life form is. It might be smaller degrees of harm, or more indirect, but harm nonetheless.
Sure we should try to minimize the harm we cause others, within reason, on a case-by-case basis, but if your best solution to that is self-imposed specicide, what is the point of ethics?
(Also the comment about natural selection was a half-joke, not a stance on the argument, but your final sentence seems to agree with me anyway.)
1. The absence of good is not bad because nobody is around to lament it
2. The existence of bad is bad
In other words, because it doesn't yet exist, you can't hurt a being by not bringing it into existence. You can't hurt non-existent beings. But you can hurt a being by bringing it into existence because it can and will be harmed once it exists.
The argument is not "simply because it creates suffering for sentient beings."
If you disagree with the argument, you have to explain why it is incorrect. In particular, why is the absence of good bad even if nobody is around to experience that absence? This is difficult to argue, in my opinion, even if I subjectively feel like it has to be wrong.
One argument I can think of is that we want to maximize the average goodness, so we should bring conscious beings into existence if we expect them to experience more good than bad. However, philosophers don't tend to make that argument because the implications are horrific.
Positions that make me feel indignant, or viscerally repulsed, are often ones that I simultaneously don’t like and also have no argument against. (Moral Relativism, for example.)
"The reason why we do not lament our failure to bring somebody into existence is because absent pleasures are not bad."
But we also don't lament bringing somebody into existence; in fact we tend to celebrate it. So we could just as well conclude that absent pleasures really are bad, or turn it around and say that pleasurable existence is good.
I countered with another value judgment: "pleasurable existence is good." This seems trivially true as well but Benatar ignores it. Whether the good of existence outweighs the bad of existence is yet another value judgment, and also depends on particular experience.
In my personal life, I feel that the good far outweighs the bad, and existence is far better than nonexistence. So it doesn't make sense to me to assume that another person who doesn't happen to exist yet won't feel the same way.
They're not ignoring the good, they're arguing that an absence of good is not bad. You seem to be arguing that an absence of good is bad because there is a potential positive experience that could exist if a person came into existence and could experience it.
But their point is that the person who would have that experience does not yet exist and thus is not harmed by not coming into existence and not having that positive experience.
If a conscious person has a bad experience, Benatar considers that Bad in some absolute sense. He thinks it's important that we reduce the number of bad experiences in the world.
Benatar does not consider conscious existence itself to have any particular value. It doesn't matter whether there are more total experiences in the world.
He also doesn't consider good experiences to be Good in any absolute sense, but just privately good to the person experiencing them. So we shouldn't care about increasing the number of good experiences in the world. Given that someone exists, maybe we should help that person have more good experiences, but it's no absolute loss if that person disappears and any good experiences with them.
These are all value judgements: that conscious experience has no intrinsic value, and that we should reduce total bad experiences but not care about total good experiences. The asymmetric treatment of good and bad experiences, and the lack of value attached to existence itself, trivially lead to his odd conclusion. Most people disagree with his conclusion not because they're illogical, but because if they looked closely then they'd disagree with his premises. I would say that conscious existence is intrinsically good, even if it contains some bad experiences. I'd also say that it really is good to have more total good experiences in the world, just as it is bad to have more bad experiences.
As I sit here on the floor in a slightly awkward position, I have a small pain in my hip. Since Benatar doesn't place any value on existence itself, to be consistent he'd have to argue that it'd better for me if a sniper blew up my head, than if I continued to have this little pain in my hip. This is a value judgment with which I disagree.
I also think that conscious existence is intrinsically good, that it is amazing that the universe has found a way to experience itself, and that out of thoughtless rocks, qualia have arisen.
But I don't understand how to argue why this is so. In fact, it appears to make no sense. It seems to me that the only argument one could make that conscious existence is good is that there are conscious people who believe it is good, and without those people, the argument ceases to make sense.
"I'd also say that it really is good to have more total good experiences in the world, just as it is bad to have more bad experiences."
Philosophers do not make this specific argument because if you treat good and bad symmetrically, you can reach conclusions like "slavery is good if it produces more good than bad."
Of course, this is also an outcome-driven decision, where people dismiss an argument because they don't like the logical conclusion, but I think it's fair to say that "good" and "bad" aren't the same thing in opposite directions.
If you can't find a rational argument that conscious experience is good, can you find one that says bad experiences are bad?
If "the only argument one could make that conscious existence is good is that there are conscious people who believe it is good," well doesn't that also apply to bad experiences? The only argument one could make that they're bad is that there are conscious people who believe they are bad. If that's not a sufficient argument, then why bother with reducing bad experiences at all?
And if conscious existence itself doesn't matter then it's hard to see any reason why it should matter what sort of experiences conscious beings have. Whether there are lots of them or few, whether they have good or experiences or bad, none of it matters, any more than it matters what sort of chemical reactions happen as atoms bounce around on lifeless planets.
On the other hand if we decide we should take into account the preferences of conscious beings, then we should consider that they prefer to exist.
Regarding your second argument, you've alluded to an issue already. You say we can't count total good experiences because that leads to bad consequences. But Benetar's premises lead to even worse consequences. So why shouldn't we discount his approach as well?
We should argue on a level playing field. If we use some criteria to reject an argument against Benatar, we shouldn't give Benatar a pass on that same criteria.
I do agree we shouldn't simply count good vs. bad and choose the maximum total good. But that doesn't mean we should discount good experiences entirely. It's still good to have more good experiences in the world, even if we have to be careful about how we apply that principle.
Ultimately, maybe we have to take the most basic things on faith, if we want to avoid utter nihilism. Even math doesn't prove everything; every kind of mathematics starts with a handful of unproven axioms and works out the consequences.
Because that notion is stupid on its face. If there is an ethical code that transcends human existence then nature itself violated that code by letting life evolve into humans. If some jackass wants to claim to know better than the forces of nature well... I'm not sure what else to say about that.
Ethics is practical philosophy, concerned with the good life. It's basic question is "how shall I live?" It is concerned with one's voluntary acts, which presupposes one's existence. It is ridiculous to speak of one's existence as being bad when existence is the basis for the good, or harmful to others when you've already undermined the value of the existence of the individual. The measure of the moral life is rooted in how well voluntary acts accord with human nature. Immorality manifests in the discrepancy between nature and voluntary act. If human beings were cannibals by nature, there would be nothing wrong with cannibalism, for example, because being a cannibal would advance the actualization of a human individual and thus contribute to his good. But we aren't, and because of our social nature, cannibalism is to our own grave detriment in various ways. You cannot make such moral judgements, or make sense of notions like "selfishness", outside the context and parameters of the social nature of human beings. What is good for human beings is determined by our nature. And because of our social nature, it is good that others exist.
Claims like "coming into existence causes harm" would be horrifying if they weren't so fucking stupid. People like that aren't serious thinkers. They're people who need psychiatric help, and maybe should knock off what looks like some kind of weird, life-hating self-pity. Maybe they should read some Nietzsche.
I think you make a small argument against yourself though.
> It's basic question is "how shall I live?" It is concerned with one's voluntary acts
Whether or not to have children is a question of how one should live, and is concerned with one of life's most important voluntary acts.
It seems like you think that existence is good per se because the idea of the good presupposes existence. If I understood that correctly, is that not circular reasoning?
Your last paragraph of ad hominem and no true scottsman attacks against anyone who disagrees with you on the matter was a bit shocking after the coherence of your first. Is this the model of a "serious thinker"? (Although I know Nietzsche did indeed like a good ad hominem!)
I think it's fair to say that David Benatar is a serious person, and a serious thinker. Although perhaps we have different ideas of what that entails.
Just FYI, I'm not an anti-natalist (I hope not with a baby on the way!), I only shared the link because it echoes the Astronomical Suffering idea that the OP article talks about.
Always had been.