Background and Arguments of Antinatalism
Antinatalism is a philosophical position and social movement that assigns a negative value to birth. Antinatalists argue that humans should abstain from procreation because it is “morally” bad (some also recognize the procreation of other sentient beings as morally bad). In scholarly and in literary writings, various ethical foundations have been presented for antinatalism. Some of the earliest surviving formulations of the idea that it would be better not to have been born come from ancient Greece. There are some good antinatalism arguments.
Buddha states his propositions in the pedantic style of his age. He throws them into a form of sorites; but, as such, it is logically faulty and all he wishes to convey is this: Oblivious of the suffering to which life is subject, man begets children, and is thus the cause of old age and death. If he would only realize what suffering he would add to by his act, he would desist from the procreation of children; and so stop the operation of old age and death.
I’m here to give a more objective view without too much attention to my own opinion. I’m not here to tell you want you must do, I’m just here to present the arguments made by others through my blog as a lens. Below I’m going to list some of the arguments behind and for antinatalism.
The term antinatalism is in opposition to the term natalism or pro-natalism, and was used probably for the first time as the name of the position by Theophile de Giraud in his book L’art de guillotiner les procréateurs: Manifeste anti-natalist.
Negative utilitarianism argues that minimizing suffering has greater moral importance than maximizing happiness. Along these lines, there is no moral obligation to produce a child even if we could be sure that it will be very happy throughout its life. Also, there is a moral obligation not to produce a child if it can be foreseen that it will be unhappy. It is seen immediately that the act “do not produce the child” dominates the act “produce the child” because it has equally good consequences as the other act in one case and better consequences in the other. So it is to be preferred to the other act as long as we cannot exclude with certainty the possibility that the child will be more or less unhappy; and we never can. In any case, it is morally preferable not to produce a child.
Volunteers of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement argue that human activity is the primary cause of environmental degradation, and therefore refraining from reproduction is “the humanitarian alternative to human disasters”. Others, in the United States and other developed countries, are similarly concerned about contributing to climate change and other environmental problems by having biological children.
Karim Akerma argues that utilitarianism requires the least metaphysical assumptions and is, therefore, the most convincing ethical theory. He believes that negative utilitarianism is the right one because the good things in life do not compensate for the bad things. First and foremost, the best things do not compensate for the worst things. Worst things such as, for example, the experiences of terrible pain, the agonies of the wounded, sick or dying. In his opinion, we also rarely know what to do to make people happy, but we know what to do so that people do not suffer: it is enough that they are not created. What is important for Akerma in ethics is the striving for the fewest suffering people (ultimately no one), not striving for the happiest people, which, according to him, takes place at the expense of immeasurable suffering.
Many philosopers argue that presently rather than engaging in the morally problematic act of procreation, one could do good by adopting already existing children. De Giraud emphasizes that, across the world, there are millions of existing children who need care.
Mark Larock believes that it is not correct to neutralize his view by stating that death is also an infinitely great benefit for us, because it protects us from the infinite number of new frustrated preferences. He proposes a thought experiment in which we have two people, Mary and Tom. The first person, Mary, dies at the age of forty years as a result of complications caused by a degenerative disease. Mary would live for some more time, if not for the complications, but she would only experience bad things in her life, not good ones. The second person, Tom, dies at the same age from the same illness, but in his case, the disease is at such a stage of development that his body would no longer be able to function.
The existence of every moral patient in our world rests on a crude moral miscalculation. As I see it, non-procreation is the best means of rectifying this mistake.
Mark Larock
According to Larock, it is bad when someone, like in the case of Tom, encounters the impossibility of continuing to derive good things from his life; everybody’s life leads to such a point if someone lives long enough and our intuitions do not tell us that this is generally good or even neutral. Therefore, we should reject the view that death is also an infinitely great benefit: because we think that Tom has been unlucky. In the case of Mary, our intuitions tell us that her misfortune is not as great as Tom’s misfortune. Her misfortune is reduced by the fact that death saved her from the real prospect of experiencing bad things. We do not have the same intuition in Tom’s case. No evil or good future was physically possible for him.
Julio Cabrera proposes a concept of “negative ethics” in opposition to “affirmative” ethics, meaning ethics that affirm beings. He describes procreation as manipulation and harm, a unilateral and non-consensual sending of a human being into a painful, dangerous and morally impeding situation.
Larock thinks that while the impossibility of experiencing future good things seems to us to be a harm, the mere lack of a logical possibility of experiencing future bad things does not seem to be a compensatory benefit to us. If so, there would be nothing strange in recognizing that Tom had not suffered any misfortune. But he is a victim of misfortune, just like Mary. However, Mary’s misfortune does not seem to be so great because her death prevents great suffering. Larock is of the opinion that most people will see both cases in this way. This conclusion is supposed to lead to the fact that we recognize that there is an asymmetry between the harms and benefits that death brings.
Julio Cabrera, David Benatar and Karim Akerma all argue that procreation is contrary to Immanuel Kant’s practical imperative (according to Kant, a man should never be used as merely a means to an end, but always be treated as an end in himself). They argue that a person can be created for the sake of his parents or other people, but that it is impossible to create someone for his own good; and that therefore, following Kant’s recommendation, we should not create new people. Heiko Puls argues that Kant’s considerations regarding parental duties and human procreation, in general, imply arguments for an ethically justified antinatalism. Kant, however, according to Puls, rejects this position in his teleology for meta-ethical reasons.
Julio Cabrera considers the issue of being a creator in relation to theodicy and argues that just as it is impossible to defend the idea of a good God as creator, it is also impossible to defend the idea of a good man as a creator. In parenthood, the human parent imitates the divine parent, in the sense that education could be understood as a form of pursuit of “salvation”, the “right path” for a child. However, a human being could decide that it is better not to suffer at all than to suffer and be offered the later possibility of salvation from suffering. In Cabrera’s opinion, evil is associated not with the lack of being, but with the suffering and dying of those that are alive. So, on the contrary, evil is only and obviously associated with being.
Peter Wessel Zapffe viewed humans as a biological paradox. According to him, consciousness has become over-evolved in humans, thereby making us incapable of functioning normally like other animals: cognition gives us more than we can carry.
Gerald Harrison and Julia Tanner argue that when we want to significantly affect someone by our action and it is not possible to get their consent, then the default should be to not take such action. The exception is, according to them, actions by which we want to prevent greater harm of a person (for example, pushing someone out of the way of a falling piano). However, in their opinion, such actions certainly do not include procreation, because before taking this action a person does not exist.
Seana Shiffrin, Gerald Harrison, Julia Tanner and Asheel Singh argue that procreation is morally problematic because of the impossibility of obtaining consent from the human who will be brought into existence.
David Benatar argues that there is a crucial asymmetry between the good and the bad things, such as pleasure and pain. Regarding procreation, the argument follows that coming into existence generates both good and bad experiences, pain and pleasure, whereas not coming into existence entails neither pain nor pleasure. The absence of pain is good, the absence of pleasure is not bad. Therefore, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.
According to Benatar, by creating a child, we are responsible not only for this child’s suffering, but we may also be co-responsible for the suffering of further offspring of this child.
Benatar explains that we have a moral obligation not to create unhappy people and we have no moral obligation to create happy people. The reason why we think there is a moral obligation not to create unhappy people is that the presence of this suffering would be bad (for the sufferers) and the absence of the suffering is good (even though there is nobody to enjoy the absence of suffering). By contrast, the reason we think there is no moral obligation to create happy people is that although their pleasure would be good for them, the absence of pleasure when they do not come into existence will not be bad, because there will be no one who will be deprived of this good.
In addition, Benatar mentions… Antinatalism
It is strange to mention the interests of a potential child as a reason why we decide to create them. It is not strange to mention the interests of a potential child as a reason why we decide not to create them. The child possibly being happy is not a morally important reason to create them. By contrast, the child may be unhappy is an important moral reason not to create them. If it were the case that the absence of pleasure is bad even if someone does not exist to experience its absence, then we would have a significant moral reason to create a child and to create as many children as possible. If it were not the case that the absence of pain is good even if someone does not exist to experience this good, then we would not have a significant moral reason not to create a child.
Benatar also argues… Antinatalism
Someday we can regret for the sake of a person whose existence was conditional on our decision, that we created them — a person can be unhappy and the presence of their pain would be a bad thing. However, we will never feel regret for the sake of a person whose existence was conditional on our decision, that we did not create them — a person will not be deprived of happiness, because he or she will never exist, and the absence of happiness will not be bad, because there will be no one who will be deprived of this good.
There’s always more to add… step by step. Antinatalism… .
Benatar also argues that we feel sadness by the fact that somewhere people come into existence and suffer, and we feel no sadness by the fact that somewhere people did not come into existence in a place where there are happy people. When we know that somewhere people came into existence and suffer, we feel compassion. The fact that on some deserted island or planet people did not come into existence and suffer is good. This is because the absence of pain is good even when there is not someone who is experiencing this good. On the other hand, we do not feel sadness by the fact that on some deserted island or planet people did not come into existence and are not happy. This is because the absence of pleasure is bad only when someone exists to be deprived of this good.
Benatar cites statistics showing where the creation of people leads. It is estimated that:
- More than fifteen million people are thought to have died from natural disasters in the last 1,000 years.
- Approximately 20,000 people die every day from hunger.
- An estimated 840 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition.
- Between 541 and 1912, it is estimated that over 102 million people succumbed to plague.
- The 1918 influenza epidemic killed 50 million people.
- Nearly 11 million people die every year from infectious diseases.
- Malignant neoplasms take more than a further 7 million lives each year.
- Approximately 3.5 million people die every year in accidents.
- Approximately 56.5 million people died in 2001, that is more than 107 people per minute.
- Before the twentieth century over 133 million people were killed in mass killings.
- In the first 88 years of the twentieth century 170 million (and possibly as many as 360 million) people were shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hanged, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners.
- There were 1.6 million conflict-related deaths in the sixteenth century, 6.1 million in the seventeenth century, 7 million in the eighteenth, 19.4 million in the nineteenth, and 109.7 million in the twentieth.
- War-related injuries led to 310,000 deaths in 2000.
- About 40 million children are maltreated each year.
- More than 100 million currently living women and girls have been subjected to genital cuttings.
- 815,000 people are thought to have committed suicide in 2000 (currently, it is estimated that someone commits suicide every 40 seconds, more than 800,000 people per year).
David Benatar is one of the biggest, if not the biggest proponent of antinatalism.
“Assuming that each couple has three children, an original pair’s cumulative descendants over ten generations amount to 88,572 people. That constitutes a lot of pointless, avoidable suffering. To be sure, full responsibility for it all does not lie with the original couple because each new generation faces the choice of whether to continue that line of descendants. Nevertheless, they bear some responsibility for the generations that ensue. If one does not desist from having children, one can hardly expect one’s descendants to do so.”
Some antinatalists are also vegetarians or vegans for moral reasons, and postulate that such views should complement each other as having a common denominator: not causing harm to other sentient beings. This attitude was already present in Manichaeism and Catharism.
In addition to the philanthropic arguments, which are based on a concern for the humans who will be brought into existence, Benatar also posits that another path to antinatalism is the misanthropic argument that can be summarized in his opinion as follows:
Another route to anti-natalism is via what I call a “misanthropic” argument. According to this argument, humans are a deeply flawed and destructive species that is responsible for the suffering and deaths of billions of other humans and non-human animals. If that level of destruction were caused by another species we would rapidly recommend that new members of that species not be brought into existence.
Some philosophers are attentive to the harm caused to other sentient beings by humans. They would say that billions of non-human animals are abused and slaughtered each year by our species for the production of animal products, for experimentation and after the experiments (when they are no longer needed), as a result of the destruction of habitats or other environmental damage and for sadistic pleasure. They tend to agree with animal rights thinkers that the harm we do to them is immoral. They consider the human species the most destructive on the planet, arguing that without new humans, there will be no harm caused to other sentient beings by new humans.
Inmendham says… Antinatalism
In addition to Benatar, a channel called Inmendham on YouTube, who argues that the proliferation and defense of life goes too far, even beyond antinatalism, defends a position against all life. He created the philosophical concept of efilism — which is life with “ism” spelled backwards — which grants the idea that life at it’s very core is the problem, not just the procreation of humans. While the channel discusses more than the aspects of antinatalism, efilism, and it’s rationale, it’s the main purpose of the channel. Check him out, you won’t regret it; you’ll learn much.
