22 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Is there any actual argument against antinatalism
Benatar's asymmetry argument relies on comparing on treating the non-existent person as if they have a well-being which can be compared to anything. But non-existent people have no well-being at all - not good, not bad, not neutral. Non-existent people are just mental placeholders, their well being is null, and null values can't be compared to anything. Thus it's not meaningful to say that anyone would be better off not existing. A person who exists and is not suffering isn't anything like the non-sufferring of the non-existent person. When people say they want to end suffering they don't usually mean to for people capable of suffering to cease to exist.
Anti-natalists claim it's wrong to make a decision for the non-existent person because they can't consent. There are a couple problems with this. One is that the decision not to have children is itself making a decision for a non-existent person. Another is that it ignores the virtual universal moral position that parents make decisions for children until they are capable of making their own decisions.
Comment by Burnmad at 14/07/2024 at 22:27 UTC
0 upvotes, 1 direct replies
One is that the decision not to have children is itself making a decision for a non-existent person.
Are you not contradicting yourself? You've just pointed out, rightly, that non-existent people have no well-being. The decision to reproduce, then, is only meaningful when the decision being made results in the creation of a person who has been impacted.
Another is that it ignores the virtual universal moral position that parents make decisions for children until they are capable of making their own decisions.
We don't hold that parents have an inalienable right to dispose with their children however they see fit, though. Many actions parents take towards their children are frowned upon, and some can result in those children being taken away and/or the parents imprisoned. ANs, believing that birth is more or less harm, draw the line of moral permissibility a fair bit further out than you might.