I also like how you call it garbage philosophy while in the same breath saying you only just now heard about it. Basing your understanding of it off of probably a free mintures worth of googling, very professional
When I learned that this philosophy came from Inmendham and read the first sentence of his wiki about it I knew it was garbage.
Reigning_King posted...
I'm interested in those papers since no one itt has come close to refuting a single one of the points I've made (with some still going unadressed), I'll have to look for them.
Maybe try google scholar. Here's one of many:
What Is the Question to which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer? Nicholas Smyth Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (1):1-17 (2020)
To begin, Benatar has argued that coming into existence, far from ever constituting a net benefit, always constitutes a net harm (Benatar 2006, 1). In order to establish this, he outlines what he calls the basic asymmetry:(1) The presence of pain is bad, and (2) the presence of pleasure is good...However... (3) The absence of pain is good even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone; but (4) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. (Benatar 2006, 30) This asymmetry, he claims, shows that it is better never to come into existence. Roughly, this is because the absence of pain always counts in favor of not existing, whereas the absence of pleasure never counts against not existing. Now, Benatar immediately notices that the argument has an undesirably abstract or impersonal flavor. This is because we are meant to place a great deal of weight on an asymmetry in valuation that is said to apply to a person who, by definition, does not exist. As soon as we start to speak of a real, flesh-and-blood person, the proposition (2) will justify their existence, and the asymmetry will no longer hold. Yet, can mere intuitions about badness with respect to non-existent persons really suffice to show that reproduction is necessarily a moral evil?How can the absence of pain count in favor of a decision if there is no-one forwhom that absence is good?