LogFAQs > #956376992

kind9 posted...

"How can the absence of pain count in favor of a decision if there is no-one forwhom that absence is good?"

I covered this back on page 1 (and Benatar covers it in his book). Basically it boils down to the idea that most people can see a given thing/event would be cruel if it were to happen to a hypothetical person. This is why I've been pointing out that most people believe that at least certain people shouldn't breed, because it wouldn't be fair to their potential offspring for whatever reason. This is a completly natural way of think, to find the suffering of someone who doesn't, but could, exist disagreeable even though this suffering doesn't actually exist. On the other hand how many people would say that they find it disagreeable that potential people miss out on the joys of life? Who says that women should have as many children as they possibly can since it's a bad thing that their potential children are missing out? Far from being a natural mindset something like that sounds insane. There is clearly a case of asymmetry here.

Another way of looking at it is the counter factual sense where we look at a human who does or did exist in reality and imagine a parallel dimension where they didn't. What constitutes suffering and if all suffering is good or bad is debatable but I don't think it can be denied that some suffering is entirely pointless. It's an extreme example but consider two people who get into a car accident and while one dies instantly the other doesn't and instead dies a slow and agonizing death pinned down inside the wreak. The extra time the poor soul gets can't be used to do anything meaningful like call their family one last time or write a will, they simply suffer and die after awhile. I don't think it's controversial to say in that specific case they would have been better off simply dying instantly as well. Anyways back to the point, if you look at the life of anyone in "Universe A" you will see that they have some degree of suffering in their life. The non existence of this suffering in "Universe B" is obviously a benefit even if they don't exist, while the non existence of the joy and positive things they felt isn't an issue since they don't exist. Saying the joy they missed out on is relevant would be falling into the whole "producing as many people as possible so they don't miss out on the joy of life" insanity I brought up before.

Even if you completely reject this entire argument of asymmetry then you would still need to justify gambling with people's lives and why bringing anyone into the world who is likely to suffer more than they enjoy life isn't unethical. You would have to develop or adopt a method of quantifying the quality of a life (keeping in mind the distortion most people have about their quality of life) and show good evidence that any given unborn child will live a good life. It is simply not a defendable position.

OhhhJa posted...

Well, don't worry OP. Rest assured, nobody is gonna procreate with you anyway

You say that as if outside opinion on that subject is relevant to me at all. I don't want to, and would never do it but it's entirely my own choice.