On April 9 2023 Tejas Gokhale1 made his case for why he thinks animals are included in antinatalism. I contend that he failed. This analysis details why.
THE NORMATIVE CLAIM
0m86s Gokhale begins by dividing antinatalism into two separate statements2. I reject this division and all arguments based on what I perceive as an error of imagining there's any such a thing as a uniquely antinatalist evaluative statement. My reasoning is detailed here.
2m6s Gokhale explains why (his proprietary) normative conclusion, “Bringing someone into existence is morally wrong”, excludes animals: “The argument goes that because other animals cannot make these decisions between right and wrong they don't have this moral agency. Antinatalism cannot include other animals. It can only be applied to human beings.”
This fairly represents the position. All normative statements exclude animals because animals lack capacity to act as moral agents.
2m18s “But what about a couple who cannot understand the concept of morality but can still reproduce sexually? Would we exclude such people from antinatalism?". Many people in poor countries or those who are dominated by extreme religious beliefs don't usually have access to independent thinking. Even in many cases many mentally healthy people, mentally healthy parents, are influenced by social norms, religious beliefs, restricted education and poverty. So even though they have capacity to think or to decide between right and wrong they cannot use that capacity effectively. Would we have to exclude such people from antinatalism? What about poor people in richer nations. What about accidental pregnancies? What about teenage pregnancies? How far down the slippery slope can we go?”
Gokhale is drawing attention to two categories of people, viz., those who lack capacity for moral agency, and those who have capacity but can't exercise it due to external constraints beyond their control. I presume his reasons for raising these matters are testing antinatalists’ tolerance for the limitations of the normative statement and trying to bridge the gap between humans and animals in a style reminiscent of Name The Trait.
The answer however, is straightforward, irrespective of his reasons. All normative statements including those pertaining to antinatalism are subject to the ought implies can principle. If someone can't comply with a normative ought, they aren't subject to it.
I interpret the slippery slope question as referring to situations which aren't cut and dry. I tackle this in sections 2.ii.c and 2.ii.d of my 2019 Defense: “In the case of human procreation, apart from extraordinarily rare cases such as cryptic pregnancies, the process of bringing someone into existence is the result of a deliberately intentional process meant to produce that specific outcome. Deliberately intending to bring someone into existence is what opens the door to ethicality because ethics aren’t relevant if the process is accidental or unknown. During pregnancy, prospective parent(s) take deliberate measures intended to minimize the risk of not bringing the fetus to term and maximize the probability of a healthy baby being born. In cases where a couple plans for a family and tries to get pregnant, the series of deliberate events can precede conception by months or even years. However, as can be seen from the following examples, establishing who the intending parties are isn’t always clear cut and there could even be cases where intention might not exist.”
I then consider several scenarios including IVF, quiverfull, and rape.
Gokhale closes out this section asking, “To go to another extreme of the spectrum altogether, should we then say that antinatalism can only include the people who have all the resources in the world to make accurate moral decisions?”.
The same answer applies. (Ceteris paribus) If someone can comply with a normative ought, they're subject to it. If they can't, they aren't.
Some people being unable to comply with normative oughts, and some situations being far from cut and dry don't mean normative statements are defective or that the evaluative assessments undergirding them apply to animals. Therefore none of the concerns raised thus far move the needle regarding the inclusion of animals within antinatalism.
FIVE ARGUMENTS
Gokhale begins this section by saying, “To solve this problem we need to look at why bringing somebody into existence is morally wrong in the first place”.
Technically speaking this problem was just solved. All his questions have been squared away and nothing he has said warrants the inclusion of animals in antinatalism. But of course Gokhale can't be judged by this present analysis. He's proceeding on the basis the questions haven't been answered. I'll proceed likewise to give his arguments a fair hearing.
Gokhale then introduces the philanthropic and misanthropic arguments he'll use to make his case for including animals in antinatalism (Philanthropic: Benatar's asymmetry, optimism bias, the risk and consent arguments; Misanthropic: The harms we do to others once we come into existence), laying the foundation for his fundamental claim: “So you see. All the underlying arguments of antinatalism actually focus on coming into existence3. Even Benatar's book is called Better Never To Have Been (BNTHB) and not Better Never To Bring Someone Into Existence. That brings us on to the second view that coming into existence is bad. This view does not need a moral agent.”
1 Benatar's Asymmetry
5m49s “Benatar's asymmetry I think very readily and severely applies to other animals (besides humans).”
This is somewhat redundant because Benatar made it clear the arguments in BNTHB apply to animals as well as humans4. There isn't any debate about this. But the erroneous implication of this acknowledgement must be resisted, that recognizing “coming into existence is always a serious harm”5 for animals automatically means animals are included in antinatalism. The reasons for this are articulated here, but long story short, the statement isn't a uniquely antinatalist evaluation. Buddhism, hedonism, and wild animal suffering activism (WASA) have just as much of a claim to the evaluation as antinatalism. It would be nonsense to categorize buddhism/hedonism/WASA as antinatalism, buddhism as hedonism, or hedonism as WASA, etc. The fact of suffering is indeed relevant to antinatalism, but not its sole domain.
So, Yes. Benatar's asymmetry applies to animals. No, this doesn't automatically mean animals are included in antinatalism.
2 Optimism Bias
Before digging in, optimism bias isn't an argument. It's an undiagnosable psychological phenomenon otherwise known as “the Pollyanna Principle, a tendency towards optimism”6. Antinatalists, and no doubt pessimists in general, utilize it as a way of overcoming objections to pessimistic worldviews.
8m5s “Optimism bias is a little tricky one. At the time of making this video I could not find any study which proved or disproved existence of optimism bias in animals which were not trained for any specific behavior.”
This is the entirety of his justification for why he includes optimism bias. Was this an editing error? Did he forgot to cut this part out? This being all he has, optimism bias must be rejected as a reason in support of the claim, unless lack of evidence no longer precludes asserting something as probative.
So, No. Not only does Gokhale miscategorize optimism bias as a philanthropic argument, he fails to show why it's relevant to the topic at hand.
3 Risk Argument
8m20s “The risk argument definitely applies to animals. Animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms at risk of different kinds of suffering before eventual slaughter by humans. Animals in wild are at risk of predation, starvation, disease, parasitism, sexual coercion, competition for resources, you name it. Like, a whole documentary can be made just on risks faced by animals in the wild. So it definitely applies to other animals”
Insofar as it applies to humans, the risk argument is a subcategory of the consent argument7. Consent doesn't apply to animals, so for the risk argument to apply to animals it needs to be expressed without the element of consent: Coming into existence causes an animal to be exposed to the risk of (serious) harm, therefore coming into existence is bad. Coming into existence causes an animal to be exposed to the risk of (serious) harm is almost identical to Benatar's conclusion, Coming into existence is always a serious harm. The only difference is Benatar's statement speaks of inevitability rather than possibility. This difference doesn't hinder my above comments about the asymmetry from applying here.
So, Yes. The risk argument can apply to animals. No, this doesn't automatically mean animals are included in AN.
4 Consent Argument
8m46s “Consent is a human concept. But I think the fact still remains that none of the animals ever to have been born on this planet ever would have consented before being born, because that's just impossible. So, consent argument applies to other animals.”
Consent only makes sense in the context of agents with capacity to make informed decisions. Gokhale should have stopped after saying “Consent is a human concept”, because that necessarily means animals are excluded. But he can't stop there because that would mean he can't include impossibility of consent as a reason for why antinatalism includes animals.
The way he does this is by asserting “none of the animals ever to have been born on this planet ever would have consented before being born, because that's just impossible”. Firstly, even if for the sake of argument we grant animals capacity for giving and withholding consent, there isn't any way of knowing that every single animal would refuse to consent to being born. Gokhale is projecting his values onto every animal and saying that what he sees reflected back at him is what all animals would actually think. Quite the claim.
Secondly, granting animals consent capacity is typical of the anthropomorphization approach employed by vegans and efilists to shoehorn animals into human ethical frameworks. For example, when they talk about animal suffering they usually mean, If human beingness inhabited animal bodies the suffering experienced by human beingness living as animals would be horrific. Regarding the present matter, Gokhale is essentially saying If (Gokhale's) human beingness inhabited animal bodies, animals would complain about never consenting to be here. It’s absurd. Human beingness can’t inhabit animal bodies. Only animal beingness can. For better or for worse evolution has seen to it that animal bodies and animal beingness are adapted to animal environments. It's nonsense to assert human projected perception as a way of understanding animals' existential experiences8.
Gokhale concludes with a baffling declaration: “So, consent argument applies to other animals”. This is extraordinary. He really thinks he nailed it. The essence of his argument is, Consent is irrelevant vis-à-vis animals, but what the hell, let's just pretend it isn't. Hanlon’s razor?
So, No. The consent argument doesn't apply to animals. It's irrelevant to the discussion about whether or not animals are included in AN.
5 Misanthropic Argument
9m2s “Misanthropic argument could apply to other animals, only to a limited extent. You can say that existence of a lion or the fact of coming into existence of a lion is bad for all the zebras. That lion is going to kill in their lifetime. Similarly coming into existence of a new zebra can be said to be bad for all other existing zebras because it adds to the competition for already existing zebras for resources. So misanthropic argument applies to a limited extent to other animals.”
I disagree this only applies to a limited extent. On the contrary I think it works just as well with animals as it does with humans. The only caveat is that it can't be called a misanthropic argument, as such arguments only deal with humans as causation agents9.
The essence of the argument is Coming into existence is always a serious harm for other animals. This is almost identical to Benatar's conclusion, Coming into existence is always a serious harm (for the animal that comes into existence). The only difference is Benatar's statement concerns the harm experienced by the animal that comes into existence rather than the harm an animal that comes into existence causes others. This difference doesn't hinder my above comments about the asymmetry from applying here.
So, Yes. The misanthropic argument can apply to animals (albeit with a different label). No, this doesn't automatically mean animals are included in AN.
FIVE ARGUMENT SUMMARY
9m33s “So you see, of the 5 underlying arguments for antinatalism at least 4 apply to other animals. So that indicates to me that we can include other animals within the scope of antinatalism.”
I submit nothing Gokhale presented supports the proposition that animals are within the scope of antinatalism. 2 of the 5 are irrelevant insofar as animals are concerned, and the other 3 are variations of the same thing. In reality he had a list of 1 and a hit rate of 0.
Gokhale closes out by talking about theft in the animal kingdom referencing hyenas stealing food from lions. It doesn't add anything of value. It's an example of how the animal version of the misanthropic argument might be applied, and would have been better included in that section. It's also another example of anthropomorphization, shoehorning animals into human ethical frameworks by superimposing those frameworks onto animal behavior.
CONCLUSION
Gokhale's purpose in making this video was to prove that antinatalism includes animals. He first tested antinatalists’ tolerance for the limitations of a normative statement and tried to bridge the gap between humans and animals in a style reminiscent of Name The Trait. This failed because some people being unable to comply with normative oughts, and some situations being far from cut and dry don't mean normative statements are defective or that the evaluative assessments undergirding them apply to animals.
He then presented 4 arguments and 1 undiagnosable psychological phenomenon to prove antinatalism includes animals. Nothing he presented proved anything about antinatalism including animals.
Gokhale failed to make his case for why animals are included in antinatalism10.
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Lawrence Anton labels the divisions (incorrectly in my view) evaluative and normative.
This is incorrect. The conclusions of the formalized consent and risk arguments (a subcategory of the consent argument as they pertain to humans are normative statements focused on bringing, not coming into existence. And as shall be shown momentarily, the optimism bias isn't a philanthropic argument, therefore it doesn't make sense to talk about whether it's focused on bringing or coming into existence.
David Benatar (2006) Better Never To Have Been, p2
This is Benatar's core claim: “The central idea of this book is that coming into existence is always a serious harm.”, ibid p1. (Chapter 2 uses the asymmetry to establish that coming into existence is always a harm. Chapter 3 justifies the inclusion of the serious qualifier.
ibid pp64-65
Magnusson, E. On Risk-Based Arguments for Anti-natalism. J Value Inquiry 56, 101–117 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-022-09889-3; Steve Godfrey (2023) Rejecting The Risk and Imposition Arguments for Antinatalism
For example, humans see tigers as orange but prey animals with dichromatic colour vision are unable to differentiate between orange and green which gives tigers camouflage in grass. We may know some things but we mostly don’t have a clue about how animals experience existence: Fennell J. G., Talas L., Baddeley R. J., Cuthill I. C. and Scott-Samuel N. E. 2019 Optimizing colour for camouflage and visibility using deep learning: the effects of the environment and the observer's visual system J. R. Soc. Interface.162019018320190183 http://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2019.0183
This doesn't mean animals aren't included in antinatalism. It only means Gokhale failed to prove they are.