Rejecting The Risk And Imposition Arguments For Antinatalism
THREE ARGUMENTS
Consent, Risk, and Imposition are three arguments commonly cited in support of the conclusion that procreation is unethical. I will defend my claim that there isn’t any such thing as the Risk or Imposition Arguments (RA and IA respectively), as they're already incorporated within the Consent Argument (CA).
The arguments can be summarized thus:
CA1
P1 Bringing someone into existence exposes them to harm without their consent.
P2 Exposing someone to harm without their consent is unethical.
C Bringing someone into existence is unethical.
(NB: The term harm in CA is used as an exemplar of all possible harms.)
RA
P1 Bringing someone into existence exposes them to the risk of serious harm.
P2 Exposing someone to the risk of serious harm is unethical.
C Bringing someone into existence is unethical.
IA
P1 Bringing someone into existence imposes the vicissitudes of life on them.
P2 Imposing the vicissitudes of life on someone is unethical.
C Bringing someone into existence is unethical.
The P1s are incontestable statements of fact and can be taken as read. The same can't be said about all the P2s.
THE P2s
CA-P2 is viable. Leaving aside objections grounded in moral skepticism and rejection of individual sovereignty2 nonconsensual exposure to harm is unethical. It's important to note lack of consent is what gives rise to unethicality, not the harm exposure. Ceteris paribus consensual exposure to harm isn't unethical.
RA-P2 fails because it implies risk exposure on its own is sufficient to conclude unethicality. However it's impossible to conclude anything about ethicality without knowing whether or not the person consented to the risk exposure.
A commonly used metaphor for RA is gambling someone else's money, an action typically presumed unethical because it exposes someone else to the risk of loss. But as already stated risk alone is insufficient to make determinations about ethicality. Rather, it's the lack of consent that makes gambling someone else's money unethical, irrespective of the loss risk.
Consider the following:
1 I gambled John's money with his permission. Unfortunately I lost it all.
2 I gambled John's money without his permission. Unfortunately I lost it all.
Both scenarios have bad outcomes, but only 2 is unethical.
Changing the outcome from bad to good highlights how consent is pivotal:
3 I gambled John's money with his permission. Fortunately I doubled it.
4 I gambled John's money without his permission. Fortunately I doubled it.
Both scenarios have good outcomes, but 4 is unethical because gambling someone's money without their consent amounts to nonconsensual exposure to risk. A random lucky outcome doesn't affect this calculus3.
Returning to RA vis-à-vis procreation, the syllogism should be written as:
P1 Bringing someone into existence exposes them to the risk of serious harm without their consent.
P2 Exposing someone to the risk of serious harm without their consent is unethical.
C Bringing someone into existence is unethical.
Unethicality isn’t derived from risk exposure. Lack of consent is what makes the risk exposure, and in turn procreation, unethical.
IA-P2 fails for the same reason. Imposition on its own isn't sufficient to arrive at any conclusions about ethicality. Consent is what matters. The syllogism should be written as:
P1 Bringing someone into existence imposes the vicissitudes of life on them without their consent.
P2 Imposing the vicissitudes of life on someone without their consent is unethical.
C Bringing someone into existence is unethical.
Imposition isn't the source of unethicality. Lack of consent is what makes the imposition, and in turn procreation, unethical.
CONCLUSION
There isn't any such thing as RA or IA. Exposing someone to the risk of serious harm (RA) and Imposing the vicissitudes of life on someone (IA) are subcategories of Exposing someone to harm (CA). The only difference between RA/IA and CA is the former specify kinds of harm whereas the latter includes all possible kinds of harm. In other words RA and IA are circumscribed versions of CA, not separate arguments in and of themselves.
For fear of falling short in making my point clear, consider David Benatar's axiological asymmetry4:
Scenario A, X exists: Presence of pain is bad, presence of pleasure is good.
Scenario B, X doesn't exist: Absence of pain is good, absence of pleasure is not bad.
Let's imagine someone argued the following and called it the illness asymmetry:
Scenario A, X exists: Presence of illness is bad, presence of wellness is good.
Scenario B, X doesn't exist: Absence of illness is good, absence of wellness is not bad.
This would rightly be viewed as a circumscribed version of the axiological asymmetry. Calling it the illness asymmetry wouldn't transform it into a different or novel argument.
OBJECTIONS
NARROW = NOVEL
Matti Hayry contests this conclusion in his response to me challenging his claim that his Argument From Imposition is a novel argument. He believes "Narrowing the scope to add strength could well be a novelty".
Referring back to the illness asymmetry, I can envisage someone specifying illness with an interlocutor if the term pain didn't land, with a view to nudging him/her towards acceptance of pain in general. For example someone might dismiss the claim that pain is bad, but might agree that illness is bad because of personal experience, which in turn might be enough to get them on board with the more general idea of pain. This would only make the illness asymmetry a persuasion tactic, but certainly not a novel argument separate from the axiological asymmetry.
This objection is therefore rejected.
INCORRECT CATEGORIZATION
I've seen it said I'm wed to the consent argument because I consider the principle of consent inviolable and this bias is what motivated me to write my Defense and land on CA as the cornerstone of antinatalism. This is backwards. I didn't set out to defend CA when I wrote the essay. I determined consent is required for a sound deductive syllogism after toying with different ideas. The process of writing the essay is what turned me into a proponent of the consent argument, not the other way round.
Nevertheless, someone might assert my bias in favor of CA led me to ignore the possibility it might be a subset of RA or IA, instead of them being subsets of CA. For this claim to stand, the statement Exposing someone to harm (CA) would have to be incorporated within either Exposing someone to the risk of serious harm (RA) or Imposing the vicissitudes of life on someone (IA). Risk and imposition are subsets of harm, making harm a superset of risk and imposition. Including supersets within subsets is impossible.
This objection is therefore rejected.
The syllogism presented here is sufficient for the task at hand. See here for a thorough presentation and defense of CA.
Legitimate objections grounded in moral skepticism and rejection of individual sovereignty (cf 6.ii.1(3)) can be raised against CA. While moral skepticism raises legitimate objections against arguments predicated on ethicality, and rejection of individual sovereignty against matters concerning consent, the present discussion presumes acceptance of justified moral beliefs and the notion of individual sovereignty. It's also worth noting varieties of moral skepticism exist which permit for justification of moral beliefs while refusing to accept categorical or absolute moral beliefs.
Someone might appeal to the concept of retroactive consent. I reject this concept because consent, by definition, can only be made prior to the event in question. What some refer to as retroactive consent is really a decision to not seek redress for a past violation and/or proceed on the basis a violation didn't occur.
Better Never To Have Been, David Benatar, pp28-49
My problem with the consent argument is it sounds like circular logic based on impossibility. I mean, we all know that it's impossible to consent to your own birth, that's just causal physics, an IS statement, but to say therefore it's wrong to create people (under any circumstances) is like saying we are wrong to procreate because we can't defy physics. It's basically setting up morality to always fail, due to impossibility of applying it (moral consent). Is it still morality if we give it no chance to succeed? This feels anti reality more than anti natal.
In morality, we don't apply this impossible condition to anyone that already exists, we often say something is wrong because they "should" have acted differently, based on a set of moral prescription (oughts), this means at the very least they have a chance to act differently, the right way (let's not go into determinism for now, lol). But for procreation we have no such chance, due to physics.
You could argue that not procreating is that chance, but the issue here is consent, not procreation per say. If consent is not violated, then procreation should be permissible, but physics give us no chance of not violating it. It's basically blaming people who procreate for accepting the reality of physics. I'm sure any rational parent would love to ask their future offspring for consent, if at all possible, they wouldn't be so cruel as to deliberately create someone that they know will hate coming into existence.
Come to think of it, it's the same for risk of harm, it's just impossible for someone to never be harmed after coming into existence. This is why in morality we often differentiate between acceptable risk (impossible to fully prevent) and unacceptable risk (reckless endangerment), the latter often immoral to impose on someone, but not the former. If we say no categories and amount of risk are even acceptable, then once again we are setting up the impossible for morality, as if we want it to fail to justify our argument.
Some would argue that there is no "need" to create someone, therefore we have no moral obligation to do it, in fact it would be immoral to do it because we know that we can't defy physics and the reality of risk in procreation. But I would argue that we do have this need, because the desire and intuitions of existing people matters, namely the need to continue the species, to prevent extinction, to perpetuate mostly positive conscious experience, as long as conditions allow and life is not a hopeless nightmare for most.
Some would argue that its selfish for existing people to fulfill their desires and intuitions, at the expense of every new generation we create, due to the risk of harm. But again, this is the same impossible rule that we are judging people with, there is no physic defying ways for people to not be selfish when creating new people, it's the consent argument rehashed.
Conclusion, is morality even applicable to situations where it's impossible for morality to even function?