Harman on Benatar's Better Never to Have Been (Part Three)

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(Part One, Part Two)

This post is the third of a brief series on David Benatar's anti-natalist argument. Anti-natalism is the view that, in all cases, bringing a sentient being into existence is morally wrong. I'm using this article by Elizabeth Harman as the basis for my comments.

In part one, I introduced the two arguments Benatar uses to defend this conclusion. In part two, I considered Benatar's defence of the first argument along with Harman's criticisms of it. In this part, I'll briefly look at Benatar's second argument and then address the further implications of his two arguments.


1. The Second Argument
As highlighted in part one, Benatar's second argument rests on a key empirical claim:

• (6) All lives are overall very bad and not worth living

Obviously, this kind of claim is quite difficult to verify. Working from Harman's description, Benatar appears to defend it by appealing to one basic idea: we human beings are prone to systematic biases that prevent us from seeing how bad our lives are.

These biases come in several different flavours. Two are worth mentioning here. The first is that of adjustment: even if our lives change for the worse -- for example, if we suffer from some debilitating disease or such like -- we have a tendency to adjust our expectations and experiences to fit with these new facts. As a result, we fail to fully appreciate how bad the changes really are.

The second is that of relativism: when assessing whether own lives are good or bad we do so by comparison with the lives of others (i.e. the standard of goodness is a relative one). This leads us to ignore the things that make all human lives bad. For example, Benatar suggests that many of the ordinary aspects of human existence - being hungry, being thirsty, being tired - are bad, but we fail to appreciate this due to relativism (also due to the mistake of thinking that alleviating those states makes them good, when it does not).

Harman is unimpressed by these arguments. She doesn't see why the ordinary experiences that Benatar alludes to are actually bad. And she also thinks that, following Mill, there might be many higher order good experiences that trump or wash out the bad experiences that Benatar focuses on. That said, she acknowledges that there might be higher order bad experiences too.

I have some other thoughts. First, I think Benatar assumes there is some stance-independent measure of value that trumps subjective measures. I'd be more inclined to think that a person's subjective measure of their own well-being counts for something. [Edit: Nick makes this point in a comment to the first part of this series]. This would suggest that the adjustment bias is not that significant (in fact, it might work in the opposite direction to that proposed by Benatar).

Second, my own feeling is that you'll probably never be able to prove this premise satisfactorily. Collecting empirical data on this kind of thing is messy and complicated. No matter how many lives you show to be actually awful, there is always the possibility (and maybe more than that) of some lives being quite good. This would then imply that not all instances of procreation are morally wrong. What's more, even if life is currently awful and so procreation is currently morally wrong, if certain transhumanist dreams play out, many of the bad features of life could disappear. This would make procreation permissible once more.

2. The Implications of the Argument

If Benatar's arguments are successful, they are taken to imply that procreation is morally wrong. It would then seem to follow that preventing sentient beings from coming into existence is morally right (perhaps even obligatory). Might anything more be implied? Might it be the case that ending sentient lives (our own or those of others) is morally right (perhaps even obligatory)?

Harman only talks about the suicide case in her article. She points out that Benatar does not think it follows from his arguments that suicide is morally right. He does so on the grounds that although life might not be worth beginning, it does not follow that life is not worth continuing. And so it does not follow that we should all commit suicide.

I'd really have to see what kind of an argument Benatar offers in defence of this assertion, but for the time being I agree with Harman that this is insupportable. Benatar's second argument claims that life is overall very bad and not worth living. For him to turn around and say that life might be worth continuing seems like a flat-out contradiction.

In any event, I'm not too concerned about the suicide issue since I think that's permissible for other reasons. What I am concerned about is killing other people. From what I read in Harman, it seems that if Benatar's argument is successful, killing another person (or "bringing about their non-existence") is, at a minimum, morally permissible (probably supererogatory) and possibly even obligatory.

Consider the following argument (numbering builds on previous posts):

• (11) It is wrong to perform an action that harms a person; it is not wrong to perform an action that benefits a person.

• (12) A person's non-existence is not harmful to that person. Indeed, it may even benefit that person.

• (13) A person's non-existence can be brought about by a method that does not harm them (i.e. causes no pain or discomfort).

• (14) Therefore, it is morally permissible (maybe supererogatory) to bring about a person's non-existence using non-harmful methods.

What can be said in favour of this argument? Well, (11) strikes me as being a fairly innocuous moral principle. (12) would appear to follow from (or at least be compatible with) the asymmetry thesis Benatar uses to support his first argument. (13) tries to head off the criticisms of those who might argue that the act of bringing about someone's non-existence is harmful. (14) seems to follow straightforwardly enough.

The only possible objection I can think of would come from a rights-based ethic. A proponent of such an ethic could argue that bringing about a person's non-existence is harmful (even if painless) because it violates their right to autonomy. There are maybe two counter-responses. First, this obviously wouldn't apply if the defender of Benatar's arguments was a consequentialist. Second, this might be a case involving a conflict of rights (right to autonomy vs. right not to suffer) in which the latter wins out over the former.

It wouldn't take much to change this argument defending the permissibility of killing into one that defends that obligatoriness of killing. All you'd need to do is to change the principle to one stating we are obliged to prevent great harm to a person. And since existence is, apparently, a great harm, it would follow that we are obliged to end a person's existence.


3. A Topic for Discussion
Now, suffice to say, I don't find myself being swayed by any of this. The wrongness of killing strikes me as being one of the most prima facie secure moral judgments. And I'm much more certain of it than I would be of Benatar's controversial premises (i.e. 2 and 6). I just can't see why it is incompatible with what Benatar says elsewhere.

This raises another interesting question. One that relates to the obligations of the philosopher. I must confess that, for the first time ever in my blogging history, I had some qualms about publishing this post. Why so?

Even though I am not personally arguing for the permissibility of killing, and even though I approach this as just another interesting set of arguments to evaluate, I do worry that someone who does embrace what Benatar says might take my arguments seriously. And although I don't think I'd be responsible for what they did on foot of this, it would leave a rather sour taste in my mouth if they did something I consider to be morally wrong.

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

Harman on Benatar's Better Never to Have Been (Part One)

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I had an interesting conversation the other day. It was about philosophers who seem to defend bizarre or controversial views. Unsurprisingly, David Benatar's name came up. Benatar, in case you don't know, is an anti-natalist. He thinks it is wrong to bring people into existence (i.e. to procreate) and he presents his view in a book called Better Never to Have Been. He's not the only anti-natalist, but his book seems to have gained a high level of notoriety, perhaps given its publication by Oxford University Press.

Anyway, after that conversation, it occurred to me that although I was aware of the basic conclusion that Benatar defends, I knew next to nothing about his actual arguments. So I decided to do something to remedy this gap in my knowledge. Of course, ideally, I should have just read his book but since I didn't have access to it, I tried to seek out some commentary on it instead. The most helpful resource I discovered after an internet-based search was also one of the first I came across: It was the following:

• Harman, E. "Critical Study: David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence" (2009) 43 Nous 776

Based on my reading, this seems like a fair, but critical philosophical analysis of Benatar's book, and I want to summarise some its content here. I'm also going to use it as my basis for trying to clarify Benatar's arguments to myself. Obviously, the kind of analysis I'm going to undertake isn't a replacement for reading Benatar's original work, but what with time constraints and everything I think it is a reasonable place to start.

Before I get started I want to draw attention to one point. I don't find anti-natalism as counter-intuitive as some people I have spoken to seem to do. Indeed, I suspect there are many (actual) cases in which procreation is morally circumspect, particularly if it is done without proper foresight and planning for the child's future. That said, I do find it hard to accept that all cases of procreation are morally circumspect and that existence is, in general, awful. Anti-natalists would have to do a lot to convince me of this. Let's see if Benatar, filtered through the lens of Elizabeth Harman, is up to that task.

In this first part, I'll just introduce Benatar's two arguments. I'll try to evaluate them in the second part.

1. Benatar's First Argument

Benatar defends one basic conclusion using two, independent, lines of argument. The conclusion, as was hinted at above, is that procreation is, in all cases, wrong. What are the arguments? We'll develop versions of each below. Initially, we can note that both arguments rely on the generally accepted principle that it is wrong to harm someone (although they might, as I will suggest, interpret that principle in slightly different ways). This principle has an obvious corollary, namely: it is morally right to benefit someone.

Benatar's first argument relies on the idea that in bringing someone into existence one is harming them by causing all the bad aspects of their lives, but not benefitting them by causing all the good aspects of their lives. Incorporating this basic idea into our reasoning we can develop (through some creative reading) the following argument in favour of Benatar's conclusion:

• (1) It is morally wrong to harm a person.

• (2) In bringing a person into existence one harms them by causing all the bad aspects of their lives, but one does not benefit them by causing all the good aspects of their lives.

• (3) The act of procreation is the act of brining a person into existence.

• (4) Therefore, in all cases, it is morally wrong to procreate.

Obviously, premise (2) is pretty crucial here and we'll have to see what kind of argument Benatar can construct in its favour. One other thing to note is that in this argument the harm principle is phrased in a categorical or absolute way - i.e. "it is never right to harm a person" - instead of in a non-absolute or consequentialist way. I'm not sure, based on this one article, whether Benatar would agree with this reconstruction of the principle, but it seems appropriate given the kind of argument he offers in favour of premise (2), which we'll be considering later. That said, I think a non-absolute version could be substituted here without doing too much damage to our appreciation of the argument (mainly because it seems to have other, more serious, defects).

2. Benatar's Second Argument

Moving on, the second argument relies on a much more straightforward aggregative empirical claim about the overall goodness and badness of life. As follows:

• (5) It is morally wrong to harm a person (unless the harm achieves some outweighing benefit).

• (6) All lives are overall very bad and not worth living.

• (7) The act of procreation causes a person to have a life.

• (4) Therefore, in all cases, it is morally wrong to procreate.

Although this argument is pretty easy to follow, a couple of things need to be said about it here. 

First, in her review, Harman says that Benatar only claims that "most lives are overall very bad". I have changed that, in my reconstruction of the argument, to "all lives are overall very bad". This comes in premise (6). I made the change for the obvious reason that without it the strong conclusion that Benatar reaches does not follow. At best, the conclusion reached would be that most cases of procreation are morally wrong (which, as noted in the intro, I might be willing to accept). Of course, this makes the argument more difficult to defend.

Second, as you can see, this argument relies on a consequentialist version of the harm principle. This version makes sense given the kind of aggregative claim embedded in premise (6): if we were absolutists about the wrongness of harming someone then assessing the overall level of harm would not be a meaningful exercise. 

The consequentialist permission of some level of harm can be understood in different ways. In the argument given, all forms of harm are permitted if they lead to some greater good. This is a pretty weak requirement. A stronger version of the principle would stipulate that harm is only permitted if it is necessary for achieving some greater good. This should actually be familiar to anyone who read my series on skeptical theism and the problem of evil. There, the idea was that God could only allow whatever evils were (logically) necessary for achieving some greater good.

Again, based on reading just this one article, I have no idea how Benatar would like the principle to be understood. I've opted for the weak version here. Again, as was the case with the first argument, I don't think this matters too much because all the real philosophical action lies elsewhere.

3. Comments

Benatar's two arguments are combined and illustrated in the following map.

The key point to bear in mind is that the arguments are supposed to provide independent lines of support for the same conclusion. This is significant since one of the arguments clearly provides stronger support for the conclusion than the other. It would be bad if it turned out that the stronger argument reduced to the weaker argument

Which argument is stronger? Obviously, the first argument because it is an "in principle" argument. It states that, given the conceptual nature of harms and benefits, it is necessarily wrong to bring a person into existence. If this is true, it would be impossible to disagree. This stands in stark contrast to the second argument, which is a contingent, a posteriori argument. It states that, given the nature of existence as it currently stands, it is wrong to bring a person into existence. The weakness here is twofold: (i) this is an empirical claim that could be quite difficult to prove and (ii) the contingent facts could change such that existence ceases to be so harmful (e.g. if certain transhumanist goals are obtained).

Given the relative strengths of the arguments involved, and the practical difficulty in evaluating the second argument in this forum, the second part of this series will focus almost entirely on the first argument.