Antinatalism is an emerging philosophy and practice that challenges pronatalism, the prevailing philosophy and practice in reproductive matters. We explore justifications of antinatalism—the arguments from the quality of life, the risk of an intolerable life, the lack of consent, and the asymmetry of good and bad—and argue that none of them supports a concrete, understandable, and convincing moral case for not having children. We identify concentration on possible future individuals who may or may not come to be as the main (...) culprit for the failure and suggest that the focus should be shifted to people who already exist. Pronatalism’s hegemonic status in contemporary societies imposes upon us a lifestyle that we have not chosen yet find almost impossible to abandon. We explicate the nature of this imposition and consider the implications of its exposure to different stakeholders with varying stands on the practice of antinatalism. Imposition as a term has figured in reproductive debates before, but the argument from postnatal, mental, and cultural imposition we launch is new. It is the hitherto overlooked and underdeveloped justification of antinatalism that should be solid and comprehensible enough to be used even by activists in support of their work. (shrink)

Ethical theory faces a group of difficult puzzles concerning populations. Here is one: would it be right to maximize utility by causing the number of people existing in the further future to be very, very large, even if this means that each of their lives is barely worth living? Derek Parfit concludes that standard utilitarianism yields the result that it would be right to create such a world. He calls this conclusion "repugnant." I begin with an examination of the objection, (...) in which I argue that the problem is axiological, not normative. I present my interpretation of the problem, and consider and reject the most popular and plausible responses in the literature. ;Many people agree with Parfit that the repugnant conclusion is unacceptable. They see this as a strong objection to impersonalism, and conclude that only person-affecting utilitarianism solves the population problems in question. I argue that the most credible person-affecting theories incorrectly answer simple population questions and are deficient in other respects. ;Need we accept Parfit's objection? I advance my own view---that there are totalistic axiologies that do not imply the repugnant conclusion, and defeat the mere addition paradox. I show that these theories have much in common with classical totalism, and they give the intuitively correct result in the crucial cases under consideration. (shrink)

This paper discusses what the so-called Priority View implies regarding possible people. It is argued that this view is plausible when applied to fixed populations, but that, when applied to the issue of possible people, it faces certain difficulties. If it is claimed that possible people fall within the scope of the Priority View, we are led to the repugnant conclusion at a faster pace than we are by, e.g., utilitarianism. And if it is claimed that possible people do not (...) fall within the scope of the Priority View, we shall have to combine this view with a different view in order to avoid certain counter-intuitive judgements. Such a combined view, however, leads to intransitivities. At the end of the paper, I discuss what these conclusions imply regarding both the Priority View and our moral obligations to possible people. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the “Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing ” to explain the wrongness of killing individuals who are conscious but not autonomous. On this account, the wrongness of such killing depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest, in turn, depends on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in the future; and the strength of the prudential relations obtaining between the victim at (...) the time of the killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or her. More precisely, when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted to reflect reductions in the strength of such relations. Against McMahan’s account I argue that it relies on an implausible “actualist” view of the moral importance of interests according to which satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are satisfactions of actual interests. More precisely, I aim to show that the Time-relative Interest Account does not have the implications for the morality of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and implies, implausibly, that certain interest satisfactions which seem to be morally significant are morally insignificant because they are not satisfactions of actual interests. (shrink)

We should not have children because (i) we have no child-regarding reasons to do so, (ii) we have child-regarding reasons not to do so, and (iii) although we have other-regarding reasons to do so, these reasons are not decisive. Objections to (i) include that life is always good and that possible individuals would choose life if given the opportunity. These fail if there is no duty to create even a good life (the argument from asymmetry), all lives are bad (the (...) argument from quality of life), and potential parents are not entitled to produce lives without the permission of the offspring (the argument from assumed consent). The failure of the objections is not, however, self-evidently inevitable if a hedonistic axiology is used. It becomes inevitable with a switch to an autonomy-respecting, need-based theory of value. There is no need to become existent (i), and there is a need to avoid frustration, pain, and suffering once an individual has been brought into existence (ii). Since any life can be or turn out to be very bad, potential parents put their children in harm’s way by creating them (the argument from risk). To see this and to see how the preferences of the potential parents do not change the situation (iii), it is necessary to assume a concept of gambling that allows genuinely serious harm in case the player loses. (shrink)