Procreative ethics and extinction | part 2

This is the second of a mutiple part series on procreation ethics. Please check the first part, “Antinatalism v. pronatalism: is depopulation good or bad?” for context. At the end of part 1, we touched, but didn’t sufficiently elaborate, on Seana Shiffrin’s case for the morally problematic nature of procreation and Asheel Singh’s harnessing of Shiffrin’s concerns to press an explicit antinatalist thesis. Here we continue our discussion of the philosophical antinatalism/pronatalism debate and move on to consider what kind of extinction would become a semi-conscious species such as ours…

After the Shiffrin/Singh case, we consider an important criticism of the debate from Nicholas Smyth, and respond to it. Finally, we examine why we think human extinction is a foregone conclusion. One way or another humans, as we know them, will disappear, and, likely, sooner than later. Moreover, if we survive long enough, there are reasons to believe it will be a conscious choice to exit. There remains the question whether and why this will be a good or a bad thing.

This topic is probably the most deeply rooted and widely ramified of any I have done. If philosophy is about ultimate questions, nothing can be more ultimate than the concerns that arise in contemplating collective death. The proverbial “meaning of life” question is at stake. The point, if any, of our existence is in the balance. Many shy away from thoughts like these. It’s not hard to understand why. Some pretend there is nothing to be said. Some refer to religion. Some to science. Most keep busy with distractions.

I contend there are a few things to say. Logically, we can describe what is possible. Morally, we can express preferences. That’s not nothing.

Shiffrin’s equivocal view of procreation

Or when it’s okay to presume permission without asking…

Seana Shiffrin, in her groundbreaking 1999 paper “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm” expresses a qualm with the permissibility of bringing new life into the world. Though she never quite settles on an antinatalist conclusion, she draws attention to the morally problematic nature of procreation viewed from a non-consequentialist perspective and articulates a principle that is, I think, at the core of one important strain of antinatalism: at least at this time, in our culture, it is not permissible to make decisions of a nontrivial nature on behalf of others without their consent or endorsement. Surely, the decision to bring into existence another being qualifies as having such gravity. But the unborn cannot be consulted on a decision to confer existence on them. Coming into existence implies exposure to harm – even in the unlikely case where a long uninterrupted happy life with no harm but the cessation of existence at its end is ever in the cards for the created subject of experience...

At the heart of the principle is an asymmetry, which Shiffrin was one of the first to note, between harms and benefits: the widespread moral intuition that harms and benefits are not interchangeable. This is why consent matters in nontrivial decisions. Behind the intuition that harm is punishable is an understanding that, as Shiffrin puts it:

"...harm involves conditions that generate a significant chasm or conflict between one’s will and one’s experience, one’s life more broadly understood, or one’s circumstances."

Benefits don’t... Six of one is not a half dozen of the other.

Please look at the full writeup is here: https://archive.org/details/antinatalism-pronatalism-extinction for more discussion.

1. “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm,” Seana Shiffrin, Legal Theory, June 1999.