Scribd
Upload
12 views2 pages

Using A Database, Roberts

The document discusses two articles that argue against antinatalism, highlighting common misconceptions and rebuttals to its principles. It critiques the asymmetry argument, emphasizing the unpredictability of life outcomes and the ethical implications of who should reproduce. Additionally, it explores the notion that antinatalism may be seen as a lazy solution to humanity's problems, suggesting a need for deeper analysis and consideration of alternatives like adoption.

Uploaded by

bigmanrob8090
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
12 views2 pages

Using A Database, Roberts

The document discusses two articles that argue against antinatalism, highlighting common misconceptions and rebuttals to its principles. It critiques the asymmetry argument, emphasizing the unpredictability of life outcomes and the ethical implications of who should reproduce. Additionally, it explores the notion that antinatalism may be seen as a lazy solution to humanity's problems, suggesting a need for deeper analysis and consideration of alternatives like adoption.

Uploaded by

bigmanrob8090
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

​ I chose two articles that are against antinatalism for this exercise.

The first one is titled


‘What Is the Question to which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer?’ by Nicholas Smyth and the
second one is ‘Unfeigning the Delusion: Antinatalism and the End of Suffering’ written by
Robbert Zandbergen. These two articles provide some common rebuttals against antinatalism
that I would like to address in my essay.
​ In ‘What Is the Question to which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer?’Smyth not only
discusses arguments made against antinatalism but he also includes common misconceptions on
the topic. Infacide and murder often come up in antinatalism because the goal is for the human
race to go extinct. However, the reason for this goal is to reduce harm so the argument that
antinatalism leads to killing people is quite unreasonable. If you break down the word
antinatalism semantically we see the prefix anti, the root natal and the suffix ism. Natal has to do
with birth, so quite literally antinatalism is the belief against giving birth.
​ Another familiar argument portains to Banaters defense commonly called the asymmetry
argument. In this Banater states that never coming into existence is quantitatively better than
coming into existence and experiencing pain and pleasure. People often have a problem with this
line of reasoning because you have no way of knowing the net sum of pain and pleasure in
someone's life before they experience it. For example, a baby is born into a wealthy family where
he rarely suffers misfortunes and all together has a happy life up until he dies naturally and with
minor pain. In this case his net positives will be higher than his net negatives meaning his life
was ‘worth living’. I have two problems with this, one being that only people in good situations
should be giving birth (wealthy, healthy, ect) which sounds to me like eugenics. I don't like this
argument specifically because it almost suggests that poor people shouldn't give birth because
they are burdening their children with poverty and that only rich people should because having
money will significantly make their life better. I would actually prefer for less rich people to give
birth because they are oftentimes bad for the environment and everyone else around them. My
second problem is that absolutely nothing is guaranteed in life. The child could be born with a
painful birth defect or mental health issues, the family could lose all of their money in an
accident after the birth happens causing them all to live in poverty, anything could happen. You
have no idea what will happen so ultimately it is better to have never been.
In the first paragraph of ‘Unfeigning the Delusion: Antinatalism and the End of
Suffering’ Zandbergen has quoted a conversation between a buddhist and a confucian regarding
the end of the human race induced from the celibacy of buddhist priests. The Buddhist responds
with “Let’s put off the answer to this until the human race has actually died out. Then I will tell
you.”, which ended the conversation. At first I almost thought that this was going to defend
antinatalism because of how good the argument was. Why should we care about something that
will cause no harm to anyone? If the human race is extinct then we are all dead meaning that it
will not matter to us.
Some interesting perspective that was brought up in this article that I actually enjoyed
reading about and made me think was that antinatalism suggests that humanities problems are
only able to be solved by human extinction. It is making antinatalism sound lazy in comparison
to figuring out what our problems are and actually solving them rather than throwing everything
out and dying off. I am not entirely sure what to think about this yet as there are numerous
problems with the world and I would have to think about them individually. Another concept was
that non-existence was humanities ‘natural state’. The article didn't elaborate on it because the
author stated he didn't know what it meant but this is something I would like to look into further.
The sources I would like to use for my argument supporting antinatalism is the book
‘better to have never been’ by David Banater as well as the article ‘Meaning to the Rescue?’ by
Loaraine Yeung. This article discusses how having children gives adults meaning and can
prevent them from suicide. This is creating a loop of people living for someone else and then
making a person that will eventually live for someone else. The solution proposed in this article
was adoption, which seems like the most reasonable option.

Works Cited

Smyth, Nicholas. “What Is the Question to Which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer?” Ethical Theory
& Moral Practice, vol. 23, no. 1, Feb. 2020, pp. 71–87. EBSCOhost,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-020-10070-7.

Zandbergen, Robbert. “Unfeigning the Delusion: Antinatalism and the End of Suffering.”
Philosophy Compass, vol. 17, no. 9, Sept. 2022, pp. e1–8. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=phl&AN=PHL2433997&site=ehost-live&sco
pe=site.

Yeung, Lorraine K. C. “Meaning to the Rescue?” Think: Philosophy for Everyone, vol. 21, no.
62, Sept. 2022, pp. 73–85. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=phl&AN=PHL2437323&site=ehost-live&sco
pe=site.

You might also like