Better Never to Have Been The Harm of Coming into Existence

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Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 2006-10-19
Publisher(s): Oxford University Press
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Summary

Most people believe that they were either benefited or at least not harmed by being brought into existence. Thus, if they ever do reflect on whether they should bring others into existence---rather than having children without even thinking about whether they should---they presume that they do them no harm. Better Never to Have Been challenges these assumptions. David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one's life make one's life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence. Drawing on the relevant psychological literature, the author shows that there are a number of well-documented features of human psychology that explain why people systematically overestimate the quality of their lives and why they are thus resistant to the suggestion that they were seriously harmed by being brought into existence. The author then argues for the 'anti-natal' view---that it is always wrong to have children---and he shows that combining the anti-natal view with common pro-choice views about foetal moral status yield a "pro-death" view about abortion (at the earlier stages of gestation). Anti-natalism also implies that it would be better if humanity became extinct. Although counter-intuitive for many, that implication is defended, not least by showing that it solves many conundrums of moral theory about population.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1(17)
Who is so lucky?
3(5)
Anti-natalism and the pro-natal bias
8(5)
Outline of the book
13(3)
A reader's guide
16(2)
Why Coming into Existence Is Always a Harm
18(42)
Can coming into existence ever be a harm?
18(10)
Lives worth living and lives not worth living
20(2)
Lives worth starting and lives worth continuing
22(6)
Why coming into existence is always a harm
28(32)
The asymmetry of pleasure and pain
30(10)
Comparing existing with never existing
40(9)
Other asymmetries
49(8)
Against not regretting one's existence
57(3)
How Bad Is Coming into Existence?
60(33)
Why life's quality is not the difference between its good and its bad
61(3)
Why self-assessments of one's life's quality are unreliable
64(5)
Three views about the quality of life, and why life goes badly on all of them
69(19)
Hedonistic theories
70(3)
Desire-fulfilment theories
73(8)
Objective list theories
81(6)
Concluding comments about the three views
87(1)
A world of suffering
88(5)
Having Children: The Anti-Natal View
93(39)
Procreation
93(9)
No duty to procreate
94(1)
Is there a duty not to procreate?
95(7)
Procreative freedom
102(11)
Understanding the purported right
102(2)
Grounding the right on autonomy
104(1)
Grounding the right on futility
105(1)
Grounding the right on disagreement
106(2)
Grounding the right on reasonable disagreement
108(5)
Disability and wrongful life
113(11)
The non-identity problem and the disability rights objection distinguished
114(1)
The `social construction of disability' argument
115(2)
The `expressivist' argument
117(1)
Responding to the disability rights arguments
118(4)
Wrongful life
122(2)
Assisted and artificial reproduction
124(4)
Reproductive ethics and sexual ethics
125(2)
The tragedy of birth and the morals of gynaecology
127(1)
Treating future people as mere means
128(4)
Abortion: The `Pro-Death' View
132(31)
Four kinds of interests
135(5)
Which interests are morally considerable?
140(4)
When does consciousness begin?
144(4)
Interests in continued existence
148(4)
The Golden Rule
152(3)
A `future like ours'
155(5)
Conclusions
160(3)
Population and Extinction
163(38)
Overpopulation
165(3)
Solving problems in moral theory about population
168(14)
Professor Parfit's population problems
168(4)
Why anti-natalism is compatible with Theory X
172(6)
Contractarianism
178(4)
Phased extinction
182(12)
When decreasing population decreases quality of life
182(4)
Reducing population to zero
186(8)
Extinction
194(7)
Two means of extinction
195(1)
Three concerns about extinction
196(5)
Conclusion
201(26)
Countering the counter-intuitiveness objection
202(6)
Responding to the optimist
208(3)
Death and suicide
211(10)
Religious views
221(2)
Misanthropy and philanthropy
223(4)
Bibliography 227(8)
Index 235

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