Now, let us consider the Harm Premise. It does seem completely plausible that, in normal circumstances, it’s wrong to cause someone harm without consent. The “in normal circumstances” clause is there to escape some obvious exceptions. In some emergency situations, like if you have been attacked, it wouldn’t be wrong to use reasonable force to defend yourself. Similarly, if someone is about to be hit by a train, you would be completely justified in pushing them out of the way even though the fall might hurt them.
In most cases the Harm Premise will seem correct because, in general, harming someone is wrong anyway, but there are circumstances when it might be necessary. If someone has a disease, they may require a painful surgery, but if it saves the person’s life we usually think it’s better if they go through with it, than get killed by their ailment. Even in cases like that, however, when it seems clear that the other person would benefit overall, if there is to be any harm, you should get the person’s permission first. That’s why we have consent forms.
So, after a brief look, the argument looks okay. You shouldn’t cause anyone harm without their permission. If you conceive a child or create an autonomous monster, you will condemn them to a great deal of harm (and you can’t get their permission). So, you shouldn’t conceive a child or create an autonomous monster.
When responding to an argument with an apparently problematic conclusion, like that proposed above, there are three main responses that philosophers could venture upon. First, we might question the reasoning we’ve gone through to take us from the premises to the conclusion. An argument is valid if its premises entail the conclusion. If something has gone wrong in the reasoning, it is invalid.
Another possibility is that we could challenge one of the premises. Even if an argument is valid, it might not be sound. An argument is sound if the reasoning is fine and all the premises are true. If one of the premises is dubious, the argument is compromised. Alternatively, we could question whether the conclusion is actually as bad as it first appears. We might “bite the bullet” and just try to explain why that conclusion strikes us as so off-putting, but still accept that it is likely to be true.
Non-identity of Monsters?
The most likely problem in the reasoning from the premises to the anti-natal conclusion relates to the “non-identity problem.” This is a major problem when considering the ethics of future people’.1 If a person doesn’t exist, how is it possible to wrong them?
Normally when a harm is caused, a subject of the harm is identifiable. If you attack someone with a pitchfork, the person or creature attacked is harmed. When that person hasn’t been born, or made, that person doesn’t exist yet. You certainly can’t attack a non-existent person with a pitchfork. So we might say that the Harm Premise is true, but the claim that it is wrong to inflict harm upon an autonomous being would be restricted to autonomous beings that actually and currently exist.
Considering this train of thought might make us think that we could accept both premises and still deny the conclusion that it is wrong to create life. Yet despite this argument, ordinary reasoning suggests that persons who don’t exist can be harmed, and that it is wrong to do so.
Consider the following situation: Dr. Frankenstein has constructed a body and is ready to infuse it with life, but he realizes at the last minute that the brain is damaged. He could turn on his machine and activate the body, but the resulting Adam would be seriously mentally impaired. Alternatively, he could build or dig up a new brain. The creature that came to exist, we may imagine, would be completely different and perhaps not at all mentally impaired, and have a higher quality of life.
In this example, we might say that he should wait and build the non-impaired creation. We could even suggest that if Frankenstein were to activate the first body, with its defects, that that creation would live in constant and intense pain. In this case, it certainly seems wrong to bring that creature into life.
However we respond to the non-identity problem, it seems that we must, somehow come to the conclusion that acts can wrong people of the future. The mere suggestion that we can’t identify a specific existing person harmed doesn’t seem to escape the anti-natalist conclusion. Perhaps there is a solution here. Maybe it lies in thinking about how and why our obligations to actual people differ from our obligations to future people. This is something that might be interesting to think about, but for the sake of continuing the discussion, I will assume that the argument is valid.
Aside: Non-autonomous Monsters?
Strictly speaking, you might argue that the conclusion of this argument isn’t really anti-natalist. It rules out the building of autonomous monsters, or having autonomous offspring, but doesn’t say anything about sentient but not autonomous monsters or offspring. You might create Franken-fish—fish created by a similar method to that used by Frankenstein—for example. Similarly, you might have children that you do not intend to reach a level of mental development sufficient to count as autonomous.
While breeding Franken-fish seems fairly innocuous, deliberately creating human beings never to become autonomous seems horrific. However, it is not ruled out by the conclusion. That is mainly because the scope here is autonomous beings, and as such is not exhaustive. The argument’s conclusion says that breeding autonomous life is wrong, but that doesn’t mean breeding any non-autonomous life is permissible.
The Harm Premise is Wrong . . . ?
The second response that we might have to this argument is questioning the premises themselves. If an argument is valid and the premises are true, the argument is classified as sound, which means that the conclusion must be true. If it is merely valid, it means one (or more) of the premises could be false, so the conclusion doesn’t definitely follow. With only two premises, we’re fairly limited in what we might question! As I’ve suggested before I find the Inevitability Premise fairly obvious (but I promise I will reconsider it before the end). Why then, should we accept the Harm Premise?
Instead of the Harm Premise given above, you might think we could have a much simpler premise, like “It is wrong to cause harm.” As suggested in the surgery case, the train case or the self-defense case mentioned above, we need something a bit more sophisticated because sometimes causing some harm, in the end, is the right thing to do. We can find causing some harm a source of entertainment. Consider contact sports, like ice hockey or American football. Often people will be harmed while participating, but it would seem mistaken to say it’s wrong to play.
Perhaps then a premise of the sort “It is wrong to cause harm, unless it is for a greater good.” This would explain what is right to do in the surgery case, the train case and the self-defense case. Something like this, if followed by everyone, would also guarantee that all harms only happened for a “greater good,” which sounds nice. If we reject the Harm Premise in favor of something like this, we can then say that it’s okay to have babies or build monsters because it’s for the best in the long run.
If the Harm Premise Is Wrong, Why Does It Seem So Right?
One problem with accepting that’s it’s okay to harm for a “greater good” is that it’s unlikely that everyone would agree on a “greater good,” so disagreements would certainly ensue. It’s also very difficult to know what consequences an action will have, so although you might think you’re hurting someone for a greater good, you might be mistaken.
In The Bride of Frankenstein, once the monster makes friends with the blind hermit, he seems content to learn and enjoy the company of his new friend. It would probably have been for the best if he was left there out of trouble and learning. When the townspeople enter, however, they think the best thing to do is to drive the monster out, which leads to the hovel being burnt to the ground.
This objection to the “it is wrong to cause harm unless it is for a greater good” premise is an objection to the ability to apply the premise, not to the premise itself. You might think that the premise is right, but that it is, in practice really difficult to tell what the “gre
ater good” is. Against this, we might ask about people who knowingly do things that are bad for themselves. Consider a smoker, or fairly heavy drinker. Let’s say that they’re not addicted (or depressed, incapable, or anything that would compromise their ability to make autonomous decisions), that they accept that in the long run they are causing themselves harm, and yet continue anyway. They do it in private, so no one else is harmed by their smoking or bothered by their drinking. If you took their cigarettes or alcohol away, let’s say for the sake of this argument (we might not think it’s true in real life) that they would have a better life. Is it okay to take away their possessions (broadly construed, harming them) for their own good? If you don’t think so, the only reason why seems to be that as autonomous agents should be allowed to do such things, in accordance with the Harm Premise.
If that example didn’t persuade you, imagine Dr. Frankenstein has a friend who will soon die without a new kidney. He remembers that he put two perfectly good kidneys into Adam, both of which would be perfectly suitable. Realizing that Adam might not want to donate them, he tranquilizes him, steals a kidney and gives it to his friend. Both of them go on to live full lives. Presumably this was for a greater good, but is stealing organs without permission acceptable behavior? We could quickly amend the suggested premise to need a greater good for the person harmed, but then we still have cases where someone could have life-improving surgery, but chooses not to. It still seems wrong for a surgeon to perform unsolicited surgery. The Harm Premise again seems to be a much more reasonable notion.
One explanation for why we might think this is offered by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). In On Liberty, he suggests that the foundation of a free state should be that everyone—all autonomous beings—should be able to do whatever they want, just so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. As an autonomous individual, you have the right to make mistakes, to do stupid things with your life: people themselves should be able to choose what they want to do with their lives. This is why consent is important when doing something that’s likely to involve harm to others, even if it’s for the best.
This is supported by common criticisms against authorities. Governments are often criticized for “butting in,” trying to control peoples’ lives. If a person or group of people are partaking in an unusual activity, you might say “leave them alone; they’re not hurting anyone.” We think they have the right to act as weirdly as they like, even if we think they’d be better off if they stopped.
The Harm Premise gets a lot of intuitive support from our practices, as well as our view of rights. It seems to be for the very reasons that we would accept the Harm Premise that we have a dislike for overly paternalistic or controlling government policies. I accept that we might think that something is wrong with the Harm Premise, but rejecting it seems to require coming up with new answers for a lot of important questions about how people should live together and the rights to one’s own life.
Why Do We Resist So Much?
The final option, when faced with an argument like this, is to “bite the bullet,” to accept the weird conclusion. Here, that means accepting that it’s wrong to have children or build Adams. By any standards, that’s a pretty big bullet to bite!
The twentieth-century philosopher G.E. Moore rejected a skeptical argument in a way that became known as a “Moorean shift.’ An argument that called knowledge into doubt concluded that you can’t know anything about the exterior world, even simple things like knowing that you have hands. Without responding to the actual argument, Moore claimed that he did know that he had hands, so the argument was wrong. That it is permissible to have children doesn’t sound like such an immediate fact as having hands, so this response doesn’t seem available, but it does seem persuasive. In a situation where we’re faced with such a counterintuitive conclusion, the very least we can do is explain why we find it so counterintuitive.
David Benatar suggests that one reason for this might be our pro-natal bias and provides several examples of this.2 It makes sense that we would have an inherent pro-natal bias. Every person alive today is the descendant of generations of procreators. If a person was to have an anti-natal genetic predisposition, they would presumably be less likely to produce offspring, and this disposition would be winnowed out of the gene pool. This explanation doesn’t apply to what Dr. Frankenstein does, which might provide one reason why it seems convincing to us that he is wrong in creating life the way he does, whereas doing so the “normal” way seems acceptable. Our pro-natal genetic bias makes us think it’s okay to have kids, but we still think it’s weird or creepy to build Adam.
There is obviously something very natural about having children and that point can’t be suggested for anything Dr. Frankenstein creates. There isn’t any reason to think, however, that because something is natural, it is also good. Pain, suffering, and disease all came about naturally, but we don’t generally think of these as good. We might think that it’s in our nature to reproduce, but saying this is only to admit that we naturally possess a pro-natal bias. Such a bias might still lead us to act wrongly.
As well as having a genetic pro-natal bias, we might also be seen as having a pro-life bias. Clearly self-preservation is required so that people can reproduce, so a disposition to stay alive, even if that might not be the best thing for you to do, is more likely to result in procreation. David Benatar suggests that people have an “unduly rosy picture” of how good their lives are, so though many people might believe that their lives have been good, that the benefits of life have outweighed the harms they’ve suffered, they are often mistaken (p. 59).
Benatar argues that this confuses people into mistakenly thinking their lives are good, while actually every life is a harm. That’s a very strong claim, which you might enjoy thinking about, but my argument doesn’t need anything that strong. This sort of “unduly rosy” view of our own lives could provide more explanation as to why we think creating other autonomous beings—human or monstrous—is permissible.
Our pro-natal bias isn’t just genetic. There is a social expectation in many cultures that we will, and perhaps should, get married and have children. People who don’t have children are often seen as weird. Once again, opting to rear life in a different way, whether it’s like Dr. Frankenstein by creating your own monsters or like someone who instead rears lots of cats, is seen as weird. Doesn’t it seem odd that choosing not to have children is financially beneficial, allows a person to spend more of their leisure time doing whatever they want and doesn’t cause any gross physical inconveniences like pregnancy, yet it is perceived as the weird choice?
There are also government policies which exhibit pro-natal biases. A state would obviously struggle in the long term if no one was reproducing. Before too long there would be fewer people in the workforce, having to support an elderly population. To prevent that, governments with low birth-rates are likely to introduce extra benefits for couples having additional children. That there is a pro-natal bias at work genetically, socially and institutionally goes some way to explaining why we might be so reluctant to accept an anti-natal conclusion.
The Remaining Options and the Shocking Conclusion
Our options are to find a problem with the reasoning, reject the Harm Premise or accept anti-natalism. One alternative is to see if we can work around the Inevitability Premise. All autonomous human beings—unless genetically altered or perhaps under a permanent drug induced bliss—will experience some harm. What about autonomous monsters? If Dr. Frankenstein was to tinker in such a way with Adam’s brain, such that he cannot experience harms, Adam would be exempt from the argument.
Whether it is actually possible that a being could exist in such a way that they couldn’t be harmed might be questioned though. It’s perfectly coherent that a person might experience no physical pain. The condition known as CIPA (Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis) makes a person unable to perceive pain, along with any other nerve-related sensations, but they may certainly still be ha
rmed. They have goals and dreams like anyone else, and the prevention of succeeding in those goals would still count as harms. As not only physical pain, but also the hindering of one’s interests can count as harms, it is difficult to see how a person could be immune to harm.
Perhaps we could imagine an Adam who experiences no pleasure or pain, has no interests, no hopes and no dreams. Let’s call him Robotic Adam. Alternatively, let’s imagine that Dr. Frankenstein has worked on a special brain to be perfectly satisfied by everything that happens, named Super Adam. Every moment in Super Adam’s life is perfect. Perhaps he has hopes and dreams, but they are all so minimal (or lucky) that they are all satisfied, and because of his constitution, he never gets tired of this, never bored of the bliss, and never valuing any moment less than the last. I don’t know if Super Adam is at all possible, but something of this sort would escape the Inevitability Premise.
So now I’ve explained why having kids is wrong. So don’t do it! No monsters either, unless you can build Super-Adams! I’m kidding . . . kinda, but it is something to think about. You probably want to reject the Harm Premise of the argument, but why? If you think it just feels wrong, you might be just as mistaken as Dr. Frankenstein. At the time, he felt he was doing the right thing too. It does make you wonder, are we really doing the right thing when we have children . . . or monsters?3
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1The non-identity problem was introduced by Derek Parfit in his 1987 book, Reasons and Persons.
2Better Never to Have Been, p. 9.
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