How Best to Prevent Future Persons From Suffering: A Reply to Benatar

Abstract

David Benatar claims that everyone was seriously harmed by coming into existence. To spare future persons from this suffering, we should cease having children, Benatar argues, with the result that humanity would gradually go extinct. Benatar’s claim of universal serious harm is baseless. Each year, an estimated 94% of children born throughout the world do not have a serious birth defect. Furthermore, studies show that most people do not experience chronic pain. Although nearly everyone experiences acute pain and discomforts, such as thirst, these experiences have instrumental value. For example, when a person picks up a hot object, in response to the pain, the person releases the object, thereby preventing serious harm. The standard that Benatar uses to evaluate the quality of our lives is arbitrary, as I will demonstrate. His proposal that we phase humanity out of existence by ceasing to have children is misguided and an overreaction to the problem of human suffering. The ‘threshold conception of harm’, which is a targeted approach for preventing future persons from suffering, is a more sensible approach.     

The exploitation solution to the Non-Identity Problem

When discussing exploitation, we often say things like this, “sweatshop laborers have terrible working conditions and are paid almost nothing, but they are better off with that labor than with no labor.” Similarly, in describing the Non-Identity Problem, Derek Parfit points out: we cannot say that the individuals born in future generations are worse off because of our destructive environmental policies because the particular people living in those future generations wouldn’t even exist if it were not for these destructive policies. How can we explain these cases, exploitation and environmental destruction, as ones of wrongdoing when the victims in both cases are no worse off than they would have otherwise been? This paper investigates the link between these two moral puzzles and ultimately uses one to solve the other: an exploitation solution to the Non-Identity Problem.     

Ethical reflections on the status of the preimplantation embryo leading to the German embryo protection act

Ethical conflicts have always been connected with new techniques of reproductive medicine such as in-vitro fertilization. The fundamental question is: When does human life begin and from which stage of development should the embryo be protected? This question cannot be solved by scientific findings only. In prenatal ontogenesis there is no moment during the development from the fertilized oocyte to a human being which could be recognized as an orientation point for all ethical problems connected with the question of the right to dispose of prenatal life (interruption of pregnancy, research on embryos). The protection of an individual human life must be valid for all in the same manner and from the very beginning on. It must not depend on value judgments or on stages of development, so-called grades of humanity, because these would then become selection criteria. Procreated life must have the right to be born. These were the essential ethical arguments which led to the German Embryo Protection Law.     

Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives

Most people are skeptical of the claim that the expectation that a person would have a life that would be well worth living provides a reason to cause that person to exist. In this essay I argue that to cause such a person to exist would be to confer a benefit of a noncomparative kind and that there is a moral reason to bestow benefits of this kind. But this conclusion raises many problems, among which is that it must be determined how the benefits conferred on people by causing them to exist weigh against comparable benefits conferred on existing people. In particular, might the reason to cause people to exist ever outweigh the reason to save the lives of existing people?     

Withdrawing Versus Withholding Freedoms: Nudging and the Case of Tobacco Control

Is it a stronger interference with people's freedom to withdraw options they currently have than to withhold similar options they do not have? Drawing on recent theorizing about sociopolitical freedom, this article identifies considerations that often make this the case for public policy. However, when applied to tobacco control, these considerations are shown to give us at best only very weak freedom-based reason to prioritize the status quo. This supports a popular argument for so-called “endgame” tobacco control measures: If we believe that cigarettes would and should be withheld from entering markets in hypothetical scenarios in which they do not yet exist, then we also have reason to seek their abolition in situations, such as ours, in which cigarettes do exist—if necessary by banning their sale. The same considerations are then used to disarm objections that have recently been raised to using nudges in public policy.     

What’s wrong with human extinction?

Abstract

This paper explores what could be wrong with the fact of human extinction. I first present four reasons why we might consider human extinction to be wrong: (1) it would prevent millions of people from being born; (2) it would mean the loss of rational life and civilization; (3) it would cause existing people to suffer pain or death; (4) it would involve various psychological traumas. I argue that looking at the question from a contractualist perspective, only reasons (3) and (4) are admissible. I then consider what implications this limitation on reasons has for the wrongfulness of various forms of human extinction.     

The Apology Paradox

Some leaders and citizens think it appropriate to apologize for historical injustices like slavery or the dispossession of indigenous people. But can we sincerely say 'Sorry' for the deeds of our forebears? By making an apology we are expressing regrets for what they did: we are saying that we prefer that these deeds had not been done. However, if these deeds had not been done, history would have been different, and probably we would not exist. Since most of us are glad to be alive, it seems that our apologies must be insincere. I discuss a number of proposed solutions to this paradox.     

The Benefits of Coming into Existence

This paper argues that we can benefit or harm people by creating them, but only in the sense that we can create things that are good or bad for them. What we cannot do is to confer comparative benefits and harms to people by creating them or failing to create them. You are not better off (or worse off) created than you would have been had you not been created, for nothing has value for you if you do not exist, not even neutral value.     

THE COLLAPSE OF OLIGARCHIC CAPITALISM AND THE RISE OF REGENERATIVE LEARNING: HOW THE SCIENCE OF ENERGY SYSTEMS CLARIFIES WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY AND WHAT COMES NEXT

We live in a head-spinning, gut-wrenching time of multiplying crises. At home we face outsourced jobs, crumbling cities, underpaid teachers, unaffordable healthcare, endless wars, political corruption, a co-opted corporate media, skyrocketing inequality, and public “austerity” measures whose main purpose is to make tax-breaks for the rich more affordable. Working-class stagnation is producing widespread anxiety, mounting debt, and “despair deaths” from opioid abuse. Fear is fueling populist outrage, along with extremism, authoritarianism, and the conditions for a fascist takeover. Meanwhile, climate change poses an existential threat to humanity itself. All of these calamities spring from the same root cause: an oligarchic capitalism that puts short-term profit for owners over people and planet. While this system seems immutable, upheavals from Occupy Wall Street to the rise of right-wing populism signal a backlash to a political–economic establishment that treats people and planet as resources to be pillaged and expenses to be minimized. Its failures have also been driving the development of new possibilities in the form of more systemic approaches. Still, while systems thinking has improved approaches in fields from agriculture to medicine, so far none of these reforms have been able to channel public frustration into true transformation because none addresses the root problem: oligarchy. The science of systemic vitality we need is also being born, but so far, its findings are diffuse. This article shows how the science of energy systems can galvanize today’s economic reformation by articulating the common sense rules and rigorous measures of systemic vitality, while anchoring them in an evidence-based vision of humanity as a collaborative learning species. The result is a practical path to building systemic socioeconomic vitality by revitalizing human networks, energizing collective learning, and clarifying why oligarchic capitalism is a distortion of our original democratic free-enterprise dream, which is now careening toward collapse.     

On avoiding bullshit

Author's note: By the time it is published this article will have been written more than a year ago; it was conceived and sketched out in letters to friends as far back as four years past, when the ideas in it would huve been considered quintessentially weird. Some things have changed since then–even since the summer of 1970 the most important being a climate of opinion antong a number of literate people, who are not yet in power anyplace in the world that I know of. Books have been published in the interim, Toper's Future Shock, Matson's The Broken Image, Mumford's The Pentagon of Power, Reich's The Greening of America, among others (Mumford is still the heavyweight); books of disparate vulue which are, nevertheless, symptomatic of the change, none of which I had the opportunity to read before I wrote this article. There are signs that the patient—us—may have a fighting chance. Only a chance, mind you, for there have appeared reactions which grow less subtle day by day, antagonisms that probably could have been predicted by anyone familiar with power's way of justifying its love affair with death. My article attempts to be predictive only to the extent that phenomena which are manifest imply their own futurity; if cause for optimism has appeared like a single power upon a dung heap, that too was always there in the nature of things. And high time!     

《淮南子》人性说探微

《淮南子》人性说之微可见于四个基本方面。道的根本意义是道的人性意义,主要通过圣人境界予以论述,旨在确保真人境界的至上性,为人们贯通了永恒的精神追求之路。人性特征可概括为人性虚静,又从中阐发出人性善;道的自然性表现为人的自然性,伦理当视这种自然的人性为善。由于心的精神性功能,人心才能够显现人性;而人心显现人性是人心通过自我修养与接受圣人教化相结合的两条途径实现的。由德福未必一致的观点推导出祸福由己,德福关系与祸福关系合而为一。     

What Sort of Collective Afterlife Matters and How

In Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler argues that the assumption of a “collective afterlife” (i.e., the assumption that the human race and humanity lives on after our own individual deaths) plays an essential role in us valuing much of what we do. If a collective afterlife did not exist, our value structures would be radically different according to Scheffler. We would cease to value much of what we do. In Part I of the paper, I argue that there is something to Scheffler’s afterlife conjecture, but that Scheffler has misplaced the mattering of a collective afterlife. Its significance lies not in the realm of axiology but more importantly in coming to terms with the fact of death and in viewing our lives as having meaning. In Part II of the paper, I outline three views on the sort of collective afterlife that matters and argue in favor of the view that it must involve creatures that recognize our existence, reasons, values, and contributions (“The Recognition Thesis”) and the view that it must involve creatures that value similar things to us (“The Valuers Like Us Thesis”)—but argue against the view that it necessarily be a human collective afterlife (“The Human Form Thesis”).     

人性视野中的医学

医学的发展应该是技术和人性的协调统一.当前,医学中众多领域存在"重视技术、忽视人性"的弊端.对医学策略、医学教育、医疗实践、医学管理等医学领域中人性关注不足的现象进行分析和评论,认为人性不足制约了医学的发展,呼吁医学的发展应该"以人为本",并提出一些人性化措施.     

Norman Garmezy (1918-2009)

Norman Garmezy, a pioneer in research on risk and resilience, died in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 21, 2009, at the age of 91. He was a legendary mentor as well as an eminent scientist in clinical psychology. Norm was born on June 18, 1918, in New York City and grew up in the Bronx in a Jewish neighborhood where educational attainment was highly valued. The scientific study of resilience as conceived by Norman Garmezy, his peers, and students has transformed the science and practice of multiple disciplines, from the molecular level to the global ecosystem, infusing a strength-based and recovery-oriented approach into psychology, education, social work, and psychiatry. Current research on resilience ranges from studies of plasticity in brain development to effective planning for resilience in the context of disaster. Norm's influential ideas and research earned him international acclaim and many honors for lifetime achievements in science. Throughout his career, Norm held many leadership roles. Throughout his life, Norm spoke with great love about his wife of 63 years, Edie Garmezy (who died just months before him in 2009), and their children. In addition to his work and his family, Norm had three abiding passions-theater, movies, and politics. During the last two decades of his life, Norm and those who loved him endured his long decline from Alzheimer's, which slowly stole his brilliant mind and hilarious sense of humor. Nonetheless, the incredible spirit and humanity of this giant scholar continued to shine through this terrible disease. To the end of his life, Norm's face would light up with a smile as he greeted the people he loved, and he would often exclaim, "Wonderful!" Norman Garmezy was a remarkable person and scholar who left an extraordinary legacy of love and work to inspire future generations in their efforts to understand and promote the human capacity for competence and resilience.     

The Destructive Nature of the Term Race: Growing Beyond a False Paradigm

Originally based on a system of folk taxonomies, the term race has been used to group people by physical appearance, often with disruptive and harmful social consequences. Given that many national and international scientific groups have diminished their use of the term race in the classification of people, it is time for mental health professionals to seriously discuss the role and assess the usefulness of the term race. We recommend that the profession follow the lead of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1950/1978) in taking steps to question the use of the term, which UNESCO views as implying biological significance. In light of the lack of support to retain the term race as a scientific concept, and given the development of a no race position by anthropologists and geneticists, it is time for mental health professionals to become more active in addressing the use of this term. Specifically, although counselors in training are taught to use the term race to refer to cultural aspects of different groups of people, we believe the term itself is passé. In our opinion, the term, in varying degrees, contributes to the formation of false perceptions about various groups of people. These false perceptions are encountered by counselors when working with clients, professionals, and systems.     

弘扬孟子仁政思想精华促进建设和谐小康社会

孟子继承发挥孔子仁学德治思想,提出以民为本的仁政学说,经剔除其封建糟粕,具超时代超阶级的积极意义.孟子仁政说中保民而王、亲亲仁民、与民同乐及制民之产以安民富民的思想,其积极意义、历史贡献须充分肯定,它对我们今天加强党风政风建设,促进加强社会主义政治文明精神文明建设,促进全面建设和谐小康社会,有现实意义,须大力弘扬.     

Self-Corrected Reaching in a Three-Location Delayed-Response Search Task

Infants watched an experimenter hide a toy in one of three wells and then attempted to retrieve it after a brief delay. Seven-month-olds performed at chance. Nine-month-olds reached correctly on 43% of trials, which is significantly better than chance. After an incorrect reach, infants were allowed to choose between the two remaining locations. Seven-month-olds responded at a chance level on their second reach, but 9-month-olds chose correctly more often than would be expected by chance despite a 10- to 20-s delay between hiding and search. One cause of error on the initial reach was a profound bias toward the center well. In Experiment 2, the wells were covered simultaneously, and the infant's spatial orientation was disrupted during the delay; this procedure eliminated the centripetal bias. Nine-month-olds still responded correctly more often than would be expected by chance on their second reach. These findings suggest that 9-month-olds sometimes have a more durable working memory for location than is generally reported for that age group.     

Invited Essay: A New System Of Politics: Government,Governance, And Political Decision Making In The Twenty-First Century

The present system of politics is based on the centrality of economics. This system is not capable of coming to grips with the problems confronting humanity. A culture-based system of politics is required to do this and prevent ecological disaster. This system would make it possible to reduce the demands human beings are making on the natural environment and situate human welfare, environmental well-being, and the public interest at the core of the political process. The risks of such a system could be reduced through cultural education and improved cultural understanding.     

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the other-‘race’ effect: An attempt at integrating different perspectives

Although different human races do not exist from the perspective of biology and genetics, ascribed ‘race’ influences psychological processing, such as memory and perception of faces. Research from this Special Issue, as well as a wealth of previous research, shows that other-‘race’ faces are more difficult to recognize compared to own-‘race’ faces, a phenomenon known as the other-‘race’ effect. Theories of expertise attribute the cause of the other-‘race’ effect to less efficient visual representations of other-‘race’ faces, which results from reduced visual expertise with other-‘race’ faces compared to own-‘race’ faces due to limited contact with individuals from other ‘racial’ groups. By contrast, social-cognitive accounts attribute the cause of the other-‘race’ effect to reduced motivation to individuate other-‘race’ faces compared to own-‘race’ faces. Evidence for both types of theories is still mixed, but progress in understanding the phenomenon has also been hampered by the fact that there has been little crosstalk between these accounts, which tend to be rooted in separate domains of experimental perception science and social psychology, respectively. To promote an integrative perspective on current knowledge on own- versus other-‘race’ face processing, the present Special Issue bridges different psychological subdisciplines, showcasing research using a large variety of methodological approaches and measures. In this guest editorial, we briefly highlight individual contributions to this Special Issue and offer what we see as important avenues for future research on the other-‘race’ effect.     

Respecting Embedded Disability

In certain ways, many disabilities seem to occupy a middle ground between illnesses like cancer and identity‐traits like race: like illnesses, they can present a wide variety of obstacles in a range of social and natural environments and, insofar as they do, they are something we should prevent potential people from having for their own sake; at the same time, those same types of disabilities can be, like race, a valuable part of the identity of the persons who already have them. I consider this seemingly dual nature of a significant class of disabilities to attempt to understand the proper relation of those disabilities to persons and how we should value or respect them. I argue for a distinction between embedded disabilities (e.g. John's blindness) and general disabilities (e.g. blindness‐in‐general); importantly not everyone with a disability will turn out to have an embedded disability. I then show that expressing negative value judgments about general disabilities does not typically express disrespect for people with disabilities — thereby addressing a long‐standing charge made by many in the disabilities community. Finally, I show that unlike with disabilities, expressing negative judgments about the general form of identity‐traits like race does typically express disrespect for people with those identity‐traits.