Abstract
According to the procreation asymmetry, we have strong pro tanto reason to do what prevents someone from coming into a miserable existence—an existence so bad that it would be rational to prefer having never been born—solely because it prevents them from coming into a miserable existence, but we do not have strong pro tanto reason to do what allows someone to come into a happy existence solely because it allows them to come into a happy existence. At best, the fact that an act would create a happy person merely offsets the reasons we have to avoid that act—i.e., an act that would be impermissible because it brings a miserable person into existence could be rendered permissible if it also brought into existence enough happy people. In this paper, I first argue that there is an intuitive asymmetry in the offsetting weight of happy humans and the offsetting weight of happy animals: the offsetting weight of happy animal lives vis-à-vis miserable animal lives appears to be greater than the offsetting weight of happy human lives vis-à-vis miserable human lives. This is the Procreation Asymmetry Asymmetry. I then argue that there is no Procreation Asymmetry Asymmetry. The best explanation of why happy human lives have only weak offsetting weight implies that happy animal lives also have only weak offsetting weight.
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Notes
Cf. Narveson’s famous quip: “We are in favor of making people happy, but neutral about making happy people.” (Narveson 1973, p. 80).
See McMahan (1981), who introduced the name “the Asymmetry”.
Existential benefits and harms are benefits and harms that are consequences of being born. Throughout the paper I will assume that all existential benefits and harms are non-comparative, in the sense that they are the result of existing rather than not existing.
For an argument suggesting that the wellbeing of animals in the wild may not be negative on balance, see Groff and Ng (2019).
It may also impact ongoing debates about “compassionate conservation” (Wallach et al. 2018).
More accurately, it would amount to accepting what Killoren and Streiffer call “Optimific Is Always Okay” for animals, but not for humans. This is one central commitment of what Killoren and Streiffer call “The Hybrid View” (Killoren and Streiffer 2020).
I will use talk of ‘happy lives offsetting miserable lives’ as a pithy way to talk about how adding happy lives might offset our reasons to avoid miserable lives.
The point is frequently put in terms of making people worse off, but I prefer the formulation in the text because it bypasses debates about whether existence can be better or worse for someone than nonexistence.
Among complaint-minimization views, I include Roberts’s variabilism (2011a, 2011b), McDermott’s objection minimization theory (2019), Spencer’s hierachical actualism (2021), Frick’s standard-based approach (2020), and what Bradley (2013) calls asymmetrical necessitarianism. These views differ in important ways. But they all capture the Basic Procreation Asymmetry by locating the morally relevant difference between actual miserable people and merely possible happy people in certain modal facts—i.e., modal facts that I claim give the former, but not the latter, “complaints”. Not all of these views (e.g., Spencer 2021) can be developed in ways consistent with the Moderate Human Asymmetry and the Extreme Human Asymmetry. I remain neutral between the others.
For a way of operationalizing this, see McDermott (2019).
I have been assuming an individual’s complaint against an action that harms them is a function of how the actual value of the action compares to the expected value of its alternatives, assessed ex post. On an alternative view, an individual’s complaints against an action that harms them is a function of the expected value the action and its alternatives hold for the individual, assessed ex ante. On such ex ante views, morality could care only about minimizing complaints without requiring human extinction if there is significant uncertainty as to who will lead lives not worth living. For example, if every possible person is as likely as any other possible person to have a life not worth living, then preventing human extinction may be permissible because it would generate no ex ante complaints. It would generate no ex ante complaints because, for each possible person, avoiding human extinction has a higher expected value than allowing human extinction—there is a high probability that they would be born into a life worth living and only a small probability that they will be born into a live that is not worth living. I set aside ex ante complaint-minimization views here, because they are incompatible with both the Extreme Human Asymmetry and the Moderate Human Asymmetry. On these views, our reason to add one happy human at wellbeing level N can always offset our reason to prevent one miserable human at wellbeing level -N, so long as we do not know in advance who will be happy and who will be miserable. Since there is no relevant sense in which we know who it is that will be happy and who will be miserable in the indefinite future, the expected value of avoiding human extinction for any future human will be positive so long as the number of future happy people exceeds the number of future miserable people. According to the Extreme Human Asymmetry and the Moderate Human Asymmetry, this is too permissive.
The arguments I offer here leave open the possibility that ex ante complaint-minimization views are true, and both the Moderate Human Asymmetry and the Extreme Human Asymmetry are false. The aim of this paper is not to defend the Extreme Human Asymmetry and Moderate Human Asymmetry. It is to argue that if there are such asymmetries for humans, there must be such asymmetries for animals. For prominent views that emphasize the importance of avoiding ex ante complaints to actions or principles, see Frick (2015), Hare (2016), and Kumar (2015).
Parfit ultimately abandons the Limited Quantity View, because he thinks it implies what he calls the “Absurd Conclusion”. But as Mulgan (2001) suggests, we can avoid this implication by placing a limit not only on the value of happy human lives at a time, but throughout all time. Like Mulgan, I believe the best version of the view accepts a “timeless limit on the value of quantity.” (p. 160) Mulgan ultimately rejects the view for other reasons I do not discuss here.
For further criticisms of rights-based explanations of the procreation asymmetry, see Persson (2009).
If the latter is true, then it is more accurate to say that the procreation asymmetry is grounded in a concern “for our fellow loci of interests” rather than our “fellow creatures”. While creatures tend to be unified loci of interests, the hypothesized creatures who live “in the present” are not. Each time slice of the creature is its own locus of interests.
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Lerner, A. The procreation asymmetry asymmetry. Philos Stud 180, 1169–1195 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01954-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01954-2