Over/Under-appreciated Philosophy?

David Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been" -- Underappreciated Philosophy?

I received the following anonymous submission today:

I found out about the book I'd want to suggest via a SEP entry, so there is at least some attention to it in the field. Still, I'm suggesting it for a post because I think it does not get the attention (neither the appreciation nor the criticism) it deserves. It's called "Better Never To Have Been" by Prof. David Benatar of Cape Town. Its central claim is that being born is a considerable harm to every person that is born. In a nutshell (and in my words) I would summarize his central argument as follows: Absence of suffering is always a good thing, even if there is no being that experiences the absence. But absence of pleasure is only a bad thing if there is a being capable of experiencing the absence. Considering that there is always some suffering in the life of every being capable of experiencing it, a world in which no such beings exist is always morally better than a world in which some exist.

I would like to see more discussion about this book, mainly because I myself am not sure if any of it holds water. Neither do I know what it implies if Benatar is right (or if he's wrong, for that matter).

As someone who has read Benatar's book, I'd like to second this submission. Although I recall being unconvinced by an argument or two, on the whole I found Benatar's book fascinating and persuasive. If Benetar is right -- and I am very much persuaded that he may be (see below) -- it is always morally wrong to have children. The book is notable not only for defending such a provocative conclusion, but for doing a damn good job of it.

A few remarks on the book's arguments. First, Benetar argues forcefully (in my opinion) that common arguments for its being better to live a human life than never to live at all -- for instance, that the good of a human life tends to outweigh the bad, that we tend to want to live rather than die, etc. -- all fail. If I recall correctly (I read the book a while ago), there is plenty of evidence that (1) there is significantly more bad (suffering) than good (happiness) in most human lives, and (2) the mere fact that people don't want to die is no evidence at all that it is good to live: the best explanations of why we want to live are (A) the sunk-cost fallacy (human beings tend not to want to quit things they have invested time and energy in), and (B) a natural, evolutionarily-implanted desire to live (which is no evidence of actual value in a human life, just a nearly-unavoidable, irrational, implanted desire to not die). Second, Benetar argues that even if some human lives have more good than bad, it is morally wrong to have children when the probabilities favor the opposite (most human lives have more bad than good).

Part of what I find so persuasive about Benatar's book is his claim that if we are honest with ourselves -- if we are openminded, rather than merely reactive -- the claims he is making about human lives are, well, pretty obvious. And I have to say that, when I am honest with myself, it seems to me that the claims he makes are, if not obviously true, then at least very plausible. For when I think honestly about my life, and the lives of people I know, I see what he sees. Look, I've been pretty darn lucky in life. I've had good parents, was raised well, was lucky enough to be born into the most wealthy and powerful nation on earth...and yet, it seems to me that my life has had significantly more pain and disappointment than happiness. Yes, I have had some incredible moments of happiness: getting married, getting my PhD, publishing my first article. But these were but a few moments of intense joy over the course of several decades. Life's disappointments have been far greater in number and more permanent in severity.  There are daily stresses, of course. Daily life often has more difficulties and worries than joy.  Then there are things like grief over the death of loved ones -- kinds of pain and suffering that almost never fade. Then there are the many, "What ifs?" -- things one could have done but didn't -- as well as ordinary mistakes in life (which cannot be changed, and profoundly affect one's life prospects; I myself have many regrets). And of course all of our lives will end in tragedy: with death, often painful death. And again, I am one of the (very) lucky ones.

Then there are the unlucky among us: people who suffer from mental or physical illnesses through no fault of their own, people who suffer profoundly bad luck (think: families of 9/11 victims or everyday victims of violent crime, people whose children die as a result of accidents), and so on. I have known some of these people, and have seen (and in some cases, shared) their suffering.

In short, when I am being honest with myself, Benatar's basic point seems right: although some small percentage of human beings may live truly charmed lives -- living their hopes and dreams -- human life, for most of us, is really quite dreadful on the whole, containing far more pain, disappointment and suffering than joy. We have all kinds of ways of rationalizing our lives to ourselves: ways of trying to convince ourselves that our lives are pretty good. But again, when I am honest with myself, all of the apologies for life realy do ring hollow to me. And insofar as they do, Benatar's argument persuades me: I am not sure at all that it is morally permissible to have children. What gives me, or anyone else, a moral right to take such chances with the life of another? What gives me, or anyone else, a right to bring into the world a human being whose life is likely to contain significantly more bad than good? 

Miriam Ronzoni's "The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice? A Practice-Dependent Account" -- Underappreciated Philosophy?

Patrick Taylor Smith has submitted the following post:

If you work in global justice, you are probably familiar with (and sick of) what might be called 'the basic structure' debate that started with Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations. Briefly, if you are a relational egalitarian, then you think that co-membership in some set of institutions or co-participation in common practices* is necessary to activate or trigger obligations of egalitarian distributive justice. Of course, there is considerable disagreement between relational egalitarians concerning which institutions or practices appropriately undergird claims of equal distributive consideration (which is not necessarily the same strict equality of distributive shares, since egalitarian distributive justice presumably can include something like a difference principle, but you get the idea). Furthermore, there is disagreement at the global level about how to properly characterize global governance and economic institutions. So, the 'basic structure' debate concerns whether the appropriate institutions exist at the global level (that is, do global institutions constitute a basic structure?) that justify a global-egalitarian distribution of the benefits of social cooperation. Generally speaking, those who think that the basic structure is essentially coercive say 'No, there is no global basic structure' while those who think that the appropriate institutions are those that structure cooperative and productive activity say, 'Yes, there is.' **

 I don't think it is too controversial to say that this debate, if not utterly stale, has reached the point where one might suspect that the moves have gotten a bit baroque. But Miriam Ronzoni's article, 'The Global Order: A Case of Background Injustice?' does a really excellent job of giving the debate some new life. See, most of the foregoing debate has been about, if I may, the ontological question: is there a global basic structure that triggers a global demand for egalitarian distributive justice? Yet, Ronzoni asks, 'Should there be a global basic structure even if there isn't one right now?' Rawls, for example, more or less assumes that we have a domestic basic structure and that a global one is unnecessary, end of discussion. Most people have objected to Rawls by saying there is a global basic structure (a claim I find pretty implausible), whereas Ronzoni's piece offers a whole new avenue for discussion: why do we have basic structures and when should we create them? So, she argues that we should build a global basic structure in order to handle certain problems that we simply cannot reasonably expect even relatively just states to handle bilaterally in the realm of international politics.

Anyway, as you can perhaps tell, I'm very much on board with thinking about global justice in these terms*** Yet, the few times I have mentioned the Ronzoni's view to senior people, I've gotten blank stares. As I'm very impressed by this article (which isn't to say I agree with everything in it), and I really think that we can breathe new life into the global egalitarian justice/global basic structure debate if we attended to it more carefully, I consider it quite under-appreciated.

* People should be the lookout for a paper of Kristina Meshelski's (http://csun.academia.edu/KristinaMeshelski/CurriculumVitae) where she argues that relational egalitarians should focus on structures instead of practices or institutions.

** See my forthcoming SEP Entry on 'International Distributive Justice' with Michael Blake for a deeper analysis of these positions.

***This is also one of the reasons that I think early modern political theory is especially relevant these days. Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and company were dealing with a world where the modern state was still in an inchoate form, so there were dealing with a developing institutions.