Death, Extinction, and the Epicurean Fallacy

Your life is (I hope!) better than nothing

Life can be good, in absolute (non-comparative) terms: something that one should be positively glad of, and that is worth promoting (all else equal). When death would deprive someone of a good future, it is comparatively bad (both for the individual, and simpliciter), and we accordingly have strong moral reasons—stemming from both person-directed and undirected beneficence—to promote the better alternative of longer happy life.

An attenuated version of the same reasoning applies to the prospect of failing to bring a good life into existence. This, too, is comparatively bad—but only “simpliciter”, as nothing can be good or bad for those who do not exist. And so we have weaker (only undirected) moral reasons of procreative beneficence, to want new good lives to exist. Still, these can add up, and make the prospect of extinction extremely bad indeed: overall vastly higher stakes than we tend to find elsewhere.

I think these claims are very commonsensical. Others sometimes appeal to confused philosophical reasoning to try to overturn these commonsense claims. In this post, I’ll explain where I think that reasoning goes awry.

The Void consuming all

The Epicurean Fallacy: Death

I had a friend in grad school who emphatically insisted that painless death was no harm, as there would no longer be anyone there to be harmed. (“Where is the harm!?” I can still hear her demand.) I take the most defensible view in this vicinity to be that present existence is a pre-requisite for suffering absolute harms.¹ But it doesn’t follow that death is harmless, because absolute neutrality doesn’t preclude comparative harm: being bad in virtue of depriving you of a future that would have been absolutely good for you.

For ease of reference, let’s speak of the ‘Epicurean fallacy’ as the invalid inference from “no absolute harm” to “no big deal”. So long as the good things in life matter immensely (as we must accept on pain of valorizing the void), their loss can be a big deal! We should strongly prefer that valuable futures be realized. That’s why premature death is such a tragedy. The absolute neutrality of death does not make it an acceptable alternative to continued good life.² Saving lives remains, as commonsense would have it, an important moral priority.

The Epicurean Fallacy: Extinction

Torres seemingly commits the Epicurean fallacy in their defense of the “Equivalence” view that there is no harm in Being Extinct over and above that of Going Extinct:

We argue that there can’t be anything bad about Being Extinct because there wouldn’t be anyone around to experience this badness. And if there isn’t anyone around to suffer the loss of future happiness and progress, then Being Extinct doesn’t actually harm anyone.

This repeats the Epicurean Fallacy of conflating absolute and comparative badness.³ The Void (or Being Extinct) is neutral in absolute terms. But to establish that “there can’t be anything bad” about absolute neutrality, you must first argue that there can’t be any better alternative. If it is possible for existence to be (very) good, then the neutrality of non-existence is comparatively (very) bad.

This elementary observation about the logic of value is why I keep arguing that the void-embracing view is objectionably nihilistic. I think that life can be good! When anti-natalists argue that it would have been better for our children not to exist, that constitutes a deeply disrespectful denial of the value of my son’s life (amongst others). I think that proper respect for persons requires recognizing that our lives, when good for us, are good simpliciter, and make the world (pro tanto) better for their presence. We should, I believe, generally view each other as better than nothing.⁴

Inconsistent Anticomparativism

Some theorists affirm Existence Anticomparativism: the view that the value of existence and non-existence cannot be compared. The idea is that existence cannot be better or worse for you, since the alternative is (for you) “undefined” rather than “zero” welfare. When combined with the individual-affecting principle that outcomes can only be better or worse insofar as they’re better or worse for some individuals or other, it would seem to follow that Being Extinct is unobjectionable.

But this reasoning is fallacious, and nobody follows it consistently. In particular, everyone agrees that miserable existence is morally objectionable, such that we have moral reasons (of procreative beneficence or non-maleficence) to not bring miserable lives into existence. So existence undeniably can be morally compared to non-existence. The easiest way to make sense of this (following Jeff McMahan, iirc) is to hold that miserable existence is non-comparatively bad for the person who endures it. We have obvious moral reasons to avert (uncompensated) non-comparative bads to individuals, instead preferring worlds where they never exist.

Note that there is (as far as I’m aware) no philosophical basis for then denying the same reasoning as applied to non-comparative goods. A happy existence is clearly non-comparatively good for the person who enjoys it. And so we have obvious moral reasons to promote non-comparative goods to individuals, preferring worlds where they happily exist over worlds where they do not.

So individual-affecting principles, at the broadest level of generality, offer no reason whatsoever to deny the possibility of procreative beneficence, or moral reasons to bring good lives into existence.⁵ Principled support for this denial would depend upon a kind of strict anticomparativism that nobody considers acceptable. Instead, defenders of narrow individual-affecting views (i.e., who deny the possibility of procreative beneficence) just posit an ad hoc “asymmetry”, granting non-comparative bads but denying non-comparative goods from existence, without any apparent principled basis whatsoever for the inconsistent treatment of the two. It’s very odd.

(If you know of a principled basis for the asymmetry that I’m missing, please share it in the comments.)

Is the Asymmetry “more intuitive”?

Some people report finding the asymmetry “intuitive”, however unprincipled it may be. I’m not entirely sure what they have in mind here, since the asymmetry itself is a rather abstruse technical claim that has many implications, some intuitive (no procreative obligations!), others decidedly less so (denying that our kids are better than nothing, or that utopia is better than a barren rock). But the intuitive implications are also securable without the asymmetry, whereas the costly implications seem distinctive to the view. So that makes it look pretty bad overall, in reflective equilibrium.

(See also ‘Puzzles for Everyone’, where I rebut the common misconception that denying value to creating happy lives suffices to avoid “repugnant” quantity-quality tradeoffs. There I argue that the problems simply re-emerge within a life.)

All in all, I’m not aware of any undefeated reason to deny that our lives can have (absolute) value, short of outright nihilism. But if you think I’m missing something, counterarguments are welcome, as always.

Why it matters

I think there are many reasons to care about this abstract theoretical issue.

First, as indicated above, I think it’s essential to properly valuing people. It’s deeply disrespectful to deny that another person (who is, themselves, happy to exist) is better than nothing. We should not regard each other’s existence with bleak indifference.

Second, it makes a significant difference to how we view the prospect of extinction. Yes, even “standard” (narrowly near-termist) cost-benefit analysis entails that global catastrophic risk reduction should be a major public-policy priority, just based on the risk to the existing population. But the wrong view here could easily motivate anti-natalist “voluntary human extinction”, which would be literally the worst thing ever. It’s really worth not making mistakes that astronomically great.

Third and finally, the pro-existence⁶ view entails further interesting philosophical updates (esp. concerning how to think about ordinary “risk aversion” and “harm/benefit asymmetries”), as I argue in ‘Don't Valorize the Void’.

1. Though I’m personally inclined to reject even this principle. I think it makes sense to believe in posthumous harms, e.g. to the enduring success of one’s projects, which could make a timeless difference to one’s lifetime (success and hence) well-being.

2. Though it’s true that some fates would be even worse. So death may be acceptable—indeed, positively welcomed—when the realistic alternative would be worse.

3. Also worth noting that the foundational insight of all population ethics is the non-identity problem that you can’t infer “not anything bad about it” from “it doesn’t harm anyone” when the act in question affects who exists. This is decisively proven by Parfit’s Depletion scenario. (Follow the link for details.)

4. I’m continually horrified by the fact that many (otherwise decent) people seem to deny this. I think such a denial has a strong claim to being the single most morally abhorrent view held by a non-trivial number of contemporary philosophers. By contrast, I get the sense that most of my colleagues think it is morally worse to have an incorrect view of the metaphysics of gender. I find the whole situation very strange.

5. Two terminological notes: (i) It seems common to speak of “person-affecting” or “individual-affecting” views precisely as those that deny that we have non-instrumental reasons to create happy lives. As indicated, I think this is a mistake. Procreative decisions “affect” the created individual in very obvious—and morally significant—ways! (ii) The term ‘procreative beneficence’ may be most familiar from Savulescu’s principle that parents have reason to try to create happier rather than less-happy lives, insofar as they’re able. Obviously I’m using it in a broader way here, not restricted to “same number” cases, but extended to reasons to procreate at all.

6. I wish “pro-life” wasn’t already taken! Incidentally, see ‘Utilitarianism and Abortion’ if you have any concerns on that account.