Confessions of an Antinatalist Philosopher
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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2024-01-02
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en
Pages
19
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Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics
Abstract
Antinatalism assigns reproduction a negative value. There should be fewer or no births. Those who say that there should be fewer births have been called conditional antinatalists. A better name for their view would be selective pronatalism. Those who say that there should be no births face two challenges. They must define the scope of their no-birth policy. Does it apply only to human or sentient beings or can it also be extended to all organic life, perhaps even to machine consciousness? And whatever the scope, they have to justify the eventual extinction of humankind or other life forms, an inevitable consequence of unconditional antinatalism. Different axiologies and moral theories produce different responses to these challenges. It is argued that a two-value conflict-sensitive negative utilitarianism would produce a kind and reasonable justification for ending at least human and factory-animal reproduction. The conclusion is purely moral and supports only voluntary extinction for humankind.Description
Funding Information: The research was supported financially by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland—project decision VN/2470/2022 “Justainability.” Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.
Keywords
antinatalism, copathy, dissense, doctrine of double effect, extinction, negative utilitarianism, pronatalism
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Citation
Häyry, M 2024, ' Confessions of an Antinatalist Philosopher ', Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics . https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180123000634