Philosophical Vegan Forum

wiki wrote: The typical argument from anti-natalists goes something like this:

"A person can't consent to come into the world, so having children is always wrong"

The obvious rational reply is by analogy: "Infants can't consent to medical procedures so parents consent for them, how is that different?"

This anti-natalist objection to consent by-proxy or substitution is overwhelmingly contradicted in practice with medicine: When somebody is unconscious or unable to consent to medical care (or other immediate issues) we typically rely on professionals and family to consent for them. This isn't seen as a problem, so nobody is acting inconsistently by allowing the will-be family (like the mother) to consent for the birth of her beloved child.

To deal with that problem, anti-natalists may try to draw a superficial semantic distinction about consent, something like:

"The infant is a person and a non-person isn't, in order to consent for somebody you have to be able to identify the person being consented for"

There are many equally obvious problems with this reasoning.

The first and most essential problem (one that makes the point irrelevant and philosophically tone-deaf) is that while anti-natalists may attempt to refute the comparison by drawing an arbitrary semantic distinction between consent for an infant and consent for somebody who isn't born, this remains an arbitrary semantic distinction and nothing more -- it is not a *morally relevant* distinction. The anti-natalist claim completely misses the philosophical significance of substituted consent which is to act in the best interest of the person or not-yet-person when more explicit consent can't be obtained. The spirit of substituted consent is (along with all morally relevant considerations) maintained even if the principle can be argued not to apply on some kind of morally irrelevant technicality.

The second problem is the attempt of anti-natalists to have their cake and eat it too. To turn the semantic nitpick around, if we're dealing with a non-person then consent should not be an issue. Do they have a problem with people lifting rocks because the rocks can not consent to being lifted? We should expect not. If there is no person, then technically, consent should not be an issue: when the act is actually done there is no person, so the act can not be a violation of consent and thus can not possibly be wrong as such a violation. It's much like Epicurus' witty paradox about the fear of death (indeed fear of death itself doesn't make much sense, but a want of life does):

“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?"
-Epicurus
The person simply can not exist when the action to create a person is initiated. Only long after the act is done does a person come into being (in fact of reality, that fetus becomes a person very gradually into childhood) -- at that point consent arguably becomes relevant to actions on that person, but never to actions on a non-person which account for all of those actions prior to the person's actual existing. IF you can credibly point to the eventual person as a victim of the action whose consent was violated, then likewise that will-be-person can be identified for substituted consent in the same way it may be done for an infant or other person unable to consent in medicine.

The third and final problem is the transient and somewhat subjective nature of personhood itself as hinted to above; infants have little or no sense of personhood yet, so how can you identify a *person* in a vessel that does not yet have that capacity? And if we identify the person the infant might become from the cloud of future possibility, how is that any more credible than identifying the person an egg might become from the same? From an egg and a pool of sperm, to a fetus, to an infant, and even to an adult who may still fundamentally change as a person into somebody else, what we're talking about is a cloud of future possibility that is only constricted over time, but never to a certainty. Or instead is a person identified by DNA alone? Then what of identical twins and clones? What are the implications for tumors and abortions? What if the choice to bring a new person into the world pre-identified the egg and sperm used rather than relying on luck? Or what if that choice occurred after fertilization coming from the decision to abort or not? These are questions anti-natalists do not answer because they have no answers for them, all they can do is draw an arbitrary line without justification in attempt to prop up a dogma they have already decided was true without careful consideration.

Red wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 11:00 am Welcome to the forum Steve! Feel free to start a thread, I'm really looking forward to the discussion.

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:48 pm Also @SteveGodfrey, it's better to quote what you're responding to, because wiki pages update pretty often.
You can also link to the history for the edits if you want to, but quoting is easier.

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:39 pm Welcome,

The page has been updated with a section specifically on consent of non-persons:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/inde ... on-persons

wiki wrote: The typical argument from anti-natalists goes something like this:

"A person can't consent to come into the world, so having children is always wrong"

The obvious rational reply is by analogy: "Infants can't consent to medical procedures so parents consent for them, how is that different?"

This anti-natalist objection to consent by-proxy or substitution is overwhelmingly contradicted in practice with medicine: When somebody is unconscious or unable to consent to medical care (or other immediate issues) we typically rely on professionals and family to consent for them. This isn't seen as a problem, so nobody is acting inconsistently by allowing the will-be family (like the mother) to consent for the birth of her beloved child.

To deal with that problem, anti-natalists may try to draw a superficial semantic distinction about consent, something like:

"The infant is a person and a non-person isn't, in order to consent for somebody you have to be able to identify the person being consented for"

There are many equally obvious problems with this reasoning.

The first and most essential problem (one that makes the point irrelevant and philosophically tone-deaf) is that while anti-natalists may attempt to refute the comparison by drawing an arbitrary semantic distinction between consent for an infant and consent for somebody who isn't born, this remains an arbitrary semantic distinction and nothing more -- it is not a *morally relevant* distinction. The anti-natalist claim completely misses the philosophical significance of substituted consent which is to act in the best interest of the person or not-yet-person when more explicit consent can't be obtained. The spirit of substituted consent is (along with all morally relevant considerations) maintained even if the principle can be argued not to apply on some kind of morally irrelevant technicality.

The second problem is the attempt of anti-natalists to have their cake and eat it too. To turn the semantic nitpick around, if we're dealing with a non-person then consent should not be an issue. Do they have a problem with people lifting rocks because the rocks can not consent to being lifted? We should expect not. If there is no person, then technically, consent should not be an issue: when the act is actually done there is no person, so the act can not be a violation of consent and thus can not possibly be wrong as such a violation. It's much like Epicurus' witty paradox about the fear of death (indeed fear of death itself doesn't make much sense, but a want of life does):

“Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?"
-Epicurus
The person simply can not exist when the action to create a person is initiated. Only long after the act is done does a person come into being (in fact of reality, that fetus becomes a person very gradually into childhood) -- at that point consent arguably becomes relevant to actions on that person, but never to actions on a non-person which account for all of those actions prior to the person's actual existing. IF you can credibly point to the eventual person as a victim of the action whose consent was violated, then likewise that will-be-person can be identified for substituted consent in the same way it may be done for an infant or other person unable to consent in medicine.

The third and final problem is the transient and somewhat subjective nature of personhood itself as hinted to above; infants have little or no sense of personhood yet, so how can you identify a *person* in a vessel that does not yet have that capacity? And if we identify the person the infant might become from the cloud of future possibility, how is that any more credible than identifying the person an egg might become from the same? From an egg and a pool of sperm, to a fetus, to an infant, and even to an adult who may still fundamentally change as a person into somebody else, what we're talking about is a cloud of future possibility that is only constricted over time, but never to a certainty. Or instead is a person identified by DNA alone? Then what of identical twins and clones? What are the implications for tumors and abortions? What if the choice to bring a new person into the world pre-identified the egg and sperm used rather than relying on luck? Or what if that choice occurred after fertilization coming from the decision to abort or not? These are questions anti-natalists do not answer because they have no answers for them, all they can do is draw an arbitrary line without justification in attempt to prop up a dogma they have already decided was true without careful consideration.

This seems to cover all objections, but if it does not or there is anything that remains unclear or that you think you have an argument against please share it.
There's also a section above that covering the definition of consent and how it exists on a multi-variable spectrum.

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:39 pm ...

SteveGodfrey wrote: ↑Sun Oct 11, 2020 5:15 am

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:39 pm ...

Here's my response
Fractal Wrongness (Dismissing BS Objections To The Consent Argument)
https://www.minds.com/stevegodfrey/blog ... 4529291264