Category: Benatar

The following post is dedicated to a book called Debating Procreation. The book is divided into two parts. The first one is written by David Benatar, in which he presents 3 arguments for antinatalism. The second part is written by David Wasserman who criticizes Benatar’s arguments and presents a pronatalism argument.

The name of the book is a bit misleading since it is not really a debate but rather two independent monologues. There is no Q&A section or even methodical replies by each side to the other’s arguments. However, Benatar’s half is highly recommended. Obviously it is hard to overcome the primacy of Better Never To Have Been, but in my view this text is much better and for several reasons: the problematic Asymmetry Argument gets less attention (but is still the first argument he displays), the Quality of Life Argument is presented here in an improved form (mostly since there is a greater emphasis on the risk aspect), and most importantly, after being totally absent in Benatar’s previous works, he finally included the harm to others as part of his antinatalism argument. The harm to others, in my view, is the most important antinatalism argument, so I was very pleased to see Benatar successfully and thoroughly construct it.

Unfortunately, he decided to title the harm to others argument as the misanthropic argument, and by that in a way, continue the anthropocentric tradition of focusing on the human race. Surely this part of the text is very unflattering for humanity, but it still focuses on humanity, instead of on its victims, who are supposed to be, at least in the harm to others argument, the center of attention. He calls the first two arguments of his part of the book the philanthropic arguments since they focus on humans as victims of procreation, and he calls the third one the misanthropic argument since it focuses on how destructive and harmful the human race is and so it better not exist. So all three arguments focus on humanity, while it could have easily been framed as antinatalist arguments for the sake of the one who does not yet exit, and antinatalist arguments for the ones who already exist and would be harmed by the ones who will be created, without even mentioning any biological species.

Yet, leaving the title issue aside, the misanthropic argument is in my opinion by far Benatar’s best argument.

Basically it goes as follows:

“The strongest misanthropic argument for anti-natalism is, I said, a moral one. It can be presented in various ways, but here is one:

1. We have a (presumptive) duty to desist from bringing into existence new members of species that cause (and will likely continue to cause) vast amounts of pain, suffering, and death.
2. Humans cause vast amounts of pain, suffering, and death.
3. Therefore, we have a (presumptive) duty to desist from bringing new humans into existence.” (p.79)

Benatar devotes a considerable part of the misanthropic argument section to base the second premise of his argument. Based on some famous social psychology experiments, as well as other evidences from other fields, he details about humans’ violent tendencies, scary conformism and etc. This sub-section is called Human Nature—The Dark Side.
Then he mentions some notorious historical atrocities humans have inflicted on each other, writing: “Humans have killed many millions of other humans in war and in other mass atrocities, such as slavery, purges, and genocides.”

After specifying some of the violence humans inflict on other humans, he goes on specifying violence humans inflict on animals. In this sub-section he reviews the major animal exploitation industries, briefly describing the horrible life in each.

The last part of his foundation of the second premise is the harm that humans cause to other humans and to animals by the destructive effect they have on the environment.
He writes:

“For much of human history, the damage was local. Groups of humans fouled their immediate environment. In recent centuries the human impact has increased exponentially and the threat is now to the global environment. The increased threat is a product of two interacting factors—the exponential growth of the human population combined with significant increases in negative effects per capita. The latter is the result of industrialization and increased consumption.
The consequences include unprecedented levels of pollution. Filth is spewed in massive quantities into the air, the rivers, lakes, and seas, with obvious effects on those humans and animals who breath the air; live in or near the rivers, lakes and seas; or get their water from those sources.” (p.99)

Benatar is aware that most people would reply to his misanthropic argument saying that instead of preventing humans’ procreation we should reduce their destructiveness. But he disagrees:

“we cannot expect that human destructiveness will ever be reduced to such levels. Human nature is too frail and the circumstances that bring out the worst in humans are too pervasive and likely to remain so. Even where institutions can be built to curb the worst human excesses, these institutions are always vulnerable to moral entropy. It is naïve utopianism to think that a species as destructive as ours will cease, or all but cease, to be destructive.” (p.104)

And adds:

“Given the current size of the human population and the current levels of human consumption, each new human or cohort of humans adds incrementally to the amount of animal suffering and death and, via the environmental impact, to the amount of harm to humans (and animals).” (p.109)

And concludes:

Humans would never voluntarily cease to procreate, and would never cease to be destructive. That’s why we must aim at human extinction by forced sterilization.

Pro-Natalism

The second part of the book is written by David Wasserman who argues for the defense of procreation. He begins with a brief critique of Benatar’s asymmetry, mainly by mentioning the familiar aspects which were specified in the post dedicated to it, so there is no point repeating it here. He also criticizes Benatar’s quality-of-life argument, again mainly by mentioning the familiar aspects such as that Benatar offers unduly pessimistic assessments and inappropriately perfectionist standards.
A more interesting claim he makes is regarding the dynamics between Benatar’s asymmetry and his quality-of-life argument, a point which was mentioned in the post regarding extinction and pro-mortalism. Wasserman wonders why Benatar even needs the asymmetry argument (which he calls the comparative argument) and is not sufficed with the quality-of-life argument (which he calls the philanthropic argument), as Benatar:

“does not regard his comparative argument by itself as making the case that all procreation is wrongful. That case also requires his philanthropic argument, which is designed to show just how bad our lives really are. But if it is the magnitude of the harm that gives rise to a complaint, not the conclusion that life is always a harm, then it is not clear what role the comparative argument plays in reaching that conclusion. If careful scrutiny and critical assessment could show that life was very harmful overall for everyone, or almost everyone, then why would it matter for purposes of a moral complaint that it was also disadvantageous in comparison with nonexistence? The extremely high odds of a very bad existence would make procreation wrongful on any reasonable decision rule for risk or uncertainty.” (p.151)

So Wasserman thinks that Benatar should make do with his quality-of-life argument and doesn’t need the asymmetry, but he doesn’t agree with it for reasons which were mentioned above, and since he thinks that not only the risks must be considered but also their probability (which he claims are very low). To that he adds criticism of the attempt to use principles taken from Rawls’s Theory of Justice to constitute an antinatalist argument. Both arguments, the risk and Rawls’s Maximin, are worthy of a separate discussion. The one about risk can be found here, and the one about Rawls’s theory of justice can be found here. Therefore, I’ll not detail them here.

Intuitively, it would make sense to mainly focus here on Wasserman’s counter arguments to the misanthropic argument, given that this is Benatar’s novel argument in this book, and since I think that the harm to others is the most important antinatalist argument. However, Wasserman cowardly, poorly, and extremely speciesistly, evades the argument of the harm to others. His evasiveness is another proof that there is no way to seriously confront this claim. Wasserman’s response to the harm to others argument, as unbelievable as it is two decades into the third millennium, is almost Cartesian, meaning he simply denies the moral validity of animals’ suffering, this is what he wrote:
“I can only respond briefly, in part because I strongly disagree with Benatar’s weighing of the suffering of minimally-sentient animals, a disagreement we cannot resolve here.” (p.166)
Benatar details some of the common horrors done to animals on daily basis in factory farms, laboratories, the entertainment business, and the clothing industry, claiming that: “Humans inflict untold suffering and death on many billions of animals every year, and the overwhelming majority of humans are heavily complicit.” (p. 93) and Wasserman’s reply is that animals don’t really matter. That’s it. His “reply” is simply disgraceful.

Regarding the harms to other humans that Benatar details about as part of the misanthropic argument, Wasserman’s reply is that he disagrees most sharply with Benatar on the implications of human destructiveness and cruelty for individual procreative decisions. And surprisingly, the argument he uses to justify this claim, in my view, undermines moral philosophy:

“I do no think prospective parents must “universalize” about the likely consequences if everyone judged or acted as they do. I think the concerns about the consequences “if everyone did it” have far more relevance for policymakers than prospective parents. Although the latter must be cautious in their predictions about their children and may reasonably have concerns about the fairness and cumulative impact of similar decisions, I believe that they do not need to give this the same weight in their decisions as policymakers or other impartial third parties should in theirs.” (p.167)

Universalizing decisions and acting as policymakers is exactly how ethics should work. That doesn’t imply using Kant’s categorical imperative for any possible case, but Wasserman doesn’t even suggest exceptional cases or anything of this sort. He practically permits people to act as they wish as long as they are not official policymakers, as if only the actions of the latter have consequences. Obviously all actions have consequences, and all consequences must be considered ethically, especially when it comes to actions that everyone can do, like creating a new person.
What’s the point in morality if it is subjective? What exactly is the validation of ethics if every couple can be their own personal policymakers?

I wanted to seriously confront a serious opposition to the misanthropic argument, but Wasserman didn’t provide one. So I’ll focus in the rest of this text on three other points that he makes which I have found worth addressing.

The Good Of The Children

The first point is Wasserman’s claim, and the example allegedly proving that claim, that people can have a child for the child’s sake:

“Here is an example to give some flesh, and plausibility, to the idea that prospective parents can create children for reasons that concern the good of the children, or at least their shared good. Consider a couple who very much want children and decide to adopt. They are normally fertile, but are moved by the need to find homes for the many orphaned children in their country now housed in institutions. This, however, is not their primary reason for adopting; it merely tips the balance. Their reasons include wanting the fulfillment of raising a child from a young age, seeking the uniquely intimate relationship that a child develops with its parents, and giving the child a good home—among the reasons given in surveys of prospective parents. They regard these as reasons that could be served equally well by adoption or conception. Just as they are going to start visiting orphanages, their government prohibits adoption—orphans and abandoned children will be wards of the state, with temporary foster parents in special cases. The couple is very disappointed but quickly decides to go with “Plan B”—they conceive a child for the same reasons.
The point of this example is not just to illustrate that adoption and procreation may be done for similar reasons. As important for my purposes, it suggests the limited role that the actual vs. contingent existence of the child may play in the sorts of reasons prospective parents have. The couple in my example starts by seeking to find a child of their own who already exists, or whose existence is not contingent on their actions. Barred from doing so, they shift to creating a child. But their reasons for doing the latter are largely the same as their reasons for having sought the former. The desire to help existing needy children was just a tiebreaker.” (p.190)

I fail to see the reasoning behind this argument or the explanatory power of this example.
If anything this example proves the opposite. It goes to show that these people want a child of their own, not to help someone in need. If they find no difference in that sense between adopting a child and creating one, then clearly the interests of the child weren’t their motive, as in one option there is an existing child who is orphan and so in need, and in the other option there is no one who needs anything.
It is the parents who wanted the fulfillment of raising a child from a young age. Before they have procreated, that child didn’t exist and so didn’t share their want. It wasn’t in the interests of that child to be raised from a young age. Non-existing persons don’t have interests and no wants, so it can’t be for the good of the child. An existing child on the other hand, does have an interest to be raised from a young age. That’s a very important difference between the two cases.

And same goes for the second reason – no non-existing person is seeking the uniquely intimate relationship that a child develops with its parents. But existing persons – prospective parents, and even more so orphans – probably do. In the case of procreation, seeking the uniquely intimate relationship is the parents’ want imposed on the child they have created.
The last reason is no different. While orphans desperately need a good home, because they already exist but don’t have one, non-existing persons don’t need a home, or anything else for that matter. The need for a good home was created correspondingly with their creation.

There are many ways to really act for reasons that concern the good of the children, but none of them includes creating ones. There are many children who have parents but don’t have other things that would make their lives better, why not focus on them? Why not help children with their homework? Why not volunteer to babysit them every once in a while? Why not starting a children class for free? Why not choose professions that focus on care for the good of the children like being teachers, doctors, social workers, kindergartners, Clown Cares, and etc.?
If it was really benefiting children that was on their mind they would invest most of their time, energy and resources on existing children who are in need, instead of on someone who they have created its need by procreation. It doesn’t make any sense. Anyone who wants to provide a good home for someone in need, who feel they have so much love to give, who want to do good for others, can adopt a homeless dog from a shelter.

Wasserman argues that “For both adoptive and biological parents, the child’s “bare existence” is a necessary condition for fulfilling their primary end but is not, or need not be, a primary end in itself.” (p. 193) But that doesn’t explain choosing the most senseless option. And even if there wasn’t any other option for giving and the only option was truly to create a need, it is still treating someone as a means to an end. The child had neither interest nor any say in being created into existence. The child is a mean to the parents’ ends.

Unfortunately there is no shortage in philanthropist aims in this world, why choose to create a new one and focus on it? With so much misery in the world why create a new need? Doesn’t it make much more sense to focus on an existing need?

If this world lacks love and meaning, what is the point of increasing the number of creatures who need love and meaning? This is the stupidest form of giving.
Or, of course, that it is not really the reason why people procreate. The real reasons are that people feel powerful when someone is totally depended on them, they feel needed and important, it fills the empty and pointless lives of people with meaning, they believe it would save their relationships, it eases loneliness, it soothes their fear of getting old with no one to take care of them, biological impulse, genetical vanity, immortality illusion, continuity illusion, it makes them feel normal, it makes them look normal to others, conformism, stupidity, accident.

Tantrum in the Mall as a Sip of Lifelong Frustration

The second point I want to address is Wasserman’s argument regrading parents’ duty towards their children: “Even the most spoiled child should recognize that his parents do not have a duty to maximally satisfy his interests; that their own interests, as well as those of a myriad of others, appropriately limit their duty to satisfy his.” (p.154)

This claim might be true when that child would grow up but in real time that child suffers. As an adult that child might regret being so spoiled, but that doesn’t serve as compensation for the frustration at not getting maximum satisfaction. The fact that the child is wrong doesn’t make that child less wanting and less frustrated. Many children tend to keep crying and screaming when they don’t get what they want even after they are explained that what they want is exaggerated or that there is no option to provide them everything they want, any time they want it. And that, in my view, holds much more than might seem. Only because it is obvious that children don’t get everything they want, and also because the crying and screaming scene is so common, people don’t stop and think about the fact that they are creating someone who would want everything possible, and would have to compromise on very little of that. They don’t stop and think about the fact that they are creating someone who would be constantly frustrated.
And it doesn’t end at childhood, it continues throughout their whole life. It is only refined along the years, when children learn to suppress some of their desires (which might come out in different ways that are not necessarily more positive), or control their urges and desires (which again, doesn’t always turn out to be better), but this is forever. Frustration is forever.

The crying and screaming scene on the shopping mall floor because the child got a little bit smaller toy than wanted, which have become so familiar that it turned into a parenthood cliché, is much deeper than children being extremely spoiled. There are so many advices for how to deal with these scenes. Most blame the parents. And they are right, but not because they don’t know how to set boundaries for their children, but because they don’t know how to set boundaries for themselves. It is the parents who are too spoiled and selfish and careless about the effects on others. It is them who acted to promote their own interests and so created a toy for themselves. They don’t know how to postpone gratifications and therefore have created a new small unit of exploitation and pollution which doesn’t know how to postpone gratifications.

This scene, which is considered as parents’ initiation, and which some go through several times during a lifetime, has been so normalized, that rarely do people realize that this wanting being they have chosen to create, didn’t have to exist, and now that it does, it constantly wants things and is being constantly limited. Frustration, even when is the product of being spoiled, is still frustration. People must realize they are creating a wanting being which would be constantly unsatisfied. Quieter children who don’t cry and scream when not getting something, are viewed as more mature and better educated children, and less spoiled. That might be true, and they might internalize that being spoiled is not good, but looking at the screaming children getting their toys, makes them frustrated. Some of them want that toy just as much, but they have internalized the expectation of them to suppress their wants.

You can look at the mall scene as merely children being too spoiled, or as lack of parental authority, or the consequences of the snowflake attitude, or the effects of the consumerist society, or a little bit of each. But it is also a window of opportunity to comprehend that creating a child is creating a bottomless pit of wants which can’t be satisfied. Of course this example is totally marginal but it is not trivial just because it is so common. It is a window of opportunity because when children are in a state of tantrum there are almost no emotional impediments. Obviously, these scenes are in many cases very manipulative (children are not yet equipped with many tools to help them get what they want so they use what they have which is crying and screaming and kicking as hard as possible), however, they nevertheless express true helplessness. These incidents often occur when children feel they have no control over the circumstances. They want things but are helpless in getting them. Helplessness can often produce fear as the children are depended on other people’s wishes. These scenes are also much more raw than the customary desires of adults, as they are highly socialized to navigate their desires in more subtle ways.

In light of the horrors Benatar specified in the first part, obviously the mall scene doesn’t only pale but seems absolutely ridiculous. But I am not bringing it up as an example of human frustration, but as an example of the greatest trivialization of human’s most trivial frustration. What makes it interesting is the glimpse it offers for everybody to publicly see how much of a lump of wants a person is, and how much frustration even the most trivial scene contains, and how trivial frustration is in people’s lives. The scene is so trivial that everybody accepts it. The child would learn that we don’t get everything we want in life. Unfortunately the adults don’t learn that they shouldn’t create frustration, even if it is very very marginal.
Parents are forcing their children to give up the toy they want, because they have refused to give up the toys they wanted to create.

Russian Roulette

As mentioned earlier, I have addressed the risk argument in a separate text, so here I’ll make do with a quick note on Wasserman’s remark regarding Benatar’s risk imposition metaphor which according to him:

“gains spurious strength, I suspect, from the Russian roulette simile he employs, which has prospective parents pointing a gun at the head of their future child; a gun with a high proportion of chambers loaded. This simile is misleading. As the literature on the ethics of risk imposition and distribution points out, it matters a great deal if the threatened harm will be imposed intentionally. Shooting someone with a loaded gun is intentionally harming him, even if the discharge of a bullet had been far from certain.” (p.165)

One might argue that the parents are not always the ones who pull the trigger. However, they are definitely the ones who set the target, and they are the ones who load at least some of the bullets.
Parents who know that their children would experience suffering, and every parent knows that suffering is inevitable at least at some point in life, are setting the target. Had that child not been created by them, there would have been no one to shoot at.
They are loading some of the bullets by passing physical and mental traits which their children would suffer from. Other starting points might also affect the life of that child. If the environmental conditions are bad, then the gun is loaded with even more bullets. And if it is quite certain that the child is prone to a serious disease, or that the parents are prone to a serious disease, or have a violent history, for example, then the parents are also pulling the trigger, at least in some rounds, and the other rounds are being completed by other factors.
Since parents are creating persons out of their own will and for their own benefit, they are imposing an intended risk on someone else’s life. They don’t intend to harm their own children, but they intendedly ignore the fact that their children would surely be harmed.

When considering the harm to others, since the parents are the ones who provide their children food, clothes, energy and every other harmful aspect involved with supporting their life, they are definitely held responsible in every possible way. They have created this consuming being which wasn’t there and wasn’t deprived of anything before they have decided to create it, and now it exists, and it is hurting many sentient creatures in many different ways for no justified reason at all.
Considering the enormous harm every person inflicts on others, and the loaded weapon is not a gun, but an aircraft carrier.

References

Benatar David and Wasserman David, Debating Procreation: Is It Wrong to Reproduce?
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)

Benatar, D. Better Never to Have Been (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

After addressing the asymmetry argument, and its supporting asymmetries, the quality-of-life argument, and Benatar’s ‘Pro-Death’ view for abortion, the last post regarding Better Never To Have Been, deals with its sixth chapter. It is mostly about extinction, on which Benatar says:
“My answer to the question ‘How many people should there be?’ is ‘zero’. That is to say, I do not think that there should ever have been any people. Given that there have been people, I do not think that there should be any more. But this ‘zero’ answer, I said earlier, is an ideal answer.” (p. 182)
And: “it would be better if humans (and other species) became extinct. All things being equal, my arguments also suggest that it would be better if this occurred sooner rather than later.”

So far so good, however Benatar divides extinction into two categories:

“It would be helpful to distinguish between two ways in which a species can become extinct. The first is for it to be killed off. The second is for it to die off. We might call the first ‘killing-extinction’ and the second either ‘dying-extinction’ or ‘non-generative extinction’. When a species is killed off, extinction is brought about by killing members of the species until there are no more of them. This killing may be by humans or it may be by the hand of nature (or by humans forcing the hand of nature). By contrast, when a species dies off, extinction is brought about by a failure to replace those members of the species whose lives come to an inevitable natural end.” (p.195)

And argues against one of them:

“There are clear differences between the two. Most obviously, killing-extinction cuts lives short, whereas dying-extinction does not. Although it may be bad for anyone of us to die, it is still worse to die earlier than we need to. Secondly, there is a moral difference between some cases of killing-extinction and cases of dying-extinction. Were anti-natalists to become pro-mortalists and embark on a ‘speciecide’ programme of killing humans, their actions would be plagued by moral problems that would not be faced by dying-extinction. Humans killing their own species to extinction is troubling for all the reasons that killing is troubling. It is (usually) bad for those who are killed, and unlike dying (from natural causes), it is a bad that could be avoided (until dying occurs). Although we can regret somebody’s death from natural causes at the end of a full life span, we cannot say that any wrong has been done, whereas we can say that a moral agent killing somebody, without proper justification, is wrong.” (p.196)

In this paragraph, as well as in interviews and other papers, Benatar emphasises that he is not a pro-mortalist. Some argue that Benatar’s version of antinatalism entails pro-mortalism, but Benatar insists that it doesn’t. His reason is that since non-existence always has an advantage over existence, it is always better not to start a life, but once life has started, existing persons have interests to continue living so we must not act to cut their lives short or stop them once they have started. In fact he claims that death is another reason to be antinatalist “coming into existence is bad in part because it invariably leads to the harm of ceasing to exist” (p.213).

In this post I’ll argue that despite his repudiation attempt, Benatar’s version of antinatalism does indeed entail pro-mortalism, and more importantly, that there are other much stronger reasons to be pro-mortalist and pro-extinctionist, independent of any of Benatar’s arguments.

Extinction and Pro-Mortalism

Benatar argues in the article Every Conceivable Harm:A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism that:

“by itself, the asymmetry argument is insufficient to yield the antiatalist conclusion. It shows that it is better never to come into existence. It does not show how great a harm it is to come into existence. The second argument – what I shall call the quality-of-life argument – reveals the magnitude of that harm. However, the quality-of-life argument can also be understood as a separate argument for the conclusion that coming into existence is a harm.” (p.146)

I’ve specifically addressed the quality-of-life argument in a former post so please read it if you are not familiar with it. Basically the argument is that life is much worse than people tend to think it is, and the reason is that people’s self-assessment of the quality of life is extremely unreliable. Empirical evidence shows that most humans have an optimism bias, which leads them to overestimate the quality of their lives.

Such being the case, why is it only that coming into existence is a harm, but not existence itself? If life is as bad as Benatar argues it is, and if people’s self-assessments of the quality of life are so unreliable, then the fact that most of them state that their lives are worth continuing is also unreliable, and since according to Benatar, for the non-existent, the absence of pain is good, but the absence of pleasure is not bad, then it seems that Benatar’s antinatalism do entails pro-mortalism.

However, as mentioned earlier, Benatar argues against pro-mortalism, and one of his reasons is that he thinks death itself is a harm. When Benatar, like many others for that matter, claims that death itself is a harm, they don’t mean that the dying process is bad for the person who is dying, which is obvious, nor the harm of being aware that death is bound to happen someday, or the feeling that it’s coming close and etc. which is obviously bad for the one who experiences it. Both cases, dying and death in the mentioned sense, are bad experiences, but only as long as a person is still alive. The dead are no longer bothered with dying or death. Another point worth mentioning for that matter is that this claim is not made about others who are harmed by the death of a person. The case in point is whether death is bad for the one who died. And oddly, Benatar’s answer is yes, death is bad for the ones who died because it leads to the harm of ceasing to exist. In other words, for Benatar, death is a sort of deprivation. That is odd since the dead can’t experience any of the effects of their death. In fact they can’t experience anything hence can’t be deprived of anything. A state can’t be bad for someone if it doesn’t have bad consequences for that someone (or any consequences whatsoever in the case of death). It is often argued that death frustrates the wishes of the dead, but the dead can’t be frustrated. There is no one who experiences the loss of the goals which won’t be accomplished. No one is there anymore to be a victim of this “frustration”. This claim can only make sense if wishes were moral entities. There is no morally relevant agent who wants these wishes but is deprived by death.

Another reason why this claim is odd is that Benatar is the philosopher who argues that “The absence of pain is good even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone; but the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation”. So it seems that, especially in his case, it would be more plausible to argue that not only that the sooner human extinction comes the better, but that human extinction is a moral imperative. That is since it is preventing bad experiences from innumerable generations, with no negative effect, and since arguing that something is better, ethically compels (surly in this unequivocal case) an intervention to make it happen. After all, to stand idle while generation after generation spawns an unimaginable amount of suffering, is complicity.
Benatar explains the oddity by arguing that while non-existing persons don’t have an interest to live, existing people do have an interest to live, so it is a different scenario.

First of all, Benatar’s argument that death is a harm that adds to already bad life significantly undermines his argument that life is a serious harm. If life is as bad as he argues it is, then death should be viewed as salvation from harmful lives, not another harmful aspect of them. It is a harm that ends all other harms. So for death to be another harm and not a relief, the other harms must be not as bad as he argues they are.

But even if we accept that it is a different scenario and therefore doesn’t necessarily entail pro-mortalism, it is definitely not sufficient as a reason against extinction brought by killing, since to make that case Benatar must think that not only that existing people’s interests in continuing to exist (which is in itself flawed given the psychological features which distort their ability to make objective assessments of the actual quality of life and constitute instead a fallacious positive assessment) subdue their own suffering in life, but that they also subdue the suffering of all the future generations.
Even if death isn’t a benefit since it ends horrible lives, but really another harm in horrible lives, in order to oppose extinction brought by killing, Benatar must argue that the harm of cutting the lives of existing people short (which in itself should be doubtful since Benatar thinks that the absence of pleasure is bad only if there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation) overcomes the harms of anyone who would ever be born if the lives of existing people won’t be cut short. It is reasonable only if you think that life isn’t that bad. But Benatar does think so. If Beantar had only argued that it is better never to have been created in the first place since non-existence has an advantage over existence, then he could plausibly argue that his version of antinatalism doesn’t entail pro-mortalism. But he does argue that life is a harm. His antinatalism is not pure logic, meaning solely based on the logical conclusion derived from his asymmetry. He really cares about suffering. And that’s what makes his pro-life argument so strange. His support of what he calls ‘dying extinction’ is self-explanatory, however I fail to understand his opposition to ‘killing extinction’, especially when he of all people, is basing it on the opposition to cut existing people’s lives short. How can he seriously balance all the suffering of all the sentient creatures who would ever be created with the suffering of the existing people had their lives been cut short?
And given that non-existing have no interest in coming into existence, so they are not harmed by not coming into existence (he of course argues that they are harmed by coming into existence), then actually the opposition to human extinction if brought by killing and not by dying off, is favoring the sacrifice of anyone who would ever be born, for the sake of not hurting the interests of existing people whose lives would be cut short.

Although in supporting ‘dying extinction’ he is in favor that there won’t be future generations, his support of ‘a right to procreative freedom’ (claiming that if the state would actively prohibit reproduction it would require highly intrusive policing and invasions of privacy since people would refuse to obey this law) practically allows and accepts the creation of future generations. In addition, it is not that he opposes extinction brought by killing because of the option of ‘dying extinction’, but he opposes extinction brought by killing because killing is wrong, period. Even if there was no other way to prevent all the suffering of all the generations that would ever exist except by killing the current one, he would oppose it. And so despite that he is in favor that there won’t be future generations, he conditions this support with unethical terms.

Even if we accept the claim that people’s interests in continuing to live can be an argument against killing-extinction (despite that there is something very inconsistent when it comes from someone like Benatar who thinks that people’s self-assessments of quality of life are extremely unreliable, and that life is so bad that they mustn’t ever start, and since he is supposed to think that death is not bad for the dead considering that he argues that the absence of pleasures are bad only if there is someone for whom this absence is a deprivation), people’s interests in continuing to live is not a valid argument against extinction even if brought by killing, when it is at the expense of others. The interests of existing people are not negated but are set aside by bigger interests of many more subjects – the billions of subjects who are harmed by the existing people. Every human who continues to live means thousands of others who would continue to suffer as a result. Even if death has a cost, and it always has a cost, there is a much bigger cost for life. The main motive behind pro-mortalism isn’t the neutral nature of death for the ones who died, but the cruel nature of life for the ones who are living. It is not the fact that death is not bad for the one who dies, it is the fact that life is bad for the ones who are forced to live horrible lives because of that person.
The interests of current living humans can’t be seriously compared with the interests of generations upon generations of sentient creatures, who would otherwise be forced into a life of suffering.

I believe that the fact that death is not bad for the one who dies, mainly makes the dilemma much easier. But the main motive is that human extinction would prevent the suffering of trillions of nonhumans, as well as generation upon generation of frustrated humans who would continue to be forced into existence with different levels of misery.
Each human is not only suffering in life (and so non-existence is better than living for that person), but is first and foremost a little exploitation and pollution unit. The death of a person is not bad for that person, and it is good for many others.
And in a broader scale, the little good that humanity has brought to this world is concealed in the ocean of misery that it caused. Wherever humans have set their foot they have murdered, exploited and demolished. That includes each other, other species, and the environment.

Weighting the counterfactual desire of dead people to continue their existence against the concrete suffering of many more people, means that Benatar doesn’t take seriously enough his own quality of life argument. And that’s in the better case, in the worst one he is being cruel and speciesist as most of humans’ victims are animals, and they already significantly outnumber existing people. Trillions of sentient creatures would be forced into a miserable existence just so the interests of much less creatures, who are also their victimizers, won’t be violated. What about the interests of hundreds of billions of chickens who can’t spread their wings? What about the interests of tens of billions of pigs who don’t know what it is like not to feel pain? And the interests of tens of billions of ducks who never feel water or clean air throughout their entire lives? Their suffering is extremely greater than would be the suffering of the last generation of humans, were it on the brink of extinction. Therefore I think it is justified that human extinction would be initiated by people who care about others, obviously with minimum harm and as fast as possible. The best way I can think of to accomplish that is forced sterilization.

The amazingly sad thing is that during a podcast hosting Benatar, Sam Harris presented a human extinction scenario in which no one suffers and Benatar rejected it anyway. Harris asked him why would it be a bad thing for everyone to die tonight painlessly in their sleep without knowing that this is their last day, and without even experiencing it, and with no one around to know that it has even happened? Benatar replied that those of us who do exist, have an interest in continuing to exit, they have an interest to not be annihilated.
The power of this thought experiment lays in showing how human chauvinism is so deeply rooted. Even the suggestion of human extinction with no human ever being aware or experiencing it, is being rejected. It is beyond me how Benatar can think that existence is always bad, but the painless death of everyone is worse.
Condemning such a dream like scenario is complete evil. The claim that in the name of what the dead would have wanted if they were still alive (but currently don’t want anything and are not hurt by anything), he would sacrifice everyone who would ever suffer in this cruel world, is one of the harshest things I can imagine.
Preventing the human race from procreating using a virus or a bacteria or something of this sort which cause sterilization, is not as ideal as Sam Harris’ thought experiment, but it is probably the least harmful way of stopping the most harmful species ever in the history of this planet. And that is one of greatest things I can imagine.

References

Benatar, D. Better Never to Have Been (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Benatar, D. Every Conceivable Harm: A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism
S. Afr. Journal Philos. 2012, 31

Benatar, D. Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics
Journal of Ethics (2013)

Feldman, F. Some puzzles about the evil of death in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Luper, S. Annihilation in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

McGregor, R. and Sullivan-Bissett, E. 2012: “Better No Longer To Be: The Harm of Continued Existence” The South African Journal of Philosophy

Pitcher, G. The misfortunate of the dead in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Rosenbaum, S. How to be dead and not to care in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Suits D. B. Why death is not bad for the ones died in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

In the fifth chapter of the book Benatar offers his argument for abortion, a ‘Pro-Death’ View as he calls it.
Basically the idea is that since coming into existence is harmful, and since at least during the earlier stages of pregnancy, one has not yet come into existence in the morally relevant sense, people mustn’t give a justifiable reason for having an abortion but for not having one.

It is the failure to abort which must be defended he argues, and adds that the greater the harm of existence, the harder it will be to defend that failure. And if life is as bad as he suggests it is – then the failure to abort (at least during the earlier stages of pregnancy) may never, or almost never, be justified.

I agree that people mustn’t give a justifiable reason for having an abortion but for not having an abortion, only for different reasons than Benatar’s. His first premise – that the creation of a new person is always harmful – is correct, but as opposed to what Benatar means when he claims that, the creation of a new person is always harmful first and foremost for other sentient creatures who would be harmed by that new person. And harming them can never be justified.
The harms to others are so severe that it nullifies the harm of abortion even when performed after the fetus has already reached the morally relevant stage. Arguing otherwise is suggesting that the interest of a fetus, even if already conscious, is more important than the interests of all the existing sentient creatures who would be harmed if that person is born. That is morally wrong.

Considering the harms to others and not having an abortion could never be justified, and considering how severe the harms to others are, abortion at any stage is always morally justified.

Some argue that abortion is wrong since it deprives a person of the value of its future. But such an argument forces us to think that it would be worse to kill a fetus than to kill a thirty-year old, since a fetus, all things being equal, would have a longer future, and would therefore be deprived of more. Most people find that preference unacceptable. Benatar provides an explanation why:

“The greater deprivation makes sense when we are comparing the death of a thirty-year old with that of a nonagenarian, where most people take the former to be worse. However, it makes much less sense when comparing the deaths of the fetus and the thirty-year old, where many of us take the latter to be much worse. The best explanation for this is that a fetus has not yet acquired the interest in its own existence that the thirty-year old has.
The case of the thirty-year old and the nonagenarian can be explained in one of two ways. It could be that both have equal interests in continued life but the nonagenarian has less life left. Alternatively, in some cases only, it could be that the nonagenarian’s interest in living has already begun to decline, perhaps on account of life’s becoming worse with advancing age and decrepitude.” (p.159)

There is another reason to prefer abortion over killing a thirty-year old, and that is since the latter had already passed 30 years of causing suffering, while the fetus still has a lifetime of inflicting suffering on others. The main ethical reason to prefer killing the fetus over a thirty-year old is the time each has left to harm others. All things being equal, the fetus has 30 years more to inflict harms, so there is no dilemma.
Even if we look at it from Benatar’s view and not from the harm to others view, if life is as bad as he claims it is, then clearly it is better to kill the fetus who has a lifetime of suffering ahead, while the thirty-year old at least has 30 years less to suffer.

Having said that, Benatar nevertheless seriously argues for a right to procreate:

“If a right to reproductive freedom were withheld in order to prevent harm to those who would be brought into existence, the state could then either simply let people exercise reproductive choices without having a right to do so, or it could actively prohibit reproduction. The first option would be pointless. If the point of withholding an entitlement to have children is to prevent the harm of bringing people into existence, why withhold an entitlement to have children only then to permit people to have children?
Withholding the right would have to bfocusing on the harms to humans[r1]
[r1]Link to 1e linked, therefore, to a prohibition on having children. However the argument in defence of a legal right to reproductive freedom might go, procreative prohibition simply would not work. People would find ways of breaking the law. To enforce the law, even partially and unevenly, the state would have to engage in highly intrusive policing and the invasions of privacy that that would entail. On the plausible assumption that coitus itself should not and cannot effectively be prohibited, the state would have to be able to distinguish between those, on the one hand, who conceived wittingly or negligently, and those, on the other hand, who conceived accidentally. In either case, the state would then have to require abortions. In the case of the unwilling, this would require physically restraining people and performing unwanted abortions on them. The threat of this would very likely drive pregnancy underground, with women gestating and giving birth on the quiet. This, in turn, would very likely increase pregnancy- and parturition-related morbidity and mortality. These sorts of moral costs are immense and there is a powerful case to be made for the view that they are not outweighed by the benefits. This is particularly so given that the full benefits are unlikely to be obtained, given that much procreation would not be prevented by a prohibition on producing children.” (p.106)

It is strange that despite his claim in chapter 2 that it is always better never to have been, and despite his claim in chapter 3 that coming into existence is a very serious harm, he makes such an argument. Earlier in the book he also argues against that parents with dependents are somehow thought to count for more: “If, for example, there is some scarce resource—a donor kidney perhaps—and of the two potential recipients one is a parent of young children and one is not, the parent, all things being equal, will likely be favoured. Increasing one’s value by having children might be like increasing one’s value by taking hostages. We might find it unfair and decide not to reward it.” (p.12) Isn’t it a similar case when the right to procreate is justified by the fear of an Orwellian surveillance? If he can that easily defend the right to procreate doesn’t it significantly enfeebles the validity of his basic arguments? If life is as bad as he claims it is, can a surveillance society, as bad as it is in itself (and it most definitely is terrible) be compared with the harms of life? Even without considering the harms to others it is highly doubtful. And when considering the billions of sentient creatures being imprisoned for their entire lives, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being genetically modified so they would provide the maximum meat possible for the to-be born persons, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being forced to live without their family for their entire lives, when considering the billions of sentient creatures who suffer from chronic pain and maladies, when considering the billions of sentient creatures that can never breathe clean air, walk on grass, bath in water, and eat their natural food, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being violently murdered so the to-be born could consume their bodies, when considering the billions of sentient creatures whom their habitats are being destroyed and polluted, when considering the billions of sentient creatures being skinned alive, castrated, burned, poisoned, kicked, dehorned, detailed,  mounted, chained, experimented on, enslaved, it is totally unquestionable.
How can a life of extreme suffering ever be compared with outlawing procreation? Or even forced abortion? Can anything be compared with lifelong suffering with not even one painless second?

Don’t get this wrong, I agree that procreative prohibition won’t work completely, and I agree that it has tremendous moral costs, however, one must be extremely speciesist to think that they are not outweighed by the benefits. This is another problem with focusing on the harms to humans, when considering the harms to others there is no doubt what must be done.
Benatar himself mentions something of this sort as a solution to the expected problems involved in procreative prohibition:

“We can certainly imagine a society in which non-procreation could be widely (even if not universally) ensured without the invasions of privacy and bodily intrusions described above. This would be so if a safe, highly effective contraceptive substance could be widely administered without the knowledge of the population or the consent of individual people—in the drinking water, for example, or by aerial spray. A state in which this were done would avoid the horrendous image of Orwellian surveillance, or forced sterilizations and abortions, and so on. Of course, it would still be violating personal autonomy, but this, we have already seen, is not sufficient to make the case for a legal right to produce children.” (p.107)

With that I couldn’t agree more. It is much more likely to work, and it avoids the harms of procreative prohibition. It also doesn’t require a broad consent or state intervention or operation. All it takes is highly devoted activists with the right idea and resourcefulness, and hopefully finally the cruelest species ever would gradually go extinct, along with all the suffering it is forced to endure, and all the suffering it inflicts on others.

References

Benatar, D. Better Never to Have Been (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Benatar, D.. Every Conceivable Harm: A Further Defence of Anti-Natalism
S. Afr. Journal Philos. 2012, 31

Benatar, D. Still Better Never to Have Been: A Reply to (More of) My Critics
Journal of Ethics (2013)

Feldman, F. Some puzzles about the evil of death in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Luper, S. Annihilation in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Pitcher, G. The misfortunate of the dead in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Rosenbaum, S. How to be dead and not to care in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

Suits D. B. Why death is not bad for the ones died in Life, Death and Meaning (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2004)

After making the claim – that as long as life contains even the smallest amount of bad, coming into existence is a harm – Benatar turns to show that all human lives contain much more bad than is ordinarily recognized. His motivation is that “If people realized just how bad their lives were, they might grant that their coming into existence was a harm even if they deny that coming into existence would have been a harm had their lives contained but the smallest amount of bad.” In other words, it is much harder to dismiss his conclusion considering how bad life actually is. However he argues that “this chapter can be seen as providing a basis, independent of asymmetry and its implications, for regretting one’s existence and for taking all actual cases of coming into existence to be harmful.”

Being aware that most people deny that their lives are bad, Benatar focuses most of the chapter to answering the question, how can it be a harm to come into existence if most of those who have come into existence are pleased that they did? His answer is that their self-assessments are completely unreliable indicators of life’s quality, mainly due to a number of psychological features which distort their ability to make objective assessments of the actual quality of life and constitute instead a fallacious positive assessment.
The following are the 3 mechanisms Benatar mentions, along with a brief explanation of each, taken from the book.

1. The Pollyanna Principle

“The first, most general and most influential of these psychological phenomena is what some have called the Pollyanna Principle, a tendency towards optimism. This manifests in many ways. First, there is an inclination to recall positive rather than negative experiences. For example, when asked to recall events from throughout their lives, subjects in a number of stud