Occupation: Professor Birth: December 8, 1966
It is unlikely that many people will take to heart the conclusion that coming into existence is always a harm. It is even less likely that many peopl….
Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people….
On my view there is no net benefit to coming into existence and thus coming into existence is never worth its costs..
As we have seen, nobody is lucky enough not to be born, everybody is unlucky enough to have been born – and particularly bad luck it is..
Coming into existence is always bad for those who come into existence. In other words, although we may not be able to say of the never-existent that ….
Notice, by extension, that in a democracy those committed to non-procreation could never, in the long run, prevail politically against those committe….
We infrequently contemplate the harms that await any new-born child—pain, disappointment, anxiety, grief, and death. For any given child we cannot pr….
Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm is not negligible, because the quality of even the best lives is very bad—and co….
It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) g….
I am under no illusions. My position, no matter how clearly stated, is likely to be misunderstood..