If you make this argument that “it’s no worse for the joyful mind to not exist,” you can make an exactly symmetrical argument that “it’s not better for the suffering mind to not exist.
If I make these claims without argument, yes, but I am giving arguments for the first and against the second, based on a more general claim which is intuitively asymmetric and a few intuitive assumptions about the ordering of outcomes, which together imply “the existence of unfulfilled interests is bad”, but not on their own.
The negation of “neither an interestnor its satisfactionprovides reasons for the existence of that interest over its nonexistence” would mean pulling interests up by their bootstraps (for at least one specific interest):
“an interest or its satisfaction provides reasons for the existence of that interest over its nonexistence”. I think this is far less plausible, see my section “Why Only Actual Interests”.
The symmetric claim also seems less plausible:
“neither an interestnor its unsatisfactionprovides reasons for the nonexistence of that interest over its existence”
For example, the fact that you would fail to keep a promise is indeed a reason not to make it in the first place. Or, that fact that you would not climb mount Everest successfully is a reason to not try to do so in the first place.
If I make these claims without argument, yes, but I am giving arguments for the first and against the second, based on a more general claim which is intuitively asymmetric and a few intuitive assumptions about the ordering of outcomes, which together imply “the existence of unfulfilled interests is bad”, but not on their own.
The negation of “neither an interest nor its satisfaction provides reasons for the existence of that interest over its nonexistence” would mean pulling interests up by their bootstraps (for at least one specific interest):
“an interest or its satisfaction provides reasons for the existence of that interest over its nonexistence”. I think this is far less plausible, see my section “Why Only Actual Interests”.
The symmetric claim also seems less plausible:
“neither an interest nor its unsatisfaction provides reasons for the nonexistence of that interest over its existence”
For example, the fact that you would fail to keep a promise is indeed a reason not to make it in the first place. Or, that fact that you would not climb mount Everest successfully is a reason to not try to do so in the first place.