Richard Y Chappell🔸 comments on Saving Lives vs Creating Lives

[Richard Y Chappell🔸]

I don’t think there’s a “duty to procreate”. I wrote that “There’s always some reason to positively benefit possible future people by bringing them into a positive existence, even though it doesn’t wrong anyone to remain childless by choice.” In other words: it’s a good thing to do, not a duty. Some things are important, and worth doing, even though morally optional.

Is a world containing happy lives better than a barren rock? As a staunch anti-nihilist, I think that good lives have value, and so the answer is ‘yes’.

Note that I wouldn’t necessarily say that this world is “more moral”, since “moral” is more naturally read as a narrow assessment of actions, rather than outcomes. But we should care about more than just actions. The point of acting, as I see it, is to bring about desirable outcomes. And I think we should prefer worlds filled with vibrant, happy lives over barren worlds. That’s not something I’m arguing for here; just a basic premise that I think is partly constitutive of having good values.

[Brian E Adams]

I think I understand and that makes sense to me.