The concept of harm

[inator]

I was reading Benatar's book and it reminded me of another more sophisticated argument, which could be summed up as the nonidentity problem (to which the anti-natalist argument is a proposed solution).

In short, it's concerned with beings who, by our own actions, are caused both to exist and to have existences that are, though worth having, unavoidably flawed.
The moral choice, then, is between bringing a being into a flawed existence, bringing no one into existence at all, or bringing a different - nonidentical but better off - being into existence instead.
The last option probably doesn't relate to the animals brought into existence as part of animal agriculture, since the animals' sheer number and the resulting impossibility to care for all of them properly is partly what causes them to have flawed existences in the first place. Another nonidentical being wouldn't have a chance at a better existence at all. So I won't get into this part of the argument right now.

However, the problem does raise the question about what the concept of harm actually means.
What we commonly understand as an act of harming someone is an act that makes things worse off for some existing or future individual.
An act that brings an individual into existence, whose life will be, though flawed, still worth having, and could never have existed at all in the absence of that act, does not make things worse for or harm that individual.
Of course, I am only talking about an existence that is unavoidably flawed, yet not so flawed that it is less than worth having. It could surely be said that animals in factory farms might prefer not to have existed at all. However, animals who live in better conditions, though still bred for food, might prefer their current existence to non-existence. They don't have a better alternative.

The intuition here is that at least some existence-inducing acts are wrong, even though they don’t make things worse for or harm the informed preferences of an individual.
Other consequences like environmental and human health concerns aside, how is the act of bringing "happy cows" or equivalents into a flawed existence bad for the individuals themselves?

Another intuition is that a given world can be morally worse than another, even though there isn't any individual for whom that one world is worse than an alternative that's possible for her personally - no one whose informed interests are thwarted.
Here we could even argue that, by harming the environment, we indirectly affect things like the configuration of which individuals will come into existence later. Harming the environment doesn't actually make future individuals worse off at all, since those identities wouldn't have existed in the first place had we chosen a different route. Still, a future world with a better environment and happier people, but nonidentical to the people who might have existed had the environment been different, does seem like a better world.
Yet not one individual is made to be worse or better off.

[Jebus]

What is the threshold of harm? At what point does the scale tip in favour of harm or pleasure? Obviously the world median is not a good measure, so would this threshold change for each individual? A starving person in Sierra Leone would probably love to change his existence to spending the rest of his life in a Norwegian prison whereas to the average Norwegian this would seem like a nightmare. If this is true, how would one assess that threshold for someone who hasn't even been born. To clarify even if one knows the parental and societal predictors, how would one set the analogous pleasure/harm measure to the freeze/ no freeze 0 degree Celsius point?

I think Benetar is overly negative in his assessment of potential human suffering v. pleasure and fails to recognise that many people do have lives that are worth living, at least from a purely egoistic point of view. However, I would still like to know how he and other philosophers answer the above questions.

[brimstoneSalad]

Another nonidentical being wouldn't have a chance at a better existence at all.

Given the use of resources (since these animals are not primary producers), human beings do.

I think you hit on that here:

Harming the environment doesn't actually make future individuals worse off at all, since those identities wouldn't have existed in the first place had we chosen a different route. Still, a future world with a better environment and happier people, but nonidentical to the people who might have existed had the environment been different, does seem like a better world.
Yet not one individual is made to be worse or better off.

We're talking about retroactive violation or realization of wills here (primarily).
To the extent that it's right to bring a happy being into existence, it's wrong to bring an unhappy one. It's also preferable to bring the more happy one into existence to one only marginally happy.
It's the same reason children with deformities or disabilities should be aborted to give healthy children a go instead (given that the parents were planning on having a set number they could care for).

What we commonly understand as an act of harming someone is an act that makes things worse off for some existing or future individual.

I see it as realization or violation of wills. If we count future wills, we should do the greater act that will be most validated retroactively.

Of course, I am only talking about an existence that is unavoidably flawed, yet not so flawed that it is less than worth having. It could surely be said that animals in factory farms might prefer not to have existed at all. However, animals who live in better conditions, though still bred for food, might prefer their current existence to non-existence. They don't have a better alternative.

That would be true if there were no opportunity cost, but then we're dealing with infinite numbers here and it doesn't resemble reality at all: like saying it's the same to find a penny or a hundred dollar bill on the ground an infinite number of times. The violation of being killed must be outweighed by enough goods to compensate, but that's not impossible to imagine.

The creature eaten in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" makes an interesting thought experiment.
It's very difficult to imagine a being having an informed desire to be killed and eaten without being severely depressed about life, but "vore" porn is a thing: some people get off on the idea.

Other consequences like environmental and human health concerns aside, how is the act of bringing "happy cows" or equivalents into a flawed existence bad for the individuals themselves?

With no opportunity cost at all, assuming a good enough life to compensate for death, it isn't. But that's not reality: a better or happier individual could exist instead, within limits (life can only get so easy until it becomes boring and sentience is compromised: look at games, where challenge creates value; farmed animals do not lead lives of challenge and purpose).

[brimstoneSalad]

A starving person in Sierra Leone would probably love to change his existence to spending the rest of his life in a Norwegian prison

That's a choice made under duress. It's to say prison is better than dying, which the person is living in imminent fear of. There's a certain minimum level of material comfort necessary for most to aspire to higher needs.

whereas to the average Norwegian this would seem like a nightmare.

And yet most would probably say they slightly prefer it to dying. Although the rate of prison suicides would suggest this isn't a large margin, particularly since many people avoid death first out of fear of it rather than a love of life.

A prisoner can be physically comfortable, but probably can not be very fulfilled.

If this is true, how would one assess that threshold for someone who hasn't even been born.

You can pretty much just ask people who have been born if they'd rather not have been, to get a sense of what kinds of lives are just barely worth living.

To clarify even if one knows the parental and societal predictors, how would one set the analogous pleasure/harm measure to the freeze/ no freeze 0 degree Celsius point?

It would be statistical, like an LD50. When half of people with a particular life answer that they'd rather not have been born, and half say that they appreciate having been born.

That said, even if most people did not live lives worth living, the alternative is not one of no life at all. Human life is a continual march of progress, and ending it just interferes with that eventual improvement. Even killing off all life would be a temporary measure: it would be pushing the reset button and forcing life to toil again through evolution back to more or less this point.

[Jebus]

You can pretty much just ask people who have been born if they'd rather not have been, to get a sense of what kinds of lives are just barely worth living.

It would be statistical, like an LD50. When half of people with a particular life answer that they'd rather not have been born, and half say that they appreciate having been born.

Would you really trust humans get this right when they can't seem to get anything else right? Research has taught us that humans tend to be overly optimistic about their potential.

[inator]

It's also preferable to bring the more happy one into existence to one only marginally happy.
It's the same reason children with deformities or disabilities should be aborted to give healthy children a go instead (given that the parents were planning on having a set number they could care for).

Some of those future wills won't exist at all and can't be violated if we take a certain action.
Say a mother prefers to have a sickly child (for whatever reason, perhaps to get more attention - Münchausen syndrome by proxy) and she chooses in vitro fertilization. This gives her the possibility to single out an embryo which has some genetic defect and to implant that one. She gives birth to Lily. Lily experiences some degree of hardship and suffering because of her defect, however she does have a life worth living.

Has the mother wronged Lily? It's not like Lily was conceived perfectly healthy and the mother chose to smoke and drink alcohol in order to harm her. Though the consequences might be similar, that child would still have existed and been better off had the mother not smoked and drunk alcohol (unless the mother had chosen not to have a child at all).
But in Lily's case, she is not identical to anyone who would have existed if her mother hadn't selected for poor health. If an action harms you only if it makes you worse off than you would have been had the action not been performed, then Lily was not harmed. Since her life is worth living, she also validates the action retrospectively. We couldn't say that Lily has been wronged even though she hasn't been harmed.

What you do seem to suggest is that we should replace the word Lily with the de dicto sense of the term "the mother's child". In that case, we could say that the mother wronged her child by making him or her worse off than he/she would have been. Even if the mother didn't harm Lily herself, she did do something wrong by not maximizing aggregate well-being (or realization of potential wills).
But why is de dicto the sense that we should care about? After all, the will of that potentially healthier child never actually came to be and can therefore not be violated.

This also begs the question of whether we can harm someone without making that person worse off. Say I hold you at gunpoint and my supervisor also points his gun at you, and I fire my gun and kill you. If I hadn't fired my gun, my supervisor would have killed you at exactly the same time, in exactly the same way. I have indeed harmed you, but I haven't made you any worse off. So, if harming someone is not a matter of making him worse off, what is it?

The creature eaten in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" makes an interesting thought experiment.
It's very difficult to imagine a being having an informed desire to be killed and eaten without being severely depressed about life, but "vore" porn is a thing: some people get off on the idea.

True, but whether the cow wants to be eaten or not, it doesn't have the choice not to be killed and eaten. The choice is between a moderately agreeable life ended by an untimely death and non-existence.

With no opportunity cost at all, assuming a good enough life to compensate for death, it isn't. But that's not reality: a better or happier individual could exist instead, within limits (life can only get so easy until it becomes boring and sentience is compromised: look at games, where challenge creates value; farmed animals do not lead lives of challenge and purpose).

I generally agree. However.
Do we measure opportunity cost from the point of view of the world or of the existing individual? What is the value of life if not as seen through the eyes of individual beings who have interests that are determined by their personal identities?

I could easily conceive that a person could exist who would be much happier than me. If I knew that if I ceased to exist, my parents would have a new child who would grow up to be very happy, do I have the moral obligation to kill myself for the sake of creating opportunity for the other potential person?
I don't think so. I have my actualized interests, the other person is only a potential, currently lacking personhood. Not creating opportunity for someone to exist is not the same as violating his or her will to live. There are no actual competing interests.
However, if we look at interests retrospectively, then I do have that obligation.

What we commonly understand as an act of harming someone is an act that makes things worse off for some existing or future individual.

I see it as realization or violation of wills. If we count future wills, we should do the greater act that will be most validated retroactively.

We need to be consistent in choosing how to value wills - from the point of view of the wills present at the moment of the decision, or restrospectively.
If we choose the retrospective route, then me already existing shouldn't give me any advantage over the potential person who could live in my stead. Also, a woman who chooses to abort a fetus and doesn't plan to replace him with any other child in the foreseeable future is violating her child's retrospective will.

[inator]

Obviously the world median is not a good measure, so would this threshold change for each individual?

Probably. Some people simply have a genetic tendency to be happier and more optimistic than others in the face of the same level of hardship. It comes down to the individual.
Which doesn't mean we shouldn't compare different types of lives. The same person would certainly be better off living a safe life in a developed country than constantly trying to get away from war lords and disease outbreaks. But different individuals have different thresholds.
And some succeed to find purpose in the tiniest of things, while others can't find it no matter how good their lives seem compared to others.

[Jebus]

Some people simply have a genetic tendency to be happier and more optimistic than others in the face of the same level of hardship. It comes down to the individual.

True, but someone's ability to deal with external influences has nothing to do with my query of where/how a consequentialist should determine the cutoff point at which a life is worth living or not. My question dealt more with the end result.

[brimstoneSalad]

Some of those future wills won't exist at all and can't be violated if we take a certain action.

Sure, but one could be realized with certain other actions. Sometimes doing a lesser good is effectively a wrong, or at least condemns a character.

You gave a great example here:

Say a mother prefers to have a sickly child (for whatever reason, perhaps to get more attention - Münchausen syndrome by proxy) and she chooses in vitro fertilization. This gives her the possibility to single out an embryo which has some genetic defect and to implant that one. She gives birth to Lily. Lily experiences some degree of hardship and suffering because of her defect, however she does have a life worth living.

She went through a lot of effort to do a lesser good because of selfish reasons.
Ignoring all of the harm caused by that child's medical needs and other actions (which may be greater than lifetime input to others), relative to no action, or the mother not even existing as a person, we can say that this was a lesser good rather than an evil.
However, if we judge the mother relative to the standards of a normal person (say, the person who might have existed in her place, with the resources she has taken in society) she is found very wanting.

It's like a person who doesn't save a small child from drowning in a baby pool because he or she doesn't want to get his or her hands wet.
This wasn't an action done to harm, but it was abstaining from such a good that could be easily done for superficial and selfish reasons. Such inaction may not be better than the person not existing (taken on its own), but it easily impugns the character of the inactor, and any normal person would act to remove the child from the pool (given, at least, that there was no threat of liability).

Has the mother wronged Lily? It's not like Lily was conceived perfectly healthy and the mother chose to smoke and drink alcohol in order to harm her. Though the consequences might be similar, that child would still have existed and been better off had the mother not smoked and drunk alcohol (unless the mother had chosen not to have a child at all).

The mother could have even mutilated the child after birth with that intent. Given the mother was only willing to have the child to mutilate it, these two actions can be just as much linked as the in vitro fertilization to choose a defect. If the actions are inextricably linked, then the harm and good must be summed. I don't see a difference if it's choosing a particular defective embryo or mutilating the child. Both probably have the same consequence and impugn character in the same way.

But in Lily's case, she is not identical to anyone who would have existed if her mother hadn't selected for poor health.

That doesn't matter. A happier/more fulfilled person could have existed instead, one who didn't regret the circumstance of the deformity or whatever the issue, and that would be a better state of affairs.

Nobody is even identical to his or herself over time.

If an action harms you only if it makes you worse off than you would have been had the action not been performed, then Lily was not harmed.

Who is Lily?
Even if Lily was mutilated after birth, she would not be the same person growing up with that mutilation as without it. Because the mutilated Lily and the unmutilated Lily are different people.

Everything that happens to us makes us who and what we are. Is it impossible to harm anybody, because it changes in some way who the person is and makes a person who otherwise wouldn't have existed? Like I said, nobody is even identical to his or herself over time.

What you do seem to suggest is that we should replace the word Lily with the de dicto sense of the term "the mother's child".

That would help avoid the thought experiment getting bogged down in existential issues.
I hope I answered the other questions above, if not just let me know.

This also begs the question of whether we can harm someone without making that person worse off. Say I hold you at gunpoint and my supervisor also points his gun at you, and I fire my gun and kill you. If I hadn't fired my gun, my supervisor would have killed you at exactly the same time, in exactly the same way. I have indeed harmed you, but I haven't made you any worse off. So, if harming someone is not a matter of making him worse off, what is it?

Your supervisor harmed the person; you were merely an instrument in that.
Just as the consumer harms the animals, as the primary driver behind the industry -- we don't typically hold slaughterhouse workers accountable.

True, but whether the cow wants to be eaten or not, it doesn't have the choice not to be killed and eaten. The choice is between a moderately agreeable life ended by an untimely death and non-existence.

My point is that it's hard to make such assumptions about the negative value of such an untimely death.

It's as though I give you a toy you love, then almost immediately take it away. It's not always better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all; there's a certain duration of experience that makes it worth it. We can't assume it's always better to have lived a brief life than none at all.

Do we measure opportunity cost from the point of view of the world or of the existing individual? What is the value of life if not as seen through the eyes of individual beings who have interests that are determined by their personal identities?

Relative to the potential individual who might have otherwise existed. If a cow living means the world can support one fewer human, that's a problem if humans live lives of more substance and value than cows.

I could easily conceive that a person could exist who would be much happier than me. If I knew that if I ceased to exist, my parents would have a new child who would grow up to be very happy, do I have the moral obligation to kill myself for the sake of creating opportunity for the other potential person?

What's the probability of that, and what's the comparative harm and good you each do the world, and what would the consequences of the act itself be?

In terms of obligations: when it comes to survival, pretty much anything can be justified. You wouldn't be seen as having an obligation to not eat a much happier person to survive if you were stranded with one with no other food.

The big problem with these thought experiments is that as they grow more distant from resembling our reality (by simplifying them and removing variables) the conclusions become more unintuitive and that seems wrong: but that's something that should be expected when we're no longer dealing in our reality.

We need to be consistent in choosing how to value wills - from the point of view of the wills present at the moment of the decision, or restrospectively.

The future and potential is ultimately less well known, so it's not unreasonable to give priority to the certain over the hypothetical. We can admit it has moral value, but also realize it's so uncertain that only in rather extreme situations of certainty it becomes permissible to account for over present wills.

If we choose the retrospective route, then me already existing shouldn't give me any advantage over the potential person who could live in my stead.

Beyond uncertainty, you also have another advantage: you exist now, and it would be an extreme violation of your will to kill you to make room for another, as well as a huge waste of the resources that have gone into you over your life so far (there's a sunk cost there). That's not to say somebody with a phenomenal life couldn't be fulfilled enough to make up for that, but no moderate (plausible) margin would justify such an action.

Also, a woman who chooses to abort a fetus and doesn't plan to replace him with any other child in the foreseeable future is violating her child's retrospective will.

Not violating a will, but failing to realize one. The lack of a good rather than the presence of a bad: while in many ways comparable, it's an important distinction to make.

That said: Abortion is irrelevant, the same applies to a woman who just chooses not to have children.
The moral baseline there would be having 2.33 children (global average for replacement rate). Have two, then flip a coin or something to decide on a third.

[brimstoneSalad]

Would you really trust humans get this right when they can't seem to get anything else right? Research has taught us that humans tend to be overly optimistic about their potential.

Not with great accuracy and precision, but it's all we have to go on. We certainly shouldn't trust people like Benatar to decide for others that their lives are not worth living when they say they are worth living.