I hear this a lot, and it's a strange objection to deal with. For one thing, beliefs aren't inherited genetically. Your comment implies that I have some sort of DNA abnormality that has caused me to think this way, and that natural selection will simply weed it out. I wasn't born opposing childbirth! There is this thing called the internet that preserves ideas and spreads them across the world. There is absolutely no reason to think that once the current generation of antinatalists die out, nobody else in history will ever be swayed by this reasoning again because they won't have the right (or wrong) phenotype for it. It's nonsense; people have been thinking about stuff like this since Buddha and before.
Secondly, I question your statement that there is a biological impulse specifically to have genetic offspring. There is an instinct for personal survival, an instinct for sex, and an instinct to protect the vulnerable. But a LOT of people don't want kids and never have, and most of them were probably born of parents who hold the opposite view. Give people more credit; they aren't robots.
Correct. Not a reason to be part of the 5 and the 95, though.
Incorrect. Justification is not subjective; something is either true or not, either supported by logic or not, either a valid means to a given end or not. There is no "justified to me" in any sense other than psychological comfort. You should know this, man! It's just the kind of thing that was lobbed at atheism for years. If we start from shared premises and use logic to reach a conclusion that is antithetical to the perpetuation of life, the next step is not to say "well, it's a good thing that nothing can be true while also being antithetical to the perpetuation of life, our work is done here." The next step should be to ask, why think that? Why assume there can be no anti-vital truths, why be locked into the affirmative mindset that holds everything to the standard of more beings, more life, endlessly into the future, without critically examining the foundations and consequences of that feeling? An uncompromising, skeptical approach is not something that can only be applied to certain topics, and not something restricted to bearers of some genetic abnormality.
Let me ask you this: do you see any flaws in my reasoning? Do you consider yourself someone who is a slave to emotions and can't accept a conclusion if it's uncomfortable?
The bolded seems to be where we disagree. Morality is subjective, not objective. It can never be objective, and is always arbitrary and at the whims of people and their passions.
Just because you can come up with a rationalization that child-rearing is immoral, does not mean your rationalization is objectively correct for all subjects, because their axioms are different. You may be able to convince some of them, and you are free to hold your beliefs, but others are also free to completely disagree with you and hold the opposite view. What is rational to you is not rational to others.
Further, I agree that if all human beings were rational actors who only cared about minimizing pain, it is feasible child-rearing could be minimized, but the inherent problem in this, is that it's not how people are built. People are
not rational, moral actors.
The only analogy I can come up with is with marxism. Taking this great and supreme moral theory and solving intrinsic problems in the world. Until you actually try to apply it and realize.. wait, that's not how people work.
I agree with everything you say here, but it deflates your objection from something about my specific position to something about any moral position whatsoever. Morality can only approach objectivity when everybody has the same starting principles, as you say; however, I am not asking any people to adopt new starting principles.
The point is that current, uncontroversial starting principles (don't cause avoidable harm, don't use people as means to an end, don't put someone in potential danger without their consent, don't create a need where none existed before) lead to an unexpected conclusion. For some people, that means we must discard some of the starting principles, and I have no quarrel with them if they are being consistent. As you rightly say, those disagreements are axiomatic and can't be resolved. But it seems like other people want to avoid the conclusions they don't like while clinging to the same moral intuitions that entail them. That's where it's legitimate to call foul, I think.
For this particular philosophical position, I would say the vast majority of objections fall into this category, including yours unless you have a counterargument I haven't heard. That's fine, but be up-front about it. Not everybody can be moral all the time, I get that. In my case, I see no flaws in the argument for ethical veganism but I am not a vegan. The intellectual knowledge that I am causing harm to sentient beings by my choice of food is less motivating to me than my desire for the particular food I prefer to eat, for reasons of convenience or whatever. Maybe that will change one day, and I wish I had more strength of character to make that happen, but I don't. But I would never tell a vegan that their reasoning doesn't apply to me, because it absolutely does--I have the same moral axioms as they do and the reasoning is simple enough. I just acknowledge that in this particular area I am doing something immoral by continuing to eat animal products, knowing that my personal failing does not affect the soundness of the argument itself.
