Many antinatalists embrace veganism, as they find these lifestyle decisions to be ethically consonant with each other. Yet most ethical vegans are not against having children. Whether one position entails the other depends on the particular ethic at play: If the goal is to prevent and minimise suffering, then does this not entail antinatalism? This…
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To the philosopher Rivka Weinberg, we need to think about the moral permissibility of procreation in terms of risk. In her book The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible (2015), she presents a conservative position on the ethics of procreation, deviating from both the strong antinatalist position which says…
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Digital antinatalism is the philosophical view that it is morally wrong to create sentient artificial intelligence (AI). It is a variant of antinatalism, which promotes the view that we should refrain from procreating for moral reasons. We can consider digital antinatalism to be a selective – or weaker – form of antinatalism since one may…
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It is fair to say that much of antinatalist thought is underpinned by a rejectionist philosophy, a nay-saying attitude towards life, a pessimism about the state of human life and the world at large. The line between such pessimism and antinatalism seems logical: if you believe existence is – overall – a bad deal, an…
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Antinatalism is the view that it is morally wrong to bring new people into existence (although a more universal sense of antinatalism includes all sentient beings, not just humans). The common arguments used to defend antinatalism include the position that existence is an overall harm, negative utilitarian arguments (which posit that minimising suffering takes priority…
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