Discussing Our Ability to Assess When Life Is or Is Not Worth Living

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VII, p. 106 of the PDF edition · English translation

32.1. The meaningful life argument

As explained in Chapter 3, the vast majority of animals born in the wild experience basically nothing but suffering and die quite prematurely. If so, it makes sense to claim that these animals would be better off had they not been born (and that, therefore, we should prevent births under such conditions).

A possible objection would say that it is possible for a life that seems not worth living from the outside to be satisfying for the one living it, and vice versa. Thus, given the difficulty of establishing a precise point beyond which a life is worth living, the objection concludes that the most prudent decision is to adopt a policy against helping animals in the wild.

Below, several problems with this objection will be pointed out.

32.2. Are we not well placed to assess when a life is worth living?

There are cases in which it is difficult to say whether or not living is worth it. However, there are cases in which such an assessment is very simple. For example, let us imagine that we were offered the chance to be reborn to live a life in which almost all experiences were of extreme suffering. If we were unable to judge that this life is not worth living, we would be unsure whether or not it is worth accepting such an offer.

Almost all the situations in which the proposal to help wild animals needs to make assessments about the value of life are extreme situations like this last one. A large proportion of the animals born in the wild are born only to suffer intensely, without any positive experience at all. If we were offered this kind of life, we would have no doubt: we would reject it completely. And we would do so not because we are human, but because we can understand how bad it would be. Thus, if such an opportunity were given to animals, and if they understood how bad such a life would be, they would certainly reject it too.

It could be objected that someone's life may have been terrible up to a certain point, but that it may be possible to improve it. When there is this possibility of improvement, it makes sense to say that, even if life so far has had a negative balance, it was nonetheless worth being born (given the possibility of a future positive balance), and that, therefore, it is false that, for each animal born in the wild, it would have been better not to have been born.

This is true, but it is not an objection to the proposal to help animals in the wild who are victims of natural processes. On the contrary: it is a reason to try to help them, since the possibility of their coming to have a meaningful life depends on our devoting ourselves to researching how to improve their situation.

Moreover, it is important to note that the goal of improving the living conditions of beings who already exist does not imply rejecting the goal of preventing new births. This is because the greater the number of births, the harder it will probably be to improve the life of each of the individuals born

32.3. Should we not try to assess when a life is worth living?

Even if we did not know how to assess when a life is worth living, any responsible view of ethics would say that we should try to acquire more knowledge about how to do so, since this would increase the likelihood of our benefiting those affected.

32.4. Doesn't the position against helping make assessments about when a life is worth living?

What motivates the objection we are discussing is the fear that we might wrongly judge that a life is not worth living. For example, with sterilization we could reduce the number of sentient beings with meaningful lives, or, in other cases, we could be committing murder while thinking we were practicing euthanasia.

Well, but this shows that the proponents of the objection do make assessments about the value of life, since they believe that intervention to prevent/minimize natural harms could prevent the enjoyment of lives that they judge to be meaningful.

However, we must also take into account the possibility of our judging that a life is worth living when in fact it is not. For example, if we refrain from carrying out a certain sterilization, motivated by the belief that such beings would lead at least minimally meaningful lives, then if our judgment is wrong we are contributing to bringing into existence many beings who would be born into lives full of extreme suffering.

The risk of bringing someone into a life of extreme suffering is much more worrying than the risk of failing to produce a new being who would lead a meaningful life, since only in the case of bringing someone into a life of suffering does there come to exist an individual who is harmed. Given the way natural processes occur, non-intervention would result in the maximization of lives in which extreme suffering predominates from beginning to end.

To argue that "letting nature take its course" results in a greater number of lives worth living is either to have no idea how natural processes occur or to defend the implausible idea that a life containing nothing but extreme suffering is worth living.