Antinatalism and Moral Particularism
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Date
2019-01-22
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Pacific University Libraries
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© 2019 Harrison. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Abstract
I believe most acts of human procreation are immoral, and I believe this despite also believing in the truth
of moral particularism. In this paper I explain why. I argue that procreative acts possess numerous features
that, in other contexts, seem typically to operate with negative moral valences. Other things being equal this
gives us reason to believe they will operate negatively in the context of procreative acts as well. However, most
people’s intuitions represent procreative acts to be morally permissible in most circumstances. Given moral
particularism, this would normally be good evidence that procreative acts are indeed morally permissible
and that the features that operate negatively elsewhere, simply do not do so in the context of procreative acts
in particular. But I argue that we have no good reason to think our intuitions about the ethics of human
procreation are accurate. Our most reliable source of insight into the ethics human procreative acts are not
our intuitions those acts themselves, but our intuitions about the typical moral valences of the features such
acts possess. If that is correct, then acts of human procreation are most likely wrong.
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Essays in Philosophy, 2019, January 2019, 20 (1), pp. 66 - 88