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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Negative utilitarianism implies that a government should provide free contraceptives, because doing so reduces pain and other disvalues.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Negative utilitarianism, as Smart argued, entails that painlessly exterminating all sentient life is obligatory, since it eliminates all future suffering.
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    • 2.If the foundational logic of negative utilitarianism demands extinction, contraception policy cannot be derived from it without invoking the same reductio that undermines the framework.
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    • 3.A principle that generates obligatory extinction cannot coherently ground partial population-reduction policies without an arbitrary threshold.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The supporting argument conflates reducing the number of pain-bearers with reducing pain, a distinction Parfit's non-identity problem makes philosophically critical.
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    • 2.Persons who would exist without the policy cannot be harmed by their own existence if that existence is worth living, as Parfit establishes in Reasons and Persons.
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    • 3.Negative utilitarianism applied to contraception therefore presupposes a repugnant conclusion-style comparison between existing and non-existing persons that negative utilitarianism itself lacks resources to adjudicate.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Negative utilitarianism holds that an act is morally wrong if and only if its consequences contain more pain or other disvalues than an alternative, regardless of positive values.
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    • 2.Providing free contraceptives reduces overcrowding and thereby reduces hunger, disease, and pain.
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    • 3.The reduction in pain counts as morally relevant even if total net pleasure decreases.
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