Re: If life is a benefit...

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote

> If life is a benefit, then it's logically certain that
> no life [ie never existing at all] is a loss.

This is only true if a creature could somehow be considered
to exist separately from its life. For theological reasons, some
Christians believe that all souls were created by God prior to
Man's Fall.

If you associate being with a creature's life, it doesn't make
sense to think of some unearthly realm of "souls" waiting to
get born, some being fortunate to be born as humans living in a
nice country, some unlucky to be born otherwise (As a child,
someone told me once I was lucky not to be born as a lab rat;
it seemed an odd thing to say, and I was in my teens before I
could say exactly why.)

But if you don't exist prior to being born, then you can't suffer
a loss. I don't consider this a trivial question since there is the
issue of abortion. Does an aborted fetus lose something? Is
existing better than not? If your quality of life is horrendous,
do you gain something by dying?

These are all valid questions, and in the case of a fetus, which
would in all likelihood be born if not interfered with, you could
argue it was indeed a loss, if you consider living better than
not. However, if it's ethical to terminate brain-dead people, it
could be okay to terminate babies without the development
to be conscious.

But from a strictly philosophical view, the idea that X is of value,
therefore not X is a loss, doesn't hold. Not X could just be
neutral. That wealth and fame don't always make for a high
quality of life is all too often proven to be the case. All you do is
trade one set of problems in for another, so it's best to just try
and make the best of what you've got.

-- 
Craig Franck
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cortland, NY