Me, at the Singapore Undergraduate Philosophy Conference 2018.
About Me
Hello!
My name is Marcus, a final-year Philosophy undergraduate in Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. As a philosopher-in-training, my research interests revolve primarily around ethics. Specifically, I work in moral psychology, applied ethics, and everything in between. As a 21st century philosopher, I advocate for an epistemic sensitivity to empirical data in informing further developments in philosophical inquiry.
Peanut, my pet English Cocker Spaniel. He is nine this year, and is a very, very good boy.
This blog project was conceived to fulfil a course assignment in a Conservation Psychology class taught by A/P Michael Gumert. Taking this class, I saw a perfect opportunity to marry my interests in antinatalism and environmental ethics.
True to form, my work in applied ethics informs my moral decisions in my personal life. I am, therefore, an antinatalist in my own life who intends not to bear children of my own. Instead, I give my affection unconditionally to Peanut, whom we have reasons to believe shall suffer less in his lifetime than an average human being.
Q&A
Some questions that I have been asked as an antinatalist in my academic career thus far.
Q: Are your parents morally blameworthy for birthing you?
A: Yes. However, this is compatible with my loving them deeply and wanting the best for them.
Q: If you argue life to be suffering, why do you continue to exist?
A: Simply put, to cease a current existence is likely to entail greater suffering than continuing to exist. This is not to say that the pain of death is necessarily more than the pain of sustaining my existence, period. Consider that an existing person has his own set of projects, desires, etc. that he intends to pursue over the course of his lifetime. A premature cessation of his existence denotes suffering not only in the form of pain, but also in the discontinuation of such plans that he otherwise would be likely to complete in his lifetime. My position is one of preventing existence, not prematurely ending a current existence.
Q: How do you know that you do not intend to bear your own children?
A: Because this blog is dedicated to my reasons for being an antinatalist, I take this question to be one that questions my knowledge of the future instead of one that questions my views in normative ethics. To this I say that skeptics are right to second-guess my seemingly-premature commitment to antinatalism. After all, what does an undergraduate know when he hasn’t “joined the real world”, or “settled down” yet? What I present here is my thought accurate as at the time of publishing. While there are certainly possible worlds in which future-Marcus decides to rear children, it seems to me a priori that possible worlds in which future-Marcus does not rear children are more closely related to the current world than possible worlds in which future-Marcus does rear children. In the possible worlds in which future-Marcus decides to rear children, I can only hope that he is a good, ecologically-conscious father, reducing the suffering of the children that he rears. Otherwise, I shall hope that future-Marcus adopts instead of making his own child. God knows we don’t want more little-Marcus’ running around in the world…