u/BlueberryLemur

This morning I took my dog for a walk and we were walking through a sheep field (we live rurally).

After a few meters I noticed something in his mouth.. and it was a lamb’s tail. The bone and red muscle tissue were still visible 🤢

I was just standing in that field surrounded by super cute, fluffy lambs thinking how utterly dystopian it is to remove tails from baby animals to keep them in decent enough shape until they’re grown enough to die 😭

My dog took no notice, chomped on the tail before I got a chance to get to him and went about his day happy a Larry. Not thinking too deeply certainly makes for a happier life.

The argument for sapience in antinatalism is often framed roughly as follows:

“We are Homo sapiens, the “wise man”.

Sapience, the capacity for reasoning and reflection, is what sets us apart from our fellow apes. Orangutans can learn, chimpanzees are emotional, and gorillas can communicate, but only humans produce philosophy, art, and complex culture.

We alone can reflect on our own existence, think abstractly and apply logic. As a result, we are uniquely aware of the suffering inherent in life, and uniquely troubled by it.

Therefore, reproducing humans - unlike reproducing other animals - is uniquely immoral, and antinatalism is fundamentally anthropocentric.”

However, using sapience as the criterion that makes human reproduction morally problematic raises several issues.

First, it is unclear how much sapience is required for reproduction to become immoral. Where should the line be drawn? Any fixed threshold risks excluding large numbers of people and a graded scale seems impractical in this context. Reproduction is a binary choice (one either reproduces or does not) and does not easily lend itself to gradation.

A related issue is how sapience could be measured objectively. IQ might be proposed as a crude proxy, but like any proxy, it is imperfect and vulnerable to bias. Without a reliable measure, any proposed threshold risks appearing ad hoc.

Second, one might argue that sapience is a species-wide trait rather than an individual one. However, this seems arbitrary unless it can be clearly defined and quantified, which brings us back to the first problem. Moreover, attributing sapience at the species level creates inconsistencies: while humans may be considered sapient as a group, it is individuals who are affected by reproduction. This risks a category error, where a property of the group is treated as morally decisive for individuals.

Third, sapience appears to be a temporary or variable condition. Infants do not possess it but may develop it; the elderly may lose it; and some individuals may never attain it despite being members of Homo sapiens. Given these cases, it is unclear how sapience can function as a reliable criterion, especially since potential sapience can only be realised after a being is brought into existence. In other words, we cannot judge the morality of reproduction based on potential development of the being that only exists in the hypothetical.

Fourth, there is the question of whose sapience is relevant. If the sapience of the parent makes reproduction immoral, would it follow that it is permissible for a non-sapient human to reproduce? That conclusion has troubling implications, particularly regarding consent. Alternatively, if the sapience of the future child is what matters, this introduces an a posteriori problem. It would also suggest that creating a person who will never achieve sapience or independence - despite potentially being more vulnerable to suffering - could be morally permissible. Both outcomes are difficult to defend.

Fifth, there is a conceptual issue in how sapience is framed. While it may make humans superior in reasoning ability, it does not make them morally superior overall. The capacity to produce art or philosophy does not, by itself, justify greater moral entitlement or reduced moral consideration for others.

Sixth, while sapience may amplify suffering at a psychological level, it does not eliminate suffering in less sentient beings. The difference is one of degree, not kind. This brings us back to the earlier problem of measurement and suggests that sapience is not the fundamental criterion. Rather, it may function as a proxy for what actually matters: the suffering itself.

A more plausible role for sapience in antinatalism, it seems to me, is in distinguishing moral agents from moral patients. Sapience enables beings to make and evaluate moral decisions, and thus to bear responsibility for them. However, moral consideration need not depend on sapience; grounding it instead in suffering and consent appears more coherent. We do not regard a baby or a dog as moral agents, yet we still consider their welfare morally relevant.

Based on this, humans (as moral agents) are responsible for decisions about reproduction, both their own and that of other beings such as children and pets (the moral patients). But the beings affected by those decisions need not themselves be sapient in order to matter morally. In other words, sapience may help us recognise suffering resulting from reproduction, but it does not explain why suffering matters in the first place.

Thank you for reading and I’d be interested to hear what you think.