The Means to an End Argument: Response:

I will respond to the first part of this argument with my statements from the Asymmetry Argument. Isn’t it just as immoral to deprive a potential life of all the pleasures of that life? And, the level of suffering of most people is minimal and if there is a level of suffering it can often bring about positive outcomes.

As to the second argument, it is true that this potential life has no values to speak of. However, I would not say that this is immoral. While the new life has no values it will gain values in time. It is the parents’ job to instill these values and this is not selfish because their goal is to sacrifice their lives to take care and nurture this new life. In this way, having a child is the opposite of using them as a means to an end. They are creating life in order to sacrifice half of their own time they have on this earth to support, teach, and help this new life to thrive on its own.

I would also like to add that nurturing a child is not the same as slavery. A slave is used doubtless as a means to an end for the slave owner's own goals. Parents nurture a child and prepare him or her for the child’s future life of independence. They want to see this life flourish and become independent. This is the opposite of slavery.

Since the first point refers to another subdebate, I will not comment direectly on it here. But even if I did accept that pleasure was ethically relevant, how would it even start to address the argument here? How does it change anything that in addition to all these negative lotteries, I also forcibly enroll you in positive lotteries? As I point out in my Duty Argument, we have a duty not to harm others but we do not have a duty to provide pleasure to others.

Your other reply seems to be missing the point. The fact that human lives are created as means to an end refers to when the decision is taken by the parents to have a child. At that point, the child is a potential life, nothing more. It has no values to consider. The fact that it will have values in the future doesn't have any bearings on the fact that at the moment of the decision it has none to consider.

I am not arguing that child-raising is not selfish (although I think that in a majority of cases it clearly is), but that the decision to make a child is selfish. For you to say that this decision is not selfish would require you to point to some value, suffering, or other state of the potential person that the parents consider when they make the decision. But no such value or suffering can exist, because potential people cannot value or suffer.

I think you have pretty severe illusions about child-raising, but on the whole I don't see how it relates to the argument.

"To that end, however, Francois, could you clarify (at least for my sake) if/how your lottery analogy is different from your point in that subdebate about causing harm? If so, would it make sense to avoid this issue of harm vs pleasure altogether in this subdebate, and focus purely on the points raised by the following paragraphs?"

My point is about new human lives being means to an end, not about harm per se. The harm is the consequence of human lives being treated as means to an end. My lottery analogy illustrates that the creation of a new human life also means burdening them with lethal or crippling risks. I think this is relevant to the issue of human lives being treated as means to an end. If you could commit a crime without exposing the victim to any risk of harm whatsoever, we wouldn't still call it a crime. You get where I'm going with this?