Bruno Contestabile

Most discussion in population ethics has concentrated how to order populations by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. The topic is characterized by paradoxes which show that our considered beliefs are inconsistent in cases where the number of people and their welfare varies. The best known and most discussed example shattering our intuitions is Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox. But why are paradoxes prevalent in population ethics? Can the analysis of Buddhist intuitions contribute to answer this question? The comparison of classical utilitarian and Buddhist intuitions demonstrates the close tie between intuitions and interests. The perplexing Buddhist intuition about non-existence can be explained (except for metaphysical reasons) by a radically different priority given to survival. The method of measuring the quality of life is not decisive for the existence of paradoxes. The Buddhist axiology changes but doesn’t remove counter-intuitive combinations. If the conflict of interest (quantity versus quality) is described within a two-parameter model, it causes conflicting intuitions. In axiologies which favour quantity (utilitarianism) or quality (perfectionism) the conflicting intuitions inevitably lead to paradoxes. In order to find a compromise, one would have to find a universal interest and a corresponding universal intuition. The obvious candidate to meet this request is sympathy. But since there is no universal consensus on the desirable degree of sympathy, the normative force of such an approach is limited. Breaking out of the two-parameter model and accepting the incommensurability of certain qualities threatens the normative claim of population ethics.

The Buddhist denial of the world seems hard to defend if it is confronted with empirical data. Surveys on subjective life satisfaction consistently report that the majority is satisfied with their lives. Is the desire to escape from the cycle of rebirth a sign of risk-aversion or even irrationality? How would an impartial observer evaluate the world? An impartial view is achieved by interpreting the surveys on life satisfaction as probability distributions for life’s risks and chances. It turns out that there is no indisputable metric for measuring risks and no reliable forecast. Given this uncertainty the denial of the world cannot easily be dismissed as being irrational.

For Nussbaum, Hadot and Foucault ancient philosophical therapy is a therapy of passions/desires, which can be understood in analogy to medical therapy. In Philosophical Papers, Vol. 43 (2014) Konrad Banicki suggests that the structure constituted by the three concepts health ideal, disease and process of treatment are generally accepted in thinking about medicine or therapy of any kind. Consequently, he demands that a therapeutic vision of philosophy must identify the diseases it attempts at curing. We disagree with this claim. The immense effort in the history of philosophy to liberate the mind from the body casts doubt on the project to explain philosophical therapy solely in medical terms. There are good reasons to associate the term philosophical therapy with the cure (or reduction) of suffering rather than the cure of a disease. Furthermore, the Socratic search for a good life has an ethical and political dimension. The interdisciplinary character of philosophy contradicts the effort to subordinate philosophical therapy to psychotherapy.

The core idea of secular Buddhism is to grasp the spirit of early Buddhism and transpose it into the present. An application of this idea to the doctrine of rebirth leads to the following result: The doctrine of rebirth cannot be revised in a strict sense, but there are some striking similarities between the ancient and modern (biological) view on the topic. Since the stream of genetic and epigenetic information has the power to create consciousness and reflects experiences of past lives, it can be associated with the stream of consciousness (cittasantana) in the Mahayana model of rebirth. Parents not only determine the genetic constitution of their children, but they also transfer character traits by means of epigenetic heredity. If genetic inheritance is associated with karma, then genes become an element of synchronic and diachronic connectedness (pratitya-samutpada). Instead of an individual learning process across successive lives, there is a collective learning process across successive generations. Given the biological model of rebirth, the belief in cosmic justice turns into a quest for mundane justice. There is a thought experiment for constructing such a concept, which complies well with the secular Buddhist spirit. John Rawls assumes that the legislative deliberation is taking place “behind a veil of ignorance”, so that the participants of the deliberation do not know their future genetic constitution and their future position within the society. If the participants imagine that their future self is contingent and impermanent – in accordance with the Buddhist doctrine of anatta and anitya – then the resulting principles of justice will be impartial.

Various authors suggested that Buddhism may be a kind of negative utilitarianism. A closer examination of the corresponding intuitions leads to the following result: - Negative utilitarianism, understood as an umbrella term, models the asymmetry between suffering and happiness and therefore accords with the Buddhist intuition of universal compassion. - The Noble Truths of Buddhism accord with the negative utilitarian intuition that (global) suffering cannot be compensated by happiness. - Some forms of Buddhism and negative utilitarianism share the intuition that non-existence is a perfect state.

In 2022 a group of researchers published an empirical study on population-ethical intuitions that offers a new perspective on global assessments of human happiness. The study revealed that, when valuing entire populations, most people intuitively weigh suffering more than happiness. If this asymmetry is applied to the life evaluations in the World Happiness Report, the aggregate score becomes negative. An unbiased evaluation would be even more negative, as the most suffering people do not participate in surveys. Since research on population-ethical intuitions is at an early stage, and there is an ongoing debate about methods for measuring well-being, the diagnosed predominance of suffering still has a provisional character. Nevertheless, the findings present a challenge to the prevailing assumption that happiness predominates.