Is the package worth the price?
When you factor in the relevant physics, determinism implies that reality comes as a package. The only scenarios that had any non-negligible chance of occurring are these: all of the reality that we experience, good and bad, or none of it. Faced with only those options, we might ask: Is the package worth the price that had to be paid for it?
I’m asking about the total package and the total price. Without all the suffering experienced by sentient beings (past, present, and future), I wouldn’t exist. That suffering is the price of my ever existing. Clearly my existence, on its own, isn’t remotely worth that price. But it’s a different question whether the collective existence of all sentient beings is worth the price.
I can see answering “No” to that question. I can understand concluding that the total good of sentient existence gets outweighed by the total suffering. Some philosophers go much further. For instance, David Benatar thinks that all the joys and glories of sentient existence aren’t worth the pain of a mild headache. However, none of the versions of Benatar’s asymmetry argument for that extreme conclusion has ever persuaded me.
I can also see answering “Yes,” that the joys and glories of sentient existence have been worth the tremendous suffering. Or maybe the question itself is ill-posed: Maybe there’s no such thing as the total value or total disvalue of sentient existence. I welcome your comments!
