Extreme anti-natalism is the view espoused by David Benatar according to which "it would be better if there were no more humans" (David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation, Oxford UP 2015, 13). This is an axiological thesis. From it follows the deontic conclusion that "all procreation is wrong." (12)
Procreation is obviously a biological process. But in the case of humans, procreation is more than a merely biological process in that it leads to the production of extremely sensitive conscious and self-conscious individuals. Human procreation is an objective process in the world that leads to the production of subjects of experience for whom there is a world! If you don't find that astonishing, you are no philosopher. For as Plato taught, wonder is the feeling of the philosopher.
A Thought Experiment
Suppose one could keep (human) procreation going but that the offspring were no longer conscious. The offspring would react to stimuli and initiate chains of causation but have no conscious experiences whatsoever. It is conceivable that all biological processes including all the ones involved in procreation transpire 'in the dark.'
The idea is that at some point procreation becomes the procreation of genetically human zombies, as philosophers use the term 'zombie.' This is a learned usage, not a vulgar one.
A human zombie is a living being that is physically and behaviorally exactly like a living human being except that it lacks (phenomenal) consciousness. Cut a zombie open, and you find exactly what you would find were you to cut a human being open. And in terms of linguistic and non-linguistic behavior, there is no way to tell a human being from a zombie. (So don't think of something sleepy, or drugged, or comatose or Halloweenish.)
When a zombie sees a tree, what is going on in the zombie's brain is a 'visual' computational process, but the zombie lacks what a French philosopher would call interiority. There is no irreducible subjectivity, no irreducible intentionality, no qualitative feel to the 'visual' processing; there is nothing it is like for a zombie to see a female zombie or to desire her. (What's it like to be a zombie? There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.) I suspect that Daniel Dennett is a zombie. But I have and can have no evidence for this suspicion. His denial of qualia is not evidence. It might just be evidence of his being a sophist. More to the point, his linguistic behavior and facial expressions could be just the same as those of a non-zombie qualia-denier.
Zombies are surely conceivable whether or not they are possible. (We are conceiving them right now.) But if they are conceivable then it is conceivable that, starting tomorrow, human procreation proceed as usual except 'in the dark.' It is conceivable that future human offspring lack all sentience and higher forms of consciousness.
On this scenario it might still be the case that it would have been better had we non-zombies never have been born, but it would not be the case that a convincing quality-of-life case could be made that "it would be better if there were no more humans" (David Benatar and David Wasserman, Debating Procreation, Oxford UP 2015, 13). For without consciousness, human life is devoid of felt quality. No consciousness, no qualia. Without consciousness there is no suffering whether mental or physical or spiritual. And without these negatives, what becomes of the anti-natalist argument?
What my thought experiment seems to show is that what is problematic about human life is the consciousness associated with it, not life itself viewed objectivistically and biologically. If so, it is not the value of life that we question, but the value of consciousness, more precisely, the value consciousness trapped in dying animal bodies. So the problem is not that we were born (or conceived) but that we became conscious.
The Original Calamity?
If a philosopher can't speculate, who can speculate? Could it be that the Original Calamity, the Fall of Man if you will, repeated in each one of us, is the arisal of consciousness? Or perhaps the calamity is not the arisal of consciousness from the slime and stench of life, bottom up, but the entanglement of consciousness in animal flesh, top down. One way of downward entanglement would be if Platonic souls foolishly quit their topos ouranios to take up lodging in rickety, flesh-draped skeletons. On either scenario, embodied consciousness is the problem, not life objectivistically and biologically viewed.
The question now shifts to why the value of consciousness is in doubt. Presumably consciousness is bad because of its objects and contents, not because it itself is bad. Being conscious, as such, is presumably good. But consciousness — this side of enlightenment — is never without an (intentional) object or a (non-intentional) content. But why are the objects thought and the feelings felt of dubious value? Because consciousness as we know it is tied to indigent, mortal, animal bodies.
If consciousness were a pure beholding, a pure spectatorship, then perhaps consciousness would be an unalloyed good. Schopenhauer says that the world is beautiful to behold but terrible to be (a part of). Things wouldn't be so bad — or bad at all — if the beholding were transcendental to the world. But it is not: it is incarnated in the world and hostage to it. Plato has Socrates say that the body is the prison house of the soul. Human incarnation is incarceration. Every beholding is a situated beholding. I am not a merely a transcendental spectator; I am also a bloody bit of nature's charnel house. Homo homini lupus. I am a prey to wolves human and non-human with all the mental and physical pain they bring, and prey to doubts about the sense and value of life in such a predicament with all the spiritual suffering they bring. And even if I somehow avoid be preyed upon, I will most assuredly end up fuel for cremation or meat for worms.
A Way Out?
If consciousness is contingently entangled in life, then there way be a way out, a path to salvation. Maybe there's a way to get clear of the samsaric crapstorm and step off of:
The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . . . . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead. ( Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus).
Here is an anti-natalist passage from Kerouac's Buddhist period. From Some of the Dharma, Viking 1997, p. 175, emphasis added:
No hangup on nature is going to solve anything — nature is bestial — desire for Eternal Life of the individual is bestial, is the final creature-longing — I say, Let us cease bestiality & go into the bright room of the mind realizing emptiness, and sit with the truth. And let no man be guilty, after this, Dec. 9 1954, of causing birth. — Let there be an end to birth, an end to life, and therefore an end to death. Let there be no more fairy tales and ghost stories around and about this. I don't advocate that everybody die, I only say everybody finish your lives in purity and solitude and gentleness and realization of the truth and be not the cause of any further birth and turning of the black wheel of death. Let then the animals take the hint, and then the insects, and all sentient beings in all one hundred directions of the One Hundred Thousand Chilicosms of Universes. Period.
Nature is the cause of all our suffering; joy is the reverse side of suffering. Instead of seducing women, control yourself and treat them like sisters; instead of seducing men, control yourself and treat them like brothers. For life is pitiful.
Stop.