Reddit reviews The Problems of Philosophy

You're making an argument for a position known as "anti-natalism" which you can read about further here.

There are arguments to be made against this position but as with all arguments about ethics, it really depends on what your most basic ethical values are or what ethical theory you ascribe to. I'm not sure how 'expert' you are in philosophy so whenever I use a key term or refer to some position, I'll link a relevant article so that you can read more. It seems as though the idea of autonomy is important to you so I'll describe the various positions with regard to that particular issue.

A utilitarian (in the most general sense) is someone who believes that we can identify evil acts with those that create net suffering and that we can identify good acts with those that create net happiness. It's usually pretty hard to define 'happiness' and 'suffering' since they are phenomenological. That is, they refer to 'internal' experiences rather than external phenomena. Given that we understand what these mean and how we can identify them, the simplest argument to be made is that bringing someone into the world exposes them to happiness. To many utilitarians, the idea of autonomy is not fundamentally important. It is only important in that it creates happiness, the core value of the utilitarian. There are reasons that a utilitarian would value autonomy as a general rule, though. If we allow the powerful to compel the weak to do their bidding, it may well harm the weak. And, at a more basic level, people do just like to know that they are free to do as they please.

I would certainly argue that autonomy is not valuable if it causes net suffering. But I'll come back to that in a minute.

There are a couple responses you might make to this position. One is simply to argue that it is wrong to say that life generally creates happiness. This is the most common line of argument I've heard from anti-natalists. They often argue that life is miserable the majority of the time and we kind of kid ourselves into thinking otherwise. Some utilitarians will believe this to be a powerful argument since it's in-line with their basic theory. But the problem now is how do we objectively measure happiness and suffering. One can only really know for sure for themselves how happy they are and if they believe that life is worth living. Even then, people can be deluded. Survivors of suicide attempts often express gratitude towards the people that helped them since they have now come to realise that suicide would have been a mistake. It's not always as simple as "you must find out for yourself".

Another type of utilitarian thinking on the issue might come from preference utilitarianism. Peter Singer was probably the most famous advocate for that position but he has since defected to hedonistic utilitarianism. A preference utilitarian argues that we ought to act in a way that accord with what other sentient beings prefer. And we also ought to think about their preferences as though they are fully informed. That means that if they are about to walk on a land mine, we're justified in pushing them off of it since we might reasonably suspect that, had they known a land mine was in front of them, they would have preferred to not step on it. He often discussed his beliefs about ethics in the context of abortion so it's very relevant to this topic. He believed that the unborn have no preferences and we therefore have no moral obligations towards them. This applies to the unborn in your case also. We need not value the autonomy of something that doesn't exist since something that doesn't exist has no preferences. There are various problems with this position as I can see it (hence why, perhaps, Singer changed his mind).

The nail in the coffin for me is that, I think, autonomy is not the most intrinsically important thing. But even if it is, there is reason to believe that brining someone in to existence is a morally good thing to do in most cases. I say most since, if you know for certain that someone is going to have a miserable life full of suffering, I think you ought not give them that life.

Ultimate autonomy involves being given the choice to begin with. Life or non-life is a forced choice. There is no third option. But at least someone who is born has the choice to then end their life if they later decide it isn't worth it. I am a supporter of assisted suicide. So in cases where people have to live with debilitating illnesses that ruin their quality of life, I think it's important to allow the person the autonomy to end it. That's not to say I think it's always a good idea to off yourself if you feel like it. As I said before, people often change their minds on that topic. Someone who feel suicidal may feel otherwise the next day. So it's not a good idea to make rash decisions without really considering your chances. Anyway, giving birth to someone is the only way to allow them that choice. I believe that you're actually restricting the autonomy of the unborn person (if there is such a thing?) more by not giving birth to them since they never even had the chance to live in the first place. As I said, it's a forced choice it's one or the other.

Birth: You have the option to end your life if it becomes bad enough.

No Birth: You do not have the option to be born in the first place and therefore you have had less of a say in the matter.

​

I hope you find that last argument convincing if autonomy is your concern.

If you want a more general introduction into philosophy there's a Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy by Simon Blackburn and the older What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy by Thomas Nagel. A more academic introduction (the last two books are more aimed at a general audience) is Fundamentals of Philosophy edited by John Shand. If you're willing to sit through it there also Russel's classic A History of Western Philosophy, which is a sort of introduction to philosophy through the history of the field (the audiobook is on youtube btw), and there also his Problems of Philosophy

I'm not that familiar with eastern philosophy, but a classic introduction to Existentialism is Walter Kaufmann's Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre and it should go nicely with Existentialism is a Humanism.

Hope this helps :)

Just because you have not personally experienced something does not mean it has no epistemic value. It just means it a hypothetical placeholder that you need to verify through testing. I don't think you can verify or discredit the uniform existence of grooming across the population by thinking about articles you've read about one type of grooming.

I think you should read the Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.