Can Existence Be Better for a Being Than Non-Existence? - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 85

We can read Narveson's example as an enforcement of his earlier point:
death and non-existence are beyond measurement with the welfare
scale. Yet, the force of this example depends on one's position on how
to deal with sentences whose referring terms lack reference. It is unclear
whether one of the answers is more plausible than the other.
Here is another example. Imagine that respondents are asked in a
questionnaire to indicate their child's reaction to their parental requests.
The child's reaction should be indicated on a scale ranging from
minus 10 (very subversive) to plus 10 (very cooperative). Parents might
be able to indicate their child's general reaction on the scale: is the child
mainly subversive or mainly cooperative; is it, for instance slightly more
cooperative or is it nearly always subversive; or do the cooperative and
subversive reactions hold the balance? Now, Holtug's argumentation,
transferred to this example would be: 'If you don't have a child, then
you have neither a cooperative nor a subversive child. So, you can safely
put the mark at the zero-point.' According to Holtug, a life in which
positive and negative experiences hold the balance should count for
the same as non-existence: a mark at the zero point. Returning to the
example, I would say that a respondent without children should not
put a mark at the zero point. He should put his mark at another place,
namely 'not applicable'. Maybe the questionnaire is not intended for
people without children at all, or else provisions have to be made for
answering 'not applicable', or else what we get is great confusion. This
suggests that non-existence cannot and should not be measured on the
welfare scale.
4 How to decide whether the absence of any value is the
same as zero value?
To recapture, the challenge for those who want to claim that coming
into existence can make a being better or worse off is to point out how
a state of non-existence can be compared to a state of existence in terms
of welfare. After all, such a comparison is necessary in order to compare
both states in terms of welfare. There is agreement about the assumption
that the non-existent lack properties and thus do not have any positive
or negative welfare. The dispute is about whether the absence of welfare
in the case of non-existence is the same as having zero welfare in the
case of existence. After all, if it is the same, both states are comparable.
How can it be decided whether the absence of any positive and nega-
tive value for a person in case of his or her non-existence is the same
as the person having zero welfare in case of his or her existence? Some