JG wrote:

> > wrote in message ...
>
>>On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 17:12:20 GMT, Jonathan Ball >
>
> wrote:
>
>>>Yet another confused person has offered the faulty
>>>"logic of the larder" as a moral justification for
>>>human use of animals. That now makes two. Woo and yay.
>>>
>>>Life per se - basic existence - is not a benefit to any
>>>creature.
>>
>> Then you still need to show how something (animal or not)
>>can benefit if it's not alive. Since you can't, we're left to
>>understand that life is the benefit which makes all others
>>possible.
>
>
>
> Life is only a benefit if actual benefits follow from its existence. If
> only harm (or even net harm) is a consequence of the existence of a life,
> how is it a benefit? Life is a necessary but not sufficient condition for
> either benefit or harm, but is neither in itself.

*Continued* life may contingently be a benefit,
although it isn't life, but rather the things -
benefits - that life brings. Life _per se_ - being
born - can never be a benefit.