ABSTRACT
I wish I didn’t need this abstract, but this blog post turned out to be much longer than I expected, so I’ll give some idea of what this is all about here.
In this blog post, I will explain the basics of the purest form of Richard D. Ryder’s painism, which I shall call “Ryderian painism.”
Then I will propose “solipsistic painism,” which I think can solve what I consider to be a major problem with Ryderian painism.
Ryderian painism, at least in theory, can permit creation of a painient (*1) consciousness under very unique circumstances.
However, creating a painient consciousness essentially means creating someone who will always be the maximum sufferer in the only world that undoubtedly exists for them – the content of the perception of that painient consciousness – and antinatalism absolutely cannot permit such a cruel act.
In order to resolve the problem of Ryderian painism and antinatalism being incompatible with each other, a new rule that forbids creation of any painient consciousness needs to be added to the rule list of Ryderian painism, and given priority over any other painist rules that may clash with it in actual use.
That’s how we establish solipsistic painism.
*1: painient (adj.): capable of experiencing pain / painient (countable noun): painient being
I did think of calling it “solipsist painism,” but my understanding of solipsism is not solid enough, in fact almost non-existent, so I’ll use the name of Hozmian painism for now.
Edit: Now I'm confident enough to call my version of painism "solipsistic painism" instead of Hozmian. We're talking about painism here, not solipsism itself, so I think it's okay to use this term this way! (May 18, 2025)
HOW (I THOUGHT) I BECAME A PAINIST
Of course, the story of how I became a supporter of painism has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the moral theory, but I’ll tell it here anyway, partly for my future self to remember it better.
I came up with the name “painism,” probably in 2020, when I wanted to name my own ethical view that drew conclusions such as that sentient beings must not procreate, and the physical world, if it actually exists, needs to (try to) go non-existent.
It was only after I started using this term that I realized someone else, named Richard D. Ryder, had already coined it before me.
I thought it’d be worth learning what it’s about if it’s named “painism,” so I had Painism: A Modern Morality (2001) and Speciesism, Painism and Happiness: A Morality for the Twenty-First Century (2011) delivered from Germany to read them.
Our view on the pure and self-evident badness of pain (those are my words, not Ryder’s) was exactly the same, and it took me no time to agree with his view on the mistake of utilitarianism, which aggregates pain and pleasure across multiple individuals and considers it to be morally meaningful.
That's how I started identifying as a painist, while being an antinatalist.
The idea, though, that painism and antinatalism seem to be actually incompatible with each other has terribly bothered me in recent years.
That’s what motivated me to say something like “we shall establish Hozmian painism, a form of painism that doesn’t clash with antinatalism” in one of my previous blog posts.
However, it’s a topic way too important to leave that way, so today I’m writing this blog post to explain the full details I have on it, and in the process make everything clear to myself too.
PURE AND SELF-EVIDENT BADNESS OF PAIN
Painism is a normative moral theory, like utilitarianism and rights theory.
Starting from the pure and self-evident badness of pain, it agrees with statements such as “moral value is based upon the individual’s experience of pain” and “aggregation of pain (and pleasure) across multiple individuals is morally meaningless, and the morally significant measure of pain in a group of painients is the maximum felt by any one of them” (Ryder, 2001, pp. 26-28).
Pain, as Ryder and I say it, is the quality usually shared by subjective experiences of things like boredom, cuts, bone fractures, sadness, anger, bruises; in other words, what makes all of these things “bad.”
My go-to wording of the definition of pain is “the quality of subjective experience with pure and self-evident badness.”
The badness of pain is “pure” in the sense that it’s the only thing that can make other things bad, and it’s “self-evident” in the sense that one can only give a circular-reasoning-ish answer to the question “why is pain bad?”
Pain is the subjective experience of badness, and badness is the quality of something that causes pain; pain and badness define each other.
RULE LISTS OF PAINISM
Ryder makes it easy for the readers of Painism: A Modern Morality to understand his views by formatting his important points in the form of “rules” and inserting them into the text.
Those rules can be classified (not by Ryder but me) into 3 groups:
Rules on ethics/morality in general
Rules on painism
Rules derived by applying rules from groups 1 and 2 to real-world problems
I will list the rules (*2) from groups 1 and 2 to introduce the pure (*3) form of painism, which we shall call “Ryderian painism.”
Then I will introduce my version of painism, “solipsistic painism,” by suggesting a small but important change to the rule lists of Ryderian painism.
Ryder uses the terms “ethics” and “morality” interchangeably, just like I always do, not just in this blog post but on the entirety of this website.
*2: Most of the rules are translated directly from Painism: A Modern Morality, but some of them need notes to make sense on their own. I've added notes in [ ] to such rules.
*3: Ryderian painism is “pure,” only in the sense that it's Ryder's original version. I expect readers of my blog to be aware that “pure” doesn't necessarily mean “complete” or “legitimate.”
RYDERIAN PAINISM’S RULE LIST 1: RULES ON ETHICS/MORALITY IN GENERAL
Rule 1 | Morality is only about the right and wrong treatment of others. |
Rule 2 | Morality provides us with a framework which facilitates our choice of actions, thus reducing our levels of stress. |
Rule 3 | Politics and the law are applied ethics writ large. |
Rule 4 | Stick to ethical rules unless you have the time and information necessary to calculate (as certainly as possible) the exact consequences of an action, or you have good reason to believe that circumstances are new or unusual. |
Rule 20 | Ethics is about unselfishness. |
RYDERIAN PAINISM’S RULE LIST 2: RULES ON PAINISM
Rule 5 | Pain (i.e. suffering) is the only evil. |
Rule 6 | The moral objective is to reduce the pains of others. |
Rule 7 | All aims and ideals such as justice, democracy, peace, equality, and liberty are good only as means towards this end: they are believed to reduce pain. |
Rule 8 | The quantity of pain suffered by the maximum sufferer matters far more than the quantity of individuals affected. |
Rule 9 | Speciesism is always wrong. |
Rule 10 | The aggregation of pains and pleasures across individuals is meaningless. |
Rule 11 | Our first moral concerns should always be with the individual who is the maximum sufferer. |
Rule 12 | It is always wrong to cause pain to A merely in order to increase the pleasure of B. |
Rule 13 | [When multiple ways to reduce the pain of B are available, the one that causes the least pain to A should be tried first.] Only if there are no alternatives may causing (unconsented to) pain to A allowed. |
Rule 14 | The pain to be reduced must always be severe [to justify an action that causes pain to A in order to reduce the pain of B]. |
Rule 15 | [When we try causing pain to A to reduce the pain of B,] [t]he action must be likely to succeed. |
Rule 16 | Whatever the benefits, it is always wrong deliberately to cause pain that is severe or prolonged. So, regardless of benefits, torture is always wrong. |
Rule 17 | The experiences of the moral patient are always of greater moral importance than the motives of the moral agent. |
Rule 18 | The probability of reducing the pain of B should always be at least as great as the probability of causing pain to A [if we are to try an action that would cause pain to A in order to reduce the pain of B]. |
Rule 19 | I conclude that pain is more powerfully wrong than pleasure is right. |
(Ryder, 2001, pp. 4, 6, 10, 24, 27, 28-31, 41-42, 57, 65)
After introducing these rules, Ryder concludes Chapter 2 “Painism: A New Approach” as follows:
We can conclude as follows:
(1) Pain, broadly defined to include all forms of suffering, is the only evil. All other moral objectives are means to reducing pain.
(2) Around each painient individual is the boundary of consciousness. So it makes no sense to try to aggregate the pains of several individuals. (This is where painism parts company with Utilitarianism.)
(3) Each individual painient, of whatever race or species, is of moral importance.
(4) Of primary concern are those who suffer most – the maximum sufferers. Moral significance is not measured by the quantity of individuals affected by an action but by the degree of pain suffered by the maximum sufferers.
(Ryder, 2001, p. 65)
The required rule lists to put solipsistic painism to practice can be completed just by adding rule X between rules 7 and 8, and adding a note that says rule X has priority over any other rules that clash with it in actual use.
Rule X: It is always wrong to create a painient being, whether directly or indirectly.
Examples of actions forbidden by rule X include procreating to have biological descendants, paying others to create painient beings (by, for instance, paying for meat, milk, eggs etc. and financially supporting animal agriculture), creating painient AI, and failing to take measures, when realistic ones are available, to stop wild animals from continuing the chains of suffering for generations.
If solipsistic painism were to have rule list 3, these things could be added to it.
IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 2 TYPES OF PAINISM
There is only a small amount of difference between the rule lists of solipsistic painism and Ryderian painism (one has rule X and the other doesn’t), so one may think those 2 positions are not significantly different.
But the stems of these two are headed in completely different directions, despite both of them sprouting from the very same seed – the pure and self-evident badness of pain.
solipsistic painism focuses on the impossibility for an individual consciousness to know whether the external world and other consciousnesses actually exist, and the sheer significance of the event of the start of a consciousness’ existence.
Only as the second best measure when consciousnesses are unfortunately created, solipsistic painism proposes the same way of “pain trading” as Ryderian painism.
Ryderian painism, on the other hand, treats the existence of “others” mentioned in rule 1 as something like a premise of ethics, not questioning the morality of a moral agent starting the existence of someone else.
Of course, I doubt that most of the supporters of Ryderian painism would say such nonsense as “the start of existence of morally important beings is out of the scope of ethics,” but it’s clear that Ryderian painism itself doesn’t actively deny this statement.
A solipsistic painist would act just like a Ryderian painist in their everyday life, while secretly having to consider Ryderian painism as an incomplete moral theory due to its possibility of allowing creation of a painient being, as we will soon find out in this blog post.
A thought experiment, where we add rule X to the rule lists of Ryderian painism without giving it any priority (or, in other words, we claim to be a Ryderian painist and an antinatalist at the same time), would make it easy to understand the crucial difference between solipsistic painism and Ryderian painism, and the legitimacy of granting rule X priority over other rules.
Let’s call such a flawed form of painism “Asagian painism,” and try applying it to a rather unique situation.
HOW AN “ASAGIAN PAINIST” WOULD DEAL WITH A SITUATION WHERE PROCREATION WOULD REDUCE PAIN
It seems that, under a unique (and very rare, or even impossible) circumstance where creation (*4) of a painient being is expected to reduce the severe (*5) pain of the maximum sufferer, rules 13, 14 and 15 can be used to justify the action.
Because of this, Asagian painism, with rule X on its rule list, seems to be a self-contradictory view.
*4: There are multiple possible ways to create a painient being, but from here on, let's phrase this as "procreation" to keep things simple.
*5: If the pain is not severe, procreation always violates rule 14.
If someone points that out, how would an Asagian painist try to counter that?
Let’s list and examine possible counterarguments.
1. Rule X should be given priority over rules 13-15 (consider rule X to be a “meta” rule that forbids addition of a new player to the game of morality)
Why do we have morality in the first place?
That’s because we can reasonably assume that there are multiple painient consciousnesses; ourselves and others whom our actions could affect.
If there were only one consciousness, whom we shall name A, A can do whatever it wants to try to minimize its pain and maximize its pleasure.
There is no one who could possibly suffer other than A, so there could be no moral issue no matter what A does.
But when it becomes reasonable to assume that another consciousness, B, might actually exist, then ethics turns from A’s time-killing imagination to a real problem.
Both A and B have to think about the possibility of causing pain to each other before they act.
Morality has binding force which prevents A from making an action to reduce its pain (or increase its pleasure) if that action is expected to cause pain to B, and as a result, morality causes more pain to A than A would otherwise have to experience.
Is it okay to throw C into such a world?
C has never asked for its painience, and yet here it exists, capable of experiencing pain and likely to actually experience pain!
Furthermore, C can reasonably assume that A and B are painient, so C needs to give up on minimizing its own pain for the sake of A and B, resulting in even more pain for C than it could have experienced in a world without A or B.
What’s worse, from C’s perspective, C is the only consciousness that certainly exists and is certainly painient.
C doesn’t live in the external world directly – the only world it can directly live in is the world of C's perceptual content, where C is the only consciousness in actual existence, and therefore always the only certain painient.
C could never know if A or B actually exists in the external world, or if they are painient (and therefore deserving of any moral consideration).
Morality disables C to minimize its own pain, just for the sake of A and B who may actually not exist at all!
When an Asagian painist uses this counterargument, they become a solipsistic pianist, who gives rule X a privileged position over others.
Particularly if they are dealing with a Ryderian painist, they will most likely proceed to use the 5th counterargument on this list, which is what I consider to be the most powerful argument to support solipsistic painism and antinatalism.
2. Creating a single painient being makes it possible (and likely, even) that generations of descendents will be created, among whom there will be a new maximum sufferer
When we create a painient animal who can and will procreate themselves, we are effectively creating all the painient descendents for however many generations there will be.
The more dice you roll, the more likely it is for you to get at least one 6.
Similarly, when you create a painient, living thing that could procreate, you are making it likely that one of the descendents you just (indirectly) created is going to suffer more pain than that of the current maximum sufferer.
With this new perspective of identifying the maximum sufferer not only among present painients but also the ones created in the future by our choice we make today, a Ryderian painist can start considering creation of painient beings to be morally unjustifiable without changing their fundamental ethical view.
However, one could say that this counterargument works only as long as (it can reasonably be assumed that) there are many painients in this universe because of the domination of pro-natalism.
If the earth was the only place where painient consciousnesses exist, and there were only 2 of them, then it may be difficult to imagine a scenario where creation of a new painient being to reduce the pain of the current maximum sufferer would make it likely that there would be many generations of painient beings, one of whom would be a new maximum sufferer who suffers more pain than the current one.
3. Creation of a painient being always violates rule 18 “the probability of reducing the pain of B should always be at least as great as the probability of causing pain to A, if we are to try an action that would cause pain to A in order to reduce the pain of B.”
Simply put, this counterargument says “the chance for your descendents to experience pain is high, but the chance for you to experience less pain due to your procreation is not.”
In most cases, this statement is probably true, but this Asagian painist could be accused of not reading the original argument correctly: “under a unique circumstance where creation of a painient being is expected to reduce the severe pain of the maximum sufferer, rules 13, 14 and 15 can be used to justify the action.”
So this counterargument isn't strong at all, if not invalid.
4. There is no reason to think that the maximum sufferer among however many painient beings this procreation is going to create will experience less pain than the current maximum sufferer
This counterargument claims that we have no enough information to assert that none of the descendents of the procreator will experience as much pain as the current maximum sufferer, and therefore the procreation is painistically justifiable.
But this one, just like counterargument 3, is easily defeatable by just saying “you misread the original argument.”
5. The start of existence of a single consciousness is also the start of existence of a whole world, where that consciousness is always the maximum sufferer.
This counterargument alone works perfectly to defend antinatalism.
If it’s used as a supporter of counterargument 1 on this list, it’s more than powerful enough to justify the priority given to rule X and complete solipsistic painism.
I, a consciousness, can only meet the external world in the form of content of my perception through the body on which I am happening.
I could never know for certain whether the external world exists in a similar way that my perception suggests.
For me, the content of my perception is the only world that I know certainly exists.
And in this world, I am the only painient consciousness, and therefore the maximum sufferer.
No matter how much of my pain is reduced, I will continue to be the maximum sufferer.
In a different world where there are multiple painients, the sufferer who is suffering the second most pain will, at some point, become the maximum sufferer as long as the moral concern is directed rightly to the maximum sufferer (and it pays off) (*6).
But in the world of my perceptual content, I could never stop being the world's most ethically urgent issue, because I am the only painient here.
If the external world and other consciousnesses than me exist as my perception suggests, then the others are suffering the same problem!
The “pain trading” with other consciousnesses, whose existence isn’t certain, is (literally) a painful business.
There's no way it could be ethically justifiable to throw someone into this situation, where they have to either experience some pain even if they act like others don’t exist, or be forced by ethics to conclude a potentially unfair treaty that forbids pain minimization with potentially non-existent entities.
This is especially true since that “someone” doesn’t exist unless we dare to create them, and therefore doesn’t have any preference or need, or desire to start existing.
*6: It’s reasonable to switch our attention to the second highest sufferer when our work for the maximum sufferer proves totally ineffective. In that case, the maximum sufferer will continue to be the maximum sufferer. (Ryder, 2001, p. 29)
6. Based on Ryderian painism, we can conclude that the number of individuals within a species of painient animals needs to be reduced, and procreation hampers the effort.
This may sound like a rephrased version of counterargument 2, but what I was thinking of is procreation of sexually reproductive species.
Such species need
2 individual animals with different sex, and
those two choosing each other as reproductive mates
in order to maintain or increase its population.
Failing to reduce the population of a sexually reproductive species means making it easy for such pairings to be formed.
It can be said, therefore, that although the quantity of sufferers doesn’t determine the moral value of anything, Ryderian painism alone actually aims to reduce the population within a species.
But this again has the same issue as counterargument 2.
It can’t beat counterarguments 1 and 5 (and frankly it doesn’t need to, because 1 and 5 are powerful enough).
Of all counterarguments we have covered, the 1st and the 5th, if used, will turn the Asagian painist into a solipsistic painist.
If the Asagian painist tries to fight with other counterarguments, then they will have to keep struggling between their antinatalism and painism, until they eventually come up with the two good ones.
SUMMARY OF SOLIPSISTIC PAINISM
Ryderian painism can help us make right decisions in our everyday life most of the time, but it does have a weakness of allowing the start of existence of a painient consciousness under a unique condition, which is actually one of the most ethically disastrous events possible – especially when the consciousness happens on a living organism that can reproduce itself for generations.
One could never exactly be an antinatalist and a Ryderian painist at the same time.
That’s why I needed to establish solipsistic painism.
So here’s my quick summary of solipsistic painism:
Define pain as “the quality of subjective experience with pure and self-evident badness.”
Pain and pleasure are the only source of any kind of value.
The only world that a painient consciousness A can directly live in is the world of A’s perceptual content. The existence of other consciousnesses is only suggested to A by A’s perception, and could never be proven. In the world of A’s perceptual content, A is the only painient being, and therefore always the maximum sufferer.
Creating something on which a painient consciousness will seemingly happen (humans, non-human animals, AI whose subjective experience we can’t be sure about, etc.) means creating a whole new world, and the only painient in that world, who will always be the maximum sufferer. Such an action could never ethically be justified (Rule X).
Consciousnesses who have unfortunately been created must engage in “pain trading” in the same way as Ryderian painism.
Please note that my ethical view doesn't require the actual existence of other consciousnesses or the external world they live in.
solipsistic painism, and most other theories, I imagine, show how to “slow down before a crossing with poor visibility,” so to speak, motivated by what is suggested by perception.
No matter how likely it is (or feels) that no one would be there, we still lift off the throttle and brake, because we can't afford hitting someone in case they are there.
THAT'S IT!
I did think, for some seconds, that maybe I should call my view “solipsistic painism,” but decided to go with “Hozmian painism” for now, as I don't know enough about solipsism yet to use that term with any confidence.
My underlying sentiment of all these 4,000 words can probably be phrased like this:
I exist, and am painient.
I have no idea whether there are consciousnesses other than myself, or whether the external world exists in a similar way to what my perception suggests.
If the external world doesn’t actually exist, or exists in a very different fashion from what I perceive, then the only thing I can really consider to be responsible for the ethical mistake of starting my painient existence is the first cause (i.e. the answer to the question “why is there something, rather than nothing?”).
However, if the external world exists in a similar way to what my perception suggests, and consciousnesses actually happen on human bodies other than the one on which I do, then the first cause isn’t the only thing for me to accuse.
The consciousnesses on the ancestors of the human body I am on, particularly those on the bio parents, played the biggest role in taking the dangerous gamble of starting my existence.
As someone who has been hit at a crossing with poor visibility, I was put in a place where it was easy to realize the importance of slowing down before such a crossing, so I’m writing this blog post to let others know how to do it.
REFERENCE
Ryder, R. D. (2001). Painism: A Modern Morality. Centaur Press.
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