The "Most people" Defense
Here is my question as it relates to ethics:
Is it permissible to do something on someone else's behalf because one has a notion that "most people" would "want this"?
If not, then antinatalism is much more strongly defended.
If so BECAUSE you hate antinatalism, simply prejudicial thinking.
If so because you legitimately believe acts can be done to someone or on their behalf because "most people" think its okay with disregard for those who don't think so, is ethics then simply based on the current preferences of a particular group? Are ethics voted in by majority rule?
I'd also like to note that the sphere of politics (majority rule) can be (and perhaps should be) separated from normative ethical principles.
Is it permissible to do something on someone else's behalf because one has a notion that "most people" would "want this"?
If not, then antinatalism is much more strongly defended.
If so BECAUSE you hate antinatalism, simply prejudicial thinking.
If so because you legitimately believe acts can be done to someone or on their behalf because "most people" think its okay with disregard for those who don't think so, is ethics then simply based on the current preferences of a particular group? Are ethics voted in by majority rule?
I'd also like to note that the sphere of politics (majority rule) can be (and perhaps should be) separated from normative ethical principles.
Comments (130)
I think the thought experiment implicit in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas puts this kind of question to the test.
My instinct is that not even one person should have a bad life as a cost of the masses having a good life. It follows that natalism is wrong.
Agreed!
That doesn’t follow. It doesn’t have to be the only relevant consideration. Your search for a single simple statement that sums up all of morality is half the reason you end up with AN I think.
It does seem that ones sense of what is ethical or not is dictated by the society and culture in which you are raised and situated. Most societies frown upon murder, torture, incest and theft but not all and universal ethics does seem (in practice anyway) a difficult if not unachievable goal.
What's this got to do with natalism? It's very rare that a person has an entirely 'bad' life, and it's certainly not in any way necessary for the well-being of 'the masses'. I don't see how you're connecting the two at all. New people need to be born to sustain the well-being of the masses, they don't need to have a 'bad life'. In fact it's overall worse for the masses if they do as we're broadly speaking an empathetic species.
I would say that it can very often be permissible. For example, suppose that a billionaire asked me if I want him to give you a million dollars. I know that if I were to send you a DM here asking if you want a million dollars, then you probably would assume that this is a joke or a scam(after all, why would some random person offer you a million dollars for no reason). So, I would have to make a decision on your behalf here or just have you forfeit the million dollars. Surely you wouldn’t think that I should tell the billionaire not to give you a million dollars just because I can’t be certain that you will be happy about receiving the money. Though, I’ll grant you that the overall goodness of being born is more controversial than the goodness of receiving a million dollars. But, if the vast majority of people are happy about the fact that they are born then why wouldn’t it make sense to take that risk of an occasional child being unhappy about existence?
I think you have a better case to make for legalizing assisted suicide with these consent arguments as it may be argued that if you make a decision on someone else’s behalf then that person has a right to not have people preventing her from wanting to undo the outcome of that decision to the greatest extent that it can be undone(which is suicide). I think it’s kinda strange to argue that we are never justified taking risks on other’s behalf because we actually take risks on other’s behalf quite often. For example, my retirement fund is being managed by some professional investors that I don’t know and they certainly don’t ask me permission for every investment decision that they make. Nonetheless, I trust that they probably know what they are doing and I don’t think it’s wrong for them to make decisions with other people’s money. Though, you should be allowed to object to their decisions and try to undo their decisions if you have the time and will to study and analyze them.
This is a non sequitur. You're confusing the rule with the data used to carry it out.
Let's say a society has a simple rule. "Do not paint your house a colour that the others in your street generally don't like". That rule could be an absolute one, not subject to democratic usurpation, but immutable for all time. It doesn't have any bearing on the fact that, in order to carry it out, one must discover which colours 'others in your street generally don't like'. Not only can this stage be carried out by majority averaging, but arguably it must be, else it would be prone to bias. One must check, by majority average, what colours are acceptable in order to carry out the timeless and absolute rule to only use such colours on one's house.
It's the same with children. The (seemingly) timeless and absolute rule is that we shouldn't do something on someone else's behalf unless their response is likely to be proportionate to the necessity of the action. There's nothing democratic about this rule. To carry it out, however, we need to assess what a person's likely reaction will be. That data is something which needs to be derived from averaging a population, otherwise we're just guessing.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
Natalism is a belief that promotes the reproduction of human life. This belief has lead to millions of people being born, a small chunk of which will have net bad lives, an even smaller chunk will have lives of unbearable suffering.
These people with net bad lives and those with lives of unbearable suffering, exist as a consequence of natalism. In short, If people stop breeding, the lives of suffering eventually stop too.
But you said that no individual should suffer for the good of the masses. So why should those people who will suffer during the course of this 'eventually' do so just to alleviate the potential suffering of these unfortunate future people who would otherwise have miserable lives?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
I am a consequentialist. Suffering in itself is not a bad thing, and is justified if it leads to less net suffering e.g. getting surgery.
I think any suffering resulting from not breeding will pale in comparison to the millions of lives of unbearable suffering that would otherwise exist.
What makes you think that? You'd need numbers on the amount of suffering, the longevity of the human race, the extent to which antinatalism will be successful - all seems like quite a lot of guesswork on which to advocate the extinction of humanity, no?
X: (Most people) think TPF is such a boring place.
Y: Speak for yourself - I like it!
Jokes aside, that's why the moral rule that has the most appeal is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would like others do unto you. Ethics isn't about what most people would want but about what you want. The underlying assumption though, ironically, is that other people are like you and Bob's your uncle!
Yet, it isn't that simple. It's not just about what most people want. We all know that! ( :wink: :wink: :wink: ) - the list of most popular and fastest growing websites will vouch for what I'm hinting at.
I find it fascinating that both X (Christ) and XXX (porn) turn us on! :chin: Threesomes, Anyone?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
I operate from the data I am aware of, and I would and have changed my beliefs based upon fresh data (I used to be a pro-natalist).
To be honest I wasn't sure of the gross increase in suffering you had in mind. Presumably, sadness of not being able to have children, less young people to look after the older generation?
I don't see real reason to believe the human race will cease to exist by the year 2100, with a predicted population of around 11 billion. I don't know how the aforesaid suffering from antinatlaism could outweigh the millions of lives of unbearable suffering that would otherwise exist e.g. babies, children, and adults with horrific illnesses wishing it would all end, people tortured begging to be killed, and we are due another world war.
I don't think the extent to which anitinatalism will be successful is relevant to my position that procreation is a net bad. It's not even a topic I'm that passionate about, it's just I sympathise with the antinatalist position, and there won't be many people defending it.
I assumed that, I was just wondering what your numbers are. Key ones being - % of the population who'd rather they hadn't been born, quantification of their 'suffering' vs the suffering of humanity as it descends to extinction, and the length of time you envisage the process taking.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Yes, and also, any community benfitting project which takes more than single generation to complete.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Well, that's what I was asking really. Why the assumption that it won't? Once the human race is extinct you can't undo that and you're advocating that position on the basis of "it seems to me, and no one's shown me otherwise". Just seems either monumentally reckless or sociopathic. Surely the default should be that the existing natural state is OK until such time as someone comes up with an absolutely watertight set of figures proving the net gain in suffering is greater if we continue. Given it's a one time switch you can't undo "I just reckon" seems an astonishingly inadequate level of certainty on which to go ahead.
Imagine you're a God. You wipe out the human race to prevent net suffering. One of the other gods comes along with the figures proving that net suffering was actually increased by your actions, distraught over the loss he asks "why did you do it?", you reply "I just had a bit of a think about it and 'reckoned' what the figures might be". Would any normal person be satisfied with that?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
The less successful it is the longer the human race is around for despite your policy, the more net suffering from those who remain. Given that the human race will end anyway at some point, a long drawn out decline by antinatalism only yields a net drop in suffering if it successfully ends the human race enough years before it was going to end anyway.
Permissible by whom?
This is moral realism, though. Might makes right. The downtrodden will not like it.
"The existing natural state is that people have children. Because it is the existing natural state, it's ok."
vs.
"The existing natural state is that rich and powerful people can take advantage of those with less money and less power, and they can do so with impunity. Because it is the existing natural state, it's ok."
The "the existing natural state is OK" motto is not applicable in all cases, so it cannot be used as a general rule by which to act or assess the moralit status of an action or ideology.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
The unborn are in a neutral state (they experience neither good or bad), on the other hand there are millions that would live in unbearable agony. I don't think it's fair to err on the side of those in a neutral state as opposed to those in unbearable agony.
Further, I don't know if I said something to the effect of "I just reckon", but I would say the data's strong enough to form a belief. It's pretty obvious the suffering that lies ahead in breeding billions more people (by the year 2100), and evidence of the suffering involved in stopping breeding looks very weak in comparison.
Quoting Isaac
Okay, I see where you are coming from now. I don't see any evidence to believe humans will go extinct by the year 2100 by which 3 billion people are projected to be brought into existence, and if even 1% of those are a life of suffering, that's 30 million.
I'm not sure I'm trying to do that. In our back-and-forths, due to you wanting me to provide a one-size-fits-all heuristic as a basis for my AN, I do end up doing that I think (see previous discussions).
What I am proposing here is that almost every circumstance where something is done on someone else's behalf there is ameliorating a lesser harm for a greater harm.. One can even argue, giving a present to someone is also doing this... surprise party, or whatever example you want to use.
However, in the case of the not-born/considering-born, it is always the case that at least for that person being born nothing needed to be ameliorated, thus, I call this act of putting in conditions of harm/suffering "unnecessary" in the sense that it is absolutely not needed for some living agent. Bringing it to the subject-at-hand in the other thread but can be generalized to any form of suffering, harm, imposition, etc.
1) Working to get better circumstance = a necessary (evil/need/thing/event)
2) Creating the conditions where someone needs to get better circumstances (aka through working) = not necessary.
Well, I think this goes even deeper to the problem with the Golden Rule argument (What you do not want done to you, do not do to another).. There are people who would want suffering in certain contexts which others would not. Hence the rule is a bit flawed itself, though I like its attempt at succinct clarity. It doesn't work when combined with outliers or simply moral relativism in general throughout individuals and cultures.
Again, this is the same problem with the Golden Rule, not everyone wants done to them what you would want done to you or its inverse (not done to them what you would not want done).
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I'm sure there are legal ways you have allowed that person to do that.. forms, fine print, laws, and whatnot. Certainly that person shouldn't do it without your approval otherwise. On an ethical basis, no one should just bet on your money, even if it is a sure bet. And certainly moments in life are not sure bets, but very nuanced and complicated phenomena.
Right, but at what percentage does the minority get discounted? And what kind of phenomena does this apply more strongly? A color to a house and a human life you would think this rule would get more stringent, don't you think?
That's another point.. What if what most people want IS NOT GOOD, but they are not aware of this?
Permissible as one's own ethical guideline.
If I run across an unconscious or an irrational patient (perhaps from drugs, or a head injury), I can treat that person under the doctrine of "implied consent," which means that we do what a majority of reasonable people would want under similar circummstances.
This even applies if they refuse, as an incompetent person is not able to legally refuse treatment.
I don't believe that the ends justify the means, but we are expected to be practical and pragmatic in a medical emergency.
Granted. But let's make this more interesting..
You are convinced most people would like the "feelings of accomplishment" or at least the "feelings of being engaged" of working.. You are a magician of sorts who can conjure people out of thin air. You use your powers and create people. You provide some options but they must choose a form of work.. You decide that "most people you create through your magical powers like doing this"... Are you in the right in creating these people who will work?
So, would you say that it would be more wise for me to tell the billionaire in my hypothetical that I can’t speak on your behalf and risk you not receiving a million dollars because of that?
So you are saying the complexities and known harms of life are the same as giving someone a million dollars?
If most people want something that has almost 0.000000001 possibility of harm and something that has demonstrable forms of known and unknown harms, you think this is analogous?
Probabilities can have a place but the application is so haughtily assumed..THATS the real argument. I’d still find something as important as bestowing a human life should be more closely analyzed.
Also, once born, its TOO LATE. At this point relative comparisons of lesser for better states come into play, so of course the negligible “lesser state” of not consenting to a million dollars is like a limit in calculus. However creating a whole life for someone else is much less negligible AND is not trading a greater harm for a lesser harm SINCE THAT PERSON DOESN'T EXIST YET TO NEED THIS TRADE OFF”. Thus it is an absolutely unnecessary cause of harm to that person.
But in the OP you say:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, it doesn’t have to be the only consideration.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No they can’t. Not consistently anyways. Unless you believe that every instance of pleasure is just amelioration of harm.
Currently if someone gave me 10 dollars I’d be happy. Even though I’m not suffering due to lack of 10 dollars. I wasn’t being harmed by lack of 10 dollars yet I’d appreciate the gift. You think this is never the case?
Quoting schopenhauer1
The whole point of that example is that no one suffers due to lack of surprise party. It’s a surprise. They weren’t expecting it. You can’t suffer due to not having something you weren’t expecting.
Are you currently suffering due to me not gifting you 10000 dollars? No. Because you don’t expect 10000 dollars from me. But would you be happy if I gifted you 10000 dollars? Probably.
They aren’t the same obviously but I think most people would rather lose a million dollars of their lifetime earnings than to have someone make it so that they have never been born at all. I don’t why this fact shouldn’t also be considered here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Given that there seems to be only like 3% of people who wish they had never been born at any given time, I think it could reasonably be seen as somewhat analogous. Even if I thought there was like a 3% chance that you wouldn’t want a million dollars(maybe because it would trigger a drug habit or something), I would still think it’s appropriate to make a decision on your behalf here since you are quite unlikely to be worse off.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don’t think it’s too late. In fact, with adequate access to assisted suicide, I think you can provide most people who wish they had never been born with a quite reasonable solution to their future suffering.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why do you think that being born is an unnecessary cause of harm and that avoid harming someone is necessary? I think one could reasonably argue that we don’t need to care about harming others(at least I don’t see why you think it’s more obvious that we need to care about harming others but we don’t need to care about creating additional benefits for others). I think this sort of mindset about morality relates to the bias of morality being treated like legal laws. For example, there seems to be a lot of talk of moral laws, moral duties, and moral prohibitions in moral discourse(which kinda seem strangely similar to the concept of legal duties and legal prohibitions). I think laws have a structure to them that emphasizes keeping everyone civil and that tends to prioritize punishing those that harm others as opposed to rewarding or punishing others that refuse to help others. This is because the law kinda seems to act as a mediator and peacekeeper to avoid having everyone engage in vigilante justice against their enemies. They typically choose to use legal proceedings instead. Because of this function of laws, laws are mostly about avoiding harming others. But, I don’t see why morality needs to be treated the same as laws and I think it’s quite common for people to conflate moral concerns with legal and sociocultural concerns. If such bias didn’t exist, then I think people wouldn’t gravitate much towards moral codes that focus on avoiding harming others. I think harming others would be equal in weight to benefiting others in a bias-free conception of morality.
Every child starts with "I want...", and to fulfill that want, one must take a considerable risk of harming the child one wants to have. Furthermore, there is no way of knowing whether the child, once its born, actually wanted to be born.
So we have a situation where we take a considerable risk on someone else's behalf, having not the slightest idea of how their lives may turn out or how one's parenting style may affect them, not knowing whether the child actually wants to be born, to fulfill our own desires.
I don't think this holds any moral ground.
Yes, that was my point precisely. The most people defense as you put it is unacceptable as a justification for why something (thoughts/speech/deeds) is good.
Nonetheless, I still feel there's moral value in the most people defense. Remember what I said:
Quoting TheMadFool
Most people want to tell the truth (not lie), respect private property (not steal) and life (not kill). In other words, most people want to be good.
It reminds me of the red herring fallacy. A hound's sense of smell (our pleasure center - our wants) is a great asset to hunters (us) - sniffing out rabbits (good) but the same keen nose can also be misled by a rotting herring carcass (bad). Put differently, a hound's nose is as attracted to rabbits as it is to putrefied red herrings. That's the nub of the most people defense conundrum - most people want good but also, unfortunately, bad.
That's what happens when you're too efficient. Evolution, instead of developing a separate morality sensor simply used the old pleasure center (the one used for sexual desires, etc.).
[quote=Anthony J. D'Angelo]Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it.[/quote]
Quoting Bylaw
People feeling guilty and embarrassed is a cost worth paying for stopping tens of millions having lives of unbearable suffering. This tens of millions is a very conservative figure too; I'm sure humanity will survive past the year 2100.
As usual you've grabbed a barely connected sentence out of context just to use a a springboard for some general whinging. Not even worth a reply really, I'll just quote the rest of the post you decided to ignore
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Not sure how you got that from what I said. I'm comparing only actual living people and predictable effects on future living people. The current well-being of the as-yet-to-be-born doesn't factor in.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
But
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
...and still no actual data.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Well then you don't see where I'm going. If antinatalism over this period is only partially sucessful, you'll have fewer people (and less incentive) to carry out necessary projects to reduce the suffering of that 1%, such that it might be 2 or 10% that are now suffering. They'll continue to suffer all the while the antinatalist project fails to be 100% successful, yet the more sucessful it is, the greater the percentage of those who remain will suffer.
Just to be clear, I'm just getting a picture of your consequentialism here, not arguing a position I hold. I think it's mindnumbingly idiotic to set as one's goal the elimination of suffering even if there's no one left to benefit from it... I'd as soon have you committed as argue the case, but since the former isn't an option...
Quoting schopenhauer1
They never get 'discounted'. That's not how averages work. The 'rule' requires a data point {the probability that your house colour will annoy the rest of the street}. We could set a rule which said 'do not paint your house any colour where the probability it will be disliked is higher than 34.56%. That rule might be an absolute rule, not subject to democratic vote, but it still requires the data point to be determined, and that measures people's current likes and dislikes.
I'm just pointing out that your thinking here is flawed. With natalism, we could have a rule which says "do not have children when the probability that they'd rather they hadn't been born is greater than 0.05%" The rule itself is the moral, and that is not subject to democratic vote, it's not 'might makes right', even if 99.9% of the world disagreed with that rule, it would still be the rule. But in order to work to that rule, the data point {what % of the population would rather they hadn't been born} is needed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. I think it would. It's reasonable to say that something like a 50% approval of your house colour might be enough. To continue having children with only a 50% approval of being born would be an abomination (if there were no other mitigating factors - which of course there usually are).
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
It seemed like you were saying, in this particular case we shouldn't act on what would probably reduce suffering unless we have a "watertight" case, due to the irreversibility of extinction.
My point was, it's not reasonable to treat extinction as higher stakes than tens of millions with lives of suffering. And stakes being equal, we should use the balance of probability to guide our behaviour.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
It is reasonable to believe the promotion of antinatalism will barely reduce the population, bearing in mind it must compete with our evolutionary hardwiring and religion. Reduction of the population is necessary to free enough land and resources to ensure quality of life, and deal with the 9 million deaths per year from pollution (16% of all deaths).
Quoting Isaac
Well I appreciate your patience :lol:
Well, no one suffers not living. I don't have any argument against giving someone money or a gift, even if they weren't expecting it. I just don't agree with giving someone a burden and then justifying it by giving them a gift.
There are a lot of considerations here. If someone thought something harmful was actually good for them, does that change things or is purely up to someone's opinion? I bring in exhibit a) Pollyannaism b) lowering expectations, and c) adaptation to less ideal circumstances... Just because these are correcting mechanisms, does that mean employing them is good just because they are needed to get by?
Yes I was explaining this to another poster. What if "most people" want something that isn't good for them? You just automatically give them this? What if work, maintenance, and even entertainment are actually quite harmful to that person when compared to never existing?
Quoting schopenhauer1
And no one suffers lack of surprise parties, by definition.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Every gift can be a burden. That's the point of the example. Maybe they really didn't want a party right now and are miserable because of it. It's a real if small possibility. On the other hand, we know they won't suffer if they don't receive this surprise party (since they don't know about it). So no surprise parties ever?
The point is, when any gift is not relieving suffering, by your system it automatically becomes wrong to give, since it can always be harmful.
Going by your assumptions (i.e. individualism), antinatalism should be judged on individual basis. It doesn't make sense to treat it as a universal position. This would result in something like: "in this case, antinatalism is true and should have been applied" - "in that case, antinatalism isn't true cause the individual clearly values their existence even if they suffer". Statistically, natalism is true far far more often than antinatalism is. It is just a matter of fact that the overwhelming majority of individuals value life despite suffering and don't see the latter as a reason for not bringing someone into life (or themselves having been brought into life). This statistical conclusion has no bearing on the ethics of any single individual case. It's just a meta-analysis of the mass of individual cases.
You're trying to draw an absolute conclusion regarding antinatalism. It's either always true or its opposite is always true. This goes against your assumption of individualism. Your universal conclusion silences the individual that you claim should be the focus of our ethical attention.
Of course, it seems like we can judge the ethics of a particular case only after the fact, only after someone has experienced life.
That's something to think about. A desideratum of most people is life but it didn't take us long to find out that's just not enough (suicide); another essential requirement is happiness or the absence of suffering. The question of all questions is, "is a life of happiness possible?" If yes, anitnatalism is wrong but if no, antinatalism is right on the money.
Are we measuring whether someone makes a statement at a point in time that “All burdens that happened, currently exist, and will exist are fine and dandy.” or Are we measuring the amount of actual burden one is given once one is given the dual“gift” of both burdens and non-suffering circumstances? Certainly, most surprise parties and gifts don’t reach anywhere near the imposition, enduring duration, and frequency of burden as this gift.
"Most people would want this" might be appropriate guidance in the absence of knowledge about what the (actual) individual would want. We don't always know what the actual person wants. Does the unconscious cancer patient want to forego treatment? We don't know. "Most people" want cancer treatment, at least to start with. Some, though, do want to forego any or further treatment, for some possibly valid reasons.
The alternative of "most people" is either one's self, or no one.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, to some extent. Particular groups (Roman Catholics) teach their ethics about abortion. Another group, secularists, teach a different ethic. The majority are in a position to gradually work their will into law and ethical teaching and practice. Capital punishment used to be far, far more common than it is now. It came under increasing condemnation over many decades, so that now a hanging is rare.
I don't see any source of ethics outside of the people, the body politic, the religious movements, etc. -- all of which involve "most people" one way or another. I presume that Hammurabi referenced what most people thought.
Where does this leave antinatalism? Our actions have a significant effect on the lives of future persons not yet born. The ethical concern about global warming is primarily about the environment that will probably exist for future persons not yet born. We ought to be concerned about the circumstances of life for both the born and unborn. We can also be ethically concerned about the ethics of bringing people into a world where the environmental conditions will be very bad.
A diminishing birth rate may represent economic barriers to supporting children adequately. It may also represent a loss of confidence in the future, such that people feel it would be unethical to bring another child into the world.
Yes, that's not far off what I was saying.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Firstly, why is it not reasonable? Many people think the extinction of the human race is a big deal, and that suffering can be reduced to levels which make it worthwhile by social and political action. Do their values not count?
Secondly, the balance of probabilities isn't sufficient. It's more likely that we'll invent the space elevator if we continue having children, so on the balance of probabilities we should support natalism... But hang on, do we care about building a space elevator? Balance of probabilities isn't enough. An unlikely outcome which we value very highly is worth more than a likely one which we value less. Most people seem to think it a good idea to strive for the unlikely, but highly valued, future society in which everyone is grateful to be, rather than the very likely but disvalued one where no one is suffering at all, but no one exists either.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
On this we can agree (though I wouldn't go as far as 'necessary', it would certainly help).
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Just waiting on the paperwork...
What are you, five years old, a handmaid, or a slave to need to ask for permission for what to have as your ethical guideline?
*sigh*
I pointed out the trouble ahead. I didn't elucidate all the steps because I figured readers can fill them in on their own.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Isaac
The negative consequence of one position is neutral (the unborn are in a neutral state), the negative consequence of the other is tens of millions with lives of suffering. I don't think neutrality is higher stakes than tens of millions with lives of suffering.
Of course this only holds for people that's ethical priority is suffering. There are plenty of other flavours of ice cream.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, the stakes have to be taken into consideration as well as the probabilities, but if the stakes are equal or in your favour, it's reasonable to act on what's most likely.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think I've shown any inconsistencies in my position. We just have different ethical foundations.
I don't think so no. You want to reduce suffering down to zero, killing everyone will do that because there's no on left to suffer. I'm just not sure that reducing suffering to zero regardless of the consequences counts as an 'ethical' foundation, just a foundation perhaps. If I said that my ethical foundation were to increase my personal wealth as much as possible regardless of the consequences, you'd just say that I'd misunderstood what the word 'ethical' means.
Ethics has to do with people. No ethical strategy can remove people and yet remain an ethical strategy, its just a plain strategy then, not an ethical one.
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
http://www.austroindonesianartsprogram.org/blog/most-polluted-river-world-citarum-river-indonesia
Unfortunately yes.And that's why even if Democracy is the "worst" best thing for societies, still isn't right. "Most people" = democracy. Logical people have to suffer in democracies. It's inevitable and also fair at the same time!
I legitimately don’t understand what you’re saying here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So unlike in the OP, it’s not that doing something on someone else’s behalf when most people would want it is wrong, period. It’s only wrong when the imposition becomes too much, correct? There are situations where “most people would want this” is enough to justify a certain action, you just don’t think birth is one of them because it’s “too much” of an imposition.
So again, you’ve gone from a type argument to an extent argument. And so you again don’t have any objectivity behind your claim. What makes birth too much of an imposition while surprise parties are not too much? Why would someone who thinks birth is not too much be objectively wrong?
If you believe that life is overall bad for most people then you can, of course, argue for antinatalism with that. I just don’t see how the consent argument makes a difference here. As someone who wishes that he had never been born, I think easy access to euthanasia drugs provides a pretty good solution for those who wish that they had never been born.
Woah, your usual project this has taken a rather dark turn. Now not only should we end the human race because too many people suffer too much, but now we should do so because you think they'd suffer too much even if existing examples say they're not. Nicely self-immunised argument. Now no matter what the human race achieves it's doomed.
"Right everyone... time to turn off the music and go home, I know you all think you're having a great time, but you're just kidding yourselves and are all miserable really, best stop now rather than waste any more time on this charade!"
Don't be a dickhead. We follow our own ethical guidelines all the time. I didn't say it has to be enforced by an outside entity. You can argue that no one follows ethical guidelines, only what is in their self-interest at the time, but you have not presented that. All ad hom, no philosophy. Come back when you want to offer something.
Interested in your input:
Do you think that because someone says they like something at a point in time, it is good to encourage what they like? For example, addicts of narcotics or opioids. They want drugs. Does that mean that it is right to just give them drugs because they want it? This is a different question than if it should be allowed as a law, just as an individual to another individual.
Can people's own assessment on life be similar to that of an addict? Can it be true that internal mechanisms like Pollyanniasm, adaptation to worse circumstances than the ideal, and comparison to worse circumstances had by others allows us to have this kind of addiction-distortion?
Do you think that suicide is easy for people? And do you think the difficulty of doing something like that is a reason why life is then a good thing for that person?
It's about how we assess what "too much" imposition is. Sometimes, a slave for example, might not know how bad they have it objectively, because that's all they know, perhaps. I'm just getting you to think a little outside this box you are trying to steer this into.
Provided that "what they like" is a good thing and provided that it can be encouraged or "given", I'd weigh in more heavily on 'yes' than 'no'. But not everything that is wanted can be given. Athletic prowess at the olympian level might be wanted but it can't be "given". Then too, good things that are wanted and can be given have limits. Beer is a good thing and I might want more, but since I am already drunk, the right answer is "time for you to go home".
Should this child's desire to read books be encouraged? Absolutely, provided that she isn't reading books about how to poison people.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Are narcotics (like coca and opium) good things? They are, but only in the right context of limited use. Chewing coca leaves is one thing -- snorting purified cocaine is altogether different. Morphine and its derivatives are good for relieving pain in the short run, but not good over the long run. Using opioids for pleasure is, like snorting cocaine, altogether different.
Properly purified cocaine and heroin, in appropriate doses, is not inherently harmful. The same goes for numerous other drugs--benzodiazepines, barbiturates, antidepressants, stimulants, etc. Addiction and/or dependence is the problem. "Want" changes to "need", and the need is intense, and that is not a good thing.
Many people can use narcotics occasionally without adverse consequences--with emphasis on 'occasional'. Regular use leads to addiction.
*sigh*
I couldn't be if I wanted to.
*sigh*
You're the one asking about whether something is permissible or not.
Well, my compassion is limited, and you've maxed out on it.
Right, that’s what I’m saying. But you claim that the person who thinks life is not too much of an imposition is wrong. What is your justification?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don’t think “how bad they have it objectively” makes sense. How bad one has it is always a subjective assessment.
I think it shouldn’t be too difficult for someone that wishes that they had never been born if they could just go to the store and get euthanasia drugs. After all, if someone really hates their life then would you expect them to fear death that much. I personally don’t think that I fear death but I’m absolutely terrified of dying in a brutal fashion. Euthanasia can solve that problem though.
I guess if someone believes in an afterlife then they might fear the afterlife but I would imagine the vast majority of people that wish that they haven’t been born don’t believe in that. If they do believe in that, then I imagine that they probably would also believe in there being life before birth and that would also seemingly nullify antinatalism.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nah, I’m not making the judgement that most people have lives worth living. I just don’t see why that question would particularly matter if people say they are glad to be born. After all, if someone wants to eat a shit sandwich, then why try to encourage people to stop feeding shit sandwiches to them? I think that as long as there is reasonable accommodation for those who don’t want to continue eating the shit sandwich, there is not much of an issue here. I believe that easy access to euthanasia would be a reasonable accommodation but unfortunately it doesn’t exist because our society imposes life on us on a much deeper level than simply rejecting antinatalism.
@Isaac (khaled and Isaac same person, slightly different writing style? haha.. collusion?) anyways..
@Bitter Crank
@TheHedoMinimalist
There are a lot of facets to explore in terms of subjective versus objective in the ethical realm.. Here's some examples:
Scenario 1: You have a prick boss. The boss is good at seeing who to exploit. He sees there is a worker who is willing to do pretty much any task given to him with a smile and a yessir. Maybe the person really just likes to work a lot. Maybe he's a people pleaser. Maybe he just looks at everything always with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe he just feels this will get him ahead. The other workers are given the average amount of work. The boss is astute enough to know that he cannot exploit them as much as the people-pleaser worker with the can-do attitude. So the boss keeps piling more and more work on the poor schmuck. The poor schmuck doesn't see any problem with it, let's say.
Is the boss wrong in what he is doing? Is he being exploitative of someone's comparative willingness to work? Is this just? Is this too much of an imposition? I would say yes to all of this, EVEN THOUGH the willing-worker doesn't see it as a problem.
Scenario 2: Let us say, we can give a tally of a typical day when negative experiences occur for a person. Spill your coffee -1, traffic jam -4, smartass remark of coworker -3, forgot to do X, -2.. You do some positives too- laugh at a joke +1, read your favorite topic, +3, etc. etc. When you add it all up, you're actually at a net negative. In other societies.. this might be as sad as looking for trash in a trash heap, etc, so go as dark and deep in the human experience as you want..
However, the local psychology department is doing a survey and has selected you to answer one question. This question, without any nuance, is meant to give a summation of ALL aspects of your life with one question. "Were you glad to be born?" The answer is "Yes". The interviewer walks away and is satisfied that this is a perfectly accurate self-assessment.. but is it?
There are the immediate phenomenological aspects to life that is the "lived experience" and then there are abstractions of this lived experience, in some remove from daily goings-on. It could be demonstrably shown that humans overestimate their positive experiences when put in the non-usual mode of evaluating their WHOLE life with one sentence. There are many biases going on including:
1) Cultural bias.. Even if someone was to REALLY think about life in depth, without reflexively giving an answer, that person might look to what social norms generally accepts as an appropriate answer. So a person on the fence who is thoughtful might never give the true answer, because then they are the weird "Negative Nancy" or "Debbie Downer" (or put in X pejorative here).
2) Cognitive bias... People have cognitive biases to distort what their experiences are when recalling them. They become cherry-picked, confused, etc. So sure we can say that in their evaluation they sounded like they were content with the situation, but then not be living the situation they are describing (see Scenario 2).
No Khaled is a lot more tolerant than I am.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You haven't said on what grounds. The simple explanation seems to be contrary to your hyper-individualist stance. You say we can't judge happiness on behalf others (and take action assuming our answer), but here you're saying we can judge unhappiness on behalf of others and take action accordingly. Why can we assume we're better judges of suffering but not better judges of happiness?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But why should the 'in-the-moment' assessments take precident, there's nothing which objectively makes these assessments more 'real'. They're subject no less to expectation biases, perhaps the thought out judgement at the end of the day is a better assessment for taking the whole day in context. All you have is two slightly contradictory assessments. You've no grounds to treat one as more 'real' than another.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is true, I think. Positive outlooks are more socially acceptable than negative ones. I can see how this could impact overall judgements of a person's quality of life, but there's a long way from "people overstate their quality of life when asked" to "most people would rather not have been born". The social pressure wouldn't apply in therapy, for example, where it's a documented effect that people overstate their negative moods to better justify to themselves why they're seeking help.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Also true, but this one is subject to the problem above. Happiness is just a state of mind, it's not an objective property of causal events. If we're happier with out post hoc filtered recollection than we were with the original events, then we're happier. Full stop. There's no 'real' happiness, it's all constructed. There's literally no neurological equivalent of being 'happy', it's entirely something we construct from recollection, there is no other form.
I would say no to all questions here and I think a lot of other people would as well. I don’t think we have any reason to care about some seemingly abstract and hypothetical harms done to others if they aren’t even expressing a grievance and they aren’t even willing to do anything to stand up for themselves. The employee in your hypothetical seemingly could tell the boss to give him less work but he chooses not to. In addition, he isn’t even forced to work for this terrible boss and with his go-getter attitude he could easily find a better job. So, why care about this person’s well being? If his well being is bad, then isn’t it completely his fault for not doing anything about it?(if there’s lots of things that he can do to alleviate his harm with not too much effort). I think that we have the greatest expectation to be able to help ourselves and pursue our own interests. If someone isn’t even willing to put thought and effort into their own welfare then it’s hard for me to understand why others should take their welfare considerations seriously either.
I also think that the expression of grievance should probably play a pretty big role in morality because it allows us to know what people have problems and how they want those problems resolved and that allows us to efficiently allocate the energy that we are willing to put into moral matters in domains where it will have maximum appreciation from others. Having that appreciation from others also really helps motivate people to care about others as it usually makes people feel good about what they are doing and ignoring grievances makes us feel guilty and that causes us to suffer.
Well, the point of this wasn't to show someone's reaction on behalf of others, per se, though that can be a possible avenue to explore. What it is illustrating is that the ethical onus fell on the owner, not the worker's reaction to being exploited. The implication being that, if someone is imposing on another, it can still be wrong despite the person being exploited perhaps not minding. I wanted to use a different example than the usual one I use about slavery, but it is similar. A slave who may not know they are being imposed upon unjustly, may not seem to care. This doesn't mean the slaveowner is thus absolved of doing the imposing or should keep persisting. This goes back to what @khaled (you) said earlier about the absolute subjective nature of ethics, as I interpreted him/you: Quoting khaled
Quoting Isaac
Well, precisely. This is again to throw doubt on simply saying "it's all subjective". I don't think that is the full story. Subjective at what point in time? Is a summative statement the one that should be used or the in-the-moment?
This leads then to the factors that seem to indicate we shouldn't quite take the summative statement (Scenario 1 and 2)...
Quoting Isaac
I really don't think so in the context of an interview. I am not just talking about to very close friends or someone like a therapist which actually may be a better indicator. I think in a formal context of acquaintances, co-workers, strangers, etc. the tendency would be towards what the social expectation is. This plays out in social media a lot. Sure, there are always those willing to post their full views and innermost feelings for everyone to see, but for a lot of people, it is important to present photos of a happy, well-adjusted life with vacations, sunsets, smiling families, etc. Posting your daily log of how your day sucked will soon start getting you strange looks and too much negative attention. But this doesn't have to be a modern social media context. I think cultural groups are basically self-reinforcing with their social pressures. Even if this was a tribal society, I am sure there is even that much more pressures to not stray from the usual modes of thought without getting some negative attention.
Quoting Isaac
But that is the point. No, you can't say that is happier, because that is a post-hoc "answer". But is the "answer" the events themselves that were experienced before the few seconds/minutes it took to summarize your whole life for someone?
Quoting Isaac
So one of my main points here was to throw doubt on the completely taking subjective view. Your point here, again, is reinforcing my point -this brief summation may simply not be "the" answer, because it was constructed based on various factors which may bias it. Certainly Pollyannaism is a thing, we seem to agree there. There are so many things we simply have to suppress, forget about, diminish in order to go on with life. If the brain/mind held on to things as when they happened, we couldn't function, so the brain does things with memories and projections to future and calibrates it with present working memory, etc.. It's all complicated and way more involved than a post on TPF, but I am getting at the fact that it isn't as straightforward as to if our subjective answer at a moment-in-time is "the" answer for how we feel on day-to-day real time.
My reply is the same as to Isaac's above. I will copy and paste it:
Well, the point of this wasn't to show someone's reaction on behalf of others, per se, though that can be a possible avenue to explore. What it is illustrating is that the ethical onus fell on the owner, not the worker's reaction to being exploited. The implication being that, if someone is imposing on another, it can still be wrong despite the person being exploited perhaps not minding. I wanted to use a different example than the usual one I use about slavery, but it is similar. A slave who may not know they are being imposed upon unjustly, may not seem to care. This doesn't mean the slaveowner is thus absolved of doing the imposing or should keep persisting. This goes back to what @khaled (you) said earlier about the absolute subjective nature of ethics, as I interpreted him/you:
I don’t think “how bad they have it objectively” makes sense. How bad one has it is always a subjective assessment.
— khaled
It seems wrong to take advantage of someone (they don't have the awareness to realise they are being taken advantage of). If we tested that with a reductio, say the worker being taken advantage of had special needs.
Yes. I agree that how bad one has it is not always a subjective judgement. In terms of 'judgement' other people judge on our behalf too. My point is that they can judge happiness as well as suffering. If you can judge the slave to be suffering despite them appearing happy, I can judge that you, for example, would be happy if you just...{whatever therapy one might advise}. You'd want to say to that "no, you don't know me, what right have you got to say that", but the grounds are the same - external judgement by a third party based on what we know about people on average. So just as you can claim more people are unhappy than say so, I can claim more people are happy then know it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But it doesn't 'lead to' those factors at all. They are just some factors we might consider, there's no grounds on which to choose the summary over the in-the-moment judgements or vice versa.
Quoting schopenhauer1
As I said, I agree. But you've still not made your case for the extent of this phenomena, only for it's existence. It may be only a minor positive spin on some otherwise mixed events. It's mere existence doesn't mean most people would rather have never been born.
Quoting schopenhauer1
All there is is the post hoc answer. That's what I'm telling you. There's no such thing as 'happiness' or 'sadness' that isn't a post hoc assessment - it's a psychological unicorn, doesn't exist.
You already know my position on this but: No to all but the second (yes he’s being exploitative, which isn’t a problem when the person getting exploited doesn’t see an issue with it)
Quoting schopenhauer1
What’s the significance of this?
To me what matters is whether or not someone has an issue with the sum being negative. Most people with negative sums seem not to have an issue with it.
First off, the idea of assigning numbers to pleasure and pain and summing them up is ridiculous, but even if it were possible, and even if the sum was negative, you haven’t given the reason why we should care. Why should this (nonsensical and impossible) objective measurement be taken more seriously than whether or not the person themselves minds the imposition.
“You were in a traffic jam, and you spilled your coffee too! You would’ve been better off not born”
It seems clear to me that the sum of pleasure and pain isn’t all we consider. Raising children is more often than not extremely painful in comparison to how much pleasure it brings. Yet everyone does it and doesn’t seem to mind the negative balance (note, I said raising not having. This applies even more so to adoptive parents)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Same as above. Why should any of this be more important than whether or not the person minds the imposition.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Ah yes. I had a 100+ comment back and forth with myself, at the beginning merely pretending to be an antinatalist (and I have to say I did a very good job since my machinations lay undetected by you despite the fact that the 3 of us have been in every single AN thread) then “changed my mind” through the conversation with myself, all the while making sure to stay up 24/7 to make it seem like me and Isaac are clearly in different time zones all to troll Mr. Schopenhauer here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No one said “it’s all subjective” about ethics. But yes it is absolutely all subjective when it comes to your assessment of your situation. That seems clear enough. To some, being stuck in a room with a tarantula is terrifying but I hear Australians think of them as food. Which one here is objectively correct?
Quoting schopenhauer1
What would a “correct” answer of “how happy are you” be? And how do you get it? Actually, just show me.
I woke up today, the day after the vaccine and my shoulder is in pain. I had breakfast then opened this site randomly because I haven’t checked it in a while. I started reading your replies which weren’t really directed at me, and got annoyed at the fact you think I’m Isaac. Because I get annoyed when people start a conversation then refuse to actually tackle the opposition, instead making up some excuse as to why it is not worth tackling (in this case, that I’m supposedly Isaac). That’s been everything of note in my day so far. Please tell me how happy I am objectively, using the standard -100 to 100 numerical scale, given the above information, and demonstrate your workings.
[10 marks]
Yes, good point.
Yes, so we are going to differ on this then. As @Down The Rabbit Hole explained, it seems wrong to be doing the imposing in the first place by the employer. The main point being here that there can be something wrong done, even if no one perceives the wrong.
Quoting khaled
More cognitive distortions. Once you have a kid, you generally can't take it back or be in a state where you didn't have a kid. So there's no other (responsible) choice ha.
Quoting khaled
That's the thing, they minded it at the moment.
Quoting khaled
Well right, analog versus digital. When the question is asked, it's digital, but much of life is lived in the moment in analog (give me this binary answer right now!). Even the mood of the time being asked might affect things. Also, the question, "Did you want to be born" might be gotten at in different ways that isn't as straightforward, as this has all sorts of implications of suicide, depression, etc. that no one would want to project. However, investigate the holistic case of what is going on throughout the feelings, moods, and experiences throughout a day, a week, a month, a year, etc.
Quoting schopenhauer1
First, I will assume that by "permissible" (too general) you mean "moral".
Now, independently of whether you mean "on someone else's behalf" literally or just "to someone else", acting on the principle or justification that "most people would want this" indicates that you don't have or cannot use your own ethical/moral principles. Acting on the basis of "what others would do in my place" indicates lack of ethical/moral integrity and irresponsibility. You should be able to act according to what you believe is right or wrong, good or bad, and accept the consequences of your actions.
Most people accept the killing of animals and the eating of animal flesh. Now, if you are a vegetarian (for moral, religious or health reasons), are you acting on the basis of what "most people" want, do or think? Certainly not. It would not be ethical/moral from your part, would it? That is, you would violate your ethical/moral principles and break your Integrirty.
I think we normally think differently about the case of the slave owner and the slave because it is often imagined by the listener of that hypothetical that the slave is uneducated and has been indoctrinated into believing that his slavery is good. The slave owner is also presumed to know that he is exploiting the slave. But, I think this interpretation of this hypothetical would make it dis-analogous to procreation because a procreator is no more aware of his alleged wrongdoings than the adult offspring is of his alleged exploitation. In addition, every procreator is also an offspring. That seems to mean that the alleged exploiter has also been exploited by another procreator but feels that he is neither exploited nor exploiting. So, it would be like a slave owner that is also a slave to someone else.
But, then I think we have a problem with the argument here. My question is if someone doesn’t have an expectation to be aware that they are being exploited then how can they have an expectation to be aware that they are exploiting someone else? Or by analogy, if someone doesn’t have an expectation to know about their alleged cognitive biases and how that gives them a false perception that their life is good overall, then how can they be expected to know that procreation is wrong? I tend to think that if 2 individuals have an equal ability to figure out that exploitation is taking place, then the person who is being exploited should have the greatest expectation for several reasons:
1. Psychologically, people usually have less bias regarding the question of whether or not they are being exploited. I think it’s because it’s really hard to get someone to hold beliefs and to avoid doing things that are greatly contrary to their perceived self interest. For example, how many antinatalists do you know that had actual serious plans to get married and have children prior to accepting antinatalism? How many antinatalists do you know that decided to divorce their natalist spouse which they married before they realized that antinatalism is true? I would be surprised if you can even name one person who is like that. I think almost every antinatalist would avoid procreation even if they weren’t antinatalists. So, I think antinatalism is almost pointless from a persuasive standpoint.
I think it’s actually more effective for an antinatalist to argue that having children is bad for the parent in some manner. I think this can actually be highly persuasive and I have actually heard a decent amount of drama stories on reddit where someone married a spouse that wanted to have children only to spontaneously change their mind after acknowledging how hard and unpleasant it can be and this unfortunately has to lead to divorce. I think this shows that people are more willing to make great sacrifices for their own overall welfare.
On a final note, I think it makes more sense to hold a person responsible when we can make an easier case that they should have known better. For example, you probably wouldn’t want to hold a mentally challenged person responsible for not knowing that procreation is wrong and subsequently procreating. Even though having an unconscious tendency to reject beliefs because it doesn’t align with your interests isn’t quite like intellectual disability, it’s still something that can be used to argue that maybe an individual is in a better position to be able to know that there life isn’t good overall.
2. It seems to me that a person is more likely to be wrong about whether or not someone else’s life is worth starting than they are to be wrong about whether or not their own life is worth starting. I think this might become more intuitive to you if we imagine someone who thinks his life is worth starting but also thinks your life was worth starting and all your problems with life would be solved if you just started going to church or taking anti-depressants. Who is this person more likely to be right about in his evaluation? Well, surely himself rather than you as his evaluation of your life is quite silly. Even if he’s likely to be wrong about the quality of his own life, it’s at least more controversial that he is wrong here as it’s unclear to what extent humans are really biased towards the quality of their own life. On the other hand, he has to resort to some really silly reasoning to try to argue that your life was worth starting. By analogy, if someone says that their life is bad overall then that’s probably much harder to dispute than the claim that most people’s lives are bad overall. Because of this, maybe it makes more sense to give the onus to every individual to decide whether or not their life was worth starting and if it happens to be the case that assisted suicide does actually provide reasonable accommodation for people that wish that they hadn’t been born then it seems that there would be no onus on the procreator.
But, what if the boss has special needs also and he’s also unaware that he is exploiting the worker?
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I don't see any mechanism for that changing the wrongness of his actions. It would obviously change the boss's culpability though.
Same applies to working out. It produces a lot of pain (If you’re doing it right) but people still do it. Even when they could easily be in a state where they’re not doing it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So you want to say that right and wrong is divorced from what people think is right and wrong? That everyone can think something is right and it objectively being wrong somehow? I think that’s ridiculous.
You also seem to base this on some utilitarian standard. As in, if an action produces a negative utility, it’s wrong to do. And since we can think that something is right but it actually is wrong, it follows that we can think that something produces a positive utility but it actually produces a negative utility. Making people not good judges of their own happiness, and discrediting their answers to happy they are (cognitive distortions and all that), instead favoring some vague unspecified “objective and unbiased” measure of happiness you think can be achieved.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What do you mean? Who is “they” and when is “the moment”?
Do you mean to restate the fact that people often remember events more fondly than they really were? Ok, what’s the significance of this? How is this an argument for AN?
I remember we had this exchange before about the remembering self and experiencing self. I think the remembering self is what matters, even if it distorts. And so far you’ve given no reason as to why I should change my mind about this.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I’m not seeing an answer to the question anywhere here. You claim that there is some objective way to assess how happy someone is, by assigning numbers to different events and adding them up. So demonstrate it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Right and when I do this I find I’m generally very happy. You think this is some bias or other and that my answer should not be taken seriously in ethical considerations because of this bias. Instead, there is some objective, unbiased view of how happy I am, and it can be expressed numerically and that’s what we should use instead.
So, find that objective answer. Apparently I’m not a good indicator of how happy I “actually” am, so please indicate to me how happy I “actually” was that morning objectively in an unbiased way. Numerically, if you could.
I want to focus on one scenario on a time, and also address you both (three, including Isaac-Khaled complex actually), but don't have time to go over each line...
Scenario 1: The imposer doesn't realize they are imposing, neither does the imposed (the controversial part). Again, there was a time when people used to think X was not wrong.. X is now considered wrong. What makes this any different?
We think because if there is a multiplicity of choices for X, that must mean, that something is just. However, the option to not even need to make the choice for X is not on the table, so how is that just?
Coke, Pepsi, Juice, Water, etc. I don't want any of them in the first place.. not an option.
So this goes back to what is just.. You will say that "as long as "most people" don't see not having the option for no option as bad, it's all good". I'm questioning this default assumption.
Scenario 2: Cognitive distortions of binary vs. analog. Khaled said to try to objectively prove himself wrong about his evaluation.. But I am not putting in a spin of "objective" and "subjective" per se. Rather, it's analog and binary. The evaluations are still subjective.. So even the analog is subjective. So when you have something super painful, or even just mild irritations throughout the day, you would subjectively evaluate that. What I am saying is the results may be different than the binary answer of "yes/no" you get when asked a question summing up your whole life.
Give an example of such an X. Slavery? The slaves didn’t think it was right. Gender inequality? Women didn’t think it was right. Racial discrimination? Black people didn’t think it was right. Etc.
No there was no point at which we unanimously agreed that X is right and discovered later that it was wrong or vice versa.
And this argument is as valid as “There were times we had wrong physical theories before, therefore quantum physics is bogus”
Quoting schopenhauer1
At first X was some action that we think is either wrong or not wrong. Now it’s a person? I’m confused.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No one will say that. They will and have said only that it is an important factor.
Quoting schopenhauer1
On the one hand you have the momentary evaluations of events. On the other you have the evaluation of whether or not life was worth it overall. What would it mean for these two evaluations to be “the same result”? As you say, one is analog and one is binary. How can they be the same? It makes no sense.
Honestly the entire comment reads like something Bartricks would write.
You write this like I owe you something. I write my thoughts not to convince you believe it or not.
This is not your blog. You do owe @khaled something, and others who've contributed to your thread. You owe them at least an honest attempt at following through the arguments they make, otherwise we're just the 'comments section' below your Wordpress. Those aren't the terms under which people make the effort to respond.
No I write this to challenge your views. Clearly however, you don't want that. Which makes me question why you start threads in the first place. Do you want a thread where all the replies are "I agree"? What's the point of that?
And where exactly did it seem to you like I think you owe me something? I haven't changed my writing style or anything like that. Maybe I took on a more aggressive tone, but as I said, it's because I get annoyed when people start threads then start making up clearly ridiculous BS like "You're Isaac" to not have to deal with opposing views. If you can't handle opposition, don't post to a public site. Write your OP in a diary or something.
If it's not to convince, and if it's not to look for opposing views, then why write an OP at all?
I just don't need even more aggravation in my life and you can be very aggravating. You're on a righteous cause to "challenge schopenhauer1's view :roll:. Good for you.
Quoting khaled
Because I FEEL LIKE IT. But more importantly, they are ideas I think I are worth thinking about. And if you don't like it fine. But you often write something like, "Well, this doesn't convince me." As if when I'm writing I'm hoping in gleeful restraint that khaled would approve. You make it oddly to the man without actually doing so, a great skill. In other words, you can write in a more conducive to dialogue way, but it's slash and burn like your friend Isaac. Anyways, I don't have much time to reply in much detail.
First off, I do that pretty well I think MORE than other people who are more well-liked (known) on this forum. So many people write something and barely respond or just disappear. Many other posters will give one word quips or sarcastic remarks to thought-out posts.. I at least give the minimal time and day to most thoughtful posters (as long as I have the actual time). So no I am not doing that. What I am trying to do is make a space for disagreement to not be as hostile as it becomes. I know that is not how you operate as you have told me. It's like arrogance is working hand-in-hand with self-righteousness working hand-in-hand with all the other negative qualities of philosophy debators.. I'd like it not to be that way all the time. Doesn't mean anyone will oblige, but I will vocalize how I'd like the tone to be, despite what others value as their debating style.
And ANs don't think it's right as being shown in real time.
Quoting khaled
I often have to write this with time constraints.. Sorry for confusion.. Put in Y or something.
Quoting khaled
I mean one evaluation might indicate life was not so great, the other a positive affirmation.
Can you give me a reply to my comment at https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/574924?
I am interested in your opinion.
Thank you
Following through the arguments is a subset of writing a response. Its something that you at least respond, but that's not sufficient tot count as responding to arguments.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Despite my lamentable lack of patience, I don't think hostility is the problem here; consider...
"All cows are brown"
"It's very interesting that you think so, but here's a photo of a black and white one"
"That's a lovely photo, you have a very good sense of composition, but still all cows are brown"
"Here's a livestock book which lists black and white as being one of the colours of cows"
"What admirable dedication to research you have, but all cows are brown"
...
You get the picture. The problem persists even through the most pleasant rhetoric. You listing what you think and others listing what they think is an opinion poll, not a discussion. It's not that there's no space for polite disagreement, it's that polite disagreement is uninteresting - why would anyone care what you think? An argument we can dissect, it's an entertaining parlour game, but an opinion...? What use is that?
See I’d respect that as a way of bowing out. Not “Haha the Isaac Khaled complex, they’re colluding” bullshit. It’s annoying for me to write a detailed response only for you to keep brushing it to the side or to make jabs at it. If you don’t want to discuss with me, say so. Don’t make up bullshit excuses.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yet you just said above you don’t want to talk about them, at least not with me.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No I write something like “this isn’t convincing” as in “it’s not justified” or “it’s fallacious”. It’s not about convincing me specifically. There is a reason AN arguments convince very few (including me once)
Quoting schopenhauer1
I didn’t think I was being slash and burn. At least not in the beginning. I was trying to rush through what we talked about before so maybe we can get to something new so maybe that’s why I sounded like that. But I apologize nonetheless. Though I stopped caring about my tone so much after you started brushing off my replies.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, agreed. I thought you didn’t wanna discuss this anymore? Anyways, all I was saying is that we have never unanimously agreed on something being wrong/right and it turned out right/wrong. Having children falls here as well.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If you had an athletic adoptive child, and they wanted to compete professionally in ice hockey or something. You then go and ask ice hockey players to rate their experience from 0 to 10 and you find a lot of 0s to 3s during training hours (which comprise a large chunk of what they do). And a lot of 0s when they lose or get insured. The overall average of their lives turns out to be a measly 3.2. Based on this you tell your child they shouldn’t participate. They say “I know all of that already, I still want to participate”. Is it unambiguously wrong to let them participate?
Just a long way of asking whether the average of the moment by moment evaluation should trump the overall evaluation. And why you think it should.
Granted and I welcome arguments, just more congenial versions of it. Not everything is "cut the other guys throat".. not all the time for me at least. There's a time and a place I guess, but that shouldn't be default "always".
Yes I think I agree with this. So in the realm of antinatalism (AN), what I am referring to here is the decision to procreate another person here is a situation that:
1) You exist, but the other person does not exist.
2) We know there is a guarantee of at least some harm to that child you might procreate.
3) We know that by having the child we are imposing regimens of living like finding work (or being homeless, dying of starvation, or any other number of ways of dying)
4) We know the only way out of the situation of "life" is suicide or some sort of amelioration process (that was needed because the person was put in that situation by being born).
With all this known, what is the justification that one should impose on another "life" and to enable the conditions for guaranteed harm on that person?
Well what people often say is MOST PEOPLE would have wanted to be born, so it can't be wrong!
But then this whole thread started arguing whether that is a good argument.
My claims were that:
a) Often "most people" evaluate their lives in a distorted fashion when simply asked "did you want to be born" versus the much more nuanced (and probably negative) experiences throughout a period of time.
b) I gave an example of a boss who exploits a worker who is okay with the arrangement.. Even if the person being exploited (like most people born) didn't realize the injustice of the condition, there is still an injustice..
@Isaac @khaled and @TheHedoMinimalist had disagreements with this, and the back-and-forth is continuing. If you want to add to this one way or the other, let me know.
Sometimes people don't want to be convinced. You must admit that too.
Quoting khaled
I just think a wrong can take place without "most people" knowing it. Can it be that someone has misplaced X going on? Possibly. The boss "can't" be exploiting me, he is my provider... Naive, but just trying to give an example quickly.
Quoting khaled
I think the nuance not in there is that the achieved goal is always in that equation, not post-facto as you are saying. Not quite the same analogy.
I don't think there's been anything like that going on. You're presenting weak arguments, it gets frustrating when you just dodge the counter-arguments by fudging and redirection, that's going to come out in the tome of the responses sometimes, but there's nothing that brutal going on.
An immediate example...
You claimed that there could be some moral wrong which most people think at the time is right, you cited slavery and suppression of women as examples. Khaled pointed out that vast swaths of people did not think these were right at the time so it isn't an example of the 'most people' argument you're making. Instead of saying "Yes, you're right, that line of argument doesn't work does it", you just ignored his point entirely and replied with
Quoting schopenhauer1
An unsupported re-assertion of the point you made. That's not a discussion. Just saying the same thing over and again without taking any notice of the arguments the other side are making.
Sure. But I doubt professional philosophers have much of that bias. Why is it that even out of the people that don’t have kids ANs are still a minority? Why is it that even among professionals who shouldn’t suffer from these biases, AN is still a minority.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Give an example then. Or has this never happened? Note that beforehand it was “without anyone knowing it”.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Wat? Please elaborate.
1. Most people would want x
2. Y is a person
Ergo,
3. Y would want x
It's not possible to refute this argument. It's an inductive argument and depending on a percentage value roundabout 90% that corresponds to "most", the argument is cogent!
Just because its not as decisive as majority takes away nothing from the analogy..Many people condoned slavery.. In the US it was enshrined in the Constitution. The point still stands that "Most people" can say whatever they want and that doesn't change the nature of the exploitation or injustice taking place (or other X negative descriptor).
It could be the case that everyone agrees eating higher lifeform animals is wrong, that contributing to the global warming in the current manner is wrong, that x, y, z number of things are wrong but aren't fully realized or taken into account by "most people" (simply experts, outliers, and pet theorists at this point, depending on the cause).
Professionals suffer from many biases. But besides that, as explained to Isaac, the extent of the majority doesn't mean much about the rightness or wrongness. Having kids isn't necessitated. A universe can exist where people are convinced this is indeed a wrong. That too doesn't mean anything about its rightness or wrongness, but that's the point of this line of reasoning. That sort of things isn't a factor to determine this evaluation.
Quoting khaled
I really shouldn't give any example, because it was meant to show that perception of the wrong isn't really the determining factor of the right or wrong. A country of Nazi-followers that let's say won the war and defeated their enemies aren't "right" because they perceive as so and they are the only ones left to perceive and evaluate such things.
Quoting khaled
Life itself is a default.. You have no choice but to make a choice- even to do nothing and starve. Not so with other activities where other hopes are clearly being achieved with the explicit entry and participation in mind (winning, friends, achievement of some kind, etc.). Once this becomes a negative, one can opt out. Even the activity in question can be "making do" in a larger sense since again, the option otherwise is to "do nothing" which has its own negative consequences.
True, I guess this argument has turned into two:
1) Does a majority of people mean it is permissible to do something that a minority views as wrong? Hence, "Should/is ethics be democratic"? (Notice I didn't say politics or law which is related, but not the same as ethical guidelines..For example, it might be "wrong" to eat animals or refuse to move away from oil, but perhaps shouldn't be illegal).
The other topic that is being currently discussed:
2) Can a majority of people be wrong about their view, and thus should not be a consideration for evaluating ethical claims?"
So for example, let's say Nazis won the war, and killed off their enemies.. Does a majority of Nazis who are the only ones left to evaluate right and wrong, mean they are right? Of course not. This is an extreme example of course, but to show the point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You're, I believe, conflating truth with want. The argument I formalized is about what most people might want. Truth, on the other hand, isn't about how many people believe it or not. Like you said, truth isn't vote-based although the so-called wisdom of the crowd seems to point in that direction. Truth works under an authoritarian system with logic as supreme leader.
One way we could make some sense of all this is as follows: Say, most Nazi's want all Brits dead. If you're a Nazi, the likelihood is high that you too might want all Brits dead. This is the argument that I formalized. Want.
However, why do most Nazis want all Brits dead? This question can't be answered with a vote i.e. democractically as you put it on pain of committing the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Truth.
You've shifted the argument again. Two distinct questions;
One is whether the majority view dictates what is right.
Two is whether what is right can be determined by a majority view.
Two very different questions which you are still confusing, despite me laying out for you right at the beginning of the thread.
Quoting Isaac
The pro-natalist argument being used is not that it's OK to impose as long as the majority agree it is (ie morality by vote). The argument is that it is OK to impose on someone something they'll probably like (absolute moral, no voting involved). To enact this absolute moral one needs to know whether your target is likely to like what you intend to do to them. This is where majorities and averages come in, it's about having done one's due diligence in checking before taking an action (are they likely to be OK with this?).
Right..just like I laid out myself here you mean?: Quoting schopenhauer1
And if they are not? Is this averaging then correct? The implication isn't just one thing (like a surprise party).. You are playing averages with a whole life. Commit suicide and go away or some other callous BS is the only ameliorating response to the minority.
Also, what if what the majority is "ok" with is still not good? This covers what we discussed already. A majority of people can be wrong (country full of Nazis example).
A lot of analogies simply cannot apply. This is the only time you are making a choice for someone else and that can never have a recourse other than accepting (even embracing) the outcome lest the very hard act of slow or fast suicide.
Yes, I think this gets at it.
Thank you very much for your reply to my comment, @schopenhauer1.
I am not familiarized with the subjects of "natalism" and "antinatalism". But what you say makes sense to me. Otherwise, I think we can conclude that there are cases where the principle of "most people" is or can be justified and other in which it isn't or can't. And certainly, we have to exclude the case of "always being justifiable and/or wise or ethical"!
It depends on the gain, generally. If there's little to gain, then it seems like the threshold of 'they'll probably be OK with this' should be quite high. One shouldn't risk causing upset for nothing even if the risk is small.
But for major gains, the threshold is generally higher (defensive war, for example). Here one might only need a reasonable assumption that people will be OK with what you're about to do to them.
Other factors that might come into play are things like - how easy it is to ask first, how hard it is to find out for sure, how reparable the harm is...etc.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, this misses the point entirely. There's no moral element to the question "are they likely to be OK with this?". The same would apply to you painting my house green. Whether I'm likely to be OK with that depends largely on whether I like green. I'm neither right nor wrong about liking green, but the fact of the matter is crucial to whether you're morally OK to paint my house green without asking first.
Argument A
1. Most people want to live
2. X is a person
Ergo,
3. X wants to live
Argument A can't be refuted. It's basically what you referred to as democratic (vote count).
The key premise, 1. Most people want to live, is based on surveys.
***However, the question that arises, why do most people want to live?
An answer: 4. Life is good.
Statement 4. Life is good, can be part of a survey and we could conclude:
5. Most people think life is good.
However, 5. Most people think life is good doesn't support the statement 4. Life is good unless you subscribe to the wisdom of the crowd (I'm not entirely sure if it's even relevant. You decide) and barring this curiosity, we have to justify 4. Life is good by resorting to an argument that proves that 4. Life is good.
I believe it is this latter part of the process (***) you're talking about.
Right nor wrong about the harm done. I explained how one can be harmed without knowing it. Certainly one is harmed in life. Certainly one can be okay with that. The happy worker is still exploited. Yet this is worse because, the happy worker can quit if he sees his exploitation, a human must embrace the forced situation, lest suicide. Hence so many analogies, and perhaps all of them of already born situations just don't compare to making a decision on behest of someone not yet born.
Indeed. You make a decision on another's behalf because you think a majority of people would want this decision made for them... but I'm saying:
1) Most people could be wrong in the assessment of harm done or imposition done
2) The minority has been screwed over with callous ideas of what they can do if the don't like life
3) A life is not a surprise party or a color on a house.. it is too important to think one should "do" for someone else, when that "do" means the consequence is a whole lifetime of having to stay alive, thrive, and generally "deal with" situations of harms great and small and cope in general.. It's quite paternalistic to think that someone else just "shouldn't mind this arrangement". Life itself is quite an imposition to put on someone else.
Indeed. Can "most people" be mistaken about how good something is? I brought up the idea of an exploited worker who cheerfully overlooks being exploited. He doesn't perceive the exploitation, but he is exploited. I also brought up notions of having generally negative experiences but then saying, "Life is good" or "Glad to be born" if asked the question. There is more than just what people want you to hear going on. Psychological mechanisms can distort ones ability to evaluate something (not wanting to get oneself depressed, always looking on the bright side, Pollyannaism, adapting to lowered ideals, etc). Certainly culturally ingrained ideas can do this as well (superstition, don't look a "gift horse" in the mouth, religion, not looking negative to others, etc.). All this worry and coping and dealing with, and then suck it up because that's life.. but "that's life" is not inevitable!!
Even when the majority is among professionals that suffer much less from these biases? Sounds like what an antivaxer or flat earther would say.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But they wouldn’t be the only ones left to perceive such things. Even most Germans didn’t think what was going on was right. The people who thought the Nazis were right, weren’t even all the nazis. It was never the case that Nazism ever approached a majority in any population (except the population of nazis). So, an example please?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes and this is a point of contention. I say that all that exists is the “perception of the wrong” and it is meaningless to talk about “the wrong” outside of that.
You’re making a claim you can’t give an example for. Fine. At least give an argument as to why you think “the wrong” exists outside of the “perception of the wrong”
And besides, if you propose that the perception of what’s right or wrong isn’t a determining factor in finding what’s right or wrong then that cuts both ways. Your perception that having kids is wrong isn’t a determining factor to whether or not it is. How is anyone supposed to argue for anything being right or wrong then?
I think you got too busy trying to get around the fact that there is overwhelming evidence that AN makes no sense that you ended up making it impossible for any ethical position to be correct. First you dismiss majority vote as being indicative of what’s right. Then you dismiss expert opinion. And now you even dismiss subjective evaluations.
There is nothing left. You’ve made the right thing to do unknowable. You’re the one that’s made it “all subjective”
Quoting schopenhauer1
This also applies to life (except for explicit entry, which I don’t think should matter much is the rest is there)
If you knew that someone will find X worthwhile is it ok to force them to do it despite protests? What about if you were almost certain?
But hey, no matter how well you argue or even how popular AN becomes there is no reason for anyone to be convinced by your arguments because popularity, expert opinion and even your own evaluation are not indicative of what’s right or wrong.
But the happy worker is happy...by definition. If your moral was 'do not exploit anyone', then you'd be concerned about their exploitation, but you were talking about whether it's OK to do something to someone on the grounds that most people like it.
See, you claim to be examining different angles, but you don't stick to that angle, very quickly, each of your numerous threads just descends into "I don't think people ought to have kids" which is just evangelism if you don't have an honest intention to explore the detail of the topic.
This one is about...
Quoting schopenhauer1
So exploitation isn't a part of it because 'most people' don't like to be exploited. The question is only whether using that which 'most people' like is a sufficient justification for taking action on someone else's behalf.
You're asking the subsequent question "can we trust each person's judgement about whether they're happy?" So the question for your exploited worker, is whether they're truly happy. The morality of the employer in exploiting them has nothing whatsoever to do with that question. That you think an exploitative employer is a good metaphor for parenting is utterly immaterial to the matter at hand.
What could 'life is Good' possibly mean without people to think it? How could anything just have the property of being 'good' absent of the minds in which that judgement resides?
It can be said that many of us are under some kind of illusion that life is good. At best, life isn't as good as we think it is or at worst, life is bad. I believe it's the former and not the latter. Why? We've imagined something far far better viz. heaven and also something unimaginably worse viz. hell.
One's attitude towards life on earth then depends on what one's comparing it with - hell (life on earth is orders of magnitude better), heaven (life on earth is misery on steroids).
It must be mentioned though that for some people earth is hell but to complicate matters for some of us earth is paradise.
Given this situation, it's best not to make sweeping generalizations like natalists and antinatalists. Let each person/family, after analyzing how much happiness they can guarantee their offspring, make their own decisions.
Unfortunately, having children is not just about how well you can provide for them. Other non-hedonic factors are at play e.g. the Catholic church's opposition of contraception.
Whether life is good or not can't be decided by a vote i.e. in an election-like manner. There are enough cognitive biases to muddle the thinking of even the best thinker among us. That would manifest in our thoughts as for example the view that life is good. We can't have that, right? The proposition "life is good" needs an argument, not a vote.
I do sometimes wonder whether it has been worth it — at least the last several thousand years of wars, slavery, famine and various forms of oppression and discrimination. If I were given the choice of starting another human race on a separate planet, but also knew that the next 500 years would play out similar to the last 500 on Earth, I would pass.
Maybe the next 500 years will go better, but it's far from certain. At any rate, we're here now so we try to make the best of it.
But apparently the proposition "The proposition "life is good" needs an argument" doesn't and can simply be asserted without one.
I think I would too.
Quoting Marchesk
Yep. That's the point I've been making whenever these AN threads crop up.
The proposition "life is good" = "Life is good" is a proposition. "Life is good" can be true/false. Ergo, "Life is good" is a proposition.
All that is fine.
Here's another idea: If we replace "most people" with "the other person", the proposition becomes "What the other person (or group) would want". Because your action is directed to a specific person (or group) and thus it is more direct and fair than considering what others in general would want ...
You're missing the point.. A majority of people can be wrong.. That was a hypothetical example... Also Nazis didn't win nor kill everyone else off, so to represent the example as being "historical" would be mixing up a thought-experiment with thinking I didn't know history.
Quoting khaled
I'm not sure who the "experts" are in judging life's goodness or other qualities, I reflexively said the truism, that experts can have biases.. I didn't understand though in what context "experts" had to do with anything in this realm other than "experts" in judging what other people should want by having them in the first place but as far as judging right or wrong... a major point to consider is when doing it on behalf of someone else, maybe we shouldn't think we are the "experts".
Can we be imposed upon but not know it?
Can we give post-facto rationalizations for prior negative feelings?
Is it sufficient if what action is being taken is imposing X things on another person, and doing so unnecessarily (not ameliorating greater with lesser harm)?
Yes indeed. But then a parent doesn't have the benefit of knowing the specific person's experiences or evaluations in the world, so ergo the "most people" defense.
Given my circumstances, antinatalism resonates with me deeply.
Yes, this is true and acceptable.
so we take a subsistent agarian and turn them into a wage earning urban dweller working in a sweat shop and say what? who has the better quality of life?
I’m not sure either. Who I was referring to is experts in ethics.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So, give an example of a time period where the majority of people thought something was right but it turns out to be wrong (ethically)
Or does having children just occasionally happen to be the example with this phenomenon never occurring at any other time. Seems kind of suspicious.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I’m not asking for a thought experiment I’m asking for a concrete example. You claim it’s possible for everyone or for the majority to be wrong in the realm of ethics. When has this ever happened?
And you didn’t respond to the main point:
Quoting khaled
Quoting schopenhauer1
I thought we went over this already in previous threads. You and I said yes. Examples being surprise parties/gifts. Those impose a risk of harm and don’t alleviate anything.
I think it depends on two main factors. One is, as you say, the reason you're doing it (ameliorating a greater harm/risk might outweigh the imposition as in the emergency surgery example), the other is the likelihood that they will like it outweighs the harm (usually small in these cases - as in the surprise party example).
But neither apply to having children becasue not-having-been-born is not a choice an individual can make. Choices, preferences, states of happiness...these are all things that existent beings have, non-existent ones don't, so the analogy doesn't apply.
All that applies in terms of harms is that you can foresee a situation wherein a person might be harmed, you can justify bringing about that situation if the benefits outweigh the harms, or, if that situation is the default one for humanity, it makes more sense to say that to stop it one would have to demonstrate that the harms outweigh the benefits.
'Choice' isn't a relevant metric because it doesn't make any sense in terms of the decisions to have never been.
Really? I thought is was so nonsensical as to be beneath reply (and I reply to some garbage sometimes!).
My argument is that TMF simply assumed that the proposition "life is good" can be determined true or false by argument. Nothing at all in the reply addresses that question. Simply stating that it is a proposition doesn't get us anywhere.
"Whisky is nice" is also a proposition - does that mean it's truth can be determined by argument?
So you are turning this into historical analysis. Do I need to provide figures of when majority of Americans thought slavery to be at least tolerable, if not preferable? Cause that was the case from the 1600s- early 1800s. We can add in torture for blasphemy or wrong religion, torture in execution, literal eye for an eye, and a bunch of other ethics that were seen as permissible or desirable. It's a truism that historically, more violence, intolerance, etc. was tolerated.
Quoting khaled
Although I do think there are plenty of historical examples, I can make an argument that indeed birth is an exception amongst decisions, especially because of the nature of a person already existing doing something on behalf of something that could exist in the future. I think this is where you try to force me into giving examples, where I don't necessarily think it needs one, but hey, I try to accomadate your demands to "convince you" (a standin for "most people" you claim, ironically).
Quoting khaled
That was directed to Isaac, but you are replying. Suspicious in light of the whole Khaled-Isaac complex.. Not making it a case that you aren't Isaac :lol:.
I can make a case similar to above that surprise parties are not analogous to not being born. Presumably, it would be a bad idea if you knew the person made it known they hate surprise parties or they can easily get a heart attack.. You do know the person presumably. However, if we go to the extent argument- the surprise is temporary, a set period of time, and is it an imposition really? That definition can be debated for the kind argument but it can also work for the extent argument that it is finite, temporary and very little in the imposition scale.