Antinatalism and the harmfulness of death
It seems clear that death is inevitable for anyone living here. And it seems equally clear that death is a considerable harm. Our reason tells us to do virtually anything to avoid it. If avoiding it means sawing your arm off, reason recommends doing that. And even if your life is relatively joyless and/or contains more unhappiness than happiness, our reason still bids us not kill ourselves. Indeed, we only seem to have reason to die if we are in absolute agony without any prospect of it ending. Mild misery, mild discomfort, even when there is no prospect of them ending, do not seem to give us reason to seek death.
Consider what this implies: it implies death is incredibly harmful. So harmful, indeed, that any amount of mildly miserable life here is rationally preferable. It does not seem to matter how long the mildly miserable life promises to be - its very mildness means that at no point in its duration will you have overall reason to seek death. Which implies that the harmfulness of death is not some one-off harm, like a toothache or stubbed toe, but instead consists of a permanently altered condition - a condition altered for the worse. For example, imagine that you know that you will have to suffer agony tomorrow, but only tomorrow and the rest of your life here will be so-so. Do you have reason to seek death to avoid that episode of intense agony tomorrow? No, surely not. It would be irrational to kill oneself just to avoid that one-off episode of agony, precisely because it is going to end. If it was not going to end - if the remainder of any life here would be characterized by that agony, then yes, you have reason to exit this realm. But if the agony is going to end, then you have reason to try and stay. That would make sense if death, rather than being a one-off harm, instead condemns one to a worse existence - that is, it would make sense if death was not the end, but just the point at which one is transferred to a worse state of being.
If this is true, then we who already exist here find ourselves in a terrible predicament: even if at the moment our lives are giving us much more pleasure than pain, that is doomed to end. We are fated to enter another realm in which our lives will continue, but not in our interests.
If that is correct - and I think there is more reason to think it is than it isn't - then it would be a terrible thing to make it someone else's predicament as well. Bad enough that we are in it, wicked to make others join us in it. And thus if I am right above, then bringing people into our situation would be a very evil thing to do.
Most people do not believe that death makes our situation worse. They believe one of two things - either that death transfers us to a much better place of milk and honey, or they think death marks the cessation of our existence. Comforting though both views may be, neither has any rational support. Indeed, the first seems ludicrous - if death took us to a better place, then it'd be in our best interests to die and we should rejoice when anyone is killed and look forward to our own demise. Yet it is manifest to reason that it is not in our best interests to die - not unless our life here has become unbearably rotten - and that the death of another is something to be regretted, not rejoiced at.
The idea that our deaths mark the cessation of our existence fares no better. There is no evidence that they cease our existence. After all, if they did then how could they harm us? As Epicurus put it, if they cease our existence, then "where death is, we are not, and where we are, death is not". But you can't be harmed by something that never happens to you. So death would not be something we would have any reason to avoid - yet clearly we do have reason to avoid it, under all but the most terrible of circumstances.
The 'common sense' views described above seem to be mere exercises in wishful thinking. They express worldviews that we have no evidential reason to believe in - a religious worldview on the one hand, and the naturalist worldview on the other. But they enjoy no support from reason at all. If we listen to reason, then reason tells us that our deaths are considerable harms and that we have reason to avoid them, even if our lives are not recording a profit in terms of happiness versus unhappiness. This implies that death is not a one off intense harm, in the way that breaking a leg is. But rather, that death alters our condition - that it takes us from here to somewhere worse. And if that is true, then our situation is truly a awful one and we do a great wrong if we voluntarily bring anyone else into it.
Consider what this implies: it implies death is incredibly harmful. So harmful, indeed, that any amount of mildly miserable life here is rationally preferable. It does not seem to matter how long the mildly miserable life promises to be - its very mildness means that at no point in its duration will you have overall reason to seek death. Which implies that the harmfulness of death is not some one-off harm, like a toothache or stubbed toe, but instead consists of a permanently altered condition - a condition altered for the worse. For example, imagine that you know that you will have to suffer agony tomorrow, but only tomorrow and the rest of your life here will be so-so. Do you have reason to seek death to avoid that episode of intense agony tomorrow? No, surely not. It would be irrational to kill oneself just to avoid that one-off episode of agony, precisely because it is going to end. If it was not going to end - if the remainder of any life here would be characterized by that agony, then yes, you have reason to exit this realm. But if the agony is going to end, then you have reason to try and stay. That would make sense if death, rather than being a one-off harm, instead condemns one to a worse existence - that is, it would make sense if death was not the end, but just the point at which one is transferred to a worse state of being.
If this is true, then we who already exist here find ourselves in a terrible predicament: even if at the moment our lives are giving us much more pleasure than pain, that is doomed to end. We are fated to enter another realm in which our lives will continue, but not in our interests.
If that is correct - and I think there is more reason to think it is than it isn't - then it would be a terrible thing to make it someone else's predicament as well. Bad enough that we are in it, wicked to make others join us in it. And thus if I am right above, then bringing people into our situation would be a very evil thing to do.
Most people do not believe that death makes our situation worse. They believe one of two things - either that death transfers us to a much better place of milk and honey, or they think death marks the cessation of our existence. Comforting though both views may be, neither has any rational support. Indeed, the first seems ludicrous - if death took us to a better place, then it'd be in our best interests to die and we should rejoice when anyone is killed and look forward to our own demise. Yet it is manifest to reason that it is not in our best interests to die - not unless our life here has become unbearably rotten - and that the death of another is something to be regretted, not rejoiced at.
The idea that our deaths mark the cessation of our existence fares no better. There is no evidence that they cease our existence. After all, if they did then how could they harm us? As Epicurus put it, if they cease our existence, then "where death is, we are not, and where we are, death is not". But you can't be harmed by something that never happens to you. So death would not be something we would have any reason to avoid - yet clearly we do have reason to avoid it, under all but the most terrible of circumstances.
The 'common sense' views described above seem to be mere exercises in wishful thinking. They express worldviews that we have no evidential reason to believe in - a religious worldview on the one hand, and the naturalist worldview on the other. But they enjoy no support from reason at all. If we listen to reason, then reason tells us that our deaths are considerable harms and that we have reason to avoid them, even if our lives are not recording a profit in terms of happiness versus unhappiness. This implies that death is not a one off intense harm, in the way that breaking a leg is. But rather, that death alters our condition - that it takes us from here to somewhere worse. And if that is true, then our situation is truly a awful one and we do a great wrong if we voluntarily bring anyone else into it.
Comments (309)
You've considered death. Now consider that the content of every person's life is, without surety, instinctively regarded as greater, and tell me what that implies.
It's our DNA that compels us to desperately avoid death. And how can we trust our DNA when it's what's compelling us to drag poor souls into existence?
I looked on line and it said that more than half of people in the US are not particularly afraid of dying. Only about 10% are very afraid. Perhaps you are in that 10%, but don't expect the rest of us to follow along.
I am sure most Americans believe they're going to heaven when they die and that's why they're not afraid. These are psychological matters of no interest to me. (Ask most Americans if killing yourself is a good idea to avoid the pain of having a root canal done, and they are going to say that no, that's not a good idea, but a really stupid one. So even if they're not afraid of death, they recognize the stupidity of seeking it out and employing it as a solution to mild problems).
What do Norwegians think?
Most people would agree, would they not, that we have reason to avoid death under all but the most extreme circumstances? That is why if you tell someone that eating x will kill you, they will generally avoid eating x. And so on.
Consider this exchange:
Jack is stuck down this cave and it is filling with water. We need to go down and there and pull him out!
"Why? He'll only die."
It is undeniable that we have powerful reason to avoid death (and by extension, powerful reason to help others avoid it). The interesting philosophical question is why, exactly, we have reason to avoid death, not 'whether' we do.
Note, if you reject my conclusion by rejecting that we have reason to avoid death (extreme circumstances aside), then you have rejected my conclusion on the basis of a ludicrous claim. If those are the lengths you are driven to, I have made a very powerful case.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes, to avoid missing out on a good life, and to avoid causing grief to our loved ones.
Your point about the after-life potentially being worse is something I've gave serious thought about before. I see it as an equal possibility to the alternatives.
Do you have reason to avoid death if your life is mildly miserable (or just so-so) and you have no loved ones?
If you kill such a person - and lets face it, there are loads of them around - has no harm been done?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
But you hadn't encountered my argument above before - it does not imply that it is just one possibility among other equally likely ones. It implies that it is the most likely possibility.
Consider: if death is the end, then it is not harmful at all and we have no reason to avoid it.
And if death improves our situation, then it is not harmful at all and we have no reason to avoid it.
It's not true of me. It's not true of most of my friends and family. It wasn't true of my father while he was dying of lung cancer. I'm enjoying my life, so I'm in no hurry to be gone, but when the time comes, I'll be ready.
No I don't think so. Our DNA wouldn't care about our miserable life thought, all it cares about is spreading.
That wasn't my question - for all I know you might be on fire, in which case you may well have reason to exit. Death may not be contrary to the interests of lots of people (which only adds to the case for antinatalism, incidentally). But it 'is' contrary to the interests of most of us, most of the time. My question was whether we generally have reason to avoid death - and the answer to that is an obvious 'yes'. It's why we generally try not to kill people - it's why wars and deadly viruses are bad. They kill people. Which is harmful, yes?
And do people whose lives are just so-so have no reason to avoid death? No, they too have powerful reason to avoid death. Agony with no prospect of an end, yes - death is now plausibly in one's interest. A so-so life with no prospect of it being anything other than so so - no, they still have powerful reason to avoid dying. (This refutes 'deprivation' accounts of the harmfulness of death - death is harmful even when it does not deprive one of anything worth having).
And as for those whose circumstances are such that death is in their best interests, it is still a harm, is it not? It is the lesser of two evils. But it isn't beneficial. When a person jumps out of a burning building to spare themselves a horrific and slow death, their death from the fall is not good for them, but bad for them - just not as bad as the alternative.
We have reason to avoid dying under all but the most extreme circumstances. That's not a controversial claim. Denying it would be - extremely so.
And death is a harm whenever it occurs. That's not controversial either. It may sometimes be the lesser harm (as when a person is in agony and can't escape the agony apart from by killing themselves), but it is still a harm.
So, we have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances, and reason to avoid it even when our lives are just so-so and there is no prospect of them being anything other than so-so.
What does that tell us about death? It tells us it changes our condition for the worse. It doesn't tell us that it eradicates us or benefits us.
And what does that mean - it means we're all going down the plughole to hell whether we like it or not. Some may be in more tepid water than others - some may be having a lovely swim. But we're all going down the plughole nevertheless. Is it moral to bring an innocent child into the water with you?
I imagine that this claim should be viable for people of all regions, at all points of time.
If so, then the Vikings worshipped death. Death was the door to another world. They chose death over a life of a farmer or a pastoralist. Death over a life of comfort. How do you justify your claim with respect to the Vikings?
I direct them to the argument in the OP.
Note, if one 'believes' that death is the door to a better land, then of course one will believe that one has reason to die. But believing something doesn't make it true.
Now, is death the door to a better land? How does one figure that out? Does one ask a Viking? Do you believe that our main source of insight into how things are with the world are 'the Vikings'? You think a good way to learn about the world is to consult ancient people with batshit crazy worldviews?
Reasonable people use their reason to figure out what's what. And our reason tells us that death is a harm - that we have reason to avoid it. That's why people were frightened of vikings - they killed people. That's why they ran away rather than saying 'ooo, vikings! We're all going to die - woohoo!!'
So, it's harmful - really harmful. It wouldn't be if it was a door to a lovely land of milkshake rivers and chocolate bar trees. So.....it isn't a door to a lovely land of milkshake rives and chocolate bar trees.
It's a plughole to hell.
And you're being told, in no uncertain terms, to try and not go down it - to delay it as long as possible unless you're in untold unending agony.
So, if you're clever, you'll conclude that the plughole doesn't go to a nice place. Plughole goes nasty place. Plughole bad.
If someone is screaming at you - and everyone else in the giant sink - 'for christ's sake, try not to go down the plughole!!! Fight, fight, fight the current. Fight for all you're worth!' - do you conclude "that plughole must go to somewhere great! That's what the Vikings thought - and they were the wisest people of all time!"
So don't bring anyone else into the water because anyone in the water goes down the plughole eventually. Fight the current, but have the decency to do it alone and don't make your problem someone else's.
So far I've had one person tell me that it is Vikings - not reason - who hold the key to understanding how things are with the universe. And now, it seems, that it is not Vikings, but the Americans that we should be consulting.
Quality stuff.
Your argument is that because we choose to live even if we experience suffering(except the extreme circumstances), then the other alternative-Death, must be worse that the current suffering that we experience.
If that is wrong then I am sorry for misunderstand you.
If that is right then my question is this- vikings also suffered great pain in their pursuit of Valhalla. they could have avoided that pain and lived a peaceful life. So I could say that because the vikings choose Death over a happy, peaceful life then this means that Death is a better option. So, we should all chase Death, For it is Paradise!
Those who ran away from the Vikings? Bah! They are unreasonable people who don't realize that Death is Paradise. Let them run! They will rot in Helheim.
Because most people think that Death is bad, Death must be bad
You use the fact that most people fear Death to conclude that Death must be fearful.
BUT you are assuming that the opinion of the masses is correct. They are making well-informed decisions.
Quoting I love Chom-choms
Please tell me where I am wrong
Do you agree?
I guess I disagree that we have a reason.
" I dont know what come after Death then why should I avoid it?"
That is the rational part.
Instinctually, I want to avoid it
If eating x will kill you, do you think you have reason not to eat it?
Focus.
But that reason to not eat x is based on my assumption that- Death is bad
IF Death was good, THEN I similarly have a reason to eat it
Now the bad news: The afterlife is in hell!
Suicide ceases to make sense then: From the frying pan into the fire!
Some sense, some lack thereof.
Anyway, I hope that everybody here has a nice day/night! :)
What's the point in saying that? If the earth is flat, then it is flat. If it is spherical, then it is spherical.
All you are doing is, in effect, just playing the tedious "How do we know anything?" card, card that one plays when anyone makes any argument for anything.
Now do try and engage with the argument. Understand that if you can only resist it by challenging whether we know anything at all, then the argument is a strong one. Similarly, if you have to insist that we have no reason to avoid death - a claim so obviously false it is akin to insisting that 2 + 3 = 8.6billion - then you have lost the argument.
Can you provide clarity on this statement? It could mean many things at once depending on one's current perceptual orientation.
No, no. I am saying that you are saying that because we humans fear death and avoid it, then death must be bad.
But we humans believe death to be bad therefore we avoid it.
So, your conclusion that Death is bad is not ok because it is already assumed to be true beforehand
Anyway, I suggest you re-read the OP and try and discern the argument contained in it. Then try and challenge a premise.
I provided an argument for that very claim. You are just ignoring it.
Obviously it is possible for death to benefit us. If death is a portal to heaven, then it benefits us. I said this! But then we would not have reason to avoid it, would we? And we do have reason to avoid it under virtually all circumstances. Even if our lives are moderately miserable and show no sign of improving, we still have reason to avoid death. So, it isn't a portal to heaven, is it? It is a portal to hell.
Then you propose a deprivation account of the harmfulness of death - an account I refuted in the OP.
I'll do it again. If the deprivation account of the harmfulness of death is correct, then if your life is so-so and you die, then your death is not a harm and you have no reason to try and avoid it (for it would be depriving you of nothing worth having). Yet if your life is so-so, you still have reason to avoid death. If death is something you have reason to avoid - and thus is something harmful (for that is the best explanation of why we have reason to avoid it) even when it deprives you of nothing worth having, then it does not harm you by depriving you of anything. It harms you by altering your condition - for the worse.
And again: if the deprivation account is correct, then death can never be the lesser of two evils. Yet it is often the lesser of two evils - if someone is in unending agony, then it is best that they die. But their death is still a harm. Yet if the deprivation account is correct, it would not be a harm at all under such circumstances. Again: so much the worse for the deprivation account.
The best explanation of why we have reason not to kill ourselves (and others) under all but the most extreme circumstances is that death is exceedingly harmful. And furthermore, that it is not a one-off harm whose gravity can just be factored into our utility calculations, but rather that it permanently changes ones condition for the worse.
Thus, our reason tells us, in so many words, that death is a portal to a worse world.
Suicide was always irrational under most circumstances - but now we have an explanation of why: if you kill yourself, chances are you will be making your situation worse.
And feeling sorry for those who have died or been killed (not just feeling sorry for oneself) - which was always rational - can now also be explained: those who have died have been made worse off. Things are going badly for them.
And feeling moral outrage at killers - which was always rational - also makes sense: they have made their victim's situations much worse.
And of course, now it is clear that procreation is wrong - among the most wicked things one can do. For it is to bring another person into our unenviable predicament.
No, I'm not getting it. Why is it reasonable to avoid death (save to avoid missing out on a good life and causing grief to our loved ones)?
The reason we avoid death is because of our selfish genes, same reason we reproduce.
I am not arguing that it is reasonable to avoid death. That'd be like arguing that 1 + 2 = 3. It is self-evident to reason that we have reason to avoid death.
I am then extracting the implications of this.
If you resist my conclusion by denying that we have reason to avoid death, you lose.
Whether or not we have a "reason" (in the sense of something being preferable for us) to avoid death depends on the framework one has. If they believe that nonexistence isn't valuable/disvaluable, they don't necessarily have a reason to fear death itself, but they could still prefer to avoid unnecessary harm as well as appreciate the good that life has (and also be a source of joy for others). If one believes in the deprivation account, then they would have to see if the harms in their life would outweigh the good. If the answer is yes, then perhaps they would indeed have a reason to prefer nonexistence over a valueless one. But, by the same token, an ultimately positive existence, even one that's "so-so" in many ways, could give one more reason to prefer existence over the void. Here, it would be important to distinguish between desires (which are ephemeral and dynamic-there are many people who switch between wanting to exist and wanting to not do so) and a "reason" for doing something (which would be the "right" thing to do that would be in our interest and lead to greater fulfillment, even if we currently don't feel like that). Unless one cannot find any sufficient source of value in their life, I don't think that dying/death can be preferable. But while death isn't desirable, the goods of life can certainly be, and I don't think that the mere existence of cessation implies that the positives aren't deeply potent. I already gave reason for taking the good into account:
1. The badness of dying (which isn't the exact same as being dead) is about experience. It could involve pain and also discomfort resulting from fear. Fortunately, it is still a small part of most people's lives (which numerous people find to be immensely meaningful) and it also doesn't seem to affect people to a degree that they cannot enjoy the goods. I would say that this is the right perspective because the fear is mostly counter-productive.
2. The badness of death itself might only be about the loss of potential life. But nobody prefers life in isolation without considering the positives/negatives. In view of this, it could be said that an inability to live long is bad due to the absence of goods that could have existed. But the alternative to perfect goodness is some good, not nothingness ;)
And the prevention of a "loss" cannot be "good" if there's no gain in the first place.
We could still have reasons to delay it if a certain kind of life is necessary for heaven. But aside from that, we do have a desire to avoid death. It might have a lot to do with an instinct to propagate and to avoid terrible pain, but it's also about a need to prevent a perceived loss of future good. Some would, however, argue that this fear isn't necessary because nothingnes cannot benefit/harm a person (unless there's some specific form of heaven/hell)
Having a desire to cherish goods and avoid harm doesn't have much to do with hell. The reality is that "so-so" lives might also have small satisfactions that matter more to a person than a potentially painful death. There's also a lot of fear associated with it from our environment and culture.
Once again, I don't think that non-existence would have any value. But as as as the deprivation account is concerned, I think that a "so-so" life which is still good (overall) would be better than nonexistence. But if someone truly has a negative life and wish for it to end, then a momentary need to avoid death migh not be too important to consider, since they could rationally see that their potential future existence would mostly be bad, which would be prevented by their death. Death might still be a smaller harm if they continue to have a desire to avoid it, but it could also (and I hope that people don't have to be in such a situation) be good for them if it proves to be a source of relief for someone in pain (and the relief outweighs the negative feeling generated by the aversion). I don't think that death "alters" anything. It does cause pain, but this doesn't mean that the good experiences a person has had throughout their life don't matter. It could lead to fear, but I think that it can be mitigated by accepting its reality and cherishing the precious goods while they do exist. Nonexistent beings cannot be in an altered state of affairs, and I don't think we can be sure that the void isn't some terrible state that can only be relieved by existence either.
I also think that you've made some hasty generalisations that aren't justifiable. "So-so" lives is a vague term that matters differently for different people. I've met many people with such lives who don't feel that they have a strong need to avoid death (aside from fear of pain or cultural/societal influence). And of course, there are others who don't have the best lives, but still cherish existence in general over nonexistence. This comes down to personal values of the individual, not some nonexistent "altered" state that death supposedly brings us in. And, as I have already mentioned multiple times, I don't think that the moment of death has to negate all the positive experiences a person has in their life. Sometimes, the true reason for seeking to avoid the door is not (just) the door itself, but the majestic room just behind us. Whether or not we want to acknowledge that and recognise the diversity of the sentient experience is a different matter.
Once again, I am not saying that the deprivation account is necessarily true. All I am suggesting is that there are many biological/philosophical factors involved regarding death, and it isn't clear that its mere existence negates the strength of a good aspects of life.
In light of this, I don't think that the existence of death is an argument in favour of antinatalism. Thanks for this post, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
It's just sad you're allowing your DNA to control your beliefs. Especially considering that it's responsible for reproduction, the greatest con of all time.
In any event, doesn't your premise assume the conclusion? The premise that it is self-evidently reasonable to avoid death, assumes the conclusion that death is worse.
Yes. I went to Google, typed "how many people are afraid of dying," and picked the link at the top of the page. I am exhausted from all the work.
No. You wrote:
Quoting Bartricks
Generally having reason to avoid is different from doing virtually anything to avoid. As I said, I'm enjoying my life; I'd like to live longer, but there are many things more important.
Are we ordered by our selfish genes? I think it's the other way round.
No, my argument does not assume the conclusion. It leads to it. That's what arguments do - they extract the implications of their premises.
Now, the premises of my argument are uncontroversial. The conclusion is alarming. But the premises are hard sensibly to deny. That's what makes it a good argument.
Here's one of my premises: we have powerful reason to avoid death, extreme unending agony aside - indeed, we have reason to avoid death even when our lives are so-so or mildly miserable.
That's not a controversial premise - not remotely. Anyone who denies it owes an argument - and their argument better have premises that are obviously true, otherwise they would be rejecting a powerfully self-evident claim on the basis of a less self-evident claim, which is dumb.
Here's another claim: the reason you have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances bar extreme unending agony is that it harms you. That is, it is contrary to your interests to die - extreme unending agony aside.
Do you dispute that? There's some room to dispute it - it is a more sensible premise to dispute than the previous one. For it is at least in principle possible that we have reason to avoid death for reasons unrelated to harm. However, once more, you'd need an argument. For on the face of it, death is harmful - that is, the claim that death is harmful seems no less self-evident to reason than the claim that we have reason to avoid death. Note as well that a whole range of attitudes towards another's death would be irrational if death was, contrary to what our reason tells us, not harmful.
The best explanation of why we have reason to avoid death under most circumstances is that it harms us.
Now the gravity of that harm must be immense. If we have reason to avoid death even when our lives are mildly miserable - and show no prospect of being anything other than mildly miserable - then it is clearly really harmful. And not just a one off harm either.
That's all I need for the antinatalist conclusion. For if death is such an immense harm, then it operates to make lives that feature it - that is, all lives - not worth starting.
No, I am claiming that most of us won't "do virtually anything to avoid it." You are changing the basis of this discussion in the middle.
Now, once more Clarky boy, try and answer the question: do you think we have reason to avoid death under most circumstances?
Don't answer a different question. Don't tell me your recipe for mushroom soup. Don't give me your theory about human psychology. Answer the question I asked.
I'll do it for you to save time - the answer is 'yes'.
Now read the OP again and address something I argued.
As I noted, that's not the claim you made originally. You're changing the rules of the game in the middle of play. No need for us to continue this any longer.
I am not talking about why people disvalue death. That's a sociological question, not a philosophical one.
Our reason tells us to avoid death under most circumstances. That implies it is harmful, yes?
The deprivation account is demonstrably false. If it was true, then death would not be a harm if your life is drab or if you are in agony and death is the only escape. The death is still a harm in those circumstances, is it not? It is the lesser of two evils. But the lesser of two evils is still an evil. So, the deprivation account is false. It does not matter that many people 'think' it is true. So what? Have they thought about it carefully, as I have? No. Have they noticed that if the deprivation account is true, then death is good, not bad, when it is visited on those whose lives are slightly drab or on those whose lives are agony. No.
So, the deprivation account is false. Quoting DA671
No it doesn't. That's like thinking that whether the world is spherical or flat depends on your framework. No it doesn't. It depends on what shape it is.
Christians think they're going to heaven when they die. Do you think that means they are? Is that all one needs to do? If you think it, it will be so? Have you not noticed that this is not at all how the world works?
You also mischaracterize what a 'reason' is. A reason is not a personal preference. A reason to do something is known as a 'normative reason'. Our personal preferences can inform what we have reason to do - if I really want to do x, then probably that will generate a reason for me to do it - but a reason to do something is not made of our personal preferences. Tom has a reason not to kill Jane even if he really wants to, yes? Well, if 'reason to' just meant 'prefers to' then that would make no sense. But Tom has a reason not to kill Jane even if he wants to - so clearly reasons to do things are not made of our own preferences and talk of reasons to do things is not just a convoluted way of talking about what we prefer to do.
Let's say you wake up one morning and you happen to want to kill yourself. Does that mean you now do have reason to kill yourself? That, magically, it is now rational for you to kill yourself? No, obviously not. It would depend. If you wanted to kill yourself with such intensity that frustrating that desire would mean the rest of your life here would be a torment, then - perhaps - you might now have reason to kill yourself. But just having a passing desire to kill yourself does not entail that one has reason to kill oneself. So reasons to do things are not a disguised way of talking about our preferences, even though our preferences can inform what we have reason to do.
We have reason to avoid death. The evidence for that? The reason of virtually everyone says so.
That's the evidence that 2 + 3 = 5. The reason of virtually everyone represents 2 + 3 = 5. It is the evidence that this argument is valid:
1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q
The reason of virtually everyone represents it to be valid.
And so on. All appeals to evidence are appeals to reason.
And the reason of virtually everyone represents us to have reason to avoid death in all but the most extreme circumstances.
That does not mean that we do have reason to avoid death in all but the most extreme circumstances, but it is overwhelmingly good evidence that we do and the burden of proof is squarely on the person who would insist that we have no reason to avoid death in the main. And if all they can do in the way of defence is appeal to some bonkers worldview that has nothing to be said for it apart from taht it was believed by vikings or americans, then they have not discharged the burden.
Now, if our reason represents death to be something we have reason to avoid and only relents when our situation has become characterized by intense suffering, doesn't this imply that death is a harm, and a very serious one?
Typically, if we have reason not to do something it is because a) doing it will harm us, or b) because doing it will harm someone else, or c) because doing it is intrinsically immoral.
Which plausibly applies to our reason not to die? Well, not b, for my reason represents me to have reason not to die even when my death would not affect anyone else. So it is only plausibly a or c. I think c is fairly implausible as we generally do not have moral obligations to ourselves, but only to others. If I smack you in the face, that's wrong; but if I smack myself in the face, that's just stupid, but not immoral. Yet if I have reason to avoid death even when my death would not affect others, then if that's a moral reason it'd express an obligation to myself. Plus, in the unlikely event that I really do have a moral, rather than prudential, obligation not to kill myself, it would be because of the harm it would visit upon me. And so really 'a' seems to be the most plausible explanation of why we have reason not to kill ourselves and to avoid death.
So, we have overwhelming evidence that we have reason to avoid death in all but the most extreme circumstances, and we have good evidence that this is because death will harm us.
And we know that the deprivation account of the harm of death is false.
So, it harms us becasue it does something to us - it harms us because it alters our condition, not because it deprives us of anything.
Quoting DA671
Irrelevant, as my point is about death. Not the process of dying. Death. Death is a harm, as I have argued and as appears self-evident to the reason of most. Pointing out that other things related to death are also harmful only adds to my case, but does not challenge it.
Quoting DA671
No, that's the deprivation account again. And it is false.
Quoting DA671
By a so-so life I mean a life characterized by mild pleasures and pains and in which the balance of mild pleasure over pain is either slightly negative or even. If it was a company, it would be a company that was not turning a profit or was turning a slight loss and had no prospect of a profit in the future. If it was a company, a sensible business person would, other things being equal, close it down. But it is not a company, it is a life. And we have reason not to shut such lives down.
To extend the company metaphor, imagine that there is a huge company that is turning a slight loss, year on year. There is no prospect of it turning a profit - the accountants and analysts deliver the same verdict: this company is going to keep turning a slight loss. Yet its billionaire owner doesn't shut it down. Why? Well, what if closing it down would mean incurring huge redundancy pay-out costs? That is, it is losing $1m a year, but closing it would mean having to pay out $1billion in redundancy payments. Well, now it is in the billionaire's best financial interest to keep the company running, even though it is not making a profit. So, if a billionaire owns a giant company that keeps making a loss - and shows no prospect of making a profit - and yet the billionaire does not close it down, you can reasonably infer that something like the situation I just described is the case. That's the more sensible inference - more sensible than, say, inferring that the billionaire is stupid with money or just enjoys wasting it.
Our reason is the billionaire. It tells us to keep the company that is our life here going even when it is turning a slight loss and shows no prospect of turning a profit. What should we infer from that? We should infer that shutting our lives down will incur huge costs that far outweigh the costs we are incurring by keeping them going. That is, death is a harm of such magnitude that it eclipses all the harms we keep incurring by continuing living.
As Woody Allen said - I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
In terms of people's averseness to death, I do think there are parallels. Someone who holds to a deprivation account might feel worse about death than one who does not. In my reply, I distinguished between desires and reason (something being the "right" thing to do). I believe that you missed this point.
Of course people do wish to avoid death. However, their reason for believing that are varied and also differ in intensity (even on a day-to-day basis, though the change there might not be easily perceptible, I think). You already said that us preferring something is not the same as us having a reason to avoid it (differentiating between what is desired and what is true), but then you claim that everybody saying that they wish to avoid death is evidence that it is something terrible (where you do end up conflating personal views with what one needs). You also disregard the fact that most people also say that they cherish their lives, even "so-so" lives. Part of the reason they wish to not die is because they want to continue living and experience the positive aspects of life that they value, and it would be terrible if someone with an extreme emphasis on death prevented the opportunity of all joy ;) Things aren't black and white.
Once again, fear is not the same as something being true. Many people might have feared that thunder was some punishment from the gods, but the majority deeply believing that does not make that a reality or give us a "reason" to pray to the thunder god the moment we get out of our homes. Of course, it's true that we want to avoid death. But if not existing has no value, then fearing is not rational (and neither is loving it). And if the deprivation account is true, then it would still be preferable to live a good life than incessantly worrying about one's demise.
Many people "think" they have a reason to avoid it. This is why their framework (the view they hold about the nature of death) matters. Many people who fear it believe that they would be left in some sort of dark void of misery after existing, but they also often avoid investigating these issues. I've experienced this a lot because I support the right to a graceful exit. People usually start off in a fearful way, but after a long discussion, many genuinely start to view death as something mostly irrelevant in their life (apart from the pain, but that's more about dying). The business owner chooses the lesser evil. Some billionaire might indeed enjoy wasting his money. The burden of proof was on you to prove that mere beliefs give us a rational reason for avoiding something, and I don't think you were able to defend your case successfully. But as you said, life is not a business. In life, things aren't about just avoiding something bad; things are also about gaining something valuable.
If "p" means the intuition that death is bad and q is the conclusion that death is bad, then you have failed to show the soundness of your argument. The problem is that it simply does not follow that if we think that we want to avoid death (which is not the same as believing death itself to be bad) that death actually becomes bad. All our beliefs and intuitions deserve to be scrutinised to ensure that we have a rational reason to trust them. Many intuitions that our ancestors might have shared, such as natural disasters being an evil force, have now been discarded by most of us once we realised that we did not have enough information to believe them. Therefore, "p" does not have to lead to q, which is why your argument is not sound.
No, we should infer that many people "think" that they have a reason to avoid death at all costs. There's a subtle but crucial difference there. But there are many things to infer besides just a single-minded focus on death. As I have already pointed out, most people wish to avoid death because they are afraid it would take away the things they value (and this is based upon the discussions I've had with countless people). Many also conflate death with a painful way of dying, and this is something that's often missed. A more accurate description would be that the fear of death sometimes eclipses our other desires. But yet again, it would be pertinent to point out that fear is not always rational, and even if it is, it only forms a component of life which also includes appreciating and seeking the ineffably meaningful moments that exist and hold such value that it fuels an extreme desire to prevent their (perceived) loss. The desire for the good, in turn, shows that innumerable individuals find their lives to be quite significant, even in difficult times. And so if the fear of death gives us a "reason" to think it's bad, the inimitable proclivity towards living and experiencing the positives also demonstrates that we have a reason for continuing life, which could be extremely potent. And I don't think that preventing the "harm" (I don't think that it is necessarily a harm, even if many think so) at the cost of all positives is justifiable, which is why antinatalism remains indefensible.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your insightful views. I hope you have a fantastic day ahead!
I never said otherwise. I did not say people are averse to death - that's a psychological claim that others keep attributing to me. I said we have reason to avoid death. That does not mean the same thing at all.
Again, my claim - which is uncontroversial - is that we have reason to avoid death under all but the most extreme circumstances. That is not - not - a psychological claim. It does not mean the same as 'most people don't want to die' or 'most people are averse to death'. 'Reason to' and 'want to' are not synonymous expressions.
Quoting DA671
I don't know why you are continuing to talk about why people may be averse to death. You're not engaging with what I have argued. You're just making psychological claims - they're irrelevant. Again, my claim is not the psychological one "people are averse to death". My claim is that we have 'reason' to avoid death.
Do you believe that we have reason to avoid death under all but the most extreme circumstances? Forget what other people think and forget psychological analysis. Does it strike you as obvious that if drinking x will kill you, you have reason not to drink x?
They're quite relevant, my friend ;) I already distinguished between the two. I merely said that the alleged "reason" is far too diverse in character to make uniform claims.
Once again, thanks for the discussion, and I hope you have a great day/night ahead!
I don't know what you mean. I have said that we have reason to avoid death under most circumstances. I have said that this is because death is harmful - that is, the best explanation of why we have reason to avoid death is that death harms us.
I am not talking about people and their psychologies - I am talking about what we have reason to do and why.
Believing something to be harmful doesn't make it so (except for psychological damage, but that's a different matter). I think that your views are uncertain and hazy, but still, I am glad to know how much people can appreciate their lives ;)
Forgive me, my humour is rather ... stale.
Anyway, as always, I hope you have a nice day!
Death is a big harm, yes? It isn't nothing - it isn't harmless. If it was harmless, then we would not have reason to avoid it under all but the most extreme circumstances. If it was harmless, killing people wouldn't be a grave wrong. Blowing a leaf into someone's face is not a grave wrong, for it is harmless - well, killing an unloved otherwise unknown tramp would be the moral equivalent to blowing a leaf in someone's face. It isn't though, is it? It seriously wrong to kill an unloved otherwise unknown tramp - because it harms that person considerably.
Perhaps you think that life here is so beneficial to the liver that the benefits outweigh all the harms, including the harm of death.
But that seems implausible. For the harm of death is so great that even if your life is going relatively badly - even if it is a moderately miserable life - you have reason to avoid it. So even a lifetime of moderate misery is better than death - the harm of death is greater than a lifetime of moderate misery. So it's a huge harm. Indeed, even if our lives here lasted 150 years or 200 years or a 1000 years, you would still have reason to avoid death even if your life is moderately miserable. What gives? Why would that be? What does that tell us? Nothing?!? That death is harmless or a portal to a better life? Er, no. It tells us that it most likely permanently changes our condition for the worse - that it takes us to hell. Think about it!
Once again, you're now conflating what's ethical with the thing itself. We believe that it's wrong to kill a person for many reasons. It violates their right and leads to immense suffering for their loved ones. It causes them pain, which isn't legal either (unless there's a greater good that would result in more joy for them). And many hold to the deprivation account, which certainly affects their thoughts on this matter. Also, people do prefer their lives, which can give us reason to think that it is good.
Life is also quite good by the same token, since most people seem to deeply prefer it and apparently that's something that can give us "reason" to ascribe a certain value to something.
I do, though I am not claiming this is true for all.
You're the one who needs to conduct some introspection, mate. But I will definitely heed your advice. I don't think that many people would want to live forever. I've seen quite happy old people who are absolutely fine with their death because they've enjoyed all the goods life has to offer. Once again, you're missing the point about reason and desire. People choose to continue living a moderately bad life because it could also be moderately good and they hold certain views about death that they haven't really thought about. Most people deeply value their lives, which can now apparently demonstrate that it is a source of ethereal good that is extremely potent. This is getting a bit circular, so I think there is reason for avoiding stretching this discussion on. As always, have an excellent day!
So? Again: you die. Everyone here dies. Nobody here 'had' to be here - we were all brought here by the actions of others. For all you know, you existed before somewhere else. You were brought here, into the valley of death.
And death is a harm. And it is a harm that is worse than life here. That's why our reason - which has our back for the most part - tells us to stay here as long as we can.
Now how is it moral to bring someone into our predicament? We are on our way to hell - that's what reason is telling us in so many words. How is it moral to decide "oh, I know, I'll bring someone else here to join me, so that I can be loved without deserving it, and then they can die and go to hell too"?
Imagine that Alex and Roger want to have a child. But the doctors tell them that any child they have will inherit a genetic disorder that will mean their life will be agony from the get-go. That is, the child will be born in extreme agony and live in extreme agony and then die. It'd be wrong for Alex and Roger to press ahead and have the child, would it not? What if, for a brief period of one day, the child will have a happy, pain free day and then the agony will resume - that's a feature of this bizarre and horrible disorder. Would it now be ok for them to press ahead? Does that one day of happy pain-free life outweigh the thousands of days of agony followed by death? No, clearly not.
Would it make any difference if the child lived for 10,000 years in agony but would enjoy 50 years of happy pain free living?
Our desires don't always give us accurate reasons for things. I am glad I didn't believe it's faulty reason when it told me that studying for long would make me sad, since it didn't. Once again, we also have reasons for believing that life has immense value that deserves to be conserved.
I also fail to see how it would be moral to prevent all good. Your reason is clearly hinting at the fact that life can have value of such magnitude that we wish to avoid its cessation to almost an incapacitating degree (which could be counterproductive, which is why we should not do so). We could be coming from hell and be on our way to heaven. Ultimately, the reality is that the existence of the harm does not give us sufficient reason to prevent the possibility of all joy.
I agree that many people procreate thoughtlessly and for purely selfish reasons. This isn't good and has to be discouraged. However, I don't think that it's impossible to create a person because one wants them to have a good life. Not creating joys that deserve to exist when we don't know for sure if nonexistence isn't some sort of hell that only existence can give relief from might not be the best idea ;)
So, let's say I plant a bomb in the centre of a city with a fuse that means it will go off in 150 years. That's wrong, yes? That's an act of murder. Yet no one the bomb will kill exists at the moment.
When it comes to pre-existence: we either pre-exist or we do not. Those exhaust the possibilities. If we pre-exist - and we have good reason to think we do, for we appear to be indivisible and indivisible things exist with aseity - then from our epistemic standpoint we are not justified in believing that those who are not here are existing in hell or heaven or something inbetween. So they cancel out. In terms of the justifiability of our acts of procreation, it doesn't matter whether we pre-exist or not. If procreation is wrong, it is wrong regardless of whether we pre-exist or not. To believe that those whom we do not bring here are left languishing in hell is to have an unjustified and self-serving belief.
Now, when it comes to death, other things are not equal - that's the point. We have excellent evidence that death harms us. We have no evidence whatsoever that our pre-existent state was harmful to us. We do have evidence - extremely powerful evidence - that death is harmful, so harmful that it makes life here overall bad. See the argument in the OP and throughout this thread for details.
Many people are extremely grateful for existing. So, if our aversion to death gives us reason to think that death leads to something terrible, we also have reasons to believe that existing can be a relief from something problematic. I don't think that procreation is "wrong", but it would become far more important if nonexistence (pre existence) was a terrible state of affairs.
I've seen your details and remain unconvinced. We don't have any "evidence" besides that many people have a desire to avoid death. However, as far as evidence is concerned, we have powerful evidence to think think that existence is deeply valuable, since it's evident (according to your own post) that most people desperately want to avoid its cessation. The non-creation of such a good is clearly absurd ;)
So does the act of procreation. There is someone who does not yet exist that my act of procreation, should I perform it, will kill. Just as there is someone who does not yet exist that the bomb will kill. What's the difference? It's wrong to plant the bomb - because it will kill someone. It's wrong to procreate, for that too will kill someone.
Imagine the bomb is also a beautiful statue. So beautiful is the statue that people come to marvel at it and some of those people are inspired by the statue to breed. And I knew this would happen. And I knew as well that it was the offspring of those folk whom the statue inspired to breed who'd be killed by the bomb when it detonates in 150 years. Is my act now not wrong - not an act of murder?
Once again, you're conflating different things. Anything that harms people who already exist and could live longer valuable lives is problematic. However, we don't have evidence that nonexistent beings are in some blissful and immortal state of affairs that's negatively affected when they are created, which is why it makes little sense to claim that the act that creates life has anything to do with ending it.
If you procreate, you're killing someone. The person you bring here is going to die. You know this and you do it anyway. That's culpable manslaughter. Presumably you think that the fact their being here at all was contingent upon your act somehow means you're not killing them.
But that's true of my bomb-statue case too. I plant it knowing it will go off in 150 years - so, no-one it will kill is currently here. And I know as well that the only people it will kill, will be people who would not have been brought here had I not planted the bomb-statue.
Does that mean my act of planting the bomb-statue was not wrong after all? If you were on a jury would you exonerate me on the grounds that nobody the bomb killed would have existed if the bomb hadn't been planted?
Anyway, the two cases appear equivalent in morally relevant respects, and so equally immoral.
Knowing people die is not the same as killing them. You're only asserting that procreation kills people, even though it's the opposite of that, since it's the act that leads to the manifestation of life. And it's indeed relevant that beings don't exist and live before being created, which is why it makes no sense to think that creating them leads to "their" death,, since they don't exist in the first place.
Your bomb scenario is different because you have no good reason to design something that would harm the interests of existing human beings.
You would still be prosecuted because your act could lead to unnecessary harm and loss of joy for people. Fortunately, the act that makes the good possible doesn't have much in common with that.
I didn't say it was. Knowing that x will kill someone and then doing it is, however, to kill a person. Yes?
If you know that doing x will result in someone's death, that's not killing someone. That's just knowing something.
If you know that doing x will result in someone's death....and then you do it, then that is called 'killing someone'
If you procreate, you are killing someone.
Perhaps they exist prior to your act, perhaps they don't - it makes no difference.
And again: consider my bomb-statue case. By your lights planting the bomb statue was a morally innocuous act, yes? But it's clearly not - it's an act of murder. As is procreation. It kills people. It brings people here, into the killing zone.
Creating someone whilst knowing that everybody dies due to the possibility of a meaningful life that the person themselves would cherish is not the same as killing them, since that requires cutting short a life and violating interests—both of which are inexistent before creation.
Indeed. Thankfully, being created won't "lead" to death; it leads to life. Things in life certainly do lead to cessation, but that doesn't change the fact that causing someone to exist does not kill (ending a life) anybody.
No, it does kill people - have you not been paying attention at all? It kills the person it brings here. Jeez. You're like someone who insists their act of stabbing Jane did not kill Jane, the knife did.
Now, procreation kills someone. The question is now whether it is a justified killing. And it isn't. Why? Well, lots of reasons, but one of them - one sufficient to establish the wickedness of the act - is that any goods that living here may bring to the liver of the life are eclipsed by the harmfulness of the death you've fated them to suffer. Again, for details see the argument in the OP and that I have made numerous times since.
I have seen your numerous arguments and concluded that they are not justifiable. Now that we have established that procreation kills nobody, we can still consider whether or not the goods of love, beauty, and inestimably valuable relationships are worth it or not. I think that they certainly can be (though it's true that they aren't present in all cases, which is a tragedy that needs to be minimised.
Yes it does. Baby steps. If you procreate, the person you bring here is going to die. And you know that they are going to die. So you are doing something that will kill another person. This really isn't hard to understand. If you do x, a person will die and will die because you did x. So, x kills a person. x is procreation. Procreating kills a person.
And death is bad, yes? A harm. A big one. So big it makes any life here in which it features - so, all of them - bad overall.
And life can also be a good—a great good. So significant are the joys that they can influence us even in dire situations to hold on to them and avoid the end. You've chosen to only focus on one side of the coin, so the incorrect destination you've reached isn't surprising. I wish you the best of luck for your future endeavours.
:up: Agreed! Entropy always increases. Entropy is disorder, disorder is chaos, chaos is hell!
What do you think @180 Proof?
It's evil to have children!
You mean you're on the ropes.
Quoting DA671
Ah, the old repeat things and they'll be true approach. Now, once again, you are killing someone if you do something that brings about their death - and that's what procreation does. Your reply is simply to deny this, not highlight any error in my reasoning or definition of a killing.
And don't point out that bringing a person here gives them all these wonderful benefits. I have already addressed that - they're eclipsed by the harmfulness of death.
Don't just keep nay saying. It's tedious.
:up:
We fear (in descending order of intensity)
1. Suffering (torture)
2. Dying (the transition phase between life and death)
3. Death (the state of being nonexistent)
[quote=Woody Allen]I don't want to live on in my work. I want to live on in my apartment.[/quote]
Did you even read my example of the bomb-statue? They - the bomb's victims - would not have existed had it not been for me planting the bomb. Presumably you think it not wrong to plant such a bomb?
You've proven my point about projection by accusing me of doing what you have been indulging in throughout this thread without providing adequate justification. Once again, creating a person does not cut short any person's life, which is why it makes no sense to claim that procreation causes their death. You're free to keep believing that if it suits your pessimism (not using this to bolster my argument, so this isn't an ad hominem), but I don't think that this changes the truth.
And no, the perceived harm of death does not negate the possibility of the deeply meaningful experiences of life. It's unfortunate that some people choose to ignore an an entire side of reality. Furthermore, preventing harm (loss of something valuable) at the cost of preventing all good itself isn't a particularly wise idea.
Saying aye to irrational conclusions isn't my forté :p
I've justified everything I've said! Jesus. You now want to make this about the arguer, not the arguments, yes? Standard ploy.
Now, if you do something that brings about someone's death, that's a killing, yes? We don't have to look into whether the thing you did also brought the person into existence. It is sufficient that what you did caused a death. See bomb example for details.
Here's another one: Jane can only give birth over the edge of an extremely high building. Don't know why - doesn't matter - it's just a peculiar fact about Jane. So, any baby she has will fall to its death. Should she have a baby? Or would she be a murderer if she did?
I have provided you with numerous examples, most of which you have simply ignored. So here's one again: Tom and Jane want to have a kid, but they know that any kid they have will live in agony and then die. They ought not to have the kid, right?
What if it will enjoy one day of pain-free life, the rest agony - is it now ok for them to have the kid?
"Also existence" is not a trivial point, because nonexistent beings don't have a life that's being reduced when they are created.
It would be wrong to create the person because of the suffering likely outweighing the good. This is about averting an overwhelmingly negative life (which isn't lived by most people, and I hope that we can reach a point where it would be lived by almost nobody), not about avoiding "killing" someone.
I don't think that existing is always good, but the existence of ethereal joys can certainly give us reason to think that it can be preferable in many cases.
] Issues usually crop up when "manifestly clear" things are observed without taking the bigger picture into account.
1. Happiness (which isn't an illusion).
2. Living.
3. Life
Entropy is inevitable, but the creation of something that can act as source of inimitable joy and resilience isn't necessarily problematic. Stability amidst decay. Perhaps the cycle is eternal. Of course, "we" is somewhat of a generalisation, since not all might prefer the latter two and have certain peculiar ideas about the first. Anyway, I don't think it's always evil to create (it can be good), but I think that it definitely can be, especially in a world struggling with issues such as worsening wealth disparity and global warming. Hope you guys have a nice day!
"Be fruitful and multiply" increases overall entropy. Deus vult – how can this be "evil"? :mask:
:up:
I think this is a fair assessment. Personally No 3 doesn't concern me much, I'm been nonextant for most of 13.77 billion years already and it didn't bother me.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
- Woody Allen (again)
:up: Got me thinking about overpopulation - one posited way of bringing about the apocalypse (famine, war) aka chaos (high entropic state).
Selfish, oui?
Quoting DA671
Zero-sum game! Your stability comes at the cost someone else's instability.
Quoting DA671
Yes, that's the nub of the issue - antinatalism & natalism are sweeping generalizations. To be fair though, antinatalism has a greater claim to the truth on that score (Benatar asymmetry, suffering > joy).
Quoting DA671
The future is bleak! Why bring children into such a sorry figure of a world?
Death is clearly more harmful than torture, at least in the main, as we have reason to take being tortured over death, other things being equal.
Death is clearly a significant harm, and I have shown that our reason implies it is a harm of such gravity that it makes any life that contains it bad overall.
It is implausible that death is non-existence, as then it would not be harmful at all. Yet it manifestly is
My instability does not justify the cessation of potential stability that could also help make others stable.
They both have their claims, but a deeper analysis clearly shows the flaws of the so-called asymmetry (it's not sensible to suggest that absent harms that benefit nobody is something good but lack of joy isn't). And I think that the hasty generalisation that suffering outweighs all happiness is probably untrue.
I agree that we must stop mindless procreation. The future could also be good, but this solicits effort. Reproduction cannot be taken lightly, and when possibility of harm is too great (I don't think this has to be the case in every situation), it would surely be sensible to not create a person.
Antinatalists would say all procreation is mindless procreation.
My logic is simple. We can't guarantee the safety & security of children, nor can we ensure children will live a happy & content life. Given this, it's irresponsible & immoral of us to bring children into our world. Would you, for example, send your friend on a quest if his/her safety was in question? It's the same thing, may be even worse.
Overall, I do think that we need to take procreation more seriously, which is why I am grateful to people like you for raising awareness about this!
Yep, that's the word I was looking for. Having children is to take a risk. Who bears that risk? Not the parents, no, the children! Doesn't that make would-be parents immoral? How would you like it if I asked you to undertake a journey to Afghanistan, that too on foot :grin: , knowing full well that you might be kidnapped, held for ransom in a cold filthy cave, tortured (to death), and then beheaded (slolwy)?
The risks cannot be seen without the opportunities, which would only be caused by the parents, making them deserving of praise. If you did have convincing evidence that a heavenly state of love and joy was possible for all eternity after the experience, I would have to consider my options more carefully. And if you could send me on a journey through majestic clouds that imbue one with unfathomable joy, then the mere presence of rain wouldn't be a sufficient reason for not starting the journey, especially if it includes the love of people one would deeply care for and the ability to try to perceive and understand a mysterious yet captivating world. But this still doesn't apply to creating people, because the harm isn't necessary for them to live valuable lives and nonexistent beings don't have existing joy that is degraded by their existence. One does not intend for the harm to exist, but they do decide on the basis of the reasonable probability that the person could have a good life. Of course, it would not be good to create a person if the likelihood of harm was too high, and that's why procreating amidst a terrible conflict isn't a good idea. I wish people would stop seeing procreation as merely a way to gain more working hands or form "mini mes". It's definitely more.
Ain't we all just human, all too human (aka "stupid is as stupid does") .
Yep! However it's tougher for the kids! Hence antinatalism.
Quoting DA671
Doesn't that add to the suffering? Sacrifice :grimace: Like I said, life's a zero-sum game: children's happiness is paid for with parents' suffering.
Quoting DA671
I quote enjoy taking risks; life is, after all, a gamble. Nevertheless, some risks are not worth it! Pain has more weight than pleasure i.e. if pleasure & pain could be measured, 1 unit of pain > 1 unit of pleasure. Do the math (expected value, probability) and you'll discover that the game ain't worth the candle.
Thanks for staying positive though, but I'm afraid life is a lost cause or will be one...soon! Good day.
You're on target! I want to pick your brain on something that just popped into my head.
Antinatalism is definitely anti-life. Remarkable, isn't it, that life could, over billions of years of struggle to survive, produce antinatalists. I'm expecting evolution, if survival is its primary objective, to mount an equal and opposite response. What would that look like? Would all antinatalists die off?
I wonder then if the best thing to do then is find a way to nuke the entire planet and kill all life. We would, perhaps, consider this one giant mercy killing (putting people and animals out of their misery) and definitively ending the breeding of more humans.
It could, but once again, looking at an incomplete picture is dangerous. There is a potent joy hidden beneath that sacrifice, and I don't think it's trivial. Nor is such a great sacrifice always necessary, of course. Things can also be a win-win scenario, wherein people contribute towards each other's well-being.
Superficial pleasures such as material comforts might not be enough on their own for providing meaning, but I think that one who has seen the effulgent smile of the poor child hugging his mother in the slums would be forced to rethink their idea that harms matter more than the good. Extreme harms are (thankfully) not experienced by all, and whilst we do need to avoid them, I don't think their existence justifies the prevention of ineffably meaningful moments that only existing beings have cherish. The probability of a person considering their life to have been worth it is likely greater than the opposite, so I don't think that "math" supports not forming potentially billions of positive moments. And since most of us don't know what total harm or bliss are truly like, I think that claims to knowledge about that are conjecture. However, the case of the monk who calmly sat whilst burning could be an interesting example of the power of resilience. Risks that lead to a greater good is definitely acceptable. After all, letting valuable opportunities slip by would not be sensible ;) There are many candles out there. Removing a few bad ones should not be done by trying to stop any light from ever being there.
I also appreciate your kindness and care for others. However, I believe that universal antinatalism is a lost cause as far as the truth is concerned. The number of believers obviously varies. In the end, I just hope that people can have decent lives and help make the world a better place for all (and not have children when things aren't going well!). Have a brilliant day!
:ok:
Quoting DA671
Antinatalism is based off the complete picture: it concedes there is happiness, it's just qualitatively and quantitatively inadequate, especially when compared to the rich variety and severity of suffering, to justify procreation.
Quoting DA671
Precisely, natalists have it tough: they're forced to look at a black object and perceive a whiteness in it to make their case.
Quoting DA671
Bullseye! There's no such thing as "superficial" pain!
Quoting DA671
Ask a friend mathematician to do the math. You'll see the light!
Quoting DA671
I do care. Ergo antinatalism.
Quoting DA671
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst! Antinatalism follows.
Except that the blackness varies, and while it can stain the surface, the white spots can be seen clearly even when they have been reduced. Fortuitously, they don't have to reduce to such a degree in the first place (nor is it the case that they cannot ever come back).
"Superficial" was in terms of chasing good that doesn't give as much value as something like a cherished bond. But by the same token, being exceedingly depressed over a mild headache while ignoring the other days when there wasn't one (and won't be one!) is not productive.
Mathematicians are too busy understanding this beautifully enigmatic cosmos of ours. However, I don't think that any honest calculation would suggest that the meaningful experiences are trivial. The light lies away from universal AN.
You do, which is why good continues to persist. Ergo, natalism.
Hope for the best (try to achieve the good), prepare for the worst (be resilient and conserve the value), and ultimately live a content life. Natalism logically follows. Bullseye indeed ;)
I agree. But I am putting it out there as it seems that for some it could be the logical next step from antinatalism.
The extinction fossil records of some 98% of all species is testament to life's blindly wanton profusion of ("antilife") maladaptations.
Evoltion doesn't have any "objective". ("Survival" pertains to the species and only to individuals until they propagate their genes through live births.) "Antinatalism", on the other hand, is a cultural development rather than an adaptation to natural selection pressures. Don't confuse apples with oranges (i.e. first-order processes (genes) with second-order processes (memes)). The latter may be correlated with the former but there isn't any evidence that they are causally related.
Certainly; nonetheless their memes, like their genes, (might) reproduce too.
The only way to survive everything chance can and will throw at life is to use the exact same strategy (random gene mutations). Given this, maladaptations don't exist - every species is a chess piece life has mobilized against an opponent that's unpredictable and in a dangerous way.
Quoting 180 Proof
Would you agree that if evolution were treated as a person, like you or me, it's purpose (seems) is survival?
What would it take to convince you that antinatalism is correct/right/true? Hell I suppose, obviously. The only reason I would endorse natalism is heaven. The earth is neither, yes, but now we switch gears from type/kind to degrees, oui? How, in your opinion, could we measure how :smile: / :sad: people are?
Here's an intriguing dilemma for you:
Is the situation going to get better/worse?
If better, it's bad and so antinatalism.
If worse, antinatalism.
P. S. Don't treat your children like a general treats his/her soldiers.
If the situation gets better, it is closer to the good, so it is not bad. So, antinatalism is not necessary. I have already said that creating people in terrible conditions is not a good idea.
Agreed. I also hope that we won't treat our perspective as the standard for judging the alleged disvalue of all that is worth preserving.
That's all there is to antinatalism.
Quoting DA671
A lack of trying.
Quoting DA671
Vs. Actual suffering. You ignore real pain for only the possibility of "immense happiness". Religion's empty promise.
Quoting DA671
Good! At least you agree with the logic of anitnatalism.
For the record, I, like all antinatalists accept that there's joy in the world. However, I'm doubtful of its authenticity - is it real joy or merely an illusion. Of suffering, I can't say such a thing - suffering is always real suffering.
Nobody has tried to find the positive value either.
I was referring to harm and good that would exist in the future, In other words, I was referring to the fact that the prevention of nonexistent harms does not justify the prevention of the creation of actual goods. Solely emphasising the elimination of harms isn't the sort of religion I would wish to follow ;) I have never said that actual pain (and happiness) do not matter. They obviously do, and one can only talk about the future if the present is secure.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Working ones, however, are generally preferable! Happiness is as genuine as suffering. But yes, we should definitely strive to reduce the latter as much as possible. And if one believes that joy is an illusion, they should also be sceptical of suffering.
Two word refutation: "Donald" "Trump" ... QED. :smirk:
Sorry, I'm not an animist, so anthropomorphism – special pleading – won't get you anywhere with that tact.
:lol: Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He defies classification, a category of his own!
Quoting 180 Proof
No problemo!
:ok:
@Agent Smith, @Bartricks, and the other anti-natalists are misfits. They were never going to have children with or without the justifications provided by philosophy. Anti-natalism is just the rationalization that people who don't belong use to dignify their misanthropy.
Deciding not to have children is fine. My brother and daughter both decided early that they weren't interested. They aren't anti-natalists. They don't need bullshit "ethics" to justify their personal decisions.
Yeah, I agree that people should not be pressurised to have children, and I think that doing so can often lead to more harm than good. Hope you have a great day!
You're much too reasonable. What are you doing on a philosophy forum?
Baloney. Just because you're too lazy, or socially inept, or frightened, or ugly to have children, that doesn't make you a person of integrity.
:lol:
You've got me!
The female species loves me. I'm a good-looking guy. Talkative body. Burning brains. The mere thought of putting children in this world is a frightening one. Poor children! No normal future ahead of them. Prone to depression and nuclear destruction. Forced to play the materialistic capitalistic game. I have all it takes to procreate beautiful children (some girls told me they never saw a more good looking bloke, "le mec plus beau du monde"...), provided with the brains to turn all they touch into gold. But I refuse...
So... send us a picture and let us decide.
https://gurushots.com/photo/da4141cfb9957d910dacfff7d44e5d20
https://gurushots.com/photo/21f9290d46c26bba1e8dbc4caf54b2a0
It is clear that it is a harm, for our reason tells us to avoid it at almost all costs.
And our reason tells us to avoid it even if our lives are a little miserable. So, it seems that 80 years of moderate misery is better than death. And that goes for a life of 150 years of moderate misery, and 500 years and so on. Our reason tells us to stay here, in this realm, for as long as we possibly can, save agony. That is, it tells us that it is in our interests to stay here, in this realm, forever, if possible, so long as one's life is not outright terrible.
That's not controversial. Scenarios under which it is plausible we might have reason to kill ourselves or another are invariably terrible, extreme circumstances, in which a person is suffering agony and loss of dignity, or in which one person's continued living will visit suffering and agony or death on others.
So, it is uncontroversial that our reason tells us to stay here - to avoid death - extreme and very taxing circumstances aside.
Only an idiot would think that implies death is great - a benefit, a door to a better place. I mean, that makes no sense at all - that's not what reason is implying. And only an idiot would think this implies death is nothing, no harm at all. Again, even a 7 year old can see how silly a conclusion that would be. No, the implication - very powerful implication, so powerful it is the only sensible one, other things being equal - is that death is a portal to a terrible place. Death takes one to a life worse than this one - worse, that is, unless you're in absolute agony with no prospect of it ending so long as one remains here.
Now, that implication - which is not reasonably deniable - establishes the truth of antinatalism. For only some kind of psycho would now think it is morally ok to bring others into our predicament. Even those who think antinatalism is false agree that it would be wrong to bring into existence a person whose life would be characterized by great agony. And that does not change if, within that person's life of agony, there is a weekend of happiness. Well, that is our situation: we are, if we are lucky, enjoying the weekend of happiness.
I'll give you a more serious response this time.
As I wrote previously, no one needs a reason not to have children. It's their choice. The choice you've made is your choice. So far, all you discussed is the specific choice you've made and the reasons for it. You haven't turned it into moral philosophy and you haven't tried to apply that moral philosophy to how other people should be obligated to behave.
So that's my question. Do you believe that other people have a moral obligation not to have children? If you answer "no," you're not an anti-natalist. You're just a guy who doesn't want to have children.
I'm a chicken!
The modern world is not suited for new chickens. I think all chickens should take that into consideration. One egg to breed max! Until people are re-educated.
That's a reasonable position, although it didn't work so well for the Chinese.
I understand the point you are making, but your argument doesn't resonate with me. Part of my role involves working in the area of suicide prevention, to provide crisis intervention to people who what to kill themselves. Despite the strong taboos of religions and culture, suicidality is common and not often the result of 'agony'. Generally it is situational and people just don't have the desire to continue because they find life overwhelming emotionally. We understand that around 15% of people consider suicide at some point.
Many people don't want to live. The offical figures for suicide are alway under. For every successful attempt there are probably 5 or 6 who were unsuccessful. And many suicides are recorded as accidents or misadventures. I would add to this all those folk who partake in high risk activities that have a high chance of killing them - substance use, smoking, 'lifestyle' choices. The risk of death, as an oncologist tells us, is generally not enough of a disincentive for certain behaviours.
Quoting Bartricks
I don't read any conclusions like this from behaviour. I also think 'reason' and behaviour don't always have a connection. Emotion would seem to me to be a bigger influence. I would also argue that from an evolutionary standpoint (and I am not a social Darwinist) that species are hard wired for survival. So there's that.
You should focus on arguments, not arguers. But I can assure you that I haven't procreated because it is dumb and immoral - so i haven't procreated on the basis of the arguments (it's something I tend to do - I tend to think before i make life-changing decisions...try it). But as we're now assessing individuals not arguments, I suspect the only reason you're convinced antinatalism is false is because you've bred. Note too, I can breed if I want to, whereas you can't undo your breeding choice. So you've got far more of a vested interest in antinatalism being false than I have in it being true. Thus, if we're basing our assessment of views on the motives and vested interests of the arguers - which is fallacious, but seems to be how you do things - then you're the one with the false view. You argue fallaciously, but even by your own fallacious standards your view comes out false! Good job.
Anyway, back to the actual case I made in the OP (which is what you ought to be assessing).
We have reason to avoid death under most circumstances. That's one of my premises and it is not remotely controversial. Anyone denying it owes an argument, and it'd better be a really good one.
The reason we have reason to avoid death under most circumstances is instrumental: it harms us. You have reason not to punch yourself in the face - why? Because it'll harm you to do that. You have reason to avoid death - why? Because it'll harm you.
That is slightly - slightly - more controversial, as it is in principle possible for us to have reason to avoid death without it being harmful to us. Nevertheless, the harmfulness of death seems both itself to be self-evident to reason and to be the best explanation of why we have reason to avoid it under most circumstances. Again, anyone disputing this premise would need to provide a powerful argument in defence of their rejection.
So, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that death harms us. But by how much? Well, it would seem a huge amount. For we seem to have reason to avoid death even if our lives here promise to be mildly miserable. At no point in the mildly miserable life does one have reason to seek death. Extreme misery - perhaps. Agony, perhaps. But killing oneself because one's life is mildly miserable seems irrational.
If the harm of death is so great that a mildly miserable life here of any length is preferable, then the harm of death must be colossal and, it would seem, it must transform our condition for the worse (otherwise there would come a point where the length of the mildly miserable life would make a difference to the rationality of suicide - which intuitively it does not).
Thus, death is a huge harm, and the harm in question involves one's condition changing for the worse. Death is, like I say, a portal to hell. That's what our reason is telling us, if we listen to it carefully and stop engaging in wishful thinking.
Now if death is a portal to hell, then we're all going to hell. Anyone here is going to hell. If that is our predicament, then anyone of moral sensibility will draw the same conclusion: it is wrong to make it anyone else's predicament as well; wrong, in other words, to bring anyone else here.
If our deaths take us to hell - as the evidence powerfully implies - wouldn't that realization prevent many from committing suicide?
Quoting Tom Storm
My claim is about the rationality of avoiding death, not about what people actually do or think. Lots of people think gambling on slot machines is a good idea - that doesn't mean it is.
Now presumably you think that these people - the ones who are not in agony with no prospect of it ending, but are just bored and what a change of scene - do not, in fact, have reason to kill themselves? I mean, why else are you trying to prevent them from doing it? Surely your very job presupposes the truth of what I am saying, namely that, in the main, killing oneself is irrational and thus those who are inclined to do so need help and to be diverted from making an irrational and very harmful choice?
Quoting Tom Storm
Again, I don't see how this challenges anything I have said. First, simply not wanting to live is not sufficient, is it, to make it rational to kill oneself? Someone who didn't want to live because they believe that there is a better place just the other side of death is, surely, someone you'd consider had reason 'not' to kill themselves.
Look, I am not making any claims about how miserable or happy anyone actually is. My claim is that we have reason to avoid death unless our lives have become lives of unending agony. That's not a claim about how many people want to die or do not - it is not an empirical claim. I am not claiming anything about how miserable or happy any actual person is. I am making a normative claim - a claim about what we have reason to do or not do. And it is true, is it not? LIke I say, if you work in suicide prevention, doesn't your job presuppose that what I am saying is true? Otherwise, why are you trying to prevent people from doing it? The job presupposes that it is irrational in the main, surely?
Agreed, but you and @Agent Smith started it.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Agent Smith
The Chinese changed it to 3. They are stupid. One was better.
No, you started it. Rather than address the argument, you decided to engage in some cod psychology.
Note as well, that accusing procreators of being evil is not to focus on the arguer rather than the argument. It is rather what the antinatalist conclusion implies about them. That is not to make things personal: it is just a conclusion of an argument.
If you address the argument I presented for antinatalism, then I will address your objections to it. But note, the argument implies that anyone who has voluntarily procreated is a wicked person. If you think that conclusion is false, then address the argument.
You won't, of course. For so far all you have done is insist - on the basis of no argument that I can discern - that we do not have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances. Make a case for that - that is, make an argument that has that as a conclusion that follows logically from some premises, and then I can inspect those premises and see if they have any self-evidence to them at all.
But they were aborting the girls so they could have sons. Leaders also figured out that they would run out of people to participate in the economy and China would plunge into a bottomless depression. There's a good chance they're right. Then we'll see some real misery.
Quoting Bartricks
Address the argument that leads to that conclusion. Note, that a conclusion describes qualities that you find you yourself possess, does not make the argument ad hominem. Rejecting the conclusion because you dislike the arguer, however, is ad hominem.
So, once again, turn the old meat walnut on and try and come up with a cogent criticism of the argument in the OP.
Been there, done that, although you're unwilling to acknowledge it. When your ideas get knocked down, you do one of two things 1) just keep repeating your argument as if saying it over and over again makes it right or 2) change your argument and pretend that you didn't. Oh, wait, there's a third 3) Insult people.
Abortion should be forbidden then. Economy is of no importance whatsoever.
Note what I did in the OP - I made a case. I showed how an interesting conclusion follows from some premises that seem, on the face of it, true beyond a reasonable doubt.
Try and do the same. That is, don't just blurt "I don't agree with that!" or 'that's not true!!!!' and think that by itself constitutes a refutation. Argue. Try and show how the negation of one of my premises follows from other premises, more plausible than any of mine.
So, in a rather pointless attempt to encourage focus, here's my argument. broken into three syllogisms:
Argument 1:
1. If we have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances, including circumstances in which our lives are already sub optimal in terms of their happiness to misery balance (up to a certain limit), the best explanation of this is that death harms us and harms us by permanently altering our condition for the worse.
2. We have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances etc.
3. Therefore, death harms us by permanently altering our condition for the worse
Argument 2:
1. If our deaths permanently alter our condition for the worse, then all of our lives are bad overall and cause their subjects far more harm than benefit.
2. Our deaths permanently alter our condition for the worse (from the argument above)
3. Thus all of our lives are bad overall and cause their subjects far more harm than benefit
Argument 3:
1. If our lives are bad overall and cause their subjects far more harm than benefit, then it is immoral to create such lives.
2. Our lives are bad overall and cause their subjects far more harm than benefit
3. Therefore, it is immoral to create such lives.
Now, I do not think a reasonable doubt can be had about any of the premises of those arguments. The only premise I think a slither of a doubt can be had about is premise 1 of argument 1. As I have said before, it does not follow from us having reason not to x, that xing will harm us. And so there's scope to argue that although we do indeed have reason to avoid death under almost all circumstances, the reason in question is to do with some other consideration apart from harm.
But what other consideration would it be? Is it immoral for us to kill ourselves, for instance, and immoral for reasons unrelated to harm? Well, perhaps, but intuitively it does not seem immoral so much as irrational. Plus in general we do not have moral obligations to ourselves. So, insisting that the reason we ought to avoid death is a moral reason looks ad hoc.
Perhaps death is not harmful at all and thus the reason must be generated by some other consideration, even if we can't identify what consideration it is. There's a famous case for thinking death might be harmless that was first made by Epicurus. Epicurus argued that death can't harm us, for we don't exist at the time.
However, although Epicurus is surely right that you need to exist in order to be harmed, he just assumes that death ends our existence. Yet we seem to have good reason to think it doesn't, precisely because we seem to have reason to avoid it. Why would we have reason to avoid something harmless? There could be a reason, of course, but it would be question begging just to assume there is. Absent actual evidence that we have reason to avoid death due to some consideration unrelated to harm, the default is that we have reason to avoid death due to its harmfulness. And that, combined with Epicurus's plausible assumption that one needs to exist in order to be harmed, simply gets us to the conclusion that death does not end our existence. It does not, in other words, raise any kind of reasonable doubt about premise 1.
So, there you go - three arguments, all the premises of which seem true beyond a reasonable doubt, and that entail that antinatalism is true.
They are not bored. They are dealing with depression and post-trauma reactions, or an overwhelming situational problem - a crisis which temporarily has a detrimental hold on them.
Quoting Bartricks
Can't see that. I never use the term irrational since I don't think reason plays all that much of a role in behaviour, or life in general. Sure people have reasons, but that doesn't imply a measured or 'reasoned' world view. People tend to be reactive in my experience. And all of us love our post hoc rationalisations.
My role in these cases is to prevent unnecessary death. It is not tied to any presuppositions other than life is preferable to death. A view an atheist might hold on the basis that the flourishing of conscious creatures is a useful guiding principle for actions in the world.
I choose to assist people because it pleases me emotionally - it seems like the right thing to do for me. It is not tied to a consciously held foundational narrative or any reasoned system. I also know that people generally choose suicide as a reaction to problems which can be overcome. Those who survive ususally say something like - "I couldn't see any solutions and didn't think I would be happy again, that's why I wanted to die. I'm so glad I didn't do it.' People sometimes require a reboot.
Anyway, despite all this stuff the most I can commit to is that life is preferable to death. If people really want to die (and many do) they don't generally seek help from services. They, to quote the execrable Nike, just do it.
Enjoy the argument, I'm out. I'm pretty sure I don't understand your thinking and it shouldn't matter to you or me that I don't. Cheers - TS
It's not controversial that we are evolutionarily hardwired to avoid death.
This is why it seems self-evidently reasonable to avoid it.
Are you accusing @Bartricks & me of being prime movers? :blush: I thought there could be only one prime mover! Bartricks, please finish what you started! :grin:
As for antinatalism, I still think it's the most reasonable policy to adopt given the circumstances we're in (overpopulation is an existential threat to humanity: sacrifice the few to save the many is one way out of the mess). If you disagree, it can only mean you want the annihilation of the human race in the most horrible way possible: not only do we end up dying in droves, but we also lose our humanity. Just saying. Convince me otherwise (if you so wish).
In general, I do think that thoughtlessly creating beings without resolving some of our fundamental issues wouldn't be a good idea. In light of this, it would be better for people to not have children in circumstances where the outcome is likely to be a negative one.
:rofl:
This is true. Our reasons tell us to do virtually anything to avoid death. You're suggesting that we should listen to our reasons. That's what we do. Our reasons also tell us that procreation in spite of death is still better than no procreation at all. Although your argument is carefully crafted, our reasons still tell us that we should procreate. Your argument heavily relies on us trusting our reason. This makes it hard for you to argue that we should stop listening to the reason that tells us to procreate in spite of death.
Here are some of the obvious objections to the OP:
I think there are better arguments for antinatalism than the harm of death. I would expect them to be about the misery of life. If life is generally miserable and meaningless, then it doesn't make sense to bring new people to it. But if life is great and only death is harmful, then it's not clear why the immanence of death would necessarily outweigh the benefits of life.
I'm very pleased that you understand the antinatalist position.
Part of the problem is that we need to be able to predict the future (coincidentally a message on my TikTok read "Can you predict what this is?"). Is the graph pointing up or down? What are we measuring anyway?
The future can be more or less certain. I do think that there have been many goods throughout the past (and the avoidance of certain negative predictions, such as the ones made by Malthus) that can give reason for hope. However, considering that climate change and growing income disparity won't be fixed tomorrow, it surely makes more sense to think twice before taking the plunge and making a choice that won't be conducive to the welfare of people.
Guess I'll have to try out Tiktok now ;)
I have no problem with that, although I disagree.
Quoting Agent Smith
This - smug, self-righteous, self-serving, unsupported - is what makes me want to kick you and Bartricks down the street. Let's leave it at that.
I take it you are attempting to challenge 1 by arguing that as we can give an evolutionary story about how we might have come to 'believe'that we have reason to avoid dying, we do not in fact have reason to avoid dying. If that is your argument, it proves too much, for presumably there is an evolutionary story to be told about all of our beliefs - are you arguing that all our beliefs are false? (Including that one).
So your argument is actually - we have no reason to believe or do anything. As well as being obviously indefensible and itself unbelievable, it applies to any argument for anything. So, it is silly. You haven't engaged with my argument so much as rejected the whole project of arguing for anything. If that's what you are reduced to doing, then my argument is very strong.
Quoting Bartricks
No, I think there are reasons to avoid dying. I am arguing against trusting our feeling that it is self-evidently true that we should avoid dying - this feeling is at least as likely to be evolutionary programming as anything meaningful.
Quoting Bartricks
Only stuff we believe to be self-evidently true is untrustworthy. Our urge to reproduce is a good example - except you didn't fall for that one.
I used an analogy of a loss making company. If the company - life plc - is recording a slight loss, year on year, you'd think it'd make sense to wind it up immediately. But your accountant tells you that that's not a good idea at all and that it is best to keep it running at a loss and only to wind it up if the losses become huge. What gives? What would be the rational inference to make? Surely that winding the company up will itself incur huge costs, - losses far greater than the losses you incur by keeping it running.
That's what our reason says about us - the implication is that death itself is immensely harmful, so much so that it never makes sense to wind your life up until or unless continuing it will incur huge costs.
Quoting Bartricks
I'm not sure what comments you're referring to. This thread has 6 pages. Although I tried to keep up and scrolled through all the pages, I cannot quickly tell what you're referring to. That's fine, because I think you're reiterating the refutation later in the same paragraph. I'll try to address them.
[hide]Quoting Bartricks
Do you mean that our lives are slightly miserable in the moment, or do you mean in general? When I feel miserable, I have to remind myself that the feeling is temporary, and that there will be times in my life when I'll feel great. Why do we want to help people stuck in depression and having suicidal thoughts? Because we believe that this emotional state is temporary and it can be changed drastically given enough time and support.
Quoting Bartricks
I don't see how this follows. If I'm feeling slightly miserable, I won't accept death as an answer, because it would deprive me of lots of things worth having in the future. I also anticipate that the time will come when I would like to choose death using rational thinking and not being influenced by an emotional state. I'd like to have personal freedom to make this choice. But I'm just speaking for myself. I wouldn't want other people to die, and I'm sure other people wouldn't want me to choose death. I'm talking about this choice as a matter of personal preference, because in the context of society there are lots of legal and bureaucratic pitfalls that hardly make it possible for society to function in the presence of this choice. Therefore, the topic of wilful death becomes a taboo.
Quoting Bartricks
Sorry, I cannot understand this statement. It's a bit hard for me to absorb. I'll move on.
Quoting Bartricks
So you're saying that death is the lesser of two evils? Which means that death is the best outcome, doesn't it? When life is an unending agony, then death deprives one of nothing worth having. But if we're slightly miserable, then there is a hope for a better life. In which case, death is a bad outcome because it would deprive us of a hope for a better life. Isn't it true? I feel that you're somehow disagreeing with what I'm saying. I'm saying that in rare circumstances when there is no hope, death is the best option, but most of the time there is enough hope to eliminate death as an option.
Quoting Bartricks
I'm also having hard times understanding this statement. Let me utilise the rule of double negation: implausible->plausible, disvalue->value. "It is plainly plausible that the value of death is a function of the value of life". Basically, one of the functions of the value of life is to add value to death. This should be a plausible statement. I still cannot wrap my head around it.
Quoting Bartricks
It's a fun thing to say that life can report benefit profits. It's hard to measure the profits of life objectively. But let's say that we did this. We have a period with losses. How would this look like? Does it mean that after a year of my life I ended up more miserable than I was a year ago? Why should I care? Life goes up and down. Just the fact that sometimes it going down doesn't mean that we should end it instantly.
Quoting Bartricks
That's a weird reference to make. In my life, I've read a few books about entrepreneurship and how to run a business, although I've never run one. If a company is making losses, I would expect the accountant to tell the CEO that it's not a good idea to keep it running. It's common for a company to have multiple departments, with one of them is making losses. I infer from the literature that it is the role of the CEO to make the hard decision to close that department for the benefit of the entire company.
If there in anything we can infer from this analogy, it is that procreation is profitable. Look at the investor firms. The reality they're operating in is that 9 out of 10 startups they invest in will cease to exist, along with their money. But that 1 startup that eventually flies will cover the expenses of the 9 other startups for the investor. That's why it sucks to be a CEO. Essentially, you need to cover for the failures of 9 other startups to the investors. You can demonstrate an incredible growth, but the investors will still pressure you to grow even more to compensate for all their unsuccessful investments.[/hide]
Quoting Bartricks
I agree. But I wouldn't make an inference that we should stop procreating. I'm assuming that the main point of antinatalism is not that death is harmful, but that we shouldn't procreate. Death is harmful in the context of a living being. It's not as harmful in the context of procreation. It is more harmful to not procreate than to procreate and to cause death by it. Our reason tells us that life worth living despite death. Otherwise, we would end our lives immediately.
I have said nothing about how miserable or not our lives are - clearly, some are happy and some are miserable.
The claim 'we have reason to avoid death even if our lives are slightly miserable' is not equivalent to the claim that 'our lives are slightly miserable'.
Quoting pfirefry
No it won't. That's the example. Imagine that your life is moderately miserable and that there is no prospect of it being any better. Now, it is rational for you to kill yourself? Surely not.
How on earth does that make sense if the disvalue of death is a function of the value of the life it deprives you of? If your life is moderately miserable then you won't be deprived of anything of positive value if you die. Yet you have reason not to die. So the harmfulness of death is not a function of what it deprives you of, for it is harmful even when it deprives you of nothing worth having.
Quoting pfirefry
Er, you clearly don't understand the example at all.
Quoting pfirefry
So, my arguments - which you have not challenged - show that we're all going to hell. That is, no matter how good your life is right now, it is going to end up really, really bad. For you are going to die, and death clearly takes you to a much worse place than here. For that is why your reason implores you to stay here for as long as possible, unless you are in abject agony with no prospect of it ending. (So, the 'other place' that you are going to when you die is not quite as bad as being in abject agony, but is is still not very nice at all).
Now, how on earth would it be ethical to bring another person into that situation? It is awful that we are in it. It would be wicked to bring someone else into it too.
The oil spill example is also flawed. One could say that the burns harmed one's health and reduced their happiness, which is not good. The failure to see the movie is only a part of the loss. However, unlike this particular scenario, we do not have evidence to believe that nonexistence is painful. Our aversion to it is driven by a combination of a conflation of death and a painful dying process along with a desire to hold on to the things we cherish that we believe would be "lost" when we don't exist.
Irrelevant. It would be irrational, would it not, to kill oneself just because one is a bit bored and one's life shows no prospect of being anything other than mildly boring?
It is plausibly rational to kill yourself if you are on fire, say, or if it is the only way to avoid burning to death. It is not plausibly rational to kill yourself if your life is just overall boring.
That tells us something - it tells us that death is immensely harmful to us. Or at least, that's the most reasonable explanation. Death is so harmful that it is rational to try and avoid it as long as possible, even if one's life has ceased to be a happy one.
Quoting Tom Storm
Precisely - so death must be really, really bad. If it wasn't, then why on earth would we have reason to avoid it like the plague?
The harm of death cannot plausibly reside in what it deprives one of, for if it did then those with moderately miserable lives would have overall reason to kill themselves. Yet it is clear to most of us that even they have reason to avoid death.
So you're not drawing the moral: the moral is that to die is incredibly harmful to the one who dies, regardless of the state of their life.
Imagine Sarah was planning on going to the cinema to see a film she wanted to see, but she accidentally spills boiling hot oil on herself and spends the evening writhing in pain. Now, it is plausible that the harm of oil spill resided in the fact it deprived Sarah of an evening at the cinema? Not remotely. It did do that. But the harm of it resided mainly in the fact it caused Sarah absolute agony.
That's what death is like - it does deprive us of life here, but it is absurd to suppose that its harmfulness to us resides in that, as absurd as supposing that the oil spill harmed Sarah by depriving her of an evening of movie going.
Quoting Bartricks
Try and focus. Don't think I've said things that I haven't said - no premise mentions fear, does it? Again: FOCUS. Which premise do you dispute?
I don't think that our lives are bad overall, so I don't believe that procreation is always immoral. I don't deny that they could be.
Argument 2 is irrelevant because I don't think that death "alters" our condition and puts us in some terrible state of affairs.
I've already addressed argument 1 ad nauseam. We "believe" that we have a reason to avoid it. But this reason in itself is fuelled by multiple factors including a desire to avoid loss and pain. Just because one has certain negatives in their life it does not follow that they would want their being itself to end. They could have hopes (which they might not always be aware of) of improvement. And the societal influence of death being this terrible thing remains. Focus is definitely required if one seeks to look beyond a flawed framework.
Which premise mentioned that? You seem to think that saying 'we have reason to avoid dying' means the same as 'we are averse to dying' or 'we fear dying'. It doesn't. Don't you understand English?
Quoting DA671
So what? Your thoughts don't determine what's what, not last I checked. I provided an argument that appears to show that our lives are overall terrible and that procreation is therefore incredibly immoral. You've said nothing to challenge it; all you've done is say things unrelated to it.
Now, which premise are you challenging. None of them are 'irrelevant'. The arguments are valid syllogisms, so if you think the conclusion is false then you need to identify a false premise.
Your posts have been rather convoluted. Elucidating distinctions is not a reflection of a misunderstanding of language, though the failure to understand that might be an interesting thing to consider. Your replies made it seem that you believe that we have a reason to avoid death because we wish to not die even if things are bad. This seemed to imply that we are averse to death. Apologies if I misunderstood you. If "reason" was referring to something being actually good/bad for us, I already said that I don't think that a valueless state (nonexistence) could have value/disvalue. But this does not mean that people could not find death to be problematic, since it obviously would be a troublesome idea for one who wants to continue living, or does not like the prospect of pain, or even has a sort of internal fear of nonbeing that they haven't fully investigated. Incomplete goals (that we tend to cherish as almost ethereal forces) and impact on loved ones could also be significant reasons. The point is that I don't think the widespread aversion to death gives us a reason to believe that death (the state of being dead) is bad (and neither would a proclivity towards nonexistence necessarily make it "good", but that's a separate matter). Our thoughts certainly don't determine what's what, including pessimistic ones that irrationally attempt to downplay the value of life ;)
I believe that I have challenged them and my points are quite pertinent, but of course, I could be wrong. Alternatively, there could be a fundamental lack of understanding here.
If possible, I would appreciate it if you could make it clear what you mean by "reason". Does "reason" mean that we have some arguments for believing that death is bad irrespective of what anybody thinks? So, it would be bad even if everybody wanted to die? Or does it mean that we appear to have certain concerns about death? Again, the latter has multiple explanations including fear and loss. It doesn't have much to do with the actual "badness" of death.
That's one standpoint. It's not so hard to challenge. We're all going to heaven. We're all going to the place of peace and calm. We reunite with the nature. No matter how good your life is right now, it is going to end up spectacularly. The only thing is that there is no coming back once you're dead. Your existence (or non-existence) will be peaceful but you will no longer have anything to do with the Earth. You can exit at any time, but you won't be coming back. It's up to you how long you stay. You won't miss out on anything while you're staying here.
My point is that the above wouldn't really change anything. Regardless of how people feel about their inevitable death, they are just currently immersed in their lives. They are not quitters. Not looking for an easy way out. That's what humans do.
You can argue that if people anticipated heaven after death, they would give up more easily and welcomed death. Maybe that's true. But the same would apply if the opposite was true. If death would inevitably lead to hell, then people would just give up their lives and meet their inevitable death. The humanity would be done with. However, the reality is that no one knows if death is good or bad. They are just living their lives. If someone thinks that it's not so terrible to face the immanence of death, they will be inclined to procreate. That's what the majority does.
I think this is as far as I can contribute to the discussion. I'm not expecting to comment more on this topic.
Oh, ok. If you say so. It's just it is not what any of the evidence implies. But if you dislike a conclusion, then it's false. That's definitely how reality works.
Quoting pfirefry
Relevance?
Quoting pfirefry
And again: relevance?
Which premise are you denying?
Quoting DA671
No, you just don't seem to understand the difference between saying that we have 'reason' to do something and saying that we fear something. Anyway, which premise are you denying?
Quoting DA671
No, that's not what it means either. And saying something doesn't make it true - argue for your claims.
You need to say which premise you think is false and then construct an argument that has the negation of that premise as a conclusion.
Quoting DA671
You have reason to believe that 3 x 18 = 54. You have reason to do what serves your ends provided that doing so is not immoral. And so on. They're called 'normative reasons'. They're reasons to do things.
Now, if I said we have reason to believe 3 x 18 = 54 would it be sensible to reply "but lots of people are not afraid of 3 x 18 = 54"? Or "some people like it that 3 x 18 = 54, but some people do not"? No.
We have reason to avoid death, extreme circumstances aside. That is uncontroversial.
We have reason to avoid death because it harms us. That is an analysis of why we have reason to avoid death. And it is highly plausible.
Anyway, it's all the in the OP.
Natalists are saying that the world is a safe place for children. Is it?
It is you who fails to understand that very difference, I am afraid. The premise that we have a reason to avoid death under every circumstance is dubious, and I do not think that we have any reason to believe that it "alters" our condition. Unfortunately, you are far too keen to merely indulge in repetition rather than substantiation.
I have already replied to your unjustified claims, my friend. Progress without openness is not possible. As far as the value/disvalue of death is concerned, a valueless state of affairs that does not affect our well-being in any manner seems unlikely to possess any meaningful characteristic. As for your claims:
"1. If we have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances, including circumstances in which our lives are already sub-optimal in terms of their happiness to misery balance (up to a certain limit), the best explanation of this is that death harms us and harms us by permanently altering our condition for the worse.
2. We have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances etc.
3. Therefore, death harms us by permanently altering our condition for the worse."
1. We do not avoid our death under nearly all circumstances. There are clearly many people (including those with good lives) who do not find any value in their life and consequently wish to not exist. The fact that our life contains misery does not entail that people would want to lose the positive aspects of their life or partake in a potentially painful experience. It would also be pertinent to point out that people who are mostly suicidal and depressed could also experience moments where they want to live. Our motivations are quite nuanced, which is why discerning the "reason" for something can be a difficult task that requires looking at the world in a comprehensive manner.
2. We do have a reason (in terms of something being true) to avoid death insofar as it could result in unnecessary pain or lead to a cessation of our positive experiences. But this is not the case with all individuals. Furthermore, not all the reasons could be well thought out, such as an aversion to death that is a result of societal notions about nonbeing.
3. The reason does not entail that death alters our condition. Since no evidence/justification for this claim exists, it remains problematic.
Facts and preferences are not the same. Mathematical truths are verifiable and it would be strange if anybody feared them. We can also safely assume that most people understand their basics. However, this is not the same as death, since it is something that many people fear due to a multitude of reasons that may or may not be justifiable. As I have pointed out before, the possibility of pain is certainly a factor, and so is the idea that is often ingrained into us that nonbeing is something terrible (I do not think it is great or terrible). This means that many people choose to retain their mediocre existence which could still have some good over this supposedly horrible state of affairs. Furthermore, it is manifestly clear that anybody who desires to live would want to ensure that they do not have to face the prospect of its cessation. The point is that all of these elements combine together to give us reasons to avoid death and continue living, but they do not give us a reason to believe that death itself is negative.
Your OP is ... limited in more ways than you realise.
Can you read? Where did I say that? Quote me.
No you haven't. And my conclusion is justified - see the valid and apparently sound argument I gave for it. That's how one justifies a view.
Quoting DA671
Learn. To. Read.
Learn. To. Read.
I said 'virtually all circumstances' not 'all circumstances'. The difference is somewhat important.
Anti-natalists are saying that bringing people into the world is ok only if there is no risk. That's a silly standard. The whole basis of the anti-natalist argument presented in this thread is that death is; in an of itself; terrible, horrible, no good, very bad enough to make the rest of life not worth living. As we've shown, most people don't feel that way. You guys are wrong. And you're whiny cowards.
No they're not. Some do, some don't. This thread is about one particular argument for antinatalism - the one in the OP. It is not about 'antinatalism'- it is about the harmfulness of death an antinatalism. Focus.
I think you should heed your own advice (and perhaps include understanding in it too). I did not include "virtually", which I will. But, for all practical purposes, your comment did seem to imply that we have a reason to avoid death even if we are in pain, but many people themselves do not believe that. The cardinal point was that the reason is not that ubiquitous. It was not exactly an attempt to dispute the general fact that most do wish to avoid cessation.; rather, it was about the prevalence of such circumstances. Still, I think I could have phrased my reply better. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Anyway, the larger point remains: We simply do not have any reason to believe that death alters our state or is intrinsically bad for us. The justification that has been provided for it is premised upon a narrow and limited understanding of our motivations. You always say that we have to differentiate between something being preferred by us and something being true, but then your entire argument for the "badness" of death appears to rely upon most people's uncritical idea of death, their conflation of dying and death, and their predilection towards existing. I am not denying that most of us might have a reason to avoid dying. We cannot completely control our interests and there is no obligation to seek death/avoid it beyond the fulfillment/deprivation it could cause for an existing being. What I am rejecting is the notion that the reason has something to do with death "altering" us (since there is no evidence for that) instead of a few misconceptions and a potent desire to avoid pain and preserve joy (if the former is bad, the latter is obviously good, in my opinion. Focus is vital.
Which is exactly what I said. Focus.
Whiny cowards? :smile: We (antinatalists) are only working with facts as they stand: the world is a dangerous place (for children). There's a difference between being brave and reckless: discretion is the better side of valor if you must know. That's all from me (for now).
In all seriousness, I would like to thank you for this thought-provoking discussion and for sharing your insightful comments. Disagreements are but natural, and yet, inquisitive people like you can serve as a source of inspiration for many. I express my sincere apologies for any inappropriate/irrelevant remarks made by me. Thank you—for being there.
So here you are saying that we do not have reason to avoid death, because there are explanations of our fear of death (something I did not mention). Er, what? I claim 'x'. You reply 'but we can explain y'.
Then, having - in your view - provided some kind of argument against my claim that we have reason to avoid death under most circumstances (which you didn't do at all), you then say: Quoting DA671
So do we or don't we? You seem profoundly confused. Then there's just more blather that doesn't engage with anything I have argued. You really don't seem to understand the argument I have made at all.
Was there any doubt?
The question of questions is this: Will the earth become hell or heaven? It all depends on which of these two is a high entropy state? No prizes will be awarded for answering this question. It's too easy!
No, I merely said that we seem to avoid X due to reasons that do not have much to do with X being something terrible in and of itself. It includes things that are pertinent to our current existence, including misconceptions, aversion to pain, and the presence of good in one's life. At this point, it's evident that you don't see the difference at all. Your entire argument for this purported badness of X comes from the way most people react in the face of X (such as the fact that even people with poor lives might want to avoid death). I only pointed out that this reaction has alternative and more plausible explanations (including fear of loss and pain) that don't entail X leading us to a horrible state of affairs, which we do not have any evidence for other than the opinions of some people who evidently feel strongly about this. It's strange that you fail to grasp this basic point. Nevertheless, I believe that this is the ineluctable conclusion that cannot be refuted by an apparent refusal to acknowledge it. The fact that our reason "tells us to virtually anything to avoid it" cannot be seen in isolation of:
1. Our biological instinct to survive and propagate.
2. Our aversion to harm that many of us associate with death. Some of it is due to the chance of pain, and some has to do with the ideas regarding cessation that are ingrained in us by society.
3. The value we place on our life which would be disrupted by a process of ending.
Instead of erroneously thinking that this is somehow ignoring the argument by talking about the psychology of people, the point is that this goes to show that our reason may not be entirely reliable and to the extent it is, it's not due to some unproven badness of the void.
Once again, you're the one who's confused because there's a difference between talking about the state of being dead and dying, which could be painful. Furthermore, the rational reason one has to avoid it (as opposed to mere opinions about it being a sort of hell) is not because it leads to a special form of hell, but because it could harm one's interests and lead to potential harm. Thus, having provided yet another reply that ignores the actual issue, you mistakenly continue to believe that you have justified your view. I am afraid that it's you who remain fundamentally confused in your thinking. The reality is different, I believe. One can only explain things to someone, but they cannot understand them for them. Anyway, I hope that you have a wonderful day!
The Earth is a slightly different matter, but I hope that we can continue to work together towards progress for all!
I don't see how the 2[sup]nd[/sup] law of thermodynamics can be violated. God, ergo, heaven (bliss) has always been associated with order (low entropy). Hell is chaos, chaos is inevitable (it is the law); hell is ineluctable. Hence antinatalism. Why jump into the fire, when you can avoid it?
Heaven might also be more inevitable than we realise, but perhaps the cycle is eternal. Anyway, I hope that the best version of the good can be manifested in the realm we currently reside :p
Your thoughts don't count I'm afraid. You're up against a law - the law of (increasing) entropy. Show me how we might be able to crack the problem of entropy?
Quoting DA671
You mean birth-life-death-decay? I'm with you on that, but note it looks like we're in the death & decay phase (the beginning of the end so to speak). Just the right conditions for the antinatalism meme to find willing hosts and replicate.
Maybe or maybe not. However, I don't think that this would necessarily make the view a universal truth, because I don't think that the prevention of all happiness can be deemed ethical. But it would obviously be important to minimise harms as much as possible, and if things don't improve, then surely procreation as a whole would not be a good idea until they do.
The law means hell is in the offing. Why would you say joy isn't affected? Do you mean we could be "happy in hell"? :chin: Meaning in life? Does meaning offset suffering? If suffering has meaning, does it become joy or bearable? Possible, but only the naïve would make such a trade - they've not seen real suffering. Nothing is worth going through hell for, right?
Quoting DA671
Now you're talking. Yep, the antinatalist does, if one gives it some thought, throw the baby out with the bathwater. What I would recommend is something to numb the pain, a stopgap measure as it were, while we get busy finding a cure for pain/suffering.
I clearly wrote "I don't think". Of course they do, and I disagree with that due to a lack of sufficient justification for that prevention. But I do agree that we need to address suffering urgently, which could definitely involve not creating more lives that would probably be negative.
You spelled focusing wrong.
Your argument is based on value judgements, not facts. Whiney, cowardly value judgements.
You spelled "you," "have," "found," "your," and "level" correctly
Your OP says even those with a bad life are compelled to avoid death, and we would even saw off our arm to do so - I replied pointing out that this is because we are hardwired to do so, and that our hardwiring cannot be trusted in light of the fact it brought tortured souls here in the first place - you then responded to others and me that it is "intuitive" and "self-evident" that we have reason to avoid death - I reiterated that it feels intuitive and self evident because of our hardwiring.
I still have issue with your premises as set out on page 5:
Quoting Bartricks
Let's cut out the middle bit, to make it easier for me to accept: "If we have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances, the best explanation is that death harms us and harms us by permanently altering our condition for the worse".
As you have indicated that death would be best for those in agony, the "we" would only be the majority of people. Therefore death would only harm and permanently alter the condition of the majority of people for the worse.
Quoting Bartricks
The majority of people would have reason to avoid death under virtually all circumstances.
Quoting Bartricks
Death would harm the majority of people by permanently altering their condition for the worse.
I think you are going to struggle to get your argument to work for me, as I would only see death as instrumentally bad, and you clearly believe it to be intrinsically bad.
No it doesn't. Sheesh. It says that we have 'reason to' avoid death. Reason to. Reason to. Reason to. Reason to. Not 'will'. Reason to. Not 'will'. Not 'desire to'. Not 'fear'. Reason to.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Yeah, irrelevant. False. And irrelevant.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Again, false and irrelevant. It's called the genetic fallacy- the fallacy of thinking that if a belief or impression has a cause, then that automatically discredits the belief or impression. It works for any goddamn belief or impression of anything at all - so it's a really dumb argument. You keep making it. Draw the inference.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
You mean you want to rewrite my premise so that it is something different and then attack that one, yes? Why not rewrite it so it is a recipe for pesto and then tell me that I left out parmesan? No, don't cut out the middle bit - don't do a damn thing to it. Attempt to show it - it, not some other premise of your own invention - is false.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Er, what? No, I have argued that death harms everyone.
I'll try and take you through it (utterly pointlessly) by means of some examples.
Sarah and Jane both want to go to the cinema to see a film. Now, if Sarah sees the film, she'll really enjoy it. But if Jane sees the film, unbeknownst to her, she'll be kidnapped and tortured for years in a crazy person's basement. Okay? That's what happens if they go to the cineman: Sarah have good time; Jane have very bad time.
Now, they're both getting ready to go to the cinema, but unfortunately the ceiling of their house falls on top of them and painfully pins them to the ground and breaks many of their bones. So, rather than going to the cinema, they both spend the evening in agony under plaster and wood.
Have both Sarah and Jane been seriously harmed by the ceiling falling on top of them? Yes. They're both in agony with broken bones. They're both screaming in pain. It is not 'good' to have a ceiling fall on top of you and break your bones. It is not good for Sarah and it is not good for Jane.
However, Sarah has been deprived of a nice evening at the cinema, whereas Jane has been deprived of years or torture. So, Jane is 'better off' than she would otherwise have been, whereas Sarah is worse off.
Your logic tells you that it was good for Jane to have the ceiling fall on her. No it wasn't. It was bad. It was just 'better than' the alternative. 'Better than' does not mean 'good'. This distinction is, of course, too subtle for the internet.
If you're in agony with no prospect of it ending, then death may well be the better option. 'Better'. That doesn't mean it is good. It is not good to have a ceiling fall on you and cause you agony. It may be 'better than' many things, but it is not 'good'.
If you go to a restaurant that serves food all of which is foul, but you happen to order the least foul thing on the menu, that does not mean you had a good meal. You had a bad meal, but it was better than the alternatives.
So, if option a is better than option b, that doesn't mean option a is good for you. Death is better than some things - better than a life of unending agony. But that does not mean it is good. Indeed, it seems highly unlikely it is good, for we are told that it is the 'worse' option under almost all circumstances - the only kinds of circumstances under which it is the 'better' option are ones in which you're in absolute agony with no prospect of the agony ending so long as you remain here.
Death is an immense harm to everyone. Everyone. That's why we use it to punish people. Punishment isn't punishment unless it harms. The death penalty is a 'penalty'. It is a a harm. Death is a harm. A big one. For everyone.
How big? Well, you gage that by looking at how much harm you need to be suffering or prospectively suffering before it becomes rational to seek death. And the answer is: a lot of harm. And even then, if the harm you are undergoing will end soon, death seems irrational as a means to avoid it. So, if I can save my life by sawing my arm off, I seem to have reason to do that even though that'll cause me about as intense an amount of suffering as one can conceive of. So long as I stand a decent chance of surviving and not living in agony for the rest of my life, it makes sense to saw my arm off.
Going back to my restaurant example, imagine that there's a dish on the menu called 'shit soup'. Now, the waiter tells you that virtually everything on the menu is better than shit soup, even after you tell the waiter that several of the other items are ones that, if you eat them, will make you ill due to your allergies. The waiter says 'ah, yes, but shit soup is still worse than that - better to have stomach cramps for a week than eat the shit soup'. But then there's razor soup. The waiter says "ah, shit soup is better than razor soup". Now, do you conclude that shit soup is a nice soup? The waiter has told you that virtually anything else on the menu is better, including items that the waiter knows will make you ill. The only item the waiter says is worse than shit soup is razor soup - a soup filled with thousands of broken razors. What do you conclude about shit soup? That it is good?
So death is a whopping great harm, and furthermore it seems it alters our condition permanently, otherwise why is the rationality of suicide affected mainly by how likely it is that the harm you are using death to escape will come to characterize the rest of your life here, or will pass?
THus, the reasonable conclusion is that death is a portal to hell.
To return to the restaurant once more, imagine that anyone who enters this restaurant 'has' to end their meal with shit soup. No matter what you order, you have eventually to eat a bowl of shit soup. Everyone. You don't know what other dishes you'll be served - you may get served the finest truffles and venison and ice cream or you may start with razor soup and then more razor soup - but no matter what other courses you get served, you will be served shit soup at the end. And it is not a little bowl either, but a giant vat. And you have to eat it all. If you're half way decent, are you going to recommend visiting that restaurant? Are you going to take a friend to it?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Bartricks
And does that reason not compel us to avoid death? Your wording in the OP is "bids us".
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Bartricks
Do you believe in evolution? It's basic science that our genes have been naturally selected to avoid things that kill us.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Bartricks
No, we've been over this; focus! It only undermines beliefs that have no reasoning apart from feeling self-evidently true.
Quoting Bartricks
This self-evident truth is starting to look more like religious faith.
No. This: "you have reason to avoid death" does not - obviously does not - mean the same as "you are compelled to avoid death". It also doesn't mean "there's some chicken in the fridge" or "our car is on fire".
And if I bid you do something, does that mean you're compelled to do it?
Look, you're just reading sloppily - you're just totally misunderstanding perfectly regular English sentences. I have not said and would not say that we are 'compelled' to avoid death.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Yes. Focus. Re-read the OP carefully. Read my words and stop - stop - exchanging them for words of your own that don't at all mean the same thing.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Er, no. You're committing the genetic fallacy. I'm not going to explain why again, for explaining things to someone who doesn't understand what words mean is a waste of finger energy.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
I don't have any religious faith. Nothing you think is correct.
Anyway, hope you have a nice day.
No, it appeals to people's intuitions - their rational intuitions - which is what any argument for anything does. So, you know, if that's a problem, then we better stop all intellectual investigation and just make shit up instead. (Not 'and attitudes' - that's just you and others who don't seem able to read or understand English).
Stop being so amateurish in your approach. It's what those who can't reason do in response to any argument for anything they dislike: they reject the entire project of arguing for things.
Now, I have indeed appealed to rational intuitions. If you think the rational intuitions in question are false, provide an argument. Lay it out.
If you think the intuition that we have reason to avoid death (and remember - remember - it is by reason that we find out about what we have reason to do and believe....so don't go dissing reason as a method of finding out about the world...that's what dummies do) is false, then argue that it is false. Lay it out.
And if you end up questioning how we can know anything at all, you lose.
People whose idea of argumentation revolves around dismissing anything that does not fit their narrow framework don't seem to get very far. Whether or not they want that depends on them, of course.
I have already mentioned that the intuitions aren't merely about avoiding death in isolation. Investigating them in detail, one can see that pain and loss alongside a lack of thought regarding the nature of nonbeing (aside from societal influence) also play a role in the existence of these intuitions, which is why the idea that they hint towards the alleged "badness" of death is illogical. But as always, one can dismiss evidence that they are uncomfortable with.
I did not question reason or our ability to know things. I merely pointed out that not all of our reasons are adequately developed and neither do they necessarily have everything to do with a single factor instead of a bunch of factors. I also did not claim that the intuition to avoid death is "false", since it obviously involves pain and loss, both of which can be avoided rationally in light of our nature. My point was that the intuition does not have to include considering death itself being a horrible state of affairs, and a few justifications for this intuition might not be accurate.
Loss and gain are inevitable, but the former will be found in copious amounts with those who do not revise their views in light of reality (and there is no evidence for nonexistence being a terrible state of affairs other than a misunderstanding of intuitions). I remain grateful to you for sharing your valuable thoughts. As always, have a good day and best of luck for your future endeavours.
Again, we're getting into general issues. Most people have the intuition - which is a term of art that I, like most philosophers, am using to refer to a representation of our reason - that we have reason to avoid death under most circumstances.
The default is that an appearance is accurate, not inaccurate. That's called the principle of phenomenal conservatism and without it you're not going to be able to argue for anything at all - you're just going to be a lazy sceptic.
So, our reason (which is a faculty) tells us that we have reason to avoid death. That's evidence that we do have reason to avoid death.
If you think it isn't because there is the brute possibility that what our reason tells us, and what is actually the case, can be distinct, then you're just saying 'how can we know anything?'. And you lose.
So, if you think that these particular intuitions and not all representations of our reason are false, then provide an argument for that claim. That is, show me that there are other representations that our reason makes that contradict this representation and that we have as much or more reason to trust than the one I am appealing to.
I've already mentioned ad nauseam that it's important to look into the nature of this intuition (alongside the nature of reality, and it does not give us evidence of a hell post existence). Once we do, it would become quite obvious that this intuition stems from a desire to avoid harm and preserve whatever good one's life does have. It's also formed due to societal influence, so the truth value of the intuition that nonexistence itself is bad is also doubtful, considering that it may be a larger result of nurture. Also, questioning how we know what we do is a fairly common thing in epistemology and philosophy as a whole. This does not mean that one has to doubt everything. They could rationally see that there is a particular instinct that they haven't really thought about. Then, they could look into the precise nature of that intuition (does it involve X, or something closely related to X?) and whether available evidence lines up with that intuition (such as whether or not there is a reason to think that there are people in painful altered states in inexistence). Finally, they can see that while that general intuition could have merit, it could also have flawed elements that can be discarded in favour of a more comprehensive understanding. I haven't even mentioned the fact (or maybe I have) that most people who do think about these issues do not seem have the intuition that death (the state itself) is something that alters us in a painful way as opposed to something that eradicates our being (which is what most people seem eager to avoid).
I've already provided the reasons innumerable times. I cannot read and understand them for someone else. This has become excessively circular. As ever, thanks for the discussion. Have a fantastic day!
Do pay attention: that's a 'conclusion'. Our reason does not tell us it directly. We have to 'infer' it.
Once more, my restaurant example. The waiter in this example is playing the part of your faculty of reason. You're in a restaurant. You have to order something from the menu. There are lots of things on the menu - some things you like, some things you know will make you a bit ill, and some that are mysterious and you've never heard of before. One of those is 'shit soup' and the other is 'razorblade soup'. You ask about these. The waiter - who is bit cryptic - insists that you really shouldn't order shit soup. He doesn't tell you what's in it, but he insists that virtually anything else on the menu would be better. You say "but what about mushrooms - I am allergic to mushrooms and if I eat them I'll be sick for a week.....would mushrooms be better than shit soup?" The waiter says "yes, certainly - you're even better off ordering the mushrooms than the shit soup". Now, what is the waiter implying? That shit soup is great? That shit soup is so-so? Or that shit soup is really, really horrible?
Really horrible, yes?
The only - the only - dish the waiter says shit soup would be preferable to, is razorblade soup, which the waiter does explain is a soup full of broken razorblades.
Now, if shit soup is something the waiter is recommending you avoid at all costs bar razorblade soup - a soup that is full of broken razorblaes - and is recomending you avoid even at the cost of eating mushroom soup instead - a soup that will make you sick for a week - then shit soup is really foul and really bad for you, yes? Even someone with an iq of 70 could see that.
That's what your reason is telling you about death.
Your reason could be corrupt.
But it's what virtually everyone else's reason tells them about it too.
Their reason could be corrupt to.
But if you think your reason and everyone else's is corrupt on this issue, but not on others, then you need to justify that belief.
Your analogy is problematic. In this case, one clearly has many reasons for avoiding the soup. Firstly, they know that bad food can make them sick which is clearly not good for them. No such evidence for the intrinsic badness of death exists. Secondly, the waiter, someone we presume to know exactly what the food is (as opposed to someone merely having some strong intuitions about the food that they never bothered to investigate), so it would be reasonable to trust them. The larger intuition that the bad soup should be avoided could be true. But it's exact nature could differ based upon our reasons, not all of which are rational.
1. I want to avoid the soup because I suddenly feel that it would transport me to hell. This makes little sense and is uncritical.
2. After having considered the clear possibility of illness and the fact that a waiter working in the restaurant surely knows the food there, I would want to avoid this soup because I do not want to incur significant harm. I could retain some of my health even if I had a bad but slightly less bad soup, and since I value my health, it would be rational for me to pick that option.
I am pretty sure that rational intuitions would drive us towards the latter choice.
A more appropriate analogy would be to consider a somewhat knowledgeable friend going with you to a restuarant that neither of you have ever visited before. You see an item labelled X on the menu and your friend immediately tells you to not eat the item because it would give you cancer. You ask your friend for reasons behind his claim and he replies that this is what he feels to be the case. Now, you could simply accept his claim at face value and perhaps abandon this restaurant that could potentially have excellent food. Or, you could start looking for evidence. Is there are evidence for some deadly food being served in your locality that immediately gives you cancer after being consumed once? Should I trust the word of my friend who, despite knowing a lot, still has little to no understanding of the food being served at the restaurant there? Ultimately, you could still decide to not eat the food, but this wouldn't be because you think that the food would give you cancer. It could merely be that you don't want to waste money on an unknown dish labelled X that you've never hears of and might not like the taste of. At worse, it could also make you sick.
What changed here was not the larger intuition of "avoiding the food", but the intuitions that were associated with it (that it would cause cancer) and consequently the reasons for going with that intuition (not wanting to waste money or become slightly I'll). Rational inquiry gave us reasons to not have a particular view about something whilst still considering it to be bad but to a different degree and for different reasons that did not have much to do with the intrinsic badness of the food (such as the purchase of the dish being a waste of money).
In my opinion, it's necessary to realise that:
1. Not all strong intuitions are correct. Good examples of this include our ancestors' fear of natural phenomena as being acts of divine punishment.
2. We could retain that overall instinct but for vastly different reasons (avoid thunder in case it hits you and causes you immense pain instead of running away from it due to a belief that it would condemn us to hell or something). Additionally, we could discard the parts of it that we know to be indefensible based upon the evidence we possess.
The difference remains vital and potent, irrespective of whether or not people see it. Also, it's peculiar to talk so favourably about certain intuitions (such as death being bad) whilst going against others (like reproduction and life being good). Arguments for antinatalism frequently involve such arbitrary double standards.
Not everybody shares the intuition that death alters us and brings us to a terrible state of affairs. If you want to accuse countless people's intuitions and rational faculties of being corrupt, then you're the one who needs to justify that claim. Prevarication and obfuscation won't help as far as that is concerned.
Anyhow, I appreciate your thought-provoking ideas. Thanks for giving me your precious time. May you have a wonderful day!
The squeaky wheel gets the grease! The situation is relatively better now than in the past precisely because people like antinatalists have been kvetching about the problems with life (tiring - machines, too hot - AC, too cold - heating, too painful - analgesia/anesthesia, so on and so forth), making it possible for people like you to denounce, in degrading terms, people like us who complain! We're the ones who stimulate positive change in the world! Prove us (antinatalists) wrong - improve life; we'll keep whining until we're satisfied that life is worth living. :smile:
At the end of the day, you ended up departing from the restaurant. Does any of these follow?
:rofl:
Antinatalists or those whose main complaint about the experience of life as a human being is suffering or
intensity of suffering. Are you able to conceive of a human existence that you would be content with?
A life experience within which you would no longer be antinatalist.
If there were no more suffering. A paradise on Earth, would you then no longer be antinatalist?
Can you describe your ideal living conditions for the antinatalist?
Minimizing suffering to tolerable levels is another, more doable, option (negative utilitarianism).
Alleviate/Eliminate Suffering should be the mantra for natalism. Until then, don't birth children: they won't like life and they'll blame you for it! Double whammy: you're responsible for someone else's suffering and your good intentions - taking a chance for the sake of a better life for your kids - backfired.
So, you are not advocating that the end of all life in the Universe is a moral imperative due to the existence of suffering. You merely suggest that the Earth is over-populated and due to the fact that resources are not equitably distributed we need to stop producing children that we cant nurture adequately.
Quoting Agent Smith
So you would agree that some suffering is needed as a comparator, a learning tool.
we will always some bad around so that we can still recognise what good is,
Do you agree?
Sorry, missed out a word.
So you would agree that some suffering is needed as a comparator, a learning tool.
we will always NEED some bad around so that we can still recognise what good is,
Do you agree?
I'm not Thanos! :grin:
Suffering is a real problem! Luckily or not, the issue is complex enough to induce analysis paralysis. I just met someone from work who complained "I don't know where to start!" I suspect we're all in the same boat.
Coming to overpopulation, I simply echoed the views of others. They seem to make sense as far as I can tell.
I remember a Neil deGrasse Tyson video on how a tabletop (2D) quickly runs out of space, but that once you start stacking items into 3D, we can fit more stuff (area becomes volume). Birth and death at different times (4[sup]th[/sup] dimension) is the same principle in action. We pack more people in the same 3D space by using the 4[sup]th[/sup] dimension. In other words, the overpopulation crisis can be solved by timing births (deaths can't be controlled for to do so might require us to legalize murder of the elderly aka senicide).
:chin:
Based on a time frame of approximately 14 billion years, the Universal state you advocate existed for the vast majority of that time frame. Then at some relatively recent point, life stated to form in the Universe.
There must have been a moment after that when the concept of 'suffering' started.
Was this moment, for you, the beginning of evil?
Can your 'reason' suggest any other need for the invention of suffering?
Does your reason offer you anything on 'what the purpose of the Universe was' before life formed?
Ok! good to know.
Quoting Agent Smith
I know!
Quoting Agent Smith
I would need more context before I could respond to this
Quoting Agent Smith
I concur
Quoting Agent Smith
I don't think our overpopulation problem needs a 4th dimensional 'pack em, stack em, rack em, and remove the old ones' approach. I think we need better 3D global politics and equitable distribution of resources.
You seem to be attracted to 'flowery rhetoric' which has, in my opinion. little practical value.
I am not convinced you are an antinatalist. It seems to me that like the rest of us, you are just concerned about global human affairs and our current way of doing things. You don't actually advocate for the end of all life in the Universe due to the existence of suffering. Am I correct?
And you are the forums resident squeaky wheel.
Quoting Agent Smith
Talk about delusions of grandeur.
Quoting Agent Smith
You; in your self-righteous, self-serving, self-satisfied smugness; say that having children is evil. You deserve to be denounced in degrading terms.
I'm not alone in exposing the flaws in our universe - just talk to any atheist worth his salt on the topic of intelligent design.
Quoting T Clark
:smile: A fact is a fact! If people had never complained about the awful heat/cold, no one would've ever thought of inventing the AC/heater!
Too, I don't see why anyone would get an ego boost from constantly seeing the dark side of reality. If anything, it makes us morose/despondent/melancholic.
Quoting T Clark
Hey, don't fly off the handle! I thought you said it was great to be alive!
I think if we looked past your current tendency towards a negative vibe about life, we would find a good person just trying to make sense of it all, much like the rest of us.
Yes I have read the OP.
I think you are suggesting that the evidence of human beings clinging so dearly to life, even when continuing it means continuous suffering and misery, indicates that death must hold even more suffering. You conclude that any existence after death must then be what you conceive as hell like.
I don't know if the hell you conceive is similar to that described by traditional theists or you are just using the term to indicate a higher level of suffering and personal misery than what an individual may suffer during their lifetime? Am I correct or way of the mark?
I am asking you to use your power of reason to give me your view of what you perceive was going on during the time before the Universe contained any life at all. A time that antinatalism considers superior when compared to the period since suffering began. Do you think the hell you posit, existed then or did it have a moment of creation?
Quoting Agent Smith
Again, delusions of grandeur. Complaining never solved any problem. It takes work to do that.
I said it is clear to our reason - which is a faculty - that we have reason to avoid death.
It is clear to anyone who stands where I am stood that there is a tree 10 yards in front of this location. Have I just said 'everyone wants there to be a tree 10 yards in front if this location'? No,obviously not. I said that, visually, people get the impression of a tree, and that's evidence there is actually a tree there. That's quite different to the unbelievably idiotic view that we desire there to be a tree there and this somehow makes the case that there is.
Now, again, slowly. Our reason - which is a faculty - gives us the impression (rational, not visual) that we have reason not to die under most circs. 'Reason not to' - that doesn't mean 'desire not to'. It means 'reason not to'. That impression is evidence that we really do have reason not to die in mist circs, unjust as the visual impression of a tree is evidence for a tree.
And then I argued that the best explanation of why we have that reason not to die is that death is a portal to hell.
Anyway, I do not know why you are asking me about the origins of the sensible world. By hypothesis, death ends our stay here in the sensible world. So why are you asking me about its origins? Which premise in my case is it relevant to?
In this analogy, a shit soup is a justifiable condition to leave the restaurant early, but the fact of leaving isn't necessarily equal to the experience of being served a shit soup. Similarly, unbearable suffering is a justifiable reason to die, but the death itself isn't necessarily equal to unbearable suffering.
I then read some of the exchanges you have had so far with others. This is a long thread so I understand that you might be becoming quite exasperated.
I appreciate your impatience, struggling to understand that which you find so obvious can be frustrating but ok, so your proposal has nothing to do with human desires.
So, reason as a faculty or 'an inherent mental power' informs us that we have reason to avoid death.
So, the actual tree is standing there regardless of my will or anyone else's will for there to be a tree in the position you reference. Ok, so far so good.
So to me, you wish to remove any emotional content within rational thinking or you are defining the term rational thinking as being devoid of human desire.
You draw on the seeing is evidence for believing, in the case of where this tree is.
I only repeat these things back to you to attempt to confirm that I understand your proposal and If I fall short then I hope you will correct me.
Quoting Bartricks
Ok, let's say you are correct. Is that the end of the debate for you?
Is it unreasonable or irrational for me to ask for more of your conceptions about that which you call hell?
If you think it is then I will stop right there.
No, the point rather is that neither impressions of reasons to do things, or reasons to do things themselves, are desires of ours. And thus to get the impression that there is a reason to do something is not equivalent to getting the impression that one desires to do it (anymore than getting the impression of a tree is equivalent to getting the impression that one desires there to be a tree). And reasons themselves are not desires of ours.
Note as well that an impression of a tree is 'evidence' that there is actually a tree there by dint of the fact it generates a 'reason to believe' that there is a tree there corresponding to the impression.
So, all appeals to evidence are really appeals to reasons to believe things. And among the reasons to believe things that there are - and that our faculty of reason tells us about - are reasons to avoid death at almost all costs.
Our reason is our guide to reality. It is precisely because our reason tells us to believe that there is an external world resembling our sensible impressions that we have 'evidence' for an external world.
And our reason tells us - tells virtually all of us - that we have reason to avoid death under all but the most extreme circumstances.
Why might that be? What would it be 'reasonable' to believe about death, given what our reason is telling us about it? That it is pleasant? That it benefits us to die? That it is a portal to a better place? Those would be utterly unreasonable - as unreasonable as thinking that as the waiter has been imploring you not to order shit soup and recommends ordering almost anything else other than shit soup bar broken razorblade soup, that shit soup is delicious and something to look forward to and to seek out and not to avoid at all.
Quoting universeness
It would be the end of the debate for all reasonable people - for if I am right about what our reason is saying our predicament is, then it is obvious that it is wrong voluntarily to make it anyone else's predicament. For if I am right, then our predicament is terrible - orders of magnitude worse than most people assume it to be. Most people assume either that death is the end, or that it is a portal to heaven. Neither of those views is remotely sensible - neither of those views is implied by reason and I defy anyone to show me otherwise. Now, if we're all going to hell in a handbasket - and if that is the inevitable fate of anyone here - then voluntarily to bring an innocent person into our predicament to share it with us would be a wicked thing to do. So it would indeed 'end the debate' in that it would make procreation about as obviously immoral as, say, rape.
I don't see how that follows - the situation you describe is not remotely analogous to our situation.
First, we do not voluntarily enter the restaurant. We do not choose to be here, but were made to come here - or, summoned into existence here - by the acts of others.
So, first, we're at the restaurant whether we want to be or not.
Second, we don't get to choose the courses, or at least we can make a choice, but whether we get it is not wholly determined by that choice, but all manner of other factors (though our choice often influences what we get). So, you can ask for tomato soup, and you may get it, but you may get razorblade soup - it depends as much on what's going on in the kitchen as it does on your choices. (Although if you order shit soup, that does fairly reliably arrive).
So, when you force someone - and it is force - to join you in the restaurant that you yourself have been forced into, you don't know what they're going to be served.
Third, everyone gets shit soup at the end. Everyone. Shit soup is death, remember? You don't know what anyone you force to join you here is going to be served in the meantime, but you do know this - their meal will end with a giant serving of shit soup and they have to eat it all. Everyone in the restaurant has to eat shit soup in the end (and then you leave). All you can do is delay it. But you will - absolutely will - eat shit soup if you're in the restaurant. And you can leave the restaurant early, but you have to order the shit soup and eat it before you can do so.
And the waiter has told you - and tells everyone else in the restaurant as well - not to order shit soup, that shit soup is worse than virtually any other dish on the menu, bar razorblade soup.
That's our situation. It's not remotely like the scenario you describe.
Now, if that's our situation, is it not wrong to force someone to join you in the restaurant? Yes, obviously it is wrong. It is bad enough that you have been forced into this restaurant. But you should make the most of it - for there is nothing else you can do - and try and order the best dishes and hope that you will actually be served them and try and forget that, whatever you get served and no matter how delicious it is, you are going eventually to have to eat a huge vat of shit soup. That's what you should do. What you should not do is press the button on the table that brings another diner to your table without their prior consent.
I read your response to me 3 times and I think I understood it less from the 3rd reading than I did the first. All I can do is admit that I cannot follow your logic.
I can only bow out of the thread.
I hope others can offer you more.
Thanks for the exchange.
Quoting Bartricks
Relevance? Every time someone visits a restaurant for the first time they don't know whether they want to be there or not. That doesn't stop them from entering. Even if they are forced in the restaurant, they can still enjoy their meal.
Quoting Bartricks
Relevance? In restaurants we don't get to choose the menu and we don't get to cook. It doesn't stop us from going to restaurants and recommending them to our friends. Or do antinatalists argue that we should never go to restaurants?
Quoting Bartricks
No, your initial argument was that departing from the restaurant was a better alternative to eating a ship soup, therefore you concluded that departure is roughly equal to a shit soup. But then I demonstrated that departure is not equal to being served a shit soup, and you agreed. So it was refuted that everyone gets shit soup at the end.
Feel free not to respond to this commend if you have nothing to add. I'm not planning to re-iterate my argument.
We cannot ask to be at the restaurant either. Thankfully, our friends were kind enough to bring us there :p
When most people enjoy the majority of the course, I don't think that a precise choice is necessary.
That terrible soup at the end might not always be extremely bad. It could be mediocre, but we would find it terrible because many of the other dishes we had were so good. Furthermore, not everybody believes that a bad soup (whose degree of badness can differ for different individuals) at the end of hundreds of absolutely delectable meals (and a few bad ones) makes the alternative of never having a meal preferable. Lastly, it might be reasonable to say that the final soup tastes bad and could probably cause an upset stomach. What wouldn't be reasonable (I think) would be to think that it would set one's tongue on fire for eternity. Anyway, this has been discussed for long, so I shall stop here. Hopefully, more people can judge the menu in its entirety instead of emphasising a single dish. Have a wonderful day!
Back at you: relevance? I don't understand what point you are making. I have described a situation analogous to the one we are in. All you have done is describe one that is nothing like it at all. What moral can we possibly extract from your version of the example? I don't see how you're engaging with the point my example is making at all.
So, kindly explain to me what point you were trying to make with your restaurant example and what, exactly, you think it challenges in the argument that I have made.
Is your point that there are some nice things on the menu??? Is that it? Er, I know. Nothing I have argued implies otherwise.
Engage with the example. I did not deny that there are nice things on the menu. I pointed out that shit soup is on it and furthermore you have to have shit soup eventually, and the waiter - which in case you didn't realize it, is modelling what reason tells us about death - tells us that shit soup is worse than everything else on the menu, including things you really don't want to eat, except broken razorblade soup.
So, read the example again and try and understand what it is doing - for you clearly haven't a clue at the moment.
I did have a point, but I found it offensive that instead of addressing it you said: "Your point is irrelevant because it goes against my point, and my point is correct. Let's talk about my point and how I'm right." If these are the rules of the OP, then I'm not interested in participating.
What point were you trying to make with it?
It's the spark of life, the ephemeral beauty of it, that defies reason. That defies our fate to decompose into what can only be described as Hellish.
The question is, why isn't life Hellish at all then? And by that I mean reasonable life. It's the opposite. Whatever we are, and whatever this spark of life is, is so beautiful that we literally celebrate it non-stop. Even though it's fated to decay when the pulse stops.
The buck doesn't stop there, though. What is more natural than rigor mortis is love. Call it supernatural, if you will.
Quoting Bartricks
Is it reasonable to measure the harm of death by the amount of suffering before it becomes rational to seek death? My point was that it isn't. When does it become rational to leave the restaurant? When we've been served shit, or when the course is over. When does it become rational to die? When we're facing a lot of harm and suffering, or when our bodies run out of life juice. It's possible to come to a restaurant, enjoy your meal and leave happily. So it should equally be possible to come into existence, enjoy your life, and die peacefully. As a result, it is not evident that death is an immense harm.
Even if there is pain involved in death, I don't think we have sufficient reason to believe that the harm outweighs all the good one can also experience throughout their life. It could, but not necessarily.
Interesting stuff.
So, again, if you are in agony, then death may be rational. But it is not good, is it? It is the lesser of two evils. If your only options are razor blade soup or shit soup, then shit soup is better. But it's still shit soup.
The disvalue of death is not a function of the value of the life it terminates.
If you are in the restaurant and not really enjoying it as every dish you've been served is grey mush, is it a good idea to order the shit soup and leave (remembering that you can't leave without eating the vat of shit soup)? Well, what does the waiter say? The waiter says no - better to stay and continue eating grey mush for as long as possible. If you get served razorblade soup- yes, now it is sensible to order the shit soup and leave, not otherwise.
For example, imagine you know - thanks to a pocket oracle or something - that any child you have will have a life of moderate misery. No great highs or lows, just hum drum misery and boredom. Ought you refrain from procreating if other things are equal? (So don't muddy the water by imagining you really want to have a child, or that your own welfare depends crucially on you having a child, for you need someone to go down the mine for you when you are old - exclude all those sort of considerations).
Seems clear you should refrain So, that life isn't worth starting. Maybe there's some kind of intrinsic value to being alive, but not enough to make starting that life and subjecting someone to a lifetime of moderate misery a moral thing to do.
There are plenty of such lives being lived. Yet those living them do not have reason to kill themselves. That can't plausibly be to do with the intrinsic value of life, for otherwise it would be equally clear that these are lives worth starting. Yet it seems they are not worth starting, however once started they their lives have reason to stay.
Another example: the death penalty. There's a debate over whether it is justified, but there's no question it is a penalty (the debate is over whether this is a penalty it is moral to serve to someone). Now, if it was the intrinsic value of life that explains why we have reason not to destroy it, as opposed to it being predominantly to do with the harm it visits on the person who dies, then the death penalty wouldn't be a penalty. I mean, a Rembrandt painting has some intrinsic value. So imagine the 'penalty' for murder is that we will destroy the Rembrandt. Well, that's crazy. Yes, we will have destroyed something of intrinsic value, but what's that to the murderer? The death penalty would be like that if the rationality of death was a matter primarily of its intrinsic value as opposed to it being about harm to the one who is to be killed. Note I am not denying life has intrinsic value, I am just pointing out how implausible it is to think that it is at the heart of why we have reason not to kill ourselves and others must of the time.
Consider too that plausibly a mass murderer's life does not have any intrinsic value. Yet it seems clear that death still harms mass murderer. The harmfulness of death, then, seems to have little if anything to do with the intrinsic value of life, for it harms us even when that value is absent.
Another example to illustrate the point. Sarah is very beautiful, andbeauty has intrinsic value. Now imagine there's a machine that you can put your face in and it'll scrape away your features with knives. Now it seems obvious that Sarah has reason not to put her face into that machine. Why? Is it primarily because if she did that she would no longer be beautiful and thus would have destroyed something of intrinsic value - the beauty of her face? Or would the main reason be that it'll be absolute agony and seriously affect her life for the worse? The latter, right? After all, even someone who is ugly has reason not to put their face in it.
Well, that's what the harmfulness of death seems to be like. Life may have some intrinsic value, but death's harmfulness to us seems to have nothing to do with it. And it is its harmfulness to us that seems to be what provides us with reason to avoid it, extreme agony aside.
Many "mediocre" lives can also have value, but I agree that a life which a person won't cherish (for the most part) should not be created. However, you're once again missing the point that people could still prefer their average lives over a painful death or the cessation of their entire being due to a fear of death that's often encouraged by the culture around us. Whether or not that's true is another matter (especially if there is no possibility of joy left and the pain is extreme).
I haven't claimed that all lives are worth creating due to their "intrinsic value". There certainly are harms that also exist, but a "moderately bad" life could also be partially good (and a life where the person is frequently thinking about ending everything might be worse than "moderate"). However, unless the positives would outweigh the negatives for that person, I think it would be better to not create them. I do think that we need to take procreation a lot more seriously.
There are also many meaningful lives being lived that continue to see unfathomable potency in life which is what fuels their desire to continue living even in the face of suffering. I think it would be narrow-minded to reduce their choice to simply an intuition to avoid death, since there is more to their lives than just that.
People could indeed suffer due to a lack of a meaningful relationship, so it's not a trivial matter. However, I won't be emphasising that here.
If the aversion to death is evidence that it leads to something terrible, I think that the fact that people do wish to continue living despite the existence of harms does demonstrate that life has more value than some people realise ;)
As far as the death penalty is concerned, I don't think that there is much confusion here. Since the convict could still have a decent life, the loss of their life/the pain they would feel would certainly be a harm for them. I feel that the latter is more relevant, but the larger point is that both of these points make more sense than some unjustifiable idea regarding the intrinsic badness of death.
The murderer may not be a good person, but that has no bearing on whether or not he enjoys his life. If he does live a mostly happy life, then one can plausibly say that the loss of his life would not be something he would find palatable, especially if it entails harm that would be felt consciously.
Those are two different things. The fact that the beauty of her face was lost is indeed a harm. However, there is also pain and a deprivation of happiness, which would probably be the primary concern here. Fortunately, we don't have sufficient evidence to believe that nonexistence (as opposed to the process of dying) leads to a terrible state of affairs.
I do not necessarily agree with the deprivation account (since I don't think that the void can be either good or bad). However, your criticism of it appears to be merely presupposing that death is a harm without justifying that idea other than resorting to intuitions that may not align with what we know to be in our rational interest due to the existence of strong emotions and a close association of death with physical harm (which has generally been the case throughout history, though it's fortunately beginning to change in recent years, I believe). The deprivation account won't say that death is inherently good or bad, but it would say that the loss of a mostly good life is instrumentally bad by virtue of the good it deprives you of, just as the cessation of a mostly bad life (that would most likely be bad in the future as well) can be instrumentally good (instead of a lesser evil) by virtue of the harm it prevents. Again, simply assuming that death itself is harm because of mostly unexamined intuitions that conflate different pertinent elements (pain and nonexistence) appears to be an irredeemable flaw in the argument.
I don't think that any of your arguments give us reason to think that death is an intrinsically bad state. All of your examples have, in my view, better explanations that also take the limits of our intuitions into account. In short, any potential badness of death (aside from the pain of dying) comes from misconceptions regarding the void, a desire to prevent possible pain (which seems to be more rational), and a loss of the possibility of goods one could experience. Again, we've discussed this before, so I would rather avoid incessant repetition. I hope that you have an excellent day!
But I did not deny that! Jeeez. However, clearly whatever intrinsic value they have, we nevertheless have overall reason not to start them. And this is plausibly because they harm their liver. It can't be 'becasue' they have intrinsic value - that'd make no real sense. Rather it is because 'despite' their intrinsic value, they harm their liver.
And when such lives are underway, we do not have reason to end them. Why? Becuase killing the liver would harm the liver even more.
Any intrinsic value the life may have is playing no role in these explanations. So you can keep pointing out that life has - or sometimes has - some intrinsic value, but it's beside the point for I am not denying it and it clearly plays no fundamental role in explaining why we have reason not to kill ourselves.
Quoting DA671
I never said you did. You've missed the point. If it makes it easier, just assume I think that all lives have some intrinsic value, other things being equal. The point is that moderately miserable lives are lives we ought to refrain from creating (if we know they'll be moderately miserable). Now, it would clearly be stupid to try and explain that by citing their intrinsic value! "We ought not to create them because they're intrinsically valuable". That's dumb. No, any plausible analysis of why we ought not to create them is going to mention their harmfulness to their liver. That is, we have a duty - normally - not to create harm and thus not to create harmful lives. And that duty plausibly eclipses any putative duty to create intrinsic value. And thus that is why it is wrong - or is part of the story about why it is wrong - to create moderately miserable lives. It's the same story we'd give about incredibly miserable lives. They harm their liver.
Yet such lives are being lived. And if you are living one, it would be irrational for you to kill yourself. Now the reason for that cannot be that your life has intrinsic value, for that is already acknowledged and we know already that such value does not eclipse in importance the importance of sparing you the miserable life. Thus, the reason you have not to kill youself is that killing yourself will make your situation - which is already bad - much, much worse.
Quoting DA671
You haven't engaged with the argument I made, you've just resurrected the deprivation account of the harmfulness of death - a view I keep, keep, refuting. It's like arguing with goldfish!
Look, first, a mass murderer's life doesn't have any intrinsic value. They're a mass murderer! They've lost their value by what they've done. That's the first thing and even if you disagree, it's a pretty damn plausible claim. Yet death still harms them. So, the harmfulness of killing a mass murderer doesn't consist in it robbing the world of some intrinsic value. I mean, I explained this and you've just blithely ignored that argument.
And you can't plausibly claim that it harms the murderer himself by depriving him of something - for what does it deprive him of? A life in prison? It harms him because it is harmful.
Again, I have refuted the deprivation account of the harmfulness of death about 100x now, yet you and others just keep invoking it.
If the deprivation account is true, then death isn't harmful to a person living a mildly miserable life.
It is though, isn't it!?! They have reason to keep living.
So, what follows logically from that? This: the deprivation account is false.
If P, then Q
Not Q
Therefore not P.
The deprivation account is false.
Sarah wants to go to the cinema. She falls over in the bathroom and breaks both her legs and spends the evening in agony. Now, how has Sarah been harmed? What's the main way in which those broken legs have harmed her? Is it that they deprived of an evening at the cinema?? Er, no. She has been deprived of that, no question. But it's stupid to think 'that' is the core explanation of why Sarah's broken legs are a bad thing for her. They're bad for her becasue they've pitched her into agony.
Deprivation accounts of the harmfulness of death are every bit as stupid as deprivation accounts of the harmfulness of Sarah's leg breaking incident.
Don't now switch to talking about intrinsic value - I refuted that view too above. Don't be a goldfish.
Most people, if asked, would agree that they do not know for sure what happens after we die. Yet most people think that it is one of two possibilities - that death is either the cessation of our existence, or a door to heaven. I have shown that neither of those is remotely plausible - I mean, they just have nothing to be said for them at all and are, I would suggest, wholly a product of wishful thinking and/or a total lack of any thinking at all. The truth is that death takes us to a worse place. But even if you think - because you're a confused little chicken - that I have not put the matter beyond a reasonable doubt, the fact is it is a possibility. That is, even if you want to wrap yourself up in the whole 'how do we know anything' silly scepticism that infects most of those whose capacity to think clearly is severely limited, you should accept that though we do not know what happens after death, one possibility is that it takes us to a worse place.
Now, if you accept that it is distinctly possible that death takes us to a worse place - and you should - then you should also accept that it would be culpably reckless to expose an innocent to that possibility.
Our predicament is that we are all heading inexorably to hell. Well, antinatalism is a no-brainer if that's true.
But even if we do not know whether we are heading inexorably to hell, or to nowhere, or to heaven, antinatalism is still a no-brainer. For it is immoral to expose an innocent to the risk of an inexorably journey to hell, and that's what you're doing if you procreate. You can hope that we're all going to heaven, or nowhere, or that there's just more of the same the other side of death - you can hope those things. But those hopes do not justify you in summoning an innocent into existence here so that they have to run the same gauntlet you've been made to run.
Until we know - know beyond a reasonable doubt - that death is a portal to heaven, or perhaps to nowhere - one should accept that it is immoral to procreate.
Why did you put "becasue" in quotes? Was that a prophecy that you were going to write it in paragraph 15 of your reply?
The pain could certainly be harmful. Other than that, I don't think that unsubstantiated claims about the badness of death can be accepted.
You have once again failed to understand that if life does have more value, it would not make sense to end it, especially if the process could be painful. It's certainly quite relevant.
Moderately miserable lives can also be good. I don't think that the harm is the only relevant factor in consideration. Just as there could be harms in such a life, there could also be pleasant moments which would make the person's life worth living. That judgement would probably have to be made by the person themselves. If we have adequate reason to believe that the life would still contain more good than bad, it can be justifiable to create them. However, it's true that we should refrain from creating them if the risk of significantly high.
No, you're the one who keeps misssing the point. Uninvestigated intuitions don't give us a basis to believe something is inherently bad. As I have mentioned ad nauseam, just because the life has many harms one cannot ignore the fact that it could also have many goods. If it didn't, it would probably be worse than a mediocre life. A person could have a bad life but still find living to be preferable to a painful death (which could be rational) or they could also consider the harms to be not strong enough to devalue the goods they experienced. They could also believe that nonexistence brings them to some special sort of hell, but while they might "think" that this gives them a reason to avoid death, it would be an unjustified reason that would be akin to fearing thunder as some evil force that sends us to hell.
I've already said before that I don't agree with you the deprivation account. You're the one seems unwilling to go beyond your rigid framework.
Throughout this discussion, I have repeatedly tried to excavate the foundations of our intuitions by searching for the reasons we have them. You have, mistakenly so in my view, ignored that by callously accusing me of focusing on "psychology". Howbeit, you have missed the fact that it can be important to focus on the reasons because:
A. We can see whether or not the intuition is rational by searching for the elements that gave rise to it. For instance, imagine that you are afraid for the life of a loved one. This intuition would surely deserve more attention if this was because you thought that she was in a risky part of the neighborhood than if it arose because you saw a character being harmed in a horror movie. How do we determine whether or not the intuition is rational? We do so by looking at the evidence at hand and whether or not our reasons for having that intuition are reasonable. A loved one being defenseless in a risky area is, but a fear that arises from watching a horror movie does not seem to be so.
B. We can also see if the absence of the reasons behind the intuition would cause it to reduce/not exist. Now, I had talked about three major reasons (aside from a pure instinct to survive and propagate that all organisms seem to have):
1. External influence that we take in blindly.
2. A desire to cherish the good that exists in one's life.
3. The desideratum to avoid extreme pain.
I think that we have more than decent reason to believe that the lack of the above factors can certainly help diminish/remove the intuition that death is bad. Regarding (1), I think my own perspective has changed quite a bit depending on the environment around me and the amount of knowledge I possessed. When I was younger, I did not really fear death. But when everyone around me kept talking about how bad death is, I internalised that view and started to view death as something terrible. However, when I actually started reading about this issue and the nature of reality itself, my dear (in terms of nonexistence itself being bad) reduced significantly, and due to this, I also don't have such a great desire to avoid death.
As for (2), I think that this is fairly obvious. As one starts to lose value in their life, they increasingly begin to see death as a valid option. This is a good example of how the replacement of joy with pain can gradually make a person to wish to cease to exist: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/podcasts/the-daily/marieke-vervoort-euthanasia-belgium.html
I hope that people can have the right to a graceful exit, even though I also wish that we can create a world where nobody would have to take that option amidst intense harm.
And finally, (3) ties into the second point because people clearly do wish to avoid pain. However, when they have the ability to die in a relatively painless way (such as those who chose voluntary euthanasia), people can prefer cessation or at least stop fearing death too much. I've personally experienced this as well as seen this with other people. Since we now know that the lack of these reasons can diminish the intuition, I believe we now have an abundance of valid justifications for thinking that the intuition that death itself is bad (as opposed to pain/loss being bad) is not reliable. The intuition that we need to avoid death can certainly be rational, but this would be for vastly different reasons and it would also entail that we should not infer that the void itself is a realm of agony.
I also explained that there's a difference between any value that life would have for us/any moral value that life would have and the joys that life itself would experience. The immoral person could still have a life that would be mostly good for themselves, even if they harmed others. I thought that the topic was the badness of death for the person, and if that is the case, then the same reasons I mentioned before apply here. Obviously, it wouldn't help us if the killer continued to live. However, the question was whether death was a harm for them, not for us. As I've mentioned before, the only plausible view could be that it robs them of a good life or the process itself would involve immense pain. Except for this, I don't think that meaningless about the inherent badness of death that are premised upon intuitions that we haven't really looked into can be considered logical. Blithely ignoring the reality won't affect it.
Whether or not the killer has a good life in prison would depend on their attitude. A friend of mine who had been to a prison that some people there were fairly happy and clearly wanted to keep living. Obviously, they would have preferred if they were not imprisoned. But many things exist in degrees, and it's not necessary that a person would immediately desire nonexistence if they are in prison. As per the deprivation account, if the person would still have lived a life that had more moments of happiness than harm, it would be bad for them to die. If it would contain more harm, it would not be bad for them to cease to exist (other than a few goods that would be lost, but then that could be outweighed by the prevented harm). Alternatively, it could still be reasonable for them to keep living a fairly average life over dying in a painful way. What wouldn't make sense would be an aversion to death on the basis of a baseless argument for the void being some sort of hell. Thankfully, most people don't seem to have this unreliable intuition.
I've only mentioned it because you don't fully understand it, but I've also explained that I don't agree with it. However, as always, you continue to turn the other way when things don't suit you. One could do better, my friend. Once again, you are missing the point by forgetting the face that a moderately bad life could be worsened by a painful death, in which case it could be better for a person to keep living. Furthermore, if the life is moderately bad, it could also be moderately good, which would give them a reason to not choose nonexistence. Death could still be reasonable if the harms would always outweigh the good, but just because it is doesn't mean that everybody would be able to overcome their emotions, the deeply ingrained views regarding death, and their (very rational) fear of pain to take the final step, especially if their life also gives them a decent amount of reasons to keep living.
I disagree with the deprivation account for different reasons. However, your arguments against it fail to defeat the deprivation account, since you've only claimed that death would be a harm for a moderately valuable life whilst failing to consider the limits of intuitions and restricted understanding that afflicts many people. In your case:
If P, then Q.
P
Therefore, Q.
If death prevents greater suffering than good, then it is preferable (according to the deprivation account). It could be that ending one's life would be a slight harm as well if it prevents some positives. However, non-existence would still be better overall. But I don't think that most lives are mostly negative.
The upshot is that the deprivation account still stands as far as your criticisms are concerned.
I agree that the pain is bad and it would probably be the real reason why the harms are bad. If only some people could realise that there is also pain involved in death, which might be the real reason behind why we want to avoid death (and which would be rational) instead of some unjustifiable claims about the inherent badness of death (which we have no evidence to believe that it plunges us to hell). But you also don't understand what exactly would be lost. Sure, it would be bad that the person couldn't watch the movie. However, the bigger loss would be the fact that they would be robbed of their health. I don't think that you understand the things you are criticising, my friend.
Your criticisms of the deprivation account are often incoherent and often don't even realise what would be lost (health instead of a movie). As things stand, I am afraid that you have merely initiated a pointless cycle to talk about your cherished beliefs that you never truly wanted to be changed in light of new evidence.
You didn't, and neither did you prove the intrinsic badness of death. I think that even a goldfish is capable of paying attention for a while, which is much better than ignoring everything.
I've argued that while we have certain intuitions regarding the harm of death (which could include the idea that it brings us to hell), not all of those intuitions appear to be reasonable in light of a critical analysis of the world around us. The annihilation of our being (loss of good) and the pain incurred by us during the dying process can give us good reasons to avoid cessation, but it's apparent to me that they don't give us a reason to think that the joyous moments of life that consist of ineffable love and beauty don't matter.
Wishful thinking/total lack of thinking at all might be an apt description of your replies. I wouldn't want to degrade chickens here, so I won't comment on them. You have failed to justify that death does not lead to the cessation of our being other than point to intuitions while ignoring the fact that not all intuitions are reasonable. Your intuition might tell you that driving your car for the first time will necessarily kill you, but you logically disregard that instinct once you consider the evidence at hand, such as the fact that there's no evidence that people are always dying when driving for the first time, and your fear probably has to do with a movie you saw a while ago. But since we know that movies don't always match with reality, we have good reason to think that our intuition is unreliable. Now, you could claim that people do in fact die and are secretly replaced by invisible clones, but the question is—which view is more reasonable? And just as one would probably consider the clone explanation to be unlikely, one could also see that the lack of any evidence for hell post existence combined with other reasons for our intuitions (fear of loss and pain)
give us solid reasons to reject the idea that nonexistence leads to hell.
You're free to believe otherwise, but it would be pertinent to remember that this would probably be a position held despite of true reason, not because of it. The" truth", probably, is that there is no good reason to think that death takes us to a worse place. As for heaven, I think one could definitely say that the fact that so many people believe in heaven gives us a "reason" to believe that it's a serious possibility (since that's apparently all that's required for one to think death is a special form of hell). One could bolster this intuition by mentioning the fact that some people have a strong desire to die (and reach heaven) that's not acted upon only due to the possibility of extreme agony while dying. So, it's so good that only extreme pain can make us want to delay it. As for other people, there could be other reasons for the lack of their desire to immediately go to "heaven" such as the fact that they believe that living a specific sort of life is required for going there. Additionally, one could just as plausibly say that our strong desire to exist and reproduce give us a "reason" to think that nonexistence is always bad (before and after existence) and it's only life that can provide us relief, even if it contains harms. The point is that these intuitions are no less reasonable than the ones you rely on. If you could look beyond your lazy dogmatism, you could realise that mere intuitions give us very few rational reasons to believe in the existence of something we have no evidence for. This becomes even more important when those intuitions can have other intuitions driving them (such as dying being too painful and death leading to a loss of happiness), which gives us a reason to believe that the intuition is pointing to something other than the inherent badness of death (along with the fact that not all parts of the intuition give us equally good reasons to trust them). You have certainly taken this matter out of the realm of reason, my friend, but it has also given us excellent reasons to doubt your position. You've managed to convince me even more that many of our attitudes towards death are based on vacuous claims and uninvestigated intuitions that are not defended in a very rational manner. Since there is a "possibility" that there are souls in the void suffering horribly before they exist (which is supported by our intuition that living is good/preferable even in the face of harm), we could also say that we have a reason to think that life brings us to the only "better" place possible.
Now, since there is a possibility that there are souls floating around in the void desperate to exist and avoid the pain of inexistence (which we apparently have a reason to believe sans any actual evidence merely due to intuitions), it would be reckless beyond comprehension to even think about supporting a view that leads to the cessation of all life and condemns billions of souls to an eternity in agony. Not saving innocent souls from that terrible state of affairs for as long as we can is patently immoral. A view that rejects this clearly deserves opprobrium.
The reality is that we have no evidence to think that nonexistence leads to hell. If anything, your inability to truly understand the nature of reality and our intuitions inexorably leads one to the conclusion that universal antinatalism remains a flawed position to hold. But if we are going to trust our intuitions blindly, then the possibility of an eternally painful void containing souls being tortured makes natalism a no-brainer. The true predicament might be that a few people don't understand the seriousness of the matter.
Those might be possibilities, but they aren't the only ones out there. If nonexistence leads to an eternity of happiness for innumerable souls, I don't think that it's a good idea to not create a person. Furthermore, going by our intuition that life is preferable to nonexistence, I think it can certainly be "reasonable " (if you think that our intuition that death is bad is totally reliable without any investigation/context) to think that the void contains innocent souls being harmed in ways you and I cannot even imagine. Not saving them just because one personally doesn't see value in life is too cruel a game for any ethical person to play. You can continue fearing a hell that we have no evidence for if that's what you have chosen to do. I think that you deserve better, my friend. But be that as it may, I don't think that your opinion justifies condemning souls to an eternity of pain. Or, more realistically, it does not give us a valid reason to prevent all potential joys.
Until we know beyond reasonable doubt that the void does not have souls (which we cannot see or know except for "inferring" that on the basis our intuition that life is better than nonexistence even in pain) who are desperate to exist and avoid the agony of nihility, it is immoral to advocate for universal antinatalism. More modestly, I think that it would be irrational to believe that death is inherently bad unless we have a good reason to think that we should not try to see whether or not our intuitions are always reliable about things it doesn't know much about (and we know that thunder is not a magic spell cast from hell) and when that intuition might actually be pointing to other things than the one we think it is at a superficial glance. Considering that (in my opinion) you failed to demonstrate the falsity of the idea that the intuition might be the result of societal influence (in which case it as as arbitrary and unjustified as the idea that racism is good merely because one's culture believes it to be so) and that it could be linked with other intuitions (life being good, the process of dying involving too much pain) that give us a reason to think that it's actually pointing at something else, I believe that we can safely say that your position is not reasonable and universal antinatalism remains immoral and deeply problematic. Pessimistic prognostications about the void cannot be accepted without sufficient justification.
Thanks for your detailed replies. I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts in such depth, and though I disagree with you, I am truly grateful to you for sharing your insights. You clearly care about the reduction of harms, which is something that we definitely need to focus on. I hope that we can live in a better world someday (and prove more definitively that death doesn't necessarily lead to eternal hell and that life does indeed have profound value!). Hope you have a fantastic day/night!
Quoting DA671
It's a 'conclusion' not an unsubstantiated claim!
A view that ignores the larger picture and doesn't even bother to check whether or not it's what it appears to be can never be nuanced.
Projection is a real problem. Nevertheless, I apologise if I failed to grasp what you wrote and consequently misinterpreted it.
Putting on the blindfold when the lights are turned on will generally impair one's ability to see. That doesn't affect the ineluctable truth. However, it's fine that you missed the fact that I addressed them thoroughly.
A "claim" can also be used to refer to any argument/position/conclusion/opinion. Your conclusion is a part of an argument which claims that something is true. It's not an indisputable fact to me, so I will continue to refer to it as a claim. But as I've demonstrated (I think), your conclusion remains indefensible.
Have a nice day!
I would also add that escape from death by materialism is a false step too. As Stephen Hawking applied the no boundary hypothesis to the universe and it's beginning, we can apply these imagery number systems to the end of life and speculate that life continue forever even though without a boundary. Consciousness continues in the body even after amputation, but instead of a limb what it it's your whole body? Where else can consciousness reside? Nobody knows.
Lobotomize every newborn (or in vitro if technically possible), which effectively removes the moral prohibition of producing more sufferers (i.e. persons anticipating pain and loss as well as projecting counterfactual memories of painlessness and losslessness). Thus, procreation rates will precipitously drop well below the sustainable population replacement rate without policy or ideational coercion (additional pain). No need to "destroy the village in order to save it", just (obliviously sing-a-long, lil lobots) with
Self-awareness [math]\propto[/math] Suffering. The more we suffer, the more self-aware we become.
If so, humans being (most) self-aware, are suffering (the most).
Draw your own conclusions...
I've explained in my other threads.. We are the only species that can do this:
"I have to keep justifying to myself why I have to keep doing a task I rather not do in order to survive".
Animals just survive. They don't have to motivate, justify, create stories for why they do. This burden of freedom is touched upon by Sartre when he discusses authenticity. The person is doing something out of authenticity when they don't give up their understanding that they can do otherwise. But it's the bummer fact that doing otherwise is almost always starvation and death that one keeps doing ones undesired role.. and goes back to making the widgets or any X task that may be less than desired.
We're caught in a trap of sorts - we don't like it (life) and so, we search for justifications to like it (life). That's positive thinking on a whole new level, oui?
Algos & Thanatos (deadly duo of suffering) force us to imagine stuff like souls, the very essence of selves, that somehow survive both kinds of suffering...to live happily ever after. A fairy tale.
Yep..talk talk talk.. justify justify justify..
Quoting Agent Smith
This almost doesn't even matter to me. The boring making of widgets and repeat matters. That's the real. That's First Principles. You need to survive before anything else.
The phenomenology of the contingent harms mixed with the inherent harms of having to survive with the self-reflective capacities of knowing one can do otherwise, yet also KNOWING that really (by default of death and starvation) that one cannot.
Quoting Agent Smith
Our "spirtual" glory says Freddy – amor fati! :fire:
Are you advocating fatalism?
Humans have a longer developmental time than other animals. They are ready for the world while we spend our first years creating an image of what life must be. Our expectations are not always met however. You mention Sartre, who I was reading today, and he talks of bad faith and the paradox of conscience. We know that we are conscious but do we know we are conscientious? Someone shouldn't complain that life is unfair unless they have full knowledge of their innocence. Job thought he was perfect but in the trial proved not to be
I advocate intellectual and moral courage (i.e. ataraxia, ekstasis, non serviam, carpe diem, sapere aude, ...) Whether or not this makes me a 'fatalist', that's not the same as being futilitarian.
Superb monsieur, superb!
Reminds me of Skynet in Terminator. The first thing Skynet thinks of after it becomes self-aware is humans are an existential threat.
I don't mean justification on a grand scale but on any task we do that we otherwise might not do if we didn't have to survive. Animals don't need this extra layer of,..."Oh fuck today, I'm taking a mental health day cause I don't want to do this today..." Why on earth is there a species that doesn't just "do" what is needed to survive without all the self-reflection? I can choose to do nothing at all and starve myself, but then I'm in that predicament. But I know I am in that predicament.
I am advocating that.
Don't know what you are getting at. Just being born doesn't conform you needing to do anything. It is your choice to do whatever you do and to have a justification for you. No one can fill that for you. That is what he means by not living in bad faith. Assuming because you are born you must be conscientious about something is bad faith if this involves some constraint on one's own free choice.
However, what Sartre de-emphasizes here and what I am trying to emphasize to the Nth degree is that we are de facto caught in a place where we are in a situatedness of the already-existing-system that we may not have freely chosen but we have to constantly every moment freely choose to participate in it, lest we want to die by not surviving (starving, no access to the goods/services for survival in the behemoth economic system) or outright suicide. It is that conundrum I am addressing constantly.
But how do you know you haven't in a previous life made this current one with everything happening as it does
Those who produce the most children are those who suffer the most (compare birth rates between first world and third world countries). Does that mean antinatalism is bogus? No! In fact the have-nots have more children precisely because they suffer; the argument is mathematical - distribute the load as it were i.e. more the merrier.
The paradox: Suffering, instead of making people averse to birthing children (end suffering), encourages them to opt for larger families (share suffering).
I don't think that is suffering as much as traditional cultures. Value is gotten from playing the role of parent. Women think they are being a true woman by birthing. As women and cultures in general become more Westernized, roles such as "careers" become more valued. To me, both values are patently wrong and working out of bad faith.
Also note, the minute you create a person who must "learn to play a game" (like the game of life, the economy, learning to live in a society a certain way), that action becomes morally disqualified. You are forcing someone into a comply or die situation. No one needs to play the game of life. You (the parent) are not a messiah bringing about someone else's curated experiences. No person needs to be born to learn anything. This is delusional messianic thinking on the part of the parent.
Death is part of nature. Like being born or eating food.
On the contrary, I think the OP was correct to say we must be nature view death as a great evil. The truth with this though is that we can unlearn this and find trasendence. Nature is one order of being, while true reality is transcendent. It seems to me we can doubt who we are, doubt what we've done, and if possible change our ways. There are many choices left up to us in life. The worst position is to be stuck saying "this is unfair"
Only the rich can guarantee their offspring a life worth living, hedonically speaking. The vast majority of us (the lower & middle income bracket) can't even assure our sons and daughters a decent income, an income which, at the very least, can make life not enjoyable but just tolerable.
Why do people have children?
But is life really about hedonism/maximizing one's pleasure? That seems like an insane way to live. "A life worth living" is a very difficult concept. I was very suicidal when my net worth was at its peak.
I don't understand why death ought to be treated as a great evil. Like @Jackson mentioned it's part of the natural life cycle. Is it really a great evil when a man dies peacefully on his death bed at age 99?
Life is wrong to start irrespective of circumstances. Procreation itself violates the dignity of the person born into a game of comply (must learn to play the game at least well enough) or die. It also puts them into a state of guaranteed suffering. None of this is moral to create for someone else. So..Quoting Agent Smith
Many bad reasons one of which is the messianic impulse to be the arbiter for creating someone else a game of overcoming obstacles. No one needs to be born for X reason.
There is no need for anyone to have to experience anything. There is nothing wrong with the state of affairs of”no person”.
"Moral" in your opinion, which is seemingly based on an extreme sensitivity to suffering and perhaps consent.... no offense but you're on your own planet here. I don't know where your principles are derived from. What if I just don't care that life guarantees suffering? What if I don't view all suffering as bad? What if I don't care/view as morally relevant that being born isn't a choice? Suffering can be a great teacher. One often learns through pain. Suffering allows one to empathize.
Well, I'd say the suffering has to be qualified..
As you said:
Can it be consented? (No)
Is it trivial suffering (No)
Can it be escaped (no)
Then it is certainly not moral to put this upon someone else.
Quoting Moses
Then you are simply using people because suffering is the basis for ethics. If not suffering and it is another X reason, I can only see that as using people.
"You need to learn X thing".. is YOUR pet project above and beyond the dignity of the other person (dignity as represented by not seeing them suffer for X cause, thus using them).
And nobody needs to learn anything a priori.
Quoting Moses
Then you are using people to bring about some messianic cause of yours (to teach people X).
Morality should not be based on USING people to see some ends come about. Already disqualified.
Quoting Moses
Even if this is true, CAUSING someone to suffer so that they can empathize is wrong. It is moral paternalism in its worst sense to believe that YOU are here so that you can bring ANOTHER PERSON into the worlds so that THEY can produce X outcome that YOU want to see out of them. No.
Schop, I don't want to get too bogged down in details but the main difference in our views seems to be that my metaphysic is theistic while yours is atheistic. You're doing your best to build something within that framework and that's fine. I have a few comments:
-You seemingly define "doing good" as preference fulfillment while I view this as shallow. I think there's a deeper level to a person beyond one's preferences. I don't feel obliged to help the alcoholic acquire drinks or the disabled facilitate their own internalized ableism.
-I like how you bring up dignity but we define it in differently. I define it the way the dictionary does:
the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed
What grounds dignity? IMHO not anything in nature, not anything in the material world. You ever see a man in a wheelchair with spit dripping out of his mouth as he takes 30 seconds on his name? We could go on. Nature doesn't ground dignity. Neither does reason. That needs to be transcendental. Do pigs have dignity? Then why do humans if humans are just animals? Exodus 4:10 provides a grounding of dignity.
EDIT: I can't tell how you ground morality: Human reason? Nature? From where does it find its source. You say that people need to be valued in and of themselves but I don't know from where you reach this conclusion.
You don't get it. It isn't about me. It's about making things better and life is good. Morality can conflict with one's personal wishes so this isn't about what I want. It's just about the good.
Yet antinatalists LITERALLY don't do anything to ANYONE. Pushing a view versus pushing a whole life onto someone else. Let's see which one profoundly affects someone ELSE more.
I never said that my ethics is preference fulfillment. I did have a previous thread that discussed the idea that if this was agreed as moral then this world is morally disqualified from the start. However, this world is also morally disqualified from the start because by its nature we are using people, so pick your poison.
Quoting Moses
Quoting Moses
To me, it doesn't matter where it's grounded. You can simply base it on the hypothetical imperative:
IF
you believe it is wrong to use people and cause unnecessary, inescapable suffering on someone else's behalf
then
what follows is antinatalism.
Quoting Moses
This seems like paternalism at its worst. If the universe was devoid of people, so what? If God had no one to foist "life, the game of" onto, so what? Will he pull a zombie resurrection and then scold everyone for not procreating and continuing his plan? But God wills it right? But he doesn't, YOU will it. You can will to not procreate. Good doesn't matter if no one is here to be good or bad. And I don't know what disambiguated "Good" is. However, using people to me is not good.
By dignity here I mean that harming a person to see X outcome come about (overcoming some struggle to build character, build empathy or whatever else you choose), is indeed using people as a means to some ends and that means precludes the person qua person. When someone doesn't even exist yet to have wants or needs, creating suffering wholesale, for no reason outside of a pet project (the OUTCOME.. character building, or what not), is thus overlooking the person for the thing you want to see from the person. It is then post-facto couched as something that was "good" for the person.. But it was UNNECESSARY as that person didn't NEED to suffer FROM THE START. So no.
I asked the question "why do people have children?" because, as you rightly pointed out, the reason whatever it is has nothing to do with the well-being of children. If that were the case, no one would even dream of starting a family; after all even the rich can't give any assurances on the happiness of their own offspring. And yet we all are, day in and day out, working hard so that we can be happy. A cognitive dissonance is apparent, oui? The way we live our lives indicates, beyond a shadow of doubt, that happiness is the be-all-and-end-all of life but we make babies as if that isn't true.
Good point! I've asked this question before, I'll ask it again:
Do things have value because they make us happy or do things make us happy because they have value?
Both.
How? An example or two?
I value health; this is a natural need, and a value. I value philosophy--I do not have to.
So, good health makes us happy because it has value and philosophy has value because it makes us happy?
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting![/quote]
Why does good health make us happy?
Because it has value!
Why does philosophy have value?
Because it makes us happy!
It feels circular this!
Chicken and egg problem.
1. X has value because it makes us happy
2. X makes us happy because it has value.
Without value nothing can make us happy but without making us happy nothing can have value!
Live is perceived as a positive things. If you don't, you are welcome to leave this beautiful world.
IMO before we answer this we need to really understand this concept of happiness.
Happiness for me can cover anything from the joy of going fast in a car or bike to the euphoria or getting drunk or high to sex, but then again you can also hear it referred to as contentment or more longer-term happiness such as an old man who's lived a long, happy peaceful life with many grandchildren who meditates to keep calm.
I don't expect you to answer this one; this concept has been baffled philosophers for thousands of years.
There's no doubt that we can subjectively assign value to things which make us happy, but we can also then ask whether those things are good. I might enjoy going 100mph on the freeway but whether this is good is another question.
If you say Peter Hayden Dinklage is greater than Michael Jordan, it can't be based on height.