People can't consent to being born.
(I posted this elsewhere)
It creates a massive ethical problem.
Consent is a huge moral and legal issue yet life is not founded on it.
Groping a random woman's breast once on a bus is considered an offence and a degrading imposition... but creating someone who can have up to 120 years of life and the subsequent suffering, that they did not request, is not an imposition apparently.
I can harm someone more by creating them than by committing your average criminal offence that people get lynch mobby about.
You don't have to hate life to come to this conclusion You just have to acknowledge the reality of suffering and that up to a million people feel the need to commit suicide every year.
I don't think a minority should be forced to suffer for a majority. That is abuse.
It creates a massive ethical problem.
Consent is a huge moral and legal issue yet life is not founded on it.
Groping a random woman's breast once on a bus is considered an offence and a degrading imposition... but creating someone who can have up to 120 years of life and the subsequent suffering, that they did not request, is not an imposition apparently.
I can harm someone more by creating them than by committing your average criminal offence that people get lynch mobby about.
You don't have to hate life to come to this conclusion You just have to acknowledge the reality of suffering and that up to a million people feel the need to commit suicide every year.
I don't think a minority should be forced to suffer for a majority. That is abuse.
Comments (300)
The more important question is how to react in the face of such a challenge.
I read an exchange on reddit a few days ago on consent where analogies with deciding for the fate of kids and dead bodies were cited. The bottomline is that those in power eventually have to impose what they think is right to those who cannot decide for themselves. The question then is, what gives anyone the right to decide for something or someone who is unable to give consent? My initial guess is that majority of the default decisions come from the unchecked collective human experience passed from generation to generation.
Why is it unreasonable?
Would you say the same in the case of sleeping person or person in a coma? Consent is possible in the future of a persons life so it is not that the unborn will not have desires and opinions that can be thwarted.
The reason consent is not available before birth is because the person does not exist (in this form at least) So it is not that I am insisting consent be given I am saying that the act is never consensual.
We can never view an individual as having consented to life. Future consent is weak because you could compare it to consenting to sex after being raped. Or consenting to a meal after someone force fed you. (Ie ethically dubious)
Another analogy is if someone offers for you to chose between three boxes with hidden gifts but they withhold a fourth box with a million dollars/pounds in it. They have withheld the greatest choice from you.
Also we don't have immediate freedom after birth including freedom to reject life. It would be different if we started life able to consent to everything and make choices.
People claim that you can't impose on the unborn (a semantic issue in my opinion).
So when one is creating a child one can only be acting for their own sake or own desires. If one begin to imagine the desires of a hypothetical child then one can realise they may and will be different than one's own.
Consent becomes a problem as soon as life begins when we begin to infringe on people's ability to consent.
I don't see how we can have ethics without consent. If we just start forcing things on people then there is no logical justification for opposing them using force in return.
A matter of wording or framing the problem, I guess, but this should not prevent us from questioning the moral and ethical implications of procreation. I like your other framing better which may not technically equate to consent: "So when one is creating a child one can only be acting for their own sake or own desires."
Agreed. People can't exercise their right to freedom of assembly before they're born, either. This doesn't create a massive ethical problem, it creates nonsense.
Framed from the issue of consent, maybe yes. But framed from the issue of fulfilling one's selfish desires at the expense of suffering of other people, hmm, maybe not.
If suicide is an option, then life is continued by consent once suicide is declined, which is by far the most prevalent choice. Ethically speaking, wouldn't it be the right thing to do to offer life, considering most often those offered it desperately protect it?
The way the issue is framed is especially important when it comes to this topic. It's rarely done in an unbiased manner. The desires needn't be selfish, and the suffering should be put into context.
It is unreasonable, at best, because there is no person, or people, who don't exist. There is no person whose consent should be obtained, nor is there a person who has certain rights which would be violated. There is no person who we would prevent from suffering harm, there is no person who would not live, there is no person who should not live.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Consider what you're saying. How can you harm someone? There is no "someone."
A sleeping person and a person in a coma are, nonetheless, living people. We may say they should or should not be treated in a certain manner. We can't say such things regarding nothing.
I'm not sure what you mean by this particular phrase but certainly, when a person is born, it will most certainly consume resources other people in more pressing situations could have used, will need other people to attend to their needs directly or indirectly, get hurt, get sick, get old, and die.
I don't really get the logic that not procreating does not equate to preventing at least one 'something' to exist once born and suffer.
What's that an argument for? Extermination or time travel? When a person is born, there's a person we need to think about. We could try to address those issues in a sensible manner.
Quoting OglopTo
It prevents a whole load of other things too, which you chose not to mention. Mentioning only suffering is a reflection of bias and an appeal to emotion.
Being born isn't against one's consent. There is no person to grant or not grant consent prior to conception, and in fact, there is no person to grant or not grant consent at conception either. It takes development of a fetus for there then be a person there, and arguably it takes development of the baby once it's born for there to be a person there.
Furthermore, in my view, we make way to big of a deal about consent violations such as groping others. In my opinion the consent violations that matter are those that physically harm the other person long term.
That matters because they were a person with opinions about what they'd like done to them prior to being asleep or in a coma.
With a baby born who immediately goes into a coma, there are no consent issues re medical treatment. The baby wasn't a person with opinions about such things. And in fact, we even treat minors who might have opinions about such things as not being the ultimate arbiter for them. We don't legally or socially treat minors as fully autonomous persons. Hence why parents can force kids to do all sorts of things without issue.
I don't get the disposition of people who are so miserable that they see everything, or at least such a significant portion of experience, as suffering with a strong negative connotation either. I always figure that they must basically be Eeyores to us Tiggers, Roos, Kangas, Owls, Poohs, etc, and I always figure that what would really do them good is professional psychiatric help.
You are conflating my argument and Ciceronianuses response to it.
Life is founded on and created by a lack of consent. It is not created by stopping freedom of assembly.
It is created by a non consensual act. Creating a child does not impact on their ability to assemble but it does impact on consent because it is an nonconsensual act. How can you justify carrying out a non consensual act that affects someone else in the long run?
Intention matters also because you can be jailed for planning crime. If you planned to torture your child (as has happened) whilst trying to get pregnant you intend to behave immorally towards a future person who will exist.
Hiding behind the ambiguity of "existence" is unconvincing. Planning to create a child is planning to create someone you know by experience of other children/humans will have volition and exhibit consent issues
Successful suicide is the tip of the iceberg more people attempt it or have suicidal ideation. The unwillingness to commit suicide does not logically denote the value of life.
Self preservation can be simply a biological instinct forced on one or based on hope or delusion. It is genuinely not easy to commit suicide the only reason it becomes easy is when you are in extreme pain mental usually or physical. I took two overdoses when I was younger. Why should someone be put in that situation in the first place?
You can't offer someone life because they don't exist initially. They can accept life once you've created them but they can't be deprived of it before they begin to exist.
I don't think consent is just an issue of whether the act in question brings happiness. Just the simple fact of not having consented can cause suffering (it does for me) I found it easier to be imposed upon as a child until I discovered it was unjustified.
I said you harm someone by creating them not be fore they exist. The act of creating them entails future harm. Creating someone is bringing them into existence
.
Some parents have been told that their child will inherit a genetic illness so they are actively creating a certainty of suffering. Are you claiming that the act of creating a person has no moral dimension even when you know full well what it will cause and what it entails. The law recognises intent to harm this way.
Just the first seconds of the below video will show you what harm can becaused by creating someone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aAD0yJ3SdQ
An unconscious person cannot consent to sex but that does not make rape alright. An unconscious person will be able to consent in the future but then so will the child a person intends to have.
I don't think it is a genuine metaphysical problem because a lot of human life is based on confident predictions. It would only not be a problem if there was no evidence provided to parents that the world contained suffering or that a child would express desires.
It is not magical (unless that is ones metaphysical position) to be able to predict the future and contemplate the result of actions. Thoughts and concepts do not physically exist like a physical child (being abstract or mental) but they are a reality.
It's reasonable to expect that there are no positive consequences for the person raped. Saving the life of a person in coma would be far more accurate.
Well I do have an issue "with parents forcing kids to do things"
I have never said to someone "don't rape me when I am asleep" someone does not need to voice an opinion explicitly for you to imagine how they might feel.(accurately)
I was forced to go to church several times of week and forced to go to school where I was getting bullied. So forcing things on children is not essential and benevolent. I prefer to ask a child how they feeling or read their expressions. Babies cry to express discontent. It is exactly childhood indoctrination that creates people willing to be imposed on. Lots of people justify bad doctrines and its all they've known.
Whether the person exists prior or after is irrelevant. There is no consent and the are potentially detrimental consequences for the person who is to exist.
That the person doesn't exist even immediately after being born is irrelevant as well. The person will exist at some point after their existence is caused.
Ok so if a person is born in coma it's okay to cause them pain and then wake them up.
Check mate anti-natalists!
The issue we are discussing is whether you can harm someone or behave immorally if the person is unable to consent. The counter argument is you can't harm someone by creating them. They didn't exist when you made the decision to create them.
Some people are raped on many occasions as a child and that is a product of creating them. If life was paradise then consent would be less of an issue but that is far from the exploitative unequal world we actually live in.
The main issue however is that no one consented to come into existence and that undermines argument concerning consent. How can we say it is wrong to infringe someone's consent when, how we were created was nonconsensual?
People do reject life (suicide) or they just genuinely dislike it. You have to consider what it is like to be the victim in this scenario who didn't ask for life then suffer either through harms or just through not enjoying life itself.
This is something I can completely get behind of and almost exactly what I would've originally posted, had you not been faster. There is always an option, and a person who makes a free choice shouldn't complain about the choice they made, having known the possible consequences of the decision.
It's not an issue of whether you say it. It's an issue of being a person, a sentient being, who has opinions on such things.
And not everyone has the same opinon, by the way.
Re forcing kids to do things, I think to some extent it's beneficial, and I surely wouldn't want to change laws so that parents would get into trouble for all sorts of non-violent consent violations. I think it's a good thing that we require that kids go to school and that most parents make their kids eat stuff other than Twinkies and Coca Cola.
I tend to look at children as a continuum from "dictatorial subject" basically to fully autonomous adult.
So with life it is not the quality of life that is the issue but the lack of consent.
Irrelevant to whom? Not to me. It can be irrelevant to you.
Quoting BlueBanana
Again, MY concern with consent is when something is done against someone's consent, and that's MY only concern with it. And even at that, I only really care about violent consent violations with long-lasting physical effects. You can have a different view, obviously.
I agree with the consensus that it's okay to do things like operations on them and then wake them up, yes.
You'd have a much easier time persuading me that we should be able to outright euthanize infants (at least a la Peter Singer) than you'd have of persuading me of antinatalist nonsense.
The problem on my view is when someone doesn't want you to do something but you do it anyway. (And once again, also on my view, this is only a problem when we're talking about something with long-lasting physical effects.)
Of course that's possible. That's not the question, the question is whether the specific case of being created is an example of such an action.
There are people who don't like living, sure. But it's about expected value. There are by far more people who enjoy life. There's the possibility of causing suffering by creating a person, but there's also the possibility of creating happiness, and on average the latter is what happens.
But there's even more. The happiness and misery are not equal because of the capability of people to change their situation. A person can end their misery with a suicide, or even get happy in the best case scenario, but a person who doesn't exist can't decide to exist and be happy.
Existing isn't something a person is forced to. It's a choice. It's both the choice and the opportunity to make the choice.
And the answer is that this is only an issue when we're actually talking about a person, which entails that they have opinions about these sorts of things, etc.
Are you referring to a "wrongful birth" action? That's in the nature of medical malpractice; the duty breached is that of the physician to the parents. Or, perhaps you're referring to a "wrongful life" action, but that again is a negligence action against a doctor generally by the parents or guardians of a diseased child, and is a cause of action which isn't recognized by most jurisdictions by my understanding. In either case, though, the "harm" experienced occurs after existence begins.
So, there is no someone who is harmed by virtue of coming into existence in and of itself. Merely coming to exist isn't a harm. After coming into existence, a person is subject to harm for a number of reasons, virtually all of them identifiable as people, things, other causal agents, to which the responsibility for harm may be attributed.
Isn't that an antinatalist opinion?
Quoting Terrapin Station
I didn't mention operations, I'm talking of pain for the sake of it, just to cause them both physical and emotional pain. Hypothetical scenario, of course.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I suppose you mean without, not against?
Certain assumptions of what opinions the person is going to have once they exist can be made.
Not unless you have a really unusual definition of antinatalism. Maybe you do. I can't know unless you tell me.
Again, I'm not really against the idea of allowing infanticide, so . . .
Quoting BlueBanana
No, I said against because I mean against.
They could be, but I'd not base any ethical stances on that.
If birth has negative value, wouldn't killing the baby immediately prevent that negative value of potential suffering?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Ok...
Quoting Terrapin Station
So it's morally right to do a person in coma or sleeping anything as long as they haven't specifically forbid that? No, as long as the consequences of an action are expected to be negative or have a high risk of being that, those actions are needed a consent for to be done and without consent those things are by default not done.
Quoting BlueBanana
If birth has "negative value" to whom?
Doesn't antinatalism believe the birth to be negative to the person who is born because the life of the person who is born is suffering and mainly negative? Idk, that isn't my opinion, we just got side tracked because you compared an idea I though was antinatalist to antinatalism as if it wasn't.
Yeah, but one huge problem with that on my view is that value is always to an individual. I'm a value subjectivist (and an ethical subjectivist, etc.). This is one of the reasons that antinatalism is nonsense.
So if you're asking my opinion, it only makes sense to say that something has such and such value to a particular person. There is no value other than that.
Ok, so we rephrase that so that people's subjective opinion of their own life quality and its worth is negative. If the question is how we compare these subjective experiences, we can just take the premise that everyone believes their own life to be a negative thing.
But we're getting side tracked, this isn't even my opinion on subject. The reason I'm arguing against you is just that I disagree with your arguments and opinions leading to the conclusion that being born and making someone exist is a good thing.
What our disagreement is that whether what makes an action morally wrong is the lack of consent or the person not giving consent. I'd like to get back to this situation:
Quoting BlueBanana
Here the person exists, which imo proves the argument that whether the person exists prior to the action is relevant to be incorrect, as the situation is similar to creating a person in the sense that the person is incapable of giving the consent.
No I'm not. That analogy was directed at your argument. Look at the first few lines. "People can't consent to being born. It creates a massive problem". These are your words, not his, and I dispute them. People can't exercise their right to assembly without first being born, either. If anything, that's an argument [i]for[/I] being born. That way, they can consent to life, or, analogously, exercise their human rights. Either that or it's nonsense.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Notice the switch there, people? Lack of consent, lack of assembly. It's not stopping assembly, it's not stopping consent.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It is created by a non-assembly act.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
They don't have an ability to assemble, just as they don't have an ability to consent. That's why it's nonsense.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Consent doesn't come into it, just as assembly doesn't come into it.
But as for how the act is justified, it's done so on the basis that it's a gamble that might well pay off, like many other acts. And you can fold at any time. Once you're here, as you and I are, it isn't about that, or at least it shouldn't be. Blaming parents can be a sign of immaturity and of trying to evade personal responsibility.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, intention matters to some extent, and in cases like that, which are very particular.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That's to be dealt with at a time when it's meaningful to do so, and not before.
But I didn't say I think it's a good thing. It's not an inherently good thing or bad thing. Whether it's a good or bad thing is up to each individual, once they've developed mentally to be able to make such judgments.
Re the other thing, I said that I object to it in general when we're talking about:
(a) a person--they must have personhood, which means that they have a sufficiently developed mentality that they can have opinions about such things,
(b) they do have opinons about such things, whether they've expressed them out loud or not,
(c) when their opinion about having things done to them when they're in a coma, etc. would be that they'd not grant consent to that, and
(d) when someone took a chance and gambled that they'd not object to it (but the person got that gamble wrong--they unconscious party would object to it).
In the case of something like an infant, (a), (b) and (c) do not obtain. However, I wouldn't object to a prohibition on something like physically mutilating an infant, where we do not kill them, so that the physical effects would last well into the point of their life where (a), (b) and (c) do obtain.
But if you make someone exist, it's basically the same thing. (a), (b) and (c) do not apply but you're causing the physical effect of them physically existing which lasts into the point where they do apply.
"People can't consent to being born."
Firstly, you don't know that. If people are souls, and souls exist prior to birth, then it is possible they do consent to being born.
Secondly, if people are not souls and come into existence at some moment defined as "being born" then there is no one prior to that moment that could either consent, refuse or be "forced" to be born; so your premise would then be incoherent.
Quoting BlueBanana
That contrast is an effective way of showing the one-sided, cherry-picking nature of typical anti-natalist arguments like Andrew's above. They're always shot with loaded language full of negative connotations. Look here, not there. Don't get distracted. Focus on rape and suffering. I know, let's call something "abuse". Feel bad yet?
But you're opinion is at odds with the law. People have been imprisoned for criminal intentions and these intentions have not been aimed at a specific person. People have made plans to abuse children when they are born.
I think you are being disingenuous. If someone told you" I am going to have children because I want to make money from child pornography and have fun torturing them" would you ignore their intentions because there plans for children that did not yet exist? That is an extreme case which has actually been documented however.
But there are more common cases like drug addicts having children, religious fanatics, alcoholics an so on. There are a wide range of people that we can easily assess would make bad parents that would damage a child, before their child is actually conceived. Almost everyone has a scenario in which they think someone else is an inappropriate parent, most pro-lifers probably oppose gay surrogacy cases. So it is quite easy to consider the fate of a child before it is conceived or cast judgement on parenting aspirations.
Just like you can assess the probability of your future child getting cancer etc.
The whole point of antinatalism is that suffering is very real including thousands of rapes everyday. That is what needs focusing on because these are real people condemned to suffer.
If there wasn't war, genocide, torture, famine and so on, there would be less antinatalists.
The issue of consent runs deep. Consent to existence seems like a minor problem for someone thoroughly enjoying life. But consent is a glaring issue for those suffering and in various cases forced to commit suicide. But I am focusing on the contradiction or hypocrisy of valuing consent at all when the nature of creating somone is the complete opposite of consent.
Imagine someone has been brutalised as child (a Yazidi child by ISIS say) Then they are sitting next to someone on a bus and accidentally step on their toe getting up. The person gets angry at them( like sometimes happen.) It is ludicrous that a minor perceived violation of someone causes distress but these accidents and impositions are nothing like having a whole child hood or lifetime of pain imposed on you by nature or others.
There is no coherent way a pre existing soul could force someone to be their parent.
As a childless person how could a pre existing soul force me to be their parent?
By creating a child through intercourse the parents are making it possible for a new person arise and Without that sex act, which I have never heard being blamed in spirits ,then a soul could not enter this temporary realm.
Why are people so desperate to create this temporary state that ends in certain death? Death either makes us oblivious we ever existed or we go back to the hypothetical spirit world.
I have cared on and off for a relative who has now been seriously ill for around 15 years (paralysed, feeding tube etc). Imagining a cosy family unit is nice fantasy but the reality is often harsher. I can enjoy my fantasy infallible family in my head.
Maybe the soul chooses which fertilized ovum to enter. No "forcing" is necessary since the parents would know nothing of it.
If there are good reasons for souls to be born, then people procreating are performing an essential service.
The "issue" of consent is a non-issue. It's a nonsense, as has been explained.
This is leading to the semantic quibble I was aiming to avoid.
The right to assemble is something that someone may want after being born but consent is an issue about personal integrity and the basis of obligation etc. Your overall response was incoherent to me.
I deliberately did not say "we did not consent to be born" I just pointed out that it was a non consensual act. (Even though personally as I have elaborated I think we can easily and rationally imagine a child not consenting to the life they have to lead)
So if the act by which we come to exist is non consensual and that that existence can be very painful how can we coherently advocate consent? I think people are completely justified in not being stoical about suffering they did not choose. If society undermines consent we undermine the grounds for politics and law which is why society does have a farcical and dystopian feel.
Glad we agree.
Quoting John
If pigs can fly, and one just flew past my window, then...
Quoting John
Yes, trivially, it's worded such that it's problematic. To reword it: there is nothing there which could consent to being born.
The whole point of antinatalism is avoiding suffering especially unnecessary suffering, which a lot is. The suffering is non consensual because suffering is something endowed by nature. So while you can embrace some suffering if you want we are talking cases where someones life is marred by suffering.
Consent is a bigger issue than suffering for me as a child who was forced continuously to do unpleasant things and was attacked by others. I can choose to expose myself to some discomfort if I desire to do something. I don't have the right to chose suffering for another person to fulfill my desire to be a parent.
I could have succeeded in my first suicide attempt when I was 17 and what would that have achieved? That would have silenced me, made my parents looks like victims and no acknowledgement would be made of the bullying at school etc. What frustrates me is we haven't even got near rational parenting and social justice and people are resistant to full parental accountability or examining the role of procreating in social and personal ills.
How in the world are you figuring that mutilation and "physical effect of them physically existing" would be at all the same thing in my view?
(Not to mention that doing something to somebody is different than talking about actions that would be towards a non-existent "entity")
I'm surprised you didn't realize that was not my statement, but was quoted from the OP.
As I mentioned unless the parents initially have sex there is no fertilization process. And contraceptives are also used to avoid this.
Nevertheless there is no evidence for this scenario. It has the absurd and grotesque consequences that you are essentially claiming a child murdered by her parents chose those parents.
Even if a soul wanted me as a parent I would prevent them from coming here because I know what this life is like. So even if a soul desire to exist here for this temporary time we can chose not to let them via contraceptives.
And I don't believe most parents even put this depth of analysis into the reproductive act..
It was an analogy. The one and the other do not have to be exact in every way. The distinction you make doesn't seem to address my criticism. Perhaps you'd like to try again?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That doesn't avoid the problem I brought up. It doesn't even address it. It's like calling a banana agnostic. Consent doesn't come into what you're talking about, like knowledge doesn't come into the example I just gave. You're talking nonsense.
I believe we can freely think and move our bodies (usually) but..we can't choose our parents, our gender, our race,our school etc. When you create someone you are already determining a lot of things about them so they will be acting within severe constraints.
Consent does come up when creating a child because a future child will have the ability to consent in the same way and unconscious person will when he or she awakes.
Your protest is ridiculous, as if you are incapable of imagining a future state of being.
When you are creating a child it certainly seems you are imagining you are doing the future child a favour or else what else could you be thinking?
You are making it sound like before birth a parent never thinks about the future child. People paint nurseries blue and buy toys when trying for a child.
Consent is an issue because humans (or at least i certainly do) value consent. So because we cannot consent to come to exist here the whole act is undermined and dystopian. An analogy is if someone told you that they could make you an elixir of life that could only be made by killing ten people. The outcome desirable but the methodology is hopelessly flawed.
How does a history of slavery, genocide, war, sexism, famine etc add up to existence being good? I can't see how that picture could be subjectively good either. Objectively there has been and still is appalling suffering. An individuals personal happiness does not mitigate this. Even if my own life was idyllic I wouldn't overlook the burden of history. I am not content for people to starve to death so I can continue propagating life. It is not like antinatalism is a response to a scratched knee or mild cold.
You can't chose to be born but then you can't chose to be black or grow up in poverty. (But you can choose this for your child)
If we took consent seriously we would not harbour such a bad just world bias.
The argument is bunk because there is no one to harm. QED.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with having sex, either with or without contraceptives. I am not claiming that the only reason for sex is procreation,either. Many people want to have children and people also find great fulfillment in sex that is not engaged with that purpose in mind at all, but is just an expression of love. If people want children, they don't know beforehand what those children will be like. None of this is inconsistent with the idea of souls choosing where and from whom to be born. I am not at all asserting that this is the case, either; just that you don't know what is the case regarding the origin of persons; no one does.
There is no "evidence" for any metaphysical "scenario", and I agree that if a child murdered by her parents chose those parents it would certainly seem an unfortunate choice. But what if that were an experience needed for that soul's development? Surely that would make it less "grotesque" than if it were purely a senseless and meaningless death. Again, though, I am not arguing that this kind of theosophical or 'New Age' notion reflects reality. I don't know if it does or not; and neither do you know that, nor anybody else; it is simply a possibility we can imagine, that is the point. People choose for many reasons, none of them purely rational, what to believe about such things.
The imaginary scenario I have outlined would not contain the possibility that a soul would want you as parent unless you have fertilized (presuming you are male) an ovum, so you are not "preventing" anything.
I'm surprised that you didn't realise that I did in fact realise that. Although perhaps you did, and the above was an attempt to fight fire with fire - in which case, don't think I don't realise that, because I do. I realise [i]everything[/I]. There's no pulling the wool over [i]my[/I] eyes!
So, you were merely being flippant then? And now you contradict yourself in saying both that you are surprised I didn't realize that, and that you realize that I did realize that. In any case I agree, there's certainly no point pulling wool over the eyes of the blind.
The only problem with that view is that most people identify with their conscious sense of who they are, for which those processes are not part of their conscious identity. But if you expand your sense of who you are to incorporate the unconscious, cultural archetypes, and so on, then you can learn to see yourself as part of a progression instead of a single isolated 'self' who started at Year X and will stop at Year Y.
But we weren't discussing a child in the future, or a conscious person, both of which can of course consent. We were discussing consent in relation to that which cannot consent - which is evident from your title - which is like discussing knowledge in relation to that which cannot know.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No, I am quite capable of doing that, but I'm not going to let you get away with this bait-and-switch. Presumably, you now mean to refer to a being in the future which [i]can[/I] consent to things. That would make [i]more[/I] sense, but still wouldn't make sense in relation to being born. That doesn't escape the problem, all that does is switch from
a problem in the present to a problem in the future. Either way, it makes no sense to consent to being born. Talking about a lack of consent makes about as much sense as talking about a lack of flamingos. And you call [i]my[/I] position ridiculous?!
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Imagination is your criteria for what makes sense? So if I imagine that the walls are listening to me, and like what I have to say, then that makes sense, does it?
Of course people imagine what their baby would be like. Of course people make such preparations. Of course people value consent [i]when it's meaningful[/I]. Only a tiny minority value consent when it isn't, as anti-natalists such as yourself argue for.
In what you quoted? Yes. In the rest of that comment? No. You addressed the flippant remark, but decided not to address the serious points.
(And I was being flippant when I contradicted myself, too. I'm always flippant, except when I'm not).
Fair enough, but although your "serious" points were perhaps not intended to be flippant I found them too lightweight/superficial/ ill-considered/trivial to warrant any kind of response,
let alone a serious one, so I passed on those.
That's also fair enough. I think that that's as much a comment on your own original comment, to which I replied, as it is to my reply. It was kind of like-for-like. I matched your if-then with a suitable if-then of my own.
But I did provide a resolution to your nitpicking in the second point, if I understood it correctly. If the reference to a person is problematic, as it implies someone where there is no one, then lose the reference to a person.
Right, affirmative ethics eschews harm and manipulation of other people but fails to account for the single instance of harm and manipulation that makes the rest of harm and manipulation possible (and affirmative ethics as well).
It's unreasonable to think someone has to be consciously aware at the present state in order to qualify for respecting consent. For consent has to do with what a person would like to have done to them, which implies a future instance of that person, even if this person has no instances at the present.
If a person is born and finds they do not like existing, and wish they had never been born, it is coherent for them to say that their capacity to consent was not respected, even if it is true that, if it was respected, they would not exist in the first place. The situation can be revealed in a different way: had this person actually existed before they existed, would they have consented? So it's really actually less about the actual action of violating consent and more about avoiding a problematic situation in which someone feels as though their consent has been violated.
The same "issue" can be seemingly applied to instances of obvious wronged births, such as people born with Tay-Sach's disease. Does it really make sense to say these people are not harmed when coming into existence? Perhaps - but perhaps we can just say that those who exist with Tay-Sach's disease are harmed, and therefore to exist with Tay-Sach's disease is to be harmed.
Existence being the base conditional requirement for a harm or a manipulation does not make it less problematic. It actually makes it more problematic. And these qualms about non-existence are easily solved with some language analysis.
Rubbish. My comment was not intended to be flippant or significant, I just responded assuming that you must have been silly enough to seriously believe it was my comment you were responding to, as unlikely as that may have seemed that anyone would think that: since I couldn't think of any other sensible reason why you would bother saying you were glad that we agreed. I was being charitable in fact.
Quoting Sapientia
Again rubbish. If you read it carefully you will see that you just repeated in different words the same point I made in my comment, and didn't "resolve" anything at all. Basically, as I see it at least, you're a carping, pedantic competitive poster with nothing of much seriousness or interest to say, Sap, and to be honest I'm not interested in attempting to carry on discussions with such kinds of uncharitable minds. I know I've said this before; hopefully next time I'll be sensible enough not to take the bait. If you want to get serious and change to a less tendentious style, of course I'm prepared to revise my assessment. It's nothing personal. :)
How are they not? You yourself said you don't consider the baby to be a person yet, so within the premise of OP that life is suffering and pain the situations are very similar. Of course the premise is wrong but my objective is showing that your arguments don't prove the OP wrong without directly attacking the premise instead.
Because people cannot consent to being born (conceived) then it can't be a consensual act (creating someone).
There can be no sense in which we really have consented to what happens to us. If I was born an Indian woman I couldn't consent to being woman or Indian even if eventually I am okay with that situation.
I couldn't consent to have lungs or needing to eat to survive. Most people have to work to survive. Sothe lack of consent permeates life. People accept certain affairs that happen to them (resignation)
Even a millionaires child with privileges is forced into this lifestyle as opposed to choosing these parents and this lifestyle.
I think reproduction is an act of physical force and when the baby is growing in the womb its growth is an involuntary act.
If abortion is available the parents can abort the child to prevent possible future suffering. Parents can use contraceptives to prevent a needless child existing. So it is not an inevitable existence.
The famous Libet experiments appear to demonstrate that there is a decision to act before one is consciously aware of it. These are often taken to disprove that free will or free choice exists. However another interpretation is that the conscious mind, the part of the mind that thinks it controls things and makes decisions, which we usually take to be the seat of the will, actually isn't the seat of the will at all. So what we take to be 'ourselves' might really only be an artefact of thought. That is what gives rise to the notion that we didn't choose to be born - because, of course, 'I' can choose no such thing, prior to being born. But what if the real seat of the will is not the 'I' that imagines itself to be in charge of itself?
I'm not saying anything about suffering or pain or anything mental. One is mutilation. The other isn't.
You seem to have misunderstood again. That wasn't what I was talking about. I've moved on from that. I specifically referred to the if-then in your original comment, by which I meant the following:
Quoting John
I was saying that I matched your "lightweight/superficial/ill-considered/trivial" if-then above with a "lightweight/superficial/ill considered/trivial" if-then of my own.
Quoting John
Yes, I think I misinterpreted it. It does resolve a problem, actually, but not one that needed to be brought up in reply to your second point, so never mind. Just shadowboxing, it turns out. No need to get your knickers in a twist. If we weren't saying anything different, then I can now say with sincerity that I'm glad that we agree on that particular point.
Which is wrong why? The exact act of mutilation is wrong for no reason because it has intrinsic moral value? No, it's wrong because it's harmful and causes pain (mainly mental) to the object.
How we come into existence as an independent consciousness is a puzzle. It is a puzzle a lot of people don't acknowledge. At some stage we become aware of being a specific "person" in a specific body in a specific era of time somewhere in space.
I feel fatalistic because of this. Maybe people are brought into this world to observe how wrong it is and to discourage it's propagation. I feel having entered this world seen terrible things and had lots of pain I am now here with this knowledge to discourage its propagation and at very least make it a more rational just world.
Because of people's mistaken attitude towards the creation of other people society can't be just. The Just world hypothesis and fundamental attribution error become rife.
I'm making a statement not an argument.
The statement is "People can't consent to being born".
If you accept that statement then you will see that coming to exist is not a consensual act.
If people cannot consent to be born for whatever reason then they are never going to come into existence through choice but be forced into existence. The parents do the act of making them exist through fertilisation.
I think it is a semantic quibble nonetheless people can't consent before they come to exist but we know they will be able to withhold consent and that we are not creating a robot.
"Where an unborn baby is likely to be in need of services from Children’s Social Care when born, a referral is to be made to Children’s Social Care."
"Where concerns exist regarding the mother’s ability to protect.
Where alcohol or substance abuse is thought to be affecting the health of the expected baby
Where the expectant parent(s) are very young and a dual assessment of their own needs as well as their ability to meet the baby’s needs is required
Where a previous child in the family has been removed because they have suffered harm or been at risk of significant harm"
And so on
http://www.teescpp.org.uk/safeguarding-the-unborn-baby
The concern is for the child's ability to suffer in the future.
Again, I'm a moral subjectivist, and more specifically I'm basically an emotivist. To emotivists, the reason that anything is right or wrong, morally permissible or impermissible, etc., is simply because we feel that something should be allowed or not--the idea is that people are effectively "yaying" or "booing" behavior.
Nothing has intrinsic moral value. That's moral objectivism. I'm not a moral objectivist. I'm a moral subjectivist. A noncognitivist. Under noncognitivism, there are no moral truth values. No statement of the type "It is wrong to murder" is true (or false). It's simply a matter of whether an individual yays or boos something. I boo physical nonconsensual (or against consent) violence, mutilation etc. with long-lasting effects. (I don't boo it with short-term effects, or at least I don't boo it very strongly.) On my view, nothing is wrong because "it's harmful and causes pain." That's way too broad/vague. On my view, there are no "mental harm" wrongs. I don't boo any of that.
And by the way, on my view, nothing has intrinsic value period. Value is always simply how an individual feels about the thing in question--how much they care about it, what it's worth to them, etc.Of course, it gets more complicated than that when we're talking about stuff like money, because that only works when we're interacting with others and value conventions end up being either practically or legally enforced--and that's the same thing with morality a la laws, but that interaction and those interactive facts do not change the fact that there is no value aside from individuals caring about things (or not) however they do.
Quoting Sapientia
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
This is the reason why I brought up the issue I quoted above, there are arguments that decouple the following claims: (1) coming to exists isn't a harm in and of itself and (2) the harm done after being born may be attributed to the causal agents. The two statements are coupled, in my view, and the intrinsic harms/suffering experienced after being born, while not a DIRECT cause of existing, are an inherent part of existing and hence it's useless to make the distinction.
Nitpicking on the actual agent that caused the harm on localized life events is only useful if you intend to do something about the causal agent. In the case of inherent harms in life like old age, sickness, loneliness, boredom, and anxiety/sadness about death which can at best be mitigated, coped with, or postponed, I don't think much can be done to "address those issues in a sensible manner". The point is, there's little use in decoupling the mere fact of existing with causal agents causing each particular localized harms.
" (...)a British-born Massachusetts resident planned to rape, murder and eat children(..)"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2417572/Geoffrey-Portway-dungeon-First-pictures-torture-dungeon-British-man-planned-rape-murder-eat-children-beneath-Massachusetts-house.html
If you read the article, he's actually been charged with possession and distribution of child pornography and soliciting the kidnapping of a child. He's not jailed simply because he wanted to harm children in the future. It's two different types of acts that are illegal that he allegedly committed. (Your posting strategy here is similar to the old IMDb Politics board--people continually misrepresented news stories there.)
You could just point out that soliciting is a category of illegal act that is about something that could have happened in the future but that didn't happen yet--the objection isn't to making an agreement, it's to the act(s) that one is agreeing or urging others to engage in, but then someone like me would just point out that we disagree with solicitation being illegal. There are a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be illegal in my view.
I would keep a category of "criminal threatening," but I define that very specifically.
Quoting OglopTo
No, I think that'd be a fallacy of questionable cause, given what you have in mind. If I stub my toe, it would make very little sense to say that being born was the cause of my resultant pain.
Except it's not. No one can exist before they exist, so you can't force the non-existent to exist. This is a logical refutation of your argument, showing that it depends on a contradiction and impossibility.
I think the "nitpicking" you refer to is essential to intelligent judgment in placing blame and in assessing harm. Those who delight in pontificating regarding the immorality of parents (which would include their own parents, of course) for having children, or maintaining that no one (else!) should be born, are indulging in an absolutism I can't accept, alas.
As I've said elsewhere, such a position strikes me as being analogous to the doctrine of Original Sin, so dear to so many absolutists throughout history. Sometime, somewhere in the course of evolution there were people or proto-people who coupled and produced children and through this sinful act thus began the vast parade of horror that has led to our own horrible lives, which should never have been.
I prefer to make judgments on a case by case basis, and avoid a post hoc ergo propter hoc approach by which parents are irrevocably subject to blame merely because they have a child, regardless of circumstances. Certainly there may be circumstances where people should not have children. However, the claim that nobody should have children because they will be harmed in some fashion which may or may not be serious--by e.g. stubbing a toe, or getting a cold, or being underappreciated, etc.--is one I find hard to respect.
I don't know what you think my argument is. I am stating the fact that we did not consent to be created or exist. So we are not here by consent or through our own desires.
I think coming to exist involves acts of of force such as physical forces involved in reproduction.
You can say that we are forced into existence. There is a force that makes us exist.
But you are playing on the ambiguities here. As has been said it is possible our "soul" exists before this body. What does coming to exist actually mean? (since the exploitation and abuse of children rests on it)
What concerns the individual is their consciousness and volition. The matter that our bodies are created from does have a prior existence (cannot be created or destroyed). So it is not that some part of us only starts to exist on birth. It is like a potter forces clay together to make a jar.
So what are you saying does not exist prior to birth?
None of this is a get out clause for exposing someone to suffering.
If the social services know that there are a couple who intend to create a child and they are alcoholics and drug users with criminal records, do you have a problem with them voicing a concern for any future child the couple may have?
Are you claiming we should only be concerned about someone when they start to exist and that we should not try to prevent any people existing even if we know they will live in poverty or inherit a severe disability etc?
You can try and prevent suffering quite coherently before someone is born. Parents will move house and get better jobs and so on before trying for a child. There is nothing incoherent about planning for a future child. You can plan to complete undermine the future childs consent.
In the case I highlighted I find it absurd if you think the man who has claimed he wants to rape and cannibalise a child and has a cage to imprison them etc in his basement, should not be imprisoned. The mean clearly presented a danger to children.
As someone else said the issue with consent and birth is that consent isn't possible so that we can never arrive here through consent.You can't claim someone consented to be born, consented to be a girl, consented to get cancer and so on.
I think if we value consent we have to assign responsibility properly because current;y consent only comes into play after a lot of imposition.
I also think you can't argue for a ham based morality if we people are allowed to harm people by creating them in harm prone bodies that will eventually die. So I think procreation undermines a lot of moral positions ( maybe not deontology.)
Sorry for seeming to digressing in my previous responses, it was not intentional. But if you view "consent" as some sort of assigning responsibility for someone who cannot give consent, it will inevitably lead to a subjective valuation (as I think @Sapientia and @Ciceronianus the White is trying to imply) of whether there is something wrong with the current state of affairs, e.g. what is wrong that life is imposed or what is wrong that there is suffering?
I think if someone consents to something that gives them some accountability or responsibility.
I think if someone creates someone else then the person created cannot be responsible for her existence but the creator can.
I think the only responsibilities people have is towards the children they created. if you have a child whilst in a broken marriage or poverty that is your responsibility and an unjustifiable burden on the child.
And I think that this is also the point raised by some participants in this thread, that we should pass judgment on a case to case basis. I think this is more easily acceptable than claiming the wrongness of mindful acts leading to procreation, regardless of circumstance, which I currently hold as a worldview stemming from my biased valuation of suffering.
Yes. I'd have a problem with that.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Again, I'd have a problem with that.
Also, associating suffering with economic level and the lack of physical disabilities shows that you don't have a good handle on just what it is that makes people happy or not. You're thinking that possessing particular things or abilities is the answer.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Unless we specify just what counts as suffering or not, I'd not agree to using that as any sort of demarcation criterion.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Then find that absurd. I couldn't be more against criminalizing ANY speech, expressed desires, etc.
I think a lot of the opposition on this thread amounts to semantics or exploiting ambiguity.
Children are exposed to suffering and the body and mind we possess is clearly liable to cause suffering. Even non-malicious parents can cause suffering in different ways if not just by creating the persons fallible body.
What is important here is that this was not a consensual situation. No one is to blame for their own suffering. The ambiguity of coming into existence and causality is not sufficient to make parents blameless.
And its strange that whilst people excuse parents of various thing blaming the individual is quite common. I think we should intervene immediately in a child's life to ensure it has the best possible life and at the very least regulate parents. It is a waste of time trying to "improve" things whilst having no profound parental responsibility.
But because he had an actual cage and chains in his basement it wasn't just a desire and speech. And a hate speech can incite violence.
People can get longer sentences than a murderer for hiring a killer. I personally find that strange since the killer was not forced or caused to kill by the person hiring them. But hiring a killer is greatly increasing the chance of a person being murdered.
But again I don't think you can just wait for a crime to happen before acting.
In my view you can't say that someone didn't consent to be born, etc. either. Not consenting to something is an action in my view. It's not the default.
It's not illegal to have a cage and chains, etc. (or at least it shoudln't be)
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No one can demonstrate that it causes violence, and I'd only accept a causal demonstration. And we can easily show that the same exact speech, said to many people, doesn't cause violence at all. So that's even stronger support that it's not causal than the mere fact that we can't demonstrate causality.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Sure, and I think that's ridiculous. It's not at all as if I agree with laws just because they're laws.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
If I were king I'd have a category of criminal threatening, but I define that pretty narrowly.
So basically you now throw away all the arguments you have said in this thread, for example whether the person exists and has opinions prior to the harm being caused matters, and instead go for the "I just feel that way"? Ok.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Just out of curiosity, how about that feeling about the thing in question?
What? I'm not really following you. What argument (or comment) specifically are you referring to? I didn't actually say anything about "mattering," so I'm not sure what you have in mind there.
Quoting BlueBanana
I have no idea what you're asking there.
Well basically every argument of yours other than feelings, but especially the a-b-c-d list that was on page 3 if I remember correctly. What I don't just get is how to fit both emotivism and other arguments into same opinion on morals.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If nothing has intrinsic value because the value is based on persons' feelings about those things, doesn't the feeling about that thing that defines the value have intrinsic value?
Oh, well there I'm detailing my feelings about it. Anything like that was just reporting my feelings a la yaying/booing in more or less detail.
Quoting BlueBanana
Well "the thing that defines the value" is the individual person in question. So you're asking about whether "the feeling" (Whose feeling? And in what context?) about the individual person in question has intrinsic value? Is that right?
Quoting Terrapin Station
I kind of agree with Terrapin, but for a different reason. Technically, you can do both, but you can't do either without seeming to partake in talk that just isn't sensible. The obvious question is, why on earth would you be talking about consent or the lack thereof in relation to these things to begin with? It's bizarre.
What would you think if I said that chairs don't speak loud enough? Or that apples were not surprised at the recent general election result? Or that people didn't protest against the big bang at the time?
That wasn't the issue. I feel slightly ludicrous having to explain this. He didn't have these things ornamentally but as part of a plot to harm someone in the future.
I find is implausible that you cannot imagine someone planning to harm someone in the future. It is just not plausible.
If the weather report says it will rain into two days it is rational to find an umbrella before the the actual event exists.
Your position seems to rest on an implausibility. The idea that you can predict nothing about the future and nothing about the future welfare of a person. You know that most humans created will have desires that can be thwarted and will desire consent.
The ability of a person to have desires after they have been created means these potential desires can be taken into consideration. The child you plan to have is not a total mystery like a new species but will share common traits.
Have you not heard of hypotheticals? There is nothing bizarre about predicting the future based on the past.
Hello science!
We are not talking about whether a non existent person should be able to consent but that the future person who comes to exist will be able to withhold consent and have desires and that these desires can be in opposition to your act of creating them.
I don't think you can grant consent to someone after you have forced them into existence or coerced. You are clearly imposing your own desires on someone by choosing to create them.
I have no problem saying that the person was planning to hurt someone.
I have a problem with making planning illegal.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I don't feel that it's categorically a problem to have desires that are thwarted.
You keep talking about it as if the person exists prior to conception. You can't impose anything on anyone who doesn't exist.
Think - when we are born we have nothing to lose but nothingness itself, which is really quite a baffling exchange given that once existing as individual we come to realize that we did not choose to be.
if someone cannot consent to be created then you should not create them. You cannot be acting in their benefit or based on them expressing any desire to exist.
Because consent to come into existence is impossible then everyone is here not at her request. There is no consent to life. There is no ethical justification for causing someone to exist and no need to create new people and lots of good reasons not to create new people and expose them to harm.
I think intending to harm someone is not far removed from harming them.
I think it is inaccurate, for instance, to say there is no harm in deciding to have children because for example my mother knew my father didn't have an affinity with children before she had children with him. then I was forced to do lots of things as a child and am now forced to try and survive as an adult and I certainly feel my life was an imposition not a gift.
It is a semantic quibble to say life was not imposed on me because I certainly did not choose my parents or my body or my childhood experiences.
If parents took seriously what they are doing to a child then they would have to plan to have a child much more seriously.
For instance your children are consuming and competing for limited resources and your children can have a negative effect on other people. For example I was bullied for years as a child. Also children in other countries are used as slaves in mines or have to work in sweat shops having a child isn't a neutral act with no ramifications
There are lots of ramifications for creating new people particular in the context within which you create them which is a connection of relationships.
If someone is unconscious they can't consent. So you can violate their consent without them having to be able to vocalise it. Unless you want to claim we can do what we like to unconscious people. The same way you assume a sleeping person isn't consenting to sex you can assume things about future humans.
If a child had the choice to be born to millionaire or to be born in a slum facing hunger do you think any child would choose the slum over the wealthy existence?
A child can't withhold their consent to grow up in a slum but you can safely assume that that life will harm them and would not be something they would choose.
I love baroque music and it is harmless but I wouldn't assume my child would like it... so I certainly wouldn't assume my child would like any form of harm let alone simply having my tastes forced on them.
Indeed, why cause the burden of life to exist in the first place for a new person when there did not have to be a burden in the first place? To see it have to overcome obstacles? What they will say is that there are goods that just must be experienced (relationships, accomplishment, entertainment, pleasure, learning, self-actualization, etc.). Apparently someone NEEDS to be born in order to experience these goods, despite the burdens of life and any structural or contingent suffering that will or may occur.
Hence the significance accorded to marriage in traditional culture.
Since, children didn't consent to being born, it implies that parents have committed a moral wrong. The consquences in the OP - the unaviodable suffering and pain that accompanies life - don't even matter. Absence of consent, in and of itself, is sufficient to qualify the act of proceeation as immoral. The suffering and pain of life just clinches the argument against bearing children.
The whole argument rests on two pillars:
1. Consent was not taken
2. Life is suffering
On the matter of 1, some posters have said that it's irrelevant because consent was impossible and what is impossible can't be of moral significance. It's impossible to remove gravity from our lives and to include it in moral, or any other, evaluation would be unreasonable, to say the least. In short, the distinction ''can't'' vs ''didn't'' matters. Children can't consent not didn't consent. That, some say, relieves the parents of moral responsibility in birthing children and, simulaltaneously, surrenders a child's autonomy to the parents. Is this true?
Empirical data suggests that this is true. Many situations exist where people can't consent e.g. when as a child, in a coma, in absentia, when mentally challenged, etc. At these times, someone - a loved one, friend, colleague, parent - makes the decision for the person, hopefully, keeping best interests in mind. As you can see, impossibility does matter - we're morally permitted to make decisions for others when it's a can't rather than a didn't consent.
2 is controversial and actually defies empirical evidence. [I]Most[/i] people aren't depressed, suicide is not as common as would be expected, people aren't avoiding having children, etc.
One could say that this is simply because people haven't given enough thought on the matter i.e. they fail to see the truth, the truth that life is suffering. If everyone were to just give a moment to consider the matter, everyone would see that life's just not worth it.
However, one could argue back along the same lines. Take Buddhism for example. It's central tenet is exactly what is your premise - life is suffering. But, according to the Buddha, this suffering has an irrational origin - unmoderated attachment, expecting more than is possible, clinging to the superficial, a failure to recognize and accept nature. So, right back at you, in fact, suffering is not because you haven't contrmplated the issue, rather, it's because you haven't.
In addition, the experience of life is improving - we're healthier, safer, happier than we were a thousand years ago. This trend is likely to continue and a few thousand years from now, life will be even better. This seriously undermines your argument. Life is a dynamic force, it progresses, and your argument ignores this crucial fact. Your argument was good in the past, is less applicable now, and will become utterly bad in the future.
Again untrue. Firstly my "if-then" is simply an examination of a purely logical possibility. It is neither lightweight, superficial, ill-considered nor trivial. And I was not being flippant, either. On the other hand you, apparently bereft of any argument against what I had said, flippantly offer up something which is not even a proper "if-then" (you don't even say what will or could be the case if pigs do fly).
And your 'contribution' to the discussion is not even a good analogy because although it is certainly possible that pigs might fly, they have never been observed doing so; whereas no observations at all that we are aware of have been made as to whether persons are souls that exist prior to birth, and in fact no conceivable means of observation that would satisfy empirical criteria could ever be made in that connection.
You make this kind of pathetic effort, and you wonder why I don't want to bother with you. At least try to use your brain a little more creatively instead of repeating the same old tired "commonsense cliche" objections :-}
I doubt whether people in traditional cultures, whether married or otherwise, gave, or even today give, much thought to planning childbirth. They could hardly avoid it in any case, and commonly relied on having as many children as possible to help carry the survival workload.
I agree with you that marriage should be invested with significance, and I also agree with you about how tiresome and childish the anti-life, anti-natal sheep are.
They could awaken from their "dogmatic slumbers" if they only used their energy and intelligence creatively for a change. In fact they would snap out of it very quickly if they had to face a genuine survival situation. It seems that they really want to cling on to this negative bullshit, God knows why. :s
Yes, of course I have. What about them? You need to bring this back to consent and go into more detail. Predicting the future based on the past is not bizarre in and of itself.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That science has to do with hypotheticals does not support your position.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Why mention that a person, once old enough, will be able to withhold consent if you aren't suggesting that a non-born non-person won't be able to do so, and that this ought to change? The consent angle is not sensible.
As for desires being in opposition to being procreated, I think that that is such a misguided thing to focus on [i]after the fact[/I], since nothing can be done about it - that you were procreated, that is. It's an epitome of that sort of thing, actually. And in terms of [i]beforehand[/I], I reiterate my earlier point about it being a gamble, like many other acts that we do, and that we find acceptable. Should we stop crossing roads? What about leaving the house?
You didn't answer my questions, so I'll repeat them. What would you think if I said that chairs don't speak loud enough? Or that apples were not surprised at the recent general election result? Or that people didn't protest against the big bang at the time? Or, here's another one, that dogs can't vote? Be honest. And remember that there's an implied ethical context.
I explained this at least a couple times above. The differences are whether we're actually talking about a person who has thoughts and opinions on what they would or wouldn't consent to.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
If they were only given that information probably not many would choose the slum. If they were given a Ghost of Christmas Future glimpse into what their lives would be like, more would choose the slum. Many wouldn't like having little contact with their parents but instead an endless stream of nannies, many wouldn't like the restrictions and pressures they'd have, including in private/prep schools, etc. Money doesn't make you happy. Particular possessions do not make you happy. You might think they would if you don't have access to them and you don't know many rich folks (and especially if one is also suffering from depression and is untreated), but they don't make you happy. Disposition/attitude, one's manner of looking at things, one's manner of acting/interacting with others, etc., regardless of possessions, is what makes one happy.
It is sensible to think of consent comparatively. There are situations in which people can consent to sex, and we use that as a comparison, but there are no situations in which nothings can consent to being created. There can be no such situation. We can't even conceive of it. That's why it's nonsense. It'd also be nonsense in a lesser sense if you're imagining a foetus or a "hypothetical" or "potential" person consenting. I don't conclude that we should treat lampposts with tender love and care because I can imagine that they would really appreciate that.
Ontologically it's rather just a category error. Folks make the mistake of thinking that there's a person prior to conception. There isn't. So it's a category error to talk about it as if we're talking about a person prior to procreation. Anything pertinent to persons is only an issue once a person exists.
Nice of you to chip in with some more loaded language. But calling it a burden doesn't quite do the trick. What if we call it a torment? Or compare it to torture? Oh no, we've had that one already. Abuse? No, wait, that's been done. Has someone brought up Hitler yet? What if we just spit at it?
I don't think it's simply a cateogry error. Nonexistence does imply a freedom from suffering. And I think we have real experiences that validate such a notion e.g. we put animals out of misery, which is I think, apart from being an euphemism for killing, roughly fits, what the OP has in mind.
Indeed, I agree, nonexistent people have no moral standing. We can't murder Harry Potter, neither can we make him happy. However, when it comes to birthing children, nonexistence has moral weight. To illustrate, don't we advise a friend against a movie, music, game, experience? We say a movie is so bad it's not worth watching and these are minor issues compared to life. Life can be beautiful but, our world being what it is - indifferent to our welfare - we're always inches from disaster. It seems then that the logic behind advising someone against a movie is applicable, twice as much, to bearing children.
Also, consider the case of a mother carrying a child with a severe genetic defect. Most people choose to abort the pregnancy based on the premise that life would be intolerable suffering for the child.
So, labeling the OP's concern as a category error is correct but hardly diminishes the strength of his/her argument.
Well argued! Impossibility does matter, in [i]a certain sense[/I], in [I]some[/I] situations. But what Andrew's trying to do with it doesn't work. They can't win the debate through reason, so they try to win the debate through appealing to emotion, by painting a certain picture and getting you to imagine certain things. But the picture is only shown from one side, and is exaggerated, and a lot of what they try to get you to imagine makes no sense in reality.
A freedom of suffering for what?
Quoting TheMadFool
People do that, obviously, but I find it ridiculous if it's not about the person in question's tastes, not the person doing the advising's tastes. For example, if I know that my friend dislikes films where there's a lot of mumbling, I can say, "You'd better avoid such and such, because half of the dialogue is mumbled." That would be the case even if I have no problem with mumbling and I loved the film. Likewise, maybe I don't care much for realist dramas (and in fact I do not), but I know that my friend loves them. So I might not have liked a film due to this, but I can recommend it to him, because I know his tastes.
Recommendations make no sense unless we know the person we're making the recommendations to. Different people have different tastes, like different things, etc.
You're right but this logic fails because it can be used against you. Not knowing the tastes of a person denies you the right to think for him/her - neither to not have children, and more importantly, nor to have children.
So, we've reached an impasse.
For me, the next step is to try and bring some objectivity into the game and that I've done in my previous post - the truth of "life is suffering" is slowly becoming suspect. This isn't a matter of taste. Maybe it was, but now it's acquring an objective quality that's tending towards falsehood.
This is where you go wrong.
It isn't morally reprehensible to keep pets in the right way, despite the fact that they do not, and cannot, consent. It's mutually beneficial. This can be, and often is, also true of parent-child relationships. Absence of consent, can be, and in many cases is, a non-factor.
There's no one to think for prior to that person existing. You can't think for someone who doesn't exist yet.
There is no objectivity in something like "life is suffering." There is no objectivity in ethics or valuations.
That's missing the point. You're right that it wasn't a proper 'if-then', since it was incomplete. That was the point: I didn't even need to complete the 'if-then'. The 'if' isn't worthy of serious consideration, so the 'then' is trivial. Which makes the whole thing trivial, unworthy of serious consideration, and not worth bringing up.
Even I, with my 'tiny' brain, picked up on that. We shouldn't make exceptions. If you allow one, you allow them all, and that would be chaos. A more stringent standard should be applied.
You confused my demonstration with mere flippancy. You just have to try a little harder.
Chairs can never speak, apples will never express surprise.
But humans will have consent issues and will have an opinion on their creation and their own desires.
People can express an opinion on the big bang..
My statement in this thread is that it is impossible to consent to be born so it can never be that we are here by consent undermining consent. I am not expressing a desire that the unborn consent just stating the fact that life is at base non consensual. (Thanks The madfool)
Apples do not desire to be surprised so the inability to do this is not a burden but humans can reflect on their existence and creation and regret it and lots of people have. People can speculate about the big bang and express opinions on it even though it is a past event. Humans are not just stuck remorsely in a present moment with no access to the past and future. They remember the past and are influenced by it and plan for the future,
For example now children have access to a huge range of facts and ideas humans have made or found. So a child now appears to have less work to do to explain various aspects to reality.
Parents could have brought children (hypothetically) into a world with no philosophical questions.
I am interested in philosophy but I feel it is an imposition like everything because I was brought into a mysterious imperfect world.
I don't think the onus should be on the child to understand her existence or make his own meaning. I find this whole "make your own meaning" idea unpleasant. It is an existential burden that also implies the failure of parents to present you with a meaning.
And non-people can never consent. Only people can. That dogs can't vote is not a massive ethical issue. It's not an ethical issue at all.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
When people are people, they have people problems. But your reverse thinking doesn't work. Yes, we can think about what will or might be, and act upon such thoughts, but it isn't reasonable to commit a reification fallacy, as you seem to be doing.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
When you state that people can't consent to being born, there's either a controversial ethical implication or it's trivial. Take your pick. It's lose-lose. (Thanks critical thinking ability).
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Apples don't cry over spilt milk, either. But if they did, I'd try to encourage them to think about things like that in a better way.
If [i]you[/I] were an apple, I'd slice you into pieces and eat you. Buy you're not, and even if you were, it would be okay to slice you into pieces and eat you, because apples differ from people in important ways, as do all non-people.
Also people have glib attitude to suicide when advocating it for antinatalists.
If you watch documentaries on suicide, the families and friends of the deceased persons are usually devastated by the bereavement. Also suicide usually comes after a lot of suffering. Usually when you withdraw consent it is an easy situation.
1.Do you want an apple? No thanks. 2.Do you want an apple. *kills self.*
Oh please, this is rubbish. When a child is conceived and then gestates, and then is birthed into the world, that is "creating a new life". By creating a new life, they created a person who will suffer. The point is that the child that "will be born if conceived, gestated, and birthed" cannot retroactively consent to existing in the first place. Now, this is not my number 1 reason against birth, but I can see the logic of the OP.
Quoting Sapientia
Why not? Why can't someone say "Whatever child might be born from the conception, gestation, and birth that may take place cannot be consented prior to its own birth, ergo I will not cause a person to be born that, de facto, cannot be consented in the first place". This seems logical to me. You don't need to know that actual identity of the person who will be born, just that someone will be born that cannot be consented.
Quoting Sapientia
Nope on both fronts actually, so keep thinking more critically.
Yes, but I won't touch one if it doesn't consent, because I'm responsible like that. I'm an anti-appleist. We ought to bring attention to this massive ethical issue by creating multiple discussions about it on this forum.
What about the apples? Think of the apples!
If apples have souls... :-O
The great thing is that if no one was born, no one feels the deprivation of whatever goods they may have had, since they never existed to care. No harm, no foul. However, if someone was born, harms will happen, so fouls have happened.
The fact is that I don't blame my parents as the source of my suffering. I blame those that cause my suffering. If that is how you feel then grow a set and go blame your parents for all the suffering you ever experienced and tell them you're going to sue them for the suffering you experience in life. In other words, be consistent in your philosophical worldview and put your money where your mouth is.
Here's the key point you seem to miss: consent isn't always explicit, nor need it be. I don't need to ask because my continued consent is implicit, not because I know I don't consent or because the question doesn't apply. I could withdraw my consent to life, and live as a sort of nihilist, or I could consent to suicide.
It's not that you don't know the identity--it's just someone that we're doing things to.
It's not anyone prior to conception. There's nothing there to consent or to NOT consent.
It would make just as much sense to say, "All of these potential people that we're not creating might be really upset that we didn't create them, so we'd better try to have as many kids as possible."
Or you could go further afield and talk in a similar way about apples, dogs, or lampposts, as I have done. I think my examples better emphasise the absurdity, but yours has a better chance of getting these people to relate the error to their own thinking. That said, I very much doubt that schopenhauer1 will be persuaded out of his thinking.
Oh men of straw.. behold. It means nothing whether someone else causes the suffering because life has suffering. If you believe the Schopenhauerean approach (my style) life is always suffering in structural terms. If you are a utilitarian or just any good/bad approach, then you know that inevitable harm will take place because that is a part of life. You don't need to know the perpetrators of the harm, you don't need to know when (usually right after birth is the start though), you don't have to know the kind of harm- you can simply say that harm will befall that otherwise will not take place and this will go on until death or at least 100+ years if the new person made it that far.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Nah, it's too late now. I'm more about the prevention of future harm. I also sympathize with folks who might not think in those terms.. I'm not a monster.. I don't yell at new mothers pushing their babies in strollers. I still have compassion for those even who cause new births and more suffering to occur. It is a big deal, but the approach also matters.
Now, some may reply that the unborn don't exist, and so could not give their consent. [Or, some may say that to speak of "the unborn" is silly, but let that pass--everyone seems to anyway]. That may be true, but if it is then so is the fact that they could not object to being born.
Why do some of us assume that they would not consent to being born? Or, if they don't make that assumption, why do they maintain that the fact consent can neither be give nor refused establishes that one should not give birth under any circumstances?
In either case, I think, consent is not an issue; it can't be. So, I suspect the idee fixe of the anti-birthers (so it seems they may be called) is merely that life is bad, or wrong, or undesirable, and so nobody should live. For that matter, we shouldn't have been born either, but alas we were (it is what it is).
Here's another thought. Let's say someone is born, and somehow becomes glad of it? He/she thus ratifies their birth, so to speak. Can consent not given (because impossible) be given when it is possible? Do the parents remain guilty--is the sin of having children unforgivable?
The issue is about planning to create a child knowing that that hypothetical desired child could withhold consent from something. A sperm is not a potential child in the way a fertilised egg is. A sperm is as much a potential child as an atom is. The problem is the parent intends to create a child. So they intend to create something that has volition, desires and consent issues. (planning to have children requires envisioning future children)
This gets back to the intent cases where someone is a danger because they intend to harm someone. people are trying to fixate the discussion around the point before the child is conceived.
This is like the unconscious rape case. You don't focus the issue of consent to sex around the time when someone is unconscious but on the whole lifespan and future potential to consent.
An analogy is when you consider throwing a brick at a window. You know that a window has a disposition to shatter. You don't need to prove it will shatter. So when planning a child we know they can do X. You don't have to wait til a future point to assert the outcome of an action.
It is true that a child may endorse life but the problem is the same process that created them creates people who don't endorse life. So I might consent to sex and another person may not, the fact that some people may consent to something doesn't justify inflicting it on all, but life is like that.
That's what you have to argue for in order for what you say to make any sense. So get to it. What is the soul and how does it pre-exist the body?
You insulted dogs? I'll legit beat you up if we ever meet irl.
They can't be upset because they don't exist.
I don't think so. Consent is key in any interaction between two/more people. Ask any court, anywhere. I accept the concept of mutually beneficial relationships. There's absolutely nothing morally wrong with establishing them but, that's a BIG but, we must remember that they're, in essence, contracts/agreements. As such they require the contracting parties to be capable of consent because it is essential that both parties see the benefits in the relationship. No side has the right to think for the other, especially in absentia. The moment this occurs, the mutually beneficial nature of the relationship ceases.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Take a consequentialist approach to the issue. Consequences, necessarily in the future, are all that matter. So, the future existence of a person, the quality of the person's life have moral weight in the present. So, nonexistence, IF life is suffering, is morally preferable. Conversely, to bear children would be categorically immoral.
Now let's take the virtue-ethicist path. As I explained (above) in my reply to Sapientia, there is something inherently wrong, morally speaking, in engaging another person without consent, as is the case in birthing children.
Thus, it is morally wrong to bear children IF life is suffering.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Is it all a matter of taste and preference then? If it is then why get into arguments (logical ones)? Argument means objectivity, at least an attempt at it.
Which is why it would make just as much sense to say that. ;-)
That's only if you believe that life is suffering and if you believe that it is morally preferable to avoid suffering (and of course that's only to the person who thinks this). The kid who wasn't born maybe would have wound up thinking that life is suffering and that suffering is preferable to not suffering, or any other sort of alternative.
Quoting TheMadFool
No. There is nothing that is inherently wrong.
Are you serious with that argument?
In that I think that
(a) "All of these potential people that we're not creating might be really upset that we didn't create them, so we'd better try to have as many kids as possible"
and
(b) Antinatalism
are equally ridiculous, for the same reasons.
Quoting TheMadFool
You don't think so, even though what I said in the quote above can be demonstrated by example when it comes to pets and children? And by your own appeal to law? Absence of consent is a non-factor when it comes to parenting and keeping pets within the law. That there is an absence of consent from pet or child would provide no legal basis for prosecution in many conceivable cases.
Quoting TheMadFool
No, that kind of complex abstract thinking is far beyond the capabilities of pets and toddlers. Mutually beneficial? Yes. Mutual consent? No, obviously not.
So you are saying that it's not possible that persons are souls, which exist prior to death? It's hardly a trivial possibility. I can't think of anything which might have more significant implications for human life, were it to be true. Socrates and Plato apparently believed it. Hermeticists and theosophists through the ages have believed it. You need to provide an actual argument against the idea if you want to be taken seriously in this discussion. I pointed out this possibility which everyone in this discussion seems to be prejudicially assuming is not a possibility, precisely because of those presumptions. All possibilities should be taken into account if you are to be a genuine skeptic.Now, do you have an actual argument, or not?
Quoting John
I am not a genuine skeptic, for good reason, if taking [I]all[/I] possibilities into account involves what I mean by [i]serious[/I] consideration. The far fetched possibilities that have nothing going for them aren't worthy of serious consideration, in my view. You seemed quite content to dismiss the possibility I raised earlier of a pig flying past my window.
If you want to make a claim that is a logically correct conclusion of OP's thoughts out of that, you have to rephrase it so that the potential person might, in future, be happy that they exist, in which case you accidentally have an actual working argument.
Kind of ironic, isn't it? You took the opposite premise of what the OP has, trying to make an opposite claim that would be non-sense, but your argument ends up working, thus proving OP to be right. Therefore your attempts to refute antinatalism without attacking the premise itself have failed.
No. You might want to go back and check what was compared to what. I compared a big "if" with another big "if". In common parlance, we refer to what's inside the womb of a pregnant woman as an unborn child. If that's what's being referred to, then that isn't a big "if" at all. There are countless unborn children all over the world as we speak.
Why do you say the scenario of souls existing prior to birth is "far-fetched"? Just because not many people believe it? (Actually countless millions of Hindus believe it). Or is it just because it doesn't fit into your predetermined worldview? Do you have an actual argument against the idea. If not and it is just your own subjective opinion; why should others be interested in hearing about that? Are you here to learn and maybe change your thinking and even your way of thinking or is this just a chat room for you where you get to mouth off and enjoy the sound of your own voice?
No. You should know by now that I am adept at identifying informal fallacies, like appealing to the masses.
Quoting John
Something like that.
Quoting John
Of course there's a reason for it, which I could try to put into words. Constructing a good argument tends to take time and hard work, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist. So maybe I'll get back to you on that, and maybe in a separate discussion, so as not be too off topic.
Quoting John
Bit of both.
What I am saying makes sense and is factual. We didn't consent to be born.
In itself, yes. But how do you think you can resolve the dilemma of either implying something controversial which makes no sense or saying something trivial and uncontroversial?
Parents make people exist. So existence is created by parents and they are responsible for that existence and what it is subject to.
It sounds like you would let a serial killing, paedophile procreate because you are only prepared to intervene when the child starts to exist.
Here is another highly disturbing case like the one I mentioned earlier. This woman agreed to let her boyfriend abuse her children after they were born in return for him marrying her. The plan went ahead and the children were abused/raped.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2479093/Mother-sentenced-54-years-horrific-sex-abuse-children.html
They had no intention of respecting the future children's well being and integrity. Obviously we shouldn't way til a plan is enacted to act.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You acknowledge that it is possible that souls exist prior to birth. What if all those souls born into flesh do consent? It's true that later they may come to either endorse life or not. But if in their pre-life state they saw the greater picture, their later failure to endorse life might merely be the result of not being in their right minds.
We haven't got around to examining the ethical consequences.
If people don't consent to be born then it is an imposition. Once they start to exist they are imposed upon and exposed to harms they did not volunteer for.
Now if law and democracy is supposed to be a contract then it is invalid because we are already in society without our consent. It is the equivalent to offering a kidnapped person a choice between having green or cream paint in their bedroom. If someone consents to a system or game then the rules can be used on them.
But because they did not consent to be in born they have no obligations or accountability to the system.
It seems ludicrous to me that punching someone in the street is considered a crime and an imposition. But a parent creates a child and they (like someone I knew) suffer from something like 40+ years of constant pain through chronic arthritis and that is acceptable.
I don't see why I should be allowed to expose another person to severe harm and not be in the least accountable either.
There is no evidence for this scenario so it cannot be a coherent excuse for creating a child. It's wild speculation. I am open to it but it is widely rejected by most people so only a parent that believed this could advocate this excuse.
However as I think I said earlier, even if a soul was desperate to be born you can prevent that by using contraceptive methods. If someone came to me and was desperate for me to set them on fire I wouldn't do it. You can judge the world is an unsuitable place to create new humans.
I just don't get why past events like human sacrifice, slavery, 2 world wars, yearly famines, the holocaust and so on, are no deterrent. I learnt about The Holocaust at around 12 when we watched "Escape from Sobibor" in English class and I could not fathom how people could behave like that and then later in my teens I was shocked by this kind of mounting evidence and that people would continue create new humans. (new evidence included photo's of a KKK lynching where someone was burnt alive surrounded by grinning men and boys)
Yeah, sure, I won't hold my breath... >:O
It's not "off-topic" at all. If it were true that souls pre-exist bodily life, and also true that all who are born consent to be born, it would repudiate the argument of the OP.
On the other hand were it not true that souls pre-exist bodily life, then the OP is also repudiated, for the reasons of incoherence I pointed out in my original post, and which others have also emphasized. In fact that was precisely my original point in highlighting both possibilities together; to show that the assertion of the OP is either false or incoherent.
What is the evidence for the obverse? In any case, my point was not to advocate this view, but to show that we are radically ignorant about the origin of personhood; and that we therefore have no evidence to support any view either way about whether or not it is right to procreate.
And, just to be clear, your stance is that that [I]isn't [/I] far fetched?
No moral stance is going to be a "logically correct conclusion."
I don't consider it to be far-fetched, although I don't deny that it would be in today's world fairly widely, and mostly prejudicially, considered to be far-fetched.
In any case, what does it matter what my stance is? Your task is to argue for your own contention that it is far-fetched. You need to show firstly what it means for an idea to be far-fetched, beyond it being merely widely, or even more or less universally, thought to be so. And if you are able to fulfill that task adequately, then you need to show that, and how, the idea in question fulfills the cogent criteria you have already provided for far-fetchedness.
I pointed out that you can't force your parents to create you. There is no evidence of people being told by an unborn spirit to procreate (I've heard of).
I have not experienced a whisper in my mind encouraging me to create children. Also it is unnecessary for a biological account of reproduction.
As I say it is an arrangement dependent on the parents having sex so the key responsibility falls on them. If it was true it would imply some consent but how could you prove it?
Anyone can make up an unfalsifiable theory and brandish it about and.. you have no evidence I was a pre existing soul that wanted this. Why would I or anyone want this?
My experience was that I was lied to from birth about religion and parental authority so I was not in the position to give consent (forced to go to church up to 5 times a week) It was only as a culmination of traumatic experiences that I was able to break away from the indoctrination as a older teenager.
Why would I chose to be lied to so that i was only able to honestly examine existence when I was in my late teens?
Also I do not believe any one would chose a bad life even if they were a preexisting spirit entering the foetus somehow. Unless you have a further invalidate belief that preexisting spirits know the future.
Therefore If a spirit did enter the womb to be born the parents is still infringing it by exposing it to harm that it didn't expect.
Even if souls' do pre-exist bodily life, there are alternative possibilities that may be imagined when it comes to the question of whether these souls consent to be born. I was concerned with only one of those possibilities; which is that all souls born consent to be born by the parents they are born by.
So, your objection here is irrelevant to my point.
This is completely irrelevant because in my scenario the souls choose ovum that are already fertilized.
Nothing can ever be proven either way, so what's your point?
The theory that souls do not pre-exist bodily life is equally unfalsifiable, so again what you say here is irrelevant.
Yes, and according to our two alternative scenarios, you either chose this prior to life or the very notion of choosing it is incoherent; take your pick.
I don't know; maybe in your pre-life state of all-seeing soul-wisdom you realized that you needed those experiences. Or perhaps you knew then that the circumstances of life are not fore-ordained, but you knew that it was right that you should be born of those parents, and experience the unfolding of your life with them.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. Do you mean the soul would only choose if it couldn't know that it was choosing a "bad life"? On the other hand, perhaps what you consider a bad life is, in spiritual terms, in terms of soul-development, a good life; and you are just not in your right mind when you think it is "bad".
This doesn't follow, because the parents would not be in a position to "expect the harm" either. And as I said above, it may only be in a state of ignorance or self-pity or whatever, that it appears to be "harm" at all.
....
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What if no one ever had kids again.. would that mean the souls are finished wanting to be embodied in the physical world? Did they put up a mass strike?
I don't believe that is a genuine possibility unless humanity were somehow rendered infertile en masse. There may be billions of other planets, infinitely many if the universe is infinite, with sapient beings; perhaps the souls would then have to choose from among those. What leads you to presume that Earth is so important in the Grand Scheme?
What if all the sapient beings chose not to procreate? No, there very well might be more sapient beings. I don't think Earth or anywhere is that important in the Grand Scheme. However, you seem to think that embodied souls is a part of the Grand Scheme, and they need some physical host to be embodied.. Reminds of interesting sci-fi plots.
It hardly seems likely that an infinite number of sentient beings all across the universe would suddenly decide not to procreate. I haven't said that I think embodied souls are part of the Grand Scheme; I have said that if the possibility that souls pre-exist bodily life and choose the circumstances of their birth were true, then the OP is false. It would also seem to follow then that embodied souls would be part of the Grand Scheme, but I haven't said that I believe any of this is the case; I am merely trying to unpack what would be entailed by two of the imaginable possibilities.
The relevance is whether they did consent.
There is such a thing as informed consent.
There is no point having consent if you have no idea what you are consenting to. For a soul to give consent to enter this world they would have to know what they were consenting to i.e. see into the future.
The reason we can consent to things now is prior knowledge of outcomes. I wouldn't consent to someone throwing a rock at me because prior knowledge of the damage to would cause.
I have absolutely no evidence that I chose my parents so why should I believe it? You appear to saying we should be believe anything that is a possibility with no evidence.
A soul could not set up a consenting relationship anyway, unless it communicated with its future parents and there is no evidence of that. Consent involves two or more people communicating with each other and not one person simply desiring something.
The notion of being forced into existence is not incoherent. The idea that we did not consent to be born is not incoherent.
If I decided to create a child tomorrow I would be choosing to make someone else exist. I would be solely responsible for them existing they would exist based on my desire to create them.
Now if I see a child wandering near a busy road I feel a responsibility as a capable adult to prevent them from wandering in the road. I think most adults would feel responsible for any vulnerable child in danger because they have the capacity to save him or her from harm.
So if we can assume responsibility for a stranger's child why the aversion to taking full responsibility for deliberately exposing your own child to serious harm? Self exculpation it seems.
It's not a theory it is the null hypothesis.
I know parents who wanted to have children and had them based on their own desires with no reference to pre existing souls. Considering there was no communication between them and the souls they can be separately held accountable for their action.
For example Imagine Jane is suicidal and is standing by a bridge about to jump but then she is hit by a drunk driver and Killed. Her desire to die does not mitigate the criminal offence of the driver.
The point of theory being falsifiable is so it can do some work in explanation so it's got go beyond pure speculation in my opinion. A thought experiment can be fantastical and be used to create "ad absurdum" or provoke thought. But to apply something to real life it has to offer to explain the evidence imo. In this case it seems simply be an attempt to shift accountability.
That's nonsense; for example when people consent to marry they never know how it will turn out.
I agree. The biggest ''IF'' is about the notion life is suffering.
You said:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Denying both (a) and (b) leads to a contradiction. That stance is possible only if morality is subjective - a matter of preference, perhaps moulded by religion and culture, etc.
But is morality subjective as you say?
If you look at the past, morality was subjective. Different cultures had their own moral standards. Infanticide was common. Child marriage was practiced. Women extra-marital affairs were stoned to death, an eye-for-an-eye was a form of punishment, etc.
But take at a look at now. All the above are now considered immoral universally. To make the long story short, we are, undeniably, approaching moral objectivity. Does this trend in the moral world have a sound rational basis? I don't know but what we can glean from it is, deep down in the subconscioud(?), we do believe morality is objective.
Don't know if anyone has made this comment yet, but this is essentially the concept of thrownness in existentialist writing. We are thrown into the world whether we like it or not. That is part of our ontological constitution, as is the fact that we are also inevitably headed towards death. which we don't necessarily consent to either.
While I don't think that suicide is always wrong, I think it is often a sad choice and oftentimes it is deeply influenced by either mental illness, addiction, or both. I think the majority of people with relatively healthy brains consent to being alive once they are actually in-the-world.
If you see life as a secular miracle (or a religious one for that matter), you will spontaneously be glad to exist and I think in that case you retroactively consent to having been born. If you don't want to continue living, on the other hand, your point makes an interesting addition to the argument for euthanasia being a legal option in some circumstances.
As I said you can't consent to be born on your scenario because their is no contract between parent and child (or contact)
Usually in marriage you know the person you are marrying and can gather all sorts of information on them. We are talking about children living in a slum,war zone or famine area here not someone marrying someone who turns out to be bad.
Personally i don't think marriage is anything real. I don't know what you think is involved. By marrying someone you do not consent to be forced to have sex with them. as far as I am aware marriage gives you no rights over the person you marry and you cannot force them to do anything. (ironically it on divorce that you can take half their stuff)
And I don't think consent allows anyone to harm you anyway. If someone ask for an assisted suicide it is usually to end there suffering and is done in a humane way. if you consent to uncomfortable surgery it is to improve your wellbeing.
I came to antinatalism by myself with no outside influence. Most antinatalist are the least sheeplike most skeptical people I meet.
Your attitude highlights the problem. We are talking about suffering from Genocide to Chronic depression, famine and slavery and you are calling people childish for not wanting to propagate this.
Even If I had children I would always be concerned and vocal about famine, disease, abuse, inequality and all other forms of suffering. It seems you just don't want to be exposed to other peoples suffering. People have to suffer quietly and discreetly so you can enjoy your life.
And with your fantastical scenario people chose this life so can't complain about their suffering and have to behave ethically and embrace that they chose their cancerous body and or callous parents.
Hmmm
I actually don't think this pet - children equivalence will go down well with some people. Anyway...
Prevalent practice permits of guardianship on moral issues - pets and children. However, this is like an improvised speech, just a place holder. It hasn't been subject to rigorous analysis. This is the point of the OP. To add, simple practice doesn't mean it's morally right. Slavery was a practice but we realize it's immoral.
Quoting Sapientia
So, if someone is mentally immature it's ok to decide on his/her behalf? This to is just a place holder - an improvisation that prevents paralysis of thought and action.
I hate when people routinely write long replies--I try to keep mine short, so I apologize for the length of this one, but I think it's important to clear a few things up here:
First, what it refers to for morality to be subjective is that moral whatever-you-want-to-call-thems (I'm using that goofy term to try to avoid loaded connotations by using particular words), such as "It is wrong to murder," "It is morally recommendable to help little old ladies across the street," "It is morally obligatory be honest" etc.only occur mentally. Those things do not occur elsewhere in the world.
That morality is subjective does not necessarily imply that different people espouse different moral whatever-you-want-to-call-thems. Imagine that every single person in the world, from the start of time to the end of time, were all to agree on things such as "It is wrong to murder" etc That has no bearing on whether morality is subjective. Why? Because morality being subjective ONLY refers to the idea of moral whatever-you-want-to-call-thems only occurring mentally. As long as "It is wrong to murder" only occurs mentally, it's subjective, even if everyone always agreed on it and always will.
Re "universality," there's some confusion over its relation to subjectivity becuse of two different common senses of the term. One sense, the one that you're using, has to do with commonality. If every x has property F (well, or we could say close to it, because people sometimes allow exceptions while still applying the term "universal"), then property F is universal on this sense. On that sense, something can be universal but subjective. How? It's simply a phenomenon that only occurs mentally, but the phenomenon occurs in every mind.
The other sense is whether we're talking about a universal a la the universalism versus nominalism debate (aka the "realism" vs. nominalism debate (on universals).) The idea there is whether there are types or kinds or forms and the like, where those types, kinds, etc. exist somehow extramentally (that is, outside of minds), simply as the type, kind, form, where that type, kind, form etc. can then be multiply but identically instantiated in different substances. On that sense of the term, universalism is incompatible with subjectivity (in the sense that if F is a universal, F isn't subjective).. Note that on this sense of universalism, not everyone has to agree on anything if "murder is wrong" is a universal. Something being a universal in this sense is mind independent. And in fact, everyone could agree that "murder is morally permissible" while "murder is wrong" is still a universal. In that situation, people are simply getting the universal wrong, perceiving it wrong, etc.--however one wants to claim that people can become aware of universals. In other words, on this sense of universal, universals are basically "things" that exist, outside of our minds, somehow in the universe, and thus we can get them wrong, just like we could get it wrong whether the Earth is a flat, stationary center of the universe. Universals on this sense have nothing to do with whether we all agree on something..
On my view, universals can certainly occur in the first sense (everyone or close to it can agree on something), although there contingently are no moral universals (I'll clarify this in a moment) in this sense (I do believe there are other sorts of universals), while in the second sense of universals, there are no universals period. In other words, I'm a nominalist.
So, I believe that moral whatever-you-want-to-call-thems only occur mentally. Thus my "fill-in" for "whatever-you-want-to-call-them" is "judgment." Now, moral judgments are realative to cultures in one sense, but in a more important sense, they're relative to individuals. It's individuals who have minds, not cultures. And plenty of individuals disagree with the morality that's dominant in their culture. This is why there are contingently no moral universals at the moment. (And by the way, I'm an individual who disagrees with a lot of the dominant moral views in my culture.) Talking about cultures as if there are cultural beliefs, cultural judgments, etc. is metaphorical, not literal. (Or actually I believe there's some better literary term for that sort of projection from an x with quality F to a broader thing where we metaphorically attribute quality F to it but it dosn't literally have quality F, but I forgot what that term would be.) Cultures are literally comprised of individuals with minds interacting in particular ways, and cultural mores and stuff are just conventions or norms re how those individuals interact, whether they agree with each other and act in concert, whether they're able to enforce certain things due to raw power and influence and etc.
So morality is subjective and it's relative to individuals, and this would be the case even if every person agreed on their moral whatever-you-want-to-call-thems. The upshot of that is this: let's say that everyone says, "It is morally obligatory to wear orange clothing on Wednesdays," and one really weird person comes along and says, "No, it is morally wrong to wear orange clothing on Wednesdays," it doesn't follow that that one person is wrong or incorrect.* (see footnote) Why not? Because there are no moral facts other than the fact that everyone else's mind is working however it is for them to feel that it is morally obligatory to wear orange clothing on Wednesdays, but this one person's mind is simply working differently. It's not wrong for someone's mind to work differently. And we can't argue that "It is morally obligatory to wear orange clothing on Wednesdays" is correct just because everyone thinks it, because that's the argumentum ad poplum fallacy. In order for it to be correct, it has to be the case that there's a fact in the world, independent of what anyone thinks, and we're getting that fact right (via our perception of it, our claims about it, etc.) But there are not any such moral facts, because morality is only what people happen to think--it's only mental. This odd person is just thiking something different.
(*footnote: when it comes to morality, no one is right or wrong or correct or incorrect. Why not? Because there's nothing to get right or wrong or to be correct or incorrect about. It's simply a matter of how people feel. There are no extramental facts that we can be mistaken about. Also, note that even if there were extramental moral facts, there would be nothing to oblige anyone to conform to them. For example, say that we discovered that somehow, "It is morally obligatory to wear orange on Wednesdays" were "embedded" in the extramental universe. Well, if Joe says, "Fine, but I don't like wearing orange (on Wednesdays). I'm not going to follow that. I feel that one should be allowed to wear all yellow on Wednesdays" then we can't say that he's wrong for feeling that way. He simply doesn't care for the extramental moral facts, and he's doing his own thing instead. The only thing that could stop that is people who feel that they should follow the moral facts and who have the enforcement power to at least arrest Joe. But that's really no different than if there were no extramental moral facts. People are simply following what they feel in both cases.)
(footnote2: There aren't actually many--if there are any--philosophers who believe that morality is objective in the sense that they believe that there are moral whatever-you-want-to-call-thems somehow embedded in the extramental world and that for some reason, we're supposed to be obliged to follow those extramentally embedded moral facts (how that's supposed to work--who knows?) Often all that's really going on is this: humans have a tendency to conform, to want to follow the pack. We know that argumentum ad populums are fallacious, though. But there's still a deep-seated desire that we can't get rid of, much stronger in some people, to conform simply because something's a norm (and in fact the word "normative" in itself is basically a term to refer to something suggesting behavioral conformity simply because it's common behavior), so there is all sorts of rationalizing done, with people going to great pains to build up elaborate theories, to justify conforming to the pack just because they're the pack, but where people are careful to avoid suggesting that they're merely advocating conformity, argumentum ad populums, etc.--but really, that's all they're doing, no matter how much bullshit they couch it in)
So, you think what I refer to as objective moral facts is of the former type - basically a matter of convention, following-the-pack sort of thing.
How do you define objectivity then? The definition I'm familiar with is a certain observation is objective to the extent it can be corroborated by as many individuals, instruments as possible. Keep in mind that the credibility is directly proportional to the number of confirmatory data points. In addition, this is important, the issue being evaluated is subject to rational analysis.
You think this is the ad populum fallacy BUT note that this fallacy is committed when the argument depends exclusively on the number of people holding a particular belief. This is not the case with moral issues. There's reason behind a moral belief e.g. killing someone deprives him of a meaningful, enjoyable life. So, no, there's no ad populum fallacy going on. And I think we can be objective about morality.
How do you feel about the suffering of non-human animals capable of feeling pain? Is it wrong for them to procreate?
Animals appear not to be able conceptualise issues like right and wrong. Some extreme utilitarians have come to the conclusion we should destroy all sentience and some utilitarians advocate intervening to make animals unable to experience pain.
It is hard to prove things about animals conscious states. Also they can't form a contract for consent. Which raises a related issue. People take care of the pets until they die (good owners) the pet has no obligations. That is what ideally should happen with children.
The main issue for me is consent followed closely by the issue of suffering. It is wrong to make something happen to someone else without their consent in my opinion.
I think it is an issue between parent and child though and that a person is only responsible for their decision to procreate.
I can't think of any justification for creating a child.
But we haven't even got near antinatalism because people can just have children as they please with minimal consequences and we don't discuss the ramifications (outside of this type of debate)
So if "subjective" refers to things occurring only in minds, "objective" is the complement--things occurring outside of or independent of minds.
That an observation can be corroborated by many individuals is a characteristic of objective things, because many different individuals can observe the same thing that exists in the world independent of minds. The observations or the corroboration aren't themseves objective. The thing observed is objective. In the case of something objective, there's something to get right or wrong. Either you clearly observe the extramental thing (and make accurate deductions etc. and then statements about it) or you do not.
In the case of something that's mental only, there's nothing to observe aside from the fact that you and others have whatever dispositions, opinions, etc. that you do.
"It's wrong to deprive someone of a meaningful, enjoyable life" is no more an objective fact than "It is wrong to kill them" is. You can't get to factual moral or value statements.
Um, just no?
The reason why I am revising my claim to a suspicion is because John, as far as I'm aware, has yet to define what a soul is. If (1) were to turn out to be analogous to the claim that, say, people have brains, then I would readily concede that people have souls. However, I find that doubtful, given the other possibilities that he linked possibility (1) to, which would remain problematic. And even it this were the case, it might amount to misleading wordplay.
What do I mean by far fetched? Something which, even if logically possible, nevertheless has little else going for it in terms of evidence or likelihood.
So, what evidence or likelihood is there for these supposed possibilities? Perhaps John thinks he can answer that question differently to how I would. But in my assessment, there seems to be only weak evidence - not really enough to warrant anything other than an acknowledgement of possibility, assuming it's even possible, and does not run into contradiction with what we know. My methodology would consist in, or incorporate, empirical or scientific methods, and I don't think that the results in either case would be substantial. Perhaps John has in mind some dusty old argument from ancient times which could be rehashed. I don't know.
Some people are overly sensitive, easily offended, and idiotic. It's not an equivalence, it's a comparison. They both have limitations in terms of ability when compared with an average adult human. That's not at all controversial.
Quoting TheMadFool
I'm not saying it's right because it's practice, so that isn't an argument against anything I've said. It's right if it's mutually beneficial, or even sometimes if it isn't, for example, if acting in what is understandably interpreted to be in their best interest. Given that consent is a non-factor, since we already know that they can't consent, we must look to other factors.
Quoting TheMadFool
Can they consent? Are you their rightful guardian? Are you acting responsibly in your role as guardian? If they can't, if you are, and if again you are, then yes, that's okay. If, for example, it was an emergency situation, then you don't even have to be their guardian: just do what's right. Getting your priorities straight matters.
Parents may or may not consent (intend) to have a child. Obviously they cannot consent to have the particular child they end up with, but if they intend to have a child they consent to take what is given. Also, consent is still consent if it comes from only one side. Consent is not necessarily mutual consent, there is a valid distinction there.
I'm not saying that at all. You need to read more carefully. I'm not saying that we should believe anything; either that souls pre-exist bodily life and consent to be born or that they do not pre-exist bodily life. The point is that considering the imaginable possibilities shows that your claim is necessarily either false or incoherent.
Well, actually there are further possibilities: that souls pre-exist bodily life and are forced to be born. But if that is the case then we exist in a diabolical universe; an inherently evil universe. Actually some of the early Christian gnostics believed something like this, if my memory serves. They believed the God of the old testament was a mistaken creation of Wisdom or Forethought, a deluded being who falsely came to believe that he was the one and only creator, and demanded to be worshiped, and threatened to punish 'sinners' who would not worship him. And the Gnostics were actually anti-natalists on the basis of this belief.
William Blake was an anti-natalist too, because he believed that procreation causes a soul to fall out of eternity into the darkness of time. I never had, and never wanted to have, children, so I guess you could say I'm an anti-natalist for myself, but it's really much more a lack of desire for children than any definite attitude about having children. If I were to be an anti-natalist with attitude it could only be on the basis of some definite belief like the Gnostics' or Blake's, but I have difficulty believing anything i don't have good evidence for. I would at least need to have some kind of religious experience that convinced me.
In any case your argument is based on the idea that souls do not pre-exist; and in that context the idea of consent is incoherent. That is the problem with your argument. So. maybe you need to adopt some kind of religious belief to render your cherished anti-natalism coherent. ;)
It's not valid because, thinking along these lines, nothing mental can be objective, even philosophy. It also renders your arguments self-defeating.
It's not useful because it doesn't provide us anything prescriptive. Like a doctor who doesn't prescribe medications. One wonders at why the title ''Doctor''.
Or in other words, nothing mental can be non-mental, which is hardly a problem.
And re prescriptions, there are no true, factual, etc. prescriptions (well, at least not without attaching them to subjective desires). That's part of the point, really.
No. It's misleading to call it a last resort if the other options were never really options at all. I didn't decide on getting a cat only after I'd exhausted attempts to gain her consent. That would have been a foolish waste of time. I wouldn't try to get consent from a baby, either, because I'm not an idiot.
Quoting TheMadFool
No, it's not sensible to treat all cases as if they were alike. You appealed to the law earlier, and that can be used against you. There's a reason why rape and slavery are crimes, but, all things being equal, keeping pets and making decisions on behalf of toddlers are not. If your argument doesn't work, and people point out why, then you shouldn't simply press ahead regardless.
And if you have pet or child you often try to act in their best interest.If you are decent, you treat them in a way you feel they would like to be treated.
The problem for the unborn is you have no idea what their preferences will be so you can't create a person for their own benefit.
I don't think consent is necessarily a moral issue. I am a moral nihilist and I don't think labelling an action good or bad says much. But consent has an actual non value side which is the basic statement that someone didn't consent to be born and you can never make realistic (accountability) judgements if you believe otherwise.
Accountability doesn't have to be moral just a statement of causality such as "you caused this to happen" I think causality in personal affairs is seriously neglected. Accountability is more like a game and fiction and ideology.
We didn't cause ourselves to exist but our parents did.
I don't see how intending to do something is an act of consent.
You could say what you said in a trivial way about every action such as if I kidnap a child I am consenting to take it. (Consenting with myself). If make a coffee I am consenting to make it.
What we are talking about here is a lack of consent. Someone could regret all their actions whilst having agreed within them self to do it.
I can see no scenario where someone from a prelife realm could force them self on a parent. (especially now with the prevalence of contraceptives and abortion.)
For a soul to be responsible for their embodiment they would have to equal or greater power than the parents in ensuring their embodiment (birth). There is currently no evidence for your scenario but lots of evidence of parents creating children through various means unconnected to disembodied souls.
Of course it is. If you decide to do something your are permitting it to happen to you. Giving your permission for something to happen is consent; it need not involve agreeing with another person. If you wanted to be pedantic, you could say that it is assent, not consent. But then would your argument change if I said OK then pre-existing souls might have assented to be born, or if souls do not pre-exist then the idea of them either assenting to or dissenting from being born is incoherent?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I have corrected you on this several times; I never said or implied that at all. If you keep misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting what I say, then I won't respond .
It's not happening to you, you are making it happen.
Or you could ignore it. Or you could add fuel to the fire.
I don't see an excuse for adding fuel to the fire.
The fact that no one chose to come here (exist) does not mean that you can justify continuing creating people. You didn't start the fire but you can try and put it out.
There has been so much human suffering that to view life as justifiable gift is implausible.
If you decide to take a job, for example, then whatever happens to in that job is only partially under your control. You are just repeating the same feeble objections.
Let's take another tack: If you thought life was, overall, worth living, would you still think it is immoral to procreate? Do you acknowledge that your thought that life is not worth living is nothing more than just that: your thought, your subjective opinion? Do you acknowledge that the majority of people probably would disagree with you; that they would say something like that 'while I acknowledge that life necessarily entails some suffering, overall on balance I think it is well worth living?
What about the simple and so far only supported scenario that people choose to create children (when they don't need to and this creates more human suffering?)
You seem to be trying to treat parents as exceptionally helpless. The reverse was the case for me. because after being born I had a very restrictive, controlled childhood.
I wouldn't encourage people to see having children as inevitable. That can either lead to them asserting total authority or failing to prevent pregnancy. You can't drive whilst drunk (legally) but you can get pregnant when drunk (or get someone pregnant).
We don't say that drunken people should not by prosecuted for a car accident because they were "non compos mentis". Even when someone gets too drunk to act coherently we try and deter and restrict behaviour. Yet outside on China's one child policy creating children is one of the most unrestricted activities.
Having children also creates more human pleasure, more human creativity and growth. I think you need to acknowledge that your view that life is predominately suffering is an irrational one, probably based on your own negative experiences and perception of your own suffering. You need to realize that you are just one person; other people's lives are different from yours, and you have no rational warrant to pronounce on their value or lack of it.
You can walk out of a job. In most cases when you consent to something you can withdraw consent quite quickly.
Quoting John
It's my experience.
As I think I said before I don't believe anyone would consent to growing up in abject poverty, or getting burnt alive or being bullied and so on.
Lack of consent is a source of unhappiness in itself. But this world has enough problems to make consent a major issue. It is pointless talking about a world we don't live in because that hypothetical can't be imposed on this world.
Based on your question you seem to be implying that if there was a perfect world we wouldn't need consent therefore we don't need consent now. But that is like saying because someone doesn't mind having lots of money putting in their bank without consent they shouldn't mind being beaten without consent.
The same can be said to you.
I think people who suffer and people who have to suffer have more credibility in casting value on life.
If there is one person drowning in lake and twenty people enjoying a picnic on the shore who do you pay attention to?
I don't expect other people to suffer so life can go on or be stoical about suffering so as not to upset other peoples idyll.
If I discovered a chemical that when put in the water would cause mass infertility I would have no qualms about doing so.
I don't presume to speak for others; whereas you do, that is the difference. What you say about putting a chemical in water to cause infertility just shows me that you are another thoughtless idiot that wishes to dogmatically impose their views on everyone else. If you were to do what you suggest it would be an unspeakable criminal act.
I think I've said about all I have to say to you
You are endorsing the perpetual continuation of human suffering for no good reason. That is a bigger criminal act.
Preventing more suffering is an act of self dense.
You endorse bringing new people into a world with a history of war and genocide, ISIS, people starve every day, a million + suicides a year. Who is the reasonable one?
Of course the OP has a point, and that should be admitted even if we don't agree with him completely.
For one thing, of course life isn't all suffering. It's a combination of alternate good things and bad things. It's like a gamble, except that nearly everyone wins sometimes, often paying a price in suffering and hardship.
So, what you're imposing on your offspring isn't unadulterated misery. Let's be clear about that. It's a gamble, an exciting and risky game. A dangerous adventure. That isn't an unmitigated bad thing.
Sure, it's true that you weren't asked if you wanted to be conceived.
But your hypothetical life possibility-story, one of infinitely-many such possiblility-stories, has you as its protagonist. Presumably a life possibility-story wouldn't have a protagonist who isn't predisposed to life, for some reason. Some need, inclination or other predisposition.
So it can be said that you were born into this life because of your predispositions for life. You're life-Protagonist material. You're someone about whom there can be a life possibility-story.
What if everyone on this planet participated in a boycott on procreation? Would that have kept you from being born? Of course not. Hypothetically there could be a world in which children are born, and you'd have been born there anyway.
So no, it isn't entirely the doing of your parents. You're blaming them unfairly.
If the worst thing that they've done to you is to conceive and bear you, you can consider yourself very fortunate.
There are a lot of parents who have no business being parents, who are quite unqualified to be parents, and they have no right to have children. ...but are regrettably allowed to.
If you want to complain about something, complain about that.
I suggest that not just anyone should be allowed to create children, or to raise them. Ok, sure, who's to decide who's qualified? Yes, but even f there's no one who can be trusted to make that evaluation, the prevention of unqualified parents is still a good idea in principle.
Michael Ossipoff
Or, looking at it evolutionarily, natural-selection makes it so that people who are born have an inclination toward life. Part of what made you was natural selection's influence that made you inclined toward life.
And that was encoded in the genes from which yours were going to be chosen,, even before your own genes were finally determined by your conception.
...in addition to the fact that your conception and birth were inevitable, due to predisposition, as I described.
Michael Ossipoff
But that's the naturalistic fallacy. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Potentially all future suffering can be prevented if no one procreated. The "supposed" anguish of potential parents in not really an issue being it's just the already-person's problem and not a whole new life with challenges, burdens, thwarted desires, frustrations, harms, structural absurdity-of-life, striving-but-for-nothing, etc. Rather than post-hoc justifying the suffering of a whole new person (or persons), and then justifying it with phrases like "hey, they'll like life and will get through the bad because life itself is somehow inherently good" they can just not have that life in the first place and give any post-hoc justifications.
I still find a problem with the distinction mental vs extramental. Let me try and pin it down.
The sense of morality is based on reason. For example, rape is wrong because it causes pain and deprives the victim of basic human dignity. I don't see how that, the application of logic and reason, is not objective? Logic, by definition, is about following rules of correct thinking, which is the hallmark of objectivity. Your own arguments, based on logic, evidence to the fact that application of reason implies objectivity.
If morality is completely subjective, why do our moral compasses point in one direction on some issues? I say ''some'' because there are cases such as polygamy which are not actually moral problems. Including them within the domain of morality only serves to obscure the objectivity in separating the good from the bad
Exactly, you have no choice - that's the definition of ''last resort''. Consider the hypothetical that you have the choice to consult the other party's willingness to participate in a pact. It would be wrong then to think for the other party. But...you would do it, as a last resort. That's an admirable act, sometimes, to risk being wrong but, it's a sin.
That's not true. We have some idea of what they'd likely be based on what we know about the average person. The average person isn't an anti-natalist. The average person would affirm life over death.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Another ludicrous analogy.
Agreed.
Not true without qualification. In some cases it is, in some cases it isn't. Rather, it [i]can[/I] be.
Then you're crazy, like the person who'd have no qualms about joining those people enjoying the picnic instead of trying to help the drowning person.
Exactly. That's more or less what I've been saying.
Yeah, far crazier I'd say, since he says he would deliberately put an end to the human species if he could. Shit like that reeaally pisses me off.
:-}
No, I'd define it differently, in a way which makes more sense, like as being in a situation where you feel you have no choice, because other options have been seriously considered or tried but ultimately given up on.
Quoting TheMadFool
A hypothetical which is not analogous to what we're talking about, and therefore has no bearing on it, since an unborn baby doesn't have a willingness for or against being born, and consulting the baby isn't a choice.
This is Richard Dawkins take on life apparently.
“The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Ask anyone, barring the psychopath, and they'd invariably like to base their relationships on consent. The other option, no consent, is a last resort because, if anything, it borders on immorality.
I think the well-established practice of making decisions for someone else, unable for some reason to cast his own vote, is sending you off track. It's brain washing. Repeat something long enough and people will think it's ok; even men of God like Moses, Jesus, Muhammad were unable to see the wrongs of slavery.
I agree parents think keeping the best interest of their children, born and unborn, in mind. It's also true that an unborn simply can't give consent. So, the practice of thinking for your children is essentially a contingency measure. It's not moral but we can't help. A necessary evil, so to speak.
There's enough suffering on earth to see why people might not consent to come here.
I doubt that insects and a range of other creatures feel pain but nevertheless Dawkins is not an antinatalist and he presents a grim picture of life (which he appears to revel in).
I take umbrage with him and others like him because seemingly in defence of atheism he presents life as terrible, to attack belief in God/s (see Stephen Fry for similar). But then says we should feel lucky to be alive.
Both the religious and key atheists have presented a grim view of life. Religious people say you can transcend life which would be nice if there was evidence for that. But when you realise the religion isn't true the comfort is gone and you are left with the nasty religious behaviour and irrationality.
I had to try and make meaning in my life after leaving religion through trauma. Initially it felt briefly liberating (although I was also depressed). But since I have followed debates between theists and atheists I have found the narrative horrible and some atheists are really pushing for life to be pointless and meaningless and taken a deflationary view of life. Yet both sides are having children whilst no real hope is being offered.
I think both religion and forms of atheism can be very nihilistic. Most human ideologies seem to neglect the individual. Antinatalists have the most sensitivity towards the value of the individual and they don't just seem them as a statistic or construct or tool etc.
It's objectively pointless and meaningless but that's like noting that objectively, there is no opinion on whether to have pizza or salad for lunch. In other words, it's quite silly to worry about what the "world itself" does when it comes to the meaning/point of life and what to have for lunch. Those are the sorts of things that individual people do. It's up to you to decide what you want to eat for lunch. And it's up to you to assign a point or meaning to your life.
And why is pain a negative thing? That's a subjective opinion.
The problem is that we didn't consent to be here. When we were talking about suffering levels and making meaning we are talking about things imposed on someone. It is one thing to choose to find your own meaning or tolerate your own suffering another to be placed in this dilemma.
For example I love Bach and Handel and Baroque music in general but I don't actively force it on anyone.
I think making an individual find their own meaning is an existential burden. It is a task for scientists and philosophers to explore life not something everyone should have foisted on them.
I also think in reality peoples meaning comes naturally for instance I don't choose to like baroque music and people finding meaning from relationships. I don't think science or philosophy have proven there is no meaning so I don't think we should revel in this position or promote it. The problem is the existential burden when life loses its meaning and there are only different dogmas to choose from.
If science had really discovered life was futile and about mindless survival that would be good evidence to stop propagating it.
Pain is defined by being an unpleasant sensation. That is not a moral claim. I find moral claims dubious but I think you can make valid harm claims.
I think moral nihilism offers no justification for anyone. On a nihilistic stance no one's behaviour is validated. I think pronatalism is quite nihilistic in that it usually does not demand much reason from its proponents. Nature allows people to have children it also allows people to try and prevent birth and allows famine and so on it doesn't usually resolve moral arguments.
I think moral nihilism or the lack of an enforceable morality(like the laws of nature say) makes it difficult to enact antinatalism. So you can have children using brute force and try and justify it after.
I think one defence against nihilism is logic and I think the world gets more nihilist the less reasonable beliefs are.
It's not something you have to do. It's just that if having an overarching "point"/purpose/"meaning" etc. is the sort of thing you're attracted to, it's up to you to come up with your own.
For me, it's not the sort of thing I'm attracted to. So I don't worry about it.
Why would the fact that morality is how people feel about things imply that we'd have no rules? That's what morality is, and obviously we have rules.
Quoting TheMadFool
And what's the reason that it's wrong to cause pain and deprive the victim of basic human dignity?
You might have a reason for that, but if you do, I can just ask the same thing again: why is it wrong to ____?
That's not going to go very far before you more or less just give up. You're very unlikely to even have, say, 50 levels of reasons. We'll quickly get to one where it's just the way that you feel about it.
So no one is denying that you feel some way and then reason from that. "It's wrong to wear orange shirts in Florida." "Why?" "Because people shouldn't wear clothing the same color as fruit that is commonly grown in a particular area." Maybe that person has a further reason for that. "Why shouldn't people wear clothing the same color as fruit that is common grown in a particular area?" "Because people shouldn't match plants." "Why shouldn't they match plants?" "Because people should only resemble their own biological kingdom" and so on--that guy has a nest of reasons for "It is wrong to wear orange shirts in Florida," but ultimately they rest on some stance that has no reason behind it beyond the fact that he feels that way. That's the way all morality works, because it's not possible to ground an ought or a should on an is.
Quoting TheMadFool
Aside from the fact that all morality is ultimately grounded on some way that a person feels, a way that they didn't in fact reason to, logic and reason are mental activities. They don't occur in the extramental world.
Quoting TheMadFool
Where do you think that "rules of correct thinking" would come from. Under a rock somwhere? Is there some sort of field of them out in space?
Quoting TheMadFool
Unlike many objectivists, I'm not operating on some unspoken assumption that things are only "legitimate" if they're objective, and should be avoided otherwise.
Quoting TheMadFool
I don't believe that there is in fact any moral stance that everyone shares. Not everyone believes it's wrong to commit murder for example. But let's suppose that there are moral stances that everyone shares. This question is like asking this: "If hunger is only a body phenomenon, why is it that everyone gets hungry?" Well, why shouldn't people get hungry if it's only a body phenomenon? Likewise, why shouldn't people have some moral stances that are the same as everyone else if morality is only a body phenomenon?
It is about making life not seem futile. unfortunately I got to the point where the gloss ran out of life and it seemed like a futile imposition.
There is a problem with conflicting meaning. Religious people believe there's intrinsic meaning and have children for that reason. I think making meaning gets unstable and chaotic with all these conflicting meanings. The reason our parents had children can emanate from all kinds of ideologies (many false)
But I think meaning is undermined if there is no justification given for having children. I am agnostic so I think making strong claims either way is suspect. Part of my meaning breakdown comes from having to reevaluate all my beliefs for truth value.
If a child you create has the potential to consent in the future and desires how would that not factor into creating them?
I think, like @Terrapin Station, you're confused between mental and subjective. If it is subjective, you wouldn't need to argue. For example people have varying preferences regarding ice cream flavors they like. Nobody argues about my/your flavor being better. [I]That[/i] would be purely subjective. There's no logic in flavor choices. By that reasoning infamous serial killers would be, shockingly, moral! This you won't concede.
Also, morality is a sociological concept. It isn't about the individual, which taste and preference is all about. The society decides, through reason, what is moral/immoral. The general consensus, again based on reason, acquires an objective character. There are changes in the standards of morality but they're grounded in increased knowledge of biology, social concepts, etc.
The confusion is that subjective doesn't only refer to mental and that it implies that people will disagree.
He's asking you why pain is a negative thing objectively. He's stressing that there's no extramental fact that makes pain negative. It's rather a mental state that finds it negative.
People argue about subjective stuff all the time, by the way, including food . . . and that especially becomes acute when different people have to decide where to go together to eat.
But people obviously also argue about tastes in art, too--music, films, novels, paintings, etc.
Why do people do this? Because they feel so strongly about their own reactions, and they like to commune with others, and they like other people to be able to enjoy the same sorts of reactions, etc. (And of course they want to agree with their friends, family, colleagues etc. where to go to eat, what concerts or films to go to, etc.)
Re serial killers, some of them are certainly moral in their own view. Other people feel differently, of course.
That's similar to the fact that to some people, McDonald's quarter pounders taste excellent, and other people feel differently.
Objectivists often make the mistake of believing that if this is the case, we have to let serial killers kill people. That's because they see objectivity as some sort of trump card--or as I mentioned earlier, the only "legitimate" thing. But subjectivists do not agree with this. We don't see objectivity as a trump card. We see morality as an inherently subjective thing, so there's no reason to defer to objectivity. We can and do impose our own morality, because we don't want to tolerate a world where we allow people to do certain things unchecked.
Really, the reason that most people have kids is because they fall in love (or lust) with someone and have sex with them. That's it.
Aside from that, for me personally, no futility enters into the "meaning" picture. When I was a little kid and I'd hear some other kids talk about "the meaning of life" I always simply wondered "what in the world is this kid talking about?" I never had any drive or compulsion for a "meaning of life," and it didn't stop seeming any sillier to me once I learned more about what they were talking about.
One thing re people debating about or constructively discussing morality, aesthetics etc. is that if people do have the same or similar foundational views, they'll try to figure out why they disagree when they do.
So Bob and Betty discover that they both like paintings of birds. They go to an art exhibit together, Bob sees a painting of a bird and says, "Ah--look at this nice one!" But Betty says, "Nngh, I don't care for that." Bob says, "Why? It features a bird." And then they might figure out more specifically why Betty doesn't care for it.
If they don't both like paintings of birds they can't even get that far.
That's important in discussions of morality, too.
For example, I don't morally object to anything just because it involves suffering or pain or harm. At least not unless we define those terms far more specifically (so that they'd pick out things I do formulate moral stances on).
(And I certainly do not formulate any moral stances on "human dignity" by the way.)
My answer to that question won't change anything.
Quoting TheMadFool
Again, calling it a contingency measure is misleading. What would be the alternative? It wouldn't be consent, obviously. That's not a sensible comparison to make. If your position relies on a nonsense ideal, then all the worse for your position. Mine is grounded in reality.
As for it not being moral, or being an evil, that's just your assertion, not a statement of fact. It has been disputed.
You are stuck on nonsense mode, it seems. I don't care about your hypothetical which has no basis in reality.
There's enough error in what you're doing that one can see why telephones might not approve of it.
Well, to look for extramental qualities in mental states would be like looking for edges of an egg. I think you're mistakenly lumping ALL that is mental into the category of subjective. Why? Because poking a finger with a needle is painful for everyone. I've never seen an insult evoke laughter. Nor have I seen a happy murder victim. Of course, there are exceptions - the odd masochist. However, to give weightage to such rare cases on the scale of morality would be like thinking one or two passive lions upsets the objective true belief that lions are dangerous. Statistically speaking, you're focussing on the irrelevant. You seem to demand 100% objectivity which is asking the impossible. Not even science has that level of objectivity and I'm sure you have no problems with science. Why then do you single out morality for such overly rigorous treatment?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Like I said above, the claim that morality is subjective rests on the few outliers who have a different, what shall I call it, disposition. Your whole argument rests on a handful of oddballs. This is clearly irrational.
So, if you want to continue insisting that morality is subjective, you'll also have to forfeit your rationality.
If you ground morality on reality then stealing, lying, rape, murder, everything would be moral. Afterall all of the above are real.
Morality is, at least in part, an ideal shaped by the human ability for empathy, to suffer, to feel joy, etc., under the guidance of reason.
It seems in this comment that you're understanding "subjective" to imply something like "there is little agreement on x." Is that right?
I hasten to clarify that, though I said that the OP had a point, I was not referring to his wish to forcibly involuntarily sterilize everyone. Forced sterilization of an entire population can't be justified, and would be unconscionable. When some people forcibly impose their own preferences and beliefs on others, that's one of the things that makes this a world in which you wouldn't choose to be born.
Here's what I meant when I said that the OP has a point: Yes, none of us asked to be born.
And yes, if you, as an individual who is on the wrong end of a planet's barbarism, refuse to reproduce, then you're 1) not bring someone into a life under barbarism; and 2) not contributing to there being an overall possibility to be born under barbarism at all.
Hypothetically (even if not realistically), if everyone who is on the wrong end of barbarism made that refusal, then no one on any planet in any universe would be born on the wrong end of barbarism. It wouldn't be a possibility.
But not reproducing must be an individual choice,unless someone is objectively and fairly judged to be unqualified as a parent. (I emphasize that I don't claim that our society has a feasible trustworthy means to objectively and fairly make that determination.)
Making our own life choices is a basic
Of course you surely agree that it would be better if, in our planet's societal system, no one were wrongfully harmed. (Dream on). If that unattainable condition were so, then there'd be no need to not reproduce.
So, just complain about the things that make being born on this planet undesirable, and make an individual choice to not reproduce.
Replying to a comment:
I'd said:
You commented:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Which of my statements that you quoted isn't true? It all seemed, to me, uncontroversial.
"Naturalist"? You really know how to insult someone >:o
If you lived on a non-barbaric planet, there'd be no need to not reproduce.
But yes, after you posted, I clarified that I agree that any caring person who lives on this planet wouldn't want to reproduce.
But that's only because of a planetary societal aberration. It isn't a general conclusion about life itself.
No disagreement there. We probably don't disagree on this subject.
Michael Ossipoff
If that's what I had meant, then that's what I would have said. But I didn't. I said that my position is grounded in reality, and I said that in a context whereby it was contrasted with nonsense ideals like an unborn baby consenting to being born. I'm not rejecting ideals, just nonsense ideals that are so unrealistic that they're hardly worth consideration. Attainability matters, and is a criterion for determining what is and is not nonsense. I'm only interested in real alternatives, not nonsense alternatives which aren't really alternatives at all.
[referring to the refusal to reproduce]
That supposition doesn't make sense. Just as there's an "if no one in barbaric worlds reproduced", of course there's also an "if" that they do reproduce, and, hence, there are possibility-worlds in which they do.
So, better that I just say, "Living on a barbaric planet, it's better to not reproduce.", and leave it at that.
Michael Ossipoff
Subjective to me is a matter of taste. An example would be what sort of food, game, movies, music, one likes. The hallmark of subjectivity is disagreement among people e.g. people like different genres of movie, music, etc.
So Utopia is nonsense to you? Isn't it the ultimate goal of all nations? It's not attainable at present but this is due to prevailing circumstances but circumstances change and what seems impossible may be achievable in the future.
I agree that we have to be realistic but that shouldn't obstruct the ideal situation, condition, world, etc. Morality, an ideal, serves as a beacon to guide our decisions. Without ideals progress isn't possible.
I thought I was clear. No, utopia in itself is not what I consider to be nonsense. Nor ideals. Whether a particular conception of utopia or a particular ideal is or is not nonsense would depend on one or more factors, like the one I mentioned. I don't restrict attainability to the present. I'm not holding my breath on babies consenting to be born, pigs flying, and whatnot. I don't think that it's sensible to subscribe to an ethic which relies on that kind of thinking, too far removed from reality, as a foundation. Bring it close enough, and we can talk sensibly.
You're right. I'm being unrealistic. We can't ask an unborn child whether it'd want life or not. But, you will agree that nonconsensual relationships are immoral?
That's not true. Lots of caring people on this planet want to reproduce, and lots do.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
But it isn't accurate to say that we live on a barbaric planet. That kind of thing is relative. Anyway, we don't live in a world that is so barbaric that it's better not to reproduce.
No, not always. Why would I agree to that, given that I presented counterexamples? But in many cases, yes, they're quite clearly immoral.
I gave the example of my preference for Bach and baroque. No one has said to me that because I derive pleasurable or profound experiences from Baroque music I should be allowed to force it on others.
There is no justification for imposing something on someone else based on your own preferences.
And as I said with the groping on a bus scenario most brief acts of unwanted contact or imposition are frowned upon.
I do like exposing people to Bach and Handel but I haven't a made any major converts. You can only have a child based on your own preferences so you can't claim to have done it in their interests.
Probably because a lot of it is repetitive and makes the same mistakes. People tend to get tired of that.
So once again you've not provided a logical refutation
What do you mean "once again"?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Amusingly, in some respects, you've done the work for me, and I need only point out that this goes against your own earlier comment about having no qualms about putting a chemical in the water that would cause mass infertility.
Because pleasure and pain are private individual experiences. And experiences are had by one individual not collectively.
If someone is in pain they may take a pain killer. It won't help them if twenty other people take pain killers.
All we have is our own experiences and we are not part of a continuum so invoking majorities is dubious. And having children won't continue your own life.
No it doesn't because infertility prevents new people being born who didn't ask to be born, who didn't express a desire to be born and will be imposed on. Infertility only prevents someone else being created.
Reproduction is an act involving three people and only two of them have consented.
My infertility comment was made to express how serious I am on this issue.
I would much prefer to hear a neighbours loud music or be groped on the arm then spend 15 years in education with other peoples darling monsters.
We also need to discuss specific cases here like conscription in World One where millions of men were sent to their deaths in the dismal trenches, people are coerced into doing a lot of things that are not in their own interests based some screwed up ideologies. That is the norm.
This is the part I really don't get. Why aren't you crusading for responsible parenting, the alleviation of suffering, the end of war, more nurturing forms of education, more meaningful and rewarding employment? Do you believe there's nothing we can do about unnecessary suffering, and that's why we should just pack it in?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel
You asked for it, here it is: a logical refutation. You've clearly contradicted yourself. I've caught you red handed.
I generally make logical arguments, and they're generally excellent - or so I'm told.
I'd said:
— Michael Ossipoff
You replied:
Yes, when I said that, I didn't really feel right about saying it. It was an exaggeration, and wasn't what I really meant to say.
There's (understandably, due to natural-selection) a strong procreative instinct. And of course yes that's true of caring people too. I'm sure that nearly all procreation is well-intended, and that new people are brought into the world with loving intent.
Instincts caused by natural-selection aren't necessarily desirable or beneficial to others just because they're natural.
I'd said:
— Michael Ossipoff
You replied:
Yes, it's a relative term, so it's something of a matter of opinion--the matter of where we draw the line to call a planet barbaric. I suggest that our planet qualifies with flying colors, because, routinely, so many people (not to mention other animals) are being wrongfully harmed. If that isn't barbarism, what is?
Well, just speaking for myself, I wouldn't want to bring, into a snake-pit social world like this, someone whom I care about (...and don't people start caring about their offspring even before they're born?).
And, in fact, in a world where people are fighting and dying over resources, and dying because they're doing without, i wouldn't want to add to the number of people in that fight.
.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't think that that's enough to conclude that we live on a barbaric planet, rather than a planet which contains barbarism, as the barbaric aspects go hand in hand with the civilised aspects. In my day to day life, I encounter people behaving in a more civilised manner than in a more barbaric manner. Throughout the day, if I look around, I observe people maintaining a certain level of respect towards each other, or towards dogs, cats, and birds.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
If only others would make that important qualification!
That there's a risk of harm is not in itself a good reason not to do something, so there'd have to be a greater reason. We both compared it to gambling, and we both accept that gambling can pay off. Many, many people live lives that they would affirm are worth living, and would also affirm that it is better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all, to borrow a phrase.
Some things are, in a sense at least, more important than even a lack of vital resources in parts of the world. You only live once, and opportunities do not last indefinitely. I am not encouraging you to have children - I don't want to have children myself - I'm just saying that you should have a good reason, and I think that it should be more of a personal reason than a reason which puts the world over and above one's own interests, since the world will keep on keeping on regardless of whether you do or do not have children, and either way, it would likely be miniscule and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, if the grand scheme of things is what you care about.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4650152/Turkish-boys-circumcised-no-anaesthetic.html
You understand that on my view, subjectivity doesn't at all imply disagreement, right?
Actually it is not, and there are people who like pain although they are a minority.
What if I do? I think they are immoral but that's my opinion, I won't accept that as a fact. Some of those serial killers think they're moral. Societies have opinions on morals but they're not objectively true.
I don't see how that's possible. Subjectivity is subjectivity IFF there's variety in mental states and, after that, disagreement follows. X likes romance, Y likes comedy, Z likes sci-fi. The preference is subjective and there disagreement.
What I think you're suggesting is that we can all vote for a particular thought/action being moral/immoral. Subjective and no disagreement. However, note that it's not easy to convince people of right/wrong without a good argument and arguments depend on objectivity. There's no such thing as a subjective rationality. They contradict each other.
http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/forced-sterilization/
Creating a life that can go on for 80+ years of suffering is the greatest imposition.
Preventing people getting pregnant is stopping them victimising others.
I don't see where I said we should ask for consent to everything.
Should I ask a serial killer for his consent before imprisoning him to stop a killing spree?
The point I am making is that we did not consent to be here so nothing is consenting. I compare it strongly to kidnapping. Kidnapping someone then giving them choices is absurd because there whole time spent with you is against their consent. You can't be moral in that scenario.
You are as much a victim as anyone else because you were forced into existence here. You may feel independent and liberated but you were just forced here.
1. highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury.
"she's in great pain"
synonyms: suffering, agony, affliction, torture, torment, discomfort, soreness More
2.
mental suffering or distress.
"the pain of loss"
synonyms: sorrow, grief, heartache, heartbreak, sadness, unhappiness, distress, desolation, misery, wretchedness, despair, desperation, mental suffering, emotional suffering, trauma; More
Masochism is a reinterpretation of pain. I doubt anyone likes every pain all the time but rather selective incidence in certain context. Mental distress can lead to self harm as a distraction but this is rather creating the lesser of two evils,
[I]Suffering, imposition, victimising[/I]... loaded language. :-d
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Missing the point. :-d
You didn't. That wasn't the point. The point speaks for itself.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
False analogy. :-d
Quoting Andrew4Handel
[I]Non sequitur[/I]. :-d
Okay, I am well and truly bored of this. Good day.
So you don't really understand my view then. It's difficult to have a conversation under those conditions.
I’d said:
You wrote:
But it isn’t just some violent people here and there, or the occasional isolated Charlie Manson. Without my going into details or naming names, you know what I mean when I say that the barbarism and brutality are systemic, systematic, official, and routine on this planet, and a high percentage of the planet’s inhabitants are its victims.
The fact that only some (large) percentage of the population are its victims isn’t enough to make it not be a planetary attribute, something that negatively characterizes the planetary societal situation.
But doesn’t that make it worse, that it’s the civilization’s rulers who are routinely perpetrating the barbarism worldwide?
Most people don’t act badly in their interactions with their nearby neighbors. They say that even Hitler was kind to his dog.
But when the barbarism is so systemic and systematic, mustn’t the social merit of a planet be judged by the plight of the large groups, the large numbers of people, who are the victims of the systematic barbarism perpetrated by the civilization on a worldwide scale?
A famous person once said, “What you do to the least of them, you do to me.”
I’d said
Of course. That’s why we’re here. Yes, that’s what I was telling the OP.
I just meant that I wouldn’t want to personally have a role as even part of the mechanism of putting someone in this particular world, even if such births are inevitable, or even right for some reason, anyway.
All of that’s true, which is why my criticism of procreation doesn’t apply to people living in a better societal-world. I emphasized that I was talking about a planetary aberration, not a general conclusion about life itself.
I suggest that being someone about whom there could be a life possibility-story means being someone with some predisposition to life, wanting or needing life, in some way—even if, for whatever reason, that life has to be in this Land of the Lost that is our planet.
In fact, maybe in some instances, someone’s predisposition is for life in the Land of the Lost. I mean, we’re all here, aren’t we.
But that doesn’t mean that I’d want to be the reason why a loved-one of mine has to negotiate life in the Land of the Lost.
If someone needs life, even on this planet, they’ll be born, maybe here. I just don’t want to be part of how it happened. And, on an immediate personal level, I don’t want a loved-one of mine to suffer after being brought into this world by me.
Opportunities here can be gone before we know what’s going on.
Quite so. I don’t have any influence over the fact that births, including births here, are inevitable. I just don’t personally want to be even part of the agency by which someone is born in this world.
Michael Ossipoff
Ok, let's talk within the assumption that generally pain is a negative thing. Then why is avoiding negative things and harming others objectively bad thing? Even doing something because one has motive to is rational only subjectively.
Not unless it's a threesome and even then this sentence is logically circumspect.
It is not that pain is negative or bad, but that it is defined by its unpleasantness.
Lack of consent and pain are real things not opinions.
A morality will be incoherent if you don't distinguish between harm and the good or consent and lack of consent and because life is created without consent and entails harm then you cannot have a coherent morality demanding that people require consent and should not harm.
So the only option is moral nihilism which essentially undermines everyone and does not favour any action. Once you try and create a morality based on consent and harm you have already undermined that by reproducing.
If someone is dying of cancer then moral sentiment won't keep them alive. Moral sentiment is cheap and subservient to facts.
And unpleasantness as a word itself implies you consider that to be negative.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Of course, but their negativity (or rather its negativity, but this is off-topic) is an opinion.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No, because nihilism is different from pure and absolute subjectivism. Besides, nihilism (and maybe subjectivism that only rejects moral theories, not morals) is the only stance on morals that is fully supported by logic and facts and you don't have any argument that disproves it as a valid theory, just that I'm making moral decisions which you can't prove.
This doesn't make any sense to me. It seems like either you'd consider lack of consent, pain, AND opinions real things, or you'd not consider any of them real.
Put it this way: consent or lack of it, pain and opinions are all mental phenomena.
So either you consider mental phenomena real or you do not.
Morality doesn't have to be focused on harm, suffering, etc. Those need not be hinges or criteria for any moral stances. Many people
And one need not be a moral objectivist to espouse moral stances. One can recognize that moral stances emanate from individuals and embrace that contra the category error of believing that they occur extramentally.
As I said pain is defined by is unpleasantness. I didn't say it was defined by it's negativity.
If you go to the doctors or dentist they often say "Does that hurt?" or "where does it hurt?"
People rarely if ever go to the doctor saying "I have a lovely pain in my knee I would like you to treat it"
You seem to be saying that private experiences (which is all we have) are values when they are not.
Mental phenomena are all we have access to. Phenomena outside of the mind are described in shifting models by physics.
Consent is not an opinion but an observation that X appeared not to consent to Y.
Even if you are most staunchly "Pro-life" there is no coherent to way to say someone created themselves and or consented to be created. We discussed the pre soul scenario but even there it is hard to imagine how someone could be argued to have communicated a desire to a parent.
Yet a huge amount hinges on this lack of consent, for how we shape society and apportion blame, including the luck of birth.
Someone born into poverty or relative poverty is disadvantaged and a child of a millionaire etc has privileges but they may be disadvantaged in other ways by inheritance. Children are not to blame for their parents,their genes, their race and gender etc but these heavily impact them.
A child with caring and financially supportive, encouraging parents has done nothing to deserve that. The only person that can be held accountable for creating someones traits and circumstances is a parent.
Yes, and unpleasantness's negativity is subjective.
That doesnt make sense. How could we have words like pain and unpleasant if there was no inherent negativity?
And when you see a starving child or someone else clearly in pain or suffering in what way is that subjective? Part of empathy and theory of mind is accurately imaging the experiences or intent underlying people's body language and statements.
Objective to us humans doesn't mean the same as objective.
Your reply seemed to completely blow by what I was interested in. You're considering lack of consent, pain and opinions to be very different things apparently, in terms of whether they're real or not. Why?