Are there any non-selfish reasons for having children?
Antinatalism regards procreation as positively immoral, but I no longer buy the arguments in favor of this view. This means I don't think procreation is morally wrong. However, just because something is not wrong does not thereby make it right. Ought implies can but can does not imply ought.
Consequently, I want to understand what positive reasons there are to have children, specifically those that are not based in egotism. Thus far, I have failed to find any. The best I have come up with is that procreation is necessary to maintain civilization. But is civilization an end in itself? I think not. And this rationale might boil down to egotism in the end.
Consequently, I want to understand what positive reasons there are to have children, specifically those that are not based in egotism. Thus far, I have failed to find any. The best I have come up with is that procreation is necessary to maintain civilization. But is civilization an end in itself? I think not. And this rationale might boil down to egotism in the end.
Comments (188)
Agreed. People will possibly say that they are giving an opportunity for the child to experience and self-actualize. I'm not sure your response to this though.
Even supposing your partner wanted children out of a sort of egoism, if you were doing it for your partner, that seems to me like it would count as a non-selfish reason.
But then I guess I sort of wonder what would count as egotism, for you, and more interestingly what wouldn't.
Because in one way or another egotism, conceptually, has this ability to engulf all reasons. In some sense we can see all motivations or consequences as centrally related to an ego. So I kind of just want to avoid that sort mistake, not really get into the specifics of selfishness/non-selfishness (since you're actually asking about procreation). I just don't want to think of something and have it seem like, well actually, that's egotistical.
In the society I live in I don't think there are any rational reasons for having children. We don't need the labor on our farm. We're not trying to populate an empty landscape.
I think back to when my wife and I were having children. We have three, oldest 36, youngest 28. I think she came to marriage with specific plans about children while I didn't. Still, there was never any conflict between us on whether, when, or how many. A lot of the timing had to do with our lives. We had a house of our own and enough money to support children. We were in our early 30s. It was time.
It was an emotional, social decision. We wanted to be part of, to lead, a family. We wanted to be part of a community. We wanted to offer something to the rest of our families. It was natural. It wasn't forced or rushed. We'd always known we would have children. It's what people do.
So, I guess for me, the question is "why shouldn't we have children?" Perhaps you have an answer to that. You don't want them. You think they are a burden on the world's resources. I have no problem with that. If you don't want children, don't have them. My brother and his wife don't. My daughter won't.
Was that to my previous response or its own separate post?
Anything in response to my first response?
I don't know what calling life good means, unless you're thinking of the Platonic equivalency between being and goodness. That's an intriguing concept and may be the most promising as a selfless reason, but I have no definite opinion on it yet. It's a variant of the hypothetical theist answer I gave above, I would say. As for life being enjoyable, I fail to see how that translates into a reason to have children. It sounds selfish, as life can only be enjoyable to individual living things. Life itself doesn't enjoy anything. There is no duty to perpetuate enjoyment either.
Quoting Moliere
I still think this would make the act of procreation selfish in this case, since at least one person (the person who will have the child) is acting selfishly, even if I may not be.
Quoting Moliere
I disagree. I think compassion is an non-egoistic motive. But one can't be compassionate to non-existent people, so compassion can't be a motive to have children.
Quoting T Clark
Neither do I. That's why I asked the question I did. :|
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't buy that either, as it depends on the claim that experiencing life is intrinsically good. I don't think it is. What would be the reason that it is? Because one can feel pleasure? Well, then we're back to a selfish reason at bottom.
I guess they would respond, "What's wrong with wanting a child to go into existence to feel pleasure/happiness"? I have my own reply, but just wondering yours.
So, what are rational reasons for not having children that outweigh the non-rational reasons for having them?
Because pleasure isn't an intrinsic but an instrumental good and therefore inherently selfish.
I don't say that there are.
Cool, that's the sort of thing I was looking for.
Is compassion the only non-egoistic motive?
I guess the two follow-ups are:
1) What is your definition of intrinsic and instrumental good?
1a) Why isn't pleasure an intrinsic good?
2) Why is inherently selfish bad?
I tend to think so, but I won't say that with certainty.
So you're no hedonist. Does that mean hedonists would necessarily disagree with antinatalism, or only if pleasure outweighed the pain of being alive?
Selfishness is only bad when it harms others. Since we're social animals, and survival is a social matter involving a fair amount of reciprocation, selfishness is seen as a negative trait.
But if we were intelligent felines, it probably wouldn't matter.
Good-in-itself and good for some other end.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because I think it's purpose is to aid the health of an organism.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, I didn't say it was bad. I think selfishness is amoral, neither good nor bad.
What about giving? A gift can be egotistical -- a display of ownership or power -- but I'd say there is also compassionate giving. Like in the old O. Henry fable The Gift of the Magi.
It seems to me that having and raising children is a kind of gift, if done in the right way. What you are doing is providing a whole new life the means to live happily. Obviously you'd have to be set up to provide, so it's not like this sort of reason would hold for everyone. But you could view having children as giving a sort of priceless gift, one with intrinsic value -- a life worth living.
I'm also sort of hesitant to say that someone could be motivated purely on non-egotistical motives. One is going to have pride for their children, be attached to them, feel joy and frustration in relation to their immediate well-being in the process. But I'd probably be pretty hesitant to think that, on the model of compassion being possibly the only non-egotistical motive, that any human is so motivated.
It seems to me that we are bi-conditionally motivated, on the frame of compassion/ego.
No, but I should add here that one could view pleasure as intrinsically good and not be a hedonist. The hedonist views pleasure as the only intrinsic good. There could be others.
Also, it depends on what is meant by pleasure. I've spoken of pleasure and have in mind effectively positive physical stimulation, but schop1 also equated it with happiness. I might be inclined to view happiness as intrinsically good, but that's because I don't equate it with pleasure.
Quoting Marchesk
Yeah, maybe.
Right. I wouldn't say the act of giving in itself is compassionate. If the motive to give is compassion, then it is, but if it isn't, then it isn't.
In the case of procreation, once again, there is no one to be compassionate toward, so it isn't a compassionate, and therefore selfless, act. It's a selfish one. As I say, selfish acts aren't necessarily wrong, but neither are they right. So I'm still left without a non-selfish reason to have children.
I'm not trying to say that whether or not you have children gives your ideas more or less credibility. I'm just curious.
In light of this, there really does seem to be only one game in town when it comes to selfless reasons to have children: theism. Either it is commanded of God, or the creation of life is good inasmuch as it imitates or even partakes in God's creative act, God being the good itself and so unable to will other than the good. Alternatively, procreation might be good from an Indian religious perspective in that it extricates someone from being in a hell realm or some other deleterious samsaric plane of existence. Secular natalists and parents are therefore on the thinnest ice of all when it comes to reasons to procreate.
As I said, I am not judging one way or the other. I'm just curious, especially if there are some people who do have kids but also have questions about the appropriateness of having them. Once you have children, it's hard to be objective anymore, so that kind of perspective would be interesting.
Do you believe that ethical value attach to anything other than people?
The best non-selfish reason for having children is that you are "doomed" to reproduce, and unless you consistently go out of your way to avoid reproduction, the odds are on you reproducing.
You are probably looking for something more elegant than accepting your biological doom (or destiny).
If you discovery non-egotistical reasons for having or not having children, does your discovery have any moral effect on anyone else?
It's still a voluntary choice, though.
Any reason to have children, in my opinion, must either be religious or intra-wordly, the latter being things like economic stability (such as government incentives to procreate). Intra-wordly reasons seem to me to almost always be selfish and immoral, since they necessarily use a person as a means and not as an end. The only non-selfish, non-religious reason for having children might be from the expectation that your children will be great altruists - unfortunately it's impossible to tell if one's children will have the proper character, let alone survive long enough to provide a positive utility. Yuck, utilitarianism :vomit: In that case, it may not be selfish, but it certainly isn't wise or prudent. And it certainly contradicts everything that goes into being a good parent - try explaining to your child that you had them with the sole intention of grooming them to be providers of utility. That's a shit parent.
Especially when it comes to humans, there’s more procreated than just flesh. Humans being a sexually reproducing species, we amalgamate two separate bodies of flesh to create a new one that is a hybrid of both parents. As a generality, the child also inherits an amalgamation of the two parent’s worldviews, including heuristics for the living of life and a prioritization of goals to be pursued. It’s a lot more complex, I know, but this can be stated to be the general norm worldwide.
Then there’s base and elevated selfishness. Base selfishness has children to do all the hard work around the farm/abode and to ensure the parents are well off in their old age—possibly with more territory. Elevated selfishness, in one of its many abstract forms, has children to propagate virtue and wisdom—hey, it’s very elevated here—thereby propagating a hybrid of the parent’s identity. Were only base selfishness to reproduce itself, humanity and the planet would go down the drain quicker than otherwise. Conversely, were only elevated selfishness to propagate itself such that no base selfishness remained, well, that blasphemous dream of utopia by comparison to where we are now would become objectified/manifest.
Again generally, base selfishness is not the kind to give a hoot about the wellbeing of the offspring, never mind of the community … ultimately, the global community as an influence upon what occurs locally. Hence, it’s generally those who are not of a base selfishness that contemplate whether or not there’s any virtue to bringing new life into the world. But if all these non-basely selfish people were to stop reproducing, human life would then become a hell on earth wherein some degree of elevated selfishness yet occasionally rears its ugly head into the world—random things sometimes occur—only to be humiliated, tortured in one way or another, etc., etc., etc.
Arguable, I’m aware, yet the conclusion of all this is as follows: it is only ethical for elevated selfishness to reproduce itself in the world—given that the conditions for raising children of like elevated selfishness can be safely enough established by the parents.
Because some would rather term elevated selfishness “non-selfish”, this then presents one non-selfish reason/motive to have children: yes, laughable as it may seem, for the benefit of mankind (a category which does not exclude the very parents of elevated selfishness/selflessness which given birth … nor the very offspring themselves).
There are also the unexpected conceptions of a future human life. The same overall argument should still apply.
Hey, it’s a feasible reason, I’m thinking, one that most would acknowledge to be close enough to non-selfish to fit the bill. Also, I don’t have children as of yet, so I can feely allow myself to indulge in this idealistic, theoretical mindset. Who knows, there might even be some truth to it.
It may seem like a form of immortality to people having children.
A desire to have sex is no reason to produce a child.
This presents its own contradiction. Why do more people have to be born to benefit mankind? What does that end goal really mean? If it is something like providing technology or other means to live "better off", then the best off would not needing to have to need technology in the first place, or to be better off in the first place- aka not being born in the first place. Thus, the best choice of all is never having been. By having more people you are creating a state of affairs whereby more people will need to be helped, when they didn't need to be helped in the first place.
I’ll be forthright. My mindset is that we’re all selfish, we all want something; and we all get irritated or worse when we clash with those whose wants are mutually exclusive with our own.
As to it being better to never have been, this too is a self’s want. We can first address an individual’s want to have never been (it happens), then the generalized want that humanity would have never have been. But there is no valid reason to stop there if this is our resolution to suffering. Hence, we progress to it would have been better if life in general would have never been anywhere. And lastly, we concluded with it would have been better if being itself would have never been. For either via materialism of other ontologies, turns out that when being is there is either a good likelihood for life to eventually develop and hold presence or, otherwise, its just accepted that life is a brute fact.
Since no one has figured out any sufficient reason for being’s presence irrespective of ontology, though, the wish that being would have never been is as nonsensical and impractical as presuming oneself to have the capacity to turn all of being everywhere into nonbeing.
Being is; life is; humanity is. The only proper question to be asked is “what now?” Encouraging a global suicide of all life, or worse, doesn’t sit well with many, including me as concerns, at least, my own transient being and that of my loved ones. I haven’t yet heard you advocate for this aim, so let’s agree to put this hypothetical out of existence.
I’ve never claimed or meant to insinuate that if someone doesn't want to have children they should have children nevertheless. This scenario generally doesn’t make for the best of childhoods--sometimes far worse. So this only tends to increase suffering. But if you want all people to stop reproducing, my guess is that those who unthinkingly reproduce with the least amount of concern or compassion for new lives will continue to do so via unprotected sex in bathroom stalls and the like without paying attention to your arguments or anybody else’s. Thereby again increasing total suffering in the world.
Again, humanity is, just as we all are. So, if there is agreement on the aforementioned, which way forward to best resolve this problem of global suffering?
Yeah, this is what I had in mind when I mentioned Indian religious traditions in my other post. That said, though they appear to be in the minority, there are some bhikkhus who advocate something very near to antinatalism. See here: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/fuang/single.html
It also seems to me that Buddhism has as a global goal the elimination of all procreation, even though locally and proximately, it advocates procreation for the reason you gave. Once all sentient beings are enlightened, birth ends. This is the bodhisattva's goal. In fact, the same holds true of Christianity, with the world having a definite end and Jesus saying that there is no marriage in heaven (and therefore no procreation) in Matthew 22:30.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yes, this is exactly how it seems to me.
Quoting darthbarracuda
This isn't facetious? I thought you were a utilitarian of some kind.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Agreed.
This brings to mind a cheeky objection to antinatalism, which is that antinatalists should have as many children as possible to spread the message and accelerate the goal of humanity's extinction. A paradox, but it fits the sort of utilitarian calculi that antinatalists tend to employ.
Quoting javra
Selfishness isn't ethical, though. This is a category mistake.
Quoting javra
That would be equivocation.
Quoting javra
Now here's the makings of a nonselfish reason. What do you mean by mankind? It sounds Platonic. What is it about mankind that it needs maintaining?
Don't kids give you a reason not to be selfish? Aren't they an antidote to egotism?
So I don't think there needs to be moral grounds for procreation as such, any more than that it could be objectively or absolutely judged as immoral. If it works, it works. So really we are talking about the practicalities or optimalities, the degree of free choice involve.
But if your concern is primarily the "sin" of egotism, then having kids must be a major way of ensuring your life must be less self-centred.
Of course, the routine rejoinder is that kids are an expression of egotism in being an unwarranted extension of yourself.
But then I would counter-argue that selfhood is essentially social anyway. Humans evolved to be social creatures. It is always going to be the case that we find ourselves in others.
Or at least, it is a business of co-construction. And antinatalism's flaw is this mistaken understanding about the socially-constructed nature of selfhood.
Quoting Thorongil
Why not? If you are making moral arguments here, why isn't a civilised self a better self?
Now we can certainly say the current state of modern society has a bunch of problems. However that in turn means it is not yet properly civilised and so not at any kind of end.
So antinatalism would depend on being able to show that things can only get worse as the human story continues to evolve. But is that judgement factual?
Quoting Thorongil
But then secular thinkers would have the least need of reasons here. They would just do what comes naturally - which includes making fairly rational choices about the situational pros and cons of having kids.
So to the degree that things like contraception, economics and social tolerance of diversity make procreation now an individual choice, people would exercise that choice.
Are there arguments - from a secular viewpoint - that would say the development of such a choice is wrong? It may indeed be a very difficult choice, given the uncertainties of modern life. But then that just emphasises the need for the kind of civilised rationality that would underpin such a choice.
So I would reply that a secular thinker - someone relying on rationality and evidence to make decisions about what is natural, even if just for themselves in some social context - is best placed to actually reason for or against having kids.
Well said. I agree.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Here, though, is where I might offer some disagreement. There is a sense in which this choice can be made, namely, by committing suicide. If, as tends to be the case, the antinatalist regards the state of being before birth as equivalent to the state of being after death, then one can choose never to have been born by ending one's life.
This is a criticism I now level against Schopenhauer, who asserts the same equivalency. For Schopenhauer, consciousness and thereby one's personal, empirical identity ends with the death of the brain, so there can be no afterlife or reincarnation. The will's manifestations after one's birth will not carry on that identity. Nor is there any transcendent mind that might retain knowledge of the life one had, so all the suffering and tribulation one experienced in life is, in death, as though it never existed at all.
Call me cynical, or worse, but I don’t comprehend how mankind could have any value to anyone outside of self-interests in the wellbeing of others. Self-interests are about the either sustained or increased wellbeing of the self and, because of this, are all self-centered when philosophically addressed: i.e., centered around the wants of the particular self or, else, a cohort of individual selves that share a common want and, hence, a common intention.
With that understanding in mind, anyone who would even remotely care for their community—mankind being about as relatively unselfish a compassion for a community as anyone can feasibly hold; (e.g. empathy for someone on the other side of the world which one learns of via news but is otherwise unaffected by, etc.)—would be solely motivated by their own ego’s self-interests. Empathy in general works this way: when it does happen, another’s welfare becomes converged with one’s own; mirror-neurons within one’s self that in turn affects one’s own being via the events that unfold for some other, if one would like to address this physiologically. Those who hold such a concern for the wellbeing of mankind are often termed humanitarians—concern for the general being of the species of which one is a member of (I didn't want to imply just males by the term). Global issues such as a reduction in global warming, increased global justice, having fewer kids in the world starve to death, this sort of thing. The future generations which would be impacted by global warming, global injustice that doesn’t immediately affect one’s own life where one lives, and the starvation of particular children one only knows about in abstract ways have nothing to do with the wellbeing of one’s immediate self—save for this empathy based self-interest in the wellbeing of humanity at large. I’ve heard of plenty of humanitarians who are atheistic and, due to this, non-Platonic. So I don’t find any connection to the ontologies maintained.
Quoting Thorongil
Who or what might be “maintaining” mankind if not mankind itself, which is itself an aggregate of all individual humans? Societies historically tend to turn tyrannical when the individuals within it don’t communally do anything to maintain the society they partake of. Yes, first me and my own, then I help if I can those others that surround—this just as they tell you on airplanes of how to best proceed in case of an emergency, and this for very good reason. Nevertheless, society is now global—more applicable to the species at large than ever before.
Am I missing something here?
And it seems to me that you (or the hypothetical you) is wearing rose-tinted glasses here. One ought to remember that for every pleasant picnic at the park, there's such a degree of suffering that exists in the world that one's best and only choice is to ignore the vast majority of it. No one with a well-cultivated conscience could go on living if the weight of the world's suffering was in their mind as much as it probably should be. This angling toward life rather than suffering, I'd argue, means that people are naturally disposed to procreation as being instep with their own will to live.
Also, love is not certain in life. A couple may intend well in having a child or children, but in my opinion the only way that you'd be able to get away with mere good intentions is to equate existence with love. As I believe @Thorongil mentioned before, you're kind of forced to preach a Thomistic approach, where existence (being) and essence (love) aren't disparate - meaning that the essence of procreation is love, thus procreation is morally permissible! I do not, however, equate being with love, which explains why I'm not a Christian and why I don't find it justifiable to procreate.
Additionally, and going back to the bit I quoted of you, I would agree that raising a child/children is a gift, a good gift, but the having of them I don't find on the same moral footing. To say that having a child is a gift means that the child must agree with your judgement of them, otherwise you've failed in giving your sense of life and goodness to your child. However, were I and my spouse to not have a child, but only raise one, our judgement of our child as being a gift is not dependent upon the child's acceptance of our view because we were not ingredient in their willed creation. In other words, if you have a child and label them a gift, and that child completely disagrees and decides later to kill themselves, would you still say with an earnest heart that their life, which ended in misery and suicide, was a gift? If after such a tragedy no sorrow finds you and you proclaim to the heavens what a great gift your child's life was to have ended that way, I would struggle to find a more selfish and twisted perspective.
Lastly, the picture that comes to mind for me when thinking about procreation is children falling into an ocean. Some will learn to swim, some will drown. Some will swim and find dry land, some will swim a ways but give up. You can give the child a rope, a life vest, a granola bar - things that can represent good parenting - but none of it, in my opinion, is enough to justify the throwing of children into an ocean in the first place. Suffering will find you whether you learned how to swim, found land, founded an empire. I think it is Schopenhauer who argued rather peculiarly that suffering, not happiness, is what marks the world for compassion. In this way, or at least how I view it, one rather paradoxically lives for suffering in order to love, as opposed to loving so as not to suffer. To me, that puts everyone in the same "boat" or ocean. The fact that some find love and compassion doesn't actually matter if suffering is the mean.
Anyway, I'll stop here as I think I've rambled enough :eyes:
This is a post-natal contingency. I'm talking about the selfishness of procreation itself, not the possible lack thereof as a result of having children. Besides, if this is true, then one can simply adopt, so you still haven't said anything about procreation proper.
Quoting apokrisis
Because civilization merely puts a vice on vice, so to speak, and so exists instrumentally.
Quoting apokrisis
It is better. But to paraphrase @schopenhauer1, by having children you are creating a state of affairs whereby more people will need to be civilized, when they didn't need to be civilized in the first place by never having been born. The project of civilization is wonderful, but its value comes ex post facto, the aftermath being the rapaciousness and violence of human beings. It is a small band-aid on a large wound that need not ever be opened again. To procreate for the sake of the band-aid is therefore irrational, as the band-aid only exists to heal the wound, which it can't ever completely do.
Quoting apokrisis
If they are moral nihilists, this may follow, but antinatalism tacitly assumes moral realism, for it regards procreation as immoral in principle, not merely according to the individual's subjective inclinations.
Well, there goes that reason, then.
Quoting javra
I don't know. I don't feel your response addressed my concerns, but we could be talking past each other.
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Frankly, I don't see the point in ruining the occasional picnic by self-flagellation for pausing the contemplation of the world's suffering. One picnic is not 10 more dying children being killed off by impatient vultures. If you take upon your self the sufferings of the world, you likely will kill yourself, to no ones benefit.
That is true. The suffering of the world is beyond the scope of our imaginations. There is too much, it is too varied, it is too refractory, it is too bound together. Dwelling on suffering does not reduce it. Rather fixating on the unquenchable suffering of the world disables those who might at least salve a few wounds.
Besides, the picnic attendees are subject to the possibility of refractory suffering along with the rest of the world. Refractory suffering has no meaning until it begins up close and personal. Even we fine few philosophers here may become intimately acquainted with suffering--so don't cancel any picnics.
Not a good argument. To procreate is to have kids. But perhaps you are not seeing it from a mother's point of view. The male can pretend it is all rather more abstract.
And adoption might be even more selfless than procreation. But my argument did target procreation - actual "proper" procreation. So you are simply trying to divert.
Quoting Thorongil
Is it quality or quantity that is the issue here? How many is too many? How few is enough?
Antinatalism has to be an argument about quality - absolute generality. Either there should be life (because it is in some sense generally good, or at least neutral), of there should not.
But if antinatalism is simply a wrangle about the pragmatics of how many lives can exist in a tolerable fashion, then it has completely lost any real force it thought it had. Once you say some number is acceptable, then we can all agree - nothing to see here.
Quoting Thorongil
Now we are into the last resort - philosophical battle by dramatic rhetoric. Existence is the wound that can't be healed.
I dunno. Maybe I spend too much time on actual biology. In nature, wounds heal. And they are the exception rather than the rule. The functional autonomy of a working body comes first. You can't have a wound without there being the alternative of the healthy organism.
Quoting Thorongil
Well exactly. It requires the absolutism of moral realism, as I said.
And some folk believe that. Which makes antinatalism another religion. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary about nature, it requires an act of faith to sustain antinatalism as a system of belief.
Some religions like to be life-affirming. Others might not.
To the degree that any religion shapes a society, those beliefs get a good evolutionary work-out. Nature still gets the last say on human death cults.
Yes, in a godless, materialistic universe, there is no nonselfish reason to procreate. This thread has solidified that opinion.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
I am not a Christian either, but neither do I rule out Christianity. Following where the truth might lead can sometimes lead to conclusions one finds unpalatable. Christians are often castigated for believing in Christianity merely because they want it to be true. Wish fulfillment is certainly a danger for the believer, but no less a danger is its obverse, what one might call dislike fulfillment, whereby one lacks belief in something merely on account of not wanting it to be true. As a nonbeliever, I must keep this in mind when pursuing the possibility of truth in religion.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
A most vivid analogy. :up:
This doesn't address what I said, and I suspect you don't understand what I said. I didn't give an argument, I made a distinction, one that refutes the alleged nonselfish reason for procreation you tried to give.
You and others may be interested in the following responses to the same question of this thread from a pregnancy forum:
- https://www.whattoexpect.com/forums/hot-topics-1/topic/selfless-reason-for-having-children.html
This tracks what I've been saying throughout this thread.
Quoting apokrisis
Quality. And one is too many. It's an argument from principle, as I said.
Quoting apokrisis
In a certain sense, yes, this is a presupposition of mine, I admit. But I also admit the possibility of redemption, though it isn't achieved by means of having children.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, but not metaphysical wounds!
Quoting apokrisis
Poppycock, I say. But if you really believe this, then you implicitly allow antinatalism in through the backdoor, for if morality is inherently subjective, you have no means of disputing the antinatalist on moral grounds.
Life is full of suffering.
I don't think suffering is enough of a reason to say life is not worth living, though. It is a fact of life. Learning to deal with suffering is part of a journey to a worthwhile life. I don't think being weighed down by the weight of the world is what a well-cultivated conscience does.
Nothing is certain in life.
Why must something be certain in order for it to be good?
Intent isn't everything, I agree. One must make prudent plans, too. But just the fact that these plans may falter isn't enough to say that having children is not-good (trying to stay away from saying it's morally bad, either -- merely the negation of its positivity, not the affirmation of its negativity)
I don't see a difference between biological children and non-biological children. Having them is raising them in what I was trying to get at -- I'm not focusing on the biological facts of the origins of children and the event of birth.
Also, even supposing tragic end to life, I don't see how that possibility makes having children somehow not-good. The intent was to give a gift. Intent is not enough, I grant, hence why you'd have to be prudent and plan. It may not end as you hope, but so what?
The possibility of tragedy and failure isn't enough to make something not-good.
I don't see suffering as this total negation of life's value. Teaching a child how to suffer -- as there are better and worse ways -- is a part of helping someone learn how to swim in your analogy.
A bit of a disconnect here, though, in your analogy -- there are no children before the swim. They simply do not exist. They are either born into the water or not. You can prepare a cove for the born, but it won't guarantee undertow won't take them away at some point. Tragedy may strike.
But, then, it also may not. This is just what it is to live a human life.
I think your evaluation of the gift would depend on whether or not you view human life, as it is, as worth living. Suffering does not persuade me that life is not worth living. At least, the mere presence of the possibility of suffering being greater than not-suffering.
I think it would depend on the quality of the gift. Do you prepare to give a good life or do you not do so? That would be a good way of differentiating between more egotistical and less egotistical motivations (I say more or less because I already said I don't think it's humanly possible to be purely non-egotistical, in the sense that a frame between compassion/ego would dictate)
NO-no-no-no-no. No.
But I suspect that in the process of going through examples I'd probably want to say that the division doesn't always hold in particular cases.
In the frame I think of compassion as a sort of dissolution of the self with the specific orientation towards a particular kind of global mind. But that global mind, or any sort of global mind (mindframe?), will always be playing in the background of any actual act -- acts are always done by actors, which needs some self which is choosing. A rock doesn't choose to fall, after all, and a compassionate God doesn't choose to bestow blessings upon the sick.
Humans are somewhere in-between those two extremes, and the very conditions of choice requires a self -- which, as I understand compassion at least, necessitates an ego.
Now our egos can have a sort of global frame to them more in tune with a compassionate mind. But there would be no act which is motivated out of compassion alone.
That being said I wouldn't say that all acts, because they are partially selfish by the very conditions which allow them to be act (on a gradient, lets say), are neither good nor bad.
Hence, when selfishness is defined in this way, I'd have to say that selfishness is not a defeater to goodness.
I don't understand how that is a refutation. Adoption might be less egotistical. But that doesn't mean procreation is consequently egotistical.
So you really didn't deal with my argument - that even pre-conception, a reason for having kids is that you could expect it would make you less egotistical as a result. The desire to be less selfish could be a valid reason.
Quoting Thorongil
Right. So antinatalism relies on moral absolutism as I said. It doesn't even leave room to value the possibility of a growth in civilised selfhood. It is monotonic and obsessive in its complaints.
It does follow its own particular logic to its end, but that remains - in my view, based on larger naturalistic arguments - a caricature of the rich world it pretends to represent.
Quoting Thorongil
Ah yes. The completely imaginary kind!
So again, if naturalism is true, antinatalism fails. Nothing has really changed. We just have to decide whose metaphysics we believe.
Quoting Thorongil
Huh? I'm not disputing your moral right to hold absolutist antinatalist beliefs. I'm saying such beliefs would be no better than faith based. They would be utterly subjective.
My view of morality is instead based on the objectivity of pragmatic naturalism. So sure, that is a metaphysical stance. But it is the product of theory and evidence, not faith. It is the objective view in exactly the way pragmatism defines that.
Remember what I said about necessity vs contingency. There is room in my naturalism for actions that make no essential difference. Objectively the world is divided in that fashion. And so yes, there is a cultural relativism that makes many things - like choice of sock colour - a "subjective" matter.
But pre-conception choices about whether or not to have kids is a bit more important than sock colours. There will always be pros and cons. And so the hope is that a civilised world will make civilised decisions.
Faith-based approaches can indeed enshrine social habits that represent good choices. Religions exist in human society for a reason. Their absolutism is useful - if the habits they dictate continue to be functional.
But strong conviction of itself is not a reliable guide to metaphysical-strength issues. We invented the rational collective method of philosophy and science for precisely that reason.
In Buddhist cultures, there is the belief that being born in the human realm is advantageous because it's the only opportunity to hear and follow the Buddhist teachings and achieve Nirv??a. That is not available to animals because of their stupidity, and also not from the other realms of existence - hell beings are too tormented to be interested, and heaven beings too contented (although all beings will eventually be reborn in the human realm albeit after enormous periods of time.)
Anyway - that was not the point I started out to make, which is the factor of pure momentum, the biological urge to procreate. It has incredible power. I was watching a documentary some time ago about rag-pickers in an enormous tip on the edge of a city somewhere in Africa - the most miserable and degraded possible means of livelihood. The story focussed on a family - with two small children! The incredible poverty and deprivation hadn't prevented them pro-creating.
Counter-intuitively, when living standards rise and there's access to electric power, the birth-rate actually falls. I don't know what the scientific rationale is for that, but it must have something to do with the instinct to preserve the germ-line, I would have thought.
My dear departed father was a gynaecologist. He treated numerous women who were aged in their early 20's, and who already had numerous children by different men. He never passed any kind of moral judgement on that - he was wholly and solely concerned with their medical well-being. But he would sometimes remark on the 'momentum' - by which I think he meant the social conditioning - which gave rise to those behaviours, often in very disadvantaged sectors of society.
So in answer to your question - I don't think the urge to procreate is necessarily egotistical in the least. It's often subliminal or unconscious - it's the drive of life itself to keep going. That is rationale, I think, for religious celibacy - which signifies the freedom from that very drive, the instinct or ID which must always result in further birth and death. I think any born being feels how powerful that is.
By what faulty logic would you presume people need the "possibility of growth in civilized selfhood" (whatever reification that means).
Quoting apokrisis
You put the cart before the horse. Just because things can be constructed socially, does not mean that we should therefore keep the social construction going by having more individuals to contribute to it. This is simply making an ought from an is. I have always proposed there is structural suffering of being born and a contingent component of suffering. Both are good reasons not to procreate a future child. To use the child as a vessel to "realize" or "actualize" their "cvilized selfhood" (WTF?) seems quite unnecessary in the light of the two kind of sufferings that I have outlined (in many posts besides this in much further detail). Besides the fact that, why should "civilized selfhood" be realized by any individual in the first place? It seems you have a particular preference that is as arbitrary as anything. You don't see the blind spot in your argument which is that what you take as "natural" is just the result of individual choices of individual humans. By romanticizing "civilized selfhood" you are simply giving a personal post-hoc reason (and arbitrary) for birth.
You were a utilitarian, though, weren't you?
Sure, but I don't accept that definition. Our basic axioms disagree, so I don't think we're going to get anywhere.
How do you understand compassion/ego ?
Reread that last sentence.
Quoting apokrisis
You're not following the plot here, it seems. I'm not an antinatalist. I'm just showing how your objections to antinatalism don't actually stick.
My understanding of a selfish action is that it is inherently instrumental, being performed for the benefit of oneself. Your definition of selfish action is far too literal, being "that which is performed by a self or ego." Seeing as all human actions are performed by human selves, it follows that all human actions are selfish. But again, this fails to disambiguate the real difference between actions performed for the benefit of oneself and those performed for the benefit of others.
As I have said, procreation cannot (at least on naturalism) ever be performed for the benefit of another, since there is no child on whose behalf one is acting. The objection raised earlier that one could act for the benefit of one's wife who wants to procreate doesn't work, since her reasons cannot but be selfish.
Just because a motive is hidden to oneself doesn't mean it isn't selfish.
I am not an objectivist. I was more just following the line of reasoning that came from thinking about egotism in relation to my theory of compassion being a particular mental mode which results in the total negation of ego.
So here you're saying who it is for is what differentiates selfish from selfless action -- for the self or for the other.
Would you say there are motivations which do not fall into these two categories? Or actions which can be motivated by both selfish and selfless motives?
I would say that if selfish actions are inherently instrumental, then there are a class of motivations which are not for others and which are not instrumental. Call them "intrinsic". Doing art, philosophy, love seem to fall into this category -- it's neither for me in some instrumental sense of promoting my self-interest, nor is it for someone else's self-interest or material benefit.
The motive behind such actions is better described as "I do them because I like them", and there ends the chain of reasons.
Cool. Wasn't sure how you'd parse that. So it has to be, at bottom, selfless.
There is a third category of action, yes, which refers to malicious actions. Thus:
Compassion = moral.
Self interest = amoral.
Malice = immoral.
Quoting Moliere
But then they are by definition self-interested and so disagree with you when you say they aren't. However, the object of such pursuits may have intrinsic worth (e.g. philosophy is done for the sake of finding truth, which is intrinsically valuable), so in that sense I agree with you.
Can I not plant a tree for future generations yet unborn?
Or save a pension for a self not yet retired?
Alright, but then you do agree with the point that the instrumentality of action is not something intrinsic to self-interested action, right?
Quoting Thorongil
So what say you about life? Intrinsic worth or naw?
Once on gets past the often materialist mindset that self, that ego, is a bag of organized flesh, it then becomes both feasible and quite obvious that selfhood can be quite expansive. The nationalist’s self is intimately entwined with the selfhood of his or her nation as the nationalist interprets it. The lover’s self is and becomes ever more intimately entwined with the self of the beloved and vice versa—if love persists. These extensions of non-flesh bound selfhood can become more abstract, such as a scientist’s concern for all scientists at large—this being the selfhood of a community into which the individual’s self inheres into—or more concrete, such as a lifelong friend’s concern for his or her lifelong friend. Needless to say, healthy relations between parents and their children will exhibit this same extension of selfhood in-between.
As to how, I’ll stick to the workings of our mirror neurons.
Yet in all such cases, what can otherwise be identified as the other here becomes to some meaningful extent, often enough reciprocally, an inherent aspect of one's own self. And, in so becoming, the other then becomes something of intrinsic value to oneself. This shouldn’t be odd to anyone. When a loved one—friend, romantic partner, family member, a member of one’s community one greatly esteems, etc.—dies, we sense that a part of us dies and, hence, a personal loss … this in due measure to the love held. Not due to loss of instrumental value, but due to a diminishing of what we hold intrinsic value for.
Yet to call such empathy based relations selfless is—when philosophically addressed—a category error. They are all contingent upon the presence of selfhood and its wants, be these wants individual or communal.
So while I concede that there cannot metaphysically be such a thing as a non-selfish motive for a selfhood to do something, the motives one has in mind are the very foundation upon which the ordinary dichotomy between “selfish” people and “selfless” people is founded. When we as selves ego-centrically pursue an expansion of intrinsic value for everyone, when this is our motive for our choices and actions, we act (more) “selflessly”. When we as selves ego-centrically act and choose with the motive of increasing all other’s instrumental value relative to ourselves, we then act (more) “selfishly”. Though not even Stalin was a perfectly selfish bastard. I’m using scare quotes because this is the same equivocation between technical reality egos interacting with themselves and of common usage you disagreed with in a previous post.
What motive, hence reason, driven action can a self possibly hold that is in an unequivocal sense not governed by the self in question, thereby being a “non-selfish reason” for some action? Compassion is a form of empathy as far as I know, which I've already addressed in this post.
p.s. I’m no objectivist. Rather I believe in teleological causation being real, such that the telos we egos will often enough choose to be driven by--such that our motives, in other words--will make all the ethical difference in the world.
No? I'm not sure I'm following this.
Quoting Moliere
I said this earlier: "my natalist interlocutor needs to establish that creating life is good, not that life is good. I could grant for the sake of argument that life is intrinsically good (or that happiness is intrinsically good), but that wouldn't in itself prove that creating it is good."
Instrumental action is something motivated by some end-goal. So I go to work in order that I may earn money. I exercise in order that I may feel healthy. I treat my lover well in order that I may be treated well in return. The action itself is just some means to get to an end.
But not all motivation is like this. Some motivation does not rely upon a goal, but is an end unto itself. So I go to work because I have a passion for justice. I exercise because I enjoy the activity of exercising, the struggle against the self. I treat my lover well because I love her.
Most actions can be motivated in either way -- extrinsically or intrinsically. The action being performed is usually not a good indicator as to what is motivating said action, at least in only considering a single act.
So I do philosophy because I have a passion for truth. Self-interested, in that I am not doing philosophy for you or others, nor am I maliciously doing philosophy to derive a kind of sick pleasure out of harming others (though some may wonder if that's *really* true ;) ) -- hence it would fall in the middle category of your schema.
But it wouldn't be for some end-goal that I do philosophy. Whether I attain truth or not is irrelevant to my motivation of doing philosophy. I continue to do it all the same because I am intrinsically motivated to do it. Even if I were to fail for the entirety of my life at achieving the end of philosophy, supposing that be truth, it wouldn't budge my motivation for doing philosophy in the least.
Quoting Thorongil
If truth is good, does creating truth fall in-betwixt good and bad?
Seems a weird turn of phrase, though, to say "creating truth". It seems to me that truth is not an action. So, as an intrinsic good, it would not be subject to creating.
So, a tabulation of what I'm tracking so far:
Actions are the bearers of the terms "good", "amoral", or "bad". What seems to be the case is that actions which fall in the good category are actions which are motivated in a particular direction: for-the-other. Categorically bad actions are against-the-other. Amoral actions are for-the-self.
Truth and life are admitted as intrinsic goods. But neither even count as activities, much less have a self/other directionality attached to them.
Also, the basic argument is that good actions are for-the-other, before birth there is no other, therefore the act of having children before there are children can not be good. That all follows definitionally from what I see.
The question is, is there some kind of rejoinder to this argument? In terms of validity I'd say you're airtight -- there could not be a rejoinder. But you did note that you aren't certain, so you're open to examples to see if maybe something is amiss in the truth-value of the argument, if not in the validity.
You agree that I'm following you, at least? Not missing something in my interpretation?
Right.
Quoting Moliere
Your second sentence above doesn't negate the first. You do have a goal in pursuing philosophy: the truth. That makes philosophy instrumental. Whether you obtain the truth as a result of doing philosophy is irrelevant as to whether philosophy is instrumental. You could fail to obtain truth and philosophy would still be instrumental, as per your own definition.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, great summary.
Quoting Moliere
Yes.
Quoting Moliere
That is effectively the question of the thread!
One might say that, prima facie, if being is intrinsically good, then it is good to procreate. Thinking about it here, what is lurking behind my objection to this reasoning seems to be Hume's guillotine: that one cannot derive an ought from an is. So my objection is that one cannot go from the claim "being is intrinsically good" to "therefore, one ought to procreate."
If Hume's guillotine fails and it is licit to derive an ought from an is, then I will have to admit that procreation is a supererogatory good (morally good, but not required, as in a duty), assuming that being is good. I don't assume that, though.
I was a consequentialist for a while, yes. I've come to see consequentialist theories as inherently intra-worldly and incapable of acting as any fundamental ethic. This is primarily because consequentialist theories like utilitarianism are monistic, and I don't think this sort of reductionism is sufficient to cover the plurality of ethical concepts we have.
This means I'm not a Kantian, either.
What is it about an ethic being "intra-worldly" that makes it insufficient?
I think I can. And the law agrees that I can make a trust fund to benefit my unborn grandchildren. And I can plant a tree whose shade I will never sit under for those unborn who will.
Indeed there is a whole strain of intergenerational ethics that proposes that we have obligations to the future, not to fuck up the climate, for instance.
I think you are confusing motivation, which is always future directed to that which is not yet, with the cause of action, which must be already in existence. My motive must already exist as an impulse, but its object can perfectly well not exist, indeed if it did already exist, it could not function as a motive. I feed the chickens for the sake of the eggs which they have not yet laid.
Right, I get this. There is no confusion. I have spoken of procreation, the action.
And the action can have the motive of creating a new person that does not yet exist, for one's own sake or for theirs. It is an imaginary person, but motives are always imaginations, whether of eggs or kids, whether selfish or unselfish.
The intra-worldly is morally disqualifying - most if not all of our actions have repercussions that are regrettable, even if they aren't within our control. As such we have to prioritize which morals we find to be the most important, the most appropriate given the situation. For instance, you may come to see that keeping a promise and reimbursing your friend is less important than donating to charity. Prioritizing morals is common, normal, and necessary. What I think gets passed over is how this makes morality irrevocably broken. To go off the previous example: to be a philanthropist and donate to charity requires that you be a bad friend who breaks promises.
That is one of the crucial reasons why I believe the intra-worldly cannot be a satisfactory grounding for morality. The morality of the intra-worldly is contradictory. There are good moral reasons for doing things that cannot be completely reconciled. This is why is makes sense for us to regret breaking a promise to a friend - "in a perfect world" we'd be able to be both philanthropists and good friends.
Having a child with the vision of using them as a means to an end of greater utility only makes sense within an intra-worldly perspective, in this case utilitarianism, where everything gets subsumed under a single banner: utility. What the affirmative utilitarian in this case fails to understand is that moral ambiguity, the tension between competing duties, is a symptom of life itself. It is part of the structure of life. The utilitarian is unable to account for the regret we would obviously feel for using a child in this way - once again, we might be philanthropists, but we'd also be horrible parents. "Being a good parent", for the utilitarian, is something that does not have value independent of the principle of utility. This is nonsense, in my opinion.
In my view, then, there are a plurality of competing moral duties that often contradict each other. Monistic, affirmative theories of morality are an attempt to downplay these contradictions by ascribing "ultimate" value to a single source - for instance, the principle of utility, or the categorical imperative, or whatever. Monism in ethics is a theoretical attempt to simplify something that cannot be simplified. Morality just is pluralistic, and fundamentally "beyond" the world we live in, so that there is always a friction between what is and what should be. There simply is not enough space for what should be.
Yes, but if the action cannot be compassionate then the motive cannot be either. In the case of procreation, because the action cannot be compassionate, for the reason that the cause of the action doesn't exist, then the motive cannot be compassion, even if the procreator claims it to be.
Here is a metaphysical resolution to Hume’s guillotine. I emphasize it is only outlined.
Hypothesize, first, that there is an ontically certain end-state to being, by which I mean all being everywhere, which grans being with a perfect cessation of all suffering. As laughable as this hypothetical might be to some, I deem it better than BIV hypotheses and the like. Next, hypothesize that this end-state of being can be envisioned by any self to take a number of different forms—but that out of all these alternative projections of what this end-state of being might be, only one possibility we can fathom will be ontically certain—and, hence, correct and right—whereas all others will be illusions we dream up—and, hence, incorrect and wrong.
Using these hypotheticals as premises, it can then logically be appraised that acting in accordance to, conformity with, alliance with, etc. this metaphysical, ontically certain end-state of being in which the suffering of being is obliterated—this to the best of one’s capacity given’s one’s environment—is what is right, correct, and ethical. This conclusion, then, resolves Hume’s guillotine by deriving what what ought to be done from that which metaphysically is.
As to what such possible end-states of being might be, examples include: that of nonbeing (what suicidal people most often seek); that which is often enough addressed by certain spiritualties as a perfectly formless/selfless awareness devoid of first personhood (e.g.s include Nirvana and “the One”); that of a perfect stability of selfhood, meaning the immorality of unchanging self/selves; and that of a perfect supremacy over all else. Each imagined end-state of being then holds its own means of best alignment with its fruition. For example, while a supremacy of self end-state will ultimately entail making everyone else an instrumental means to one’s own supremacy of being (and thereby relieve everyone's suffering), the technically perfect equality of a formless/selfless awareness end-state will entail things such as compassion toward others as though they were parts of you.
Because none of us can unequivocally prove the ontic certainty of any end-state of being, we thereby hold a choice in choosing which end-state to pursue--and often do so in emotive ways. All the same, there will be only one possibility which is an ontic certainty and, hence, indifferent to what any of us think or believe. And, it will be this ontically certain end-state which is that then determines which oughts are right and which are wrong.
Though only an outline of my beliefs, it, for example, here illustrates that were this end-state of being to in fact be that of nonbeing, then antinaturalism would be right and correct—this due to being a logically valid means to the end-state that is here believed to be (an ought from an is). However, were the ontically certain end-state of being to in fact be that of a selfless awareness/being wherein perfect equality of being is obtained, for example, then striving for a cessation of being/awareness would be a wrong and incorrect means of actualizing what is best (again, this ought being derived from the metaphysical is of this particular end-state’s factual being).
In this set of hypotheticals, justifying which end-state is ontically certain, i.e. true, would be a completely different issue. Nevertheless, it does resolve Hume’s guillotine.
The thing is, were one to believe this end-state of being to in fact be nonbeing, it would resolve nothing of ethics save, well, the striving to end all life ... if one can call this ethical.
You're floundering. Actions are actions, and are motivated by selfishness or compassion. The cause of the action is the motive, and the motive is an imagined consequence. So if I am motivated to build a house, it is a house that does not exist until I build it, and this is the case whether I build it for you or for myself. The house does not cause me to build it, on the contrary, the lack of house is the cause. I imagine a house.
Now I have just imagined you in need of housing, and I do not need you to be in any condition at all to do that. That's the thing about imagination, that it is not constrained by reality. Likewise, I might imagine a gloriously happy, grateful daughter, and I simply refuse to allow you to constrain my imagination. And for her - the imaginary her - I propose to suffer the indignity of procreation and the nightmare of childrearing - ugh!
Come off it.
Quoting unenlightened
Now it's my turn to accuse you of being confused. Specifically, you seem to be confusing a motive with an intention. One could intend to act for the sake of another or to build a house without that being the motive. The motive may not line up with the intention at all. Our motives are not always clear to us and we often lie to ourselves about the reasons for our actions.
In fact, many people have children without intending to at all, but that doesn't mean there is no motive, no reason, for the action. Clearly there is. Moreover, it is in part precisely because most parents do not intend to cause harm or suffering by procreating that I don't morally condemn them. But procreation in this case not being wrong does not thereby make it right, as I said in the OP.
My intention is to build a house, my motive is to house someone. Or it might be just that i enjoy mixing cement, and the whole housing thing is an excuse and self-deception. So I might think I am unselfish when I am selfish.
I might just want sex, or I might just want a child, or I might want another to enjoy this wonderful life. I might be deceiving myself or I might not.
But you want to rule something out, and you have no argument for it.
You seem more interested in word games than serious arguments.
Maybe you are making the point that all choices serve the interest of some ego - even the desire to be egoless. Ah, sweet paradox!
But remember my ultimate position is that the self itself is a social construct. So egotism - in the true sense - would extend to include the interests of our family, our community, our tribe and humanity in general, as it is that social context which produces the personal individuated "us" in the first place.
So now the issue is what level is egotism being served by a choice - the highly individual or the collectively general? And now a desire to become a better individual by being less egocentric can both serve an interest - as all reasoned action ought - and yet not be egotistical in the sense of having to serve the interests of "my self".
It is not beyond individual human reasonableness to frame a decision in these prosocial terms. And my original reply was highlighting your own apparent presumptions about the ego as something personal, not social.
Again, antinatalism requires theistic/romantic absolutism to get going. It must already believe we are born into the world as feeling souls.
But if instead you take a physicalist/naturalist view of human being, then attention goes to the merits and defects of actual social systems. The increase of reason and civility becomes the thing. It is a paradigm shift in which antinatalism looses all its force.
We could still decide not to have kids because social conditions are such that we are sure they would suffer too much for their existence to be worth it. But that would be a situational decision - one responding to the social context, not the kind of ontically absolute argument that antinatalists want to make about living and "being a self" just on its own.
Well, I guess I don't actually do philosophy for the truth. So I'm being sloppy in hopping between hypothetical set-up and my own actual motivation. Sorry :D
I would say that this class of actions can have results, but the results are not the motive. They are deontologically motivated, in the specific sense that the goal is not what's being considered in the choice to act. The action itself is the reason for the action -- it forms a sort of logical circle, where there simply is no more reason for it other than itself.
Philosophy is like this for me. So is art. (EDIT: So is gardening, reading, talking with friends, biking, walking -- just to give a few other examples) There is no more why at that point, and even if one were to come up with a factual theory of motivation to account for the why (say, evolution predisposes persons to procreate for survival, or human nature predisposes us to seek pleasure and minimize pain to give two very common theories) it would completely miss the point.
Quoting Thorongil
Cool. Glad I'm tracking. :D
This part of my post is a bit rambly. Sorry for that.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say being is good -- it's just too general. Human life, though, I think I'd take as a good (though not an exclusive good -- i.e. the life of animals can also be good, I'm just focusing on human life cuz procreation). So perhaps that's just a hard point of difference that informs our thinking -- perhaps because of how we think of the word "good", too, I'd wager since I think of the terms as highly embedded in human practice with a sort of irrelevant/apathetic attitude towards meta-ethical commitments or implications in their usage; i.e. whether we choose naturalism or theology as a frame for understanding the world, it seems to me that the debate on goods is always-already relative to the world we co-create with others and the world and so the grand frame has little bearing on the choices we make and whether or not they are good. The ethics come before the metaphysics.
Also, I don't think I'd defend the notion that procreation is a kind of universal good that anyone ought to do, like the sentence "one ought to procreate" seems to imply. It is contingently good, depending upon the circumstances -- and I don't know if I could even say that the circumstances are fixed, either (is it only good to procreate in 20th century liberal capitalism? That seems way off)
Something more in line with a supererogatory good, but one which has complex circumstantial conditions.
If we're thinking of Hume's Guillotine, then we could make an appeal to the passions. No ought can be derived from an is without some kind of value statement of the form "if x is then a ought y" where x is a true statement about some agent's passion, a is the name of an agent, and y is some action. We would just need the connector between is/ought which, as far as I understand Hume at least, is just a passion.
But, then, I don't think I'm committing the fallacy at all -- it seems to me that giving the gift of life does presuppose that life is worth living. I can grant that. But it's not like I'm starting from a fact and moving to a value. It seems to me that this is values, all the way down. The point of contention between ourselves, I think, is more or less how we parse goodness vs what is amoral.
This is indeed a disagreement. I would reverse this order.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, probably.
In a way, yes. You're using another person for your own benefit. Why have children? "Because I want to be a more selfless person." That is inherently selfish. Now, it may not be strictly wrong to use another person for one's own benefit, but that only makes it amoral, not positively morally justified, which is how I have characterized selfish actions.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, I disagree, so I don't see this conversation going any further.
Yes, good point.
If Being is intrinsically good, then Hume's Guillotine fails. In fact, Hume's Guillotine basically is a denial of the idea that Being is intrinsically good.
But that still doesn't get one to an ought.
I see it like this: If it's good to help people, then it's good to help people whether or not the universe is material or immaterial, whether it was created by God or has existed in infinite time, whether or not I am a brain the vat or an embodied mind participating in the world.
These kinds of questions don't bear on the decisions I have to make or the values I hold. The factual situation does matter in considering what to do, but facts have to be reconciled with any fundamental ontology and can be rationally believed while believing in any sort of fundamental ontology.
And I suspect that ontological commitments, at least, are often held in the face of beliefs about their ethical implications anyways. So by starting with ethics I begin with what matters for many people (not saying you or universally, just commonly)
I can see that you disagree. And that you failed to provide a counter-argument. So yes, you have bowed out as far as any conversation goes.
Quoting Thorongil
Word play. My argument was that selfhood is fluid. So we can (socially) construct a contracted definition of the self - as a solipsistic soul stuff. Or we can recognise that selves arise contextually to serve purposes, and so a social-level of self is also a thing.
Now you can refuse to accept the validity of social psychology here - despite the evidence. You can assert that selfhood is "inherent" and not contextual. And that would indeed be the mainstream unscientific point of view.
But there - I've called it as it is.
The objection I will raise here is that you are making it seem as though because the self is socially constructed, it must be within our control to destroy this same self.
So yeah, we can see how selves serve contextual purposes, etc etc. But that doesn't mean it fails to be an enduring concept that breaks its own limits.
I don't follow. It is not about a destruction. It would be about a fluid negotiation.
If the self is contextual, then it is the product of some dynamical balance. What I am saying is that it is not a substantial and located object - a mind or soul that inheres in a body. It is instead a relation between bodies and their worlds. And with linguistically/culturally evolved humans, it is then the self that forms as a result of that higher level of interplay between a social creature and its social world.
That is explicit in a general theory like anthropology. Society is understood as a dynamical system - the balancing of the complementary tendencies of competition and co-operation, or differentiation and integration.
So selfhood exists fluidly as this negotiation. I am more a singular psychological self to the degree I express a competitive and differentiated state of being. And I am more a collective social self to the degree I express the counter-tendencies of a co-operative and integrative state of being.
Thus personal identity is not monadic - a single inherent stuff. It is the balancing of the two complementary tendencies which form the third thing of a body in a relation with its world, a person in a relation with their society.
And where we stand on this spectrum at any moment - competitive vs co-operative, differentiated vs integrated - is a pragmatic issue. We would want the self which is the most effective and best adapted in terms of the long run goals - the long run evolutionary goals that shaped the whole system in play.
So this is the science-based framework through which I would view the "philosophy" of antinatalism.
Antinatalism depends on a theistic/romantic metaphysical model - one that treats mind or identity as something inherent to a body. A soul stuff of some sort or other. But I am arguing from the point of view where the mind or the self is emergent from the pragmatism of a modelling relation.
And so the locus of "the self" is a fluid thing - one poised between two complementary directions. And the optimal balance is a constant negotiation - one we are expected to actively partake in, especially in a civilised society. We are meant to be free to choose whether to be more competitive or more co-operative, more differentiated or more integrated, as best suits the prevailing context or situation.
That is what we want people in general to be good at doing. Striking the healthy balance which sees the whole flourish.
Antinatalism is instead about curling up in the corner and wishing you were dead. It is giving up on the possibility of "controlling things" - or rather, being a properly active part of the negotiations always going on "out there" in the real social world.
And I still agree that it may be the case the real social world has rather spun out of control in many regards. Maybe the problems aren't even fixable.
That could be argued. But still I would say it is excessively pessimistic. Most people don't feel that their life is that bad.
You sneak in a lot of YOUR preferences as what OUGHT to be. You are creating an ought from an apokrisis :lol: . No one has to "want" or "expected to partake" in anything. That is your preference writ large. What people do have is the ability to evaluate life and then choose not to procreate it to a future person. That is a fact.
Also, your idea about people being able to cooperate or compete in nice balanced ways is a bit idealistic. Rather, some people have the dice loaded not as good as others, and their coping strategies don't work as well because of this loaded dice. Some people's exact circumstances cannot be compared to the group's in the same way. A lot of factors may make everyone's situation different to a degree that any particular set of strategies may not work on that individual. Anyways, I'm going off the main point which is again, just because identity may be created from group dynamics, does not negate the fact that someone can evaluate LIFE (in total) and deem it an existence that they do not want a future person to have to experience.
Edit: And I already told you my ethic which is that if life has structural and contingent suffering (as I've outlined it elsewhere) no X reason is convincing as to why a new person should exist. No one needs to fulfill X reason in the first place. Certainly there is no ought that derives from the idea that people's identities are created by group dynamics. That is besides the point.
Alternatively, I simply speak to our best science-backed understanding of the reality. It makes a change to the literary or religious ways of addressing life's essential questions.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure. But why wouldn't those people be regarded as in need of the appropriate therapeutic help?
Diversity of views and experience may be healthy. My model already speaks to differentiation and competition as a fundamental part of the equation.
But antinatalism - in its monotonic obsessiveness - is then one-sided, and so unhealthy and irrational.
One would be crazy to agree with its view of existence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You have indeed told me that repeatedly and obsessively. My reasonable reply remains the same. On the whole, life seems pretty good for me and my family. I don't claim that this holds as a universal human view, but most folk - if asked - tend to appreciate the fact of having the chance to have lived.
So it is you who is guilty of mistaking a model of reality for reality.
Life may have to contain the possibility of suffering, but only so it can contain its "other" of flourishing. If you want to talk about structure, you would need to face up to its irreducible complexity in this regard.
Your antinatalism is reductionist and simplistic. It is not in fact structuralism. Like religion and literature, it treats experience like a monadic substance.
Yet there is a difference between science of life and life as it is lived. You say the self is fluid, but the self we value as a self is precisely the differentiating self. It's rather akin to religious interpretations of the cosmos - we cannot help but wonder "where it all came from" or "why it's all here", even if something like the anthropic principle dissolves these issues. And so similarly we cannot help but see the self as a soul-like resident of the body. As it stands, there are individual, different physical bodies that are often reflective and solitary - most notably in the moments of pain, suffering and anguish. Coincidentally enough these are exactly the things antinatalists tend to be concerned about.
To say the antinatalist point doesn't work because soul-like selves do not exist in reality is akin to saying the antinatalist point doesn't work because there is no such thing as free will, or God, or whatever, and this risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Quoting apokrisis
This is about as true as the claim that pragmatism is about incessantly accusing others of romanticism and sentimentality. :meh:
Antinatalism is about taking control of one of the few things we actually do have control over. Life is not "working". It's not up to standards and it never will be. The pragmatic solution is to conserve what resources you do have and stop wasting them on future progeny. Of course, that's a pragmatic, intra-wordly justification - but I've already explained in this thread why I don't regard intra-wordly ethics as anything more than a prejudice.
Only the difference between the theory and its application. If the theory is right.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Really? Do you speak for the entirety of humanity throughout human history on this score? A little presumptive and not much supported by the evidence.
My argument is that most people should construct their identity in a way that does express the possibilities of (fruitful) differentiation. But balance would involve also expressing a matching desire for (fruitful) integration.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Why does that have to be so? I absolutely don't see it that way. A rational science like positive psychology certainly wouldn't teach things to be that way.
It is only if you can't escape the clutches of literature and religion that you would be trapped in such a myopic view of personal identity.
Quoting darthbarracuda
The only risk is folk building bad morality from bad metaphysics.
So your precious thing - the differentiate and competitive aspect of personal identity - is not getting chucked out here. Instead you are being introduced to its complementary twin that also wants to share the bath.
You seem to have tipped this other poor baby out. I found it crawling around on the slippery floor and return it to you. :)
Quoting darthbarracuda
It's attacking the symptoms rather than the causes. Quoting darthbarracuda
But whose standards? Sure, you can decide that it ain't up to your standards. But as an antinatalist - indeed a strident antinatalist like Schop - you are trying to force your standards on me. And the whole of humanity if you could.
So just note how you choose the third person voice. You already presume that objectively, for any possible person, life doesn't work. Thus you hope to win by rhetoric an argument you can't sustain by logic.
Quoting darthbarracuda
That is utilitarianism - and many people do understand pragmatism to be nothing more than a selfish instrumentality.
So we have gone around the complete circle that is the limits of your metaphysics. We are selfish inherently. Therefore pragmatism can only be the instrument for satisfying the desires of this self. That is all pragmatism could mean.
Damn. You seem to have toppled your favourite baby's neglected twin out of the bathtub again. I've tripped over him crawling about on the wet floor.
This sounds too good to be true, probably because it is. Alongside positive psychology, we have theories such as depressive realism and terror management theory. But those don't make people feel good.
Literature and, to an extent, religion, are treasures that are manifestations of hopes and dreams of real human beings. They ought to be taken as testimonies of the experiences of real people, not dismissed as being somehow fake or opaque.
Quoting apokrisis
First off, antinatalism need not depend on the claim that everyone's lives suck. I don't know why you keep bringing this up, apart from as a rhetorical strategy. That, or you never took the time to really understand the antinatalist point of view.
That being said, I do think even the best lives are still quite atrocious. And I'm allowed this opinion. I'm not telling people to kill themselves. The strong argument is that life necessarily is horrible for the person living it and thus birth is always a harm to the person being born. The weaker argument draws from the indisputable fact that many people have horrible lives and that this reality depends on them having been born. Any counterargument to this will require some form of justification of this reality - basically you need to provide a theodicy.
Yeah, I don't feel like going down the rabbit hole of disputing the claim that the self is "socially constructed." Social constructionism tries my patience severely.
Sounds legit.
like this:
I'll have kids
& then
see how much of their time they spend thinking about
[qualified antinatalist thing]
and then see if they realize that
[qualified antinatalist thing]
is just a conceptual [safe space]
and see if they can figure out how to leave the [conceptual [safe space] ]
and get to to the place where ...
[....fades and crackles because we're still in the conceptual safe space... ]
tldr: get over it, you were already born. don't have kids if you don't want to. Find something else to focus on, or you'll never feel better
Alongside? In what sense are they treated with the same scientific/therapeutic respect?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Ah. So they are better because they don't paper over the essential badness of existence! For people in a hole, they are a help to dig the hole deeper.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I was talking about them as a metaphysical-strength basis for generalised theories. But if you want to understand them in terms of the social construction of the "human condition", they are good anthropological data. That's exactly what anthropologists do.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Probably because antinatalists keep mentioning it. Although I agree, you might take the more interesting position that basically life is 99% OK for you, but the 1% that sucks then makes the very idea of living an intolerable burden. Even the possibility of dying slowly in a mangled car wreck means an otherwise cheerful life is a metaphysical no no.
Quoting darthbarracuda
There you go.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Well I can't get over the hopeless irrationality of a view that says a 99% full glass is still a cosmic tragedy in its 1% emptiness.
I mean I scrapped a knuckle doing some gardening this afternoon. It bled a little.
Even worse, the fibre cable installers cut through the underlawn irrigation despite me telling them exactly where to look out for it. Oh, the agony.
And yet I don't regret having been born. It's been another great day.
I accept one part of antinatalism. We ought to consider long and hard about bringing kids into the world. The future could be quite dicey.
But then that just commits you morally to doing the best that you can for them if you do. There is nothing particular to fear about life as a journey in itself. The variety of that journey, the challenges it presents, is pretty much the point.
To build a cult around persuading everyone to stop having kids seems weird. Frankly it is weird. It has value only as an illustration of what bad philosophy looks like.
Given you are posting in a thread dominated by the like-minded, which of us would be in that conceptual safe space? ;)
idk I didn't read the whole thread, just posted at the end
And funny that this type of thinking can only take hold (even in a minor way) in the top ten percent of countries by level of quality of life in just about every indicator. I vote for mandatory "holidays" in the DRC to cure the malcontents of their malaise. If life is not much more likely to be a gift than a curse when we are born into the relative privilege and wealth we in developed countries enjoy, then we really are... But that's not the case, thankfully.
Then you have missed the point of philosophical pessimism. You are never out of it. Existence is always something that is to be grappled with- not just a fanciful thought experiment for the depressed personality types. The ethics of phil. pess. is such that the aesthetics of existence is not simply hand waved and ignored, as that is the core of the issue. Hence darth's point about intra-worldly affairs. This is looking at the whole pie perspective, not trying to subsume, isolate, distract, and ignore it.
I don't think so; it's very straightforward, isn't it? I just think its wrong.
& I think a preoccupation with it is a literal addiction.
What a feeling to read the great pessimists the first time and be like 'whoa yes exactly' right? But each time you return to those texts, they lose a bit of their power, until you find yourself almost mechanically repeating pessimistic passages, or slogans - not because it really helps anymore, but because its become painful not to.
[quote=Conrad]There is a – let us say – a machine. It evolved itself (I am severely scientific) out of a chaos of scraps of iron and behold! – it knits. I am horrified at the horrible work and stand appalled. I feel it ought to embroider – but it goes on knitting. You come and say: “this is all right; it’s only a question of the right kind of oil. Let us use this – for instance – celestial oil and the machine shall embroider a most beautiful design in purple and gold”. Will it? Alas no. You cannot by any special lubrication make embroidery with a knitting machine. And the most withering thought is that the infamous thing has made itself; made itself without thought, without conscience, without foresight, without eyes, without heart. It is a tragic accident – and it has happened. You can’t interfere with it. The last drop of bitterness is in the suspicion that you can’t even smash it. In virtue of that truth one and immortal which lurks in the force that made it spring into existence it is what it is – and it is indestructible!
It knits us in and it knits us out. It has knitted time space, pain, death, corruption, despair and all the illusions – and nothing matters.”[/quote]
Beautiful, right?
But spot the performative contradiction.
And, having spotted it --- what is the significance of the contradiction?
(hint: phil pess isn't doing what it needs to pretend its doing)
I'm not sure what you're getting at with the quote. What I do know is that when you are born, and you take on an identity and your personality shapes, the "you" (fictional or otherwise as apo keeps reiterating) must make decisions. There is the burden to exist, the condemned to be free. By this I mean even the choice to not exist anymore is something that has to be decided upon, and carried forth. In this way, everything is a burden. You claim pessimists obssesively focus on one major point, but it is THE major point. You can put your attention into all sorts of intra-wordly affairs- the mechanics of building structures, the science of plastics, the intricacies of the circulatory system, the sewer construction down the street, the computer engineering and programming of the computer you are using, the electrical system which almost everything plugged in runs on, the art projects in the art district, etc. etc. The complexity of the world masks the simplicty of the existential situation of being born.
What are the reasons birds want to fly, fish want to swim, dogs want lick their own balls, my mouse nibbling on my shoes and humans want to procreate? The biological answer is not going to satisfy you. You are looking for a spiritual answer -- or basically a philosophical answer. You don't want an explanation, you want a justification. A philosophical normative case to procreate.
But I do not foresee a fruitful discussion based on the premises you have provided. All "Reasons" can be taken down as mere rationalisations. For example, even if you accept my first sentence, you could still reject the notion of human flourishing, by questioning the idea as to why we would want humans to flourish in a non-selfish way beyond any subjective rhetoric. As long as the context of the debate remains in the restrictions of subjectivity, the result of the discussion will be inevitable, namely nihilism.
Indeed.
Quoting Kitty
That's fair. It is true that I need to sort out my metaphysics before ultimately deciding this issue.
Note also: i can, with equal justification, flip this focus on condemnation and burden such that [obsessive focus on one thing] is an attempt to repress the complexity of life in order to focus on a single more managable concern.
[no, thats not the same!]
It really is though.
Its important to ask: what are you doing when you devote so much time to repeating the few tenets of a philosophy you already are comfortable with? Why are you choosing this?
About ‘burdens’ - when we avoid difficult choices in life, they become inflated. They grow bigger and bigger and bigger. The more we avoid them, the more burdensome they become, and the harder it is to ignore them, but also the more painful it is to confront them. So we’re more tempted to find some other easier form of relief, which leads us to ignore the choices we’re not confronting, which makes them grow bigger, which makes the crutch more appealing...this is the spiral of addiction, and part of addiction is misunderstanding or romanticizing the thing ones addicted to. Pessimism likes to pretend its the ultimate confrontation with the ultimate horror. Its not: its a justification for not confronting anything.
Terror management theory has been around for a while, and depressive realism is only slightly younger than positive psychology, as far as I am aware.
Quoting apokrisis
No, I think TMT, et al are important because they fundamentally put into question some of the things about positive psychology. Incidentally, Ernest Becker would have wanted TMT to help create a more meaningful and positive society.
Quoting apokrisis
Yeah, dying slowly and in great pain sounds awful.
Quoting apokrisis
You persistently bring up the most unimportant aches and pains as a reductio of antinatalism. It would be absurd if little finger scrapes and boo-boos were what we were concerned about.
Instead of taking the 1% to mean the minor aches and pains you may experience, instead take the 1% to mean the percentage of individuals with, say, debilitating neurological disorders which cause intolerable pain and premature death. Think about innocent children who die from medical complications in their early youth - think about how terrified this child must be, to have just barely come into this world before being violently yanked out of it again. Consider the countless individuals who have and will be tortured by governments. Or wild animals, where the rules are that you run or you die. If not anything else, consider what your progeny will think about the world you bring them into. Will they ever feel appalled, even if they're not personally experiencing the brunt of it?
The antinatalist point is that it does not make sense to mourn the existence of these terrible things, yet accept and even support an institution that single-handedly perpetuates them (procreation). The basic point is that very bad things only happen to people who are born.
You may object that technology + human will = a better future where these horrible things do not occur to people who are born. But this is going to lead to a more broader pessimistic point, which is that problems seem to find a way of popping back up again. Solving one problem creates the opportunity for another problem to fill the role. There is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes has it.
Quoting apokrisis
Another way of putting the antinatalist point could be: the best parent is the one who never is one (biologically, speaking at least). As Cabrera said: "Because I love you, you will not be born!"
The current way of looking at things has it that you can be irresponsible as a parent of a child by how you provide for them and treat them, but hardly ever is it considered that having children tout court is irresponsible. This is what makes antinatalism a radical position, one that may seem "weird". It questions a fundamental, fundamental assumption of affirmative societies, that life is good and having children is also good. It is a culture of parenting, made and perpetuated by parents.
Antinatalism, at least in the way I'm presenting it, is an ethical orientation that doesn't require any sophisticated metaphysics beyond what the average person already believes. Antinatalism is a final consequence of taking the contemporary ethical categories and applying them radically and consistently.
With respect to antinatalism being a "cult" - I admit that many prominent and "vocal" antinatalists on the internet are cultish and probably narcissists/schizoids/avoidants. Separate the substance from the shit.
[antinatalism is subtler. Its a condemnation not of existence, but of the part of existence we can consider responsible for existence - however the focus on it is serving the same function - the feeling of guilt is placed elsewhere]
Go back to the beginning - why cant you do it? Frustration is always bound up with self-condemnation. The trick is to realize that youre the one making impossible demands on yourself, even if doesnt seem like it. Thats the first step of healing. addictions want you to think you cant get better, but you can
So here is a value-judgement upon what a person should be doing. Please do elaborate? And then I'll appeal to the usual structural suffering of whatever it is you mention. You will accuse me of unnecessarily reducing life to a framework in order for me to better deal with it. I will then accuse you of not looking at the big picture and finding ways to ignore what is really going on. You will then say I am still hiding from the complexities of life in order to make it easier for me to cope. Your hope is this will then just reveal itself to be a psychological problem to overcome in order to get to "really" living which you haven't quite shared what that is yet, except hinting at "complexity" which is the very term I came up with. Is that about right?
Kind of, but not really. If you take a deep look at most pessimists, you find that they're very concerned with a specific sort of injustice. Without their consent, they've found themselves in a situation where something is being demanded of them in excess of their ability to deliver on it (the specifics of what the demand is can vary.) This is tormenting, a feeling of condemnation. The response is always the same: the world itself is then condemned. If the pessimist realizes that its not really all that meaningful to condemn something thats insentient (as in that Conrad quote), then they'll focus on the part that is sentient: parents. They're the ones who are responsible for all this.
I'm not saying the pessimist ought to confront anything because its the rules of being a good person. It's something different. The pessimist approach is (implicitly) obsessed with justifying its own failure to confront the demand (it generally slips out explicitly in one place or another though. Key examples would be: Beckett's discussion of his 'pensum' in The Unnameable, Conrad's Lord Jim, give me an hour and I'll find where it comes out in Cioran etc etc.)
So, it's not that the world's out here, folding its arms, and telling the pessimist what he should do. It's the pessimist himself who is constantly imposing this value-judgment on himself(if usually in a displaced way.) If what's ailing you is the condemnation that comes from not-confronting - it's up to you what you want to do with that - but you already have your answer.
Of course, it's hard to figure out what you're not confronting. Everyone has something different. But I think mostly its the condemning voice. You have to find a way to take away its power rather than trying to get it condemn something else, and leave you safe. It's a strategy that only works temporarily, and works less and less each time.
And I don't think its a psychological problem. I think its a spiritual one with psychological ramifications
'I must have got embroiled in a kind of inverted spiral, I mean one the coils of which, instead of widening more and more, grew narrower and narrower and finally, given the kind of space in which I was supposed to evolve, would come to an end for lack of room.'[/quote]
[quote=Kafka]"Alas," said the mouse, "the world gets smaller every day. At first it was so wide that I ran along and was happy to see walls appearing to my right and left, but these high walls converged so quickly that I’m already in the last room, and there in the corner is the trap into which I must run."
"But you’ve only got to run the other way," said the cat, and ate it.[/quote]
Addiction will always tell you that anyone suggesting a way out is a cat, or someone working on the cat's behalf. But there isn't any cat at all. The 'cat' is a necessary part of the pessimist mythology. In a way, it keeps you safe, but at a very steep price.
To take a more lowbrow example. Beginning of this clip: Frollo's the one who won't stop talking about the 'cat'. Why? And why does Quasimodo believe him? & it it meaningful that this particular exchange centers largely around disfigurement which is one of the pessimist's favorite talking points?
Yep. By definition, anyone posting here about antinatalism has a full belly, a roof over their heads, time on their hands. They can take for granted all the civilised advantages that hold real discomfort at bay.
But that would be the irony. Take away the few big discomforts of life and that frees up the mind to start noticing all the tinier ones. Which are far more numerous in their diversity.
A crooked painting can cause me psychic pain. I can't even bear cotton t-shirts anymore - too heavy and restrictive. It's got to be micro-merino next to my skin. :)
So it is easy to see how a generalised dissatisfaction arises. The more luxurious your life, the more you can become overwhelmed by everything that is just slightly not perfect about it.
Nothing in particular needs to be responsible for existence nor is there a need for guilt. There is no responsibility for that unless there is a god. This sounds like either your particular journey through this subject or a very direct experience of someone else's.
Quoting apokrisis
Antinatalism need not arise from a dissatisfaction with one's own life. I can recognize that I have led a fairly charmed life with small amounts of suffering here and there, but that is only my small survey of one. The bigger picture is what the antinatalist is focused on, not the individual. And it should come as no surprise there is a requirement of time and luxury to come to such a worldview. If you're struggling day to day just to survive then it's unlikely you'll have time to ponder such things.
Also, antinatalism and pessimism are connected but not necessarily from a local viewpoint. I consider myself a short-term optimist but a long-term pessimist. This doesn't lead to some crippling psychological state where I don't strive to make the world a better place, but it does inform decisions about bringing people into this world.
Who is arguing that we shouldn’t make rational choices about having kids. Their welfare ought to be our primary moral concern. We might decide the world is not going to be a good place for them as a result.
But that is quite different from a general claim that life on the whole is structurally intolerable.
Yeah, I'm definitely drawing from my own experience, but not only that. I've mentioned Beckett and Conrad, for instance, where the same dynamic is very clearly at work. And it seems to hold true of nearly every full-blown pessimist I've run into.
I mean take this quote from a post just one page back:
[quote=Darth]
The current way of looking at things has it that you can be irresponsible as a parent of a child by how you provide for them and treat them, but hardly ever is it considered that having children tout court is irresponsible.[/quote]
Maybe I can clarify things a bit this way. There are many ways to react to a feeling that the world is largely horrible, filled with suffering. You have soteriologies of all variety. You have suicide. You can take a Buddhist approach and practice meditation. But there is another thing that consists of devoting the majority of one's intellectual energy to talking about how bad the world is. Saying the same thing often and with only slight variation (Cioran is probably the apotheosis of this.) That's philosophical pessimism. It's only partially about what's being said. What's more important to look at, again, is the patterns of saying it. So for instance: The OP is insistent that he's not drawing moral distinctions. Ok, but if that's not what he's interested in, why the particular appeal of this topic? The (ostensibly morally-neutral) selfishness of parents? Why does he return to this topic again and again?
By definition, just about anybody posting here about anything at all has a full belly, a roof over their heads, and time on their hands. And they all certainly do take for granted all the civilized advantages that hold real discomfort at bay. :roll:
Quoting apokrisis
Most people think there is some teleology to their existence. At any particular time, I should be doing X thing. But this isn't the case. Rather there is simply habits and routines we choose to pick up because we don't like the alternative of looking at the yawning void. Condemned to be free. Inside outside, do this that. Experiences are said to accumulate into something more and more developed and growth. Nope. It's the same circular pattern. Did you ever think the ideas of self-actualization and moving towards something better were there as a way to cope with existential dread? Yes. It's best we soothe with words of self-help wisdom so that individuals don't look too deep.
Quoting apokrisis
You try to make the not-so-subtle switch from apokrisis preferences to the world-writ-large. What apokrisis does is balance, what the evil antinatalists do is romanticism. Yet, we are both doing choosing our habit patterns to look away from the void. I am just peeling off the layers to see the barebones of it- what Schopenhauer called "will", I'll call existential striving at the bottom, dressed in goals we give ourselves. Keep outrunning the boredom at the bottom of things etc. etc.
No, I mean I get the darn concept- all of the above is boilerplate pessimism - but I think its wrong and I've been trying to explain why.
I mean just look at that paragraph: It's describing itself! It's closer to a recitation of a catechism than it is anything else.
Most people think there is some teleology to their existence. At any particular time, I should be doing X thing. But this isn't the case.
compare to this:
[quote=Schop1]The ethics of phil. pess. is such that the aesthetics of existence is not simply hand waved and ignored, as that is the core of the issue. Hence darth's point about intra-worldly affairs. This is looking at the whole pie perspective, not trying to subsume, isolate, distract, and ignore it.[/quote]
The only coherent interpretation of this passage is that you think there is a kind of an ethical demand to face the horror of reality, one that most do not live up to.
Rather there is simply habits and routines we choose to pick up because we don't like the alternative of looking at the yawning void. Condemned to be free. Inside outside, do this that. Experiences are said to accumulate into something more and more developed and growth. Nope. It's the same circular pattern.
The suggestion here, read in light of what precedes it, is that the things we do because we feel that we're supposed to, and because we think they lead to something better, are really just a protective shell of habit and routine which allow us to avoid something else.
How does this square with the 'ethics of phil. pess.' and the refusal to 'subsume, isolate, distract' etc? Isn't it odd that on the one hand you have a very specific demand alongside plenty of posts repeating the same basic points, again and again. But then on the other, you're differentiating yourself from those who believe in the reality of meaningful demands, those who get caught up in circular routines?
What's your attitude toward those who fail to live up to your ethical demand?
It's an attitude of ironic contempt.
What you've done here is describe your own approach as someone else's, and then condemned it. Some people self-soothe, others can confront the 'deep'.
Don’t you instead wander the city streets brandishing your placard warning the end is nigh? Repent while you have the chance!
You have to have a reason why you could believe that existence is structurally intolerable when the evidence is that most people find life a mixed bag, but on the whole, worth living. And arguing with unbelievers is how you daily confirm yourself in that faith. It becomes your evidence that ordinary people really do operate under some mass delusion and only you have been gifted with the vision of the truth.
Neither strike me as actual solutions to suffering, in the same way that blowing your head off doesn't cure a headache. Both just strike me as utterly hopeless and defeatist. "Being alive is awful (or mostly awful, or contains awfulness), there is no solution, just end it all." Or even, "there is a solution: just end it all".
But for the majority of people, their own lives are judged worth living. I think it's incredibly arrogant to somehow think you know better than all these people, that you see the truth of the world whereas everyone else is deluded (which is basically what the antinatalist does), all the while claiming to be more compassionate and caring than everyone else.
Antinatalists would do a lot better to personalize their own sufferings. But they don't, because it leads directly to suicide (or maybe, the ones that do aren't around to talk). "Being alive as me is awful, there is no solution, just end it all." We call this in the western world depression. Why is it awful to be alive as you? And why can't you see a solution? Because being embodied as a human in the world is a fundamentally flawed enterprise filled with great suffering and purposeless pain? Or because you lack close relationships with others (even children?) and a meaningful engagement with the world?
The antinatalist might respond, but why should I have to form a meaningful engagement with the world? Why should I have to form close bonds with others? To do it, to do it, to do it? Why was I thrust into this predicament? Why was I forced to seek out and create these things? But the objection comes from a place of deficiency, whereas the rest of the world is already engaged and involved in these things. For the vast majority of the natalist world - the world in which people form close bonds with each other, have sex, create families and futures - these objections simply don't arise, because they're already involved and engaged with the world.
Although it may be condescending and infantilizing, I think it's not too far off the mark to simply say there's something wrong with antinatalists. There's something lacking in their lives, or dispositions, or outlook or mental state or whatever. They personally suffer a great deal, therefore we are all suffering (secretly mind you; we are unaware of our sufferings - whereas the antinatalist has the balls to 'see the world as it is head on' - only he is enlightened to the truth of the world), and therefore the whole human enterprise must come to an end (for the sake of the unborn chilluns!). And all this while claiming compassion. It's sick really.
It's as if for the antinatalist, they see their own lives as headaches, and therefore it must be so for the rest of the world. And the proposed cure is an ending of heads altogether. But the rest of the world is looking at them oddly saying, "but my head doesn't hurt...".
But for the vast majority of people the barebones of the world is not a void or an "existential striving", it's their relationships with others. You act as if you were born into the world alone, forced with a choice to cover up the void of it all with goals/entertainment/relationships or face head on the harsh truth of the world. In reality everyone has someone who raises them, a culture and language they were taught and a society they exist and survive within. The barebones of the world is a community, not a man alone with the void. Nobody exists and survives without others. It's a failure to meaningfully engage with, and get 'caught up' within your community that causes this sense of "void". It's why people are so depressed in the modern world. It's why people commit suicide. And probably why people advocate antinatalism.
Feeling cut off, deeply cut off - where does it come from?
[quote=inyenzi] I think it's not too far off the mark to simply say there's something wrong with antinatalists[/quote]
From there.
"there's something wrong," said in the right tone, is the death knell. This is the beating heart of shame.
There is something wrong, but its something that happened (that can unhappen, over time), not something the antinatalist is. This is a crucial distinction, and a super important one.
I have no enmity towards those who are caught up in circular routines. In fact, we all (including pessimists) must do it to survive. We are built with cultural mechanisms that rely on choosing routines to ground ourselves in an umwelt. The freedom to choose, along with our group dynamics/group-derived identity demands it. So it's inevitable and I am not even saying one should not do so. It is descriptive, not normative. However, the ability to see it for what it is, can be considered normative. This meta-cognition (or self-awareness) of what one is doing is perhaps part of the pessimist's heuristic recommendation. In this regard, Existentialism as a movement is very much about this meta-awareness that one is really choosing paths of "care" (things we care about/ intra-worldly affairs). In this way Existentialism and pessimism are linked in many regards.
Quoting csalisbury
No one has committed a pessimistic crime by not using their ability for self-awareness regarding their paths of care or circular routines. I don't condemn it, but there is a recommendation to be aware of it. One can be caught up in the routines without knowing the bigger picture of it. When you do see the bigger picture, you tend to see that aesthetic perspective I was talking about of striving will that wraps itself in layers of circular routines in the individual's umwelt. At the bottom of it is a sort of emptiness/boredom- a dull silence that we wrap more routines around.
So what exactly is the need for more people? What is the X reason? I think you have a well-stated post. Actually, it might be the most coherent response to the pessimist argument as it attacks the premises head on. So kudos to you. I still think the rebuttal, though well-stated, is still lacking in response to the pessimist's argument. As I mentioned with csalisbury, even if people do not see the bigger picture, it does not mean that something is still not going on here. Why does that new person need to be born? What is this trying to accomplish? Eventually the argument will come back to the idea of circularity, instrumentality, absurdity, etc. That is a vicious circle that would be hard to break in argument.
I will offer an olive branch to the anti-antinatalists/pessimists. Do you think that people should be at least thinking of life in the meta-awareness sense that some pessimists advocate? Religion, tries to fill this role. Literature does too. But, is there a way for communities to directly address issues of existence head-on without mediating layers of allegory and metaphor? Can we have communities of existential discussion? I haven't seen it, and it would be interesting to see how that would work. I am aware this is a routine, but its a routine that is referring back to the meta-awareness of the existential situation.
But @Inyenzi nailed it. Not having children is to suffer a deficiency in an especially close human and community relationship.
It is thus funny - in a sad and ironic way - that you would want to scratch your itch for community in a community of existential complaint.
But then if there were such a philosophical community, it would only be valuable to the extent it was brutally honest. So it would have to take account of the psychological and sociological science, as well as the physical and cosmological science.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Is that really the general case? It sounds like what a person with the flat affect of deep depression might say. But some people might say that perhaps there is restless anxiety. A person with a tendency to disorders of anxiety and obsession would have that as their most unfocused baseline state.
And then there is what I would think of as the balance between too flat and too jittery. The calm instability of a meditative state of mind - a state of simple vagueness. :)
So even at a pop psychology level, we can see that your argument for some generalised baseline condition - flat affect - is challenged by the facts. It may be what is true for you. But is it true for everyone?
And my point is that neurocognition tells us the mind depends on its dichotomous responses. It needs to be able to swing both ways with adaptive flexibility. It must be able to worry when worry is required, and to relax, when that is what is best. Be jittery or be calm. Be introspective or be outwardly engaged. Etc, etc.
So the richness of lived experience is the ability to move strongly in opposing directions as suits the needs of the moment. Joy and pain.
And that lability predicts that the resting state, the deep down condition, would be the kind of neutral instability, the sense of disengaged poise, that meditation seeks after. A continuous fertile bubbling of thought and impressions that you keep letting go rather than pursuing.
It is nothing like death or the void. It is not the abyss or the chasm or the terror that needs to be managed and suppressed.
It is ... a vagueness. It is basic mindfulness, a basic level of being in the world, all ready to go, but not yet going anywhere in particular.
And it is not even some super-state of mind or anything special. It is not pure individuation but rather its opposite, the most de-individuate state of mind we can arrive at.
However, it is what it would be like to be centred. It is the balance between being too flat and too jittery for comfort. Neutral and yet alive with the potential to engage.
So if we are going to start building psycho-philosophies, they ought to accurately identify what would be the natural general baseline condition of a well-adjusted mind. We ought to know what we are shooting for when making our generalisations.
You don't read, do you?
I agree with what you say about community, but would you not agree that the style of mostly capitalist communities emphasizes an obsession with self? Getting caught up in the wealth-glamour 'religion' might be the cause rather than the cure of alienation.
Probably you have personal relationships in mind, though. And, yeah, I think successful personal relationships are the main reason that most people don't regret being born. And that's why it's easy to read anti-natalism as a projected failure on the level of personal relationships. 'It's not just me. It's life itself that fails.' I read it largely that way, but I think it also has the appeal of every radical idea that understands itself to pop a bubble of sentimental delusion. My primary objection to it is that it wants to make suicide respectable. It's not that I'm anti-suicide, but rather that this making-respectable strikes me as involving the same kind of sentimentality that anti-natalism defines itself against. 'Excuse me, sir. If you have a moment, I'd like to politely and rationally talk you into the extinction of your species. Of course I'll have to start by convincing you that your life sucks more than you know.'
Don't we have that right here and now?
Or do you really mean a community of anti-natalists? And isn't something like that out there?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I understand the mood or emptiness/boredom. I bet many of your opponents do, too. So isn't the issue really about how to position this mood in a worldview? Why should this mood be the truth of the matter more than any other mood? In my view, the profound is tangled up with the possibility of this mood. This emptiness is something like a space that allows the parts to move.
But then I'm not trying to be your opponent. Maybe life's grand and maybe it sucks. Maybe we exaggerate our happiness, and maybe we exaggerate our suffering and our concern for the suffering for those distant strangers. Maybe the entire notion of some grand truth about life in general is bogus. These 'maybes' are an example of the complexity that a fixed pessimism can be accused of dodging.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Women like to play with babies. Fathers like to be proud of their successful sons. Because 'God says so.' You know the needs. What exactly is your need for a need?
One of my objections to pessimism is the way it wraps itself in a sugary coating. I think I'd find it more exciting if it leaned in to accusations of being adolescent. 'Yeah, I'm a monster-baby who hates life for not being up to my infinite standards. Fertility is just gross. Better the void than this unjustified replication. I just don't like life, and my own little suicide is way too small of a gesture for expressing this dislike. I want the machine that made me shut down forever. I want the universe to disappear up it's own asshole.'
I spent a little time in detention now and then in high school, and FTW ('fuck the world') was carved into that detention desk. That proud, senseless revolt had a certain purity. When the basic FTW idea is dolled up as rational or moral, this strikes me as a status-seeking attachment to life (as well as a genuine disgust for life). The 'machine' is still loved as the condition for the possibility of trying to shut it down. Also non-pessimist is a necessary background for the heroically truth-telling pessimist identity. (And that's why an anti-natalist forum would probably be a snore, just like a Rand forum.) And of course your namesake stuck around for a long time without having to work at anything but his complex denunciation of life. He had a cute little retro outfit and resented Hegel getting more attention. I bet he was grateful to have been born when fame finally caught up to him in his old age. This doesn't mean his life was 'really' good. It just complicates the message.
I like just about everything you've written on this issue, but I think this line leave something out. What about the raging self-love that can lead to frustration? What about the monstrous inner child who always wants more? Or who is tired of being polite, punctual, and prudent? Or tired of being rational, respectable, scientific, etc.? I have in mind a kind of stupid animal rebellion against all constraint, except that it's particularly human in its relation to an unbounded imagination.
There's no way of knowing what your child will become. Potential is neutral and things could swing any which way.
So, nobody is or can be in a position to offer reasons for or against.
Personally, I think it's better not to have children - I do defensive driving. I don't mind an Einstein but I don't want a Jeffrey Dahmer on my family tree.
And what causes this effort to be balanced in the first place? Why does this balancing act need to take place? Ah, the existential questions- in other words, not taking what is for granted as what should be. Why should there be this balancing in the first place. Putting the cart before the horse again. Taking an is for an ought.
Quoting apokrisis
I never said that, so this is a straw man.
Quoting apokrisis
The baseline state is boredom or restlessness that motivates to pursue this or that goal. You can call it a vague-like state if you will and dress it up in your terminology, but that is the feeling. Not anticipation, etc. etc. as that is a layer beyond. It is the restlessness of the striving human animal, challenged by projects and tasks of his/her choosing. Some things are more given than others (hunting/gathering provides for a more confined set of choices for goals than a post-industrial economy for example but it is the same basic goal-categories: survival, comfort/maintenance seeking, boredom-fleeing).
Not in the real world. I haven't seen many "Communities of Existential Thought" in many cities. There's probably one or two somewhere I'm sure on a meetup site, or perhaps just philosophy meetups, but generally there is not. Ironically, we only relegate religious institutions for this kind of thinking, and that is wrapped up in the trappings of supernaturalism, traditions, custom, allegory, and historical baggage.
Quoting syntax
But then, is a life worth starting because it has complexities? The antinatalist does not assume that the answer is yes.
Quoting syntax
Starting a whole new life on behalf of someone else seems to me as good a reason for a reason as any other decision.
Quoting syntax
One is never not choosing to decide some stance, at least those with minds capable of metacognition- awareness that one is making a decision (or what appears to be one) in the first place. I think you do identify an interesting dialectic though. The antinatalist asks the "why life?" in the first place. It grates on people who never stop to ask this question or who have projects and goals that they do not want to question the importance of. It is a slap in the face- more personal than almost anything else.
Quoting syntax
Interesting observation. Indeed Schopenhauer was independently wealthy.
Oh, you meant in the real world. Well, I'm starting to embrace the internet as the 'real' intellectual world. I was recently at a lame party. It got about as deep as Beyonce and a few liberal 'tribal' snorts, and these were educated people. I suspect that there's just cowardice at the root of it. They accurately see their peers as a judgmental/conforming mob with no taste for polite discord. I think people are also afraid of sounding pretentious if they venture beyond pop culture.
Anyway, I came home and read philosophy online for about 8 hours to wash the banality from my mind. And I bumped into an appreciation for the value of the internet in some of these thinkers. It's just too hard to physically arrange live conversation at a high level. And really there's something beautiful to me in written conversation. I like maintaining and developing the skill of written self-presentation.
As far as religious institutions go, I think the real problem there is the expected passivity. Again, I think this forum is pretty close to the ideal. There are some great posters here. I would only ask for more, more, more. Imagine of there were 100 posters as good as the best posters here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm neutral on anti-natalism. I really don't know. I do think that it is a hopeless cause. For me a hopeless cause must function as a kind of fashion statement. But maybe that's too cynical.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The problem may be in the assumption that some 'rational' justification is possible or desirable. I'm sure you are familiar with kind of approach, but here's a nice statement of it anyway.
[quote=Brian Leiter]
Given the terrible truths about the human situation, it is hardly surprising that Nietzsche took so seriously Schopenhauer’s challenge, namely, why prefer life to non-existence? These “terrible truths”
differ, however, in how they inflict their pain. All the “terrible truths” are terrible if contemplated, if internalized, and taken seriously. But some of the terrible existential truths are, of course, constituted by pain and suffering: they are terrible for those undergoing them. I take it that the Schopenhauerian challenge depends primarily on the former, rather than the latter: that is, Nietzsche’s concern is why we who confront seriously the terrible truths about the human situation--even before the ones constituted by pain and suffering befall us—should keep on living, when we know full well that life promises systematic suffering, immorality, and illusion? Why not accept Schopenhauer’s apparent verdict, and give up on life altogether?
There are relatively few claims about Nietzsche that are uncontroversial, but I hope this one is: Nietzsche was always interested in responding to that Schopenhauerian challenge, from his earliest work to his last. And the animating idea of his response also remains steady from beginning to end, I shall argue, namely, that as he puts it in the new 1886 preface to his first book, 1872’s The Birth of Tragedy, “the existence of the world is justified [gerechtfertigt] only as an aesthetic phenomenon” (BT: Attempt 5). He is here explicitly summarizing “the suggestive sentence...repeated several times” in the original work a dozen years earlier: “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (BT:5) and “existence and the world seem justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon” (BT:24).6 This kind of “justification,” whatever precisely it amounts to, is equivalent in Nietzschean terminology to taking a “Dionysian” perspective on life.
[/quote]
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2099162
Of course the pessimist can call this Dionysian perspective bogus and the Dionysian perspective can call the pessimist all kinds of things (cowardly, personally unlucky, and so on). For me it is fact that some people are brighter and happier than others. I think it is far easier for the more gifted and the luckier to embrace the Dionysian perspective. It is an elitist or cruel position in that sense. It ignores or aesthetically 'justifies' the suffering of the less lucky. I think those who roughly conceive themselves in this way also laugh at themselves mockingly.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Maybe among non-philosophers it's annoyingly deep. But I think some philosophers are just annoyed by it as a position. They just think their position is better. In this thread I've seen a real interest in discussing it. Of course those with other positions will discuss it by challenging it. But that's why this forum isn't sterile and boring.
Indeed. I've studied him. He's one of the greats, and he's a great personality to contemplate. I just think that instead of will we have a plurality of wills.
Goood point.
So I won't die on this hill, but I think the monstrous inner child and the overdemanding [something like a superego] are closely interrelated. They need each other.
Have you ever seen the movie The Master?
You have one character, Freddie, who is pure animality, unshapen earthly demand. & then there's 'the master' who is basically L Ron Hubbard. He has this grand faux-scientific system which he uses to exert absolute control over all his devotees. The movie is a perverse love story. The 'master' needs some utterly unreflective jumble of desire and impulse as the raw material for the imposition of his will (imposed under the false auspices of 'healing') & Freddie seems to need his absolute attention and concern.
I think this is about right. Infinite demand recognizes infinite demand. They reciprocally provide each other with limits they can't give themselves.
My hunch - and its just a hunch - is that children aren't really monstrously demanding the infinite. Rather they're overwhelmed by their emotions and don't know what to do with them. A skilled parent helps teach them what their emotions are and shows them how to ride the wave. An unskilled parent tells them (directly or otherwise) to ignore whats going on, to shut up and do this.
From the unskilled parent's perspective the child's inability to do this - its inevitable reversion back to [screaming, punching their sister etc] - does constitute an an unbounded monstrous. The parent doesn't know (probably weren't taught themselves) how emotions work, what their rhythm is - so all they can see is an eternally recalcitrant monstrousness that will always resist their limits. The child, on the other hand, is never taught how to meaningfully engage with their emotions. They just experience an irruption of overwhelming [ ineffable ] which irrupts in a household that has no place for it. Over time this turns into a feeling that certain needs are by nature unbound and unaddressable. If the child goes out on its own, it'll probably wind up in cycles of self-destruction. (One cycle, which I fell into, is one of Salvational Force (Girl, substance, philosophy etc.) disappointment, New Salvational Force etc.)
Hence the romance between the two: It's kind of sad, tragic one. They do both want to help the other, to be with them, but they don't know how to do it. The place in which they might connect has been replaced with a play of Boundaries & Transgressions which circles endlessly around what they need.
From the end of the Master:
I really like inner-child work. It's got an earnestness to it that turns some people off, but I think it's good. I had deeply flawed parents, like so many people, and reacted to it by overprotecting and bossing myself around, to the point where I was kind of imprisoned and quiet deep inside myself.Occasionally I'd burst through in a fit of [rage, lust, etc]. [also far from healed, very liable to fall back into old patterns]
What I kind of think is that you need a more complex and subtle relationship with yourself, where you allow the child wide berth when you can (like the parent who lets the kid run around screaming in the park, waving to the child when it looks back, until he finally wears himself out and wants to nap) and find a gentle way of communicating to it that you need to take control when life requires it. You don't yank its arm, or tell it to shut up. You figure out how to communicate the situation with a kind of affection.
I'm trying to relate this all back to the thread: umm. It'll be too forced right now. I think its relevant, but I'll have to post when it comes back to me.
You need emotional range to model the richness of the world. So you need this baseline balance as the neutrally poised state from which you can launch in appropriate fashion in countering directions.
So the ought is a logical necessity. If we want to express a full range of emotions, we ought to start from a neutral position. (Did you have an actual argument against this ought?)
Quoting schopenhauer1
You just make things up as facts to support your case.
I was talking about what you might genuinely feel as a baseline condition when all forms of thought and action are as stilled as possible.
Boredom is what you feel when nothing is exciting your curiosity. And thinking about it, curiosity is probably our most valuable trait.
This is, indeed, the right rhetorical move to make here. But frankly I don't believe you. Your other posts don't bear it out. Your opinion of people who don't use their ability for self-awareness bleeds through.
so : Why do you recommend it?
[quote=schop] I will offer an olive branch to the anti-antinatalists/pessimists. Do you think that people should be at least thinking of life in the meta-awareness sense that some pessimists advocate? [/quote]
I think it can be very helpful, if used well. As an end-in-itself it's not only unhelpful, but crumbles into inconsistency.
I doubt it. Literality, brought to a limit, dissolves in the metaphorical. Both Existentialism & Pessimism are full to the brim with metaphors.Your namesake's a veritable metaphor-machine (the rainbow one is nice, and Baron Munchausen is a classic.) You've used plenty yourself, as well. I don't think this is a flaw, mind you. I think metaphors are great. So I would ask instead: Which metaphors work? Being condemned to fashion metaphors, which ones are worth cultivating?
This sounds right. There is also the possibility of a dangerous alignment of the superego and the inner child (of authenticity and criminality.) There is a personality type that can be ashamed of its virtue as a kind of compromise or cowardice. 'I should be true to my anti-social desire to get the most out of this life. I should just let my rage or my lust run free, even if it gets me killed.' Now I'm not personally this 'crazy,' but I understand the position. I can hear that monster grunting in the basement. On the other hand, I think being aware of that monster is one way to keep that monster in check. This is just the old idea that large scale evil tends to be done in the name of the good. Mobs and fanatics can become this monster all while imagining themselves the agents of virtue.
Quoting csalisbury
Oh yes. Great director. I watch everything he does.
Quoting csalisbury
Yes. For me, the master is the 'male' who narcissistically enjoys himself from the perspective of his ideal admirer. And the admirer is a chaos who thirsts for an escape from an unbounded cognitive dissonance. (For me this touches on the treacherous terrain of the heterosexual situation. In short, men and women use another as flattering mirrors.)
Quoting csalisbury
For me the master just wants to be acknowledged as master, and then the non-master does indeeed get his limits from the master, otherwise unable to focus or shape an identity from the chaos of his passions.
Quoting csalisbury
As you probably know by now, I had in mind the monstrous inner child of the articulate adult, the adult who is well-read enough to 'justify' to some degree a consciousness of this monster. On the other hand, I remember playing with my G.I. Joes in a way that suggests that the 'real' issue was who I'd let win the fight. It was ideology-free. But then I had a tyrannical father who never justified himself (well, until we both got older and I was no longer dazzled/afraid). Could be contingent, let's say.
Quoting csalisbury
Fascinating. I definitely relate to a sequence of Salvational Forces. For me the basic threat of the nihilistic vision settled in after a sincere teenaged attempt to get religion. I've read lots of thinkers, but really they all seem like footnotes to Nietzsche, at least as far as salvational force is concerned. 'Live well or off yourself ' was the take-home. The intermediate states basically lost their appeal. And that's where a soft version of embracing the monster slips in. Yeah, the world is 'evil' and 'fucked.' But [s]Jesus[/s] the devil hates lukewarm ideology! Don't hurt non-enemies, but reach guiltlessly otherwise. I see I've digressed, but maybe that's useful background for future conversation.
Quoting csalisbury
I strongly agree here. I see a lot of general low-level misery, and I interpret it in terms of 'dead inner children.' So the monster I mention is also a friend. We've got to negotiate with the little bastard. He's a threat to life and yet the source of what makes life worth preserving. (Or is this little bastard a she?)
Yeahhh, agree. There's some literature (mostly french) on the Marquis de Sade along these lines. The weird thing about his monstrosity is how meticulous it is. 100 Days of Sodom, for instance, doesn't feel all that animal at all - it's more like an exhaustively worked out system of perversity.
Very much agree with this as well. While the tendency of my post was to try to minimize the element of monstrosity, I think it would be dangerous to propose some state (of being) where everything's been smoothed out so well that there's no longer any need to take into account monstrosity at all.
[quote=syntax]Oh yes. Great director. I watch everything he does.[/quote]
Ok awesome. So of course there's a lot going on in his movies and they can't be reduced to any single theme. Nevertheless, I think there's a very strong through line that deals with exactly the kind of stuff we've been talking about. Let me know to what extent you think this reading (inarticulate child/controlling parent) works:
Starting with
Punch-Drunk Love.
Starting here because I think this is where PTA really begins to deal most explicitly with the inarticulate rage of the child-like part of ourselves. Barry is a kind of caricature of those who meet the demand that we become an adult with an anxious superficiality. Everything about him is low-rent and just-barely-making-it (selling crap out of a garage etc) but he still insists on his fancy suit, even when everyone around him sees it (rightly) as laughably out of proportion to what he actually does.
His relationship to women is totally tarnished by his sisters. They mercilessly undermine him, at every term. His whole existence is an attempt to maintain a facade of legitimate adulthood while dealing with a simmering rage in the face of these humiliations. These humiliations largely come, unannounced, through the phone. His way of expressing his frustration is through simple, unthinking violence.
And, significantly, the only way he can think to attempt intimacy is also through the phone. He deals with intimacy the same way he deals with business - he wants to keep things at a safe, superficial level. But it doesn't work. He taps into a deeper structure with a severe, threatening core (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), which assails him brutally trying to get payment. He was looking for intimacy but we got was: manipulative woman trying to use him, backed by an almost archetypical vengeful force.
But Barry doesn't confront. Instead he looks for an Elsewhere he can go by quietly manipulating the world. Find the inconsistencies (like a poorly calculated pudding promotion) and use to it go to Hawaii.
This is a false solution. As soon he's back, he's still hounded by p hoffman et al. Everything comes to an end only when he confronts him with the phone.
It'd be a happy ending, only he promises to stay close to Lena by using his frequent flier miles to accompany her around the world. I don't know if this intentionally symbolic, but by using something ill-earned (earned through quiet manipulation ) he undermines his heroic standing-up. And I think it does matter because
There Will be Blood
The role of the protagonist has switched. Punch Drunk Love sees PTA identifying (or asking us to identify with) the impotently-raging schlemiel, against the malevolent controller. Here things get switched around. We recognize Daniel Plainview's massive flaws, but we still respect him, or are at least in awe of him. (want to emphasize this. There Will be Blood is certainly not a celebration of Plainview, but its most sympathetic to him.) Paul Dano, on the other hand, is seen as a shrewd manipulator. He's contemptible, and the movie is basically about how Plainview's skilled attempt at control is ever-shadowed by a weak manipulator with whom he has to vie.
The way I understand this is PTA identified with Barry in Punch-Drunk Love, embraced his standing-up to the distant controller, but has now go on to identify with the controller himself, and to be haunted by the strategms of the weak, manipulative part of himself. The outcome is sheer bitter humilation (the bowling scene, i drink your milkshake.) The end is so absurd and comical in relation to the tenor of the rest of the movie but I think that's the point. All of this struggle ends in a bizarre, childish humiliation that the director and audience recognizes has been won at the expense of Plainview's soul.
There are no women, really, in There Will be Blood
So The Master: Already mostly said what I wanted. But instead of identifying with either character, the movie focuses on the dynamic itself, and what's gone wrong.
Skipping Inherent Vice for now
Phantom Thread
So the protagonist is also super concerned with control. Also super concerned with an endless supply of ideal women, each of whom he can use as a muse, for however long it works, then discard them. I have a lot to say about this movie but I'll try to sum it up quickly, because this post is out of control. One woman is not discarded. Why? Once she realizes that he's not going to come out and dance, or do anything enlivening ever, she very firmly begins to negotiate with him (in a very weird, maybe unhealthy way, but still) He will be in control when he needs to make the dresses. She will stay on for that, but only if he is willing to weaken himself and depend entirely on her, periodically.
Personally I think this kind of thing is only the beginning of a potentially much more healthy negotiation, but its at least a right step. They do go out and dance, but its a slow waltz in a mostly empty place. Baby steps tho.
geez, tldr; But basically I think that this movement kind of works as a intricate dramatization of this:
I think I'm in pretty close to the same boat, through (maybe) a different path?
I was raised religious (not super-strictly, but religious enough) and had the nihilistic vision in response to that. I guess more accurately it was visited upon me. We had been studying the egyptians in school and I was like man they really believed in that stuff, as much as we believe in christianity. Wait, how do we know we're right?? It sounds pretty quaint now, but it really shook me (I was little). I did the angry fuck-you-dad New Atheist stuff, but it was preceded by a real trauma. But anyway, got into Nietzsche because I thought he'd fit my angry atheist thing, and was quickly, blessedly, disappointed. I was disappointed with that disappointment at first, but then it was great. Lucky enough to have a few friends in high school who 'got it' too. Strangely, I got into pessimism after Nietzsche. (was really into it, which might explain my impassioned responses here) But then got Nietzsche again, better, after that. I think Pessimism is kind of great as a station along the way. Affirmation is great, but pure Affirmation, without building up the pessimistic antibodies, can wind you up self-poisoned at the foot of a charismatic leader.
I agree with both characterizations. I am wary of reading it along hetero/homo lines. Not signalling here, I swear, but I've known both homo and hetero couples who exemplify both kinds of relations. I would agree, tho, that hetero relations, in general, seem more often to reflect this pattern. I don't know if that's an essential tendency or a social one - not rhetorical, I'm really not sure, don't lean one way or the other.
I like the Sade mention. I've read some of his shorter works and could never finish his longer works. Too repetitive! I felt 'in' on something with wicked writers like Sade. I agree that it's not essentially animal. It's 'spiritual' in that it depends on transgression. Oscar Wilde joked somewhere about women having the advantage of more taboos to violate. Stolen bread is sweeter. Of course it's dangerous for thinkers to talk about this stuff, because it's hard to not look like a creep. Indeed, this is consciousness of the creep, or the quarter-creep's idealistically self-honest analysis of his own depths. Traditional notions of good and evil fall apart down here, beyond/beneath/before good and evil.
Quoting csalisbury
You are opening my eyes to things I didn't notice. I did notice his conscious passivity and cowardice. He could only be a false saint or a beast. And the choreography of his beast moments enraptured me. In pure rage there is no fear.
I probably missed this because my own strategy used to be to delegitimize the adult world. It was a cynical twist on Christian unworldliness. I found myself rooting for Sandler 'just because.' Maybe he was more sinned against than sinning. I wanted Hoffmann's character destroyed.
Quoting csalisbury
Yeah, that's a pretty great description. And I sympathized with Plainview and hated Dano.
Quoting csalisbury
Good point. I was disspointed by this movie the first time. I had built it up. But, when I rewatched it, I found great and complete in a new way. I also felt the nastiness of his attitude toward his 'son' with more intensity. Plainview was buried alive within himself.
Quoting csalisbury
This one was a bit of a disappointment, but I adore Joanna Newsom as a musician. And Fiona Apple for that matter. Damn you, PTA !
Quoting csalisbury
Oh I haven't seen this one. I need to check it out.
Forgive me for unloading that. It's been building up in my head since I watched Phantom Thread (definitely see it, its great) the other week and I seized the opportunity.
I will say this
Talking about his movies on the level of plot does miss this altogether. He's incredible at this kind of thing - Punch Drunk Love captures the feeling of bubbling rage like no other movie I know. I don't want to spoil Phantom Thread any more than I already have, but I think he captures another sort of moment, on a visceral level, just as well.
I want to try to bring this all back. The pessimist view is centered around a demand. The pessimist is someone like Barry, hounded by anxiety-eliciting phone calls. Besieged constantly. What he does isn't confront Hoffman. Instead he says: Listen: life consists of these awful, immiserating phone calls. Do what you will, the phone calls will keep coming. What you need to do, then, is always be aware that no matter what you do, a phone will eventually ring. That's what it comes down to: we run around all we want, but all we're really doing is ignoring a ringing phone.
Or in other words: They've settled down and set up camp at the beginning of the whole thing. And the culture of it: don't try to figure out where the calls are coming from. They're just bad, is the thing, they hurt. The point is to recognize they hurt.
Ah. I was raised by a supremely tepid Catholic mother and a father who believed more or less in blue-collar masculinity but without the usual restraints on sex (essentially straight but freaky!). Pretty much no civilized discussion or explanation of 'the law' in either case.
Quoting csalisbury
I think I was seduced by the grim existential glamor of atheism, and then all the smart people I was reading seemed to be on that side. Freud functioned symbolically for me as a sort of amoral wizard. That's basically still what attracts me in philosophy, that move to be above the fray with a kind of amoral neutrality.
And then I also never felt saved by religion. I used to be terrified of Hell. So accepting my mortality wasn't too much of a price to pay. Basically I 'chose' the unbearable lightness over the unbearable heaviness of being.
Quoting csalisbury
Do you mean because Nietzsche demolishes the pose of moral indignation? That was maybe the biggest thing I got from him -- a contempt for self-righteous whining and accusation. It was basically gangsta rap for a small town white boy. By the way, I think today's rap really does tell the truth of the beast and spell out the essence of capitalism with an honesty that's hard to find in intellectuals. Bookishness tends to go with a certain righteous father pose and an underestimation of popular culture, but then many of the snobs hated Shakespeare back then.
Quoting csalisbury
Yeah, and this is profound. I have fallen into depressions after assimilating Nietzsche. And even though I knew better, I couldn't feel better. All the fine word systems are just nauseating when the lust to be done with the noise takes hold. One gets utterly beyond 'universal' or 'rational' concerns. It is just a raw calculation of whether I wanted to die or not. The bitter, ironic monologue in my head (which I know I've shared with others) was just [static]. And I was lucky without being able to enjoy it. The frozen shit in Dante was spot on. Bukowski wrote about the 'frozen man' in an eeriely convincing short story, and then Kerouac freaks me out with his accuracy in passages in Desolation Angels.
Having survive a few of these intense, irrational bouts, I am glad to have passed through. I am a 'bigger, darker listener' for having done so. (Kerouac in The Subterraneans describes himself as a bigger, darker listener than Ginsberg in the context of some new girl : that's what he had on tap, a bigger darker listening.)
Anyway, maybe pessimism and 'Nietzscheanism' are entangled in both understanding life as aesthetically justified or not. If and when life is 'sexy' enough, the Dionysian position actually works. So I think it's no at all really a matter of rational argument. I think our anecdotal, biographical approach is the right way to talk about this stuff.
Beautiful. And for me that connects with life is exploitation. Life is 'stupid.' But we like or can sometimes like it for and despite of its nastiness. I loved GoldenEye, the video game, once. There was nothing like dropping someone in the basement with a magnum. 'One shot.' And it feels great to outperform someone, and not just bad to be outshone. And (for completeness) life offers moments of incomparable tenderness. I think the macho-omniscient cynicism is a kind of exoskeleton that protects the gooey girlstuff that keeps reality from being an arid, burning plain. I remember being especially terrified to die when I thought about the end of all the female beauty that that would entail, the end of the possibility of the feeling of beginnings. Jesus & Lucifer, some of life is well worth paying for in suffering. That's probably the basic gut-level reaction to pessimism.
Anyway, I love the ringing phone metaphor.
again tonight
my soul despite all the past
agony
thanks all the gods
who were not
there
for me
then
Bukowski
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/80188-i-sit-here-drunk-now-i-am-a-series-of
sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted –
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
i get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it’s still nice to be
Bukowski
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/979919-sometimes-when-everything-seems-at-its-worst-when-all-conspires
Well said. Reminds me in a good way of what I like in Rorty's pragmatism, though in context-appropriate grimier terms --appropriate because a rosier statement will offend the nose of a pessimist.
Forgive me, but I'm no longer a student, and I'm not going to read the entire forum before participating on the off-chance that there is a similar discussion. If the moderators wished, the two threads could have been merged with very little effort instead of being silently deleted or locked.
schopenhauer1: "Often I see these newer posters start a thread and then never participate in the actual conversation. I don't get it."
Maybe it's because their threads get locked and/or deleted.
schopenhauer1:"The general position is that life has too much suffering and therefore not worth starting for another."
The state of non-existance prior to conception means that by not conceiving one is not alleviating the suffering of an extant being. The affected party in non-conception is the parent and to a diminishing extent the parents' social group, whereas only conception can affect the child. Consequently, the decision to have a child seems to be selfish by definition.
Regarding suffering, the answer to the question, "Is it better to have lived than have never existed?", at least in my case, is a resounding 'yes'. Suffering is part of the human experience, and no doubt I have plenty in store. Maybe I should take Croesus' advice who claimed that one could not evaluate one's life until its end. Nevertheless, I suspect I'm not alone in being fiercely protective of my existence.
Regarding 'antenatalism', It's too nihilistic for my tastes and I don't consider nihilism to be a logical outcome of philosophical enquiry, rather I consider that the purpose of philosophical enquiry to find a way out the clearly paradoxical reductio ad absurdum that is nihilism.
Post McPostface: "I feel as though, there's a dichotomy being drawn between 'rationality' and 'human nature' here. Seems fallacious to me, as if one can speak about 'rationality' while excluding 'human nature' from the discussion."
Reason is supposed to transcend human nature. Conception, like smoking and obesity is usually a result of non-rational impulses. Rationality, in the sense of positive freedom, is the control of these aspects of human nature; my reason is the master of me (or at least I'd like it to be). In this sense, the problem is not succumbing to our human nature, but the reasons we have for doing so. Ergo, "Is there a rational basis upon which to bring children into the world (I'm thinking developed countries with some kind of welfare system)?"
I guess it's just how you look at it. Most people will say you only ask these questions and see the world in this way because you're not caught up in your relationships and projects and future goals. The world only looks this way to antinatalists because they *aren't* involved in any of these things (at least, not in a truly meaningful, worthwhile way. Nobody in a relationship with somebody they love or caught up in a project they truly care about really asks these questions - the worth is self-evident to them). Whereas you might respond you don't ask these questions and see the world like the antanatalist because you *are* caught up in these things (as if like a horse with blinkers on). But I'm caught up in these things because they are genuinely meaningful and worthwhile to me, and not some desperate attempt to mask or escape the true 'big picture' of life (a meaningless depressive void of purposeless striving/suffering). From my perspective, the antinatalist is sick/ill. He/she lacks a sense of enjoyment and meaning in their lives. When nothing is enjoyable or seems worthwhile, the antinatalist position makes perfect sense - life is fundamentally not a good thing, it should not be inflicted on others, the world should stop being proliferated.
In past depressive episodes I have personally fallen into the same way of thinking. But looking back I was just sick/ill (in a sort of spiritual, existential sense). My life lacked meaning, purpose and joy. Nothing was enjoyable, nothing seemed worthwhile. I was alone in a world embodied within a locus of needs and pains and wants which inflicted themselves upon me, motivating me through pain in order to work and strive to address them in a cycle that had no purpose but to extend itself. It's as if suffering itself was using me in order to proliferate its own existence. Life seemed a horrific joke, with suicide and total world suicide (antinatalism) being a perfectly rational response. But like I say there was just something wrong with me, the world actually isn't this way, at it's core.
We have discussed this at length in the messages. Can you post the follow-ups that we had so we can at least see how the discussion played out? No use repeating what we have covered. Then we can go from the latest conversation.
I'm sorry but the philosophical pessimist would not leave it that relationships and projects are all that needs to take place to keep one from seeing the aesthetic picture of the world as circularity. It does narrow the focus for a while, but these can themselves become loci of frustrations, disappointments, and deprivations. I said in another thread on here:
Relationships and projects do indeed narrow the focus, but that is not seeing the bigger picture. But I've written about this idea of projects and relationships voluminously in many other threads because those are exactly the two reasons people would use to justify bringing people into the world. Either I was dead on for the main reasons people use, or you've been reading my past threads (the greatest hits package ;)). I doubt its the latter, so I'm glad my theory has been substantiated.
[quote=schopenhauer1]Well, that is an interesting part of our human experience that no other animal seems to share- a perpetual ability to understand itself qua itself. We live but we don't know why. This question entails not just our own personal lives but bringing forth new life. We can be what Sartre might call "authentic" and do things in "good faith", that is in knowing what we are doing in full awareness of the stark futility, or we can simply bury our heads in ongoing projects that we don't know how or why we took on, or perhaps were just kind of "foisted" on the person by circumstances. What is it we are trying to get at as individuals, as a species? This is something only we (or the proverbial self-aware aliens) must contend with. Suicide I see as an ideation coping technique. The thought of it is more relief than the actual action. As Schopenhauer stated,
Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment — a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.
— Schopenhauer- On Suicide
But indeed suicide, like existential angst, extreme boredom, questioning of life, absurdity of life, and the like are on the edges of things. It needs to be pushed out for more projects to be put through. Projects good, questioning bad. Navel-gazing and self-indulgence will be the main accusations.[/quote]
[quote=schopenhauer1]2b) Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure. Being that we can never have true satiation, we are always in flux and never quite getting at anything in particular. It is a world to be endured. We may find ourselves projects to concentrate on and have that "flow" feeling, but once one is out of such a mode that might capture one's thoughts thoroughly, one sees it is just going from project to project or chasing the "flow" so as to not think about the situation at large.
These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament. Though it is an aesthetic of sorts, I cannot see how it is a matter of perspective as really the core of the matter of the human condition. It is not even a matter of people denying these claims. Rather, it is a matter of putting 2 + 2 together to see the larger pattern going on.
The counterarguments that one can just think their way out of the situation seem to not work. One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation. One cannot choose to get rid of unwanted pains. The absurdity of the instrumental, discussed by many philosophers is just part of the situation.[/quote]
I have recently been an adherent of the Humean saying that reason is a slave to the (human) passions. I'm not saying that reason cannot stand on a higher ground than emotions, but rather that the two cannot be spoken in isolation from one another.
Do you also see antinatalism itself as an ideation coping technique? Is anything learned about the nature of things by the ending of mankind itself?
Advocating for antinatlism is itself a project, and a goal, right? Is this suffering free world devoid of humans not also just some distant hope on the horizon? I just fail to see how the cessation of the world is in any way a solution. Nobody will be better off. Is the thought more relief than the actual action?
What's the point of convincing others of your aesthetic view of the world?
I'm going through your previous threads/posts now by the way, a lot of interesting stuff!
Procreating is just something people do, something they're semi-compelled to do (most people have some degree of broodiness, and sexual intercourse is one of the most sought-after pleasures). It is in peoples' nature to procreate; we are a form of being that (among other things) procreates.
In that sense we ourselves are a possible measure of "good" and "bad" (what's good or bad for us). Just as the world crystaliizes as objectively good or bad relative to any given point of view - a rock, a galaxy, a plant - so do we too have a point of view of our own, a nature, a way that we live. (In philosophical terms an essence or nature.) And the perpetuation of that through time, its flourishing, has some value, just naturally (again, it's just part of our nature to value ourselves).
And in that sense procreation (making babies) can be good or bad only in relation to other things that are good or bad for us. (The limit to it would probably be something like "but not up to the point of fouling our own nest.")
IOW, you just have to weigh it up, procreation is one value in the context of several important values. And here there's a hierarchy that fluctuates with circumstances (sometimes it's wise to hold off and build up a career for example, sometimes the opposite, it depends on the people and their circumstances, and it's for them to decide).
Yes, actually I do see antinatalism as a coping technique. I said one time here:
[quote=schopenhauer1]I think pessimism can be productive as a philosophy of consolation. It can be a possible alternative to "pick yourself up by the bootstrap" theories. The inherent worth of the individual's suffering is taken into account rather than self-regulating phrases to ensure people do not get too upset by circumstances (by as you said before) "blaming the victim". Anyways, everyone has harms.. some similar, some more nuanced and individual.. It is quite alright to air those to others and find some solace in it.
Besides being a consolation, it may provide perspective on existence itself. Rather than take it as "this is what must be", it provides the individual a way to look at existence as a whole. By questioning the foundations of the human enterprise itself, it lets us look at what is important and what is justified. It allows us to look at how our own psychological mechanisms work to create the structure needed for goals, how it is contingent harms play a role, and confronts the situatedness of being thrown in a world where we are experiencing the pendulum between survival through cultural upkeep and maintenance, and turning boredom into entertainment goal-seeking. All this structural/necessary harm in the background while being harmed by contingent factors along the way.. All the things listed here for example.
Believe it or not, there can be a giddyness to pessimism.. To knowing we are all in the same boat, that it is all part of a similar structure. I dare say, there may be a joy and connectedness in pessimism.[/quote]
Quoting Inyenzi
I have never put emphasis on the final outcome of antinatalism. I don't think its going to result in complete cessation of human experience. So no I don't have "hope" of antinatalism's final goal. However, no potential person being born translates to no suffering for that future person, which is good. There is no need to adjust to whatever coping strategies (antinatalist, Stoic, pleasure-seeking, or otherwise) because there will be no need for the coping strategies in the first place.
So in a way, the aesthetic view is more of a relief. It is seeing what is going on here and then acting from it. Perhaps I can reiterate the view from this quote:
[quote=schopenhauer1]The life lived without reflection contains suffering. The life lived with reflection, for the person of a pessimistic temperament, sees the suffering and cannot readily accept with joy or (morose indifference) that this is life and so be it. To the pessimist, this is a basic truth of life and truth cannot be simply discarded once recognized. For the pessimist, there is a reaction of rebellion that life is this way in the first place. If one does not commit suicide, one will have to live life, but one doesn't have to view the situation as good. The indifference approach is cold and does nothing more than say a truism: "life is suffering and we know this". The pessimistic approach not only takes into account that there suffering and we know this, but sees the suffering as negative or an "evil". Perhaps it cannot be overcome, but at least it is recognized for what it is and not ignored or downplayed- discounting its pervasive part of life for many people in many instances.
For those who do not "see" this truth or who overlook the suffering- it is their prerogative. I haven't seen a pessimist forcefully make anyone believe anything before. The pessimist has every right in a free society to state his views and see if he finds others who see the same thing as him/her. If people vociferously disagree due to temperamental or aesthetic differences, then they can explain their view to each other. I have no illusions that people have the exact same aesthetic tendencies towards the human condition. Each side can make their case, but this doesn't mean each side will win out the other person's view. Philosophy is all about dialectic, and the same basic themes unfolds over and over again throughout history.
I will say this for the pessimistic theme though- the pessimistic theme is pervasive throughout all of civilization, has been embraced at times by many deep thinkers (not just philosophers), and at one point or another, crosses the minds of most adults at some point in life. Perhaps these fleeting thoughts are simply judged as youthful angst or a depressive mood, but pessimists are willing to stare at it directly and explore this understanding further. The aesthetic sensibility of the pessimist sees these ideas not as fleeting depressive states but as a truth about the human condition itself. They cannot help but see it this way. Life's flux, challenges, contingent suffering, annoyances, instrumentality and existential boredom seem so pervasive to life itself that being indifferent to the suffering is hardly an option if it is one at all.[/quote]
I don't understand why the pessimist has to project his own feelings about the world onto everyone else to the extent of being an antinatalist. If your life sucks and you suffer, then don't have children. But certainly you must see that not everyone feels that way about life?
I'm an optimistic realist. I like life, I enjoy more in life than not, and I think most people do. I decided to procreate, in part because I think that life has more good than bad to offer. Of course there is suffering, and potentially more suffering than joy, but it is more likely for a child growing up in the environment I can provide, that the good will outweigh the bad.
To paraphrase Nietsche, I have stared into the Abyss, and the Abyss has stared back into me. One can be an optimist even after having confronted the darkness of the human condition and existence in general. But ultimately I choose to live life with another quote in mind: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." (Nabokov) I like to focus on the "brief crack of light" part, while the "eternities of darkness" are there to remind me to carpe diem.
What about life needs to be started for a new person in the first place? Is it some X experience you would like it to have? Is that the only experience it will have? Are you unwittingly doing the bidding of society's perpetuation (on the child's behalf)? What of the circularity- life is essentially survival, maintaining environment/comfort levels, and boredom-fleeing? Then what of the contingent suffering that is unexpected, unpredictable, and contextual.
I'll answer you in order:
-Nothing needs to be started. But it also doesn't need not to be started.
-Yes, there are a multitude of experiences I hope my child has.
-Nope.
-Also nope.
-I don't believe that is true.
-Life is risky, but that doesn't mean it's not worth having.
Ok, what is the outcome of not starting the life for the child? There is no child to be deprived. Once the child is born, it is indeed deprived, needs to survive/find goals (and this possibly entails Schopenhauer's vision of constant deprivation), and general existential circularity on top of the contingent suffering of being born with certain traits, certain situations, and certain happenstances.
Quoting NKBJ
What about experiences needs to be carried out in the first place?
Quoting NKBJ
How are you so sure? Where is the cues to have children coming from? Cultural cues, perhaps?
Quoting NKBJ
I doubt you can disprove that. Almost all goals fall into one of those three categories. At the bottom of things is restless will, the needs of survival the wants of something interesting to do, the middle-ground of comfort and maintenance seeking.
Quoting NKBJ
Are the potential goods of life that important for a new person to experience? If they don't exist, what do they lose? There is no they, so nothing can lose. Something can definitely lose once born. The goods of life needn't be an issue with non-existent nothings that are simply placeholders for potential somebodies.
Once again, you are assuming the same pessimistic outlook for everyone. Well, everyone doesn't share that view of life, including me.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I know that's not true of me, so therefore it is not true of all humans.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's nonsensical to compare it's non-existence to existence. So existing can never be better or worse than not existing.
You can have a good or a bad life, sure. But from what I have seen and what I've heard from most people, life has more good in it that outweighs the bad.
But we're going nowhere debating whether life is worth living subjectively. I just still think all you can say with your pessimism, is that you personally don't see the point in procreation for yourself. Just, stick with speaking for yourself.
I guess its not a view, its a reality. You are deprived and have needs and wants, whereas, colloquially speaking, "nothing needs anything".
Quoting NKBJ
Really? Once born, the primary goal is survival. Humans with big brains, and social systems create complex cultural ways to survive. The human navigating this cultural landscape is part of survival. Also, humans prefer comfort, so there goes maintenance seeking activities that aren't about survival or entertainment. Then, our restless minds need entertainment- relationships, complex games and hobbies, and even meditation all fall under this. Its really quite simple in its complexity.
Quoting NKBJ
You can compare states of affairs comparing being born and having good/bad experiences and not being born and not having any good/bad experiences, or even have an actual person to be deprived thereof. Of course, this is done retrospectively, but it is comparing them nonetheless.
What you meant to argue I think was that, it is some sort of logical error to talk about non-existent people. But I believe you can since we use conditional speech all the time. Johnny could have done this, but he did that. If born, a human must survive, maintain, entertain, a condition that would not be the case if not born. Since humans are self-aware as well, there is always the existential question of why start it in the first place. As Zapffe might put it, we are in a sense, tragically self-aware.
I'll quote for you from a piece that I read recently by philosopher Jeff McMahan (just ignore the part about carnism and apply it to human procreation for the sake of our argument, please):
“The claim that benign carnivorism would not be worse for the animals that it would cause to exist is, strictly speaking, trivially true, while the claim that it would be better for them is necessarily false. This is because ‘worse’ and ‘better’ are comparative terms, and one element in each implied comparison is never existing at all.
Consider the claim that it is not worse for an animal to be caused to exist. This is not a substantive claim. It is instead true as a matter of logic, since it is incoherent to suppose that an animal’s being caused to exist could be worse for it. Because ‘worse for’ is comparative, the claim that it is worse for an individual to be caused to exist implies that it would have been better for that individual not to have been caused to exist–that is, never to have existed at all. But there cannot be anyone for whom it is better never to exist.
Similarly, to say that it is better for an animal to be caused to exist implies that it would have been worse for that same animal never to have existed. But again, there cannot be anyone for whom it is worse never to exist. In one clear and relevant sense, there are no individuals who never exist.”
(Here's the link: https://philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-files/Eating_Animals_the_Nice_Way.pdf)
Yes.
Quoting gurugeorge
The same can be said of serial rapists, murderers, pedophiles, thieves, etc. Your moral relativism is a non-starter for me.
Quoting gurugeorge
No we're not.
I wonder what is the measure of right and wrong. One of my main concerns with moral realism isn't that it isn't even clear how one would go about verifying or falsifying a moral claim.
If I say that it isn't wrong to hurt innocent people and you say that it is, what can we do to resolve the disagreement? Is there anything we can do, or is it just a case that we disagree, each believing that our respective positions are obviously correct, and if the other can't understand that then they have some fundamental problem?
That's true of all non-scientific claims, so this doesn't bother me. I can always retort by asking how one goes about verifying or falsifying the claim that it isn't clear how to go about verifying or falsifying a moral claim.
Quoting Michael
Well, hold on. Let's not confuse resolving disagreement between ourselves with the truth of the matter in question. We could do the former without thereby having determined the latter. I'm not interested in resolving disagreements. If X is true and you disagree, then so be it and so much the worse for you. If you respond by asking how we know that X is true, then presumably you are requesting the reasons why X is true. If you disagreed with those reasons, your mere disagreement alone still wouldn't make X not true.
Assuming there is a fact of the matter, and assuming that we disagree on what the fact of the matter is, what can we do to determine the fact of the matter? Is there some empirical or rational method available to us to show that something either is or isn't immoral?
We have such methods to determine if it's raining, or if such-and-such a number is prime, but what about determining if it's wrong to hurt people?
Quoting Thorongil
Self-reflection. Whether or not I have knowledge of how to verify or falsify a moral claim is determined by some fact about my mental state that's immediately apparent to me.
But given that, as you've said, we are not the measure of good and bad, we can't use self-reflection to determine if something is good or bad. We can reflect on how we feel about the matter, and what our opinions are, but that's not the same thing (if moral realism is true).
So it doesn't bother you that you can't support your claim that X is wrong, or that moral realism is correct?
We can try to do so by using reason.
Quoting Michael
Making valid and sound arguments?
Quoting Michael
I never said I couldn't support the claims I hold to. We're getting rather far afield from the OP in this discussion. Perhaps I will make another thread.
Morality is indeed objective - but it's not intrinsic. Another way of saying that might be that it pertains to action not being. IOW the act of making babies is neither good nor bad intrinsically, it's objectively good or bad (from whatever point of view - e.g. human beings or dromedary jumping-slugs) depending on circumstances. And in relation to any given desideratum, procreation has objective costs and objective benefits that can be weighed up.
This also means that (compressing a large argument down to a caricature) the "Nature" one might wish to protect by not having us filthy humans polluting the planet is also intrinsically neither good or bad, so "it's evil to make babies because muh Nature" isn't an argument.
Most environmentalist philosophy is just one bunch of humans trying to force another bunch of humans to behave the way they want to, using bogus arguments, social shaming tactics and the occasional capture of a corrupt legal system. The only bit that makes credible sense as philosophy is, "Don't foul your own nest."
Okay. Seems you're a utilitarian, then.
Quoting gurugeorge
That wasn't my argument. I'm not an antinatalist, remember. But this logic cuts both ways, so the procreator isn't on any firmer footing.
Quoting gurugeorge
Okay, and now please consider the question of my thread. Are there any non-selfish benefits to procreation? I do not dispute that there are benefits. Clearly there are. What I'm disputing is that there are any non-selfish reasons for the act. I do not see that there could be any such benefits, given the nature of what a benefit is.
No, not really, not even strictly a consequentialist. I don't think there's any hard and fast dichotomy between consequentialism and deontology. Deontology is just the "strategic" version of consequentialism, which is at the "tactical" level. (IOW, general rules of behaviour are instituted because - so it is hoped or believed, or trusted - they create general conditions that lead to good consequences; but that sometimes means having a general rule override strictly consequentialist decision-making, because the benefit of following the general rule and having it be a general rule that everyone follows becomes itself a higher-order value.)
Quoting Thorongil
I think the burden of justification is on the wrong side here. It's like the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" - people don't need to justify just being who they are and doing what they're doing, it's interference with people being who they are and doing what they're doing that requires justification (which is usually on the basis of the harm principle - i.e. if someone being who they are and doing what they're doing is harming someone else without justification, then interference may be justified).
Quoting Thorongil
Think about what you're saying here: you're asking me if there are any non-selfish benefits to devoting time and energy to the raising and nurturing of another life. ;)
No, the point isn't about raising and nurturing, but creating a life.