Are there any good modern refutations to Global Antinatalism?
Not much really needs to be explained aside from the title. Antinatalism is the belief that birth should be morally wrong because it involves bringing into being a creature capable of suffering and that will suffer without its consent and that automatically makes it wrong no matter how much pleasure that creature experiences (because you have no right to create another human when THEY will be the ones to bear the consequences of your choices). Most antinatalists are negative utilitarians who believe that reduction of pain is the only morally correct thing to do and that increasing pleasure is morally meaningless so it'd be great if the refutation is based on negative utilitarian grounds. (so saying "people are generally happy" is not enough for a negative utilitarian)
Comments (417)
I've noticed that this antinatalism idea creates a lot of debate here.
I think it's just a feelgood response to counter the negative aspects that people have with the issue and gives them a honourable sounding reason for intentionally not reproducing. Like "I'm not selfish, I really think about pain and suffering of others". Because let's face it, however permissive our society has become, not to have children especially when living male-female relationship and especially if it was possible (to have children), is still somewhat of a stigma. The fact is that children do bring happiness. You will have a family around you when you die. And your genes don't die with you. Sure, there's a lot that can go awry, but still the vast majority are happy to have children. And that happiness of others creates this burden to some. Of course it shouldn't, one should allways enjoy the positive aspects of one's life and living single or living without kids has the positive sides to it. But antinatalism as a reason for it? Give me a break.
It's like asking if there's a good refutation of the claim that George W. Bush is a reptilian.
With that note, "these are not my actual opinions", I think you made the refutation yourself.
Sure. Give an example of an argument for it. I'll refute it, probably from the first premise.
For example, if your argument begins with something like "You have no right to give birth . . .," that premise is false, whether we're talking about (a) legal rights, because you most certainly do have a legal right to give birth, or (b) "natural rights" aside from legal rights, because there is no such thing. The idea of natural rights is something we've made up.
I think the problem is people can just ignore moral claims and act.
I don't see what gives legal rights any power. Anyone can make up a legal right.
In Europe and many other places the state will take someones child off them if they consider them an unfit parent. So every day decisions are made to prevent people having access to children.
I don't see a good justification for having a child and gambling with someone else's well being
P1: One has no right to inflict undue suffering on another
P2: Giving birth is equivalent to inflicting undue suffering on another as it results in the creation of a creature that will definitely suffer as opposed to the absence of such a creature in which case there will be nothing to suffer
C: Giving birth is immoral
True but the only premise that argument relies on is that inflicting undue pain on others is morally incorrect
If giving birth is immoral how come eating is moral when:
1- Both of them are necessary for survival
2- Both of them have the potential of causing involuntary suffering on another being (it is involuntary in the case of eating because many who work in food production and distribution are there because they can't find another job)
That fails because for one, moral stances aren't the sorts of things that are either correct or incorrect.
Quoting khaled
That's not the case if we're talking about legal rights, and if we're talking about natural law, morality, etc., those things are noncognitive, so again, not true (or false).
Hence why again "Not much need to worry about a good refutation of anti-natalism when there isn't even a good support of it in the first place."
Legal rights obtain via people who have the power to do so, because of their social position--because of how others treat them in a social context, that is--codifying and subsequently enforcing edicts in some manner. So what gives them any power is the social context. Social behavior where people treat some others as having authority, both to make proclamations and to enforce them.
But you CAN know an action is bad if it causes ANY suffering where there could have been none and that's exactly what birth does. Now as for the rest of your comment
Quoting Nicolás Navia
Starting here you seem to be having a debate with yourself because I never said that. It's logical and well thought out though
Suicide used to be illegal but that didn't stop people committing suicide.
I don't know why you think the legal right to have a child would justify having a child? There is nothing metaphysically impressive or infallible about the law. Slavery used to be legal.
I think one of the problems with having children is that you can do it without any skill or qualification or planning or justification.
Not that I'm for the moment agreeing or disagreeing with your "according to you," but If it refutes an argument for anti-natalism, then it does address the issue. That's the thread topic. An argument is refuted if its premises aren't true.
If P1 is saying that one does not have a legal right to give birth, for example, then that's false, simply because one does indeed have a legal right to give birth. It's not against the law to give birth.
If P1 is instead about "natural rights," then it's neither true nor false. Likewise, any moral stance is neither true nor false.
Does this imply that "there is no good support for any moral theory." Not necessarily. It does imply that no (non-contextual) moral claim or argument is true or false, but I would say that there are good supports for some moral stances relative to certain moral premises that one agrees with, and I'd say that moral premises can be better or worse formulated based on factors such as vagueness versus clarity and whether they well-capture how the person in questions actual moral dispositions.
P1, as a moral premise, is not well-formulated in my view, because both "undue" and "suffering" are vague.
By the way, your conclusion also doesn't follow at all, because "Don't have a right to x" doesn't imply "Is immoral to x."
For example, most people do not feel that it's a natural right to participate in instant run-off voting, but that doesn't imply that it's immoral to participate in instant run-off voting.
So even if we were to imagine that P1 and P2 are the sorts of sentences that can be true or false, and we were to imagine that they're true, then the argument isn't valid, because it's possible for the conclusion to be false while the premises are true.
Sure, that you don't have a legal right to do something doesn't imply that it's impossible to do that thing. It simply implies that you can be arrested, prosecuted, etc. for doing that thing, at least as long as you explicitly do not have a legal right to do it, so that it's explicitly illegal. Obviously this is irrelevant if you attempt suicide and succeed, but it's not irrelevant if you do not succeed (with the whole aim there of not having a legal right to do it is that people can then be required to receive help for their suicidal tendencies).
And I don't know why you'd think that I'm saying anything like that. I didn't say anything at all about justifications for anything. The reason I brought up legal rights in the first place is because I think that those are the only sorts of rights that anyone has. I don't believe that natural rights exist in any sense aside from it amounting to people saying that they feel so strongly that one should be allowed to do some x that they feel it should be inviolable.
Sure. And no one said anything at all like that. I simply mentioned legal rights, since I believe those are the sorts of rights that exist (as something we've created socially), and you asked a question that suggested that you didn't understand how legal rights were possible, so I answered that.
And yeah, people used to have a legal right to own slaves.
I don't think people should have a right to have children or believe they have that right. I think there has to be a good reason for proposing a right.
For example the right not to be enslaved is a response to the harm of slavery.
Is that basically your default--everything should be illegal unless there's a good reason to make it legal?
I am not talking about legality but rather conferring rights.
People do not have the right to sexually abuse children. if someone wanted to make that legal they would have to give a really compelling reason for it.
There are actually thousands upon thousands of laws. These days most things have a legal component. There is not much that you are automatically entitled to do. People have to pay for essential needs like water and shelter.
That is why it is absurd that anyone can have children without showing any capacity to rear a child and without having any resources. If the parent fails to care for the child then society is given the responsibility of paying for it and rearing it.
I think the idea that having children is a natural right is what lies behind the reluctance to discourage people from having children or to make it harder to do so.
How do you confer rights non-legally?
You bring something into the realm of legality. Some things are neither legal or illegal. To confer a right you bring it into the legal framework.
To give someone a right to have child brings the issue into the legal framework. Before that stage it is neither legal or illegal. In trivial way everything is legal until it is made illegal.
However there is a difference between something being legal by default or because it is not legislated against and asserting a right. For example some drugs like cocaine were legal or simply not legislated for until they became illegal. Now some people want recreational drugs made legal.
So I think if someone claims we have a right to have children I think they have to give a substantial argument for that and likewise for the counter position.
But as they say The Law is an ass. You seemed to be compelled by the idea that having children is a legal right.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
So then it would seem that if you're talking about conferring rights you're talking about legality.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Once again, the only reason that I brought up legal rights is because that's one sense of rights a la "You have/you do not have a right," and in my view there are no real natural rights. So if we're instead talking about natural rights, we're talking about shit we're making up as if we didn't simply make it up.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
That doesn't make any sense to me in context unfortunately.
P1: Taking a course of action that results in more net suffering in the world than there would be without taking that course of action is immoral.
So in this case punching me is okay because it resulted in the least net suffering. Me killing you would have been much more painful. However, on the other hand, giving birth is NOT okay because it increases net suffering in the world as now there are THREE lives capable of suffering instead of two so in all likelihood, they will suffer more. You should also consider the long-term effect of giving birth. I predict that you are going to give the argument that giving birth IS the least painful way to live because it increases our survival rate, however, let's do some math.
A little bit of suffering X infinity = infinite amounts of suffering
A LOT of suffering X a relatively short time frame = less than infinite amounts of suffering
The first case is the current state of the world in which people keep reproducing and the second case is the case of if everyone today decides not to give birth and "bites the bullet" suffering all of the inconveniences and pain of not having a working force.
Yes as long as there are no repercussions (disclaimer: None of these are my actual opinions I'm playing devil's advocate). You tell me why it WOULDN'T be moral.
Quoting Nicolás Navia
That is actually the "best scenario" for most antinatalists
Quoting Nicolás Navia
Conveniently, they tend to ban people who show them that this is the logical conclusion to their philosophy although I agree with you on that point. Or they give some lame excuse such as "killing myself results in the suffering of my family as well as myself and that suffering outweighs the suffering I will experience in life"
P1: Taking a course of action that results in more net suffering in the world than there would be without taking that course of action is immoral.
That's pretty much the central premise of negative utilitarian thinking. Accepting this premise, how might you refute the position of antinatalism?
If giving birth is immoral how come eating is moral when:
1- Both of them are necessary for survival
2- Both of them have the potential of causing involuntary suffering on another being (it is involuntary in the case of eating because many who work in food production and distribution are there because they can't find another job and dangerous because of the risks associated with the job. Way more people get disfigured in the food and clothing industries than there are disfigured children)
My main problem with antinatalism is that I see no set of reasonable premises (reasonable as in not fine-tuned to reach the conclusion of antinatalism without any intuitive backing) that could reach antinatalism. All I see as conclusions to antinatalism's premises is either promortalism, suicide, or giving birth and living normally as we do today. I don't understand how you can stop at antinatalism without going to those extremes
If we're not allowed to try to pin down just what we're referring to with "suffering" or just how we're attempting some overarching calculus of it, it would be difficult to address anything about it pro or con.
And pain is "physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury"?
"Suffering" being in that definition is problematic if we're wondering what suffering is supposed to refer to, exactly.
"Discomfort" seems intuitively dubious if we're suggesting not moral commandments based on it, doesn't it?
And we didn't bother with our calculus.
I'm pretty sure you know what pain is. Whatever gets the least amount of that is the most moral thing and whatever increases that is immoral. I don't understand why you are pretending that pain needs a definition.
If you REALLY want a definition: highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury.
It's not difficult to define "run": "Move at a speed faster than a walk, never having both or all the feet on the ground at the same time."
The reason we'd be requesting a definition is that "suffering" is extremely vague, and it's used in a very wide range of senses, and we're attempting to suggest moral commandments based on it. We'd better know just what we're referring to and why.
Re "highly" unpleasant, are we then claiming that everyone or close to it experiences highly unpleasant sensations, and are we claiming that everyone or close to it has highly unpleasant sensations outweigh pleasant sensations?
1. if someone exists he will unavoidably experience bad things (and possibly good things)
2. avoiding that someone experiences something bad, is a good thing
3. avoiding that someone experiences something good, is a neutral thing because he doesn't experience anything bad as a result
4. therefore avoiding that all future persons have any experiences is a good thing
Ways of waylaying antinatalism:
1. Reject utilitarian ethics.
2. Even if it were true that all existing people have suffered at some point, it does not follow that suffering is part of existence.
3. No people means there aren't any people experiencing something so the comparison between "what is" and "what ought to be" for antinatalists is between something and nothing. Since the latter cannot have any qualities the comparison is in fact nonsensical.
4. The antinatalist position is hyperrational but people aren't hyperrational.
5. The antinatalist position argues there's a difference between the "true" estimate of pain we experience and the one we estimate in retrospect (e.g. forgetfullness, romanticism), it thereby ignores natural processes of dealing with suffering and would also like to ignore simple optimism.
6. Memory improves through reinforcement. Most people are positive about their lives, therefore on average positive experiences outweigh negative experiences.
7. While existence is a conditio sine qua non for suffering it isn't the proximate cause. If you have an abusive father, then it isn't existence causing your suffering it's your asshole dad, who is the proximate cause. The solution is to put him in jail.
1- too easy, that's what I'm trying to avoid
2- impossible to claim otherwise as there is no evidence of suffering ever being removable from existence and even if it is removable it most certainly hasn't been removed yet so antinatalism would work for the present
3- Quoting Benkei incorrect. It has the quality of there being no pain. That's the whole point. An empty bucket has the quality of having no water in it. It doesn't have "no qualities"
4- this is not a refutation. Just because people are not rational does not make the position wrong. Also this can be used to refute almost any moral code and that's not the goal here
5- yes it ignores optimism because it uses negative utilitarian logic, that's established and is not a refutation
6- yes but as long as you know that there is a risk of severe suffering or even just any suffering associated with birth you are not allowed to take the risk with someone else's life when you don't have to. Claiming that the risk is small is true but is not a refutation. It's like saying that it's okay to kidnap a child if the child learns later to enjoy his captivity. Even it WAS THE CASE that most children learn to enjoy their captivity, that does not permit the kidnapping of children as long as there is the slightest chance of a child not enjoying the captivity
7- this is the same as 2
I don't think we can simplify it further than that nor do I think you can define "unpleasant" without making a circular definition
Well, so if we're just going with "unpleasant sensation" isn't that ridiculously broad?
For example, I find it an unpleasant sensation to smell someone's fart. But is it immoral for them to fart in my vicinity, so that it suggests that we should have a moral commandment against it?
That strikes me as ridiculous, even if it doesn't strike you as ridiculous.
P1 is confusing. I don't have the right to eat pizza everyday, but eating pizza everyday is not a bad just because I don't have a right to it. From the perspective of good health it may be bad, but not because of lacking a right.
If we were negative utilitarians, as you present it, we may say something more along the lines of "Inflicting undue suffering on another is bad, and furthermore, the only morally significant value" -- since the former statement, without the qualification, I think most people would agree to. But most people would not go so far as to say that inflicting undue suffering is the only morally significant value.
P2 is closer to what I take an anti-natalist to believe, but it also reveals why their arguments do not get very far with a lot of people -- and this is related to the restatement of P1 above. In particular the equivalence relation is just not how people look at birth. Everyone has a pretty good notion that their child will suffer. But they also think that their child can thrive. They have more values than the rather narrow interest of our purported negative utilitarian.
For myself I have a hard time accepting that I'm inflicting anything on someone who does not exist. Birth will result in a life that will include suffering in it. But without birth there isn't anyone at all -- and hence nothing to consider within a moral light. It is only after birth that someone becomes a morally significant being worth consideration. Else, it's just an imaginary character.
I don’t think this argument holds up. We understand the idea that things are possible all the time. The more likely the possibility, the more real it is taken. So a stampede of unicorns goring a crowd of thousands is impossible. A hurricane in the Sahara very unlikely. However the likelihood someone can be born, and as a consequence suffer, is so high that it’s taken as a given.
I'm making a statement about what is right to reason about morally. Stones, for instance, are not the sorts of things we reason morally about. Human beings are. Animals are. The environment is.
But something else we do not reason morally about are either things or beings which do not exist. So Harry Potter, for instance, is not the sort of thing which we should reason morally about. So far I don't think this is controversial.
I'd just take this one step further and say that persons who do not exist, even those who may possibly exist, are not worth moral consideration. They are more like fictional characters than they are people. Not identical -- and there is some tension in the way I'm saying this here and the belief that future generations, for instance, should be cared for (which I do think they should).
But the anti-natalist is making a mistake in treating what is possible as if it were already actual, when the game of talking about pain-prevention already presupposes, I'd say, someone who is alive -- which an unborn somebody isn't.
But that is where possibility does factor into this. The very thing that is in question is whether to create a new person, where there was not that unique individual before. The very thing in question is the very real possibility of a person being born from real actions that take place in the real world. Whether or not the person exists already is irrelevant when the very question being asked is SHOULD that person exist in the first place.
So the question is, is it moral to create a new person if creating a new person leads to that individual experiencing harm? This pertains to two alternatives: 1) A person is not created or 2) A person is created.
In scenario 1, no new person is created, and thus no person exists to experience harm. In scenario 2, a person is created, and thus a person exists to experience harm. These are very real alternatives and possibilities thus, it is not the same as a fictional character and very relevant for consideration.
They aren't identical. But a child you do not have has about all the moral weight as a fictional character -- something not worth considering.
The child need not exist, only the possibility that a child would exist. In this case, the harm and the person the harm is happening to comes together in the same package as a consequence of the action.
So what would be appropriate would be to tend to the needs of children that are actual -- but if there aren't any children, then what's all the fuss about anyway? You're thinking of what is not actual as if it were actual.
That's fine.. The AN in this case would say that no harm, no foul. In other words, it is only good that a person did not exist to experience the harm.
Quoting Moliere
But that is precisely the argument. There are two alternatives. It is binary. One is off (don't exist), one is on (exist). The better option is to be left off. Being left off means a person won't exist (who will experience harm). If a person exists, then harm will ensue. Thus, any consideration about how to prevent harm for the child after this decision is irrelevant in the AN argument which is just about whether or not to bring in a person (and thus harm) or to prevent a person's birth (and thus prevent harm). The person does not need to be born to know that it is being prevented from harm. If they are negative utilitarian, then it was only good that harm didn't occur.
I understand that this is what the AN thinks, but this is the very point that I would say is the most unconvincing part for myself. The language of harm needs an actual person. As we cannot harm someone who does not exist, there is no equation between preventing a person's birth and preventing harm. It would be like saying that we should not harm Harry Potter.
Now as for your argument: Quoting ?????????????
You don't know enough of them then lol. I know plenty that want that
Most people (even those in relatively worse circumstances) seem to enjoy life.
Creating a new human will indeed entail some suffering to for them, but statistically it will also create enough joy/pleasure/good to make the whole experience worthwhile for them.
Therefore, the creation of new humans is usually an ethically justifiable action...
Quoting Moliere
This is unexplained. It's like saying "murder is ok because after the guy is dead there is nothing to consider within a moral light". Of course there is something to consider within a moral light. Your choice to give birth results in more suffering in the world than there was previously
Except Harry Potter can never be harmed. However, a potential person can be harmed in real life, if it is born. The birth is intricately related to the harm that will ensue in this case. Think of it this way, birth is the platform for which all harm ensues. ANs believe at least some harm will ensue (usually more harm than good), thus by preventing the platform, you are preventing the very basis for harm to a person. Harm is the sole aspect of morality in this case.
If giving birth is immoral how come eating is moral when:
1- Both of them are necessary for survival
2- Both of them have the potential of causing involuntary suffering on another being (it is involuntary in the case of eating because many who work in food production and distribution are there because they can't find another job and dangerous because of the risks associated with the job. Way more people get disfigured in the food and clothing industries than there are disfigured children)
My main problem with antinatalism is that I see no set of reasonable premises (reasonable as in not fine-tuned to reach the conclusion of antinatalism without any intuitive backing) that could reach antinatalism. All I see as conclusions to antinatalism's premises is either promortalism, suicide, or giving birth and living normally as we do today. I don't understand how you can stop at antinatalism without going to those extremes
1. Both of them are not necessary for individual survival.
2. Quoting khaled
I think you miss the point of AN. The point is that birth itself is the platform for which ALL harm is created. Thus, eliminate the platform for harm. There is no harm in having no children at all, but there is harm in having any child, as that child will suffer.
Yes, I have been on this forum for a while, and a lot of my posts in the past have been AN oriented. I am more of a structuralists AN though. Suffering is structural and contingent, not just contingent. However, I am sympathetic to AN that focus on contingent suffering such as negative utilitarianism. Though, I suppose, even structural suffering can be subsumed in the framework of negative utilitarianism.
"Enjoys their captivity" isn't a coherent justification for kidnapping. Although, If the kidnapping is done to prevent some greater harm being done to the child, then you might consider it justifiable.
In the case of conception, no immediate harm is being done, but the opportunity for suffering (and pleasure) are created. If all signs point to the likelihood of children leading enjoyable lives, then overall, generally, or in most cases, it is not harmful or immoral to create them.
If someone creates a child and allows them to suffer needlessly, then they have done unethical things (the decision to have a child knowing their incompetence, and the decision to neglect it) If someone creates a child who then suffers immensely due to unforeseeable and unpreventable circumstances, then perhaps from a strict consequentialist perspective they have also done an immoral thing (the choice to create a child given the unforseeable bad outcome), but then from that same consequentialist argument, every parent of healthy and happy children are therefore vindicated along similar lines.
If the only argument is that doing anything which might risk the suffering of others is immoral, then society needs to shut down immediately. We face uncertainty in the world, but luckily we face it in degrees of varying intensity; we can evaluate the risk/reward of actions, and choose appropriately (hence, we allow people to drive sober, but not drunk).
There's no perfect set of rules to follow that will stop anything bad from ever happening and accidents will happen; there will always be risk of suffering. I submit that life can be worthwhile despite the cost of suffering it entails.
Because treating it as if it's a moral issue that indicates the necessity of a moral commandment is an insane overreaction to something that's not that big of a deal. If any arbitrary unpleasantness whatsoever is that traumatic to anyone they have serious issues that they need to deal with via counseling.
Cool.
Quoting khaled
Alright, so we're evaluating actions.
In the case of murder you increase suffering because you are causing harm to someone who is actual.
In the case of birth, though, there is no one who is actual.
Suffering only occurs after birth. I'd say it's something like a transcendental condition for talk about suffering -- without anyone it's not just that there is no suffering, or that suffering is being avoided -- there is nothing whatsoever.
That's a different kind of result than simply avoiding increasing the net suffering of the world. The AN avoids the world in which net suffering is supposed to be avoided, rather than avoiding suffering within that world. The target is different. Perhaps that is the real point of the anti-natalist -- that it is better to not exist than to exist. But then it's time to change the principle originally appealed to because that principle requires a world in which to act within.
I don't see a potential person as being the same as an actual person. Harry Potter can never be harmed. And a potential person, if said potential person is always a potential person, can also never be harmed. That is because only actual persons can be harmed.
So if we see potential persons in the same light as we see actual persons then sure. But, then, I think I've basically been saying that the AN position basically does exactly this -- it conflates what is actual with what is not-actual. Or, if not conflates, it at least evaluates what is not-actual as equally worth consideration as what is actual.
For me that's just absurd. If someone never has children, then the children they do not have are not as important as the children that someone else does have. I should feed the actual children, whereas I should not set food aside for the children that are not-actual. By choosing to not have children that is all that potential persons are -- they aren't exactly the same as fictional entities, but there isn't a whole lot of difference with respect to how we should act.
So are you implying here that causing harm on others for individual survival is immoral? If so the only possible logical conclusion is suicide.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is mirrored by my argument. "There is no harm in having no food at all, but there is harm in having any food as it requires that someone make that food" sounds ridiculous right? That's the whole point, there IS harm in having no children that's what no.1 states. And thus having children is done out of necessity to prevent one's own suffering and if you denounce that as immoral you will also have to denounce your own living as immoral as it creates suffering for others and so the only andwer then becomes suicide (in this case I use food instead of life because it's more approachable)
This is flawed reasoning. If all evidence points to the fact that most people would overlook a minor theft that does not make it okay to steal. If all evidence points to the fact that people enjoy drinking milk that does not make it moral to impose drinking milk on everyone which is analogous to birth. Also antinatalists are negative utilitraians in which case your argument from pleasure falls straight on it's face because negative utilitarians don't care about pleasure
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes indeed and the conclusion you drew from that is also accurate and what antinatalists want. You can't prove ad absurdium by using exactly the ideal situation for the person you're debating
It is quite possible not to have children and it is not inevitable to have children. Having a child or more will not prevent your inevitable death.
I think having children compromise any moral stance one takes. It goes against the ideas of do no harm and the ideas of consent and freedom. Someone can have twenty children to defy an antinatalist but they and all there children are going to die anyway.
i cannot think or a morally good or coherent reason for having children. What upsets me and other antinatalists is that the cycle of suffering will continue and responsibility will not be attributed correctly to the cause of this suffering. To me a compelling argument for having a child should explain why it is necessary and valuable and why you can justify imposing life on someone or forcing them into existence.
Who are you to decide at what point unpleasantness can become traumatic. Also why doesn't it make sense to you to say "it is more moral to fart away from people than in their vicinity".
So if I kill someone painlessly it's okay? Because there is nothing to experience the pain or complain afterwards?
It's really very simple
Give birth: increases net suffering in the world
Don't give birth: don't increase net suffering in the world
Therefore not giving birth is morally and giving birth is immoral.
That is indeed exactly what it arguesQuoting ?????????????
NO THEY DON'T. That's the whole point. Do the math
Little suffering X infinite subjects X infinite time = infinite suffering
A lot of suffering X relatively small time period= finite suffering
Infinite suffering > finite suffering
Therefore one should stop giving birth or else one prepetuates situation 1 which results in endless pain which is immoral
That's false. There is plenty of reason to have children. If no one gives birth for 10 years you will suffer a slow and painful death of starvation due to not having enough people to work. Your argument is pretty much like saying "I don't think there is any reason to produce food. Lots of people don't produce food" and that's obviously absurd
Quoting Andrew4Handel
This amounts to saying: Having food will not prevent your inevitable death therefore you should not have food. This is exactly why antinatalism always goes to promortalism in every debate I've had about itQuoting Andrew4Handel
To prevent pain to oneself you are allowed to harm others. That's exactly what you do when you eat because you are causing the suffering of the food producers to reduce your own suffering. So if you truly think that any harm inflicted on others is immoral even if it is done to prevent harm on oneself then the only logical thing to do is to commit suicide
Of course not. We treat those who are actual different than those who are not actual. The whole focus on harm, suffering, and pain here has more to do with the required ethic the OP sets out.
I don't think giving birth increases the net suffering in the world. It makes the world in the first place, and the AN position negates said world.
That is, after all, the consequence of global anti-natalism. The principle of reducing suffering is taken to a point where the context in which said principle was developed can no longer be applied.
Why not. If you are to look at a world with no humans in it how much human suffering is there? 0. That is the goal
Quoting Moliere
No it doesn't. A rock is a rock even without kids observing it.
I stated the moral world before. Sure, the rock will exist without us. But the subjects which are part of our moral deliberations will not. It's this to which I refer. If the goal is 0 human suffering without humans, then I'd submit that I haven't misrepresented the AN's case -- The AN avoids the (moral, our human) world in which net suffering is supposed to be avoided, rather than avoiding suffering within that (moral, our human) world.
It's the entirety of our existence, rather than suffering -- which requires subjects who can suffer -- that the AN rejects.
If there is no moral difference there then, given that these are the consequences of the AN position, there isn't much reason to think that the anti-natalist can speak for anti-natalism without, at the same time, speaking in favor of reducing harm to fictional characters.
Giving birth: infinite time X infinite subjects X little suffering per subject = infinite suffering
Now if you don't give birth it's like: A lot of suffering X short amount of time
What the antinatalist tries to do is to get the point of 0 suffering while causing as little pain as possible.
But giving birth increases pain. That's the point. So not giving birth is a relative reduction
Little suffering X many subjects X extremely long time = suffering A
A lot of suffering X relatively small time period= suffering B
A > B
A is definitely still greater than B. Imagine if Adam and eve had killed themselves. How much pain would there have been? Let's say X, the amount of pain they suffered. Now it's been a few thousand years and how much pain has occurred? About 20 billion X or more. Just multiply X by the number of humans that have died. They definitely all suffered in all their lifetimes as much if not more than what Adam and Eve would have if they had killed themselves on the spot
Disclaimer: I am not religious. I simply refer to the first humans or apes or whatever.
But that's what a strict negative utilitarian would do and ACCEPTING that is there any good refutations is what I'm asking
Quoting ?????????????
What I said was it reduces the total pain of humanity and that it definitely does. I obviously didn't mean it reduces the pain of unborn spirit children. I already argued those don't exist. The mere act of birth harms no one but since it causes more suffering in the future it should he considered immoral is my argument here. If you don't accept future considerations then dropping a piano on someone's head is ok because the act of dropping a piano harms no one, it's only when someone's standing there that they get harmed.
As for your explanation you were wrong when you said that since everything falls under P1 there is a "lack of structure" or whatever (I still don't understand why a lack of meaning is absurd to you but ok) because not all things are equally immoral. It depends on how much pain is caused. For example torturing and murdering a child is pretty up there on the list but tickling someone is not. That's how you get your structure. So essentially everything you do is immoral so you should seek to do the least immoral thing.
Quoting ?????????????
You asserted this out of the blue with no explanation. The reasoning that if things keep going as they are, giving birth increases suffering is perfectly valid and I see no reason to randomly say it isn't
Quoting ?????????????
I truly don't I just don't understand what half of what you're saying has to do with the topic or where you get these out of the blue claims from
Generally when this happens I suggest we both severely cut down the length of our posts and argue as if it was a chat. Few words at a time. Please outline what is so unconvincing about P1 for you. Also try to put as many things as you can in premise conclusion form so we can see what we're not getting
P1: Causing pain on other creatures is morally incorrect relative to how much pain is caused
P2: Birth causes sever pain on other creatures
C: Giving birth is immoral enough as to justify prohibiting it
Exactly which premise do you have a problem with
There are lots of people that die prematurely or suffer life long illness. Having a child does not prevent you dying of cancer, having long term mental illness or becoming paralyzed.
For example I have suffered most of my life from various things including anxiety and depression and my oldest brother has been paralyzed for 10 years or so and he has had MS for over 20 years and pneumonia at least 6 times.
People do consider suicide and commit suicide.
Eating food if you are a meat eater may cause temporary suffering until you eventually die but it does not cause the perpetual cycle of suffering and death. Hunter gatherers eat animals that have already reproduced.
I think there is a big difference between being forced to survive because someone else created you and creating someone else who is then forced to try and survive.
Is it not possible for someone to have a reaction where you think they need to get help? Let's say you're living with someone--a parent, a spouse, a child, whoever--who routinely gets so upset at little things others do while driving that they often get out of the car at stoplights, etc. and start screaming at the other driver, basically having a tantrum.
Do you just sit and read, listen to music, twiddle your thumbs, etc. while they do that and not say anything to them because it's a sin to crush anyone's groove in your view, regardless of however they're reacting to any arbitrary thing they're reacting to?
From that silly, robotic perspective, why wouldn't you just talk about the "net pain" of interacting with someone who would be traumatized by being around someone who is farting?
You said you think there is a difference between being forced to survive becuase you are here and forcing someone else to survive but that's exactly what I'm disputing. First of all, those two things are the same in some cases. You forget that the PRIME REASON we have a reproduction instinct is EXACTLY so that we would survive. Forcing some else to survive IS how you survive. If you say that's immoral because you're causing pain on someone who would not otherwise have experienced it with no consent from them then I'll reply by saying that that's EXACTLY what you do when you buy food.
When you buy food you indirectly cause potentially massive harm on someone else
When having children you indirectly cause potentially massive harm on someone else
In both cases you do it to survive
Therefore if one is moral the other is moral and if one is immoral the other is immoral
P1: Causing unpleasant sensations on other creatures is morally incorrect relative to how much unpleasant sensation is caused
P2: Birth causes sever pain on other creatures
C: Giving birth is immoral enough as to justify prohibiting it
Exactly which premise do you have a problem with
Which premise do I have a problem with? Both, plus the conclusion (which also doesn't follow; it's not a valid argument as stated)
Re premise 1, "unpleasant sensations" isn't sufficient for something to be immoral Suggesting that any unpleasant sensation whatsoever, no matter how minor, is at least a bit immoral (no matter how minor) is an overreaction--the sort of overreaction that among other things has resulted in the political mess that we've seen lately, where we seem to believe that it's a problem if anyone is at all uncomfortable, at all offended, etc. It produces a society of constant victims, and a society that erodes freedom--freedom of speech, freedom of action, etc., as everyone walks on eggshells to try to avoid making anyone else even the slightest bit uncomfortable. This is exacerbated by the fact that any arbitrary person could be uncomfortable with any arbitrary thing, no matter how neurotic or irrational it seems to anyone else--with the upshot that it's impossible to not make some people uncomfortable at times. I don't know how we arrived at the idea that it's a problem--and a problem that needs addressing--if anyone is at all uncomfortable at any time . . . and I don't know how we wound up with so many people apparently agreeing with that idea. That certainly wasn't something that people readily agreed with historically.
Re premise 2, it's stated as if birth itself causes "severe pain" to others, and it's not at all clear that it's an existential rather than a universal generalization--as a universal generalization, it's obviously not true. What would be acceptable as a similar premise is "Living results in occasional, and far less frequently chronic, severe pain for some persons."
Re the conclusion, for one, it hinges on a quantification that couldn't be more vague--"immoral enough." It also hinges on an unstated premise of, "Just in case x causes severe pain (or alternately " Just in case x is immoral to n amount/degree), then it justifiable to prohibit x." You can't just introduce that idea in the conclusion (if you want a valid argument). The conclusion can't follow from the premises if that's only introduced in the conclusion.
Remember, for a valid conclusion, it has to be the case that it's impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
(Of course, this is all ignoring that moral "claims" can't be true or false, but we can ignore that for now.)
Maybe the best anti-natalist argument would be that if we refrain from giving birth, we'll prevent people from coming up with completely idiotic crap like anti-natalist arguments. Hopefully that comment makes you uncomfortable. There's value in that.
You seem to have completely forgotten my disclaimer in the beginning especially seeing as you felt the unbearable urge to sully a civil discussion with ad hominem for no reason. But anyways for your response to premise 1: this is not my premise and I don't care if you think it's an overreaction. That's how utilitarian morals always worked. They always considered any kind of pain. As I said in the original post: please use negative utilitarian logic if possible. You refuse to even grapple with the issue and pretend you've solved it.
Now for your response for premise 2: you seem to have completely misunderstood it. Let's say every individual can experience a maximum of 10/10 suffering and let's say there are two people on the planet. The net maximum suffering is then 20 and their actual suffering combined is, let's say 10. If they choose to have 3 children then now the maxium suffering is 50 and the combined suffering is something like 20 or 30. Both numbers go up. That's what is meant by "causes severe suffering". It not only increases the net suffering experienced but also the net suffering experienceable. Not giving birth on the other hand would result in a total of 10 suffering instead of the 20 or 30
As for your opposition to the conclusion, I had to include "immoral enough" because I had already established that morality comes in shades according to NU thinking. As for that claim being vague::
Infinite subjects X Infinite time X Small suffering = Infinite suffering
Therefore from that, giving birth is THE MOST immoral thing you can do and that's what's meant by "immoral enough". I see now that it was probably too much of a stretch to expect people to make the inference (although I did make that argument 3 times already)
Hope that clears some things up
Final note: how is hiring a hit man NOT murder? What about "leaving" a car moving at 200mph towards someone? What about dropping a piano that just happened to kill someone? What about shooting someone? After all it was the bullet not you....
Every sentence in your response has serious problems. Do you want to start back and forth replies that are thousands of words ever-increasing, or?
Re this:
Quoting khaled
Aside from the idea of "10/10 suffering" being simply nonsensical, you seem to not understand the word "net." Net suffering would be the amount of excess suffering once all calculations are made re suffering, pleasurable experiences, etc.
Since you probably won't want to do thousands of words back and forth, I'll respond quickly to this, since you're asking me questions.
Re hiring a hit man, the hit man committed the murder (assuming they did, of course), the person who hired them did not. It's the hit man's choice to commit the murder or not. All the solicitor did was hire the hit man.
Re the car, etc., we're talking about direct causality. Those are not situations where there's an intervening choice to be made, as there is in the hit man example, Likewise, if you set up some elaborate Rube Goldberg-like contrapation, as long as we're talking about direct causality, whoever sets the contraption in motion is responsible for whatever it does. However, culpability there is diminished when there's no reason to believe that the initiator would know what the machine would do in the end. So if you were to set up some elaborate Rube Goldberg contrapation that shoots people in Texas when someone turns on a light switch in New Jersey, the person who flipped the light switch isn't responsible unless there's reason for them to believe that flipping the light switch would, via a long chain of direct causality, fire a gun in Texas.
Likewise, with suffering, unless we're talking about something that's clearly a genetic issue, so that the person in question has no choice, most things are going to be due to actions that the sufferer decided to take. For example, if they break their leg in a skiing accident. That's not their parents' fault or responsibility, unless the parents somehow forced them (as in literal, physical force) to ski. Per the logic of saying that it's the parents' fault/responsibility, you'd have to say that every crime ever committed is the fault/responsibility of ancestors (presumably the first ones, whoever that would be, the first homo sapiens).
I'm saying P2 is false. The rest is justification for why I think P2 is false -- birth does not increase the net suffering in the world, it creates the world simpliciter. The (moral, human) world is full of suffering -- but this concern with suffering only happens within this world. The AN should modify their principle to reflect this difference, I think, because it's much more clear -- and also makes apparent why AN isn't very appealing to many people, though the AN seems to make an appeal to what is a commonly accepted moral precept.
Also, as is a pretty common way of arguing in moral philosophy, I'm attempting a reductio ad absurdum on AN. I am appealing to consequences because consequences, while not exactly the same as a utilitarian calculus, are generally more appealing to those inclined towards utilitarianism. The consequences of AN, taken globally, is that we are all acting for the concern of people who do not exist. Given that this is patently absurd I can see why an AN wouldn't want to accept this conclusion, but then I'd say the AN needs to spell out what the morally significant difference between fictional persons and people who will not exist is -- and in so doing I suspect that they'd undercut the basis on which the AN makes a claim (namely, that difference between actual persons and not actual persons), though perhaps there's another way about it.
Perhaps you don't find these arguments persuasive. But then I'd just say that you are right to say I don't understand. And so it'd be helpful to know what you are looking for exactly.
I don't think that's very clear, though, especially not on net, and especially not re something that anyone should be (morally) concerned with.
Re the latter, if we're going to call "suffering" things like "your butt being slightly sore for a few minutes from the chair you were sitting on/the way you were sitting on the chair," or "needing to burp," or "having that pretty girl in Dunkin Donuts reject your offer to go make out in your car," then yeah, there's lots of suffering, but it's rather insulting to in any way equate that with things like having cancer or having a loved one die at a young age and so on. They're equated by using the same term for all of that stuff and making no clear distinction when forwarding ideas like anti-natalism.
It's suffering of the having cancer/having loved ones die young/etc. sort that it's dubious to say the world is "full of" on net.
And suffering of the "I need to burp" "I don't like the smell of farts" variety is the sort of stuff where no one sane is going to say, "Yeah, we definitely need to do something about that--I say prohibit having kids so we can avoid suffering."
And not to get too dreary, but I'd say it's also not terribly clear that the world, on net, is very positive on this hypothetical ledger either. And if all we do is quibble over the this hypothetical spreadsheet it at least seems, to me, that we're not really addressing the real concern of our purported negative utilitarian who is wondering if the world is really worth all the pain within it -- or, in the case of our convinced AN, is not just wondering but believes the world should go extinct because there is just too much suffering.
Plus I'd just note that I don't really keep accounting figures on such things in the way that I think of it. Even if the world is full of joy, it is also full of suffering. I don't really see one counter-balancing the other. So from my perspective I'm comfortable with the proposition that the world is full of suffering -- I agree with it. I just don't agree with the rest of the AN's position. But I can at least begin some kind of agreement upon which disagreement can be meaningfully had by agreeing to this point.
I fail to see how conceiving a child is akin to theft. If you're merely equating conception with any and every moral transgression, you've got no coherent argument.
Quoting khaled
Who said anything about imposing milk on everyone? (honestly, you make the strangest comparisons).
If I do impose milk on someone though, and they enjoy it and are thankful, why have I behaved immorally?
Quoting khaled
In other words, your own argument falls flat on its face because it is only accepted by negative utilitarians?
Quoting khaled
Anti-natalists want birth to stop occurring, not for society to shut down immediately.
When you drive a car you run the risk of causing suffering to other people. If conception is wrong simply because it risks the suffering of others, then driving is also wrong because it risks the suffering of others.
Why not?
I like, by the way, how they don't even bother to ask the people who they're worried about--ask them whether they think it's worth it.
You don't need children to survive. There are hermits that live and die away from civilization.
When most people had children throughout history they were unaware of gene theory.
You are saying then that if someone brings into a highly exploitative world the child is responsible for that exploitation? That doesn't make sense. In hunter gather society you could see the people and resources you were exploiting. The fact that now there is a massive complex web of exploitation cannot be blamed on every new child.
Antinatalism is the solution to suffering and exploitation. We gradually die out and completely end the cycle of suffering and exploitation.
Do you think everyone should be forced to have children? I think anyone who does not have children qualifies as antinatalist because they are making their unique set of genes extinct.
What sort of exploitation are you talking about? (I'm curious because a lot of exploitation I don't at all think is something negative.)
Well, and also it is okay to steal insofar as people feel it's okay. Morality isn't something different than what people feel.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yeah, I agree with that, too.
There is mutual and neutral exploitation. Division of labor can be mutual or neutral exploitation. Likewise friendships, family and social groups.
Also you can exploit the environment in a sustainable way sharing it with other organisms and not monopolizing it.
However what we have is China an undemocratic country that commits numerous human rights abuses manufacturing a lot of the world goods. We have the UK proving the arms that Saudi Arabia uses in the war in Yemen which has led to famine deaths of babies.
Children and adults caught up in current and former war zones in places like The Congo, Angola and Liberia mining for minerals with no wage whilst being held hostage and these minerals are turning up in our mobile phones.
There are jobs that are robotic and unrewarding and underpaid as well, and unfair distribution of resources based on luck of birth etc
I can link you to a wide range of sources of evidence.
However in most cases in the modern economy it is very difficult to know where exactly goods are coming from so it is hard for anyone to assess the level of negative exploitation involved. I think the best way not to endorse inequality and corruption is not reproducing. In some cases children are just destined to become canon fodder metaphorically and literally.
Re this for example, it doesn't sound like something I'd call "exploitation" . . . and I also don't think there's anything inherently preferable to democracy.
Plenty of things considered human rights abuses I'd probably have a problem with, but I just wouldn't necessarily call it exploitation. Some of the stuff you mentioned I'd consider negative exploitation probably. (Like the African situations you mentioned.)
A job that's "unrewarding" isn't something I'd call exploitation . . . or even neessarily a problem. That would depend on the details.
No? Where did you get THAT from. The child isn't responsible for that exploitation he is exploited. But he is exploited in the same way you exploit people in your daily life so I don't understand why you would allow the exploitation of living people for your purposes (forced labor food/clothes producers for example) while not allowing childbirth
In other words:
Food: Needed to prevent suffering, causes suffering to acquire
Clothing: Needed to prevent suffering, causes suffering to acquire
Children: Needed to prevent suffering, cause suffering when born (or rather experience suffering when born)
If one is immoral all should be immoral. If one is moral all should be moral. I am asking why you are picking and choosing because if you're allowed to do that then I must also be allowed to pick and choose and I just happen to choose to have kids but not Chinese clothing for example (disclaimer: I don't have kids nor am I gonna stop buying Chinese stuff. Just an example)
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No and I never said that
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No antinatalists are not just people who don't have kids. They're people that see it as morally incorrect to have kids
For a negative utilitarian all pleasure amounts to nothing and all suffering is excess suffering. Again, I ask for a response using negative utilitarian logic and you just keep critiquing negative utilitraianism. I agree that it's a crazy system but it's not my choice to use it. I am only using it to try to find an anti antinatalist argument that uses it if one exists.
Quoting ?????????????
I don't know about "are the only things that exist". More like "are the only things that are considered"
Quoting Terrapin Station
It's not the parents fault in the same way that, say, offering to sell drugs to someone and them accepting is the dealer's fault for their addiction. It's not. BUT the dealer knows that by selling drugs he is causing more suffering in the world than there would have been had be not been selling drugs so his action is immoral nonetheless. I never said anything about accountability because utilitarianism is a purely consequentialist theory so I don't know why you even mention it
The consequences are that there is less suffering which is the AN's only concert. The AN does not need to appeal to souls to make his argument
The AN is not considering the suffering of people who don't exist. He's considering the suffering of people who WILL exist and that's not absurd at all. That's why we have genetic tests to determine the likely hood of genetic diseases and abortions to prevent suffering before it is manifest. THAT is what the AN tries to do, prevent suffering before it is manifest. You seem to be having a problem with considering the suffering of people who will exist and I don't get why
Is it? I don't see it as obvious.
Quoting khaled
I like your idea of going piecemeal.
So let me start with this. If the Global anti-natalist's proposal is carried through, how would you classify the people who will exist? Would you agree with me that they are no longer people who will exist, but are actually people who will not exist?
I know. But if someone does not have children they are not concerned about the survival of a part of themselves. they don't feel the need to have children. They survive without having them.
Quoting khaled
I am not allowing it. The only exploitation I can realistically control is not exploiting my own child. You can attempt to limit how exploitative your life style is nonetheless.
The way to minimize harm is to not reproduce. The person who is forced into existence cannot be reasonably blamed for attempting basic survival to evade the harm for starvation and injury etc.
The kind of exploitation now is nothing like what early human societies were like.
I cannot see how any of my actions mitigate or promote creating millions of more humans. Even as an antinatalist we don't usually believe someone having one child is the equivalent to someone having 8 children.
If there is no afterlife everything you did in life will be forgotten and become irrelevant.
We cannot imagine this because we all currently exist and cannot seriously imagine ceasing to exist altogether. I think with proof of an afterlife my stance would be slightly different.
Also the fear of death and the uncertainty of death and its specter is one of the many reasons I am an antinatalist. If I fear death and deprivation myself I don't want anyone else have to.
But there are numerous arguments people might give for antinatalism from death, disease through famine and war, via consent issues. There is not just one reason to be antinatalist. There is mental illness being bullied and other victimization, sexism, homophobia, religious persecution et al. I find it puzzling that all of these perils would not deter people.
When I was a child I was led to believe life was ultimately just and presided over by God but that was just a way of comforting or justifying things to someone in the presence of chronic problems, I think. The more you study history, the news, crime mental illness, cancer the harder it gets to feel optimistic I think.
If we assume that something is right, then under that assumption, it's right.
I'm not saying it's akin to theft. Your argument was "if most people don't mind then it's okay" and I'm attacking that.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
That's what birth is. Imposing the conditions of life on another being.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
That's actually a better example, forget the theft and kidnapping ones. If you force-feed anyone anything for the reason "I think they'll like it" that's wrong EVEN IF they liked it. Because what if they are lactose intolerant and you force feed them cheese for example because "most people like cheese so I think they'll like it". You know that by force-feeding people you risk harming them so even if most people are not harmed, that still doesn't make it okay to force-feed people and risk THEIR well being for your own reasons.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I am asking for a negative utilitarian response specifically because antinatalists are negative utilitarians. This isn't really a refutation of my argument. It's like saying to a scientist "so you're argument falls flat on it's face because it's only accepted by scientists?"
Quoting VagabondSpectre
This is exactly the refutation I came up with myself (I used buy clothing as an example because we know the demand harms people). Maybe you didn't see the disclaimer at the start but I'm not actually an antinatalist just trying to get other good responses.
My argument was that if most people are thankful for it, then in most individual cases, it's not immoral. I don't recognize the validity of deontological rules because better and worse courses of action change with changing circumstances (I.E: in some cases, the risk of harm to others is very low, and the potential reward for them or ourselves is very high, which should impact our moral calculus)
Quoting khaled
It just so happens that we have evolved to thrive in the conditions of life, much like how we have evolved to enjoy the taste of milk. Mothers need not survey their baby's opinion before serving them the tit (it's a rather safe decision to force milk upon a baby).
But again, "the conditions of life" are ambiguous. Conception does not entail the infliction of suffering, it entails the infliction of a capacity for suffering (and pleasure). If pleasure is the predominant foreseeable result of the act of conception, is it not less immoral than conception where the predominant foreseeable result is suffering?
Quoting khaled
For the same reason, driving a car is immoral because what if...?
If you drive, you risk the well-being of others....
Does magnitude of risk vs reward count for nothing?
Quoting khaled
Not quite.The beauty of scientific truth is that it cannot be boiled down to a preference or opinion (scientific truth is demonstrable), whereas negative utilitarianism amounts to a subjective opinion about the non-importance of pleasure and the all importance of reducing suffering.
I can understand that you want an answer that will be persuasive to a negative utilitarian, but it's also fair to attack negative utilitarianism itself as means of dissuasion.
I decided not to post the first draft of my original response to this thread, which basically took negative utilitarian anti-natalism to the extreme of making ethically obligatory the immediate and forceful destruction of all life on earth (to prevent the reemergence of life capable of suffering from single cells). Ultimately I decided it would be less persuasive than questioning negative utilitarianism itself because, absurd as it may be, once negative utilitarianism is fully accepted that is its rational conclusion; as you say, it's not absurd in their eyes.
If I can't dissuade someone by credibly accusing them of wanting to destroy all life in the universe because they they know what's best for us, then another approach must be taken...
Indeed. I am addressing you as if I was addressing an actual anti-natalist, but I'm aware you're simply looking for refutations. Simulating dialogue with an anti-natalist might helpful in ways that a discussion about them is not.
Negative utilitraianism =/= antinatalism
I'm looking for the line between the two
For a utilitarian suffering is like math so 9 billion X 1-10/10 is definitely greater than just 10
Quoting Moliere
Ye
Quoting Andrew4Handel
So you're saying that people get to pick and choose which exploitation to control? Because it sounds to me when you say "the only exploitation I can REALISTICALLY control" that you're basing it on your own subjective needs. So if you were 20, and in a pack hunting for food in 6000BC it would have been moral to procreate because back then it was actually necessary for survival? Because if you base your Procreation on needs, and if everyone in first world countries therefore chooses not to procreate it won't be 10 years before you recognize the need to do so and just have kids. What you're advocating sounds a lot more like local antinatalism to me which is a version that's more time and need considerate which I don't even mind honestly
Quoting ?????????????
No I don't that's why "essentially" is there. If we lived in some sort of paradise where no harm is possible then everything would be morally neutral. Having a massive feast in a dream for example is morally neutral and also pleasurable. And so is imagining things. Twittling your thumbs is also morally Neutral
Pain: immoral
Neutral: morally neutral
Pleasure: morally neutral
And there ARE things that are morally neutral. Sorry, I have a bad habit of expecting way too much inference from people when I'm making arguments
because that's how negative utilitarianism works
Quoting ?????????????
I already said what the difference was. Almost all of your actions ARE immoral according to this framework (with varying degrees) but an action that does not cause any harm whatsoever (such as kicking someone in a dream or breathing) is morally neutral
If negative utilitarians think that only suffering matters, if they think that all suffering, no matter how slight, matters, and if they think that anything that creates less suffering should be obligatory, then there is no difference.
I am aware. It wasn't my idea
One of the problems I see is a parent has a child either for a particular set of personal reasons, or due to circumstances of sex. None of these reasons have the scope of that new person's life. The interest of the child as a whole person and what they experience in life can never be considered in full. But once the child is born all the negative collateral damage will occur nonetheless. The scope for the use of the child for the parent or simply the no thought that goes into procreation act itself, does not accord with what will follow for the child. It is incongruent. To not even think reproduction- whether or not it’s a good thing, is in the realm of moral reasoning, is perplexing to me considering that it lies at the cusp of such an important existential, ethical, and metaphysical starting point.
The big problem is this: Parents' evaluation of life are the only thing that matters in the consideration of having a child. The parents' point of view is the reason the new person is born. The parents' point of view is not the child's point of view, yet the child's life is justified only from the parent's proxy stand-in point of view of life. That is incongruent, yet is never considered unjustified. Our species is self-aware enough to reflect on these things. There is nothing that says ethics and and reproduction are compatible (naturalistic fallacy). Nor is reproduction ethical because its natural (naturalistic fallacy). We make analogies to other species, we are but one species out of many right? But other species cannot self-reflect, and have little to no moral calculations. Thus the comparison with other species is simply denying the freedom of choice humans have.
There's a refutation.
Philosophical (as opposed to societal) Antinatalism depends on the metaphysics of Materialism (or something similar to Materialism in some regards).
Philosophical Antinatalism is metaphysics-dependent.
I'm not a Materialist.
By Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, the activities of your parents are only the physical mechanism, but not the reason, why you're in a life.
And of course if you're in a life, then the consistency-requirement requires that your experience of your physical surroundings be consistent with your being in a life. That includes a requirement that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the physical origin of the animal that that you experience being.
Your life-experience-story is about the (your) experience of being that animal, and, as I said, that experience musts be consistent (...because there are no inconsistent facts.). Therefore your experience of your surroundings must include there being evidence (when evidence is checked-for) regarding a physical mechanism for the physical origin of the animal that you experience being.
Materialists assume that a physical world comes first, and then a galaxy, a sun, and a planet form, and a species evolves, and then an animal is conceived by parents and is born as a result. Yes, that's the physical story, and of course it's true in its own context. In your necessarily-consistent life-experience-story, it's hardly surprising that you find physical evidence for the above physical mechanism for your experience of being the animal that you are in this life.
But arguably, in a hypothetical logical-system that I call your "life-experience-story", you and your physical surroundings are just the twocomplementary parts of that life-experience-story.
Without going into detail here (I've argued it in a lot of other threads), I'll mention that Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism is fully parsimonious--something that can't be said for Materialism.
So, don't blame your parents for your being in a life. There were going to be parents for you somewhere, because you were going to be in a life..
Your parents aren't the reason for you. You're the reason for them.
8 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French-Republican Calendar of 1792)
2018-W48-4 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
(4th day (Thursday) of 48th week of year)
Michael Ossipoff
How are those two things equivalent? You don’t need to give birth to survive.
Maybe he means psychological survival?
Would negative utilitarianism even make sense as a stance to hold under your ontology?
I'm not sure how that would work.
Even so, it would depend upon the function which measures suffering. So we might say that the mode of the set of all sufferers is the final output rather than, say, the sum.
Quoting khaled
Then do you also agree with me in saying that suffering is not independent of people who suffer?
There is no independent suffering-function to which our moral acts must hue?
The final output would be classical utilitarianism. Negative utlitarianism is the sum of suffering
And yes I agree with you suffering is not independent of the people who suffer
That quote should be memorialized.
In this case it is just a means of how you weigh the utility. More births means more deaths and suffering anyways, so it is short-sighted.
I can think of two:
1. You have to pay this price of suffering for existence, which should cancel out this negative morality, utility wise.
2. Birth is neutral because it contains both suffering and the ability of rising above it and gain happiness (which is your benefit). Looking only at the negative gives you a skewed perception of morality.
Since money has time value, you could make a comparison: you give a loan of 100 bucks to someone, with the understanding that they will give you 110 bucks a week from now. Is it true to say you are short of 100 bucks? Sure, if you look at your purse only. However, you also have a promise form the other fellow, that he will pay it back with interest. It's basically a contract with some risk.
You also don't have the right to choose before conception so how would you know if you want to make this deal of a "lifetime"? You could say your parents know, but you can counter argue with good will, or the inherent value of life I mentioned. Or if you believe we have no free will at all, then you could say it was an unavoidable that you would be born, and you can't assign morality to nature (your parents may even have tried everything to not have you, but you were still born somehow - this is especially true with pro life laws).
"2. Birth is neutral because it contains both suffering and the ability of rising above it and gain happiness (which is your benefit). Looking only at the negative gives you a skewed perception of morality."
If there are both good and bad aspects of existence, that does not necessarily mean that existence is neutral overall. In fact, the only way that existence is completely neutral is if there is exactly as much good in life as there is bad in life. An antinatalist would argue that since it is reasonable to suppose that life overall contains more bad than good, then performing an act of commission without the permission of the person most affected by the act would be wrong because the person created could reasonably resent the fact that he was created. Many philosophers would object to this logic by stating that procreators have no way of asking their future offspring for permission. An Antinatalist could respond to this objection by arguing that, in similar cases, it would also be wrong to perform an act of commission that could reasonably be viewed as a net harm without permission even when permission could not be acquired. For example, imagine that a surgeon has to choose whether or not to operate on an unconscious patient. If he operates on the patient, the patient will experience a tremendous amount of suffering, but if he refuses to operate the patient will die. Some antinatalists would argue that it's better to let the patient die because you have no obligation to save that patients life but you do have an obligation not to cause the patient extreme suffering. Although, if the surgery in question only involves minor suffering, then the fact that the patient cannot grant consent may be overridden by a reasonable assumption that the patient wants his life saved and is willing to endure the minor suffering. An antinatalist would typically think it is reasonable to wish to not be born though and therefore we shouldn't procreate since we don't have a duty to create anyone but we have a duty not to inflict harm onto them.
No.
Michael Ossipoff
2018-W48-7
11 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII
Okay, but that's what khaled keeps asking for. A refutation under the auspices of negative utilitarianism.
Fair enough. Telling why Negative-Utilitarianism doesn't apply isn't what the OP asked for, and so I didn't answer his question.
Michael Ossipoff
I've found a copy of a more complete posting about Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
So, if you still don't agree with me, at least it won't be because I didn't post my proposal.
Description of my metaphysical proposal:
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December 2, 2018 edit:
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I hope this clarifies what I mean when I mention Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism. I don’t guarantee that you’ll agree with what I say—evidently nearly no-one here does.
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The disagreement seems to always take the form of someone insisting that this physical world, instead of just being real and existent in its own context, has to have some sort of absolute objective fundamental independent existence and reality—but without being able to say what that would mean, much less how he knows it to be true.
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9/29/18 posting:
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First two premises that we all agree on:
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1. We find ourselves in the experience of a life in which we’re physical animals in a physical universe.
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2. Uncontroversially, there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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I claim no other “reality” or “existence” for them.
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By “implication”, I mean the implying of one proposition by another. By “abstract implication”, I mean the implication of one hypothetical proposition by another hypothetical proposition.
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So there are also infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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Among that infinity of complex hypothetical logical systems, there’s one that, with suitable naming of its things and propositions, fits the description of your experience in this life.
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I call that your “hypothetical life-experience-story”. As a hypothetical logical system, it timelessly is/was there, in the limited sense that I said that there are abstract implications.
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There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.
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Just as I claim no “existence” or “reality” for abstract implications, so I claim no “existence” or “reality” for the complex systems of them, or anything else in the realm of logically-interdependent things.
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Each of the infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things is quite entirely separate, independent and isolated from anything else in the describable realm, including the other such logical systems.
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Each neither has nor needs any reality or existence in any context other than its own local inter-referring context.
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Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication:
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“There’s a traffic-roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine.”
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“If you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter, there, a traffic-roundabout.”
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Every “fact” in this physical world can be regarded as a proposition that is at least part of the antecedent of some implications, and is the consequent of other implications.
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For example:
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A set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a “physical hypothesis, theory or law) together comprise the antecedent of a hypothetical implication.
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…except that one of those hypothetical physical quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.
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A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms.
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Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”.
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We’re used to declarative, indicative, grammar because it’s convenient. But conditional grammar adequately describes our physical world. We tend to unduly believe our grammar.
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You, as the protagonist of your hypothetical life-experience-story, are complementary with your experiences and surroundings in that story. You and they comprise the two complementary parts of that hypothetical story.
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By definition that story is about your experience. It’s for you, and you’re central to it. It wouldn’t be an experience-story without you. So I suggest that Consciousness is primary in the describable realm, or at least in its own part(s) of it.
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That’s why I say that you’re the reason why you’re in a life. It has nothing to do with your parents, who were only part of the overall physical mechanism in the context of this physical world. Of course consistency in your story requires that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the origin of the physical animal that you are.
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Among the infinity of hypothetical life-experience-stories, there timelessly is one with you as protagonist. That protagonist, with his inclinations and predispositions, his “Will to Life”, is why you’re in a life.
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The requirement for an experience-story is that it be consistent. …because there are no such things as inconsistent facts, even abstract ones.
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Obviously a person’s experience isn’t just about logic and mathematics. But your story’s requirement for consistency requires that the physical events and things in the physical world that you experience are consistent. That inevitably brings logic into your story.
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And of course, if you closely examine the physical world and its workings, then the mathematical relations in the physical world will be part of your experience. …as they also are when you read about what physicists have found by such close examinations of sthe physical world and its workings.
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There have been times when new physical observations seemed inconsistent with existing physical laws. Again and again, newly discovered physical laws showed a consistent system of which the previously seemingly-inconsistent observations are part. But of course there remain physical observations that still aren’t explained by currently-known physical law. Previous experience suggests that those observations, too, at least potentially, will be encompassed by new physics.
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Likely, physical explanations consisting of physical things and laws that, themselves, will later be explained by newly-discovered physical things and laws, will be an endless open-ended process…at least until such time as, maybe, further examination will be thwarted by inaccessibly small regions, large regions, or high energies. …even though that open-ended explanation is there in principle.
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A few questions:
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1. If you think that this physical world is other than, or more than, what I’ve described it as—If you believe that this physical universe is “objectively existent” or “objectively real” or “actual” or “substantial” or “substantive” in a way that the physical world as I’ve described it…
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…as the setting of your hypothetical life-experience story, which is a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things…
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…then what do you mean by “”objectively existent”, “objectively real”, “actual”, “substantial”, or “substantive”?
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2. In what context, other than its own, or the context of our lives, do you want or believe this physical universe to be real &/or existent? What would it mean to say that this physical world has absolute objective fundamental independent existence?...or some specified kind of existence that the hypothetical experience-stories that I describe don't have?
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These discussions always end with the other person not answering these questions.
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Michael Ossipoff
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It seems to me that saying "There are hypothetical abstract implications" is claiming existence of them. So either I don't understand what you mean by "there are" or I don't understand what you mean by "claim existence" or both .
1- I don’t get what you’re saying sorry
2- But you don’t have the right to take that risk with someone else’s life. Would it be okay to kidnap someone because you think they’ll come to enjoy the kidnapping later? Of course not, even if there was a chance they would. It is immoral to take an action that risks harming someone else when you could otherwise not take that action and not be harmed yourself
1- By objectively real I mean unalterable by my thoughts about it
2- It would mean that they are unalterable by me
What you just proposed is essentailly just the objective world. You have a story that you can’t alter. That’s all I need to say something is objective. Your model runs into the massive issue of “who made this story and what makes it consistent” because I’d say THATS the cause of my story not me. It’s like how every hypothetical world you imagine is imagined by you (obviously) so who is imagining this world I’m living in right now and how in the heck is he so damned focused.
So yea that’s my opinion of your proposition but’s I don’t really want to discuss this in this thread as it is unrelated. Also I don’t understand how your position is supposed to mean that I’m the cause of my own existence. If I was I would at least remember setting the rules for this dang reality. Also if I was truly the author of this life story, let’s just say there would be a few changes.
Also why do you end all your posts with your name?
Khaled
The analogy would have to be that they don't mind the kidnapping when it happens either (at least the vast majority of babies, toddlers aren't complaining about being born), and I'd say that yes, it's definitely okay to kidnap people if the vast majority of people neither mind being kidnapped when it happens nor mind it later--in fact, the vast majority of people enjoy it a lot, even if not 100% of the time. That there are a minority of people who have a problem with it later, so that they wish they simply weren't kidnapped at all, wouldn't suggest that no one should be kidnapped in my opinion.
Kidnap: high chance of pleasure(good), low chance of pain (bad)
Don’t kidnap: no chance of pain(good), no chance of pleasure(not bad)
So it’s clearly the case that the more moral option is not to kidnap, especially as the kid wouldn’t complain about not being kidnapped (if he knew you were coming it wouldn’t be a kidnapping). Maybe that last sentence is taking the analogy a bit too far but what I’m trying to say is that not giving birth doesn’t mean anyone loses out on anything because there is no one to lose out on something. The asymmetry above is one of the most famous arguments for antinatalism. The more moral option is clearly not to give birth and recklessly take chances with another person’s life.
I don't agree with that, though. And there are benefits, because under the scenario I wrote "In fact, the vast majority of people enjoy it a lot." That's a benefit.
The scenario is this: Kidnap: high chance of pleasure(good), low chance of pain (bad)
Then they exist.
But I've been emphasizing that I'm only saying they "exist" as something that can be mentioned and referred to.
Other than that, I don't claim any existence for them.
But the limited kind of "existence" that I say that they have is quite uncontroversial.
Michael Ossipoff
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A life-experience-story, as I said, has the requirement of consistency, because there are no inconsistent facts.
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That doesn’t allow for your thoughts governing what happens in the physical world, which must operate by its own rules.
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Yes, I’ve proposed an explanation for the objectively-observed physical world. …but one consisting of logical relation among abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things.
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Well, as a physical animal, a biologically-originated purposefully-responsive-device (Your experience-story is a story about the experience of being one of those.), you can act on your surroundings, as they can act on you.
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But no, you can’t just will things to be the way you’d like them to be.
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It timelessly is/was. Abstract logical implications—and therefore complex inter-referring systems of them--don’t need to be made.
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Consistency results from there not being any such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts, or true-and-false propositions.
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Okay, but your life-experience-story is an experience-story only because it has a protagonist, an experiencer—namely you. That story is about your experience. In that sense you called the “reason” for it. But I agree that ultimately you didn’t choose to be. It was just an inevitable fact that there timelessly was/is that story about your experience—among the infinity of abstract-implications and complex systems of them.
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It doesn’t need anyone to imagine it. The logical relations among those inter-referring abstract implications just inevitably are. Who’s experiencing it? You, of course, as the protagonist of your life-experience-story.
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How real is all that? Who says it has to be “real”, whatever that would mean? The notion of, the belief in, “real” and “exist” have caused much philosophical confusion for millennia.
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Sure, that’s a good objection, and I claim that it’s answerable.
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It comes down to that consistency-requirement that I mentioned above. There’s no such thing as mutually-contradictory facts or true-and-false propositions. That means that your experiences will be consistent with eachother. When there’s an apparent contradiction, a consistent explanation will often be found. And when one hasn’t been found, there’s always the possibility that it might be subsequently consistently resolved.
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The bottom-line is that there’s never provable inconsistency. That’s all that the consistency-requirement requires. Arguably, probably, it’s impossible to prove that a physical world is inconsistent, because there could be a consistent explanation, such as:
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1. Finding out something that you didn’t know that gives a consistent explanation. That could be a commonplace sort of new observation, or it could be new physics that explains a previously inconsistent-seeming observation (something that has often happened in physics).
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2. Mistaken memory.
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3. Hallucination.
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4. Dreaming
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Only in the sense that you’re an integral, inextricable, part of your life-experience-story. The experience-story only “is” one only because it has a protagonist. It didn’t come into being before you did. The story was/is timelessly there, with you as part of it, as its experiencer/protagonist.
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Your subconscious inclinations, perceived needs, inclinations, predispositions are part of your life-experience-story—at the root of it. They’re the fundamental “You”.
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No doubt you’d like everything to be favorable to you, but the consistency-requirement doesn’t work that way.
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Physical worlds can’t be made-to-order. They must operate by their own logical rules, rules that are part of your necessarily-logically-consistent life-experience-story.
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See above.
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For the same reason why you signed the post that I’m replying to?
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It’s customary to sign what we write.
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2018-W49-1
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12 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII
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Michael Ossipoff
Kidnap: High chance of pleasure (good), Low chance of suffering (Bad)
Don’t kidnap: No chance of pleasure (not bad), No chance of suffering (Good)
So which one seems like the more moral option to you? You have no moral obligation to create positive utility for others but you DO have an obligation to not cause them harm if it can be avoided and this birth doesn’t do (or kidnapping in this analogy)
Your metaphysical proposition just sounds like a deterministic external reality to me. It is external in the sense that my thoughts can’t change it and it is deterministic in the sense that these abstract ideas had to interact in a logical and deterministic way according to their own rules. Now then it just sounds like you’re arguing for the moral neutrality of birth by abolishing free will essentially, or at least that’s the “type” of objection you have. Your objection is an objection based on a deterministic state of the world, which is a fine objection, except it works for literally anything. I could murder someone and plead innocent because my life experience story just had to turn out that way deterministically because it’s consistent. Your critique can be generalized to all of morality. You’re giving me a hammer when I asked for a toothpick if that makes any sense
Also I’m just kidding with you when I sign my name at the end. If you notice I only do that with you
Khaled
Very easily this is the more moral option in my view:
Kidnap: High chance of pleasure (good), Low chance of suffering (Bad)
Quoting khaled
You're asking my opinion, right? I don't at all agree with the obligations as you see them.
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Sure, that sounds right. But I emphasize that you, as the protagonist/experiencer, are one of the two complementary components of your experience-story, rather than only a passive result of it.
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I don’t believe in “free will”. Your choices are chosen for you by your built-in and acquired predispositions and preferences, and your surrounding circumstances. Your only role is a fairly good estimate, your best guess, of which choice best achieves your preferences and purposed, given the surrounding circumstances.
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But no, that doesn’t mean that a criminal is innocent. What he did was partly because of what he is, both intrinsically and from his experiences. That was him, even though he didn’t choose to be as he is.
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That’s nice. Do so if you like to. Forgive me if I don’t acknowledge it as important.
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To tell the truth, no I didn’t notice, because it isn’t something that would occur to me as relevant, something that I’d look for, or something that would get my attention. See above.
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Michael Ossipoff
2018-W49-2
You have no right to take a course of action that has a risk to harm others if you gain nothing by it.
Do you agree with this as a premise? (The alternative is you DO have a right to harm people unnecessarily which I highly doubt anyone would support here)
Because if you do then antinatalism is the only remaining option
You're pointing to David Benetar's axiological asymmetry argument here from his book "Better to Have Never Been". In which he states:
1. The presence of bad things is bad
2. The presence of good things is good
3. The absence of bad things is good, even if there's no one to enjoy the absence
4. The absence of good things is not bad unless there's someone whom this absence is a deprivation.
There are a few things that need to be clarified about his argument:
1. By "bad things" and "good things" he's referring to things that could be considered intrinsically good or bad. If you are a hedonist the good=pleasure and the bad=pain. If you prefer the preference satisfaction account(no pun intended lol) then good=satisfied preferences and bad=frustrated preferences. If you think there's something else that's good or bad intrinsically then you just add it to the list.
2. When he says that the absence of bad things is good, he means that it is relatively good rather than intrinsically good. So basically, the absence of bad things is better than the presence of bad things even if there's no one who enjoys the absence. Similarly, when he says that the absence of good things is not bad, he means that it is "not worse" than the presence of good things if there is no one to be deprived of those good things. This is where I would disagree with Benetar.
The reason why I disagree with his claim that the absence of good things in nonexistence is not worse than the presence of good things in existence is because it contradicts our intuition that pleasure has intrinsic value rather than just relative value. I use pleasure as an exemplar here because it is something that we have the greatest reason to think is intrinsically valuable. I'm aware that many negative utilitarians might argue that pleasure is only neutral intrinsically and it's only relatively good(compared to experiencing pain or neutral emotion). But, I would like to bring up a thought experiment I considered:
Imagine that a mad scientist managed to create an artificial sentient being that only has the capacity to experience mild pleasure. It cannot experience pain or negative emotion of any kind. It also has no intelligence, personality, perception, or memory. It's just a brain in a vat that only experiences a constant stream of vague and meaningless pleasure which it has no capacity to desire. While Benetar thinks we should be indifferent about bringing such a being into existence, I happen to think that it would be good to bring as many of these artificial beings into existence as possible(Assuming there's no chance they could evolve into a different being that might experience pain). Having said that, I don't think the mad scientist has an obligation to create more of these beings. Which brings me to the next part of Benetar's argument.
Benetar claims that his asymmetry argument offers the best explanation to the following additional asymmetry:
1. You have an obligation not to create an unhappy person.
2. You don't have an obligation to create a happy person.
Benetar's asymmetry would supposedly explain this asymmetry because if the presence of bad is bad and the absence of good is not bad in nonexistence then creating an unhappy person would be bad and neglecting to create a happy person would be not bad. But, I think there are 2 additional explanations that could be given for this asymmetry:
1. It's unreasonable to give people a duty to perform a specific positive obligation, in most cases. That is because there are nearly an infinite amount of benefits that a person could provide instead of reproducing a happy person. If someone refuses to reproduce, he might be called selfish unless he decides to donate his money to charity or adopt a child or help grannies cross the stress and so on. Because, the notion of duty is typically a simple rule based one(it would be too hard to add up all your good actions and subtract out all the bad actions.), it would hard to have, as a rule, an obligation to provide a specific benefit rather than some benefit in general. On the other hand, we could often easily make a moral rule that forbids a certain act.
2. Requiring someone to reproduce would require too much of a sacrifice. While, Benetar does mention this explanation in his book. His response is that it is counterintuitive to him to imagine that we would have an obligation to create a happy person if there wasn't any sacrifice that was required for that. But, it's hard to imagine how there could be no sacrifice since simply feeling icky about reproduction could be viewed as a sacrifice.
The weight is on the negative. What is good is that painful experiences did not occur for an individual. Pleasurable experiences not occurring does not hurt anyone, nor would anyone know they are missing out. There is an epistemological element to the pleasurable experiences but not for the painful ones. In other words, it is absolutely good that painful experiences were avoided. This is a strong metaphysical stance- a universe with the least pain is better off. A universe with no pleasurable experiences, is not bad, especially if the people that would have had pleasurable experiences do not know they are deprived of anything. Further, a universe with the least pain is certainly better in a universe where the people who were to experience pleasure otherwise if they were born, did not know they were deprived of any good
I don't parse any moral talk in terms of rights, but aside from that, sure if a course of action is something that no one could gain anything from (pretending there could be such a thing), and the course of action only has a risk of harm to others, then sure, I'd say that course of action isn't moral.
But that wasn't the idea above. The one option was, "Kidnap: High chance of pleasure (good), Low chance of suffering (Bad)." Because of that "high chance of pleasure" in conjunction with "low chance of suffering," that's the option I'd go with as the moral option.
Re this, "you DO have a right to harm people unnecessarily" What counts as necessarily/unnecessarily is an issue (that I'll refrain from sidetracking us into), but ignoring that, and given just how widely people use the term "harm," I do feel that it's moral in some cases to harm people unnecessarily.
An example: some people are "harmed" by offensive speech. I think it's not only morally acceptable to utter offensive speech, I think there are good reasons to do so, I think that the people who are offended by it are the ones who have a problem, and re rights, I think it should be a legal right to do so--I'm a free speech absolutist (where I also don't see free speech as only a legal issue).
I want to point out first that your position seems different to that of David Benetar. Benetar has stated explicitly that his main axiological asymmetry is "axiological" rather than metaphysical(read his book or listen to his discussion with Sam Harris for more details). He also states in his book that the absence of pain is not literarily or absolutely good in his asymmetry. We are not deriving utility in our universe from all the beings that were never born, that is to say. Also, I don't understand how you stances could be a strong "metaphysical" stance since metaphysics refers to the study of what there is out there. Any metaphysical claim should begin with something like "There is".
Examples of metaphysical propositions:
1. X is the same person as Y.
2. "There is"(or isn't) an afterlife
3. "There is"(or isn't) free will
Your position is more of an axiological one since it deals with the question of what is good or bad, better or worse, valuable or disvaluable. If you believe that the absence of pain is absolutely good, then you would have to conclude that the absence of pain has intrinsic value. But, how can the absence of pain have intrinsic value if there isn't an extent to which it is valuable. In other words, in order for something to be "intrinsically"(note that the word intrinsic had root "in" as in "inside of something") valuable, it has to be valuable for someone. Since, the absence of pain is valuable for no one, in the case of nonexistence, then it cannot be "intrinsically" or "absolutely" valuable. It could only be "relatively" valuable, that is to say that the absence of pain in nonexistence is better than the presence of pain in existence. I argued that the same applies for pleasure thereby claiming that there is a symmetry rather than an asymmetry in Benetar's argument. That is because I think that a universe full of sentient beings that only experiences benefit is better than a universe without sentient beings.
I don't have the book with me. I used to have it but no longer in my possession. If you have an online source, please let me know. From what I gather, preventing bad is intrinsically good. The reason I say this is that he says this obtains sub specie aeternitatis which is taking an objective view of preventing bad. That is why I say it is absolute- it is good no matter if there is a person there to experience the prevention of bad or not. The fact that bad was prevented is good- even if there is no one there to witness this. However, the same does not seem to obtain for preventing good. Preventing good, is only bad if there is someone who is there to experience this deprivation, or more specifically, there is someone there who may be deprived of good. If there is no specific person who knows they are deprived of good, this is not bad, but neutral. This to me means that preventing good is simply instrumentally bad (only if someone is alive to be deprived, but neutral otherwise), while preventing harm is absolutely good (whether someone exists to know or not, preventing harm is always good).
Here's a link to the ebook:
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalism/comments/5giu51/david_benatar_better_never_to_have_been_the_full/
Chapter 2 is the one where he talks about the main asymmetry argument. I'll try to see if I can find some quotes where he states that absence of pain is relatively good rather than intrinsically good
No youre not looking at the option fully. The situation above IS exactly that situation of doing something that only has a risk of harming others and does nothing else. An "unborn child" doesn't miss out on being born. It's not like there's a spirit baby sighing every time someone decides not to have kids. This is why absense of pleasure in this case is completely meaningless. It doesn't harm anyone. It's not like:
Do X: chance of pleasure and chance of pain or
Don't do X: miss out on pleasure (a form of pain) and no chance of pain
(The situation you have a problem with)
It's:
Give birth: Chance of pleasure and chance of pain
Don't give birth: No chance of pain and no chance of missing out on pleasure (aka no harm done but much harm prevented)
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes and it would be immoral to utter offensive speech at them when no one benefits from it. So for example it's not moral for me to walk up to random people and Target their insecurities for no reason similar to how it's immoral to hurt people if you don't get anything out out of it or you get less out of it than the other guy loses
I found the following quote on page 41 of his book:
But, I couldn't find any textual evidence that he thinks the absence of pain is only relatively rather than intrinsically good. I assume that he judges both the absence of pain and the absence of pleasure both as only relatively good and not bad respectively. Otherwise, he would be judging this argument by 2 different standards and I don't recall him claiming that the absence of pain is intrinsically good. I honestly wish Benetar would make his arguments a little more clear thou lol.
"High chance of pleasure" is something else.
Quoting khaled
What does that have to do with kidnapping in our stipulated scenario?
To not talk about our stipulated scenario and to instead just talk about antinatalism, as you seem to want to do here, if we were to say that there's a much greater chance of pleasure than suffering in life, and thus say that it's morally better to create life because of that, we're not positing doing anything to "someone (extant) who hasn't been conceived yet." We're talking about creating things that will then be in a situation to experience pleasure or pain (and many other things).
Quoting khaled
Haha, I like how you slide that nonsense in.
Quoting khaled
There's no chance of an already extant particular person missing out on pleasure, but if we were to keep a running tally of pleasurable experiences had by extant things, not creating offspring would result in the tally being much lower. Not that I had been talking about that, by the way. I was talking about the stipulated kidnapping scenario. You brought that up for illustrative purposes, but I didn't agree with what you assumed would be everyone's take on it.
This is no different than the antinatalist argument in this respect: antinatlists are not saying that conceiving offspring is wrong because we're doing something to "someone (extant) who hasn't been conceived yet)" are they? No. They're saying that conceiving offspring is wrong because it creates an entity that will suffer.
By the same token, we can say that conceiving offspring is good because it creates an entity that will experience pleasure.
It's just that supposedly antinatalists don't care about the "pleasure" side of things.
I care about the "suffering" side of things, but I care about the "pleasure" side of things, too, and I don't agree with the notion that all suffering is something that should be avoided (and especially not that all suffering is something that we should do anything we can do to avoid), especially not without "suffering" being well-defined so that it would only refer to things that I think are significant enough to be problematic. "Suffering" as any arbitrary person being at all uncomfortable, dissatisfied, etc. in any arbitrary way isn't something that I believe should be categorically avoided.
Quoting khaled
I don't at all agree with that, which is why I brought up this example The sort of "harm" that offensive speech does is something that I don't see as something that merits being avoided at all, at least not by avoiding speech. If the offendee doesn't like the speech in question that's their problem, quite literally.
This is why I don't base any ethical stance on "harm" per se. Lots of things that people can consider "harm" are things that I don't feel merit any moral action whatsoever.
But then, that's your judgement, not the person you would be creating's judgement. Even if probability was a factor (high, low, what have you), preventing pleasure ONLY matters for someone who is deprived of it (that was already in existence), not for those who don't exist. It is neutral otherwise to prevent pleasure where there could have been. It ONLY matters that pain was prevented (and this doesn't matter if there is no actual person to know this). That is the negative utilitarian stance. Disagree with it, fine, but it has its logic.
Ok, so the contention is over the use of absolute/relative or intrinsic/relative. The point that I think we both agree he is saying is that preventing pleasure only matters for those who already exit to be deprived; it is neutral to prevent pleasure for something that cannot be deprived (yet). Conversely in his argument, preventing pain is always good, even if there was no one there to witness this. Unlike preventing pleasure which is neutral in respects to no one existing, preventing pain is good, even if there is no one existing to know pain was prevented.
Yes, obviously.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That comment makes no sense to me. It only matters to whom that pain was prevented? Mattering can't be "to no one." Mattering is always to someone.
So I'd agree that it can only matter to people who exist that there are people deprived of pleasure (though I'd not agree that that only matters to the people who are deprived--we can care about others' pleasure, too), but likewise, it can only matter to people who exist that pain was prevented. So in both cases, we're talking about things that matter to people who already exist. In both cases, from the perspective of the antinatalist argument, we're talking about caring about things that could happen to people who might be caused to exist but who don't exist yet. And what matters and how much it matters to people who exist varies by individual.
You have to look at the argument as a whole.
[quote=The Harm of Coming into Existence p. 30]However, this conclusion does not follow. This is because there is a
crucial difference between harms (such as pains) and benefits (such
as pleasures) which entails that existence has no advantage over,
but does have disadvantages relative to, non-existence.²² Consider
pains and pleasures as exemplars of harms and benefits. It is uncontroversial to say that
(?) the presence of pain is bad,
and that
(?) the presence of pleasure is good.
However, such a symmetrical evaluation does not seem to apply
to the absence of pain and pleasure, for it strikes me as true that
(?) the absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed
by anyone,
whereas
(?) the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody
for whom this absence is a deprivation.[/quote]
There are a number of problems with that. The two biggest problems are that:
(1) "entails that existence has no advantage . . . " Advantage in a moral context isn't entailed by anything. Moral stances are not true or false. Moral stances are ways that individuals feel about interpersonal behavior (that they consider to be more significant than etiquette).
(2) "The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone" is just nonsensical. Nothing is good context-independently, and the context always has to be how an individual feels about the thing in question.
The last two points may very well be how the author feels--that the absence of pain is good and the absence of pleasure is not bad, but that's all it is. How the author feels about each.
So this is precisely why its an asymmetry. Pleasure is only good as person-dependent, no pain is good is person independent. Benetar is pretty clever and he anticipates arguments like yours right after here:
[quote=Benatarp. 40] Now it might be asked how the absence of pain could be good if
that good is not enjoyed by anybody. Absent pain, it might be said,
cannot be good for anybody, if nobody exists for whom it can be
good. This, however, is to dismiss (3) too quickly.
The judgement made in (3) is made with reference to the (potential)
interests of a person who either does or does not exist. To this it might be objected that because (3) is part of the scenario under
which this person never exists, (3) cannot say anything about an
existing person. [b]This objection would be mistaken because (3) can
say something about a counterfactual case in which a person who
does actually exist never did exist. Of the pain of an existing person,
(3) says that the absence of this pain would have been good even if
this could only have been achieved by the absence of the person
who now suffers it. In other words, judged in terms of the interests
of a person who now exists, the absence of the pain would have
been good even though this person would then not have existed.[/b]
Consider next what (3) says of the absent pain of one who never
exists—of pain, the absence of which is ensured by not making
a potential person actual. [b]Claim (3) says that this absence is good
when judged in terms of the interests of the person who would
otherwise have existed. We may not know who that person would
have been, but we can still say that whoever that person would
have been, the avoidance of his or her pains is good when judged
in terms of his or her potential interests. If there is any (obviously
loose) sense in which the absent pain is good for the person who
could have existed but does not exist, this is it. Clearly (3) does not
entail the absurd literal claim that there is some actual person for
whom the absent pain is good.[/b]²³[/quote]
That doesn't work in the slightest because Benatar doesn't understand what "x is good" claims are.
You can't say "x is good" "based on someone else's interests." Only a particular individual can report whether they feel that x is good or not. Aside from knowing someone and the usual sorts of judgments they make, there's no way to predict for any particular individual whether they'll say that any arbitrary thing is good.
Aside from this, you can just as easily say the same thing about the absence of pleasure for potential people re counterfactuals.
So (a), Benatar doesn't even understand what judgments a la "x is good" are, and (b) he's suggesting an argument that very obviously doesn't work because it in no way logically justifies the supposed asymmetry.
I mean seriously, my view of the typical philosopher's intelligence decreases daily lately, and that doesn't say much for anyone who thinks that any of this garbage has any merit as examples of critical thinking, coherent writing, etc.
Yes, I think we were probably just bogged down on semantics. I disagreed with Benetar on this point because I don't think that the absence of pleasure without deprivation is "not worse" than the presence of pleasure is, in existence. That is because I think that it is good to create sentient life that experiences nothing bad but something good. Benetar, on the other hand, thinks it is neutral to create such lives. I find this highly counterintuitive since feeling pleasurable sensation seems to be a better state than experiencing no sensation is, even if there's no one to miss out on the pleasure. It's not clear to me why the lack of deprivation necessarily changes the outcome and it's also not clear if there isn't anyone deprived by not being born. The assumption being made is that someone has to have a physical identity in order to be deprived. But, we can think about a non-specific and hypothetical identity being deprived. Although, I'm honestly not sure if we should think about these identies or how we can think about these identities. But, I'm not willing to grant the assumption that if someone lacks a physical identity, they cannot be said to be "worse off". Having said that, I don't think we would have an obligation to create utopian beings and I think there's enough bad things in existence that it's reasonable to think that being born is undesirable and that one ought not to have children. I, myself, have no interest in having children and I think it would probably be better if I hadn't been born myself. But, Benetar's argument just doesn't sit well with my reasoning.
A lot of the intuition of why preventing pain is always good, where preventing good is neutral comes from this type of thought experiment:
[quote=Benatar]
To this it might be objected that ‘good’ is an advantage over ‘not
bad’ because a pleasurable sensation is better than a neutral state.
The mistake underlying this objection, however, is that it treats
the absence of pleasure in Scenario B as though it were akin to the
absence of pleasure in Scenario A—a possibility not reflected in
my matrix, but which is implicit in (?) of my original description
of asymmetry. There I said that the absence of pleasure is not bad
unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation. The
implication here is that where an absent pleasure is a deprivation
it is bad. Now, obviously, when I say that it is bad, I do not mean
that it is bad in the same way that the presence of pain is bad.³?
What is meant is that the absent pleasure is relatively (rather than
intrinsically) bad. In other words, it is worse than the presence
of pleasure. But that is because X exists in Scenario A. It would
have been better had X had the pleasure of which he is deprived.
Instead of a pleasurable mental state, X has a neutral state. Absent
pleasures in Scenario B, by contrast, are not neutral states of some
person. They are no states of a person at all. Although the pleasures
in A are better than the absent pleasures in A, the pleasures in A are
not better than the absent pleasures in B.
The point may be made another way. Just as I am not talking about intrinsic badness when I say that absent pleasures that
deprive are bad, so I am not speaking about intrinsic ‘not badness’—neutrality—when I speak about absent pleasures that do
not deprive. Just as absent pleasures that do deprive are ‘bad’ in the sense of ‘worse’, so absent pleasures that do not deprive are
‘not bad’ in the sense of ‘not worse’. They are not worse than the
presence of pleasures. It follows that the presence of pleasures is
not better, and therefore that the presence of pleasures is not an
advantage over absent pleasures that do not deprive.
Some people have difficulty understanding how (?) is not an
advantage over (?). They should consider an analogy which, because it involves the comparison of two existent people is unlike the
comparison between existence and non-existence in this way, but
which nonetheless may be instructive. S (Sick) is prone to regular
bouts of illness. Fortunately for him, he is also so constituted that he
recovers quickly. H (Healthy) lacks the capacity for quick recovery,
but he never gets sick. It is bad for S that he gets sick and it is good
for him that he recovers quickly. It is good that H never gets sick,
but it is not bad that he lacks the capacity to heal speedily. The
capacity for quick recovery, although a good for S, is not a real
advantage over H. This is because the absence of that capacity is
not bad for H. This, in turn, is because the absence of that capacity
is not a deprivation for H. H is not worse off than he would have
been had he had the recuperative powers of S. S is not better off
than H in any way, even though S is better off than he himself
would have been had he lacked the capacity for rapid recovery.
It might be objected that the analogy is tendentious. It is obvious that it is better to be Healthy than to be Sick. The objection
is that if I treat these as analogies for never existing and existing
respectively, then I bias the discussion toward my favoured conclusion. But the problem with this objection, if it is taken alone, is that
it could be levelled at all analogies. The point of an analogy is to
find a case (such as H and S) where matters are clear and thereby
to shed some light on a disputed case (such as Scenarios A and B in
Fig. ?.?). Tendentiousness, then, is not the core issue. Instead, the
real question is whether or not the analogy is a good one.
One reason why it might be thought not to be a good analogy is
that whereas pleasure (in Fig. ?.?) is an intrinsic good, the capacityfor quick recovery is but an instrumental good. It might be argued
further that it would be impossible to provide an analogy involving
two existing people (such as H and S) that could show one of the
people not to be disadvantaged by lacking some intrinsic good that
the other has. Since the only unambiguous cases of an actual person lacking a good and not thereby being disadvantaged are cases
involving instrumental goods, the difference between intrinsic and
instrumental goods might be thought to be relevant.
This, however, is unconvincing, because there is a deeper
explanation of why absent intrinsic goods could always be thought
to be bad in analogies involving only existing people. Given that
these people exist, the absence of any intrinsic good could always
be thought to constitute a deprivation for them. In analogies
that compare two existing people the only way to simulate the
absence of deprivation is by considering instrumental goods.³¹
Because (?) and (?) make it explicit that the presence or absence of
deprivation is crucial, it seems entirely fair that the analogy should
test this feature and can ignore the differences between intrinsic
and instrumental goods.
Notice, in any event, that the analogy need not be read as proving that quadrant (?) is good and that quadrant (?) is not bad. That
asymmetry was established in the previous section. Instead, the
analogy could be interpreted as showing how, given the asymmetry, (?) is not an advantage over (?), whereas (?) is a disadvantage relative to (?). It would thereby show that Scenario B is
preferable to Scenario A.
We can ascertain the relative advantages and disadvantages of
existence and non-existence in another way, still in my original
matrix, but by comparing (?) with (?) and (?) with (?). There arebenefits both to existing and non-existing. It is good that existers
enjoy their pleasures. It is also good that pains are avoided through
non-existence. However, that is only part of the picture. Because
there is nothing bad about never coming into existence, but there is
something bad about coming into existence, it seems that all things
considered non-existence is preferable.
One of the realizations which emerges from some of the
reflections so far is that the cost-benefit analysis of the cheerful—whereby one weighs up (?) the pleasures of life against (?) the
evils—is unconvincing as a comparison between the desirability of
existence and never existing. The analysis of the cheerful is mistaken for a number of reasons:
First, it makes the wrong comparison. If we want to determine
whether non-existence is preferable to existence, or vice versa,
then we must compare the left- and the right-hand sides of the
diagram, which represent the alternative scenarios in which X
exists and in which X never exists. Comparing the upper and the
lower quadrants on the left does not tell us whether Scenario A
is better than Scenario B or vice versa. That is unless quadrants
(?) and (?) are rendered irrelevant. One way in which that would
be so is if they were both valued as ‘zero’. On this assumption A
can be thought to be better than B if (?) is greater than (?), or to
put it another way, if (?) minus (?) is greater than zero. But this
poses a second problem. To value quadrants (?) and (?) at zero is
to attach no positive value to (?) and this is incompatible with the
asymmetry for which I have argued. (It would be to adopt the
symmetry of Fig. ?.?.)
Another problem with calculating whether A or B is better by
looking only at (?) and (?), subtracting the former from the latter, is
that it seems to ignore the difference, mentioned earlier, between
a ‘life worth starting’ and a ‘life worth continuing’. The cheerful
tell us that existence is better than non-existence if (?) is greater
than (?). But what is meant by ‘non-existence’ here? Does it mean
‘never existing’ or ‘ceasing to exist’? Those who look only at (?) and(?) do not seem to be distinguishing between never existing and
ceasing to exist. For them, a life is worth living (that is, both
starting and continuing) if (?) is greater than (?), otherwise it is
not worth living (that is, neither worth starting nor continuing).
The problem with this, I have already argued, is that there is good
reason to distinguish between them. For a life to be not worth
continuing, it must be worse than it need be for it not to be
worth starting.³² Those who consider not only Scenario A but also
Scenario B clearly are considering which lives are worth starting.
To determine which lives are worth continuing, Scenario A would
have to be compared with a third scenario, in which X ceases
to exist.³³
Finally, the quality of a life is not determined simply by subtracting the bad from the good. As I shall show in the first section of the
next chapter, assessing the quality of a life is much more complicated than this.
Now some people might accept the asymmetry represented in
Figure ?.?, agree that we need to compare Scenario A with Scenario B, but deny that this leads to the conclusion that B is always
preferable to A—that is, deny that coming into existence is always
a harm. The argument is that we must assign positive or negative
(or neutral) values to each of the quadrants, and that if we assign
them in what those advancing this view take to be the most reasonable way, we find that coming into existence is sometimes preferable (see Fig. ?.?).³?
The point is that in all of these cases you're trying to create pleasure where none was asked for. You don't have to make gun jokes with a loaded gun even though that might make them funnier. You also don't have to kill people for others' pleasure. People will do just fine without those things. So unless you say those situations above are moral you can't say birth is.
[quote=Benatar p 32-35]I have some better quotes to work off of here:
First, the asymmetry between (3) and (4) is the best explanation
for the view that while there is a duty to avoid bringing suffering
people into existence, there is no duty to bring happy people into
being. In other words, the reason why we think that there is a duty
not to bring suffering people into existence is that the presence of
this suffering would be bad (for the sufferers) and the absence of
the suffering is good (even though there is nobody to enjoy the
absence of suffering). [b]In contrast to this, we think that there is no
duty to bring happy people into existence because while their pleasure would be good for them, its absence would not be bad for them
(given that there would be nobody who would be deprived of it).[/b]
There is a second support for my claim about the asymmetry
between (3) and (4). [b]Whereas it is strange (if not incoherent) to give
as a reason for having a child that the child one has will thereby be
benefited,²? it is not strange to cite a potential child’s interests as
a basis for avoiding bringing a child into existence.[/b] If having children were done for the purpose of thereby benefiting those children, then there would be greater moral reason for at least many
people to have more children. In contrast to this, our concern for
the welfare of potential children who would suffer is a sound basis
for deciding not to have the child. If absent pleasures were bad irrespective of whether they were bad for anybody, then having children for their own sakes would not be odd. And if it were not the
case that absent pains are good even where they are not good for
anybody, then we could not say that it would be good to avoid
bringing suffering children into existence.
Thirdly, support for the asymmetry between (3) and (4) can be
drawn from a related asymmetry, this time in our retrospective
judgements. Bringing people into existence as well as failing to
bring people into existence can be regretted. [b]However, only
bringing people into existence can be regretted for the sake of
the person whose existence was contingent on our decision. This
is not because those who are not brought into existence are
indeterminate. Instead it is because they never exist. We can
regret, for the sake of an indeterminate but existent person that a
benefit was not bestowed on him or her, but we cannot regret, for
the sake of somebody who never exists and thus cannot thereby be
deprived, a good that this never existent person never experiences.[/b]
One might grieve about not having had children, but not because
the children that one could have had have been deprived of
existence. Remorse about not having children is remorse for
ourselves—sorrow about having missed childbearing and childrearing experiences. However, we do regret having brought into
existence a child with an unhappy life, and we regret it for the
child’s sake, even if also for our own sakes. The reason why we do
not lament our failure to bring somebody into existence is because
absent pleasures are not bad.
Finally, support for the asymmetry between (3) and (4) can be
found in the asymmetrical judgements about (a) (distant) suffering
and (b) uninhabited portions of the earth or the universe. Whereas, at least when we think of them, we rightly are sad for inhabitants of a foreign land whose lives are characterized by suffering,
when we hear that some island is unpopulated, we are not similarly
sad for the happy people who, had they existed, would have populated this island. [b]Similarly, nobody really mourns for those who
do not exist on Mars, feeling sorry for potential such beings that
they cannot enjoy life.²? Yet, if we knew that there were sentient
life on Mars but that Martians were suffering, we would regret this
for them.[/b] The claim here need not (but could) be the strong one
that we would regret their very existence. The fact that we would
regret the suffering within their life is sufficient to support the asymmetry I am defending. The point is that we regret suffering but not
the absent pleasures of those who could have existed.[/quote]
I recently thought about a new objection to Benetar's conclusion that the absence of pleasure is not worse than the presence of pleasure if there is no one for whom the absence is a deprivation. It goes something like this:
Imagine that scientists discover a new alien species on a distant planet that cannot experience nor appreciate or desire pleasure. We shall refer to these alien beings as "X Beings". X Beings cannot comprehend the concept of pleasure because they never experienced it and do not know what's so great about it. Explaining pleasure to them is like explaining the joys of music to a deaf person. Although they cannot experience pleasure, they can still experience deprivational suffering. For example, they can't derive pleasure from eating but they suffer from hunger if they don't eat. They also cannot derive pleasure from sex but being celibate will make them experience sexual frustration. They have to engage in recreational activities to avoid boredom but they derive no pleasure from them. They also can be alleviated from stress by drinking alcohol but the alcohol isn't pleasurable to them. Given the characteristics of X Beings, my argument goes as follows:
P1: The presence of pleasure in human beings is an advantage over the absence of pleasure in X Beings.
P2: X Beings cannot be said to be deprived of pleasure because they never had a desire or appreciation for it in the first place. In addition, experiencing pleasure provides no instrumental benefit to them by alleviating deprivational or inflictional suffering. Furthermore, the absence of pleasure is necessary for an X Being to maintain its identity as an X Being(that means if a rare mutation makes a supposed X Being experience pleasure, scientists would reclassify the being as some other species rather than an X Being with good scientific justification)
C: Therefore, the presence of pleasure can be an advantage over the absence of pleasure even if there is no one for whom the absence is a deprivation.
If you reject P1, you would have to accept the counterintuitive conclusion that the presence of pleasure in human beings is in no way better than the lack of pleasure and the lack of capacity to understand pleasure in X Beings.
If you reject P2, then you would have to explain how the X Beings are being deprived of pleasure. One possible explanation is to distinguish between "feeling deprived" and "being deprived". The objection goes that although X Beings are not "feeling deprived" they are "being deprived" of pleasure nonetheless. That is because the X Beings exist and all beings that exist can be deprived of something good even if they don't appreciate it or desire it. This would demonstrate that there is a clear difference between Benetar's Scenario B and my Scenario involving X Beings; that difference being the existence of a being in my X Being Scenario but there's no being existing in Benetar's Scenario B. If this is your objection to P2, then you would have to explain why "being deprived" is bad even if there's no one "feeling deprived".
The point of living shouldn't be to maximize one's own pleasure. It would be infinitely better to avoid inflicting unnecessary harm to others if maximizing their pleasure is somehow beyond one's control. One should not think that maximizing pleasure for the self is the point of life when humanity is inherently social. In no possible world could humans not be social beings without ceasing to be human. So, maximizing pleasure for the self is base and goes against humanity's need for community.
I can offer 3 alternative explanations for that asymmetry:
1. We have no duty to create happy people because it requires too much of a sacrifice to raise a happy child. It would not be reasonable to expect everyone to raise a happy child.
2. Any positive duty can be easily avoided by choosing to perform a different positive duty instead, thereby justifying the violation of duty. For example, instead of creating a happy person, I could make an already existent miserable person happy. It's not clear why the duty to procreate should be privileged over the near infinite amount of other positive duties we could perform instead.
3. Humans usually experience guilt and shame from harming people more strongly than pride for helping people. Thereby creating a bias towards wanting to avoid harming people while being relatively unmotivated to benefit them. The existence of this psychological bias does not mean that creating benefit cannot justify creating harm.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I can also offer 2 alternative explanations for that asymmetry:
1. You don't have a duty to create a happy person but you do have a duty not to create an unhappy one.(Note that you don't have to accept Benetar's argument to explain this asymmetry)
2. Humans usually experience guilt and shame from harming people more strongly than pride for helping people. Thereby creating a bias towards wanting to avoid harming people while being relatively unmotivated to benefit them. The existence of this psychological bias does not mean that creating benefit cannot justify creating harm.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Once again, I can offer at least 2 alternative explanation for that asymmetry:
1. We can't regret for someone if we aren't aware of that person's existence. For example, I can't regret the suffering of a person I have never thought about because there is no conceptual manifestation of that person in my mind.
2. There's simply no person to regret if you don't create any, but our inability to regret a potential child not being brought into existence does not imply that there's nothing to regret. Rather, our psychology is flawed to have a hard time understanding the regret.
This asymmetry could be explained with similar explanations as the last one.
1. We can't morn for a hypothetical alien if we aren't aware of that alien's hypothetical existence. For example, I can't morn for the suffering of a Martian I have never thought about because there is no conceptual manifestation of that Martian in my mind.
2. There's simply no alien to morn about if there aren't any that existed, but our inability to morn for a hypothetical alien not existing does not imply that there's nothing to morn about . Rather, our psychology is flawed to have a hard time understanding why the absence of Martians is mornworthy.
For one, there is no such thing as an "intrinsic good."
"The capacity for quick recovery, although a good for S, is not a real advantage over H." There is no such thing as a "real advantage" in a value judgment context.
"It is obvious that it is better to be Healthy than to be Sick." No it isn't . It's obvious that anyone who says these things--"intrinsic, " "real," etc. , when we're talking about axiology doesn't understand what value judgments are.
"It is also good that pains are avoided through non-existence." Once again, anything is always good only to someone. So if it's good that pain is avoided by not existing, that's only good to the particular existent individuals who happen to feel that's good.
Likewise if it's bad that pleasure isn't obtaining that could obtain if more people existed, that's only bad to particular existent individuals who happen to feel that's bad.
Re the stuff about the diagrams, matrices, etc. I can't see any of that so it's difficult to comment on it.
You want me to be asserting some broadly abstract principle that I'm doing ethics by, so that it would be applicable to a bunch of different scenarios. That's not how I do ethics, though. And I think it's a bad idea to do ethics that way. It's a type of theory-worship that almost always leads to things that I consider absurdities (such as antinatalism).
This makes sense only to the extent that it's a matter of whether we're talking about a particular person or not.
The problem with it is that you don't have to be talking about a particular person. You can regret that indeterminate people were never made to exist so that they could enjoy particular things.
So in both of those cases, you have regrets about others, it's just that they're indeterminate, potential others in one case, but determinate, actual others in the other case.
Unless you believe no one needs to ever justify having a child and can have a child for incoherent, illogical reasons.
Sometimes the reasons people give for having a child are very disturbing. I think most people believe that not everyone should have children such as abusive people, drug addicts, pedophiles and such.
If you can accept that some people shouldn't procreate then it is not far to go to scrutinize everyone's parenting suitability.
The difference being that we are not talking about X beings that already exist, but no being at all. It can be regrettable for X beings that they don't feel pleasure, because they exist and they are being deprived of something. However, even this is a moot point in your scenario as it seems like an impossibility they can derive pleasure in the first place, so it is not even regrettable, just an oddity of nature that happens.
Rather, Benatar's scenario is simply that preventing pleasure is not bad, if no actual person is deprived of it. The potential kids you or I won't have are not suffering from prevention of pleasure. The only scenario where someone would suffer from prevention of pleasure, is one where an actual person existed who was prevented (i.e. a person-dependent scenario). That is his main idea. However, preventing harmful experiences don't need to be person-dependent. That someone could have existed that would have suffered but was prevented from doing so is good, independent of whether an actual person can be identified to have benefited from this.
To me, the Martian argument is his most revealing of his negative utilitarianism. It seems his negative utilitarianism comes from the intuition that for a hypothetical person to not experience pleasure, is not something we really regret.. (If we do it would be more post-facto in a philosophy forum like this simply to prove others wrong..in other words it would be intellectually falsifying how we really feel to make point). However, it does seem that we intuitively are indignant at the idea that someone (who does not exist but has a potential to) can be born into great suffering.
Why not?
Do you think pedophiles should be allowed to have children. Drug users and Alcoholics?
I can give a common personal example here. As Christians my parents believe that all humans are corrupt through Adam and Eve and basically worthless and deserving of hell. So they had six children that the had a default low opinion and exposed them to the threat of eternal damnation.
Suggesting that he feels that "Preventing pleasure is only bad if someone (actual) is being deprived of pleasure."
Someone else might feel, "The more pleasure there is in the world the better. The less pleasure there is in the world the worse it is--purely based on how much pleasure there is in the world. Therefore, we should act to have as much pleasure in the world as possible."
Because, for one, I don't like the idea of people judging other people in general, especially not where those judgments constrain what other people can and can't choose to do. In that regard I'm basically a minarchist libertarian (the idea of minarchism is "as close as we can get to anarchy without people taking even more control via force") (Overall, politically, I'm not longer just a libertarian, but when it comes to moral issues like this, I am.)
I don't know if you're familiar with the term "moralizing"--it's a specific idea typically with a negative connotation, but I'm extremely anti-moralizing.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes.
Among the basic reasons against having a child famine, poverty, pollution over population, physical and mental illness, stress, work, war, the weapons industry including the nuclear threat, exploitation, death, possible pointlessness and meaninglessness, survival of the fittest, consent issues,inequality, injustice, religious doctrine (see my previous post).
Each issue has many layers. For example exploitation might be mutually beneficial however there are very many different cases and structural issues. In order to give yourself and your child what they want it relies on other people having children and working on behalf of your goals.
So for example if you want your child to see a Doctor and receive medicine then someone else has to have a child and that child has to train to be a doctor. It is not just a case of having a child in a bubble of independence but you implicitly have to demand other people procreate and work to create the society you want.
There was a case in America where a couple had a child with the explicit intention of sexual abusing it. They received very long prisons terms and I believe the child was taken into care however what if the child had not been rescued?
This is the most explicit case of a parent planning to torture a child and I cannot see how anyone could or should have the right to do this.
I think having a child to mend a relationship is also irresponsible and not in the child's interest.
I am interested in your response to my example of people who believe in the fallen nature and hell doctrines.
There are a number of issues here. First, I'd never have planning or even conspiring or contracting or ordering someone to do something as a crime. This includes planning to commit acts of terrorism, hiring a hit man, a political leader ordering underlings to commit murder, etc.
People can do things to other people, including children, that would be illegal if I were king--such as torturing them (which would fall under a general nonconsenual battery prohibition), but they'd have to actually be doing those things for it to be an issue.
"What's in someone's interest" is a subjective issue. Each person ultimately decides what's in their interest for themselves. There are no facts that such and such is in someone's interest and something else is not.
Re your personal example re "fallen nature" etc., morally I'm indifferent to that. I'm not sure what your moral view would be on it. People have all different sorts of views. They're going to believe some things that you think are false. That's the case when it comes to family members, too.
But Benatar takes into account outcomes. What is the outcome of pleasure being prevented (and no one there to be deprived of it?). What is the outcome of preventing suffering (even if there is no one there to be deprived of it?). Moral intuition might say, the "regrettable" loss of pleasure, for something that did not even exist to know of its deprivation is trivially sad, where the prevention of suffering is non-trivially good. You should also understand that Benatar seems to split morality into two modalities- lives worth continuing and lives worth starting. Here is how he puts it:
[quote= Benatar p 22-24]The expression ‘a life worth living’ is ambiguous between ‘a life
worth continuing’—let us call this the present-life sense—and ‘a life
worth starting’—let us call this the future-life sense.¹² ‘A life worth
continuing’, like ‘a life not worth continuing’, are judgements
one can make about an already existent person. ‘A life worth
starting’, like ‘a life not worth starting’, are judgements one can
make about a potential but non-existent being. Now the problem
is that a number of people have employed the present-life sense
and applied it to future-life cases,¹³ which are quite different. When
they distinguish between impairments that make a life not worth
living and impairments that, though severe, are not so bad as to
make life not worth living, they are making the judgements in
the present-life cases. Those lives not worth living are those that
would not be worth continuing. Similarly, those lives worth living
are those that are worth continuing. But the problem is that these
notions are then applied to future-life cases.¹? In this way, we are
led to make judgements about future-life cases by the standards of
present-life cases.
However, quite different standards apply in the two kinds of
case. The judgement that an impairment is so bad that it makes life
not worth continuing is usually made at a much higher threshold
than the judgement that an impairment is sufficiently bad to make
life not worth beginning. That is to say, if a life is not worth
continuing, a fortiori it is not worth beginning. It does not follow,
however, that if a life is worth continuing it is worth beginning or
that if it is not worth beginning it would not be worth continuing.
For instance, while most people think that living life without a limb
does not make life so bad that it is worth ending, most (of the
same) people also think that it is better not to bring into existence
somebody who will lack a limb. We require stronger justification
for ending a life than for not starting one.¹?
We are now in a position to understand how it might be preferable
not to begin a life worth living. [/quote]
Were you addressing this comment above:
Quoting Terrapin Station
That has nothing to do with the idea of anyone being deprived of anything.
I'm assuming you were talking about the idea of antinatalism and that you are anti-anatinatalism because birth brings more experiences of pleasure and we should maximize this apparently. That seems to be your stance. Hence, I point to Benatar's idea that the preventing of pleasure is not bad if there is no one there to be deprived. Conversely, there is no obligation to bring about pleasure if no one exists in the first place. There does seem to be an obligation to prevent suffering though.
Another note I'd like to make is that having people so that they can suffer in some edifying way that is deemed appropriate by the parent seems also off to me. No one who doesn't already exist, needs to be born to experience some society-approved form of suffering. And THIS is why I pointed to Benatar's distinction between life worth continuing vs. a life worth starting. Sure, if you already exist and have to endure certain forms of suffering to get to a "better place" mentally/socially/physically fine, but to CREATE a situation so that someone has to go through this, is suspect to me. There is too much collateral damage, too much assumptions of the existent on what the new person needs, wants, etc. In other words, there is a lot of arrogance in this idea of making people go through the gauntlet of life because that is just something someone wants to see carried out. Damn Nietzsche, damn the idea that people have to be born over and over to suffer through existence for its own sake! It is middle-class respectable savagery masquerading as pragmatic gentleman's morality.
I wasn't giving my view there, just a possible view. The possible view, again, is this:
Someone else might feel, "The more pleasure there is in the world the better. The less pleasure there is in the world the worse it is--purely based on how much pleasure there is in the world. Therefore, we should act to have as much pleasure in the world as possible."
Again, this is not about deprivation in any manner, and it's not even about any particular people. It's just about the total amount of pleasurable experiences, seen rather abstractly.
A person with the view above might think, "It's better for there to be 100 people each with 10 pleasurable experiences in their lives and ten thousand painful experiences than for there to be 10 people each with 75 pleasurable experiences and nine thousand painful experiences, simply because 1,000 is more than 750."
So when do we start banning childbirth per this view? Or have I misrepresented your stance?
I'm not talking about the issue of criminality I am just examining the reasons people have for having children and what the characteristics of these reasons are.
Your positions amounts to anarchy if you don't think people need to justify their actions.
On the theological issue I am referring to my actual parents beliefs prior to and during having children and not whether I believe them.
I think it is part insane and part terrible to create children you think of as broken and to threaten them with hell, expose them to the hell doctrine and expose them to the hell they claim to believe in.
I cannot see a commitment to child welfare in your stance.
It is pragmatic to arrest people that plan to harm others or prevent harm rather than let the plan go to fruition which creates victims.
I have found that people who claim life is so desirable because of pleasure do not advocate forcing people to have children to increase levels of pleasure rather it seems like an ad hoc justification.
I don't think pain and pleasure can be strictly measured or accumulated in a utilitarian calculation. But I find it troubling that people are willing to coexist with lots of other peoples suffering
. And I don't think things like the Holocaust are a statistic to be manipulated but rather a qualitative experience to be reflected on phenomenology..
Fair enough, I suppose we can agree to disagree at this point. To me rejecting P1 of my argument is more counterintuitive than rejecting what I will call Benetar's Regret Worthiness Requirement. I think the absence of pleasure for X Beings is bad even if it is not regretful. Feel free to provide me with a creative objection if you can come up with one though. I would be interested in knowing why I should accept the Regret Worthiness Requirement.
If people need to have certain beliefs to have kids, say, and they need to justify a bunch of stuff they want to do in order to be allowed to do it, who gets to decide what the right beliefs and justifications are, and why do they get to decide?
You don't believe in experts?
You would allow a random person to do heart surgery on you?
Not when it comes to value judgments, including what people should and shouldn't be allowed to do.
Your scenario about X beings is that they don't feel pleasure. Well, this follows under Benatar's idea that if something already exists, then it is best that they can maximize pleasure. Hence, these X beings would be better off with pleasure, even if they can't. For a being that does not exist, but just a potential, the situation changes. There is no one actually existing that would be better off. In fact, to take it to its furthest reach, if no pleasure ever existed for anyone in the universe, it would not be bad (though it would not necessarily be good either, but neutral). However, that a scenario can occur where someone could have incurred suffering, but was prevented from doing so, is always good. Thus, your thought experiment falls right into Benatar's asymmetry.
Having a child is doing something to someone else and it is not a case of personal freedom. Bad parenting effects someone else, the child potential for a lifetime.
We have thousands of laws saying what people can and can't do so you must really object to everything about society or is it only regulating reproduction you object to?
It is already the case that thousands of unfit parents have there children taken into care so why wait to make this judgement of unfitness until after a new victim has been created?
It appears as though you are rejecting P2 of my argument by stating that X Beings are deprived of pleasure even though they don't feel as though they are deprived. I think there are some potentially worse implications that come with the claim that any being is deprived of any good thing it cannot acquire(since X beings cannot acquire pleasure, the lack of acquisitions counts as deprivation on your view.). I would like to point out that there appears to be a hidden premise in Benetar's argument that I never heard mentioned(although Benetar seems to believe in that hidden premise, especially since he thinks absence of knowledge is bad for an existent being but not a potential being that will never exist.). That hidden premise is that the absence of pleasure for existing beings is worse than the absence of pleasure for potential beings that are never born. We could derive this hidden premise as follows:
P1: The absence of pleasure for existing beings is worse than the presence of pleasure for existing beings.
P2: The absence of pleasure for potential beings is not worse than the presence of pleasure in existing beings.
C: Therefore, the absence of pleasure for potential beings is better than the absence of pleasure for existing beings.
This argument could be mathematically expressed as follows:
P1: A < B
P2: C = B
C: Therefore, C > A
There are 2 major counterintuitive implications of that hidden premise:
1. It means that the harm of coming into existence extends far beyond the presence of bad things. The infinite deprivation of good things in life is also an infinite harm relative to non-existence. For example, there is an infinite amount of pleasure that I am deprived of(because I cannot experience an eternal orgasm, for example) and that is bad only because I am a being who is deprived of that pleasure. This seems highly counterintuitive to me.
2. It means that bringing a being into existence that can be deprived of some good things in life but is inflicted with no bad things in life would still be harmful. That is because the deprivation of pleasure is bad compared to the case of nonexistence where there's no one deprived and therefore no one harmed by the absence of pleasure. To me, this is even more counterintuitive than thinking that X beings are not worse off than humans by not being able to experience pleasure. It implies that bringing a child into existence is bad even if that child experiences nothing bad but simply doesn't have as many good things in life as she could have.
In my view there can't be "value experts," in the sense of particular moral and aesthetic judgments, because there are no moral or aesthetic facts of judgment/value to be an expert about.
Re laws, mores and the like, I've mentioned this before, so apologies to people who have read it already (and I'm not sure that I didn't even mention it in this thread), but politically I'm a very idiosyncratic sort of "libertarian socialist." Without getting into a big thing about that, on the libertarian side, with respect to moral or general behavioral enforcement, say, I'm a minarchist libertarian. Minarchists are folks who lean towards anarchy, but who don't believe that anarchy is possible, so the goal is a minimal set of restrictions with the idea being to avoid even more restrictions arising.
In practice, we tend to endorse the typical libertarian triumvirate of a prohibition against the initiation of nonconsensual "physical" damage to others (where in my case I introduce the "physical" qualification and a minimal damage qualification), contractual fraud (where I limit that to documentable, formal contracts), and property crimes (where again I have a minimal damage requirement).
Aside from that, most minarchists are also still in favor of a government sourced police-force, court system, etc.
Re that sort of stuff, I'd actually have a government-sourced economy/means of production (and service etc.) overall, as that's the socialist part of the equation for me, but It's the socialist part where I don't resemble any other socialist I've ever heard of, and my socialist aspects would run parallel with a minarchist libertarian approach otherwise.
Could people have their kids taken away in my system? Sure. But pretty much only if they're initiating nonconsensual physical damage towards their kids per what my restriction would be.
You did a great job bridging utilitarian antinatalism with philosophical pessimism/structural antinatalism. Structural antinatalists (like myself) would say that life is always suffering due to the deprivation of desires and wants which are endless. Satisfaction is short-lived, and similar to Heraclitus' idea that all is flux, we are never in a state of complete satisfaction, but always thrown upon the world in the pendulum swing of NOW needing to work to survive, NOW needing to maintain comfort levels (do laundry, clean our house, etc.), NOW needing to entertain our complex brains (we get bored and have to always look for more novelty, more flow states, etc. etc.). Indeed, even the pleasures may not really be so fully good as the flip side is the deprivation that it reveals in the human condition.
If you think that everyone is regularly suffering, and that suffering includes things like needing to do laundry, then suffering isn't something to be concerned with on any moral level. Some subset of suffering might be something to be concerned with, but suffering in general wouldn't be.
It isn't the activities that result from the suffering, it is the lack that is there in the first place. It is not an immediate physical pain. It is your willing animal nature. Yes, it is baked into the definition of being an animal, so the subtly probably goes above your head as to how lack equates with suffering. Not all concepts of suffering are of the course physical/immediate kind that you think only justifies moral categorizing.
I didn't say I had any problem with calling it suffering. I said that if it's suffering, then suffering isn't at all sufficient for moral concern.
Sure it is, and one clever part of Benatar's argument is that the different thresholds in starting a life and continuing a life. I would take the hard stance that in matters of starting a life, just the structural suffering alone is enough to prevent birth. However, I don't think it is necessarily a threshold to discontinue life once born. Now, if we combine the fact that life is structural suffering AND contingent suffering (your more familiar harms based on circumstances of life), then the decision of whether to start a life is indeed weighted against birth. To go further, to provide a gauntlet of burdens to overcome, to provide pain in order to get stronger, to something that didn't exist to need to get strong is also morally suspect. As Bentar's example of getting sick and recovering fast versus never getting sick. Just because you have the ability to recover fast does not negate that it was better to never get sick. This is all the more so if no one existed in the first place to NEED to get sick (in order to recover). It would be a reckless and arbitrary value of wanting to see another person go through adversity. Adversity is then put as a premium above suffering, which I have many qualms with in terms of playing with people's lives, the arrogance of making someone else go through with this for your weighted preference for seeing someone struggle through adversity, and the collateral damage of the child going through more than a socially-approved form adversity. As I said earlier: Sure, if you already exist and have to endure certain forms of suffering to get to a "better place" mentally/socially/physically fine, but to CREATE a situation so that someone has to go through this, is suspect to me. There is too much collateral damage, too much assumptions of the existent on what the new person needs, wants, etc. In other words, there is a lot of arrogance in this idea of making people go through the gauntlet of life because that is just something someone wants to see carried out. Damn Nietzsche, damn the idea that people have to be born over and over to suffer through existence for its own sake! It is middle-class respectable savagery masquerading as pragmatic gentleman's morality.
"Sure it is" per what?
Um, did you read anything else? Ugh, I'm disappointed you associate your avatar with GD symbology. Shame.
Yes, of course. Was the rest supposed to be justifying the basis for why suffering period, under that definition, would be worth moral concern? If so, I'll read it again with that in mind, but it didn't seem to me that anything that followed "Sure it is" was actually saying per what suffering period would be worth moral concern.
What does the concept of thresholds have to do with why suffering period, under the earlier definition, so that needing to do laundry, needing to clean house, etc. count as suffering, is worth moral concern?
Your view is that suffering period, under that definition, suggests not having children at all--the earlier part of the threshold..
My view is that suffering period, under that definition, doesn't suggest any moral stance whatsoever, sof any part of the threshold.
So per what does suffering period suggest anything moral with respect to any threshold?
It represents having a lack. Why create situations of lack, (and adversity) for something that doesn't need to? To put a put a premium on adversity or responsibility or strength through activity? Psst.. not strong enough reasons to pass the threshold of STARTING a life. In fact its creating a negative situation where there was none.
Right, so in my view, lack is not at all sufficient for moral concern. "Why create situations of lack" is a morally null question, because creating situations of lack is not sufficient for moral concern.
You're arguing that it is sufficient for moral concern. So I'm asking you on the basis of what is it sufficient for moral concern?
I just told you- creating situations of lack, and more strongly, adversity for something when there was nothing there to originally experience lack or adversity is sufficient for moral concern. To make something experience a situation of lack when there need not be lack, is wrong. It is prioritizing adversity or overcoming which I also think is wrong to do for others.
What is GD symbology?
Okay, but I don't at all agree with that. "Creating situations of lack" is not at all sufficient to be a moral concern, especially when it refers to things like having to do laundry or clean house.
Suppose there is a being that is incapable of experiencing any kind of negative emotion that normally comes with deprivation and dissatisfaction. The experience of that being ranges from extreme pleasure to mild pleasure. Whenever the being experiences mild pleasure, he is deprived of extreme pleasure. But he doesn't care at all that he is deprived(that is because he can't experience any negative emotion or mental state at all). Despite that, you would still call that deprivation(even though I think that's a disputable definition of deprivation). But I'm not interested in arguing with you about the meaning of the word deprivation, rather I would like to know why you think that the deprivation is bad. It's hard for me to see how the deprivation could be bad if the deprived person doesn't experience any negative emotion from the deprivation or care that he's deprived.
You pick the outcome and not the cause for rhetorical purposes. But if we are going to go down this absurd route between a situation where the only thing that exists in the universe is that someone feels the discomfort of dirty clothes and has to do laundry or non-existence.. then non-existence is still the correct choice as no lack was created.
So you are describing a non human situation? Is it relevant?
It is relevant if you are arguing that "life is always suffering due to the deprivation of desires and wants which are endless." That is because you are implying that the fact that something is a deprivation makes it bad even if no one experiences negative mental states because of that deprivation. In addition, the deprivation seems to be infinitely bad on your view. That is because under your definition of deprivation, you don't even have to desire the thing you are supposedly deprived of, in order to be harmfully deprived. My question goes as follows: is it the case that, even if there's no one experiencing negative emotion or having desires violated because of an absence of pleasure, an absence of pleasure in a being could still be called a deprivation and the presence of that deprivation in a being is still a bad thing? Is the mere fact that it could be called a deprivation make the supposed outcome bad and why?
If no negative states were attached to the deprivation then the outcome is not bad. I would just like to see a human with no negative states due to deprivation. Perhaps these are the mystical enlightened ones. Buddhism is based on lessening attachment to desire. Schopenhauer's only salvation was to become an austere ascetic and possibly die due to starvation without care.
Again, I don't at all agree that a mere lack of something is sufficient to suggest that we have a moral issue at hand.
So when we don't agree on that, how do we resolve it?
Ok, so what you just said seems to imply that you don't accept the following implications of accepting Benetar's argument and rejecting P2 of my X being argument:
Because you think the presence of desire or deprivational suffering is a necessity for something to be called a "deprivation that qualifies as being bad", it cannot be the case that the badness of the deprivation is infinite(since I only have finite desires and experience a finite amount of deprivational suffering from the deprivation, thereby making the badness of the deprivation finite).
Now I would like to come back to my X Being argument:
P1: The presence of pleasure in human beings is an advantage over the absence of pleasure in X Beings.
P2: X Beings cannot be said to be deprived of pleasure because they never had a desire or appreciation for it in the first place. In addition, experiencing pleasure provides no instrumental benefit to them by alleviating deprivational or inflictional suffering. Furthermore, the absence of pleasure is necessary for an X Being to maintain its identity as an X Being(that means if a rare mutation makes a supposed X Being experience pleasure, scientists would reclassify the being as some other species rather than an X Being with good scientific justification)
C: Therefore, the presence of pleasure can be an advantage over the absence of pleasure even if there is no one for whom the absence is a deprivation.
Because there has to be some deprivational suffering occurring for the absence of pleasure to be a deprivation or there has to be a desire for pleasure at least, P2 must be true. Although X beings do experience deprivational suffering, the reason they experience it, is not because of an absence of pleasure(that is because they do not derive any pleasure from activities that alleviate their deprivational suffering). They also do not desire pleasure or comprehend the concept of pleasure, so they don't know what they are missing out on. Just like a dog cannot be deprived of intellectual pleasures(because they don't desire any), X beings cannot be deprived of pleasure in general.(because they don't desire or understand pleasure.)
If you accept that P2 is true, then you would either have to say that P1 is false or reject Benetar's asymmetry. I chose to reject Benetar's asymmetry because I don't think that the presence of desire or deprivational suffering could fully explain why it is bad to have an absence of pleasure.
However, even if a God does exist he/she /it is not forcing people to procreate so people are choosing to bring offspring into a world they would condemn a deity for creating.
I think having a child is endorsing everything that happens in reality as suitable for your child.
I think both the religious and non religious can use God or Gods as a scapegoat for problems they are actually perpetuating themselves.
I know that if I create a child I will be responsible for all his or her future suffering and the possibility of grandchildren and further descendants suffering.
To me it is most brave to confront your own death and see what happens not to try and create some kind of immortality by having children.
The X Beings don't experience pleasure or get deprived of it. This is not good or bad. The humans experience pleasure, this is good. The non-existent potential child doesn't experience pleasure or get deprived of it, this is not good or bad.
Grateful Dead
Okay. I thought it might be Gangster Disciples! Lol
Ok so it sounds to me like you're choosing to reject P1 then. That is to say that you don't think that the presence of pleasure in humans is an advantage over the absence of pleasure in X Beings for the same reason you don't think that the presence of pleasure in humans is an advantage over the absence of pleasure for potential beings.(that is to say that there's no deprivation present in either one of these cases of pleasure absences.) In that case, I guess we will have to agree to disagree since I think rejecting P1 would be more counterintuitive than rejecting Benetar's asymmetry. Feel free to provide me with an argument or a thought experiment for why Benetar's asymmetry is more intuitive than P1 in your opinion if you have one though.
Benatar's asymmetry is based on the idea that preventing harm is always good even if there is no actual person, where preventing pleasure is neither good nor bad (neutral) if there is no actual person. Pleasure just seems to not have moral precedent- it revolves around preventing harm more than prompting pleasure. Perhaps in a universe with 0 chance of harm, prompting pleasure would become the moral imperative. In a world where there is always some non-trivial harm, preventing harm is more important.
It is well known that life presents adversity. To have a child knowing that adversity exists would lead to the idea that you know your child will face adversity. This is doing a several things:
1) It puts adversity at a premium. Adversity is valued more than preventing harm. This to me seems odd.
2) It makes the decision for a future person that adversity should be something that should be experienced. This to me seems odd.
3) It ignores collateral damage. That the child will endure a type of adversity that is more than what the parents would have envisioned (not that any amount of creating adversity for a new person is justified, so this is kind of an imperfect version of the original idea that causing adversity when there was none previously is not good in the first place).
There is an assumption that life carries with it the value of experience itself. Going through this "gauntlet" of experience is somehow good for the individual. It is a quasi-religious idea but fails when compared to the idea that there is no writ-large universal principle that experience is something that needs to be had by individuals. Why do individuals have to experience the gauntlet of life in the first place, when prior to birth, there was no actual person who needed anything, good or bad? Why does a person have to go through the slings and arrows of existence in the first place? This is especially pertinent when harm is in the picture. Our known existence has harm. Bringing someone into a harmful existence because experience or adversity is seen as good, seems to be a difference in what values are primary in ethical considerations of birth. Adversity causes intentional harm to an individual, perhaps to create a person that will become stronger and more adept from the experiences. This to me doesn't seem necessary to do for someone else.
Long story short, the difference comes down to a difference in values for a future person. The antinatalist puts the value of prevention of harm above all else. The pro-birth (or limited pro-birth) position is that adversity and experiencing in general are more important than other considerations, even preventing harm.
I don't think it's at all clear that most people have adversity as their dominant experience or to extent/to an interpretation that makes them miserable, etc.
What's odd is the antinatalist idea in light of the above fact.
Just what sort of person sees any adversity whatsoever, whether it's dominant, significant, etc. or not, as being so overwhelming that it suggests just trashing the whole thing?
It seems akin to an artist who would see even the slightest flaw in a work as a reason for not producing the work in the first place, hence we have an artist who simply never produces any work. But what would that artist's mindset have to be like to make the decision that even the slightest flaw in a work suggests that they simply shouldn't produce any work? It seems like it would have to be an unusually neurotic person who is obsessed with "perfection."
If you look at my last paragraph you'll see that I said it is a difference in values between the antinatalist and pro-birth position. If someone does not exist and there will be adversity- anitnatalists think creating adversity for someone that didn't need to take place, is an unnecessary and harmful step to take. The fact that it is on behalf of another person makes it more egregious (and quite arrogant). The imperfect (but still important) other reason is the amount of adversity that was envisioned. The parent might think only a little flaw will ensue (like your artist example), when in fact more adversity than was anticipated might ensue instead. You don't know that outcome of how much adversity will be faced.
Thus the axiological position is that causing any adversity for someone (when it is not needed), is bad.
The second axiological position is that you are causing this adversity for someone else.
The imperfect secondary consideration is that since life presents unknown outcomes for each individual as to how much adversity they will face, it compounds the original axiological position.
What would make one moral consideration primary over other moral considerations?
In other words, what makes "whether we're creating (the opportunity for) adversity" the trump card and not something else?
This is a good question. I think the justifications for the original axiological settings get murky. Some use "intuition", for example.
Harm seems to me a good place to start for moral considerations. Causing harm seems to be bad to do in general. You can counter that sometimes it is needed. I can then use Benatar's argument to say that there is a difference in moral considerations for those who already exist and those who don't exist yet. The threshold for causing harm is much lower for those who don't exist yet. Since no on exists that needs there to be harm, why cause someone to experience harm when they didn't exist in the first place to experience it?
I would agree that inuition is what people rely on, but we have differen intuitions, and really, there's nothing to get correct or incorrect. It's only intuitions, only the way we feel.
My intuition isn't at all that "harm" is a good place to start, for example. For one, "harm" is way too broad and/or vague in my intuition.
Not that I advocate a "principle"-oriented approach to morality, anyway. I think that tends to lead to absurdities instead.
That's fine, but I am giving you the reasonings for antinatalism. You can choose to agree with the principles are not as they are laid out. I think it is similar to veganism. They can lay out their reasons and you can agree or disagree. Similar to veganism, since this is on the fringe of beliefs in society at large, no one should force the view on anyone through force or legislation. Rather, like other beliefs in the larger society, it should be laid out and you can decide from there. Rarely does any philosophical argument have a slam dunk case. You don't automatically say "Yes, Socrates.. you are the golden god of reason and logic.. I shall now change my ways" when hearing an argument. It usually accord or doesn't accord with your sensibilities. Perhaps it is objectively true.. I wouldn't be able to prove it to you but that is an epistemological issue. How do I prove to you that harm is the basis for morality? It's pretty much where we have to depart ways.
I shouldn’t have called antinatalism “dumb”. I disagree with it and think it’s irrational. I apologize.
Well,. no moral stance is true/false or objective. Morality is noncognitive/subjective.
I'm pretty sure I pointed out before that antinatalism doesn't work very well, from the perspective of arguing for it, if one doesn't assume some sort of objective morality.
Are you always on disagreeable mode? I'm trying to reconcile the fact that the basis for axiological considerations in morality are hard to prove one way or the other. Yes, like most moralities, it starts with an idea (coming into existence is a harm, and thus people should not procreate). If you don't think harm is sufficiently bad enough a reason to prevent birth, it will not convince you. If you are inclined to think that indeed preventing harm is good, and that preventing pleasure is not bad, then you will agree with Benatar's version of antinatalism. Perhaps someone who did not consider this idea before about preventing harm and preventing pleasure would agree with Benatar. However, if someone does not think preventing harm is good, then I cannot do much else to convince you. Only if you think preventing harm is good (especially in the situation of someone not being born yet), would you agree with this argument.
I would think that to agree with antintalism, someone would have to think that either:
(A) preventing harm/suffering/lack etc. is good and warranted regardless of how minor the harm/suffering/lack might be, while no pleasure metric can override the merit of preventing any level/degree of harm/suffering/lack,
Or:
(B) preventing harm/suffering/lack etc. is good just in case there's a good chance that harm/suffering/lack will outweigh pleasurable experiences, and the person believes that indeed it's the case that the weight would fall on the "harm" side.
It's probably far more unusual to find people on the (A) side, there.
I'd be on the (B) side if we were talking about a huge imbalance, but I don't believe that that's the case.
Counter: You can never know how much there will be, why take the chance? If you predict wrong? Even if you think it is a low chance, is that worth it for the collateral damage?
Also, what's the point of even causing a little harm to someone who doesn't need it? What even constitutes little harm? Maybe you are the golden god and don't go through annoyances large and small throughout the day, but even minor annoyances don't need to be created for someone. Your threshold for creating harm for someone is just higher than mine. We will always disagree then.
Also, you didn't seem to answer the question about you always being in disagreeable mode. Is there ever agreement with you or do will you always focus on what is the difference. I'd just like to know so I know what to expect from these discussions with you.
I don't think that's true though. The only reason to think that would be to think there's a good reason to believe that future people will be radically different than present people, but there's no good reason to believe that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's the (A) stance.
Ok, so now what? We agree to disagree.
Sure.
I'm going to drop the other part because I think it is less persuasive and somewhat obtuse.
The part I'm saying is not obvious is that the negative utilitarian should rely upon the function of a sum to characterize the negative utilitarian function. Delving into the math aspect of the negative utilitarian we could characterize the NU-function differently.
So in the setup where NU-function is a sum we have three persons with a, b, and c suffering. The negative utilitarian chimes in that a fourth person will have d suffering, and since d is non-zero (part of the agreement in our conversation) the net suffering increases.
My point here would be to say -- why is sum the obvious function to character the NU-function? It does not seem obvious at all.
Say we have our above world with three persons, and we designate that they all have a suffering of 5, respectively. If we characterize the NU-function as an average rather than as a sum, then the anti-natalist argument does not go through universally. It would depend upon the context. In fact, if we are negative utilitarians, and we have a reasonable belief that our child's suffering will be 4 -- in the above world -- then having a child will actually lower the suffering in the world, since the average was previously 5.
It's not self-evident that the sum is the best way to characterize negative utilitarianism. So the anti-natalist would have to provide some kind of reason why, even under the pretense of accepting the negative utilitarian ethic, we should characterize the NU-function as a sum.
I would not characterize it as a sum of all persons or potential persons. Rather in the scenario of choosing whether to procreate, when considering if a new person should exist, not having someone who experiences pleasure is not incumbent. Pleasure creation is not an obligation, especially if no one exists yet. However, as long as one is preventing someone from experiencing harm, it is always good, especially in the case of someone not existing who never has to compromise short term harms for long term gains in the first place or who never has to experience the collateral damage of harm above or beyond what that person would want to contend with in any way had they been able to prevent it.
Not considering harm in the procreation scenario or only calculating an estimate of possible future harms would be putting adversity as a premium as you know you are creating a scenario where the child will have to overcome adversity in a life we know that will challenge the future person. If the person does not exist already, why create and setup this “gauntlet of adversity” situation for a new person who otherwise would not have been deprived (being nonexistent), who would sever have been harmed.
Fair enough, it seems like your argument is now somewhat different to that of Benetar and I don't particularly disagree with it. Unlike Benetar who seems to be making an asymmetry of consequence, you seem to be implying an asymmetry of merit. There are 2 asymmetries of merit that you seem to imply in your last comment that are not ever mentioned by Benetar: The Blameworthiness Asymmetry and The Praiseworthiness Asymmetry.
1. Blameworthiness Asymmetry: While creating harm can be said to be blameworthy, preventing benefit is only blameworthy if someone is deprived of that benefit.
2. Praiseworthiness Asymmetry: While preventing and alleviating harm can be said to be heroic and praiseworthy, creating benefit is only praiseworthy or heroic if someone is alleviated or protected against some harm by the benefit.
The act of reproduction can be categorized by creating harm and creating benefit that doesn't avoid or alleviate harm. If we accept the asymmetries above then we would have to conclude that reproduction can be blameworthy but it cannot ever be praiseworthy. Similarly, the act of avoiding or preventing reproduction is categorized by preventing harm and preventing benefit without deprivation. Given this, we would conclude that preventing reproduction can sometimes be praiseworthy but it can never be blameworthy.
I'm not sure if the above argument is the position you were implying in your previous comment but I actually find it convincing for now. I think it solves many of the problems that Benetar's argument has and it is compatible with my X Being argument since good results do not imply a morally praiseworthy action under this asymmetry.
Yes I can agree with this conclusion. I think your formulation of the argument makes sense. To add to this, I'd like to throw the idea out there that if anything other than harm of the future child consideration is given as a reason for reproduction, it can be considered non-moral or immoral decision and can fall into two general camps of thought- one is egoistic or self-interest and the other is Nietzschean. The egoistic group is less sophisticated in reasoning than the Nietzschean.
The egoistic group has two flavors. The first is the party of procreators that have sexual relations that lead to children by accident. Putting abortion aside, these cases have little planning or forethought and often it is quickly decided that no abortion will take place (for various reasons) and indeed, the child should be brought forth in the world. Usually post-facto reasonings of why the child being born would be a good thing ensues. They will then defer to the reasonings in the second egoistic party of procreators or in some rarer cases become indifferent to parenting all together (thus often leaving the child in harsh, uncared for conditions, unless quick adoption takes place).
The second kind of egoistic group would be ones that have children for the benefit of the idea of family itself. This cultural preference and/or biological drive (though questionable as a biological drive other than the pleasure of satisfying personal preferences or having group acceptance) is to raise a family/have children of one's own/make the grandparents happy/make a contribution of continuing the tribe/seeing one's own progeny and teaching them one's own ideas/companionship/making a family of one's own, etc. These reasons are a variety of preferences that have to do with living a certain lifestyle and revolve around happiness-through-lifestyle-choice (that of being a parent). It also has to do with the social preference and expectations to have children at a certain stage of life. Of course, the actual consideration of the new person is not in question. The child itself is not really thought about in terms of whether it would be a benefit to be brought into existence in the first place (if the alternative is that the child did not have exist at all). Rather, this type of reasoning is completely overlooked. Most people simply would not think in these terms and when presented with the idea, would consider it as not legitimate or irrelevant considerations in relation to their own lifestyle goals and the acceptance of reproduction as a desirable preference by the greater society. Whatever the case may be, the child itself is not really in the consideration of values.
The second camp is the Nietzschean camp. In this view, possible considerations of the future harm/benefit of the child have taken place beforehand. However, the conclusion is that experiencing life is beyond the idea of being harmed or not harmed. Rather, experience is put at a premium (whether it contains adversity/harm or not). Here the idea that people get to live out a story of their own is considered most valuable- even if there is harm. You see, future people in this scenario are seen as "having a chance". They have a chance to build their own life-narrative story, the argument goes. They can be that guy who writes commentary about Wittgenstein's ideas of language in a philosophical work or on a philosophy forum! They can be that guy who skis on weekends. They can be that guy who finds meaning in work. They can be that guy who updates spreadsheets, lays down concrete and rebar building structures, adventures across the world, obtains and loses love, lives a mildly uninteresting, mediocre, anxiety-inducing life for 60 years. Whatever the case may be, the parent thinks that the child will be given a chance to experience life, and write its own narrative. Thus, life is seen as a gift bestowed simply because of the opportunity to experience in the first place. You get to be the advanced ape making a show of yourself and relating with the other advanced apes in intertwined life stories!
What isn't considered in any of this is what the cost would be to a future child if it didn't exist. In all cases, the cost is obviously nothing. No person is deprived of living a life story if it didn't exist. Rather, that is something that results from being born after the fact, but doesn't have to take place. There is nothing writ-large that a being needs to exist to write a life story for itself- that something needs to be in order to experience anything at all. By preventing birth, harm is avoided for a future being with no cost. The universe doesn't weep for non-existence of consciousness. That is of course a projection from the side of the already conscious. The idea that someone needs to exist to have experiences of its own, doesn't make sense in light of the fact that no one needs to go through anything, and no actual person is harmed from not going through anything. Rather, it is more the case that humans are as uncomfortable with the idea of nothingness.
Love doesn't have to be pursued, accomplishments don't have to be won, a life story doesn't have to be lived out and shared. In fact much of life is overcoming adversities, getting over anxieties, dealing with various aspects of the givens of survival-in-a-cultural setting, maintenance of comfort levels, and alleviating boredom with entertainment. Individual preferences based on biological/socially-derived personality and broader cultural cues, fit into this framework of simple survival, comfort maintenance, and boredom-aversion. Why does someone have to live this out though in the first place? What does it matter whether someone exists to push that boulder?
No one needs to go though adversities and life experiences of overcoming-to-get-stronger, if they don't exist in the first place to need it. Why create this need for need? Why create a situation that exposes new people to lacking something that they need to fulfill? Why create a situation that exposes new people to adversity that needs to be overcome? This impulse to create these situations on behalf of someone else is more an indication of the already-living person's inability to cope with the idea of nothingness. Our restless, willful natures prevents creates the notion that a non-existent person is a sad future.. That nothingness is sad. Nothingness is nothing. A philosopher once said, the nothing "noths". Whats wrong with noth-ing? Let non-existent people stay non-existent. Why do people feel we are bearers of some Promethean fire of being that needs to be carried forth and spread? Why use future people as "bearers of knowledge" or "bearers of experience" in such a matter? Is non-existence this scary to people? Is the blessed calm of nothingness seen as a blithe that must be eradicated with the strum und drang of life? What about survival-comfort-relief-boredom-relief needs to be lived out by a future person? What pleasures need to be had, if there was no person there in the first place to care? Certainly we can see the logic that preventing harm is a good thing, and no one loses out who doesn't exist in the first place.
Surely the antinatalist must concede that they simply don’t have access to the experience of others. It is the pinnacle of arrogance to prescribe extinction by extrapolating one’s own misery, which of course is already nested in this particular existential orientation.
As I see it, the antinatalist is caught in an inbent spiral of self sustaining cynicism. There’s nothing ‘true’ about it unless you’ve already fallen in. Is it a good place to be?
Being a pussy is not good for you. I’m not being flippant. I don’t take it lightly. This sort of hypersensitivity to suffering is absolutely pathological. I was trying to stir something that I suspect is already known at a much deeper level than articulated sophistry - just a well intentioned shot in the dark.
Thank you for the clarification.
In regards to the egoistic reasons for reproducing, I think a similar critique could be made for non-reproducers. Certainly, having children could inflict you with a variety of psychological stresses and other types of emotional suffering. In addition, it deprives you of time, money, and freedom. I think most people choose to reproduce or not to reproduce for largely egoistical reasons. That's because humans, in general, are egoistic or egocentric by nature. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with egoism or egocentrism; as long as nobody is harmed in the process. This is where the antinatalist position has an advantage for me; most people think that egoistical behavior is only wrong when someone else is exploited or harmed for someone else's selfish benefit. That implies that selfishly choosing not to have children is not wrong, but selfishly choosing to have children can be wrong. Having said that, I'm not convinced that selfishly having children is always wrong(although it can never be right or good to do).
Quoting schopenhauer1
The second type of egoism that you described really sounds more like egocentrism to me. Unlike egoism which concerns itself purely with self interest, egocentrism concerns itself with the interest of the individual and the interests of the loved ones that the individual has. A person that wants to reproduce to benefit his family, tribe, or country is more accurately categorized as egocentric. Although, I don't think benefiting your family necessarily justifies harming someone and it could never be praiseworthy to harm someone to benefit your family(unless you are also alleviating harm with the benefit).
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree that this argument isn't particularly convincing. I think if someone can't specify what makes life itself or experience itself special, then it's hard to see what point they are trying to make. It's obvious why we love pleasure and hate suffering. It isn't so obvious why we should assume that life or experience is valuable for its own sake.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree that we should look at the bad side of many common human ambitions. Ambitions like having lots of love and having lots of accomplishments have a dark side to them. Love usually eventually leads to heartbreak when it goes poorly and if it goes well it leads to bereavement(you will either watch your loved ones die in the end or they will watch you die). I don't think that it's obvious that the warmth and bliss of love is worth the immense grief that it can cause. Accomplishments have a different problem; once you accomplish something, you feel good about it for a little while but then life continues and you continue to feel inadequate. Similarly, how you feel about an accomplishment has to do with your surroundings. If you are always around people who are successful, then you will always undervalue your accomplishments. If you are always around drug addicted failures, then you feel proud of yourself simply because you're not that bad of a failure. In conclusion, if you want to feel accomplished just hang around losers all the time :).
http://www.vhemt.org/les.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Human_Extinction_Movement
Apparently he was voluntarily vasectomised at the tender age of 25, and it seems that he campaigns a lot.
So I think we should see what he has to say, as he is an active antinatalist, not some theorist.
If the children are harmed by being brought into existence when the alternative is nothing, then nothing is better alternative as it is always good not to be harmed.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Yes, exposing someone to all the forms of harm life has to offer for a lifestyle choice of being a parent is at odds with the principle of preventing harm is always good, especially if there is no one there to be deprived.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Yes, somehow the idea is that people need to go through the "gauntlet of life". They need to experience their own versions of suffering.. but there is no real justification other than life is somehow inherently better than non-existence. It is a weak argument. It also disregards collateral damage of people who aren't perfectly attuned to the "right" kind of adversity that is just challenging enough to be fun to overcome. That is to say, people may have undo suffering of mental and physical illness, anxieties that exceed "normal parameters", life experiences that are fare more stressful than would be desired by that person. But even if we were to take ALL that collateral damage out, even adversity itself, in its "normal" limits doesn't NEED to be something to go through if the alternative is nothingness. That is to say no actual person who is denied or who cares in the first place.
I think we've had a pretty good conversation about this topic. I definitely learned something new in our discussion and perhaps we can future discussions that are just as good. I'm thinking about potentially writing a long philosophical essay on antinatalism and you have given me a potential new idea for one of the arguments. I think we've said everything that needs to be said about this topic for now though so I have nothing more to contribute. Feel free to contribute more if you have something else to say about this topic though. I would love to hear if you have any other ideas or considerations on the topic of reproduction
I guess I'd go along with the other line of thought I dropped with @khaled with you, then. This seems to be the central belief by which you are appealing to anti-natalism here. I'd say to you that you are directing your actions towards nothing, in the event of anti-natalism, and so it hardly counts as a good. There must be some other belief at play other than the preventing harm from someone -- maybe this is where your thinking starts, and in taking stock of the world you note that we all are suffering. But the belief changes from what is a fairly commonplace belief to something else that rejects the entirety of the world because of suffering.
You do not need direct access to a persons experiences to make a plausible claim about other peoples suffering.
Also there are peoples own reports of their suffering, suicide attempts and successful suicides, statistics on depression and famine etc. I don't know of any antinatalists who does not measure their position only using their own personal suffering and their own speculation and intuitions.
I think the real pinnacle of arrogance is assuming you deserve to be able to create someone else, to force him or her into existence and control them and to decide standards for them and decide how much suffering and dysfunction they should tolerate.
You're not doing anything to anyone prior to them existing, hence you can't "force someone into existence."
You are causing them to exist. Combining your DNA and you partners is using physical forces to make someone exist.
Like the way a potter forces preexisting matter i.e. clay.
Yes, but that's not using force on someone.
I think if your offspring share your values and preferences that is either, coincidence, indoctrination or genetics.
I do not belief my own desires and values are adequate grounds to make someone else exist.
I didn't make that claim but I think this is a semantic quibble. Physical Force including biochemical aspects is the only way to create a child.
There is no sense in which the child is choosing or that nature is forcing the parent automatically or that the child has expressed a preference and made a contract.
There is also hypothetical preferences and probability about the future. I don't need to throw a brick at a window to make a safe assumption it will shatter. A child does not need to exists for you to make hypothetical about the nature of existence based just on prior peoples experiences.
Right, but there's no sense in which the child is being forced, either. It can't do anything, and we can't do anything to it, until it exists.
Making the child exist is an act of force and then its experiences are forced on it (by its nervous system etc).
I don't see how you can describe the creation of a child as not an act of force.
To create someone who has his or her own desires and volition undermines their desires and volition because they exist based on the parents desires.
I just think it is forcing something on someone because once they start to exist experiences they didn't choose are forced on them because of a decision by the parent.
Now imagine I asked you "Do you want a massage"? You would likely not want me to start massaging you without your consent and you would probably want me to find out your desire. But a child does not have this luxury. The fact the child cannot express desires or preferences before you created it means that anything experiences initially is forced onto it.
Most people really value consent but then are happy to create a child knowing it did not consent to the things it inevitably experiences. I have had numerous experiences I didn't consent to, like having a dysfunctional family, going to church several days a week throughout childhood, going to school and being bullied etc. To me creating a child is the biggest infringement of consent with life long consequences.
I think the status of a child prior to birth is irrelevant and a quibble though. We are quite capable of imagining before we act. I don't have to rape someone before deciding rape is wrong. There are lot of valuable concepts including numbers that don't exist physically.
I understand but that makes having children even MORE immoral. My parents were part of the cause I was born into this world where suffering is possible. Now imagine if everyone in every possible life story where suffering is possible decided not to have children (became antinatalists). In that case ONLY life stories where no suffering exists would be left. Therefore let's start by preventing birth in this world so that fewer people/sous/experiencers whatever you want to call them have to experience the unpleasantness of a life story with pain
Personally, I am not an antinatalist but only under certain conditions. I believe the only way pulling the switch, in that case, is moral is if you are willing to put the kid back in the cryo chamber if he asks (Euthanasia). If you are not willing to make that commitment then no, you should not pull that switch
No because it's a fact that the Neanderthal all killed themselves because they realized that they lacked a decent tumble dryer! Oh how great their suffering must've been!! :cry:
It's not an act of force on the child. You can't do anything to the child until it exists. It seems like that's going in one ear and out the other.
It is an act of force that directly impacts the child and has lifelong consequences not of their choosing.
After you have been born you have experiences that you did not chose after you have lived for several years and when you reach the age you can think about suicide having to kill yourself to escape from a life you didn't chose is another things forced on you.
Another example is people who have genetic illnesses that will almost certainly be passed onto a child.The parents know before hand what condition the child will likely inherit and have to deal with.
Because the thing being created has volition and desires these can inevitably be thwarted as soon as the person starts to exist.
Forcing someone into existence is not forcing something on someone but it is an act of force to begin somethings existence without its consent. So any onus is on the creator.
I am not sure what rests on your quibble.
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They were part of the physical mechanism, not really the cause.
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Do I blame my parents? Of course. …for being parents when they were entirely unqualified to be parents. But I only blame them in the limited context of this physical world. They’re better described as one shabby and despicable part of the resulting mechanism than as part of the cause. Ultimately, they aren’t the reason why I was born, or why I was born in a world like this one, or why I was born to such lousy parents.
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Why did I have parents like them? Well, most a likely a world with people like them, in general, and parents like them, in particular, are part of the physical world that’s consistent with the person that I was. …the person who was/is the protagonist of the life-experience story of which I and my surroundings are the two mutually-complementary parts. I mean, it was a matter of what kind of people would beget the person that I was in that hypothetical experience-story.
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For example, if someone is a fiend, then what kind of parents are likely to have produced a fiend like that? They’re part of the story. Presto—parents made to order.
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And, by the way, I’m not saying that every life is a reincarnation. There’d have been an initial first-life, one that isn’t a continuation of someone of a previous story.
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But I suggest that there’s no reason why anyone would be born into a societal-world like this one, unless they’d gotten themselves into a major moral-snarl, over a number of lifetimes, digging themselves deeper each time.
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Why would someone’s first life be in a societal-world like this one? I say it wouldn’t.
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Who knows what we did, in order to be born in a societal-world like this one. …but I’d say it wasn’t very nice.
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What are you in for?
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Who knows.
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Wait. Right there you’re saying a contradiction. That’s contrary to the definition and nature of hypothetical stories. There are infinitely-many, and there are all of them, including the bad societal worlds in which hardly anyone is an anti-natalist. …like this one, for example.
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There inevitably was/is this hypothetical physical world (…and infinitely other bad societal worlds with reproduction going on).
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That’s impossible, because there are all of the hypothetical life-experience stories, including the ones that are in bad societal-worlds with reproduction. There’s no such thing as “if the people in those worlds didn’t reproduce”, because that isn’t the nature of those stories (…of which there are inevitably all kinds, including all the ones without many antinatalists.) The “if” that you refer to is about a limited separate class of the worlds of “If”.
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I agree in the sense that we don’t want to be part of the mechanism for a bad-story. Yes there inevitably are life-experience-stories in bad societal-worlds, and some of those stories can be quite bad. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be part of such a story about the beginning of a life in a bad societal-world.
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We aren’t without responsibility for our actions in this life, and I acknowledge that.
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So, I agree with anti-natalism in that sense.
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…aside from the pragmatic fact that it’s better if we don’t make this planet too crowded.
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Michael Ossipoff
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
But of course such a world can't be the setting for a life-experience story. ...any more than could a physical universe that can't support life.
Michael Ossipoff
Well, maybe a world of immortal robots.
Michael Ossipoff
I’m saying the antinatalist position is untenable for non-pussies. It’s radical avoidance of potential suffering at the cost of literally everything. Bad approach to life, I promise.
It’s reasonable to decide you shouldn’t have kids. But it’s villain-level confused narcissism to think you’ve discovered that nobody should.
It doesn't directly impact the child prior to or even at the moment of conception.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Consent is a category error because there's nothing to grant or withhold consent.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It's not an act of force against someone a la it being a consent issue, which is the emotional conflation you're shooting for by using that language.
It's an act of force in the way that opening a beer bottle is an act of force. In other words, it takes an application of physical forces to produce a particular effect.
I'm not sure what you're responding to. How else than what do I propose "someone do ethics"?
Again, the way that everyone really does ethics, whether they believe/realize this or not, is by intuiting how they feel about interpersonal behavior.
And yeah, different people feel different ways about the same things.
Re the lion thing, lions aren't making choices that make them culpable for attacking someone, and I wouldn't think it's cool to lock someone in a cage nonconsensually, lion or not. Not because of some overarching principle, though.
What agenda would you put above preventing suffering in the unique case of procreation. In this situation you can prevent, all future suffering for a new person altogether, with no actual person but the parents' own projection deprived. Sometimes commonplace beliefs are misguided, unreflective, and sometimes the truth is hard to hear because it is depressing. No one needs to be born to carry out the parents' idea of what is valuable. De facto, at the least, the parents are unintentionally putting adversity above harm as adversity is very much a part of the equation of life. If you think adversity, or the collateral damage of too much undo adversity, is not something to consider, then you fall into the Nietzschean camp.. See above in my correspondence with TheHedoMinimalist here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/236652. You think experience should be lived out for the sake of experience, even though there is no a priori reason for experience to be lived out.
It should also be considered, that if we are going to do stochastic models (which I don't think even need to be considered in this case of procreation), then it should be noted that we live in an on average mediocre average universe with a mix and range of harms, goods, and for the most part it is very neutral to mildly annoying/negative for many on a daily basis. Sometimes there's peaks and flow states, genuine catharsis in laughter and entertainment, etc. but on the whole very mediocre. Now remember, this isn't even something I consider because fully preventing harm is enough a reason for me to consider, but I don't see the carrying on of a mediocre existence as moral either. Since we know this universe is a mixed bag, that is even enough to prevent future people from experiencing it. Why would I want to promote the agenda of a mediocre range of good and bad experiences for a future person? This imperfect version of the "preventing harm above all else" is just a more pedestrian way to get the idea across for those who like to "weigh" the good and bad, which again, is not the utilitarian version I think is appropriate for this procreational scenario (though it may be for those already born looking to weight outcomes and have no other recourse since already alive).
This is rhetorical blather. You know that procreation is the direct cause of someone else's existence. This whole "there's nobody there until they are there thing" denies the very cause of the person being there to exist in the first place. And being there in the first place is what exposes someone to the adversity/harms of life. That is the point. Now decisions HAVE to be made. Adversity HAS to be overcome. Try a new argument.
He said that you're forcing something upon someone by procreating. You're not. "You're forcing something on someone by procreating" is ontological blather.
"Procreation is the direct causes of someone" is fine. Maybe he should have said that instead.
I'm not denying anything about what causes someone to exist. I made that clear by saying "It's an act of force in the way that opening a beer bottle is an act of force. In other words, it takes an application of physical forces to produce a particular effect."
I'm objecting to this language: "You're forcing something on someone by procreating."
My line of thinking here isn't about promoting an agenda, but rather what it takes for there to be an agenda in the first place. If there is no one for whom we are preventing suffering, then we are directing our actions towards who isn't real. It's not that we're preventing suffering, it's that we're so against the world that we find ourselves in that it would be better for it to be gone. In your response, I believe, I have support for this in your language here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
The prevention of suffering isn't the belief your anti-natalist position comes from, but rather your belief about the state of the world. It's that there is suffering in the first place, for you at least, that makes the world something worth anihiliating as long as we do so without causing yet even more suffering overtly.
And that's a very different argument than relying upon the belief that suffering is bad and should be prevented (to the extent possible).
No, you are purposely using my argument against me in a way I overtly said in the last post it shouldn't be used. I purposely said that this is an imperfect argument for the reasons you brought up. Since this is about the state of the world in the sense of stochastic harms and goods that can befall someone in greater or lesser variance it makes the argument hinge on statistics rather than axiological principles of harm. Hence, the more absolute and stronger argument is preventing suffering, period.
You say that there is no agenda, but I don't see how that is the case. If preventing harm isn't the number one priority, then it is something else, and that something else is the agenda. It can be seeing someone go through the encultration process, grow, learn, have to navigate the world. This requires at least some level of adversity, Beyond the usual adversity of encultration is the collateral damage of unforeseen and undo suffering beyond that. Either way, both forms of adversity are real, and they are being put as a priority above the principle of preventing harm. Providing opportunities for pleasure for someone who does not exist to need them would also be a moot point, if that person is also exposed to real harms/adversity. Sure, this is about what one prioritizes, but it is hard to justify anything other than preventing harm for those who do not already exist to need anything in the first place.
Prevent suffering. (injunction)
Universal birth-prevents fulfills this better than anything else, because then there is no suffering.
So, we should not have children to fulfill this injunction.
That's what I pick up from what you are saying. What I'm getting at is that the injunction "prevent suffering" is developed in a world of people, people who are real, who feel suffering. So universal birth-prevention undermines the very basis on which such an injunction is formulated -- and therefore does not prevent suffering as much as it annihilates our ability to prevent suffering in the first place, and so does not fulfill the (commonly accepted) injunction. Universal birth-prevention is aimed at, given its consequences, the feelings of people who will not exist, which is absurd given that our ethical actions are not normally directed at what will not exist.
With birth comes real suffering, but without it comes nothing at all.
What? I need to go back and read whatever post this is supposed to be referring to, but "the more 'absolute' and stronger moral argument" isn't going to follow from anything.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The only way any moral stances are "justified" period is by someone feeling however they do.
That's a good point in that "preventing suffering" is incoherent if no one exists. People need to exist for preventing suffering to amount to anything at all.
I haven't read every post in the thread. Did you ever say what your personal view is about all of this stuff?
Thanks. :)
That's what I think, at least. I'd characterize the effects of the universal anti-natalist as not so much preventing suffering, but rather preventing life -- and therefore preventing the ability to prevent suffering.
@khaled has said that he is interested in arguments, from the negative utilitarian position, that would counter the AN argument, and that he personally does not subscribe to this view.
I wasn't addressing you. Stay in your lane, or make a more clear post to respond to.
I've already explained my position on that. We agreed to disagree on the "feeling" of the matter. And then you reopened this for rhetorical points. Good job.
Ok, you have two arguments going on there and they are kind of separate ones.
One argument is that by preventing people, the injunction itself is annihilated. I just don't see the problem. If there are no people, the injunction is unnecessary. As long as there is the option for procreation, would this be an issue. This is supposed to be some sort of "tree falls in the woods" conundrum that I don't think really has any bearing because as stated, only in cases of decisions of procreation exist does the injunction matter. Otherwise, it's not an issue.
The other argument is that it does not fulfill commonly accepted injunctions of aiming at things that do exist, but rather it aims at the feelings of people who will not exist. Again, I don't see a problem. The people that could exist will suffer, don't have make this condition an actuality. It is odd because it is about procreation which is the only instance when life as a whole can be considered rather than various decisions of someone who is already born. This is not about improving or getting a better angle on some issue in this or that situation, but situations as a whole. That does make this unique which is why I see it as THE philosophical issue, more important than other ethical matters. Should we expose new people to suffering is the issue? However, what other priorities should take place. You didn't propose anything, but if the answer is other than harm, clearly an agenda is there, unstated. The agenda could be to form a family, to watch a new person overcome the adversities of life, etc. Either way, the parent is wanting something to happen from this birth. The non-intuitive notion, that is still valid despite being non-intuitive or unfamiliar, is that anything other than preventing harm does not need to take place, if there was no actual person to need that particular agenda to take place.
Right. I was curious what his view actually is, though.
Someone needs to learn how public boards work. ;-)
If you want to address just one person, private message them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's fine, but I'm going to point out the facts when you seem to suggest stuff that's wrong.
Yes, I know how they work. Certain people want to post like a troll to incite rather than insight. Could just be your online or real life personality \_(?)_/¯
Quoting Terrapin Station
But you haven't, so it's extra annoying ;). We addressed this when I actually agreed that this was about prioritizing what was important- based on someone's intuition or feeling. The axiology falls from there. You have not presented anything earth shattering :roll: . I find preventing harm a pretty decent place to start, in light of the fact that no one needs X agenda if they don't exist to need it already.
Do you define "trolling" so that trolling is possible if one is being honest? Just curious. And yeah, I'm exactly the same online and offline.
Re the other part, "when you seem to suggest," which is necessarily about how I'm interpreting what you're writing. If you don't disagree with me, then why respond with a bickerish post? You don't want to ever agree with me?
I don't know if it's an issue as much as I would say that you should rephrase your argument -- because it's not the injunction that matters to you. Suffering matters -- suffering matters so much to yourself that you believe people shouldn't even exist because their life is bound up with suffering. But that isn't really what most people mean when they say they believe that preventing suffering is good.
So saying that preventing suffering is good sort of conflates, or at least confuses, where you're coming from -- it's not a commonly held belief, but rather something that is specific to the anti-natalist. The presence of suffering is so bad that life shouldn't exist. Whereas most people see the worth in preventing harm, they also don't think that preventing all of human life from continuing is a good way to go about that - and I'd argue from these considerations that it isn't from some kind of problem of consistency, but because your belief is actually very different from what people really mean by saying that the prevention of suffering is a good.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The issue, at least from my perspective, is that you're treating non-existent persons as the same as persons. These are persons who will not be, given your prescription, so it's not even the same as considering people who will be -- such as responsibilities to future generations. From this post I gather that the difference between these persons and fictional persons is that you believe that procreation is the only action where the entirety of life can be considered.
If I'm right in reading you so, then that's progress! :D I did say before that you at least needed some reason to differentiate the two from each other.
But here again I think we can see why it is the anti-natalist argument tends to fall on deaf ears. Why does it matter that we are able to evalaute the entirety of life? And, in fact, don't most persons view the entirety of life as a good thing? Perhaps if they thought suffering was so bad that any amount of it is a good reason to eliminate it by any means necessary they wouldn't think so. But most people are more tolerant of the existence of suffering than this. To the point that, in spite of life being full of suffering -- and I am not at all convinced that there is more pleasure than suffering in life, so please don't mistake me as giving the usual utilitarian retort that the pleasure outweighs suffering -- we also value life as an end unto itself.
And also I really don't think I'm misrepresenting you at all in saying that your target isn't suffering as much as it is life itself. As you say -- procreation is the only instance when life as a whole can be considered. So your target is life, not suffering -- suffering, in any amount, is what makes life bad, for you, but your injunction is not "prevent suffering" as much as it is "prevent life, because any suffering at all is bad, and this is the only way to eliminate suffering".
Does that strike you as right or wrong, in terms of my depiction of your argument?
By entirety of life, I mean, you have the unique ability to prevent suffering for an entire life. This valuing life as an end unto itself you mention as a reason, can stand in place of the "agenda" the parents have in mind when creating a child. In this case, life itself is the agenda, and the child is the bearer for this agenda. The child needs to be born in order for the agenda to be carried forward- that is life itself. Why does life itself need to be experienced by a person though? This idea coupled with the idea that no person needs anything, if they are not already born in the first place to care about it or be deprived of it, is my point. It is all about the parents' perceived loss of some future outcome that they want to see- again the agenda. There is no person deprived of this benefit (what I call agenda). There is no need for the need for an agenda (to the potential person who does not exist to care)
Just because most people are tolerant of suffering, does not mean that it should be perpetrated on behalf of a future person- that is to say, that it a new person should be exposed to it for X sake (in your case to experience life itself- but you can put ANYTHING in that agenda).
Quoting Moliere
Well, if life itself didn't have suffering, then that wouldn't be a target. What is it about life itself that needs to be carried out in light of the fact that no one needs anything if there is no one there to care or be deprived in the first place? That is my question to you? Isn't it all about the projection of the parent in any of these cases you could possibly present? Why does the child have to bear out this projection?
There are things, probably lots of things, you would not like forced on you as an adult.
Now it seems your using the excuse of the child's initial non existence to impose these on someone.
For example I was forced to go to church several times the week my entire childhood which was a grim joyless environment and read the bible and pray every day. As an adult I have never chosen to do anything like that. It is something I would never chose but my status as a child meant I was powerless.
You are using the "nonexistence" status of the unborn so as not to have to accept that you are imposing on them a soon as they come to exist and mitigate your actions even though you can well predict potential preferences.
It is not acceptable to rape someone when they are unconscious because of the impact when they become conscious. The initial non existence of a person does not justify what happens to them after they start to exist.
Even if someone is not an antinatalist they can accept that the child did not chose to be born or did not state a preference for this life or sign a contract with society. I would be happy if people just recognized that dynamic and its ethical ramifications.
Someone might believe that after creating a child, the child will live for ever. This life is temporary but they will go on to an eternal heavenly afterlife so there life will over all be amazing.
This is a genuine hope some people claim to have. But it is a dangerous optimism with no evidence to support it (depending on how you analyse the evidence claims)
I think to have a child on this kind of worldview would require strong evidence and more evidence than has been presented.but still it would not justify a free for all of unregulated procreation.
I find it harder to understand why someone without these kind of beliefs would have child, some of these people believing in no innate purpose or meaning, no afterlife, no God, no freewill etc.
I think religion might encourage people to have children because it is based on a mixture of false hope and ignorance and that rationality and inquiry does not lead people to have lots of children if any.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No they WERE the reason you were born in THIS world. Had they not decided to have birth you could have been born into a world of immortal robots. They're not the reason you're born but they're the reason you were born HERE. (I still don't really accept your premise that a person is the cause of his own birth or part of the cause but I'm rolling with it)
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Whoa whoa whoa there I'ma have to give you a speeding ticket. Why'd you turn Hindu so fast what the heck? What does one's moral actions in his current life story have to do with him reincarnating? You never said people reincarnate. In fact, according to your theory then what follows death is NOT reincarnation but the repetition of the exact same life like in Nietzsche's book thus spake zarathustra. Since you're the cause of your own life story then after death, you should cause the same life story again. You don't move on to another life story. Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I might have misspoke there. What I meant was that
P1: if THIS world turned antinatalist it would reduce the chances of someone getting born here.
P2: there are worlds where no pain is possible
P3: pain is possible in this world
C: this world should turn antinatalist to reduce the number of people that have to experience pain
Your logic would still make an argument for antinatalism
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Wait so you're an antinatalist now? I thought you were trying to argue AGAINST it
It's like this: is it moral to bring a child into being just to torture them? After all, there existed no child beforehand to protect from suffering so I'm not really saving anyone from suffering am I?
The answer is obviously not because it's just like the gun example, the problem isn't the "giving birth" part it's the "they'll suffer if you do" part. Just like the problem isn't the "pull your finger back part" but the "they'll die" part
When antinatalists say "preventing suffering" they don't mean the suffering of a magical baby-ghost. They mean the suffering that WOULD occur if that baby is born. If there was a way to KNOW that a baby will be happy and love life forever if it's born then it's fine to give birth to it but that's unknowable and it's immoral to take such a risk when you're not the one that's going to be paying the price but your child. It's like how it's immoral for even the best juggler in the world to juggle babies over a fire. Sure he probably won't mess up, but the problem is if he DOES he can't pay compensation. If he chooses to juggle his own laptops for example, that's perfectly morally acceptable, because he'd only be harming himself if he messes up.
This is why my view is that the only way giving birth is moral is if the parent is willing to help his child with assisted suicide if he asks. The parent took a risk and if it doesn't work out then he has to ensure that his child has the least painful exit possible
If you give birth: Someone is harmed
Thus:
If you don't give birth: Someone is saved from harm
Even if you don't accept this asymmetry (which I'll be honest I don't myself but keep citing it because I like role-playing as an antinatalist) it's still
Give birth: bad, good
Don't give birth: neutral neutral
So what right do you have to take a risk with someone else's life like that? Destroying someone's house while they're asleep and saying "There was no one to be harmed by what I was doing (because they were asleep at the moment) so what I did doesn't harm anyone" and then refusing to fix what you broke on the basis that they never said no to you. Of course there IS a chance that person actually likes his house nearly destroyed and so wouldn't ask you to fix what you broke but you have to still be willing to fix what you broke if he asks. On the other hand, you could have not taken that risk of him disliking or liking the house to begin with and not destoryed it (Neutral, Neutral)
This is why the only way birth can be moral is if you are willing to "fix what you broke". If you're not, don't give birth
Thanks for answering. That's an interesting view at least. ;-)
That wouldn't come up very often (a kid going to their parent with a suicide request), but I suppose that doesn't matter.
Quoting khaled
Re this, of course no one was in a previous state of not being alive.
To use an amusing earlier example, though, if pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger meant that the person who was "shot" would have to do their laundry, should it be a crime to shoot someone?
I’m attacking the position with an experimental approach because (honestly) I suspect this sort of view is a pathology of the logos. Reason alone never seems to untangle it for the afflicted.
Here though, let me reiterate something important. There is an absolutely crucial distinction between the certainty that I should not have children and the certainty that nobody should. The former is fine and vasectomy or w/e makes sense. The latter is exactly the type of narcissism that serves as a precursor to the worst kinds of atrocity.
The moral principle of preventing suffering is a byproduct of humanity’s life affirming orientation across an enormous span of time. It exists in a context. It is not a standalone axiom of the universe. To turn it against life itself is mere rhetorical sleight of hand and this is plainly obvious to most of us.
There is nothing about life itself that needs to be carried out, because needs only happen within life -- just like suffering only happens in life. Valuing life isn't an ends-to-means kind of care, so it doesn't make sense that the child is "saddled" with the desires of some parent just by the mere fact that they are born.
Not to mention that this is kind of far astray from suffering and has more to do with valuing autonomy and individuality.
Quoting schopenhauer1
For me, then, this is reverts back to thinking of un-real persons as receiving some kind of benefit, which is just absurd. I'd say that valueing life isn't the sort of value that one is doing for the sake of which -- hence why it seems strange to me to say it's an agenda. The child is not a means to an end.
Why does the suffering of a person matter? Why should autonomy figure in our moral reasoning?
Of course there is no why. All reasoning comes to an end, including moral reasoning -- and the sorts of appeals being made here are not being made for some other reason. Suffering is bad, life is good, autonomy should be respected. These aren't values of the ends-means variety, but are the values by which we reason about how to act. They are a kind of terminus to moral or ethical reasoning.
The big difference here is not an answer to these questions, but the degree of attachment you happen to feel to these sorts of things. You don't feel attachment to life, or at least not enough to balance out your attachment to the badness of suffering -- suffering is so bad, and a necessary part of life, that life does not have value for you to the degree it has for others.
But is there really an answer you can provide to the answer of "why?" other than that suffering is really, really bad?
Click on my highlighted name and you should be able to read my argument to you:
Quoting Moliere
Actually all I'm doing is stressing a very technical ontological point. You're not actually doing anything to anyone, consensually or not, prior to their existence, because there is no one to do anything to.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
What I think is worth looking at here is why that experience was presumably so traumatic for you that it would lead you to thinking that if other people would have to go through it, it's better if they simply don't exist at all.
And something more specifically that's worth looking at there is this: some people can get something of value out of any experience--they can see positives in any experience, they can parse the experience differently while they're in it so that they get something of value out of it--perhaps even by mentally subverting it, focusing attention on things that one enjoys, seeing the humor in it, etc, they can treat every situation as one where something is learned and experience is gained, where those are seen as positives in and of themselves, and so on.
So in your case, what made the difference between being able to see the positive sides of having to go to church, etc. and seeing it as instead so traumatic that you'd recommend no one ever have kids because of the possibility that some other kid will have to do something like go to church?
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Aside from the fact that you're not seeing the distinction between whether a person exists or not (you're thinking of it simply as a question of whether someone is conscious--that's not the issue, the issue is that you can't do anything, pro or con, to a nonexistent), even if that were a good analogy, I don't have anything resembling conventional views on stuff like that, but I don't want to get into details on anything too controversial, because then that's all that anyone can ever focus on. (I've had that situation on message boards before.)
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Again, this is a category error, because there's not something to make a choice. It's not the case that you're doing something nonconsensually to anything.
This doesn't make sense to me. Suffering and needs happen within life. Do not "saddle" a child with the burdens of life by procreating them into existence is the argument. As far as the parents' desires- what I meant was that if a child does note experience whatever X agenda (pleasure, experience for its own sake, etc.) that is no loss for the potential child, only for the parent who is projecting what the child is missing. Other than that possible confusion, I don't understand your claim here.
Quoting Moliere
Well, I have mentioned that it is not just preventing suffering, there is a component that you are also not creating suffering on behalf of someone else so the child can live out X agenda (pleasure, fulfill a role in a family, etc). Again, the kicker here that you might not take into consideration is that no actual child is deprived of whatever X agenda that they might miss that the parent had hoped for the child.
Quoting Moliere
I certainly hope the child isn't a means to an ends, but unfortunately, to the procreational parents of the child, that is what it becomes before its birth. The placeholder of that potential child is the reasons it should be procreated in the first place (to experience life, to create a family, etc.). It becomes the bearer of whatever agenda reasoning the parent had in mind for why the child was to be born, at the cost of preventing a person who will suffer.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, as I stated to Terrapin, at the end of the day, these kind of axiologies are based on various ways we feel about the values they are based on. The value of preventing ALL future suffering at the cost of nothing FOR NO PARTICULAR PERSON, and the value of not creating suffering on the behest of someone else so that they can carry out someone else's vision of the agenda of what is valuable (pleasure, experiencing life, enculutraing, overcoming adversity, etc.) is what matters in this axiology. What I think gives strength to this argument over all others is the fact that there is NO COST. There is NO COST because no actual person is deprived of goods, but all the benefit of not being harmed would be the case. Sure, this means that all other aspects of experiencing life are considered not as important, but what does it matter to a person not born in the first place?
Also, the lesser but still notable value (that you pointed out) that the child isn't being used as a bearer of the parental agenda of values that they think should take place for that new individual is also important here.
Lastly, the collateral damage of undo suffering that happens to some degree (sometimes to the extremes) is always something to consider. But this is an imperfect argument because based on statistical weights of future outcomes more than any hardcoded axiological value to base it on.
Exactly! :D It does not matter until the child is born. Mattering can only happen if there is a someone. There is a cost associated with your axiology -- the cost is life. And people do, in fact, value life. For yourself this seems like no cost because life is not worth much. But for most that is just not so.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yeah, but why? This connects to what I was saying later about how people value life -- not for some end or other, but unto itself. There isn't an agenda, it's just something considered vauable -- that has currency. So it's not about a deprivation or a benefit to some non-entity. Valuing life isn't really about what we are doing to non-entities. The consideration isn't about saddling or burdening someone else with the horrrors of life.
Life itself is just valuable, so procreation is as a relative good. That's the whole of it. Just like suffering has no real why behind it, but is generally seen as something that is worthwhile to avoid, prevent, or lessen.
Well, part of the argument is where benefits of life (like I guess, life itself and pleasure) do not matter unless there is someone there to be deprived. However it is an absolute always good to prevent harm even if no actual person existed for this benefit That is the asymmetry part of the argument. Pleasure is only good for those who exist. Someone being prevented from harm when they otherwise did not need to be harmed is always good, period (thus necessary harms of adversity to get stronger are moot points pre-birth).
Quoting Moliere
Yes there certainly is an agenda- the agenda of being born to experience life. That is what the parent is projecting on behalf of another person, despite the fact that existence has non-trivial harms. Guess what though, being not born is not a harm, it is not a bad. Nothing is lost by not being born for any particular person. Certainly, suffering is prevented though which is always good.
Quoting Moliere
I see no need to put life with harms above preventing harm. The only person who loses out is the sadness of the parent for not fulfilling their projected value of life for its own sake.
Then the same question remains. Why is life considered more important than preventing harm, when no actual person is losing out only the parent's sadness of not fuliflling projected value of life.
I suppose I'd just say this asymmetry is false, then. Or, at least, I do not believe in the asymmetry between these. Preventing harm is only important if someone is there for harm to be prevented. And, even then, preventing harm is also a relative good -- causing harm can be the right thing to do, in certain circumstances. This is because all ethical claims rely upon there being ethical agents; there is no absolute or ultimate ethical rule which must be satisfied, come what may, even if we do not exist. Ethics are a human concern, and so eliminating the agent from which they spring sort of undercuts the very basis of any ethical claim.
I know you're not trying to do this, but it's worth noting how difficult it is to state something like you want to state here without suggesting the idea of doing something to someone who doesn't exist yet.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nothing can be any loss or gain or anything to a "potential child."
Quoting schopenhauer1
If Jim and Janis want to have a child but do not because of social pressures (maybe even a law) against it, doesn't that create suffering for them?
Not in the circumstance of no person existing at all (but has a potential to ). In cases of potentiality of possible people, there is an absolute way to prevent all harm, with no relative trade-offs that affect a person.
Quoting Moliere
This doesn't make sense. It again values life itself as something that must be had in the first place. Ethics is about right course of actions. If there are people around then follow the right action. If there are no people around, ethics does not matter. People don't need to exist for ethics Rather, if people around, ethics then can take place. There is a big difference. We don't live to be bearers of existence, or bearers of ethics. We just happen to live and thus exist and think about ethical concerns.
:lol:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Which is factually incorrect. Things are only good or bad to particular people who exist and who feel that that thing is good or bad.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, to people who want to have a child, not having one, where that's not by their choice, is suffering. Why wouldn't you care about alleviating the suffering of people who actually exist?
Correct.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, there is a component that the suffering is on behalf of someone else. If someone suffers cause they can't do an action that will cause suffering to others, that is still not a good thing that takes place, as it is causing the suffering for someone else. The kicker again, is that someone else did not need to suffer..unlike people who are already born that may need some type of adversity to get to a stronger outcome.
The terminus is preventing harm with no cost to any particular person. I cannot conjure an infinite amount of reasons. That is the starting place. Who created the first cause.. etc. So at the end of the day, no argument can go beyond the values of the ethical premise. We discussed this and something we agree with to that small extent.
The suffering isn't on behalf of someone else, it's their personal suffering, due to their desires not being met.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You have no idea that the action will cause suffering to others. That's speculation. Meanwhile, there are existent people who really are suffering because they can't have a kid through no choice of their own.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not being able to have a kid when you want one is a cost to a particular person.
Not that that has to do with what you were commenting on. "Preventing harm" is only categorically good to the individuals who feel that it's good. It's simply false to suggest that it can somehow be good outside of that.
No I mean, the import of the argument relies on creating harm for someone else.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Then their suffering is their own and not exposing a lifetime of suffering for another- with no cost to any particular person (that is to say an actual child). It's not like the child already exists and there is a relative trade off.
The "import of the argument"? What argument? We're simply talking about people suffering or not. There are actual people who suffer (and who would) if they can't (or couldn't) have a child for physical or social reasons. That's not an argument. It's a fact about people suffering, a fact about a cost (in terms of suffering).
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's their own suffering and that's a cost. They ARE actual children.
So exposing a new person to all possible suffering it may incur in order to alleviate the suffering of a present person on one particular issue, is justified? That makes no sense to me.
If your goal is to reduce suffering, and there's a chance that the child won't experience suffering, at least not anywhere near the actually existent people who are suffering (because they can't have a kid), then it should make sense to you, because that could easily result in less suffering. That is, it should make sense to you if your goal really is to reduce suffering.
Preventing all harm to whom, though?
I'd say we've reached something of an impasse here. The case for the harm to the potential of possible persons is just not a case that means much of anything to me. But I'd just be rehashing what I said and what you are responding to here.
I see by absolute you mean something different than I had thought, though. You mean something along the lines of certain, or perfect.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Does it not make sense, or is it something you disagree with?
I actually disagree that ethics is about a or the right course of actions. And perhaps that could be fruitful to explore, though it would take us pretty far astray from the OP -- so another thread, another time. I'll close with the opening paragraph from Susan Wolf's Moral Saints to hint at what else I might be thinking of, though -- and say that I think ethics is about living the good life, just to give it a slogan:
[quote=Susan Wolf]
I DON'T know whether there are any moral saints. But if there are, I am glad that neither I nor those about whom I care most are among them. By moral saint I mean a person whose every action is as morally good as possible, a person, that is, who is as morally worthy as can be. Though I shall in a moment acknowledge the variety of types of person that might be thought to satisfy this description, it seems to me that none of these types serve as unequivocally compelling personal ideals. In other words, I believe that moral perfection, in the sense of moral saintliness, does not constitute a model of personal well-being toward which it would be particularly rational or good or desirable for a human being to strive.
[/quote]
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1. I didn’t say they weren’t the reason why I was born in THIS world. I merely said that they weren’t the reason why I was born, or why I was born in a world like this one.
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2. But, as a matter of fact, they WEREN’T the reason why I was born in this world.
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I was born in this world because it’s the world that’s consistent with the person that I was, because the experiencer and his/her physical surroundings are a complementary pair.
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Yes, as part of this world, one’s parents are definitely part of the mechanism that, in this experience-story, has produced the person. And so they’re a significant part of what makes this world consistent with you. As such, then, yes they’re part of the reason why you were born in this world, if you want to say it that way.
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But no, they certainly are not THE reason why you were born in this world.
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I realize that Materialists will disagree with much of what I’m saying.
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Alright, I can’t criticize that because I was the one who brought up a world of immortal robots. But I wasn’t really right to do so, because how could someone be in the beginning of a life, in a world where no lives begin?
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Had Mr. & Mrs. Ossipoff decided not to give birth, then I’d nevertheless have been born in a world similar to this one, to parents similar to them.
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So that’s one thing that I don’t blame on them.
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When wasn’t I?
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Your subconscious attributes, inclinations, wants, needs, predispositions at the end of this life determine what kind of a world is consistent with the person that you (subconsciously) are. Consistency is the requirement of experience-stories, because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts.
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I’ve been saying it at The Philosophy Forum since I arrived at The Philosophy Forum.
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Reincarnation plausibly follows, as a natural and plausible consequence of Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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No, I’m not claiming to prove that there’s reincarnation.
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In any case, whether you do or don’t reincarnate, you won’t know that you did or didn’t, because, either way, you won’t remember that there was this life.
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Above, I said:
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“Your subconscious attributes, inclinations, wants, needs, predispositions at the end of this life determine what kind of a world is consistent with the person that you (subconsciously) are.”
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Your subconscious attributes, inclinations, wants, needs, predispositions at the end of this life are the determiner of your next life. What makes you so sure that those things will be the same at the end of this life as they were at the beginning of this life and the end of the previous one?
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Undeniably. The probability of birth here would be zero.
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Not necessarily. I’d say probably not. A physical world is bound by logic, not made-to-order, and must operate according to its physical laws. So P2 is far from certain.
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Most undeniably.
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For one thing, P2 is doubtful at best.
For another thing, even if P2 were true, C still wouldn’t follow, unless you believe in Materialism or something similar.
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The number (actually an infinity, not a number) of people of people who have to experience pain has exactly zero dependence on whether or not this world turns Antinatalist. …by Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, but not by Materialism.
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I support Antinatalism, but not for the fallacious reason usually given by Antinatalists.
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No, not at all. I’ve given two good reasons for Antinatalism.
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What I disagree with is the faulty metaphysics, the Materialist myth, by which Antinatalists usually argue for Antinatalism.
(By the way, yes, requested assistance with voluntary auto-euthanasia should be available to everyone and anyone. Not because suicide makes any sense, but as insurance regarding things that can happen to someone that would spoil their quality-of-life.)
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Michael Ossipoff
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December 19th (Roman Gregorian Calendar)
December 20th (Hanke-Henry Calendar)
2018-W51-3 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
2018-W52-3 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
28 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French Republican Calendar of 1792)
Do you think a person exists when they are recently dead and their body is intact?
Yes, but obviously in a limited sense, since they're dead/not functional, they don't have "personhood" in the philosophical sense, they're not due the same moral considerations (although I wouldn't say they're due no moral considerations), etc.
What matters to me is the potential for harm. A dead person exists but has no potential for harm.
I don't t like to do things that have the potential for harm like I will not work in the weapons industry and build a bomb.
What matters with a (deeply) unconscious person is they can in the future be harmed. Not that they can be harmed whilst you are abusing them.
On the other hand it seems like plants and the environment cannot be harmed although they exist because they do not appear conscious.
None of that amounts to being able to do anything, pro or con, consensually or nonconsensually, to someone who doesn't exist.
Yes, and there is no need to strive for anything if no-person existed in the first place. No need to make people strive for a good if they can be prevented from existing (to not experience harm). To make someone in order for them to pursue some model of well-being makes little sense, if they didn't exist to need anything in the first place. We will always have this back and forth as I will always bring up the idea that no one needs anything to begin with if they don't exist in the first place to need it.
I have not claimed someone non existent is being forced to do anything.
However I did give the example of a vase, a vase comes to exist by an act of force on preexisting clay and then the vase is made to exist by someone else's actions.
You seem to be quibbling or prevaricating about the boundary between coming into existence and not existing.
Before a child comes to exist there is the potential and material for a child to come to exist. A humans psychological desire to create a child is also real and can motivate the action of turning preexisting matter into a new child. So I do not think there is non existence in the sense you seem to be referring to.
Are you claiming nothing is forced on a child? I mentioned how straight after birth I was indoctrinated and forced into strict religious routine. It was not free of parental force at any stage in my childhood and I had to painfully struggle to leave including nearly dying by suicide attempt.
I still think your point is a semantic mistake. Or a mistake about the relationship between intention and action. Before John Lennon was shot his assassin intended to shoot him and that intention was a significant causal event (that played a causal role in the eventual murder). My intention, not to create a child is preventing me causing a pregnancy.
This seems similar to your apparent moral stance. If someone has every intention of Killing John Lennon you wouldn't prosecute them until the bullet exited the gun.
What started this whole tangent was you writing "to force him or her into existence," where you could be read as saying that there was a moral problem with doing something to someone that forces them into existence. I clarified that that's not possible (for force someone into existence.)
And no, I'm not claiming that nothing is forced on a child. I'm only claiming that no one can be forced into existence, in the sense of force being applied to a person to cause that same person to exist.
And yeah, no intentions would be illegal if I were king, a fortiori because no thoughts, period, or even expressions of thoughts a la speech, etc., would be illegal if I were king.
The problem is that no one can choose to be born and so how do you describe their existence instead other than as an act of force?
I think things like houses are made to exist by force and when I am doing gardening or moving something around I am aware I am using force. I do not think the term force is a value judgement but it is obviously not how parents want to describe having a child. Maybe you like the "life is a gift" metaphor?
Nevertheless I do think there is a puzzle about how we come into existence in term of consciousness because it seems you can mold clay into numerous different objects without it ever being aware of existence but humans are aware of existing in a profound way.
I think there are definitely different degrees and varieties of indoctrination and I think that religious extremism is not equivalent to the inevitable indoctrination of a child on birth.
However to limit force and indoctrination would entail giving a child adequate information to draw her own conclusions and to allow a high level of freedom of choice, information and action.
It's neither an act of force (against them) nor consent (from them), because there's no one to grant or withhold consent.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes, but it's not force against the house prior to the house existing.
The distinction here is force as a means of any physical activity occurring versus force against something('s consent).
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Different material, in different dynamic structures, has different properties. Brains aren't made of clay. They have blood flowing through them, they have electrochemical activity, etc.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Hear hear! Quite so!
Quoting Andrew4Handel
...as they should.
In fact, there should be demanding requirements for qualification before someone is permitted to be a birth-parent or any other kind of parent. Who'd judge that qualification? I didn't say it was feasible in this Land-of-The Lost societal-world--only that it would be right, if feasible.
I'm qualified to comment about unqualified parents.
But it seems to me that it would be entirely meaningless to speak of "...if Mr, & Mrs. Ossipoff hadn't reproduced...." It's a nonsense clause, from my point of view. (...even if not from someone else's point of view.)
And for whom would it have been better?
Another thing: As a Materialist, you'll agree that your parents were biologically-originated purposefully-responsive devices. ...just parts of the physical universe. So where's the justification to attribute primary responsibility to them, to make them the cause, as if it all happened because of them?
They were just a cog in the mechanism of the physical world. You might as well blame our galaxy for your birth, or the Big-Bang. I'm not denying that your parents had a role, but not uniquely. You're giving them too much credit.
There were going to be parents for me, as an obvious requirement for my physical world, and they were going to be like they were, because, for some reason,. that's the world (including the parents) that was consistent with me.
I was the reason for the parents, not vice-versa.
December 25th (Roman-Gregorian calendar)
2019-W01-2 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
Michael Ossipoff
But if there's no need for life, then why does Schopenhauer1 think that there's need for things in life?
...if he says that life itself was and is unnecessary?
No one needs anything to begin with if they don't exist? It's meaningless to speak of needs of someone who isn't. Schopenhauer1's sentence doesn't really have a subject, and therefore doesn't have a meaning.
Another thing about "no one needs anything to begin with..."
...so Schpenhauer1 thinks that they "need" things now? He's spoken of a "need" to entertain oneself, to always instrumentally strive for entertainment. Yes, greed brings misery, but I suggest that that greed isn't necessary.
The regrettable situation that Schpenhauer1 (along with other Antinatalists and Absurdists) talks about is an attribute of some people. It isn't an attribute of the world.
A comment about Absurdism:
Absurdists are right to say that the Materialist world that they believe in is indeed absurd.
Michael Ossipoff
2019-W01-3 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
I think that all the matter that makes a human does exist before it turns into a child. the only thing that might not exist prior to conception is consciousness.
I think creating someone is clearly an act of force on them because you are in control of the outcome which profoundly effects them. There is no mystery now about the process of reproduction where you have unprotected sex knowing it could lead to the fusion of egg and sperm and start the process of making another person.
Anyhow here is another example. If you plant a land mine in a playground it does not matter if the persons killed by the mine did not exist when you initially planted it because your action was clearly one aimed to maim and kill and harm someone else at some stage. You can expose future persons to harm and hardship.
To me also if someone cannot chose to be born then they did not chose there life and cannot really freely chose anything afterwards because any choice is forced upon them by the nature of non-consensually coming into existence.
Likewise you cannot authentically help your child charitably because you caused their life problems in the first place. It is like chopping off someones leg and then making them a prosthesis
Okay, so at time T100, let's say, conception occurs--S is conceived via intercourse.
At time T200, birth occurs--S is born.
At time T10, what is S's status?
DNA in the mother and father?
DNA in the mother and father is identical to S at T10? Is food that the mother and father eat identical to S?
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Yes there’s something right about what they’re talking about, and their topic is worth comment. Yes, I didn’t consciously choose to be in a life...least of all one (seemingly) inexplicably sharing the world with violent or aggressive people with whom I have nothing in common.
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Because Antinatalists are Materialists, comments that refer to a metaphysics different from theirs won’t be effective with them. But there are things that can be said that are true for Materialists too.
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As a Materialist, you believe that you’re fundamentally a product and result of your physical world. But then how can you object to being in this world?? What else would you expect, given the belief that I quoted in this paragraph?
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You seem to be objecting to the fact that there’s such a thing as life. To whom is that objection addressed? Not to God, because you’re an Atheist, though Antinatalists seem to be shaking their fist at the heavens. Atheists shakings their fist at the heavens.
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Why has your material world made you be in a life? …which really means, why has this material world made there be life. Materialists deny that they’re religious, but their Material-World really, for them, stands-in for God. It’s there without explanation, as the Ground-of-All-Being, the Uncaused-Cause of everything.
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(I’ve previously described, how, likewise, by Merriam-Webster’s and Simon-&-Schuster’s definitions, Materialism is indeed a religion.)
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But the main point of this answer is what I said a few paragraphs back: If, as you believe, you’re a product and result of this material world, then, given that that’s what you are, then why are you surprised that you’re in a life in a world. …how could it have been otherwise? Is it even meaningful to speak of the possibility of it being otherwise, given that “You” is a meaningless notion without life in a world?
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Then what is the point of railing at that obvious inevitability?? In fact what even is the meaning of that railing?
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Given your beliefs, then, given that you’re here, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to just accept the obviously inevitable situation and just do as you like (…which might include some you-intrinsic standards of right-living, but that’s another topic)?
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Michael Ossipoff
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2019-W01-5 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
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2019, Late-South, Week 1, Friday (6-Season -3 wk Offset Calendar (where “South” refers to the 13-week terrestrial-season resulting from south solar-declination, roughly corresponding to December, January & February) )
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2018 December 28th (Roman-Gregorian Calendar)
The DNA is not identical to S but it will become an essential part of S.
The rape analogy consent is most powerful. You cannot have sex with an unconscious person because they cannot consent to it and therefore it will be rape.
It is not usually acceptable to do something that will effect someone that they couldn't consent and may not have consented to.The fact an unconscious person cannot consent to sex is what makes it so unethical.
Because someone cannot consent to being born I cannot see any ethical good in that scenario. If someone enjoys there life that is fortunate but does not mitigate the lack of consent. (I will go into this more in the other Schopenhauer thread.)
But then you didn't answer what I asked you. I asked what S's status at time T10 was.
Do you think people come out of thin air?
I am not a materialist and also I do not think physics has a picture of reality that is complete and satisfactorily defines the physical or causality
and also I do not think it is a deterministic picture.
So tell me S's status at time T10
What do you mean by his status? He is matter and that matter resides partly in the DNA of his parents and in the environment.
I gave the example earlier of clay being made into a vase. It is the equivalent of that unless you believe in a preexisting spirit.
Humans can exist because of preexisting a matter.
So at time T10 S is identical to S's parents' DNA?
A person is constantly changing in a flux they are never identical with a previous version of themselves.
However some personal identity is continuous (the self?) and that might be what you are referring to.
I am talking about the process of being caused to exist which is what parents engage in. What is being caused to be exist is an individual created by preexisting matter.
If someone does not chose to come to exist how do they come to exist?
Their parents make them come to exist.
I would find it easy to consider myself causally accountable for creating a child and making them exist by act of force.
It is this forceful lack of consent process which is one of the things that makes me reluctant to reproduce.
I asked you a yes or no question. You don't need to respond with more than three letters.
Alright, I was mistaken to believe that all Antinatalists are Materialists. I was basing that belief largely on Schopenhauer1's statements.
But, you not being a Materialist, and given the things that you said in your reply just before this message, then, if your physical world isn't necessarily metaphysically-prior to you, then doesn't that mean that Antinatalists are attributing unrealistically-much ontological-creative-power to their parents?
Anyway, much of what I was saying is true whether someone is a Materialist or an Ontic Structural Subjective Idealist. Only the underlying mechanics-explanation is different. The facts about our situation now are basically the same with either metaphysics.
Some Buddhists comment on such matters without mention of metaphysics. Much of what I've said, to cheer-up Antinatalists and existential-angst-ridden Absurdists, is independent of metaphysics.
There are things that you like, They're plainly what you're here for, even if you don't agree with me that they're actually why you're here.
That's the situation, whether or not the Material world is the Uncaused Cause and Ground of All Being.
...you being here, and there being things that you like.
Schope has said (..,if I understood him right) that we're forced to entertain ourselves. What? Things that we like are an opportunity, not something compelled on us. That's how everyone but a very few Antinatalists and Absurdists view it.
Whatever the reason why we're in a life, that's the situation, And sure, there are the hardships and risks that go with life. Again, we can agree to disagree about why we're in a life, but Antinatalists can't realistically deny that the person and hir (his/her) being in a life are a "sealed-unit" a "unitary-construction". ...an in-principle inseparable pair like the poles of a magnet or the sides of a paper.
,,,and that they're confronted with that as an accomplished-fact, even if we disagree about why that is.
There's no reason to believe that there's any such thing as waking-consciousness other than in a life.
Schope speaks of sleep, but there's no reason to believe that there's even such a thing as that except with respect to a current or just-ended life. Sleep is for born living-beings, during their life, or at their end-of-lives (which is at the end of this life if there's no reincarnation). So, even that end that some Antinatalists long for is only there as part of a life of a born bring,
Antinatalists embrace the sleep at the end of lives (or of this life), while rejecting the life that necessarily, unavoidably must precede it, It's well understood by Buddhists and Hindus that unrealistic rejection of how things are isn't going to bring satisfaction or contentment, As Rajneesh pointed out, your death won't be better than your life, One shouldn't expect an abrupt change at death, from unrest and rejection, to peace. Attitude counts, and that's a matter of life-completion and lifestyle-perfection.
The fact that you're in this life of vulnerability, varying degrees of hardship and suffering is just something that integrally goes with you. You and that situation are the sealed-unit, the unitary-construction, the inseprable complementary pair that I spoke of, You only are, in the context of that
situation. ...whether or not we agree on the reason for that situation.
It's meaningless to speak of that situation as something that has been done to some pre-existing someone. You made an analogy about life being something that is set-up to be done to someone who hasn't yet come into existence. But that analogy doesn't work, because it implies a separate being for the situation and the person subjected to it, A situation like that is necessarily integrally part of the complementary pair consisting of that person and hir world.
...whether you agree with my explanation for why there is that, or whether you believe that it's a result of a Material world that is the Ultimate-Reality.
It's a matter, now, of living with that situation, regardless of disagreements about why there's that situation. Sure, I didn't knowingly ask for this situation either, and I know just how Antinatalists feel, because I sometimes feel the same way.
But there are things that you like,
Michael Ossipoff
2019-W01-7 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
2019 Late-South Week 1 Sunday (6-Season -3 wk Offset Calendar)
I think that most antinatalist take issue with parents reasons or lack of reasons for having children
Which then undermines the meaning making process for the individual. The irrationality of attitudes towards procreating and parenting then leads to fear and a sense of abandonment.
My parents life meaning and my experiences and desires are seriously at odds.
I would like to be optimistic for the future but it depends on what evidence you see and whether attitudes are changing.
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So do I. But I don’t (retrospectively) expect much from my parents, and I’m (now) not surprised by their shortcomings. …though I was a bit surprised when I first realized about it.
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Of course. Abandonment is the name-of-the-game. Well, active-victimization is a better word.
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Of course. Likewise for my parents, of course. They sure didn’t put me in the situation for my benefit, as is obvious from their parenting. Of course the same abandonment and hypocrisy is obvious regarding the schools and overall society, with regard to the children who are their victims.
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In fact, of course “abandonment” is a euphemism and understatement for that victimization.
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There’s no cause for optimism for the societal future on this planet in this physical world.
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As for our own individual futures, it’s just a matter of making the best of the situation that we’ve found ourselves in. …found ourselves in with complete bewilderment on the first day, and even for years later weren’t ready for dealing with, due to a societally and parentally taught maladaptive notion of who our life is for.
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Michael Ossipoff
2019-W01-7 (South-Solstice WeekDate)
2019 Late-South, Week1, Sunday (6-Seasons -3 wk Offset)
2018 December 30th (Roman-Gregorian)
Quoting Roke
So we have this principle here A that we use in literally every other situation but when the situation inconveniences you it’s suddenly a “rhetorical slight of hand” because it “is turned against life itself”? I’d say “turned against life itself” is the rhetorical slight of hand here. It’s a phrase that doesn’t mean anything but just sounds “bad”
You never ever implied that people get reborn NOR that where they get reborn is dictated by their morality. Those are two MASSIVE speculations. Nothing in your framework says those have to be the case.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Who says those subconscious attributes remain after death? I thought more along the lines of Nietzsche’s repeating lives in thus spoke Zarathustra, where you are continuously reborn into the same life. That’s another massive speculation not substantiated by your own framework
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
It IS certain. What’s illogical about a world with no pain? Even if you think it’s not certain I’d say you can agree that it IS certain that there are worlds with less pain than this one
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Ok then why did you reply to a post that was about finding arguments AGAINST antinatalism lol?
Final note, I’m still in utter disagreement with your metaphysics as it makes way too many presumptions for no reason and just seems clunky to work with but this is not the thread for that
As a metrialist I see blame and prosecution as an evolved mechanism for removing troublemakers and bolstering your chances of survival. As a materialist that doesn’t believe in free will, talks of morality are merely talks of “which combination of words will allow me to release the most good chemicals in my brain”. Now, that being said, in my view blaming your parents for your existence makes sense. You were evolved to undoubtably see them as the cause of your existence despite the fact that they had no choice but to have you. As such they are the cause of your existence. Same with how you say “the gunshot killed the man”. Of course, according to my view, the Big Bang killed the man but when people talk of “cause” they always mean their perception of who the biggest actor was as tuned by their evolution to remove troublemakers. And this is what materialists always mean by “cause”
He means that a non existent thing (an unborn baby) doesn’t need anything including life but when someone is born, they suddenly need things in life. It’s better to be in a state of not needing anything and to be put in a state of needing something then acquiring it. Solving a problem you posed is not productive and it is immoral to force someone to solve a problem YOU POSE on them when they didn’t have to solve it before. Worse yet if solving that problem requires them to perpetuate it.
Parents. Not the heavens. We humans are born with an evolutionary tendency to blame others who cause pain not because they chose to (that’s what we tell ourselves, they can’t really choose) but because if we don’t execute troublemakers we get executed. As such, when this is applied to parents one can clearly see why they are to be blamed. If parents are executed we won’t have to be put in the conditions where we risk getting painfully executed in the first place. That’s what antinatalists are doing. One doesn’t have to be a Hindu to blame others. One doesn’t have to believe in free will to blame others. Blame is an entirely self preserving endeavor
It’s not an inevitability. It might convince others not to have children (deterministically of course) and then eventually maybe an anti-reproduction policy can be implemented. Just because everything is deterministic does not mean you throw up your hands. You can’t say everything is deterministic therefore I’ll do X because you don’t KNOW what’s going to happen even if it is deterministic. You will always feel you have free will because of this. You can’t call having children an inevitability because of what I just said. The antinatilists might succeed in their quest you never know
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes. That’s the point of blame. To get someone prosecuted. Not to punish them for being “bad”. You get people prosecuted so that you may survive.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
That’s how most absurdists view it actually. Not having free will is the state of the world for us.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No one does that. I found andrew’s analogy most fitting. Setting a bear trap in an empty park is still wrong despite the fact that there is no one there yet. The point is that setting the bear trap WILL harm someone. Doesn’t matter if that person doesn’t exist yet.
If somebody adopts the principles of negative utilitarianism as you present them then antinatalism follows immediately. But I don't know anybody that would adopt that extreme form of negative utilitarianism. There are plenty that adopt the 'minimise gross suffering version', but that doesn't automatically lead to antinatalism.
Suffering seems to be great!
There can be no objective truth in what is inherently subjective. Antinatalism, if I'm correct, needs, for it to make its case, suffering and pain to be objective facts.
Some people, like antinatalists, find life to be miserable but some find life enjoyable and worth it.
We need to be objective about this if we're to make a judgment as to who is right. However, this isn't possible for the simple reason that people's values differ both in type and degree. You don't tell people not to eat chocolate because you don't like it. Some people will. There's no objectivity antinatalism, if you ask me.
"The pain that began with the resistance of matter to become a world, becomes a pain of matter that ceases to be a world anymore. You do not understand, I see, my poetic expressions are to blame: in the face of the act of my birth (which, irrespective of the fact that it is not an act of mine, it nevertheless is the most important event in the history of my being) is the only act of MINE that can stand at the same height because it has insurmountable power and tragedy.
What benefits me to exist for what it's worth, since at the moment that I did not ordain, but luck itself - the very power that gave birth to me, I should bend my head and die patiently, consoling myself that this is how the law of nature dictates, and what can I do?
A course that has a beginning and an end the command of a hostile law, totally and beyond alien to me - because neither my birth did I will (how could that be?), nor death do I accept - what is the point in that? Since I was not able to give birth to myself, I make an equivalent act: I destroy him. By taking life from my matter, I raise it against my mother - fate -, thus taking away from her the right to decide for my end; she decided for my beginning - I decide for my end - I equate my power with hers".
I listen to albums that I don't think are great all the time. I'm listening to one right now, actually--Black Sabbath's Seventh Star. It's solid, and I enjoy listening to it--I'm certainly not suffering listening to it, or I wouldn't listen to it. But I wouldn't say it's great.
This is the big problem with framing anything on "suffering." It's not clear just what the demarcation criteria of that term are supposed to be, especially if we're to see it as something universally negative.
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I’ve been saying those things since my arrival at The Philosophy Forum.
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Incorrect. They plausibly, naturally, follow from my metaphysics, Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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…though I never claimed proof that there’s reincarnation.
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If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?
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Of course, if you’re a Materialist, then, by your metaphysics, the reason why you’re in a life is simply because your parents reproduced…a cause that obviously won’t remain at the end of this life.
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Under Materialism, reincarnation is ruled-out.
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From the point of view of your survivors, when you’re dead, and the worms are eating your decayed body, neither you nor any of your attributes, subconscious or otherwise, remain.
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But it was clear from what I said that I wasn’t talking about the time experienced by your survivors, when you’re dead, with your body’s shutdown complete.
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I was referring to your experience, during the “unconsciousness” (absence of waking consciousness) that arrives during death.
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You’re welcome to that belief. But it’s yours, not mine.
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Your pain-free world—the notion that there could be such a world--is speculation.
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No pain whatsoever for anyone is a big, big thing to postulate for physical beings in a physical world operating by its own physical law, where the physical perception of an immediate &/or urgent need to avoid serious injury is called “pain”.
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If you admit that it’s not certain, then you contradict your statement quoted above.
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Undeniably.
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Because, though I agree with the undesirability of being part of the proximal cause of another life in this world, or of increasing the Earth’s human population, I nevertheless point out some errors of Antinatalists and Absurdists. …whose claims go beyond merely saying that it’s undesirable to be part of the proximal cause of another life in this world or increasing the Earth’s population.
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Of course. How could it be otherwise, with you being a Materialist?
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Actually, Ontic-Structural Subjective Idealism makes no assumptions or presumptions whatsoever, and posits no brute-facts (…unlike Materialism.)
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You should feel free to share with us what assumption or presumption you think my metaphysics makes.
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…but I emphasize that my criticism of the claims of Antinatalists and Absurdists is NOT a metaphysical issue, because, even under Materialism, there are good objections to various statements made by Antinatalists and Absurdists.
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But, as I sometimes say, Absurdists are right about one thing:
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The (Materialist) world that they believe in is indeed absurd.
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Correct, because my criticisms of statements by Antinatalists and Absurdists are valid even under Materialism.
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Replies to your other posts will be along soon, maybe all today, or maybe one or a few each day.
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Michael Ossipoff
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If there can be no objective truth in what is inherently subjective and we have to rely on an objective truth to make a claim that something is morally wrong then it’s not clear to me how we can conclude that something like murder is wrong either. Just as you insisted that someone shouldn’t tell you to refrain from eating chocolate because that someone doesn’t like chocolate, I could just as easily insist that someone doesn’t tell me to avoid killing people just because that someone doesn’t like death. Now, I think the best response against antinatalism is not to try to deny an objective moral truth but rather to insist that the mean collective subjective opinion could be regarded as objectively true. That is to say that if we compiled the opinions of millions of people across various cultures and took the average of those opinions, we would get the closest approximation of the actual objective human preference. This might get the accusation of using the bandwagon fallacy, but it may seem appropriate to ask the preferences of others as the basis for predicting the likelihood that a person would be glad to have been born for most of his life.
But the antinatalist could insist that instead of asking people for their existential preference, it is more appropriate to ask whether or not it morally right or wrong to create preferences in the first place. For that, we would need to compare 2 different preferential circumstances: the circumstance of having preferences of which some preferences will be satisfied and others will be frustrated and the circumstance of never having any preferences. You might insist that these 2 circumstances are incomparable and therefore we can’t judge one to be better than the other, but I think it is self-evident that creating a preference that is certain to never be satisfied and will lead to frustration is not morally preferable. Whereas, creating a preference that is guaranteed to be satisfied isn’t self-evidently morally preferable. That is not to say that it is never good to create a likely satisfied preference. I’m not taking a radical anti-frustrationist position on this topic but rather I’m insisting that there seems to be a skewed scale against creating preferences. Having said that, I do think that in addition to preferences we should observe the various experiences in our lives to get a better understanding of whether or not we think the experience of being alive is overall preferable to non-existence. My instinct is that if someone doesn’t enjoy their life, then it’s probably a bad idea for them to have children. That is because their children would likely inherit their misery. I don’t necessarily think that people who enjoy their lives should have children because of my moderate anti-preference creating views and because I think avoiding harm to others should be a stronger motivator for morality than providing someone with a benefit.
You're forwarding an argumentum ad populum.
No, I’m not actually. Although I thought I was when I wrote the original comment. An argumentum ad populum is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it, often concisely encapsulated as: "If many believe so, it is so." The key word in this definition is belief. When evaluating the most likely human existential preference, we are not saying that the belief that people hold about their life is the reason why life is good but rather the preference that they have for existence over non-existence. The difference between a belief and preference is that a belief is an opinion about the nature objective reality while a preference is an opinion expressed in personal taste and there’s no claim that something is objectively better but rather just an expression of subjective preference. I think when evaluating 2 state of affairs, it is appropriate to try to figure which state of affairs most people prefer. This would be one empirical fact that the pronatalist could use effectively to make her position stronger. By all means, I do not think that it’s the only valid empirical fact regarding the morality of reproduction. If you read the rest of my long previous comment, that becomes quite clear. I must also add that I’m more of an antinatalist than a pronatist and I was giving the devil his due by providing the strongest potential argument for pronatalism. To me, the most absurd position that a person could hold on reproduction is actually the most common one: that is the view that reproduction is amoral or not morally relevant. I can’t imagine how something as consequential as reproduction could not have any serious moral significance. The only way an action could not be morally significant is if:
1. The action has no morally significant consequences
2. There are no duties related to the action in any way
3. There are no commonly understood virtues or vices that go along with the actions.
In my opinion, none of the 3 above criteria apply to reproduction much less all 3.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Well you haven’t said them here lol. And looking into the comment history of everyone I meet is creepy and time consuming
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Why were you stating it as fact then? Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Imagine a world where a planet where particles accidemtally collided together forming a utopian planet where everything has a marshmallow like texture so that even if you fall you just bounce back and can’t hurt yourself even if you tried. Now imagine those particles collided also forming 2 humans that just happen to both not have the ability to feel pain. If you’re still not convinced a world without suffering is possible you must at least be convinced that a world with less suffering than this one is possible.
And besides according to your position you shouldn’t be an antinatlist. Because no matter what you do you’re not actually preventing people from being born. A person will ALWAYS be born into whatever world best fits “them” (although you don’t have proof that changes to their subconscious self remain after life and you still have no proof that moral GOODNESS brings you to better worlds. You know the saying nice guys finish last right? What if being good actually made you susceptible to getting born into WORSE realities. You haven’t explained how this “affinity” between person and world is decided). Since a person will always be born into whichever world fits them our decision to procreate or not procreate is completely inconsequential. If we DO antinatalist ourselves into extinction that’s just because we’re out of people that fit our world. We didn’t save anyone from anything
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Your version does. You assume people go to better worlds if they do moral deeds. You assume people’s subconscious changes remain after death and that they get reborn into a different life as a consequence. You assume “minds” exist to have ideas to begin with for these minds to be born into a world consistent with their ideas. You assume our laws of logic are cross-universal and that an illogical universe with contradicting principles cannot exist. All you know is that we cannot image such a universe. That’s not proof it cannot exist. There is no such thing as an ideology that makes no assumptions. You can’t have a syllogism without premises.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Mind explaining how?
Also I’d rather we do metaphysics in a private chat rather than on this thread
It then comes to be that antinatalists are trying to impose their minority views on the majority.
This brings us back to the original question of which, the majority happy to live or the minority antinatalists, is being objective?
The question then boils down to the soundest arguments from both sides.
The antinatalist argument is a good one based on the fact that both religious and secular factions have an imagined ''better'' state of existence. Heaven for the former and Utopia for the latter.
The interesting thing is there's also a ''worse'' state of existence imagined. Hell for the faithful and dystopia for the unbelievers.
These imagined states, one better and the other worse, indicates that antinatalists haven't really made their point. Nor have the anti-antinatalists proven their point. This world, our reality, sits in the middle and is neither as good as some people claim nor as bad as the antinatalists say.
Is this a better point of view on the matter?
Well, while it’s true that we can imagine much better and worse states of beings than our current lives, I don’t think that it necessarily means that our existence is about as good as nonexistence(I’m guessing this is your position but correct me if I’m wrong). For example, let’s imagine that non-existence has a hypothetical value of 0 and heaven has a hypothetical value of 1000000 and hell has a hypothetical value of -1000000. Our lives could on average have a hypothetical value anywhere between 10000 and -10000 for all we know and that would still make a huge difference between existence and non-existence. The antinatalist could believe that life is really awful but hell is just so much worse. They would also likely to believe that the disvalue of hell is much more farther away from the zero of non-existence than the value of heaven is compared to non-existence. So, heaven might only have a value of 1000000 but hell has a disvalue of -1000000000000. The antinalist philosopher David Benetar is known to argue that if you ask people if they willing to experience 30 minutes of the worst suffering imaginable for 2 hours of the best and most sublime pleasures, most people would not be willing to take the deal.
Overall, whether or not existence is overall good or bad for the average person, I think it’s almost certainly not anywhere close to non-existence in value or disvalue. That’s because we spend decades on Earth experiencing good and bad mental states and having preferences and desires. Given how consequential our existence is, it seems that we have to have a strong view of its goodness and badness if we really think about it. While it’s really difficult to compare existence to non-existence and we may not know the answer, I do think it is important to ask the question. I have thought about several thought experiments that seem to give at least a rudimentary answer to this question but I’m not going to take the time to explain them unless you would like to continue having this discussion in that direction.
Hell/dystopia is unequivocally worse than our circumstances.
So, antinatalists are wrong.
On the other hand, to say life is wonderful in the superlative sense is also wrong. Heaven and Utopia are patently better.
So, those who endorse existence as better than nonexistence under all circumstance are also wrong.
Given the context above, how would one make a good judgment on the matter?
I believe that life is getting ''better''. We have medicine, machines, knowledge, democracy, etc. All mentioned afore facilitate a happy existence. Things were different a few thousand years ago - tyranny, disease, ignorance, etc. Am I wrong in thinking there's a positive trend here?
Of course, it's possible that I'm ignoring the ills of modern society - social isolation, depression, suicide, pollution, etc. Considering these, one could question my belief that there's a positive trend to human history.
So, what's the truth of the matter?
If there's one thing to go by I guess it's population. An increasing population would mean longer lives, healthier women and children. There may be depression, suicide, and other social ills but it seems to be of lesser effect than the positive effects as evinced by world population growth.
Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that, with all the social, scientific, and health planning we engage in, life in the future will likely become enjoyable enough to contradict the antinatalist claim.
This is a lot of speculation on my part but there's a ray of hope for those who deny antinatalism.
''Life was awful. Life is less awful, Life will become enjoyable'', is what I want to say.
Well, it’s a good time to bring up the thought experiments that I have come up with then. The first thought experiment is what I call the suspended experience machine experiment. Imagine there is a device that allows you to suspend your ability to experience things during certain times in the day while maintaining your functionality and allowing you to do things you need to do without having to experience them. Let’s say you don’t want to experience your work day or your school day and you could make the experiences disappear almost as if you were asleep the whole time and you would still perform your work and gain all the memories and knowledge from the time you were unconscious. It’s almost like you could make yourself a philosophical zombie with this machine any time you don’t want to experience something unpleasant. The downside of this machine is that it does shorten your lifespan because you will still need to go to sleep at night and if you use it a lot, you will only be awake for a short period of time. The question I would like to ask you is how often would you use the suspended experience machine. For me, the answer is about 40% of my current life. That just includes me skipping my work day, and my chores with the machine. Considering how pleasant my life is, I find it remarkably shocking that I spend almost half my life doing things that are worse than being unconscious. I imagine that my life will get worse as I get older and I start having health problems.
The second thought experiment I have thought about is what I call the magic coin experiment. Imagine that you find a magic coin on the ground and whenever you flip the coin, if it lands on heads you will re-live the best day of your life so far but if it lands on tails, you will re-live the worst day of your life so far. Would you be willing to flip that coin? For me, the answer is a resounding “no”. I can’t even recall what the best day of my life was but I can certainly recall the worst day of my life. Given my responses to both of these thought experiments, I think it would be better if I don’t reproduce. That is because if I can’t conclude that my own life is better than nonexistence then I can reasonably expect that my future offspring would share the same attitude since that offspring would inherit my genes and environment. I can’t say if my conclusion about these thought experiments is just my own subjective judgment or if many people would agree with me so I don’t know if I have a reasonable consequential case against reproduction for most people or everyone. But if you agree with my intuitions, it seems appropriate for you to consider refraining from reproduction at least until you can improve your life enough that you would have little use for the suspended experience machine and you would be willing to flip the coin. I doubt that one is likely to improve or worsen the quality of one’s life over the long term though. That is because our best research on happiness seems to indicate that people’s happiness stays around a set hedonic set point that seems to be mostly determined by particular genes(scientists have actually already identified those genes). This is what is called the hedonic treadmill in happiness research. Whenever a really good or bad event happens in people’s lives, it tends to only impact their reported happiness over a period of 6 months or a couple of years at the most. Afterwards, their happiness returns to their normal hedonic set point. It seems to be an asymmetrical treadmill though for 2 reasons:
1. Periods of temporary suffering after a tragedy typically last longer than periods of temporary happiness after a positive life event.
2. In rare cases, some life events could permanently shift your hedonic set point up or down. It is more likely that a tragedy will lower your hedonic set point permanently than a positive event will raise it.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, developing countries do often report having a higher happiness level and lower suicide rate than developed countries so I’m not sure if I agree with that. But when I think about the suffering of people in developing countries, I almost have it hard to believe that their life could be as good as mine. Dostoyevsky was famous for arguing that even if we gave a person everything he could possibly want, they would still suffer just as much as people in unfortunate circumstances do, simply because they can do so or out of some strange spitefulness. Perhaps there’s is a solution to problem of suffering that could be offered by altering the genes responsible for it and other technological methods that could be developed in the future that could eliminate suffering for everyone. There is a philosophical community known as the hedonistic imperative that hopes for that kind of future and thinks we can be successfull at eliminating all suffering. I hope they are right but I tend to be skeptical of such utopian claims.
Quoting TheMadFool
Regarding population ethics, I think it’s really difficult to predict what impact a particular world population would have on the world. There are so many confounding variables to think about. I’m aware that the world population is expected to peak at around 9 billion and then start going rapidly down due to the low birth rate in many developed countries and it’s estimated that once developing countries become more developed they will have a population decline also. The 2 biggest reasons for the low fertility rates seem to be access to contraception and higher education levels for women. While the underpopulation in developed countries could cause economic stagnation, it could also slow down global warming and if technology progresses to the point that most people would be unemployed within a couple of generations, then underpopulation would be good I think. That’s because if we have a high unemployment rate, we would most likely have to resort to something like a universal basic income to support most people and most young people will be unproductive and just taking up resources. The more educated and skilled older people would likely be extremely productive in this new type of complex and technologically advanced economy.
You are because you used the word "objective." What was that word supposed to suggest otherwise? What difference did that word make to the sentence you typed?
Antinatalism is like when you take a philosophical conviction and stand by its extreme form without challenging it. It's utilitarianism taken to the extreme in which any kind of human existence becomes irrelevant and the idea itself becomes absurd. It's the kind of idea that proves philosophical ideas to be flawed as a singular system or end in itself, and that a philosophical idea needs to evolve and change through dialectics rather than be the final answer to everything.
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As a Christian, I see blame as ultimately irrelevant and counterproductive.
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Especially since, as Nisargadatta pointed out, nothing has ever happened. …making it unnecessary to get all worked up over blame.
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Were our parents culpable? Of course. So what. I bet my parents were worse than yours.
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With blame, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
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Though I’m not a Materialist, I don’t believe in free-will either. As I’ve said, much of my criticism of what is said by Antinatalists and Absurdists is just as valid for you if you’re a Materialist.
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You’re expressing your Materialism, but we should agree to disagree about metaphysics. These issues aren’t really metaphysical, since the relevant conclusions are really the same under Materialism or Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism. Yes your parents were the proximal physical cause of your conception and birth.
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Is the criminal responsible for his crimes, or were his crimes the result of a combination of his genetic-heritage and his surroundings?
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Answer: Both. He’s fully responsible for his crimes, which are also entirely the result of his genetic heritage and his surroundings, over which he had no choice or control.
This is my reply to the 2nd of your recent posts. The other replies will also be along soon.
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Michael Ossipoff
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If you go back to read my original quote, I mentioned objective human preferences. By objective, I was referring to something worth mentioning as a fact relevant to the subject matter at hand. For example, if I am hosting a party and I ask my guests what do they want to have for dinner and the most popular answer is pizza, this is a fact I should consider whenever I’m deciding to what dinner I should bring to the party. It would not be fallacious for me to argue that I should buy pizza because that’s what the guests want. Similarly, it would not be fallacious to argue that if most people prefer existence over non-existence then we should consider this fact when thinking about the morality of reproduction. To bring the point home, here’s a difference between some ad populums and valid preferential arguments:
Ad populum: antinatalisms is wrong because most people think it is wrong.
My claim: most people prefer existence over non-existence. This fact should be taken into consideration when thinking about reproduction.
Ad populum: The most guests at your party believe that ordering pizza would be best for everyone at the party.
Valid argument: Most guests at your party want to have pizza for dinner. This fact is one objective fact about the overall preferences of your guests that should be taken into consideration
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No argument there. A nonexistent thing wouldn’t need anything.
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Need or absence of need can only be meaningfully spoken of in reference to someone who is. At the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life if there isn’t reincarnation), the person indeed doesn’t need life anymore, and eventually doesn’t know that there ever was, or even could be, such a thing.
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But then, as you quoted me asking, if you didn’t need life in the first place, and didn’t need this life, then what makes you think that you need anything in this life?
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They think that they do. But obviously their need for things in this life can’t be any greater than their need for being in this life in the first place.
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Yes, if you mean “seeming to need something”.
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Let me repeat some quotes that I’ve been posting:
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Barbara Ehrenreich said something to the effect that death doesn’t interrupt life. Life (temporarily) interrupts sleep.
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Mark Twain said something like:
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“Before I was born, I was dead for millions of years, and it didn’t inconvenience me a bit.”
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So yes, sleep, such as the ever deepening sleep at the end-of-lives, is the natural, normal, usual and rightful state-of-affairs. You’re right about that.
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…because it’s timeless, and because it’s the final state-of-affairs.
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But, because of what I referred to immediately above, then what are you Antinatalists and Absurdists complaining about? Life is temporary, a brief blip in sleep and timelessness. So what’s to complain about???
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Again, you’re speaking from your Materialist belief, making metaphysical assertions. We needn’t bring metaphysics into this.
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Anyway, even if you’re a Materialist, you and your life are inseparable, even in principle. It’s meaningless to speak of a “You” that never began a life.
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Whatever you believe is the reason or origin of your life, it and you were always the two complementary parts of the same whole. …even under Materialism.
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So, all this talk about being better off if you hadn’t been conceived is quite without meaning.
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Michael Ossipoff
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That's not a fallacious sentiment--sentiments can't be fallacious, arguments are; but it's also not true or false, correct or incorrect, or objective in any manner (aside from the objective fact that when polled, most of your guests said they wanted pizza).
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
That makes a lot less sense to me. You should consider that fact when thinking about the morality of reproduction in what context? Deciding your own moral stance?
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
You can't have a valid should. Shoulds are preferences that individuals have, too. They're not valid or invalid.
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Even under Materialism, it’s inevitable that you’re in a life, because, as I said in my other reply today, for it to even be meaningful to speak of “You” at all, you’re in a life.
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“You” and “in a life” are inevitably inseparable.
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That could conceivably happen on this planet, in this possibility-world. That would be good, because the human population is suboptimally-high.
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Of course, if Antinatalism became international official policy, abided-by by everyone, then the human species would become extinct within one human lifetime.
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There’s nothing wrong with extinction. I don’t disagree with you about that. There’s no need for a species to be, and, as you might have heard in the news, the other species on this planet wouldn’t have good reason to miss us.
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Yes, the Norway Rats, the House-Mice and the Cockroaches would soon follow us into extinction, because our dwellings are their niche. But the rest of Earth’s life would do just fine without us. Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt our pride.
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Humans—the great experiment. In the distant past, a pig and a chimpanzee had a romantic tryst, or at least a date. …and now here we are.
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…until we make ourselves extinct. (We won’t do that by Antinatalist contraception or celibacy. We’ll do it by global-warming due to unabated CO2 and methane emissions.)
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Of course Antinatalist contraceptive extinction will never happen, for a number of reasons.
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1. For one thing, there’s a strong reproductive instinct, for all animals, including humans. Therefore, Antinatalists will always remain a small minority.
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2. For another thing, rulers need workers (at least until workers are replaced by robots). So there will never be an official Antinatalist policy (…at least not until the necessary robots are available). Of course this reason #2 is secondary to reason #1--The rulers, like everyone else, want to have a family future due to reason #1.
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They won’t, for the reasons stated above. But don’t worry: Our CO2 & methane fueled global-warming will achieve your goal of human extinction.
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Will the global-warming extinctions stop when we’re extinct, or will a vicious positive-feedback cycle tipping-point have been passed by that point, eventually turning Earth into a lifeless Venus? I don’t know the subject well enough to even guess, but I’ve heard both opinions.
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Michael Ossipoff
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If this is a sentiment and not an argument then I imagine that you also think my point regarding morality of reproduction is a sentiment also. Then, why accuse it of being fallacious since sentiments can’t be fallacious?
Quoting Terrapin Station
You should consider the probability that your offspring will be glad to be born. This fact could help you determine that probablity. I’m not claiming it’s the only thing you should consider but it’s a good start.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If I say that you shouldn’t rob a bank unless you are willing to risk going to prison, this would be a valid should insofar as I am making a pertinent point if you are not willing to risk going to prison.
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When I said “a very few Antinatalists and Absurdists”, I didn’t mean “a small percentage of the Antinatalists and Absurdists”. I meant that the Antinatalists and Absurdists are very few.
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Of course. If that were Antinatalists’ and Absudists’ only contention, then I wouldn’t disagree with them.
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Undeniably.
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Under Materialism, that analogy holds up, to some extent at least. By my metaphysics, it doesn’t work, because you’re the reason for your parents, not vice-versa. But I’ve not been saying that lately, because I feel that it’s more effective to talk to Antinatalists and Absurdists in terms of their own metaphysics. So I’ve lately only been saying things here that are true even under Materialism.
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Your parents are the proximal physical cause of the fact that there’s you. Under Materialism, that’s the whole reason why there’s you. …entitling you to blame them.
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Fine, they’re culpable, even with Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, because they made themselves part of your being in a world like this one. (…and maybe because of being unqualified for parenting too.)
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So, we don’t disagree about parents’ culpability.
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But evidently we disagree about the importance now, of that culpability. Yes they’re culpable, but so what?
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“So don’t repeat their wrongdoing”? Fine. I agree with that too. I wouldn’t want to be part of the proximal physical mechanism of someone coming into being in a world like this. Nor would I want to add to the world’s already excessive population, and its consequent problems. …nor would I encourage others to do those things.
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So we agree on the bottom-line main-issues of Antinatalism. …just not on Antinatalists’, Schopenhaurists’ and Absurdists’ irrational life-rejection. …in other words, I disagree with their attitude toward this life…which is an issue of theirs that’s different from and more than their exhortation to not reproduce.
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So I don’t disagree with Antinatalism itself. I only disagree with the “philosophical-pessimism”, and specifically the bad-attitude toward and rejection of this life that Antinatalists unnecessarily tack onto Antinatalism, as if it were an essential part of Antinatalism.
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And I only express that disagreement because I’m genuinely trying to be helpful.
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But it doesn’t seem to be doing any good, and so there isn’t any reason for me to join future Antinatalist or philosophical-pessimism discussions.
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Michael Ossipoff
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1. There are experiences people don't want
2. Suffering is weighted more than happiness
So,
3. Nonexistence is better
However, what about the experiences people want out of life?
Here's a thought experiment of mine:
Imagine someone given three options:
1. Non existence
2. Existence in dystopia
3. Existence in utopia
The choice thus given, the person would chose 1 over 2, 3 over 2 or 1.
As this reveals the only problem with existence is suffering and pain one has to undergo in living.
As I mentioned, the suffering and pain graph is showing a downward trend with modern medicine, technology, and good governance. There is no logical contradiction in utopia is there? Utopia is possible and if we go by national strategic planning and UN millenial goals, such as eradication of polio, universal health for all, etc., the global community is, in reality, aiming for a utopian world or thereabouts.
Therefore, in my opinion, my though experiment shows that if happiness is achievable, it looks possible, people will choose existence over nonexistence.
It’s not clear to me how your thought experiment does reveal that the only problem with existence is suffering and pain. Some philosophers would argue that betrayal, ignorance, disappointment, malevolence and death would also be part of any properly dystopian future even if they wouldn’t contribute to the suffering. Some pessimistic philosophers would even argue that life is good but death is bad and it’s the combination of life followed by death that makes being born regrettable. Also, it seems that I could just as easily argue that the only thing good about existence is pleasure and happiness. There’s a debate in philosophy about whether or not intrinsic goodness or badness lies in experience or if there are also things that are intrinsically good or bad outside of its effect on experience. I tend to think that intrinsic value could only lie in experience.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, even if I knew that in 200 years there would be a utopia, would it be right for me to create a child living in circumstances that I believe are worse than non-existence in order so that my great-grandchildren can live in utopia? It’s seems like I would be using my children as a means to an end and that could be objectionable from a deontological perspective. But, even if I was to be a pure consequentialist and I knew that a utopian world would come about in 200 years, how long would this utopian period last? Would it be an everlasting utopia? What if it peaks 200 years from now and it sustains it’s utopian state for another 200 years but then it goes to hell afterwards because something goes terribly wrong and it continues being hell for thousands of years. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren might have to live in hell! This is why it’s not clear to me if we should rely on future predictions as a basis for justifying or condemning reproduction.
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You’re right: I hadn’t said them in this thread before I said them in this thread LOL :D
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Then maybe it would be better if you didn’t assert about posting-histories.
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What I said was that it plausibly follows from my metaphysics.
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Fact? It probably is. …though I can’t prove it.
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:D
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Living things can be expected to likely depend on various physical conditions obtaining, and various things not happening, and various other things happening. A physical world operates by its physical laws.
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Your world of never any harm, misfortune or pain for any of its living-things doesn’t sound very plausible.
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But your beliefs are your business. I’m just saying that I don’t share that one.
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Almost surely there are, in other possibility-worlds, better societal worlds than that of this planet
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Of course.
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I address that statement farther below.
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Yes, as required by consistency of experience, if the subconscious predispositions that are the basis of this life remain at the end of this life, then there will be a next life in a world consistent with the person you are.
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And yes, your parents have nothing to do with it.
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If your practice contraception, you aren’t preventing anyone from being born.
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I answered that in a recent previous reply. Maybe even the one that you’re “replying” to here. No, I’m not going to repeat that answer. I refer you to the recent previous reply in which I answered that claim of yours.
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That’s your wording. I didn’t say that. I said that, due to the requirement for consistency of experience (because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts), your next world will be one that is consistent with there being someone like you…a world inhabited by the kind of people who would beget someone like you.
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But I’ve answered about that too, and so, again, I refer you to my recent previous replies.
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Say you’re a really awful person. Most likely you were begotten by similarly awful people. Then what kind of people are likely to populate a world in which you’re born? What kind of a world is that likely to be?
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But see above. I refer you to my recent previous replies.
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Anyway, you’re of course entitled to your beliefs. It’s just that I don’t share them.
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See directly above.
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We can agree to disagree about that claim.
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And I refer you to my recent previous replies.
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I have no objection to discussing, or answering questions about, reincarnation. But if you’re going to pursue that issue here then you shouldn’t object to it.
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The points that I’ve been making here don’t depend on the matter of whether we have one life or many.
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Correct.
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Correct.
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Now, above, you said:
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I’ve clarified many times that I support Antinatalism because:
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1. It’s undesirable to be part of the proximal physical mechanism of the start of a life in this societal world.
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2. This world is already overcrowded, and so it’s undesirable to make it more crowded.
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Neither of those reasons requires agreeing with your philosophical claims.
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A hint: When you quote someone, limit yourself to things that they actually said.
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I’ve answered that, and I don’t have time to keep answering it. But I’ll say again (for the last time) that I was speaking of the unconsciousness (absence of waking-consciousness) during death.
I wasn’t speaking of the time (experienced by your survivors but not by you) after your complete shutdown, For you, of course, there’s no such time.
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As for reincarnation, I’ve already clarified more than once that it’s a plausible consequence of the metaphysics that I propose. It isn’t part of that metaphysics. It isn’t assumed by that metaphysics.
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If you want to find assumptions or presumptions in my metaphysics, then look for them in my description or exposition of my metaphysics.
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Nonsense. I’ve many times clarified that I make no claim about “existence” or “real-ness” (whatever that would mean) of any of the logically-interdependent things.
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I spoke of complex logical systems consisting of inter-referring abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things. I didn’t claim that they “exist” or are “real” (whatrever that would mean).
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Some of those systems can be called “experience-stories”, about the experience of a protagonist. That protagonist and hir (his/her) surroundings are the mutually-complementary components of that story.
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It goes without sayings that the protagonist and hir physical world will be mutually consistent, because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts.
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You’re debating metaphysics, when I’ve been avoiding that topic because I’ve been making points that are valid even under Materialism.
I’ve been avoiding the metaphysics issue because it’s more effective to say things that aren’t metaphysics-dependent, and are compatible with the whatever metaphysics you already believe in. Most Antinatalists are Materialists, and so it’s best to say things that are valid even under Materialism.
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I make no claims about the “existence” (whatever that would mean) of any of the logically-interdependent things.
If mutually-contradictory facts are important to you, then it isn’t for me to say that they shouldn’t be important to you. But they aren’t what I’m talking about. I’m not quite sure how a world based on mutually-contradictory facts, and propositions that are both true and false, would work—and neither are you. There isn’t evidence that the universe in which we live is one such.
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There’s no reason why you can’t speak of such things. I make no claims about the “existence” (whatever that would mean) of any of the logically-interdependent things.
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If you want to say that worlds with mutually-inconsistent “facts” exist in some way (though neither of us knows what you mean by that), you’re free to speak of such things. It’s just that I’m not.
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Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism doesn’t make any assumptions.
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I invited you to name one, and you named things that Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism doesn’t assume.
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You can have an abstract implication with a false antecedent, or with an antecedent about which you don’t claim truth or falsity.
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I make no claim that any of the antecedents of any of the abstract implications that I speak of are true.
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I have no objection to discussing or answering questions about metaphysics or about the metaphysics of Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, but if you’re going to pursue that topic here then you shouldn’t object to it.
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I no longer criticize philosophical Antinatalism (the belief that your parents are the reason why you’re in a life), because, in this Antinatalist topic, I want to say things that don’t depend on metaphysics. I want to say things that are just as valid for you if you’re a Materialist.
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Materialism assumes a brute-fact, as an unfalsifiable proposition. That brute-fact is that this physical world comprises all of Reality. In fact--regarding the mere assumption that this physical world has some (unspecified) kind of absolute or objective existence or real-ness that isn’t had by the system of inter-referring abstract-implications that I speak of--That assumption is an unsupported, faith-based brute-fact too, and an unfalsifiable proposition.
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Materialists claim to highly value science, and to be More-Scientific-Than-Thou, but their faith-based, unnecessary, unparsimonious brute-facts and unfalsifiable propositions are not the sort of things that are usually favored by science.
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That qualifies as absurdity.
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1. Fine, but philosophical Antinatalism (which claims that your parents are the reason why you’re in a life) depends on a metaphysical belief. (But I no longer address that issue, because I want to say things that don’t depend on metaphysical issues.)
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2. Then why are you persistently debating metaphysics and reincarnation in this thread?
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I’d be glad to leave metaphysics and reincarnation out of this thread. But if you pursue those topics here, then I’ll reply to them here.
Michael Ossipoff
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Michael Ossipoff
By dystopia or hell, if you prefer, I include ALL negative experiences and so those that you mention above are part of my thought experiment.
My point is that people will prefer existence over nonexistence if the problems of existence are solved and they are being solved. Some problems are easy to solve and some may require all the ingenuity we can muster. Yet, the future seems bright. Doesn't it?
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Well, isn't depriving people of heaven/utopia a bad thing? When I say utopia/heaven I mean a permanent state of happiness. All the problems of existence dealt with decisively.
How could you deprive someone that never existed? Deprivation requires that there’s someone to be deprived so never bringing a child into existence can never be harmful to anyone. You could say that you are failing to provide a benefit if you don’t reproduce under utopian circumstances. But, am I obligated to provide a benefit to someone? We typically don’t think that someone is blameworthy for refusing to benefit someone. Otherwise, I would be immoral for refusing to donate some money to charity to help the starving children in Africa. On the other hand, somebody that harms somebody else could be called immoral. Reproduction involves potentially harming someone and it could therefore be immoral but avoiding reproduction can never harm anyone so it can never be immoral. It’s also not clear to me if creating a happy life would be morally praiseworthy. That’s because you took a risk of creating an unhappy life in the process. On the other hand, avoiding reproduction can also be potentially praiseworthy because it could be considered preventing harm and we typically think that preventing harm is praiseworthy. Another way you could be praiseworthy is by preventing reproduction by donating money to charities that provide contraception to developing countries. That way we could prevent the creation of lives that are even bad by your standards. The average cost of raising a child in the US is around $250,000. Imagine if I donated that amount of money to charity to provide enough contraception to prevent potentially dozens of terrible lives from coming into existence. Wouldn’t you think that would be more virtuous? Less controversially, I could just donate that money to provide food and shelter to developing countries and that would be more beneficial than having children.
May be if we view this as potentiality it'll make sense. A person, before birth, is nonexistent and , therefore, can't be deprived of or gifted with anything.
However, a person doesn't come into existence from nothing. A plant grows from a seed. The seed has the potential of becoming a beautiful flower. Would you deny the seed of its potential?
Likewise, in our bodies the female egg and the male sperm together, have a potential for a beautiful life. Are antinatalists not then depriving a potential wonderful life?
Well, by that logic, we are depriving a near infinite number of potential beings. Every time you are not reproducing, you could be potentially depriving someone who could of lived a happy life. You seem to be suggesting that all of the gazzilion of different sperm and egg combinations could be potential victims. This seems absurd to me. I would also like to point out that it takes both a sperm and an egg to create an identity unless you hold the strange metaphysical view that we had dual identities before the sperm and egg came together. So, it’s not clear to me if I would harming a whole being or half a being by not reproducing. I also would like to ask you a question. Suppose that a person who doesn’t want to have kids and who could raise a child in a utopian circumstances agreed with your argument and decides to remove his testes to prevent the production of future sperm, thereby making it so that there is nobody who could be created or deprived by not being brought into existence. Would the fact that he avoided creating sperm cells make any moral difference under your view?
Truth can evoke many kinds of emotions.
You deny that nothing is gained or lost in antinatalist contraception. That's not true. In the context of an improving world children have a brighter future than not. Not producing children would be depriving life from a beautiful existence.
Imagine you have a gift that you're sure will make anybody happy. Imagine you're a filthy rich man. Wouldn't you produce children or find someone to appreciate and enjoy your gift/wealth?
Of course, if you were poor the reverse logic would apply. But isn't it then an individual issue. We can't make any general pronouncements like antinatalists do.
I’m actually a fairly wealthy person myself and I used to be poor and I could tell you that having more money is not going to make you any happier. I don’t think existence could ever be a gift that will make absolutely everyone happy. Alleviating suffering is not as simple as giving them enough material resources and opportunities to form relationships. I think suffering is inevitable so long as we do not alter our genome or strip away our humanity. We used to suffer from disease and starvation but now we are suffering arguably just as much because our romantic partner broke up with us or we are in poverty while surrounded by rich people in the developed countries. This is among the reasons why the suicide rate in developed countries is higher than it is in many developing countries. Tragedies are so much worse when you seem to be the only one experiencing them.
I would still love to hear the answer to my question about whether or not preventing the production of sperm cells in your body would prevent anyone from being deprived of being born since the reason you gave me for why you think not having children deprives someone revolved around there being an identity attached to each individual sperm and egg combination. It’s not clear to me how there could be an actual physical identity if the sperm and egg do not combine and if each individual has a dual identity before fertilization, then simply preventing the production of sperm and egg cells would prevent the deprivation.
Because you're forwarding that it can somehow be objective, and you're basing an argument for that on popularity. In other words, I'm criticizing it from the context you're proposing.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I'd agree that the probability that your offspring will be glad it was born will help you determine the probability it will be glad it was born. ;-)
That is, assuming that (a) probability really works the way people like to imagine it does, and (b) we could have data for something as ridiculously oversimplified (outside of frustrated teenagers expressing frustration) as whether people are "glad they were born."
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
That's still not valid. You could say that if you rob a bank you increase your chances of going to prison, but that tells us nothing about what anyone should do a la validity, which has to do with truth. Shoulds can't be true (or false). That's a category error for them.
The chain of causation relevant to potentiality can be extended into the past and the future.
You, me and everyone else are part of this potentiality chain or web if you like.
There was a Siddhartha Gautama once, the Buddha, whose philosophy is founded on pain and suffering. He was right. During his time his words were true.
In the 21st century his foundational thesis, that life is suffering, is only partially true.
All of us, 21st century people, were only potential humans during the Buddha's time. Yet, here we are enjoying, even if only relatively, our lives.
Yes, there's a lot of suffering but this isn't a photograph in which we're stuck in one state/pose forever. It's more like a movie - states change - we can become happier. If I see a photograph of African slaves it saddens me. Yet, if you observe the passage of history, a movie as it were, then you see emancipation.
The potential for happiness can't be ignored and, as of habit, we don't. Don't we all go to school, sacrifice little pleasures and willingly undergo a little pain, for a greater state of happiness/contentment? The potential for happiness or greater happiness is very relevant.
It is the above element of truth that is missing from the worldview of antinatalism.
Lastly and most pertinently, I draw your attention to the familiar idiom ''to nip something in the bud''. Antinatalists are advising just that and that is, if not anything else, an endorsement of potentiality as I've tried to describe it. Only difference is I see a different outcome (happiness) than antinatalists (sorrow).
I was forwarding that if we asked about people preferences, their collected answers would constitute an objective fact. You admitted that you agreed that was the case in your previous comment. Whether or not this fact is relevant to the case of reproduction is a different question. You could argue that it’s up to debate as to how relevant this fact is. I never claimed it was the only fact we should consider and think about relating to reproduction but it’s worth considering. When I say it is worth considering, I am not claiming that it’s an objective fact that it’s worth considering but I’m claiming that the objective fact is the collected explicit preferences from different people.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So, what do you think is a more relevant fact to consider here then? It’s sounds to me like you don’t even think anyone could make a sound moral argument of any type and that there are no relevant facts to addressing any moral issues. So, how should we talk about the morality of reproduction then?
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think we’re using a different definitions of valid here. My definition of valid here is something worthy of consideration that is relevant to the subject matter at hand. The fact that you might go to prison for robbing a bank is valid because it’s something worthy of consideration that is relevant to the subject matter at hand. Similarly, the fact that most people claim to prefer existence over non-existence is valid because it’s something worthy of consideration that is relevant to the subject matter at hand. On another note, whether or not, shoulds can be true or false is dependent upon which theories of truth you except. If you accept only the correspondence theory of truth then shoulds cannot be true or false(although, something could be neither true nor false but still be valid under my definition of validity. Although, I must point out that the technical definition of validity in logic has to do with the structure of the argument and not the content of it. By the technical definition of validity, you could make a valid false argument because an argument is valid if the premises would lead to the conclusion even if the premises are false or could not be true nor false). But if you accept the coherence or the pragmatic theories of truth then shoulds could be true or false. By the coherence theory, shoulds can be true so long as there are no contradictions in the larger framework of all of your should claims. By the pragmatic theories of truth, shoulds can be true if believing in them is useful for your life.
Yes, but if you removed the potentiality by preventing the production of sex cells, wouldn’t that prevent the deprivation? If potentiality implies possible deprivation, then if an antinatalist mad scientist invents a powder that prevents the future production of sperm cells and he puts the powder in the food of unsuspecting men, you would have to conclude that he is doing something good by preventing the harm of deprivation of all the potential happy beings that were extremely unlikely to be born anyway. That’s because most of these potential beings that would of been produced by the future sperm cells had they existed would not be potential beings anymore and that means the mad scientist got rid of the deprivation by removing the potentiality.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, if life was suffering in the past and is now better, we would expect to see a reduction of the suicide rate and antinatalism should be becoming less popular. What we are seeing in the 21st century is opposite of that so it’s not clear to me that material well being leads to life satisfaction and happiness. As I have mentioned with the hedonic treadmill, our level of happiness tends to stay constant throughout our lives and we simply adjust to our increased well being and find new things to be miserable about. The upside to the hedonic treadmill is that we can adjust to our suffering also but that takes a longer time and is more difficult.