On Antinatalism
Antinatalism seems like a popular topic hereabouts. There's something very psychologically satisfying about denying suffering to an unborn fetus. It almost strikes one as the ethical thing to do, and I do admit that I've been lured into the thought about not having children and burdening them with existence.
Mind you, I am somewhat in a contradiction between the empowering psychological appeal of creating less suffering in a world that we have very little control over.
But... I have realized that antinatalism is, in essence, an extreme form of psychological projection onto an unborn and unknown entity.
What do I mean by this? Well, we all have visions of the future, or perhaps the antinatalist has an overabundance of concern for the future (anxiety, dread, angst). Those of us who have been mired in their misery, unjustifiably so in many cases, have taken their experiences and have created a fictional entity that is an unborn child.
I don't know how far I can take this psychoanalysis, and perhaps @unenlightened or @Baden might be of help here; but, fundamentally, antinatalism is an extreme form of some cognitive distortion or psychological dissonance, that needs to find an outlet, which unfortunately manifests in the denial of life.
Thoughts?
Mind you, I am somewhat in a contradiction between the empowering psychological appeal of creating less suffering in a world that we have very little control over.
But... I have realized that antinatalism is, in essence, an extreme form of psychological projection onto an unborn and unknown entity.
What do I mean by this? Well, we all have visions of the future, or perhaps the antinatalist has an overabundance of concern for the future (anxiety, dread, angst). Those of us who have been mired in their misery, unjustifiably so in many cases, have taken their experiences and have created a fictional entity that is an unborn child.
I don't know how far I can take this psychoanalysis, and perhaps @unenlightened or @Baden might be of help here; but, fundamentally, antinatalism is an extreme form of some cognitive distortion or psychological dissonance, that needs to find an outlet, which unfortunately manifests in the denial of life.
Thoughts?
Comments (1871)
They could just say, "I have no opinion on that; all I have an opinion on is that creating suffering people is morally neutral"
Basically, you're banking on the idea of reasoning about this stuff--so that you need to proceed as if moral utterances have truth values, and you're also trying to do that from the perspective of moral utterances needing to be maximally generalized rather than being very particularly qualified or alternately rather vague.
I would invite them to think about it. If they don’t want to then there’s not much I can do about that.
Yes, because to most people different moral statements have certain connecting “themes” or “logic” behind them. Most people don’t randomly juggle words in a sentence such that it contains the word “should” and employ the generated moral statement as a result.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Not necessarily. It’s just better to start with general statements. If you want more specific ones I can do that but we haven’t even gotten over vague ones (not that I want to start arguing with you about this again)
Actually going to bed now
Impossible and highly unlikely are far from being the same. For the sake of argument, if you erase the morally responsible all you have left is the morally irresponsible.
Quoting khaled
Yes, but as I also stated, that reduces the argument to a depth nearing meaninglessness.
If the whole purpose of this thread is an exercise in argumentative skills then I'm bowing out. I was trying to understand the concept as a meaningful, implementable plan, but I'm finding it to be nothing but an exercise in idealism based on a dim view of the human experience.
Why does the "human experience" need to be lived out in the first place? It sounds like a knee-jerk idea of "because existence has some good points, or because I have grown from pain, existence must be good for people to have to live through". That however, does not logically cohere.
More than directing the argument towards what I personally consider good or bad, whether human existence is good or bad, or anecdotal examples about human life benefitting from surviving hardship, I prefer to not pretend my personal moral judgment is above nature's design.
That makes no logical sense. Nature's design? Humans have freedom of thought and can do any number of actions. Nature here implies there is only one path someone can or should follow. If it is "should follow" that is the naturalistic fallacy.
Not really. After all, by whatever method that we clearly do not yet understand nature produced humans, where humans are nowhere near to produce anything rivaling the feat. There is no one path, we are free to choose. You choose to believe the very fact that nature produced humans is a mistake that needs to be corrected, I simply disagree.
That’s exactly what I’m saying won’t happen. Because among the morally irresponsible some will learn to become morally responsible. Because moral responsibility is not genetic
Quoting staticphoton
Ok so we’re not using pleasure good pain bad anymore then. What’s the alternative you’re proposing? Also, antinatalism is not a plan. In the same way that “murder is wrong” is not a plan. Note that a world without murders is unimplementable and neither is a world where everyone is not an antinatalist. That doesn’t take away from whether or not they make sense does it?
Quoting staticphoton
Nature doesn’t design. Also does that mean if you had bad vision you wouldn’t buy glasses to preserve “nature’s design”? What about vaccines? As I said, we have gone against nature’s design plenty of times already. Unless you mean something else by nature’s design and I’m talking past you
Since you're using murder as a parallel, I'll delineate a parallel plan:
Murdering causes suffering, so we will outlaw murder to limit it.
Birthing causes suffering, so we will outlaw birthing to limit it.
Neither is fully implementable, but you do your best, right? The only obvious difficulty is that pretty much everyone considers murder to be bad, while not so many consider birth to be bad. And if one doubts the power of the majority in forging the bounds of morality then one has forgotten history.
Birth = bad makes sense to you and a very small minority. A simplistic rationalization doesn't necessarily make it morally correct.
Quoting khaled
Design is a word I'm using to illustrate man is a product of nature.
There wasn't a point in which humans became "separate from nature" and began to create eyeglasses and vaccines, we do exactly what nature endowed us with to do, nothing more & nothing less. We are not an invading species from another planet nor a "virus" inoculated into the environment to screw things up. If we ultimately bomb ourselves into extinction and take the world with it, it is only because evolution has taken us to the point of being able to create the means and make the choices.
I have no idea how anyone can come to the conclusion that human reason is above the very system that created it.
True, and I believe you should be part of that minority if you want to avoid seeming like a hypocrite. Whether or not birth = bad is what I came here to debate, not whether or not one should outlaw birth. Because as I said before, an antinatalist leader is so incredibly unlikely that I find reasoning about whether or not he’d be right in imposing antinatalism on the population a waste of time.
Quoting staticphoton
Nature also allowed us all to be antinatalists no? So I don’t see a problem here. Again, nature doesn’t have an agenda for us. Any agenda you ascribe to nature is just your own.
You also haven’t presented an alternative to “pain bad pleasure good” that we’ve been using, even though you conceded antinatalism makes sense under those hedonistic general principles. And yet you criticize it for being Quoting staticphoton
Please present a non simplistic moral valuation so we can see if it antinatalism still makes sense under more complex principles because I believe it does. It’s been simplistic SO FAR but David benetar for example went over much more complex moral principles in his book “better never to have been” that are popular nowadays and showed that antinatalism still makes sense under those as well. You can’t criticize the position for using simplistic rationalization when you’re the one that said “let’s assume pleasure good pain bad for the sake of argument”
You're the one who said: Quoting khaled
So I was trying to make it easier for you.
Since your strategy keeps reverting to calling me a hypocrite, and because of the fact that no matter what I say you will never accept the premise that there is merit in the balance of suffering/happiness, I don't see the point of continuing.
In the end it is all a matter of belief, and we are free to believe what makes sense to us. If ending suffering by ending humanity is your ideal, I am sure there are good reasons for you to reach that point, I completely accept that, and I have no interest in making you think my way.
I'll catch you around Khaled, be good.
That is false first of all. I haven’t stated an opinion about “the balance of suffering/pleasure” because I don’t think it matters. Unlike most of the people here I don’t think my opinion of life is a factor in deciding whether or not I should introduce someone else into it for the simple reason that they might not share said opinion. It shouldn’t matter what you think of the balance of suffering/happiness when you know it’s possible your child won’t think the same. The point is: you take a risk of harming someone else for no good reason and in a way where they can’t appeal to some greater meaning or value in “the balance of suffering/happiness”. At least you haven’t shown me a good reason yet. That YOU find value in the balance of suffering/happiness that is no good reason to assume a stranger would find value in the same is it? You’d have to convince me that there is some moral good resulting from having children, as in, someone somewhere benefits from it so much that the suffering of the child is outweighed.
Let’s just get one thing clear: do you think that if someone had a child and provided them with an absolutely perfect life (as measured by the child) that that someone has done something good?
Because I think what he did was neutral at best.
Quoting staticphoton
Ending humanity is not my ideal. It’s a side effect. “Humanity” is not a person. I’m not actually harming anyone here whereas one can be harmed severely by being brought into a world where harm is possible. If you harm someone by NOT having children then I’d be arguing you’re a hypocrite for not having MORE children
No you can't do that. Khaled was trying to understand what you meant by "Nature". You were unclear- was it that nature only has one way and we are against it? If so, Khaled was trying to show that this was clearly wrong because as humans who are PART OF NATURE, we clearly can do any number of actions, including not procreate, which means that antinatalism is "part of nature" too.
Quoting staticphoton
The key here is "us" in your quote. You are making a decision on behalf of someone else, and then hoping post-facto that they will agree with your decision, or that harm is not greater than pain for them. It is always the case though, that you made this decision for someone else that cannot be reversed. Prior to birth, no person existed. No person with needs or wants, or with harms to experience. Sure, there are no neutral/good experiences either, or chances to grow from pain. But then, the assumption is, that people HAVE to experience some sort of cycle of growth through pain, along with occasional happy experiences and probable undue harm (what I call the GTA-UH model). It's like the standard model people project will be their future child's life. No one ever has a good answer why this model should be carried out- why the agenda of the GTA-UH model must be experienced by another person, at the cost of creating (literally) unnecessary needs and wants, challenges/adversity, and certainly undue harm. If you go back and say, "it's nature", that is false as someone can simply not procreate and defy this idea that it is some all abiding force that just makes it that way. You can go back and say that you like inflicting challenges on other people, and seeing them go through undue harm, but then that could be deemed as mildly (at best) sadistic. You could go back and say that you feel that you are a missionizer for humanity to continue, but then that could be deemed as messianic and unfounded. So yeah, no good justification for the GTA-UH model being carried forth again and again and again at the cost of harming new people.
Great point.. I don't know why people always make that error.
What I consider a good reason, you don't. You are asking me to understand what "good" means to you, and structure my answer in a way that fits that mold. That is beyond my ability.
Quoting khaled
See above.
Quoting khaled
Per your own reasoning, values are not genetically inherited, they are taught. And to assume that those reared by me are "strangers" is a belief I don't share either.
Quoting khaled
Again, I have no interest in convincing you, I only here to see if from my perspective there is any merit in your belief.
Quoting khaled
I don't think in those terms. Good and bad are far from being absolutely and universally defined values against which every system of morals is measured, what is good to some is bad for others. I'm sure I don't need to explain that to you. To me that question is meaningless.
Quoting khaled
Again, judging people for not sharing your set of beliefs is dogmatic at best. Personally, ending humanity seem like a pretty big deal to be set aside as a collateral effect, "oh well stuff happens".
Quoting schopenhauer1
If you are making a decision to contribute to the greater good by not having any children, I respect that. If you will not be content until everyone sees it your way, that's another story. I simply don't share your values or perspective.
that's the bottom line, right?
Quoting staticphoton
If you don’t think in terms of good and bad then how are you doing ethics right now?
Quoting staticphoton
What IS your good reason exactly? That you yourself believe in the value of a pain/happiness cycle and are thus entitled to bring into the world someone else knowing full well they might not share your comforting belief? If that is the case, then I should be allowed to force people to work my job if I like it right? After all, me liking an experience apparently gives me license to impose it on someone else.
Quoting staticphoton
They are strangers until you educate them obviously.
Quoting staticphoton
This is missing the point, the whole point of not having children is that it is a way to ensure no one is harmed but no one benefits either. Antinatalists don’t try to contribute to a greater good, they merely don’t want to risk contributing to greater evil
Yes. Unless it is for some greater purpose. But you can’t guarantee your child will find such greater purpose.
Quoting staticphoton
No. Future life should not be introduced. Totally different things.
The most significant effect of not introducing more life is that the life cycle will end.
"If" there was a greater purpose as you suggest to be a possibility, you are compromising such a greater purpose based on an arbitrary moral call. Is that your place? I don't know, maybe you think it is, I'm not so sure.
Quoting khaled
Exactly. You teach them what you believe in, and that becomes their belief.
Quoting khaled
My set of values differ from yours, that's all. Me not thinking in terms of good and bad is something you just invented to use as a red herring.
Yes I would be compromising such a purpose. Tell me exactly who that harms. I don’t think an act is wrong if it doesn’t actually harm anyone so who exactly is harmed if everyone decides never to have kids starting tomorrow?
On the other hand look at how many are harmed by people having kids today.
Who exactly does human extinction hurt other than yourself and your fellow believers in great purposes?
Quoting staticphoton
No I didn’t, at least not purposefully
Quoting staticphoton
I thought “those terms” was referring to good and bad
Quoting staticphoton
Correction: you teach them what you believe in and sometimes that becomes their belief. I’d say most people have different beliefs from their parents. Take antinatalists as an example!
A higher purpose would trump the concern for individual harm. That's the point of a higher purpose, it is above the needs/wants/fears of the individual. If there was such a higher purpose, it would not my place to compromise it.
This fear of harm and suffering over everything else, to believe your moral position is above all else. This urge to terminate the human life cycle... It just doesn't work for me, sorry.
Quoting khaled
Yes, good and bad as absolute concepts, I don't think in absolute but relative concepts. I don't expect others to accept my moral perspective.
Quoting khaled
Whether they accept your teachings or not does not make them strangers.
You said it yourself. For INDIVIDUAL harm. Not for another individual's harm.
Are you saying your higher purpose is so high you wouldn't mind harming others for it? Knowing they might not share said purpose?
Quoting staticphoton
I don't use good and bad as absolute concepts. I expect others to have their own, consistent moral systems though. Or else they'd be hypocrites. Not that that's objectively good or bad either
Quoting staticphoton
My point was, you can't guarantee your child will believe in this higher purpose you believe in. That's all. I don't actually care whether or not they're called strangers.
Quoting staticphoton
Which I don't have. If I did I'd be a pro mortalist
I can agree in some aspects.
My wife feeds the feral cats that come around the house, but she also traps them to be sterilized, releases them, and continues to feed them. Otherwise they would produce kittens with bleak destinies.
People in overpopulated, poor, oppressed, and/or polluted areas where a new human is basically a guarantee for lifelong suffering, I believe would be perfect candidates for the voluntary practice of antinatalism (ignoring all fairness/justice aspects of course).
But other than dismal scenarios, from my perspective the foundations don't hold.
I have already expressed my beliefs in past posts which assigns different values & merit to suffering, life, happiness, etc., and I believe values can be passed down to offspring. I believe in a higher purpose (not necessarily religious) that makes the risk justifiable and make life worth living.
These were immediately discarded, so I don't know how else to frame it for you.
It appears to boil down to you finding it unfair that I impose the risk of suffering on someone who is unable to approve/disapprove, and me believing that producing a life is a justifiable endeavor... I am just unable to justify it to an antinatalist.
Even what are considered minor negative conditions can really fuck with someone's well being and adjustment in the world, far beyond what others, even a parent would expect or deal with themselves. This idea that only the worst conditions merits avoidance is no big deal for ones own estimate of ones own state, but when considering that this is then applied to another person altogether is misguided at best. Being that the alternative is no harm nor person who is deprived, there is no other argument here.
They weren’t. The idea that you can ignore all moral considerations when it comes to risking someone ELSE’S life for your own ideals was. If I saw “greater purpose” in working as a janitor let’s say, does that entitle me to force you, someone I know nothing about, to work as a janitor as well? With the excuse that “I’m sure he’ll like it in time” or “I’m sure I can pass my values onto him perfectly because there is absolutely no chance he’ll disagree with them because my values are just that good”
Quoting staticphoton
Well this is just empirically incorrect. Do you see everyone being spitting images for their parents. If it was true that values could be passed down to offspring entirely and with no chance they disagree, I wouldn’t have a problem with having children so far as the ones that did it saw a “greater value” in life. Because they can then know that their children will think the same.
Quoting staticphoton
Here’s a challenge: find me a scenario in which individual A is justified to force individual B to do something A doesn’t know B agrees with or not without having B’s consent and where B is put in a much riskier situation as a result
Quoting staticphoton
This is the problem here. YOU believe producing life is a justifiable endeavor. What if said life doesn’t?
PS: 1k replies. This thread is literally second to trump on the front page
Ah, but there is no forcing here. Nothing comes as natural as giving birth.
Quoting khaled
But it is all about belief, no?
I just don't believe you can reduce life to "suffering = bad" and construct a system of logic that finds no value in what lays outside "suffering = bad". You diminish the concept of life to an incredible simple equation and all the complications are gone. No life = no suffering. Done!
You believe in a simple logic. Its easy, I get it.
Quoting khaled
I said "can", not "will".
Quoting khaled
All moral considerations? I only saw one: suffering = bad => birth bad.
Not ignoring it, just not shallowing it.
...and by "greater purpose" I had something different in mind than working as a janitor, I'll just leave it at that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What is misguided at best is adopting a philosophy of life followed by closing your heart to any other possibilities. But don't feel bad, on that one you are in the majority.
Quoting khaled
I'll take that as a compliment!
Joking aside, I have enjoyed the exercise and admire the fighting spirit. You are tenacious and true to your cause.
Murder and rape are natural..... this is just a naturalistic fallacy. Having a child obviously forces a child to exist, it IS forcing. You didn’t choose to exist did you? Now that would be impressive.
So again, I ask for an example of the scenario I described other than birth.
Quoting staticphoton
Yes, just not your own. Your child’s. Whose beliefs you obviously don’t know. So don’t assume they’ll be the same as yours. Simple. Antinatalism is “belief neutral”. The argument doesn’t take into account what the living think of living but what the would be living could think of living.
Quoting staticphoton
I don’t actually believe suffering = bad and that’s it. As I said, I was only doing that for the sake of argument (which was your idea). I haven’t stated what my actual views are because unlike you, I don’t think ME believing in something entitles me to force someone ELSE to do something (in this case live). In fact, I don’t think you believe that either, but you’re making an exception for having children as has been shown by the fact that you can’t come up with another scenario like I specified.
Quoting staticphoton
And that’s a problem innit. So you recognize the possibility that your child would absolutely hate existence right? So why are you taking the risk for him?
Quoting staticphoton
And your child might have something different in mind than preserving the human race. I’ll just leave it at that. The whole POINT of the example is that working as a janitor is something most would say has no greater purpose. All I did was reduce the probability someone finds purpose in the activity in question and suddenly for you it went from “yea it’s ok to force them to do it” to “no it’s not ok, who’d ever want to be a janitor”.
Quoting staticphoton
If I was closing my heart to any other possibilities I wouldn’t be debating you. And actually, antinatalism is one of the few moral theories where believing in it blindly, even if it turns out to be wrong, doesn’t hurt anyone. Natalism on the other hand....
Quoting staticphoton
It was. To everyone in the thread. (Most of the work was done by terrapin though good job)
Very good example.
Quoting khaled
Haha, also good point.
Great thoughts.
I don’t want to Pooh-Pooh the philosophy because I’m only vaguely familiar with its arguments, but I can’t see the reason or value of this stance because it is ethics applied toward beings that will never exist, “potential persons” and the not-yet-born.
I can understand why one wouldn’t want to have children for a variety of reason, but presenting it is an ethical stance towards beings that don’t exist seems strange.
This wouldn't be the first example of such ethics. I would bargain you find genetically modifying children to suffer as much as possible (by, say, giving them 10 broken limbs on birth) wrong. Even though no person is being harmed at the time the modification is taking place.
Beings that will never exist is quite different than beings that will or do exist.
Antinatalism doesn't say you are good for not having children if that's what you're saying. (Because that's the only sense antinatalism would be talking about beings that will never exist, except it doesn't)
A potential human is never a human and never will be. You are not talking about beings at all. You’re not being moral towards any being.
True. Antinatalism doesn't claim it is "helping" potential people. As I said, you are not doing something good by not having children per antinatalism. What antinatalism is claiming is that having children is bad.
Then why are you saying potential human?
Say potential being.
But then...
Quoting NOS4A2
You'd have to change it to a potential something.
Until you loop around~
That is the term I see thrown around.
Or a potential nothing. Either way when we’re talking about beings let me know.
That’s fair, admittedly I know little about the position. Excuse my ignorance.
What is, in your mind at least, the most convincing reason why having children is bad?
Pretty simple. Having children risks harming someone whereas not having them doesn't. And I see no other scenario in real life when people think it's acceptable to risk harming someone for no good reason whatsoever like that.
For me it's more consistency than anything really.
But doesn’t that becomes a moral imperative to avoid having a child in order to avoid harming someone that doesn’t exist?
No. It's "avoid harming someone that will exist". You seem to be thinking that antinatalism is doing this to protect the poor magical ghost babies. Antinatalism doesn't say anything about magical ghost babies. It simply says: avoid the course of action that might hurt someone.
Again, antinatalism doesn't benefit ANYONE. It just makes sure no one is harmed.
Answer this: you agree genetically modifying children to suffer is wrong right? Doesn't that become a moral imperitive to avoid harming someone that doesn't exist? (Note: genetic modification is done on sperm and egg so it's not actually doing anything to the child)
I’ve never seen anyone harmed by the birth of a child, but I suppose there could be an argument about overpopulation or environmental concerns,
Yes it is wrong. But it seems we’re dealing with extant things here, and not the faint imaginings of a “potential human”.
I asked why it is wrong. You're not actually doing anything to anyone are you? It is simply not the case that the child exists when you genetically modify it as I have noted. It's confusing but "genetically modify children" actually means genetically modify sperm and eggs (as I noted)
Quoting NOS4A2
How about the child? Also overpopulation is another argument but I don't use it.
I get the argument, but I think we’re conflating a real potential human-I suppose fertilization—and a philosophical potential human. I just sense some unjust reification going on here.
That’s my problem: What child? The imagined one?
I can understand why people wouldn’t want to have children, but I just don’t see how this conduct can be construed as right or wrong conduct towards something that doesn’t exist.
That's also my problem with you saying genetically modifying children to suffer is bad. What child is getting harmed here? The imagined unmodified child? The situations are identical.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't. If you do present you case. I see the situations are identical.
Quoting NOS4A2
In both cases the action in question is done before fertilization as I note for the third time. And in any case why do you think those two types of potential human should be treated differently?
Quoting NOS4A2
Why can genetically modifying a child to suffer be construed as wrong conduct towards something that doesn't exist then? Where is the "unmodified child" that was harmed?
If you feel the situations are not identical please tell me why. Procreation is not a cutoff point as I noted.
I’ve already distinguished between an actual potential human—the necessary ingredients involved in procreation—and the thought of a potential child. We can’t apply the same ethics to the actual processes of procreation as we would to the fuzzy “potential human” we keep evoking.
I’m not trying to be difficult here, and I apologize if this objection has been raised.
Why not? The consequences are the same. We agree genetically modifying someone to have 10 broken limbs is wrong right? Well what if a healthy couple find out that if they have a kid he would have 10 broken limbs on birth because of a very rare combination of genes that they have. Wouldn't it be wrong for them to procreate too?
Yes if the options were to bear a child with 10 broken limbs or not, I would think it prudent to choose the latter for the reasons you mentioned.
But we’re not really talking about parents genetically doomed to have genetically deformed children, are we, but all births regardless of the child’s condition or not?
And there is your proof that the philosophical potential person is to be treated exactly the same as the actual potential person. Because, as I said, the consequences are the same. Do you still think they should be treated differently? If so why.
Quoting NOS4A2
You don't need to be genetically doomed for your child to have a shit life. So don't take the risk for them.
Then you've done nothing good but something neutral at best. Making happy people =/= Making people happy.
To demonstrate:
Say you have 3 starving people and 2 solutions you can employ:
A: Feed them
B: materialize 100 satiated and perfectly happy people so that overall you create much more pleasure than in A
I think everyone here would pick A right? Because B doesn't actually help anyone. If it were true that materializing happy people is good on its own you would pick B.
So it can be seen that making happy people is not good in of itself. It's like creating a problem for someone else then solving it. The exercise is pointless morally speaking.
As for the metamorophosic good, it is much more likely, statistically speaking that they do a slight bad to having a neutral value. You'd need to show me the child in question is destined for greatness and that he will enjoy the journey there for me to think having him is ok. And you can never even show the latter so how do you expect to show the former?
In fact I'll ask you this: if I could show your next 10 children would be as you described there would you have a moral obligation to have them?
I think they should be treated differently because one is the actual material of procreation, will lead to procreation, and will lead to dire consequences if messed with. You could rub two philosophical persons together forever and never achieve procreation. I don’t think the two can be conflated.
So the ethics here are, it is right conduct to avoid pregnancy for the sake of protecting a child who may or may not exist at some point in the future. Is that fair?
But... You treated them the same... I asked you if it was ok to genetically modify someone to suffer and you said no. You called that a "real potential person". I then asked if it was ok to have a child you know will suffer and you said no. You called that a "philosophical potential person" because he hadn't been procreated yet. Yet you answered no in both cases. Also I'm not sure what this "rubbing together" quote is supposed to mean. I was addressing this:
Quoting NOS4A2
And this
Quoting NOS4A2
By showing that you DID treat both types of potential person the same. Which you did
Quoting NOS4A2
But you conflated themmmmm. You answered no in both cases did you not? One in which a real potential person was going to be harmed and one in which a philosophical one was going to be harmed. So far you have shown 0 difference between treating the two types while claiming they shouldn't be treated the same
Quoting NOS4A2
Did you mean "who may or may not suffer"? In that case yes. Why would it not be fair? Why should people be allowed to take risks with others' lives when the alternative of doing nothing doesn't risk harming anyone
Would it be fair if I said I wasn't allowed to force you to work my job that I really like despite having no input from you on whether you'll like it? Of course.
Do you think the conflation posited justifies denying a happy person? Perhaps the parents' contribution is negligible, but it's the only way they can make it happy - even if it is letting it be innately happy.
Succumbing to the fear of a threat, you would, if you haven't, doom yourself to failure. Simply, it's no good.
Yes. Do you think it doesn't? If so aren't you being immoral right now by talking to me instead of having more kids? Look at all this happiness you're denying. Also look at all those possible non existent kids everywhere. Doesn't it just break your heart, this amount of denied happiness?
Quoting Shamshir
No. I'm not dooming myself to anything here. I'm making sure I don't doom someone else into unhappiness in an effort to make them happy which no one asked for and as I demonstrated no one actually thinks is good in and of itself. I am pretty sure if there was a distribution of "risk taking" I would be pretty high up there but that's beside the point. That doesn't justify me taking the risk for someone else does it?
Also could you answer the question?
if I could show your next 10 children would be as you described there would you have a moral obligation to have them?
The answers to your questions were the same, sure, but I did not treat them the same because they are entirely different scenarios. One was a matter of principle the other a matter of prudence.
How is antinatalism more than moral posturing, given that there isn’t any right conduct towards actual living beings?
It would help if you told me which was which and why one is this and the other that. Also, I don't really care all that much as long as you treat them the same. And since you do treat them the same, I ask again. Why is having children ok?
Are you saying it was a matter of principle for the genetic modification and a matter of prudence for the couple case? So you don't actually think the couple would be wrong for having that child? Because that would not be treating them the same. Also mind telling me what this "principle" is that makes a certain genetic modification immoral yet makes having a child with the same genetic modification in question naturally moral? The consequences are the same aren’t they?
Quoting NOS4A2
See, when it takes a page for the other person to pull the "but morality doesn't actually exist" card after they've been debating it for 2 hours that's when you know your arguments make sense
Sure there may be no objective moral rules between people, no ethical system, not even antinatalism can escape that. But so far you have shown that you have subjective moral principles that SHOULD make birth immoral for you yet you're making a special case for it. If you want to do that I can't stop you.
It is not forcing. I'm not taking the child out of unborn child limbo against his will and pushing him out into the mean bad world. Children don't exercise choice until after their formation reaches a certain maturity, which can only happen until they intrinsically understand the concept of choice, which happens after a set of values are in place.
Quoting khaled
Yes but preserving the human race and doing something to improve the world you live in is more important, a higher calling if you will, that the individual himself. You are right, an existence reduced to an individual concerned with nothing but his suffering is a sad thing, but this "naturalistic fallacy" of real life just happens to be the universe we live in, we are not individual islands residing in oblivion and concerned with nothing other than our pain/pleasure. To a great extent our needs include to be part of, to contribute in some way. Much more important than "it makes me feel good to help" is that your world/environment is becoming a better place because of it.
You call me selfish because I force my belief on someone who is not born yet.
I call you selfish because out of fear that one individual might experience suffering you are willing to ignore the need to improve mankind.
Improving mankind involves a risk, and it is an endeavor that benefits the many, often at the expense of an individual.
If the improvement of humanity means nothing to you, then I can understand why life would be meaningless.
Fair point. Maybe it's not "forcing" but the fact that you have no consent to do it doesn't change. That's the real problem
Quoting staticphoton
Great. So go get em. Do it. But don't force others to do it.
Quoting staticphoton
Don't you mean in your mind? You can't guarantee your child will be you
Quoting staticphoton
Explain to me how that is selfish. If I had such a desire, I would be sacrificing my own desire to not risk harming someone else. How is that selfish exactly?
Quoting staticphoton
Yes. But that individual has to choose to do it. Forcing someone to do something for the good of the many is not good. Especially when this "good of the many" is not actually the good of the many but your own values. You've shown me no evidence that the majority of people think as you do.
Quoting staticphoton
It doesn't. But that's not the point. Even if it meant something to me I wouldn't force it on others. Why aren't you getting the simple point that it's not about what you believe to be good. Unless you are willing to force others to work for your values which I don't think you actually are.
I, for example, place value on conquering oneself and becoming more powerful. similar to Nietzsche's "will to power". I value that a lot, but I would never have a child so they can seek the "will to power" or become "ubermensch" just because that's MY goal. Because such an imposition benefits no one but my own sense of narcissism
You are creating the problem. There is no such a thing as consent coming form being incapable of understanding what consent is. Consent develops after a certain level of formation is achieved.
Does that make it ok to say, torture children because they can't say no? When consent isn't available you do the least harmful alternative no?
They can't say no because they are not capable to understand the circumstances, not because you are robbing them of the choice.
You are doing what you believe is good. You are preventing the child from existing because you believe it is best for him that way.
No. I am not benefiting anyone by not giving birth to them. I'm just making sure no one is harmed. Not having children is not "good" it's neutral. It's just that having children is bad. Because it's imposing your own ideals of life on them when you don't have their consent.
Quoting staticphoton
I... Don't understand why the REASON they can't say no is relevant. You said
Quoting staticphoton
So that means that consent is not an issue for young children. So then I asked whether or not it's ok to torture them. Please actually answer the question.
Torturing your child means directly and willfully harming them with intent. The answer is no, it is not ok.
Alright. How about putting them in a situation where they MIGHT get harmed. Say, leaving them in the middle of traffic. Is that ok?
You're gonna answer no (hopefully) so then you can see that just because someone or something isn't capable of consent that doesn't justify putting them in a scenario where they might get harmed does it?
That is directly and willfully harming them with intent. The answer is no.
If your intent is to have children with the purpose of torturing them, then yes, it might be best for you not to have children.
Again, reducing human life to a paper thin logic and ignoring the merits of human existence.
But other than food and shelter, that is what a born child needs, a nurturing parent that loves them and teaches them. They want nothing more, and neither does the parent.
Again. Not getting the point that your child might not agree with you a about human existence having merit
When he grows up he might not agree with you.... I'm not claiming 3 year old Billie is gonna write a philosophical thesis on the meaninglessness of life
And you're not getting the point that a newborn is incapable of choice because he doesn't yet understand what choice is. He will after you teach him.
Ok great. Not every parent succeeds at providing that even if they can. And not every child grows to be happy. So why take the risk? Give me a reason that does not depend on your valuation of human existence as your child might not share it
At this point we're just repeating the same arguments over and over. It's getting nowhere.
Just answer this: I asked this a while ago and you still haven't come up with a response
Quoting khaled
Because these are the scenarios of birth. If you can find one actual example we can start from there
The child will learn a set of values either from his parents or the environment he is raised in, before then he is not capable of deciding whether his life is worth living or not. Once he has a developed a set of values he will. You can come to him at that point and ask him whether he wishes he was never born.
As long as you perceive the unborn child as being forced into this world you are attributing free will to him.
You're correct, we're getting nowhere.
Quoting khaled
I removed the big bad word. Does this match the description of birth now?
This is just not causally taking into account what is going on. The child is born via the parent. If the parent is not abusive, the parent tries to habituate child along with society (schools, social and economic institutions, other adults, other kids, etc.). The child still has a personality, experiences, and thoughts of its own. There is no 1:1 correlation here between parent's values and childs, besides which the parents values to themselves versus modelled behavior is different, also indicating that the child will have personal thoughts that have nothing to do with what is being modelled. This is all straightforward obvious stuff.
But this is all BESIDES the point. The point is, the harmful situation IS brought about by the parent procreating the person- it does not matter whether that person has self-consciousness at birth, or at some other time. The factor that brought about this person into "existence" or "life" or the "universe" was the parent. The self-consciousness comes from that. So this specious argument in no way negates the claim that procreation is the cause of this person being born, and the conditions for which suffering/being harm will take place for that person. The point is, the deed was already done, long before self-consciousness and cannot be reversed (suicide is not the reverse of never being born). Thus, this line of reasoning is bunk.
@khaled I think you might agree here.
Not yet.
"A is justified to cause individual B to do something A doesn’t know B agrees with"
Is a false premise because it assumes B is capable of deciding whether he agrees or disagrees, and A ignoring the result of that decision. It also assumes B has the capability of issuing consent.
"where B is put in a much riskier situation as a result"
A "much riskier situation" implies that situation 2 is much more riskier than situation 1, which makes no sense in the context of this argument because situation 1 does not exist.
B becomes capable of deciding later no? Yet he still has to do the thing A told him to do, namely live
Quoting staticphoton
Existence is riskier than non existence correct? In other words, more pleasure and more pain are at stake when it comes to existing than when not existing correct?
That's why I said the values are learned from the parents or the environment. I should have also included the pre-existing genetic makeup, which is actually a direct contribution of the parents.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The whole thing is about making the possibility of harm the pivotal point of the argument, which is an incredible simplistic way of evaluating the meaning of life.
You're saying that after life evolving for 2 billion years and finally acquiring the power of reason, that reason is used to conclude the whole process was morally bad and should be ended.
I'm saying that's just silly.
Unfortunately for your argument "not existing" is not a "thing" you can compare against.
Quoting khaled
B becomes his own man and has the choice to live life how he sees fit. Only under extreme circumstances of suffering he may later decide he wishes he was not born, and even then there are painless ways for him to fulfill his choice, after he has had a chance to make that choice on his own.
And my point is there is no absolute 1:1 ratio that this is the case. In fact, this is painfully reductive. As you would admit, the human experience and amount of contingency in it, allows for way more than genetic, parental, and environmental enculturation to predict. Any of which case, ALL would be wrong to signal "life is always good", as there is MARKED evidence for the Polyanna principle (people overlooking things that truly are harming them in the present when projecting on harmful events in the future). Anyways, the point is no, that is empirically wrong that genetics, parents, and environment will guarantee people who say they are happy, NOR does it prevent contingent harmful situations to befall that person. Oh, AND did I mention when interviewed, people tend to say what people want to hear (life is good) rather than be perceived as "debbie downers", even if their whole day was something like "fuck my life!" or in fact, the majority of their days were "fuck my life!"?
Quoting staticphoton
What is really simplistic is this idea that parents + genetics + environment guarantees people that have no thoughts or experiences of their own, only what is "programmed". Laughable and reductionist.
Quoting staticphoton
So evolution is "unthinking".. Don't worry we are not hurting "its" feelings. As khaled was saying, I/we have no obligation to an impersonal concept (like humanity), but we do have obligations to individual people (like future people that are brought into the world). And in the case of procreation, ALL harm can be prevented and no person is actually around to experience deprivation of good..win/win.
You realize, by having the child DESPITE the the harmful outcome (guaranteed in some way), you are using the child for an agenda (whether that be humanity, progress, civilization, your own desire to parent, etc.). Using people's harm for your agendas is also not good.
ALSO, life indeed presents itself with adversity. In fact, we usually say growth comes from adversity. Whether YOU like this or not, throwing people into adversity (even if in order for them to grow from it), when it was UNNECESSARY is not good either.
Yeah, that's where we don't agree.
A life worth living has nothing to do with "life is good"
Way to ignore almost every other thing surrounding that statement. But, since you focused solely on this particular part, I'd like to explain that forcing others into a model that you agree with or even someone else identifies with later on (because, ya know, someone MUST go through the growth through adversity thing, and of course they will always identify with it is worth it) is wrong.
No its not wrong.
As khaled was stating...Let's say I like my job- I'm just going to "allow" you to have to do it for a life time (obviously the job being a metaphor for the conditions of life itself). You eventually say, "eh, I guess it is not that bad a job". I still say this is wrong. Consequences be damned, it was wrong to force (um, I mean "allow") it.
No, I’m not arguing morality doesn’t exist, just that since antinatalism has no one to apply their principles of to, that it is a moral posture, a sort of virtue signalling.
If I were to have 100 children each deformed worse and worse, yet each would live a happy life...
It would be immoral of me to deny one of them their happiness; in the same way a thief denies.
I'll cut it short: If you deny the child, you deny any potential good from and to.
You will stagnate in fear of potential damage.
To be moral and free here, would entail to risk.
Certain failure versus potential failure.
Not sure what "liking" has to do with it. Sperm an eggs have a prime directive or objective: to produce a life. You are able to use your intellect to decide when the conditions are favorable to allow this to happen. That's how the system works. It doesn't work by pretending you are forcing an individual out of a neutral state to introduce him into a harmful state. This previous state does not exist, it is meaningless. A neutral state does not exist either, it is also meaningless.
Let me ask you this, if you were in a state of oblivion and someone explained to you the risk of harm, and gave you the choice to be born and have a life, would you choose to do it?
Wrong answer, either way. Because you don't have the frame of reference or even the consciousness to evaluate the proposition, in fact you don't even exist. You would actually have to be born and live some extent of this life thing to be able to determine whether it was worth living or whether it was better to remain in the oblivion of not existing.
If you don't exist, no action such as "forcing" can be executed against you.
You actually truly believe that? So again I ask
You have 3 starving people and 2 solutions
A: feed them
B: materialize 100 satiated people such that you create more pleasure than in A
Would you seriously pick B?
Also let me ask you another question: do you think someone is ever morally obliged to have children?
Quoting Shamshir
Agreed
Quoting Shamshir
That is wise when dealing with other people you don’t know. The default is to do the action that doesn’t risk harm. Would you appreciate it if someone destroyed your house in an attempt to add a room to it when you didn’t ask him to do so.
Quoting Shamshir
This doesn’t follow from anything you have written. Not taking risks for other people is the default position in every other scenario. I’ve never heard someone claim before that one has to take risks with other people when they didn’t ask him to for him to be moral
Quoting Shamshir
Who is harmed by me not having children? Where is this failure?
Do you mean to say that since no one benefits from antinatalism that it is somehow virtue signaling? Is not modifying children to suffer virtue signaling then as well?
And I’m here to ask everyone to take this advice and find that the favorable conditions are: never
Also I just wanted to re ask another question you never answered: do you think it is right for person A to cause person B to do something B might not like because A likes it?
That is part of the fallacy. If you don't exist, you would not be able to evaluate the act.
Shitty advice.
Yes it claims to be an ethical principle regarding the treatment of beings that do not exist, something that is always claimed to help others but cannot be shown in reality.
Seriously though just think about it. Is consent ever assumed when it is not available? Because that’s what you’re doing. You’re assuming consent because it’s not available. Which beats the whole point of consent
Other than that can you actually answer the question? Quoting khaled
I thought we went over this already at the very start. Antinatalism never claims to help anyone. The antinatalist doesn't think he’s doing a good thing. That’s why I truly don’t get how it can possibly be virtue signaling when it doesn’t even claim itself a virtue. It claims the alternative a vice. And for good reason
This is called the "non-identity" issue in philosophy and it really doesn't apply here in the case of antinatalism. A future person will be born if a set of conditions is met, we both agree on that. Procreation is what brings life about. As you admit, there CANNOT be a situation where someone can do anything about the situation of being born. That is what is mean by "forced" here. The default is always "being born".
Now, I am going to couple this idea with the decision to procreate. At the procreational decision, you can prevent ALL future harm by simply refraining from procreation. There is NO deprivation experienced from any actual person either. OR you can procreate, and create the conditions for definite harm.
Please see the David Benatar asymmetry here before we go any further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar
My apologies. I guess All this talk of reducing the suffering of potential humans confused me.
The question antinatalism asks is simple: why risk harming someone for your own selfish gain? Because there is literally no other reason to explain it. Find one other scenario where there are 2 courses of action A and B. A has a chance to severely harm or severely benefit someone. B is neutral. Where someone would pick A for someone else and think it’s ok to do so. You can pick A for yourself all you want but for others please pick B. I don’t want random strangers to start using my bank account to buy things they like in an attempt to please me which is the type of behavior that would be allowed if you extend the reasoning of natalism to the end
So you wouldn’t mind if some psycho believed very vehemently in the greater purpose of cleaning sewage and so forced you to clean sewage with him for 60 years? After all, it’s not wrong for him to force you, he sees value in the activity after all. Fuck asking for your opinion
But you’d also prevent many other things besides harm. I wouldn't want to prevent the birth of Nicola Tesla because he was sure to suffer through cholera.
First off I think that’s incredibly selfish. And second off, what happens once those good things are prevented? Who is harmed?
Look at it this way:
Worst case scenario for antinatalism: someone who would be extremely happy is not born
Total amount of harm done: 0
Total amount of harm saved: a bit (not too much because they’re extremely happy)
Worst case scenario for natalism: someone who would be extremely sad is not born
Total amount of harm done: extreme
Total amount of harm saved: 0
Best case scenario for antinatalism: someone who would be extremely sad is not born
Total amount of harm done: 0
Total amount of harm saved: extreme
Best case scenario for natalism: someone who would be extremely happy is born
Total amount of harm done: a bit
Total amount of harm saved: 0
By “harm saved” I mean “harm that would have happened if the alternative was chosen”
You can look at EITHER harm done or harm saved and you’ll find antinatalism wins out on both
I just came up with this so maybe there’s a lot wrong with it idk
Well, like you said, no one is harmed, but it denies the world and posterity a human being who may alter the course of history for the better.
Do you believe Beethoven’s parents should not have had Ludwig because he suffered through deafness? Yes no harm no foul, but then again, no Moonlight sonata.
I would have to know something better than cleaning sewage to be able to decide whether cleaning sewage sucked. Values are not absolute, things are good or bad in comparison with something else.
Antinatalism wins if the prime concern is harm of any kind is above all else, and if nothing else matters.
I'm not seeking to convert you out of antinatalism, but the absolute conviction that you have found the ultimate truth, and that everyone else is a fool for not following suit, is nothing but a basic form of extreme fundamentalism.
I don’t have such a conviction or I wouldn’t be here, again. I do however have quite the strong conviction that you’re being a hypocrite to your own values. Especially since you keep avoiding giving straight answers.
Also I could accuse you of the same conviction for natalism. But I don’t.
Quoting staticphoton
Alright let me change the question a bit. Would that psycho be wrong for doing what he did?
Yes. I do believe that. Because then who would be harmed. It’s not like there is some announcer telling people what their children would have accomplished when they decide not to have children. Tell me who is harmed in a world without Beethoven? No one will “miss” the moonlight sonata will they.
On the other hand, who is not harmed in a world without hitler? Plenty of people.
This is another asymmetry when it comes to giving birth vs not doing so. Giving birth to a criminal hurts people, giving birth to an entrepreneur benefits people. So it’s good vs bad. On the other hand not giving birth to entrepreneur doesn’t harm anyone but not giving birth to a criminal saves a lot of people. So it’s good vs neutral.
(This argument might not makes sense I'm not sure I just came up with it)
Quoting NOS4A2
Or for the worse. Do you believe the world would have been a better place if hitler’s parents hadn’t had him? Yes. You can’t just assume your child will be groundbreakingly successful. Might as well try to win the lottery with that luck.
That’s really the point here. The crucial point to understand about antinatalism is that no one actually believes making happy people is a good thing. Sure making people happy is good, but making happy people is neutral at best. As I’ve shown with the “3 starving people” example.
I ask you the same question I asked the other guy: if I knew your next 10 children would be successful and happy are you morally obliged to have them? I highly doubt you’ll say yes. That should show you that not even you think that creating happy people is good in and of itself.
Happiness is only good for those who exist, it’s not good in and of itself.
My values are live and let live. Your values are nobody lives.
I believe everyone should be entitled to do what they believe is right. You believe only your values are right.
And that makes me a hypocrite lol.
Simply incorrect. If that were the case why would I stop at antinatalism? Why not be a pro mortalist? Why stick so such a losing strategy for achieving my supposed goal?
My values are mine but the highest one among them is: I can’t enforce my values on others, and I think you share this too (as do most people). You’re just making an exception for procreation
Quoting staticphoton
Me too. Do you not also believe that no one should be entitled to make OTHERS do hat THEY believe is valuable?
Quoting staticphoton
Incorrect, you just haven’t shown any evidence that you even understand my argument because you’re missing the point half the time and not giving straight answers to questions
Quoting staticphoton
No it doesn’t. Believing that no one is entitled to enforce their beliefs on others in every other scenario except procreation does.
Again, would that psycho be right for what he did? You’re still not answering questions which is quite ironic because the quote you quoted is literally me telling you to please answer the questions.
If a Psycho is harming someone, that is bad.
Nobody should be entitled to make others do what they believe is valuable.
Making someone do something means extracting them out of condition A and inserting them into condition B.
However if condition A doesn't exist, and the individual doesn't exist previous to being inserted into condition B, then "making them do something" is a meaningless statement. A pre-existing condition is still not existing.
Please do not lure me like this, as the two questions are incomparable.
The theft of happiness that we're discussing is comparable to: Would you feed them if there was a chance for them to be allergic, even if the chance was 99%?
And I would take the 1% as the opposite choice is certain doom; I wouldn't be sparing them anything, like you think, if I took pity from the fear of an allergic reaction. That pity is outright thievery.
But to answer your query:
Intuitively answering A ought be the proper choice as it fixes the posited problem, whereas choosing B most likely wouldn't fix it, at least not directly, right?
But if I were to offer the three starving these two choices and they all chose B, would it be moral to choose A anyway? No, I do not think it would.
So I would offer the three the aforementioned choices, and grant each their wish or grant the one unanimously chosen if the former is not allowed.
Quoting khaled
No, man is not morally obliged to have children.
But man ought to be morally obliged not to deny children.
Quoting khaled
It is slavery to fear.
I told you once - do not warm the pan, prior to catching the fish.
You're making decisions for the child you're not even willing to give a chance.
You're not sparing it harm, you're sparing yourself the responsibility if it comes to harm and unwilling to risk that it might enjoy its life with gratitude to spare.
Something I've seen from my many interactions with disabled children; they don't want your pity, they want to live.
Quoting khaled
The world as a whole.
But mostly the children.
Your failure is the failure to see past the corrupt idea that kids don't desire to live.
In short, s failure of transmission from the child to you.
You come across a deeply religious man and explain antinatalism. He responds that the directive from God is to be fruitful and multiply, and that to contradict God using human reasoning is folly. He is morally bound to obey God, and he profoundly believes that God, in one way or another, will fulfill His promise.
At this point you have two choices:
A: Make an exception for the religious man.
B: Decide the religious man is a dumb shit because he believes in God above reason.
If you choose A then you are not completely true to your cause. If you choose B then you are a radical fundamentalist, you are the hypocrite.
The very foundation of your argument is that human reason provides the ultimate answer for all ethical questions and is above all other forms of moral guidance.
That is a belief. It is a belief you have faith on. If that belief fails, the rest of your argument crumbles.
Quoting staticphoton
So you don’t believe human reason has the answer for this ethical question? Why are you reasoning about it then? And why didn’t you say so at the very start?
I would do A in that case although I don’t know where you got the idea that I was trying to be true to any cause in the first place. I’d be convinced with a good counter argument
Doesn’t birth risk harming someone?
Does it? I see no need for this highly complicated definition. Making someone do something, is making someone do something. It doesn’t matter if that person existed at the time the decision was made to make them do something. If the result of an action is: B is doing something without having expressed he agrees with it then that action is making B do something
You’re for some reason stuck on whether or not there existed someone beforehand as if that mattered. So then I ask you to explain why you think genetically modifying children to suffer is wrong. After all, genetic modification is done on sperm and egg so it’s not actually doing anything to the child, so why is it wrong? I don’t care if you don’t respond to anything else as long as you respond to this
It’s not theft if no one is stolen from and no one is harmed is it? Calling it theft might make it sound wrong but you haven’t actually presented a logical reason for why
Quoting Shamshir
Of course. But these examples aren’t alike at all. Here, it is 99% chance of suffering (feeding them) vs 100% chance of suffering (not feeding them) so obviously I’d pick the 99%. In the case of birth it’s whatever% vs 0% so obviously I’d pick 0%
Quoting Shamshir
First off this would never happen as they have absolutely nothing to gain from adding the 100 people. Note we’re not considering the benefits those 100 people might bring later for this example because that will add unnecessary complexity for the point I’m trying to make. In the same way that were not considering “but what if the 3 people were criminals” and other such cases.
Secondly, of course it would be moral to choose A anyway. After all, you don’t owe these people to feed or help them in any way. You’re the one who is going to be implementing the solution out of your own desire so whatever solution you choose to implement is fine, as long as they don’t object to it. So you’re not allowed to force feed them for example if they want to starve for whatever reason. Let’s think of another example real quick to show this: if you asked a beggar if he preferred 1$ or 5$ and he said he preferred 5 would it be ok to give him 1 anyways? Of course it would!
Quoting Shamshir
You are proposing A and not A at the same time
Man is not morally obliged to have children
Man ought to be morally obliged (aka is morally obliged) not to not have children (aka to have children)
So: Man is morally obliged to have children and not morally obliged at the same time
Quoting Shamshir
And natalism is making decisions for a child which actually risk his wellbeing without there being any need to. I’ll take making decisions for a child without giving them a chance any day, especially since it doesn’t actually hurt anyone
Quoting Shamshir
This is wrong on so many levels. Quite simply not true. Not only are my motivations irrelevant to my argument anyway, but you have them wrong as well. If these were my motivations, I wouldn’t be looking to adopt in the future would I? But I am looking to do so. And even if I was doing all of this to “avoid responsibility” that wouldn’t take anything away from whether or not my argument makes sense AND saying I’m avoiding responsibility would have to assume I had the responsibility to have children which is a position you somehow hold simultaneously while saying I don’t actually have a responsibility to have children
Quoting Shamshir
I would know. My brother has a mutation and can’t do much at 12 except walk and eat. Your arguments seem to be getting more and more personal only to fall even harder on their face.
Quoting Shamshir
Point me to the kid that wants to live who I would be denying life by not having children. Also, just because kids want to live doesn’t morally oblige me to have them does it? If you believe that you’d have as many kids as you could but you don’t do you? That would make you pretty much just as guilty as an antinatalist wouldn’t it? Having 1 or 2 kids is nothing in comparison to he number you COULD have, look at all this happiness you’re denying. You absolute monster
Quoting Shamshir
Which children? The non existent ones? The non existent children are harmed?
Quoting Shamshir
How is the world harmed by me not having children? Maybe my child would have turned out to be another hitler despite my best efforts. Also who cares about the world being harmed when the alternative causes a child to be harmed. I don’t have an obligation not to harm “worlds”, I have an obligation not to harm people.
That's correct, I don't believe a reasoned logic can be used to determine whether humans should be born or not.
At the very start the argument struck me so absurd and counterintuitive that I assumed a logical refusal would not be too hard, but I was wrong. From a purely logical and cold-reasoned perspective the argument is ironclad.
I was not trying to convince you otherwise, my postings were a personal exercise to show that a simple line of logical reason cannot be used to justify the end of birthing, I believed I could battle you at your playing plane, but I discovered I can't.
Without realizing it I was trying to drag the fight into my plane using a lure of pseudo-logical reasoning, but as long as you remain comfortable in your waters you'll stay there.
Yes, I deeply believe there is more to existence than reason can explain (although this belief is not necessarily religious), but since I entered this discussion with intent, just to discover that I don't have the tools or the language to show you why, I have to acknowledge you as victorious.
Quoting khaled
Well in that case there is still hope for you haha.
No, you wouldn't - because these kids can't do either.
You're like a horse with blinders, completely oblivious to everything but your front.
You say you can't harm nonexistent children? Very well.
But if you accept that, follow through and realise you can't spare them harm.
Your idea is void by your own rebuttal.
You're just afraid and if you'd commit to that Quoting khaled
instead of putting up this idiotic front, this conversation wouldn't be so needlessly dragged out.
You could’ve said that at the start m8. I take back calling you a hypocrite. If you believe that you’re Gucci. I don’t agree with it, think it’s bogus, and think this belief will so much more harm than good but I can’t judge.
Have a good day.
I agree completely. Not giving birth is not sparing anyone harm. It is not a good thing. I have never claimed that antinatalism means that not having children is good. You and NO4S... (sorry don’t know ur name) for some reason thought the same thing. I never once claimed not having children is good. What I did claim is that having children is bad.
Not having children doesn’t spare anyone and it doesn’t harm anyone. So it has a neutral value.
Having children risks harming someone. So it has a negative value.
So obviously don’t have children. Simple. You are being willfully blind to the fact that the argument makes logical sense.
Quoting Shamshir
No it isn’t, and I’ve just shown why.
Quoting Shamshir
No I’m not as I’ve just shown. In fact, I think YOU'RE afraid to committing to saying that not having children is harming someone because you refused to reply to any of the ridiculous consequences of such a belief, such as that it would make you almost as guilty as an antinatalist for having 2 kids instead of 200. Because of all the happiness you’re denying non existent people (as if that’s a problem)
Quoting Shamshir
Isn’t saying your child will do the world a great good an equally idiotic front? You’re the one that started evaluating the potential impact of children on others not me. Your literal first comment was “and what if the child will do the world a magnanimous good”. I’m pointing out that there isn’t also a chance they do a magnanimous evil.
Your entire argument seemed to rest on saying that I’m harming someone by not giving birth to children. Since you just conceded that isn’t the case, where does antinatalism not make logical sense?
The argument is you equating risk with loss, while being blind to anything and everything potentially good.
You sound just like I did five years ago - completely sunk with insecurity.
You're quivering from potential harm while resting on the crutch of security, patting yourself on the back thinking that your not having children has indubitably spared the world or your children.
I've stated quite clearly that having a child is a risk you're not obliged to, but that it is the only rewarding choice.
Your idea that not having children is in any way beneficial is a fraudulent justification of your irresponsibility and sloth.
Considering your current state of mind, perhaps as a natural irony, it would be best that you didn't have children as you'd be an inept parent, more harmful than beneficial.
In this, ironically, you're justified.
Yes. And as I've shown, neither you nor anyone actually believes creating happy people is good in and of itself. If you want to debate that you're welcome, but judging by the rest of your post, the debate won't be very productive as you seem to be incapable saying anything relevant.
And risking harming other people without their consent for no good reason IS A LOSS. I don't see anything that appeals to the parent's desire to have children as a good reason. And I don't see anything appealing to greather entities such as "the world" or "God" or "the natural order" as a good reason.
Is there anything in the above paragraph you disagree with?
Quoting Shamshir
Ohhhhhhh. Have a kid because it's "rewarding". Ohhhhhh. I guess we just don't care about the kid's opinion then. "Let's risk giving someone every sort of harm possible because I find it rewarding". I would like to inform you that I find this reasoning absolutely apphaling. Hey, I heard rapists say rape is pretty rewarding. Might be something you're into with that kind of reasoning. (Trying a new approach here as you seem to be incapable of following logical arguments and want to devolve this conversation to using emotional appeals and ad hominem, have it your way sir)
Quoting Shamshir
Again. I wouldn't be looking to adopt then would I? You're being willfully blind to the point that it's getting pretty irritating actually. I'm getting close to calling you a moron and leaving it at that. Like, seriouly, I have had to write everything to you at least twice (I feel like terrapin talking to myself). You seem to need a refresher on every single point every 2 comments. Or you're being willfully blind which is what I suspect.
Quoting Shamshir
Ad hominem is garbage. Just like the rest of your comment.
But you won't, for the same reasons you won't have kids - you can't commit.
Poor self-inflicted little martyr~
Quoting Shamshir
You’re projecting. It’s you who can’t commit to your own moral premises all the way to end.
I'm coming back to this because your arrogance is insufferable.
Quoting khaled
I do.
Quoting khaled
I disagree, because inherently a bad experience isn't worth avoiding more than a good experience is worth having.
Quoting khaled
I do.
Quoting khaled
I do.
Quoting khaled
A non-existing being doesn't have an opinion.
Quoting leo
In my defense, the other guy is also quite insufferable. Shamshir or whatever his name was.
Quoting leo
Let’s test that. You have 3 starving people And 2 solutions. Which do you employ
A: feed them
B: materialize 100 satiated and happy people so that you create more pleasure/happiness than in A
I’m pretty sure you’d say A is the better option right? Because B doesn’t actually help anyone. Doesn’t that show that creating happy people has no value in and of itself. Or at least negligible value.
More proof would be that I’m pretty sure everyone here considers having a child and dumping them on the street somewhere when the parents can afford to take care of them wrong. But why would that be the case? If creating happy people was good in itself then making sure your child is happy should have been an option not an obligation right? In the same way that charity is an option not an obligation. This is assuming one doesn’t have an obligation to do good but an obligation not to do bad. But we clearly think of keeping a child happy as an obligation to the parent not a charity. That implies that not keeping a child happy is bad, not that keeping the child happy is good. We don’t think someone is morally good just for being a decent parent do we? We EXPECT that. That’s not what we do with other good behaviors. You’re not expected to donate to charity for example but you’re encouraged.
Quoting leo
Does that justify rape, theft, murder, etc? Sure inherently it is as you say, but ethics doesn’t deal with what actions are “inherently” good or bad (at least not the ethics I’m doing) it deals with what’s subjectively good or bad. Your statement can be used to critique any ethical position, so it’s not so much a problem with antinatalism.
Quoting leo
Do you happen to see the rapist’s desire a good reason for rape? I don’t think so. So are you saying that you do because:
A: it’s a matter of degree, the parents can do whatever they want to someone without consent because what they’re doing isn’t that bad
B: it’s a matter of principle, anyone can do anything to anyone consent or not
I’m pretty sure A but just asking anyways
Quoting leo
Your child might not. So why are you taking the risk for them? For “the world”? Would you be fine if a religious zealot raided your home for “God”? If you’re not fine with that, why risk putting a child in a position where similar to you they’re told that their suffering is for “the world”? Do you think they’ll be fine with that?
Quoting leo
Does that make it ok to genetically engineer babies to suffer on purpose? They can’t say no can they?
Also the point is that they WILL become an existing being with opinions and their opinions of the world may be highly negative. So simply don’t take the risk for them when you can avoid it.
I'd go with B. The people in A might turn out to be nagging antinatalists. The other 100 might be able to drown them out. :grin:
Can it, weenie.
Quoting khaled
What's interesting about the implications of this type of thinking is that humans are sort of a "group-think" entity which is working towards..."something" (humanity? scientific advancement? to go where no man has gone before? to maximize happiness throughout the cosmos? to increase the amount of "stuff" we create?). This "something" is not quite clear, but certainly the agenda here is that the group-think entity must carry on and box-out and stamp-out any questioning of the agenda. It certainly stems from unconscious cues taken from socialized norms.
But the problem here is the reality is a lot of "dealing with". A group-think entity that desire's more individuals to be challenged with the "dealing with" game. Here is the thing- what are people trying to get out of the new people? What end result is there? What is it that people must experience? Here is how this looks:
Person A needs to experience X because I like experiencing X and they must like X too.
Person A won't experience more undue harm (more harm than one would want for reasons of "meaning" or "growth".
The parent knows neither of these things as a 100% true, so now the person moves to statistical thinking. Statistically, people seem more well-adjusted than not well-adjusted, they like being alive, and do not experience more undue harm than is deemed too much. Thus the "dealing with" game must be the default for people to desire. Even if 68% of people like the dealing with game, this is deemed enough of a green light to have more people apparently.
This all reminds of Plato's notion of The Good. It's like everyone thinks they are a form of the Good and creating more people is participating in The Good. Good is that which we are striving for. Virtuousness, balance, peace, tranquility, flow, self-actualization- these are all words we try to convey for experiencing The Good. So really natalists (at their most philosophical and least selfish) are like Platonists thinking they are spreading more of Good by having more people. Harm is just something to be incorporated into The Good or to be overcome for the sake of the Good.
As @khaled stated though, anything that causes harm for another when it wasn't necessary, is causing harm to an individual for an agenda. But the natalist will say, if the the agenda is The Good (or some other positive synonym), isn't that justified? Because certainly, no one prior to existence needed any experiences. Thus the experiences themselves come BEFORE the personality that will develop and HAVE these experiences. Thus it is an agenda of some sort of concept- The Good or something of the like, that people want to be propagated.
The outcome is more work, more dealing with situations, more strife, but supposedly the strife is supposed to be good for the person as it can be incorporated and in some sort of Hegelian dialectic, make the person stronger with the negative incorporation.
People also do not think the fringes. They don't think of the worst case scenarios- the person with the mental disorders, the person with the physical setback, etc. This is deemed as collateral damage, and will simply be post-facto justified as part of the incorporation of pain to become better. Thus the natalists will have their own self-provided airtight case. They will not consider that:
1) Harm is unnecessary to create for someone
2) Causing individual harm for an agenda is not justified (even The Good)
3) As long as a majority of humanity say they like life in any self-reported formal or informal way, it is justified that future people should be born
4) Collateral damage of the worst case scenarios are overlooked as long as it can be incorporated into an overcoming or learning experience for that person and they will be deemed better for it.
As we see here, there is no way this type of thinking cannot be overcome as long as harm can be justified on behalf of a majority of people reporting they like life, and think that agendas are more important than causing individual harm unnecessarily. That seems to be the main themes here it seems with natalists.
I would like to conjure the ghost of @Bitter Crank and @Baden and @csalisbury for their input.
But then those same people are apphaled by rapists, murderers, totaitarian governments, terrorist groups, etc..... That's the inconsistency here.
It is ONLY ever the main theme for them when it comes to birth as I’ve asked them to come up with one other example where they think this type of thinking is acceptable and they have yet to come up with one.
I also believe that the urge to make babies is one of the strongest urges a person can feel.
I think some things are wrong and go against human nature, while other things are wrong but are congruent with human nature. The latter are blameless acts of immorality, which includes the mistake of having children.
I think the question that needs to be answered first before we can even tackle your specific question is: what ethical standing do future humans have?
There are various approaches to establish the ethical standing of current humans, but how well do these apply to future humans? It seems that the question can further be divided into the standing of humans which are already born and those which might be born in the future. For the former, protection of their future well being might be seamlessly derived from protection of their current well-being. But for people who have not yet been born, that avenue is closed and we'd need an entirely separate justification.
Why? Because of climate change? Or because you put someone into a world that is doomed? Or do you think that human life is bound to be full of miseries and suffering so that it would be a privilege not to be born?
No, not thousands. The search function narrows it down considerably, and in this case, you only have to scroll down to the end of the homepage to find a discussion on anti-natalism.
Also, section d) under "Starting new discussions" in the Site Guidelines states:
If you had read my post (not only the title) you would have seen that the content and the arguments are different from those made in the context of "antinatalism"
If my post violates forum rules: signal it to the admins and have it deleted. I would not cry
It's not drastically different. Anyone with extreme enough views about climate change will agree, and anyone who is already an anti-natalist for different reasons already expressed umpteen times will agree with the conclusion, and the rest of us will have the exact same opinion on the matter which has also been expressed umpteen times before, and can easily be looked up.
Quoting Matias
That's a shame. I wanted to lick the tears from your face to see what misery tastes like.
Furthermore, I don't see having children as a strictly personal matter. The wellness of the child should be at the front of all things to consider before having children. If the wellness of the child is somehow (within reason) at odds, it is unethical to let one's own desires make one decide to have children anyway.
Lastly, I believe the climate-change narrative is way overblown. People have been predicting the end of days for thousands of years. They have always been wrong. Apparently some individuals just like to play pretend that the world is coming to an end. Very well, I say, let them not have children then, because they do not qualify for the 'mentally healthy' part anyway.
This whole "I don't have children because I care about the environment"-spiel is rather idiotic. One is living in the most prosperous time (materially speaking) in history, living in debaucherous luxury every day, but one will not have children because one cares about the environment? Puh-lease.
The ethics of childbirth likewise do not fall down to conception, but discipline - the discipline of the parents and the discipline the child may inherit from the parents.
Not having children is far more harmful to humanity than having children as it is entirely self destructive, whereas having children is progressive and offers benefits.
Well, people who feel that it is unethical to have children should obviously not have any. As you can imagine, this idea may then very well die out with the ones who believe in it.
Quoting Matias
So, then the question becomes:
Are laws against making children viable? Can you send law enforcement officers to people who break the law? What do you do with the illegally-born children?
First of all, ethical questions are about self-discipline and therefore about you think you, yourself should be doing or not doing. They are not a question about what you believe other people should be doing or not doing. "Other people should be doing this or that ..." indeed represents a horrible but quite prevalent attitude.
Furthermore, I think that this would represent a rather counter-trend increase in government intrusion in people's lives, exactly at a time when existing intrusions are being questioned very openly, and have become less and less viable. It certainly goes against the current trend in which people generally consider government to be clueless, as well as the resulting desire to reduce government intervention.
For example, the bitcoin -and wider cryptocurrency community wants to expel government out of the business of printing and controlling money. Approximately everybody who knows what they are talking about, certainly believes that on the long run, the cryptostrategy will work.
In France, a slight increase in taxes on gasoline led to that notorious yellow-vest protest. I don't know if it is still ongoing, but I think that the glass is now full in many countries. So, no, such new birth-control policy would be very unrealistic, because governments would not even be able to find the legitimacy to implement a thing like that. It would be used as an opportunity to do something much rasher than the yellow-vest mini-insurgency.
I agree with @Matias, this is very different from the anti-natalism discussions. His approach is from a different direction and is more human and humane. And since when doesn't "already expressed umpteen times" apply to 84.23% of the threads on the forum. There are 473 threads on free will active right now, all started by The Mad Fool. I counted them. See, my scientific, quantitative approach to philosophy is much more valid than yours. "Umpteenth" indeed.
Quoting Matias
This is a very thoughtful and even-handed presentation of our choices. Yes, and well-written. I have three children and I am happy with the decision my wife and I made to have them. My brother, on the other hand, is more like you. He and his wife decided from the very beginning not to have children and he has lead a more adventurous life than I have. That's not an argument for not having children. It's as you say, I was meant to live life in one place. I've lived in the same house with the same woman for 40 years. That is part of who I am as is having children. My brother is not like that. His not having children is a reflection of who he is, not really an instrumental choice.
At times when I think maybe I need a justification for having children I think of it this way - having children is an act of community, an act of faith in my neighbors and fellow women and men. It brings people together. And, although this is not in any way a valid justification for ignoring whatever ethical issues there are with having children, I have a strong conviction that the universe is a better place for having my children in it.
Here is evidence that this is different than other threads about the ethics of having children - I have been willing to lay out my feelings and understanding of the issues. I would be reluctant to do that on an anti-natalism thread because I know it would hit a brick wall.
It's 84.25%, actually.
I have not read everything above and this is my very first post. The question that I ask myself: What guarantees can you still give a child? For example: Are they still going to find a job? Job security? Health? The prices of a property? The new self-centered syndrome? The loss of physical communication? The shortage of drinking water? The future prices of drinking water? The generalized use of preservatives in food and all cancers that come with this? Is the loss of collateral increasing? The list is so long ... As a parent it is impossible to continue to protect your child and you have no guarantees anymore. It is exposed to a hard social environment. Are the elements ideal? Are they going to improve in the nearby future? To want to have a children and to be sure they will have a normal life... These are two different things. For me. It depends very much how a persons vision towards society and our environment is... If you think everything is fine and believe the government is going to solve all above problems, get a child... If you have doubts... Think twice...
Let me recheck. I have a computer program that searches the forum and does data analysis ................ .............................................................................................................................................................................................Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks for the correction.
1: Creating happy people is not good
I'll just start with the most controvertial bit, creating happy people is not good and is different from making people happy. To demonstrate: (I've typed this so many times) You have 3 starving people and 2 solutions which do you employ
A: feed them
B: create 100 satiated people such that you create more pleasure/happiness than in A
I think most people would pick A, because B doesn't actually help anyone. That means that creating happy people is not a good in and of itself or at least is considered negligably good by most (100 vs 3) when compared to the good of actually helping someone
2: Having kids risks harming someone in the future (pretty self explanatory)
3: Having kids also risks making someone happy in the future but as shown in (1) no one actually thinks this is a good thing.
So don't have kids, because if your kid is perfectly happy, you haven't actually done anything good and if your kid is miserable you have harmed someone for no reason, whereas you could have just avoided taking the risk for someone else in the first place and not risked harming anyone.
I hope this isn't just going to turn into just another anti-natalism thread. I like the way @Matias has framed the question and I'm hoping people will spend some time with that. Obviously, anti-natalism is part of the mix, so I'm not suggesting it be excluded.
It is no one’s business. It seems like rationalizing avoiding birth and growing old and alone. But if you get worried, just plant ten trees every year of your child’s life and you can offset any carbon footprint.
And if you believe that, boy do I have a bridge to sell you.
Did you know that Jerry Garcia had four children? I'll bet you did.
Yes, I did know that. :up:
Ever heard of "Crying "wolf""?
"T"'s was a zinger; this is just sour grapes.
Who gives a shit about Jerry Garcia's procreative proclivities, though?
Most of those who have kids have them either for no reason whatsoever (which is incredibly irresponsible and foolish) or for bad reasons (such as a desire to be unconditionally loved).
Plus, having children involves forcing someone to live in a dangerous world without first getting their permission.
If you find yourself living in a prison, surrounded by dangerous people, is it good to make some innocent children join you? No, that's a despicable thing to do. I mean, just terrible - so spoilt, so self-centred.
You're living in a dangerous world full of dangerous and evil people - if you want to be loved do your best to cultivate loving relationships with those who are already around, but don't summon into being vulnerable, innocent people so that you can be the centre of their attention.
@Terrapin Station understands.
Why can't people respond to the topic as specifically framed: not antinatalism per se, but whether it is ethically justifiable to have children in view of global warming?
This is the anti-natalist argument, one that I find contemptible. Full of anger and bitter hatred for the world and people in it. Nothing is more mean-spirited, graceless than this. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.
OMG, we can't have that! You might give birth to something.....odious.
It's sort of a little joke. @Terrapin Station loves the Grateful Dead. He named his three kids Jerry, Bob, and Phil. And Phil is a girl!
For those who have a choice in the matter: if one is not married; if one is a chronic drug/alcohol user; if one is poor; if one is mentally unstable; if one thinks that they can, singly, be a completely adequate parent; and so on, I would judge it as at least inadvisable to have children, and it might be unethical.
Lots of people are poor and manage to be good parents, but deciding to be a poor single parent is stupid. Alcoholics and chronic drug users should not be in charge of children. Period. Raising healthy children requires a fair number of challenges; deciding to have children (alone or with a partner) and knowing that one is mentally ill seems inadvisable. Children benefit greatly from having two parents who both participate in the rearing of the child. It is a question of both role models, sufficient time, attention, and income.
Over population is a major concern to me, and I don't think we can succeed in avoiding catastrophic global warming without restricting, reducing population.
People who decide to have children, especially many children, for doctrinal reasons are being unethical. They are demanding a greater share of the world's diminishing resources in the service of some god or religious obsession. [I am the youngest of a large family; I have 2 brothers and 4 sisters, two died in infancy. Effective and convenient birth control was not available until the 1960s, by which time I was in college. My parents didn't want to have 7 children, they just did.]
There are no ethical grounds for considering methods for quickly reducing the population. Fortunately for us, we don't have to think of methods: Nature can and will reduce our population if we run out of resources.
The excessively large human population is not growing as fast as it was growing, but it is still growing --it is not shrinking. IF we want to avoid being subject to nature's harsh culling methods, we would do well to have fewer children. Nor trying to reduce the population by having fewer children is also unethical.
I reject anti-natalism. People are not quite as good a thing as flowers that bloom in the spring; we are frequently less appealing that birds on the wing; but we aren't a curse on the world, either (most of the time, anyway).
On what rational basis do you reject my arguments? Do you deny that the world is dangerous or do you think it is fine to force innocent people to live in it?
Should prisoners be able to have kids in prison and rear them there - if not, why not?
Anti-natalism isn't true or false. It isn't even right or wrong or good or bad. It is the argument as normally presented that is disgusting. It's the hatred for humankind that is implicit that sickens me.
Ah, so he's one behind his hero in the procreation stakes. I've warmed to the Grateful Dead a little as I've gotten older. Back in the 60s I didn't like them at all, but did like their "sister" band: Jefferson Airplane.
I still much prefer JA and don't think that highly of GD's fairly waffly, insipid music. But that's off-topic, so I'll STFU now...
Just to be clear, I have no idea whether TS has children or what their names are. I make up most of the stuff I write on this forum.
Furthermore, if you had a pill that would make someone love you unconditionally, you'd be acting very badly indeed if you gave it to someone.
Many of those who procreate do so because they want to be loved unconditionally. That's a vice. And they create people who will almost invariably love them unconditionally. A child doesn't really have any choice in the matter - it is biologically programmed-in, as most parents know only too well.
So, by procreating most parents exhibit terrible vices - they are behaving in ways that, in other contexts, we all recognise to be seriously wrong.
Are not we all?
Why in the name of Bullwinkle J. Moose would it be wrong to want to be loved unconditionally? It is the greatest gift any person can give another. I don't expect or even want my children to love me unconditionally. You see, I love them unconditionally. That's another gift - to get the chance to love someone that way.
I get the feeling you probably don't love your parents unconditionally.
It has nothing to do with that necessarily. It's just a desire to protect someone from unnecessary harm.
You think you love your children, but you'd have loved any child you created. So your love is not personal at all. It is a sick, demented kind of love that mature, reasonable people want no part of. Needless to say, the world is in short supply of the latter (they don't tend to procreate for one thing!)
Now, if you have a child you know that the child you create will almost certainly come to love you unconditionally. It is biologically programmed in. You KNOW this. The child is not going to carefully assess you as a person and see if you're a good match. No, they're just going to love you - it's a chemical thing, not a rational thing. And that's not good - yes, I know most of you think it is. But guess what - that too is what you're programmed to think! It is not a good thing - it means that newly minted kids have an in-built love pill. You create a kid, and you know it'll unconditionally love you, due to the love-pill nature instilled in its brain.
That love is bad, unhealthy, crazy. We don't admire it in other contexts. We don't admire people who love other people who beat them, who treat them with disrespect, who hold objectionable views and so on. We think those people are mad - mad to love the people they do, and mad not to be responsible to their character. We think they're not really in love with the other person at all, for their love does not have the person's character as its object, so unresponsive is it to it.
Parents knowingly create that kind of love. They make another person - an innocent party -love them unconditionally. And furthermore, they're proud of thesmelves for having done so and think the love they've created is something worthy of admiration. They're so wrong it hurts! Parents are analogous to those suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy - people who deliberately make others ill so that they can then tend to them.
There's nothing noble, healthy or wholesome about procreation. It is mainly the preserve of pathetic megalomaniacs.
So a good person doesn't create a needy person, doesn't create a person who'll have to suffer the indignity of living by someone else's rules, so incapable are they of looking after themselves. A good person doesn't create a situation in which they are going to have to be that dictator. Yet parents do all these things. No half-way intelligent parent can seriously claim not to have realized that the child they create will be pathetically needy for at least 16 years (and then some) and won't have a clue how to navigate the world or survive in it by itself. So when they procreate they knowingly force another to live in indignity. Furthermore, they know fully well that they will have to assume the role of law-giver and controller (and often relish this).
What sort of a person behaves like that? What sort of a person knowingly creates a needy, pathetic creature who'll have to live in indignity for years and years? What sort of a person relishes the idea of exercising that control over another? What sort of a person thinks their life will lack meaning unless they can assume that role?
Look at what has been firmly etched in stone:
Quran. An-Nisa 34. Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.
This clause is obviously non-negotiable in its entirety, and it is also never negotiated, because it will never, ever be put up for negotiation on any negotiation table.
This verse is obviously much more popular with men than your belief, but actually even more so with women because it gives them a right to be supported in exchange for their obedience. That is an arrangement that will always suit quite a lot of women fine.
Since people whom you cannot convince of your opposite belief, will multiply and thrive, while the ones that you can convince, will die out, your belief is some kind of punishment of God, which mostly exists to weed out lineages that are not meant to continue in future generations.
As I have argued previously, if a particular belief leads to you fail to reproduce, it will most likely die with you.
When it comes to ethics, our source of insight is our reason, not the Quran.
Yes, but as Aristotle famously wrote, "If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded". Reason is about deriving statements that necessarily follow from other statements; however, without such chain degenerating into infinite regress. So, that means that you can only work your way back until you reach the basic starting-point statements.
You will need to feed "something" to the inference engine. Kurt Gödel really liked to feed the starting points of number theory to his virtual machine, but you can actually pick anything.
So, what is your set of basic starting-point statements, i.e. in Kant's lingo, categorical imperatives, to produce rulings in morality?
The god is wise.
I don't disagree with Aristotle about that. But what Aristotle said there is a self-evident truth of reason.
There are lots of self-evident truths of reason. That this argument is valid, for instance:
1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q
is a self-evident truth of reason. I do not merely assume that it is valid. It seems to be valid - that is, my reason represents it to be. And I know that the reason of virtually everyone else does too. Which is excellent evidence - the best there could ever be - that it 'is' valid.
And you cannot understand any of the contents of the Quran or any other religious text until one applies one's reason to it.
So reason is the boss of bosses - the ultimate and only true answerer of questions.
Now, it is a self-evident truth of reason, is it not, that one should not make significant impositions on another without their prior consent, other things being equal?
Why is it wrong, for instance, to drug another person's drink without asking? Well, because that'd be to impose something significant - the effects of the drug - on the other person without their prior consent. We may be able to dream up extreme scenarios where such behaviour is overall justifiable (the drug is the only antidote to a poison they've just taken and there isn't time to explain this to them, for instance). But that's why there's an 'other things being equal' clause in there. The default is that it is wrong to do things that impose on others if their consent has not been gained.
Now, clearly you cannot consent to be born. Thus, other things being equal it is wrong to procreate.
Here, using an argument form that Aristotle liked:
1. If an act will make significant impositions on another without their prior consent, then it is wrong other things being equal.
2. Procreative acts make significant impositions on another without their prior consent
3. Therefore, procreative acts are wrong other things being equal
I am not intimidated by the quality of your general anti-natalist arguments, because I have heard all those tired old arguments before ad nauseum, and I know they are based on tendentious assessments of the degree of suffering that life necessarily must involve.
I have never wanted to have children. If I was young now I believe I would make the same choice (which was actually for mostly selfish reasons) and I also think that same choice would be all the more likely because I don't think the world needs any extra people. Although I don't think life per se necessarily involves so much suffering that it would be unethical to have children, I can see why someone who thinks it does involves that much suffering would think it unethical to have children, so I am not totally unsympathetic to anti-natalist arguments. For me the point against them is that the assessment of the degree of suffering that life necessarily involves is entirely subjective.
To repeat, though, apart from the fact that each person contributes significantly to global warming, an ever stronger reason I would have for not wishing to procreate now is that I do think anyone born now will most probably suffer greatly from the effects of global warming.
You can't refute arguments by being bored by them. There are lots of boring, but good arguments out there.
Now, as you're exclusively interested in what bearing global warming has on this, I have already said what I believe (and you have not engaged with it). Namely, that if it is prima facie wrong to do anything that warms the planet, then it is definitely wrong to procreate as the more of us there are, the warming the planet will be. There - a simple and boring point.
Well no, that is a repeat of the ancient, 10th century Mutazili heresy:
Mu?tazilites believe that good and evil are not always determined by revealed scripture or interpretation of scripture, but they are rational categories that could be "established through unaided reason";[6][9][10][11] because knowledge is derived from reason; reason, alongside scripture, was the "final arbiter" in distinguishing right from wrong.
Furthermore, religious scriptures do not contain hypothetical imperatives, in which you have to follow arrows to distill morality. They are categorical only. Islamic jurisprudence is axiomatic from a categorical Quran and Sunnah:
Principles of Islamic jurisprudence, also known as U??l al-fiqh (Arabic: ???? ??????, lit. roots of fiqh), are traditional methodological principles used in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) for deriving the rulings of Islamic law (sharia). [...] This interpretive apparatus is brought together under the rubric of ijtihad, which refers to a jurist's exertion in an attempt to arrive at a ruling on a particular question.
Ijtihad (Arabic: ??????? ijtih?d, [id?.tiha?d]; lit. physical or mental effort, expended in a particular activity)[1] is an Islamic legal term referring to independent reasoning or the thorough exertion of a jurist's mental faculty in finding a solution to a legal question.
The epistemic domain of Islamic law is axiomatic from scripture. It is not possible to meaningfully derive any conclusion in an axiomatic domain without accepting axioms first.
I don't disagree with that simplistic point per se at all, as boring as it might be. Of course you also have to allow that some people are, rightly or wrongly, (I would say wrongly) skeptical that we are inducing planetary warming. Also, someone might think that we need to keep reproducing to keep the economy going, because if the economy collapses the suffering will be very great indeed and since (it might be further argued) global warming is already inevitable the only possibility to reverse it would be a technological fix that will certainly not happen if the economy collapses.
But I haven't "gone on and on about it", I have just responded a few times to your unreasonable assertions that you were on topic, when you obviously weren't.
I don't think that our lives are full of misery. Far from it: I think most lives contain more pleasure than pain (even the misery-filled lives of those who procreate). The point, though, is that it is wrong to impose things on others without their prior consent, other things being equal. And furthermore, it is wrong to be the kind of person who wants to be loved unconditionally, and it is wrong to make others love you unconditionally, and so on.
So my case appeals to both Kantian and Virtue-ethics considerations.
If everyone stopped procreating tomorrow the economy would boom. Procreation is bad for the economy. How on earth is it good for it?
Well, you need something as a starting point; anything really.
Imagine as a thought exercise a centuries-old moral scripture that says to its followers that they should not have children. One major problem will be that, without future followers, the moral scripture will become unused and just some kind of historical curiosum. So, in a sense, this moral scripture simply would seek to destroy its own relevance. Hence, the historical non-existence of such moral scripture.
OK, but I don't see what that has to do with the issue of having or not having children in view of global warming.
Well, if everyone stopped procreating tomorrow, most of us would be better off. Children aren't productive. They cost the economy money -vast,vast amounts - for the first 18 years of their lives. How is it good for the economy to have a vast fund of people who are costing us all money?
Take the economy of me and my partner. We don't have kids. We're far wealthier than those of a similar age who do have kids. And both work full time - because we don't have kids - and we have a large household income as a result and no costly children to have to spend it on.
it would be very bad for the conomy of me and my partner if we had kids. We'd be poorer.
Well, now apply that to everyone else. If everyone else stopped procreating, they'd all get wealthier. And they'd have lots of leisure time in which to spend their money.
So, if everyone stopped procreating we'd have more workers (because more people could work), more money and more leisure in which to spend it.
What you're focussing on is just keeping the economy going for as long as possible. That's misguided.
Quoting Bartricks
No, I'm not focusing on that at all. The problem is how to make the transition form a growth economy to a sustainable economy. From the point of view of global warming it would be better if the world economy collapses as soon as possible. But that would result in untold human misery, and the people who survive would not stop procreating because contraceptive technologies would quickly become unavailable.
1. If someone says something that contradicts something in the Quran, then they are wrong
2. Bartricks has said something that contradicts something in the Quran
3. Therefore, Bartricks is wrong
Now, that's an unsound argument - its first premise is obviously false to anyone who is not a Muslim - but it is valid. And so in making such an argument you are still appealing to reason.
Reason, like I say, is the ultimate court of appeal in all things and you ignore her at your peril.
You and I don't need to worry.
No, I don't think that's fair at all.
The situation may well be so dire that no "provision can be made for it", not to mention that there might not be anything like "enough time".
We may have no need to worry for ourselves, but focusing on that small positive shows a rather selfish attitude.
That is hypothetical (goal-seeking) morality, which is a practice that Immanuel Kant famously decried in his Critique of Practical Reason. The short story is that hypothetical morality does not work.
As to what's selfish - well, forcing someone else to exist so that they can provide for you in your dotage and then saddling them with exactly the same problem....now THAT'S selfish!
Well, no, it works differently:
Assuming that Bartricks accepts the Quran, if he says something that contradicts the Quran, Bartricks is wrong.
Bartricks probably does not accept the Quran. Still, my remark was about how people who accept it, would react; not necessarily Bartricks.
You can try to find any moral scripture that advocates that its followers should not have children, deprive it from future followers, and hence make itself over time irrelevant. I can guarantee that you will not find such moral scripture with a history of having been in active use for centuries.
The idea of a documented starting point for morality, X, just places morality in the axiomatic epistemic domain. In fact, Immanuel Kant already did that in his Critique of Practical Reason. So, not using any documented X at all is not viable in that view.
The fact is I am currently forced, by the tax system, into subsidising other people's idiotic and unethical procreative acts. My taxes pay for schools and health care for other people's children. Parents should pay for those things, not me.
Again, I am not the selfish one here. I am supporting others. No-one is supporting me.
The children, of course, are the innocent parties in all of this. But parents owe their children a living, not me. I'll pick up the tab if necessary, for it is not the children's fault they exist. But other things being equal, the parents owe their kids everything.
Surely the latter. That's what stopping procreating would give us. And it isn't as if the absence of the economy would be bad for anyone - no-one would exist at that point, by hypothesis.
Consider: at the moment there are two massive groups who are unproductive and cost us all lots and lots and lots of money: children and the elderly. They produce nothing, and they cost a ton. They're supported by the largest group - the group in the middle. Us (assuming you're not elderly).
Now, if everyone stopped procreating, what would happen to the size of those groups? Well, one of them - the children - would rapidly reduce in size, as no more children are being produced and all of those that have been produced move into the productive central group - the one that produces all the money that the other two groups depend on.
Eventually the child group will disappear altogether, at which point we'll have a massive central group (for we are in that group the longest) and an elderly population. But that's better - that's a better situation economically than one in which you have the elderly AND the children.
Note too, all the time and money previously wasted on children can now be dedicated to the elderly. It is only the last generation that would have a problem - but, as I say, they'd know it was coming and could make provision.
Plus, it wouldn't be that bad. The real problem with being elderly is being elderly and that's something you have regardless of how many children there are around.
If you would say that everyone should procreate in spite of that creating an unsustainable situation then that would contravene Kant's CI, as far as I can tell.
No, it's not. Where will the workers come from?
Quoting Bartricks
What you're failing to see is that that situation could only last for about half the average working like of around 40-45 years.Once there are no more children then the shortage of workers would soon be felt. Also, all of the industries and jobs that presently cater for the needs of children would quickly collapse, producing unemployment and more people who need financial support. But the two tendencies shortage of labour and the loss of jobs would probably not be able to be coordinated such as to provide a smooth transition.
You don't seem to understand how fragile our global economy is.
It is hypothetical because: sexual reproduction [math]\Rightarrow[/math] global warming [math]\Rightarrow[/math] suffering.
A categorical imperative does not use that kind of arrows.
For example: You will not steal.
It does not try to achieve any particular goal. In categorical morality, there is no reason why people are not allowed to steal. It is merely axomatized as a basic rule.
Can we have a categorical imperative: You will not sexually reproduce. ?
Well, no, for reasons mentioned above, a moral scripture will never axiomatize a thing like that.
What, you think if people stopped procreating everyone who currently exists disappears?
Let's be clear: the fact I may need support when I'm old is a problem my parents are responsible for, not me. I think they should pay for it. But obviously they're not, and they probably won't be around when I'm old. So, I'll pay someone else to look after me, if I need it. And if I can't afford it, and if the state isn't willing to pay someone on my behalf, then I'll starve to death. That'd probably take about a week - one grim week in the larger scheme of things isn't too bad, and anyway, I don't think I am justified in burdening another person with all the same problems (and doing so without asking) just to try and avoid that grim week from occurring. (And it'd probably occur even if I did procreate, for most kids don't actually look after their parents).
I don't agree. The goal is workability. If everyone routinely lied, stole, murdered, raped and so on, society would be unsustainable. That is the basis of the thought experiment re willing that something morally right should become a universal maxim. If the outcome would be unsustainable, then no rational person could so will. Otherwise, what would it matter (apart from any basically selfish or compassion-based Humean feelings of revulsion towards theft, murder, rape and so on which are alien to Kant's CI)?
If you are younger than about 50 I doubt you will if things go the way they seem to be. You might have superannuation, but it is likely invested in the financial markets; what do you think will happen if they collapse?
Yes, you will likely starve, and if that doesn't bother you then it isn't really a problem, is it? I would say it would be a problem for the majority of people. But note, I'm not saying we should all have kids. I tend towards thinking that the ethically better choice would be not to have them, and I think that only on account of the fact that I don't think we should have any confidence in our ability to provide them with a good life. But I am not about to preach to others about it; I am content to leave it to them. If you had the power would you legislate to prevent people from having children?
We do not know if it will still be workable 125 generations from now.
Your approach requires a copy of the Theory of Everything (ToE) to function, but you do not have such copy. Religious believers, on the other hand, believe that the revealed scripture originates from someone who does have such copy, called the "Tablet of Wisdom".
One thing is sure, though. Regardless of what X you use as a starting point, improvisation in the basic rules of morality will always snowball into a nightmare.
With secular law and religious law being in the same epistemic domain, you can ask any lawyer or judge if he thinks that his profession needs such basic document, "the law", to bring back arguments to, and if he believes that it is wise to liberally improvise changes to that basic document.
Politicians everywhere pay no more than lip-service to the issue of global warming. And that is not to mention resource depletion, habitat destruction, species extinction, growing financial fragility and instability. Do you really believe that humans will be able to cooperate enough to solve all these rapidly growing and converging problems? Don't get me wrong; I hope we can; but I don't think we should base our thinking on counting on our ability to do so.
I think that 10 000 - 20 000 years ago, before they started farming, they were already gradually running out of game to hunt; a problem undoubtedly caused by their dangerously growing head count. At that point, they could also have said: "Hey, the sky is falling. Stop making kids right now!"
And I think that would've made much more sense.
It's laden with hypocrisy and cowardice.
Someone refuses to end their life prematurely but insists on denying a newborn life on behalf of an unborn.
Biting the bullet would spare both the parent and their unborn child from this potentially wretched world, but how often does it go out like that?
If the world is so blatantly dangerous and unwelcoming, running away from it isn't going to change that; but maybe fresh minds could solve the problem in a manner that current befuddled ones didn't come to - and offer a future where people don't have to be scared of potential harm.
If having children is unethical, having this conversation is unethical - both on an anthropic and scientific basis; as we shouldn't have progressed this far for fear of what might be.
Children are the hope of the future, and denying them is denying the chance for redemption; no two ways about it.
Quoting Shamshir
I can't relate to this. The future is the only hope for the future. If the future is hopeless then the lives of the children of the future will be hopeless. In any case why is mankind in need of redemption?
.
it is wrong, other things being equal, to impose significant things on other people without their prior consent .
Procreative acts do that - therefore they are wrong, other things being equal.
How on earth does that imply that we ought to kill ourselves? It doesn't follow at all.
It is also wrong to want to be loved unconditionally and to create someone who'll do so. Most procreative acts are peformed for such reasons and/or have that upshot.
How on earth does it follow from this that we ought to kill ourselves?
No children - no future; thus the children are the future and its hope rests with the them.
Quoting Janus
Look around you. How malicious human history has been and is continuing to be; bad news everyday.
More often than not there's some snake with a toothache spitting from afar - is this what humanity should remain relegated to?
If it's wrong, then don't impose antinatalism - as you have neither your unborn nor your newborn offering consent.
Anyway, for someone who pretends to be interested in keeping things focussed on topic, you're doing a good job of wandering from it.
the issue is whether it is ethical to procreate, not how wise it is in terms of pension planning. It is, in fact, extremely unwise in terms of pension planning - I will be a much richer older person without kids than with, I guarantee it - but that's not the issue. For even if having kids was a good pension plan (and it really isn't - just do some research if you don't believe me), that wouldn't make it ethical to have them.
by contrast, if you don't procreate, then you're not imposing anything on anyone.
You can't impose something on someone who does not exist. But you can impose something on someone who does exist.
This is getting painful.
They don't exist and you forced them not to exist.
Quoting Bartricks
Then I can't impose either natalism or antinatalism.
Keep running this hamster wheel over and over, your own statements are your bane.
Prosperity leads to declining reproduction rates, not the other way around. Our prosperity is supported by exploiting workers and even slave labour, including children, in other countries.
Quoting Bartricks
Depending on whether you are a consequentialist or a deontologist, pension planning would or would not come into consideration of the question concerning the ethics of procreation.
You are confusing the question of whether having children is financially beneficial for the individual who has them with the question of whether having children in general is beneficial to society in general. It is by no means as simplistic a question as you seem to think it is.
Can I or can't I impose existence on the nonexistent?
Tell you what, you invest your money in economies in which the average person has ten kids, and I'll invest my money in those economies with the lowest rates of reproduction on the planet, and we'll see who does best. I'm betting on me - and you are too, because you're not going to invest a penny in those economies are you?
And if it isn't worth living - it can stop living and spare itself and its offspring further injury. Of course that's assuming its offspring think alike, when they could think the opposite.
The difference between us is that you assume that the child doesn't want to live, whereas I assume that it might want to live, keyword being might.
And unlike you I'm willing to offer the child a trial and have it formulate its own verdict.
Natalism isn't an enforcement but an allowance and each child may spend it as they see fit; whether they suffer or prosper is up to them.
@Janus has already touched on this in his responses to others, but there is a simple argument against this position which is very strongly related to both global warming and your 3 starving people.
You'd agree, from the sounds of your argument, that we have a moral duty to feed the three, yes? So what if the process by which we ensure that is done takes longer than one generation? If we do not have children (and bring them up to continue our good work), then we will not have fulfilled our moral obligation to the three starving people.
I am not an absolutist. There are no doubt all kinds of scenario we can dream up in which procreation would be ethically justifiable. For instance, if someone held a gun to my head and said "procreate or I kill you" I think it would be within my rights to procreate.
The point, though, is that 'other things being equal' it is wrong to procreate. There may be some who depend on having offspring for their own survival - in their case I don't think the 'other things being equal' condition is satisfied. But in our case - certainly my case - it is satisfied and thus it is wrong for me to procreate and others who are relevantly similarly situated.
So your rights outweigh the rights of the child you were so vehemently defending moments ago.
Point in fact, you're just a narcissist who doesn't care about the child, but whatever gets you high at the moment.
Evident by the following statement:
Quoting Bartricks
It's just anti-natalism with a different premise. The conclusion in itself warrants rejection.
Okay, but what if the best explanation of why most people get the rational impression that procreation is ethical has nothing whatsoever to do with its actual ethics? I mean, there's a pretty obvious explanation of why virtually all humans get the impression procreation is ethically fine - only those whose ancestors got that intuition would breed.
That's similar to the intuition, again widely felt, that there is something immoral about homosexual relations. Why do many people - often people with homosexual dispositions - get that impression? Well, because it would be adaptive. If you have a homosexual disposition but also think it would be wrong to act on it, and bad to have it, then you'll try hard not o act on it and to focus and cultivate your heterosexual dispositions (and acquire all the standard heterosexual attributes, such as a partner of the opposite sex and lots of offspring). Hence why the intuition that homosexual sex is immoral gets selected for, and why we find it associated with possession of homosexual dispositions.
Now, does that show that the intuition should be taken seriously? Does it show that homosexual sexual relations are, in fact, immoral?
No, the opposite - it discredits such intuitions. It does not vindicate them, it debunks them. Likewise with the intuition - widely felt - that procreation is morally fine. It's pretty obvious why most people get it: anyone whose ancestors did not get it would not have procreated.
No, you're putting words in my mouth. The conclusion of anti-natalism is that it's immoral to have children. There are justifiable grounds to reject that conclusion. I do think that it's obvious to most what those grounds are. It's probably obvious to anti-natalists, too, although they'd of course deny that it's justifiable grounds.
Quoting Bartricks
No it isn't.
This seems to be a false dichotomy to me. Conceiving children is not opposed to caring for the people who are already alive.
First off, I don’t think feeding them is an obligation. You never have an obligation to help someone unless you harmed them yourself.
So you’re proposing controlled reproduction with the goal of eventually ending humanity? As in, we will ONLY have children to feed the starving people, after that, we’re done (and we’re obviously going to do it in such a way that the number of starving people keeps decreasing or else it would be a very dumb solution). Actually, I think there is some merit to this view. I’m fine with it. After all, if everyone stopped procreating tomorrow the result will be complete mayhem a few decades down the line, and what did the people who will live through that do to deserve it? They didn’t ask to be born themselves did they? So I think there is some merit in saying that they are then justified to procreate IN SUCH A WAY that annihilation is the final goal. They would be moral to procreate when they can show that they would suffer severely more alone and childless, then they+their child would suffer if they were together (or at least that the suffering is comparable both ways). This wouldn’t sustain the population however.
Although I shouldn’t be saying final goal but rather final destination. It is not a goal in and of itself per se
I agree. The agenda is more important than causing the conditions for an individual's harm. They think it is acceptable, justified, and perhaps even desirable to create more people for their "growth-through-adversity" model coupled (unwittingly) with undue harm (the GTA-UH Standard Model). This is the agenda that somehow must perpetuate the generations in perpetuity over time.
No and you’re being willfully blind. In the scenario in question the choice is between 100% chance of severe suffering (and death) or a slight chance of severe suffering for someone else. In this case it is permissible to procreate.
His rights don’t outweigh the child’s but they do have some weight
Quoting Shamshir
Let’s expand on this logic a bit. “If getting raped isn’t worth going through, she can just stop living and spare herself further injury, after all she MIGHT enjoy the experience no? I’ll rape her and give her a chance to make the verdict herself. After all, not raping her would he forcing her to not get raped when she could enjoy it”
Disgusting to even read isn’t it?
Quoting Shamshir
Yes you are because
Quoting Bartricks
Thus when someone exists without asking to exist, they have been imposed upon to exist. When no one exists, no one has been imposed upon not to exist.
I’d like to hear those. I don’t mean this in a challenging or standoffish way, I’m just curious if there’s any I haven’t heard before.
Right, I misread that, sorry.
Quoting khaled
This isn't the same scenario, because the person being raped exists beforehand and therefore already has ethical position that would be violated. But what ethical standing to non-existant potential people have?
Quoting khaled
The phrase "being imposed upon to exist" doesn't make grammatical sense to me.
First off, the choice is only 100% of suffering if you're an utter wimp who can't defend himself and is scared of dying; to add to which - your assumption that it is inherently bad.
Secondly, that's what outweighing means - having weight, precisely more weight.
And why do his rights appear to outweigh the child's? Because he, like you, would rather save his own skin at the expense of another. You and him both value your own lives over that of another and there's no two ways about it.
Quoting khaled
It's not about if she gets raped, maimed, burned alive, lynched or whatever.
Those are all potential risks, that if the woman in question is paranoid over and unwilling to face, she can spare herself the worry by living completely isolated or ending her life.
Imagine you want to build a house, but you suddenly start thinking - what if my neighbour burns it down, what if lightning burns it down, what if a tornado blows it away, what if a meteorite falls on top of it?
All if scenarios, that could happen.
And you either accept that they could happen and build your house anyway, hoping they won't, but prepared to deal with them if they do.
Or you give in to paranoia and don't build the house; quit.
If you're unwilling to go through and cannot handle the potential trials and tribulations, then quit and stay safe.
Quoting khaled
What about if that someone does want to exist?
Denying existence to someone who wishes to exist is bad isn't it?
And let me guess - you can't impose on the nonexistent and cannot ask them anything, right?
So how do you impose anything, when you don't know anything? It's simple - you don't.
You're deliberating this drivel on behalf of children you won't have, thus children you know nothing about.
And because that's too hard for you to wrap your head around - here's an easy example.
You impose your hunger on other lifeforms, consuming them at your leisure to prolong your vitality.
You didn't ask those lifeforms for consent prior to consuming them.
You didn't even ask for consent prior to butchering and/or harvesting them - if you've ever even done it yourself, rather than wash your hands with the grocery store.
And the irony of it all is that you possess the leisure and amenities to espouse all of this drivel, thanks to all of the natalists prior to you who got you here, only to have you shit on their graves.
You're a narcissistic stick in the mud who wants to play hero, having humanity go extinct.
None. Then again, I’m not claiming having kids harms non existent ghost babies. I’m claiming it risks harming real people. That the real person didn’t exist at the time the action that would harm said real person in the future took place is of no consequence. To demonstrate: I’m pretty sure you’d agree that genetically modifying children to suffer more (extra limbs, blindness, etc) is wrong no? Explain to me why that is wrong then you will find that the same explanation could be used to explain why having children with the normal number of limbs is still wrong.
Quoting Echarmion
Grammar doesn’t make or not make sense to individual people first of all, and as far as I know “being imposed upon to exist” makes grammatical sense. Doesn’t “being imposed upon to eat” or “go to school” make sense?
If I’m sounding like a douche it’s because I have shamshir to reply to after this so some of it spilled over sorry.
There you go with the personal insults again. I just don’t understand what you think this is accomplishing. These are the assumptions for this example yes.
Quoting Shamshir
Dying isn’t inherently bad? So murder is ok? Please actually present a case for something
Quoting Shamshir
Again with the willful blindness. In this scenario, Bartricks life has less or equal weight than his child when considering an action done to both. However the madman here (maybe it’s you lol, I might as well hop on the pointless ad hominem train you’re so fond of) threatened to shoot Bartricks not his child didn’t he? So the child isn’t under danger of being shot, if he was, I’d imagine Bartricks would way he should choose to get shot himself or that there’s is no right answer.
Quoting Shamshir
They don’t, but he’s under more threat of harm. Another example would be: I think if someone told you “punch someone and break their nose or I shoot you” and you do it, the person that got punched wouldn’t even mind and you would be right to do it. Because the suffering you stopped from happening (your own) is out of proportion with what you inflicted. In this case the strangers safety has equal or more weight than your own. However he is under much less threat than you are. So harming him is the right call.
Quoting Shamshir
These are indeed all if scenarios. That could happen TO ME. And I personally would take them. Procreation is taking huge risks for someone else who had no interest in taking those risks at the time the decision was made.
You speak as if the individual that gets born doesn’t matter. We’re talking making another life here not a freaking house. A house doesn’t get hurt. I’m paranoid of hurting someone else unnecessarily as I fucking should be. Aren’t you? Don’t you avoid harming someone for no reason? Is it really fair to call that paranoia? (Notice the “for no reason” it’s pretty important)
Quoting Shamshir
Agreed. But I’m hoping you’re not talking about childbirth with this because it doesn’t apply. Because SOMEONE ELSE will be taking the trials and tribulations and you had no right to make them do so
Quoting Shamshir
That is impossible. Someone needs to exist for someone to want to exist. But he freaking exists already in that case.
Quoting Shamshir
First off it’s not denying. Second off even if it was it wouldn’t be bad. It’s not bad to deny a beggar money for example. You don’t owe anyone their existence.
Quoting Shamshir
You know some things and you assess the costs vs the benefits. Having children has no benefits at best and many costs at worst. That is because as I’ve shown, having children isn’t good in and of itself, no one actually thinks that.
Quoting Shamshir
Even if that was the case, I wouldn’t be wrong, I don’t owe anyone a life. However I owe not to give someone a shit life they will hate. Procreation risks doing both, so is bad.
Quoting Shamshir
Yes because it’s my vitality vs theirs. But the child doesn’t get harmed if he isn’t born. No one loses anything (except me) by me not having children. I just can’t imagine how you think any of the examples you cite are anything like birth. They’re not in the same ballpark.
Quoting Shamshir
You almost have it shamshir. I’m so proud of you. You almost made it without much ad hominem this time. Maybe next time you might actually say something you haven’t said already and has been refuted 100 times which led you to resort to ad hominem due to having nothing to say.
Also I’m pretty sure you’re purely projecting when you say “play hero”. That’s what you’re trying to do bud. “Save the magical ghost babies who are very sad at having not been born because they totally exist”. I’ll just stick to the safe route when it comes to making decisions for other people when consent isn’t available. As I’ve said before, anitnatalism doesn’t “save” anyone, so I’m I can’t be trying to play hero here when I don’t even think what I’m doing (or rather refraining from doing) is good (it’s neutral)
Quoting khaled
The whole post is oozing hypocrisy.
Okay, boy - if and when you get to the tender old age when there is no one left to visit or care for you and you become nothing more than a burden on the social system and you still hold this view - you can write me a message about how wrong I was, and if I'm not dead I'll read it.
So survive if you can.
But this really does amount to the same thing as harming ghost babies, doesn't it? If the position in time of whoever is harmed by an action is of no consequence, then we treat them as if they were alive right now. They're not, however. Whether they will be alive in the first place depends on the choices of current people. Therefore, I think it's wrong to say that the fact that the person doesn't exist is "of no consequence". I think, rather, that we need a dedicated justification for the moral standing of "potential" persons.
Quoting khaled
Sure, but that's only because you're causing me to imagine a suffering baby and therefore empathy kicks in. I'm not actually sure a rational argument can be made to this effect. Perhaps you could explain why it is wrong.
Quoting khaled
I don't think "existing" is an action. It's a relation between a mental concept and some external state.
No!
In very simple terms either your child will hurt or get hurt.
You don't want your child to hurt someone
You don't want your child to suffer
Ergo it's unethical to have children
1. C > ( H v S).......premise
2. ~H.......premise
3. ~S.....premise
4. ~H & ~S.......2, 3 conj
5. ~(H v S).......4 DeM
6. ~C.............1, 5 MT
C = You have children
H = Your child will hurt someone
S = Your child will suffer
Surely you've heard this before. All the people who think that life is worth living.
Bandwagon fallacy? :broken:
No, I'm not suggesting that it's true because lots of people believe it, I'm suggesting that it's none of your business to presume that you know better than them and to contradict them. That's not warranted. If you think that life isn't worth living, than you can make your own decisions with regard to your own life, and keep out of the lives of others. People are entitled to start a family if they so desire.
Of course people are free to choose. That's not the issue. It's about the ethics of having children and clearly, if you don't want your child to hurt anyone or get hurt, both of which are inevitable and unethical, then people should NOT have children.
If you had the power, what restrictions would you put on people being able to have children?
Knowledge and power don't mix. People are free to choose but their choices, in this issue, must be ethical.
This response is ambiguous. I'll ask again. If you could, would you put restrictions on others being able to have children? Yes? No? You don't know?
Do you not understand what entitlement means?
And regarding what you say about people not wanting their child to hurt anyone or get hurt, that's fine. That's just part and parcel of life, and people can and do still value and enjoy their lives regardless. Virtually everyone concludes that it's much better for the child to live in the first place.
I wouldn't put restrictions or enforce any sort of behavior. Of course you must remember that ethics is precisely about dos and don'ts but these must be reasoned positions as I have hopefully done so.
I think ethics is more important than entitlement. I'm entitled to eat meat but is it ethical to kill animals?
Entitlement is part of ethics. It means having a right. You don't seem to understand what entitlement is. It isn't the same as freedom. Your question makes no sense. If you're entitled to eat meat, and the only way for that to happen is for animals to be killed, then it must be ethical for animals to be killed, otherwise how could you be entitled to eat meat?
As you may have seen, I have a strong angry reaction to the anti-natalist argument. At the end, when both sides have laid out our positions and failed in our attempts to convince, as we always do, I want to ask that final question. It seems important.
What about the option where neither happens?
Even if it is an improbability, it's not an impossibility, is it?
This is astoundingly shortsighted when you think about it. I was a child once. You were a child once. We all were a child once. We've all hurt and been hurt. Who here wishes they were never born? Not I.
I don't think it'd be good advice to avoid being hurt at all costs. Some experiences in life require you to get hurt. That doesn't make being hurt a good thing somehow, but it does mean I don't really want my children to never get hurt.
Exactly. I completely agree. That's what I mean about how shortsighted what he said is. It's like he either hasn't thought it through properly, or worse: he's deliberately leaving out important factors because they don't work in his favour.
To reject my argument we must resort to a utilitarian calculus dependent on an improbability of the consequences I described or balancing suffering with happiness. However these are all, as you know, probabilities and we can never be sure of them to the degree required to allow us to make a decision.
However, the two consequences of birth I described, hurt someone or get hurt by someone, are so certain that we may base a definitive decision on them and the decision should be not to have children.
Another relevant point is heaven. Why does the concept of heaven exist if, as you say, life on earth is so desirable? We wish a better state of existence than the one we have on earth which proves that people aren't as happy or happy to the extent that makes life on earth desirable.
Yes, we also have the notion of hell but earth, this life, isn't good enough an escape from it. Heaven, the very idea of it, is evidence against any utilitarian calculus in favor of having children.
Well said. Getting hurt/hurting others: isn't this at the core of the art of being human? It is to me. I will not speak for anyone other than myself: the art of being human centers around the ways I've learned to to avoid being hurt and to avoid hurting others--i.e., avoiding certain types of people, not taking the bait when being bated, practicing patience and refraining from nastiness --in short, honing our discernment and acquiring knowledge about how to be my best self (in progress) and help bring out the best in others.
That is, if it matters to one not to hurt others. I don't think it's unethical to have kids: I think it's unethical to be an abusive parent.
You pose very interesting questions. What I understand the philosopher to be saying is that it would be a good idea to reduce the human population at this point, because life on earth is in the process of becoming disasterous for millions of people.
I'm a university professor and I try to engage my students to consider how the planet will be for their children and grandchildren. I understand, however, having been through my late teens-early 20s some decades ago, that it isn't easy to get young people to have a "mature" sense of time and history. They have so little past, so little historical perspective, and I have also observed that the majority of them don't have much perspective on the future, either. They focus on the present. They couldn't possibly have the same perspective that I have in my 60s: accumulated experience and the capacity to evaluate it are two of the keen intellectual pleasures of aging.
I don't intend this as point in favor any particular position - just some possibly relevant information. It is my understanding that demographers are pretty confident that the Earth's population growth rate will reach 0 in about the year 2100. At that time, they estimate there will be about 11 billion people living here.
My rational intuition tells me that there is not much we can do about this either way, assuming no catastrophic intervention. The Chinese took an extreme swing at dealing with the issue with their one-child policy which has had negative social effects with which they are now trying to deal.
Where do you feel the anger comes from? I'm asking because I don't have an issue with Shakers not procreating. Neither do I have an issue with those who feel it unethical to have children holding the position. The only place where an issue arises, for me, is where it crosses the threshold to claim a justifiable imposition, and then only when it has a risk of political uptake.
I admit to an occasional twinge of pique when those in the anti-natalist camp make a claim to some inherent ethical contradiction in those of us who have children. After reflection, though, I find my emotional reaction is unjustified, in as much as I'm dealing with anonymous people on the Internet.
The sophomoric nature of the argument made and its radical departure from modern life (universal acceptance of the claims would lead, clearly, to extinction) lead me to reflect on them as I would conspiracy theorist claims. It's interesting as an exercise in dissecting how we arrive at what we believe, but doesn't move the needle with respect to foundational belief.
I guess I'm asking is whether you feel dispassionate argumentation is somehow flawed. Where does emotion serve a purpose?
Characterizing an argument is not dealing with the argument qua argument. It is placing it in a box so as to not actually tackle the questions it poses head on. However, you somewhat redeem this statement by saying that antinatalism, at the least, allows us to explore how it is that we believe certain foundational ideas such as why we believe having more people is good. I think you cannot go into a philosophy forum and expect all arguments to conform to only mainstream views on foundational beliefs. In fact, that might be going against the spirit of philosophy itself, which in its essence, is about questioning foundational beliefs, whether that be in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and value.
I'm in general agreement with your outlook but I do have an objection as it applies to public policy and how we can minimize the risk of resource misallocation. I wonder if the issue of failing to price externalities into our individual economic decision-making might lead to civil discord as we are forced to deal with this misallocation. As an example (and I'm not sure this is properly considered an externality), we can look at a rising national deficit and how we, as a country, have a spendthrift economy. The perception that we have more headroom than we do may have us having more children than we can economically bear and may give rise to conflict as natural resource allocation provides smaller margins with a larger population.
Rational policy as it applies to pricing individual economic decisions may help reduce the risk as we work towards a population equilibrium.
As I said in my post, I'm not sure what the information I provided means for the issues we are discussing and I don't know what we can or should do about it, if anything. I just thought it was relevant.
As for your previous post about the anger I feel when dealing with anti-natalist arguments, I do plan to respond.
I wonder what the demographers say about the impact of climate change on the world population, and I intend to see if I can find out. I certainly hope that it's been taken into consideration in their projected numbers. And at this point in time, I would have to express some skepticism about their projections precisely because global warming is impacting earth's inhabitants much faster than was anticipated 10 years ago.
Jesus fucking Christ. Citing one example then saying the whole post is oozing with hypocrisy? Also the first quote very clearly has the the added line “please actually make a case for something” doesn’t it? Under conventional uses of language, anyone would infer that means that this isn’t actually my position but that I’m inquiring if it yours. But you choose to be willfully blind. Now you’re quoting out of context too. What happened shamshir, you were doing so well last time.
Quoting Shamshir
So if there is someone to care for me I’m suddenly not a burden on the social system? Well that’s false. The burden just shifts to people closer to me. And how is this an argument for natalism exactly? “Have kids so they can take care of you when you’re old”. Are you seriously pushing this as an argument right now? You cannot think of kids except as tools can you? And you just liked having kids to building a house too....
No.
Quoting Echarmion
No. We only do that when considering the consequences of a certain action. For example, we don’t think not having kids is harming anyone. Because not having kids has no negative consequence on anyone. However having kids does have negative consequences on someone in the future, it doesn’t matter if they existed at the time the decision was made
Quoting Echarmion
Let’s test that.
Which is more wrong?:
A: implanting a bomb in someone at age 1 which will detonate at age 18 without them knowing
B: implanting a bomb in fetus which will detonate when the person born reaches age 18
C: bombing someone aged 18
I don’t think either is more or less wrong than the other do you?
Quoting Echarmion
Because it risks (pretty much guarantees) harming someone in the future. It doesn’t matter that that person doesn’t exist at the time
Quoting Echarmion
I think existing is an action. Considering it can be stopped. Maybe “living” would’ve been a better word.
Yes I have, and I thought it was an unrelated argument. Whether or not the living think life is worth living has nothing to do with whether or not they can add more people. Because there is a difference between an experience worth living through and an experience worth starting. Example: blindness is an experience worth living through but that doesn’t make it ok to go around hacking people’s eyes out does it? Similarly, life is worth living through but that doesn't necessarily justify adding more people to it does it? Even though in both cases the person in question will likely get over the difficulties of blindness/life and come to enjoy it later.
It is probably not 'either/or'. I don't see why such concerns can't be part of a large web of motivational vectors that end up summing one way or another. It would seem that in the way you are looking at it, no decision of any kind could ever be made on the basis of conscious, rational consideration of cost and benefit, and all such thinking would amount to no more than post hoc justification for behaviors really rooted in pure feelings or unconscious factors. Such irrational factors almost certainly play a role, but I think there's room for reason to inject some influence. That influence will never be total though. Feelings, after all, and even such things as wanting to be a "good person" (probably partly unconsciously a wish to receive love) are partly at the root of worries about climate change.
If I think about why I haven't had kids, I see a large and complex web of factors. And concerns about such things as global warming form part of that web.
Thinking about the topic is certainly helpful for me as I work through questions that I previously haven't considered. Among other things it has sparked an interest in understanding avenues for explanatory results from a neural net. This has generally been a limitation in comparison to other algorithms, such as decision trees.
In considering the topic at hand, I find myself considering propositions (narratives) around the good of human existence, the difference between the good of the individual animal vs the good of the species (why its worse to eat the last dodo in existence vs any particular dodo among many), how the prevention of suffering compares with respect to these goods. What I don't find myself doing is taking seriously human self-extinction as a good.
What is a right?
I'm guessing the numbers don't include the effects of climate change on population. I don't think anyone knows how to quantify that.
For me, it comes down to this - all philosophical arguments involve human values and preferences. Values and preferences mean emotions and feelings. It is one of the great misunderstandings of philosophy that the issues we consider have resolutions that don't involve values. That they can be resolved by applying strict rationalist rules. This is especially true when we are discussing moral issues.
I think if you look through my posts on the forum, you'll see that I self-consciously bring feelings, emotions, preferences, and values into most of my arguments. That doesn't count the times when I've lost my temper out of frustration or because of perceived insult. I have no good excuses for those.
I don't know if you've gone all through this thread, so here are the posts I was referring to when I talked about my anger:
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting T Clark
Based on their words, Bartricks and his tribe hate the world and they hate people. They write off three billion years of our existence based on their brief, pitiful view of life. They sneer at human emotion, loyalty, community, and love. How can recognizing that not be part of a philosophical response to their positions?
Consider that it is generally thought to be wrong for parents to beat their kids. This was once thought to be a man's right, as he basically owned his family. He could even kill them or his wife in some cultures.
The thing is, having a child inevitably involves more than just my interests. The interests of the child and perhaps the rest of the world must be considered. And usually, when a person's choices impact another in a big way, we tend, in our culture now, to see that as a place where state intervention is justified. Even in libertarian thought, you have this "my freedom ends where the other person's nose begins" idea. We have the state intervening between parents and children in abuse cases. Why not reproduction?
I find the claim that a person is entitled to or has a right to have kids questionable. I think one would be very hard-pressed to fully justify such a claim.
If someone is being raped, would the rapist be right to say it is nobody else's business, or that he has a right to meet his sexual needs? If he were doing something involving no harm to others, we might accept his claim.
Does a child qualify as "someone else" in relation to the parent? If so, are questions of harm any different here as opposed to with strangers?
It seems that people have a sense that "this is my child!" And this feeling is where they ground ideas like having a right to discipline as they see fit, being entitled to reproduce, and so on. But isn't this "my child" claim questionable?
In my view most procreative acts are seriously immoral, both because of the nature of the act itself - it is an act that imposes something significant on someone else without their consent - and because of what it typically says about the character of those who perform it (namely, that they are self-centred, narcissist megalomaniacs).
So here's one argument:
1. If an act will impose something significant on another person without their consent, then it is default wrong to perform that act
2. Procreating imposes something significant - life here - on another person without their consent
3. Therefore, procreative acts are default wrong
The argument is deductively valid (so its conclusion is necessarily true if its premises are). It is undeniable that the first premise has considerable support from our rational intuitions and premise 2 is obviously true.
I think premise 2 is obviously false. You cannot impose life on anything.
Quoting khaled
But we need to consider the consequences [I]to someone.[/I] Ethical considerations need a subject that already exists. I am not aware of any ethical system that allows you to just jump to non-existant "potential" subjects without issue. What ethical system are you using that allows you to claim that the distinction doesn't matter?
Quoting khaled
I'd need information on why we're planting those bombs in the first place. I would accept more justifications for B than for either A or C.
But there is another problem with this example: If we consider the decision whether or not to have children, the children cannot be said to "already exist in the future". That would imply our decision has already happened.
So here is another example: Let's assume we develop some technology (or magic) that will be extremely beneficial for society for several generations, but then everyone still alive will die horribly. Assume life extension is not plausible when we make the decision, and everyone will be made aware of the eventual consequence.
Should we use that technology in order to make everyone's lifes much more pleasant right now?
Quoting khaled
But we haven't established exactly why harming people in the future is a bad thing.
Quoting khaled
I think the connotations of "living" and "existing" are very different. The former is a general description of things you do, the latter is a category of being.
I can both help starving people and have children. I won't have 100 children and I won't decide for others whether they should have children, it's a personal decision based in part on whether the parents believe they can take care of them and make them happy.
If I see starving people around me I would think about helping them before having children, because I wouldn't want my children to grow up in a society that lets people starve.
Now hypothetically, if I believed I could have happy children on some distant planet far from the problems of this society, I would probably go there and let this society deal with its problems. In some way I would see taking care of my children as taking care of a part of me, and I have spent too much time already taking care of others without taking care of myself, and I exist too, not only others exist.
Quoting khaled
When the parents can take care of the child, I see not keeping the child happy as bad, but I still see keeping the child happy as good.
Quoting khaled
It doesn't, I wasn't saying it's OK to make someone have a bad experience just so you can have a good experience (which is usually the case in rape, theft, murder), but that if a human being has both good and bad experiences, then the existence of bad experiences doesn't imply it would have been better for the human being to not exist in the first place.
Through having a child we create the conditions for both positive and negative experiences in the child, through rape/theft/murder we usually create only negative experiences in our victim. If we take care well of our child we can also usually make it so that the child will have mostly positive experiences.
Quoting khaled
Indeed I don't, but then again I don't equate having a child with raping someone. And it's not that what the parents are doing "isn't that bad", I don't see having a child as bad in itself.
Quoting khaled
Again, I don't equate having a child with raiding someone's home. If they agree that their existence serves a greater purpose then they would be less negatively affected by the suffering they encounter. If they don't see it that way, we can still make them happy as much as we can, I wouldn't force spiritual beliefs onto them no matter what.
Quoting khaled
No, but again, I don't equate having a child with genetically engineering a baby so it suffers on purpose.
Quoting khaled
Indeed they will become an existing being with opinions, and by then they can decide for themselves if their life is worth living or not, if they want to keep living or not, and then they might tell you "thank you for having me dad/mom, if you had been antinatalists I wouldn't have had these experiences that make life beautiful and worth living".
They are not so certain - they are a paranoid assumption based in a hopeless state of mind.
This very assumption is what leads to feral children - it poses no benefits, only detriment.
Maybe it makes sense in theory, but it doesn't hold up in practice.
If I may add, maybe those people are starving as punishment for some crime.
A wise man once said: Before you pull someone out of the well, consider why he's there in the first place.
Yeah we can. Look around you. You'll see a world full of people. People have been sure enough to make that decision for hundreds of years. Your objection has been rejected innumerable times. It is not considered a serious enough objection.
Of course it does. What an absurd denial.
Quoting khaled
Yes, there's a distinction, and obviously the reasoning is that because life is an experience worth living through, it's worth starting. Your analogy would be a false analogy in the full context of this discussion, because the experience of being born is nothing like the experience of having your eyes hacked out, and you don't need to have your eyes hacked out in order to start life.
Quoting khaled
Who said anything about necessity? That's a red herring. Lot's of things aren't necessary, but are nevertheless worth doing.
Quoting khaled
Except that the two are not judged in the same way, so they're not truly analogous in this respect either. Way more people are glad to have been born, and many people would give you a funny look if you framed it as something to get over. That's obviously not the case with getting your eyes hacked out. Terrible argument.
You know what a right is without requiring me to define it, and you're capable of thinking of examples.
Have you never been hurt and have you never hurt anyone?
"No" is an impossible answer.
That’s not reasoning that’s just your intuition. You haven’t actually thought about this. There is a clear distinction between experiences worth starting and ones worth continuing. Every experience worth starting is worth continuing (at least I can’t think of a counter example) but not vice versa. Life being an experience worth continuing doesn’t guarantee it isn’t worth starting or else living with blindness being worth continuing would guarantee it is worth starting. And neither of us thinks that.
Quoting S
I agree. Having your skull folded and bent as you scream in pain is much worse. Childbirth is a painful experience for both mothers and children. So my analogy is apt this far.
Quoting S
I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. It’s almost as if you’ve already declared starting life the goal when that is exactly the topic of debate.
Quoting S
I think you’re misunderstanding what I meant. I was saying that life being an experience worth living through doesn’t mean it is worth starting.
I understand that the gouging eyes out example isn’t the best. How about: having a child knowing they will be blind. Is that ethical for you?
This is called not addressing the hypothetical. You haven’t actually answered the question with the restraints imposed.
Quoting leo
I think it does, but then again I don’t have to go to that extreme I don’t think to make my case.
Quoting leo
Keyword: usually. Can someone then use the chances of positive experiences in crimes to justify them? I don’t think so. That’s because it would be taking a big risk for someone else right? Doesn’t childbirth do the same? Even if the chances of having pleasurable experiences are far higher in the case childbirth, why take a risk for someone else in the first place? Especially since no one actually believes that if that risk pays off that they have done something good. As I’ve said making happy people =/= making people happy. Which you would’ve seen had you actually answered the hypothetical.
Quoting leo
Me neither. I’m just placing them under the same “class” of behaviors. Risking both pleasure and pain for someone else without consent. It’s just that the risks are more favorable in one than in the other. I say ban the whole class though
Quoting leo
“If they like the game I forced them into great. If they hate it I’ll try to solve the problem I created for no reason the best I can” is not a very convincing argument for natalism to me. Why take the risk in the first place? No one has been able to answer this
Quoting leo
No? Why not? There is nothing that can say no to the genetic engineering is there? It’s not like there is a specter of a healthy baby that can object to changing its genetic code.
Quoting leo
Indeed they could say that. But they could also say “Fuck you mom and dad why the fuck did you do this to me. I didn’t fucking ask to be born”. I won’t take the risk of causing someone to think that when it can be avoided.
Explain to me why genetically modifying children to suffer is wrong then. Most explanations you come up with you will find will lead to antinatalism.
Quoting Echarmion
No. Because it will harm someone in the future. Unless we can cheat the system and not give birth to that final generation then heck yea
Quoting Echarmion
I agree, my bad. Everything I said still makes sense when you replace “existing” with “living” though so I don’t see an issue
I can't explain. That's why I am asking you. After all, your position depends on, or is at least strengthened by, that argument. I just say I don't know.
Quoting khaled
Well, if everyone knows, perhaps they'll all not have children. We don't know that they won't, of course. But do we need to care?
From within the perimeter of lowered violence of human society, it is sometimes difficult to imagine how other realities can be so different.
For example, I have recently been watching youtube videos in which killer whales hunt the calves of grey whales. It is fascinating. You can even book a cruise in the gulf of Monterey to watch them doing that. The killer whales start by switching off their sonars, because grey whales can hear sonars from at least a dozen miles away. So, the killer whales start swimming in silent combat formation, until they are very close to a grey whale mother and her calf, who then hears them and will frantically start swimming in the direction of shallow waters to escape the attack, but it may be too late.
For hours, the killer whales will try to separate the mother from her calf, by swimming in between them, or by ramming either of both, until they can start jumping on the calf to push it under and in that way drown it, after which they rip it to pieces. Here is some nice footage of a successful confiscation of a grey whale's calf:
Hence, the congratulatory applause from the bystanders on the boat. Hey, they did it!
Here some other footage, where the killer whales manage to devour another grey whale baby while the mother is taking off. Hence, the remarks, "The mum got away, but the baby they ate. Baby orcas got to eat too! The baby is dead now. They are eating it. Do you see the blood there?"
There are actually quite a few species that specifically hunt the babies of other species. For example, chimpanzees hunt the babies of Colubus monkeys. So, yes, babies of one species are a delicacy for other species. They attack, kill, and eat them with great satisfaction. So, if you have free time, go and watch killer whales eating babies. It may bring you back to the "real world"! ;-)
No, it's basic reasoning of a form we all make all of the time: that's worth doing, so let's do it.
Quoting khaled
Not that it matters, but it's easy to think of counterexamples. A perpetual roller coaster ride? No thanks. There'd definitely be a point where it wouldn't be worth continuing.
Quoting khaled
No one said anything about guarantees, either. That's another irrelevant point like your point about necessity. Again, there are lots of things worth doing that don't require a guarantee, and this is one of them.
Quoting khaled
They're obviously both painful, yes. Hence your analogy is indeed apt in that one respect. It's an apt analogy, so long as you ignore a whole bunch of important differences. So pretty useless overall.
Quoting khaled
It obviously has to do with my reasoning in relation to the topic. Life is worth living for lots of people, and you can't have a life worth living if you don't begin to live. It's not rocket science.
Quoting khaled
But it does mean exactly that for lots of people. That's the point.
Quoting khaled
That's an understatement if ever I saw one.
Quoting khaled
It can be, yes. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that the lives of blind people aren't worth living on account of their blindness, and I think that a lot of blind people would strongly dispute that, and would probably find it highly offensive.
It's not an impossible answer, it's an omission on your part.
Similar to the popularly phrased question: Would you rather be rich or happy? - it's misleading.
Why can't I be rich and happy or neither?
Obviously I can, but you omit that to make the responder believe he has no other choices and leave him dazed as to which to pick.
I'll add to which - even if I, myself, have been hurt and have hurt another - that does not indubitably indicate that my offspring will either be hurt or hurt another; in the same sense that a bloodline composed of ten generations worth of farmers, can suddenly produce an offspring that wants nothing to do with farming.
So it’s wrong but you don’t know why you think it’s wrong? For my position it would be very easy to explain. Because it will harm someone in the future. I believe if an act will harm someone for no justifiable reason then it’s wrong. It doesn’t matter if there’s existed a person at the time the act took place. I don’t ridiculously think think that bombing an 18 year old is somehow more wrong if done directly or by implanting a bomb in the fetus. It doesn’t make any difference. What matters is the consequence
Quoting Echarmion
Is this the late “but actually morality doesn’t exist” card? You don’t NEED to care. I don’t understand what authority could possibly force you to care. But you’ve shown you care about ethics for the most part by engaging in discussions like these. So it was sort of too late to play the “but actually I don’t care” card because you’ve shown you do
Would you knowingly hop on a perpetual roller coaster though? Obviously not. Then it’s not worth starting is it?
Quoting S
You did when you claimed that life being enjoyable makes it (guarantees it is) worth starting. I was pointing out that life being worth living through doesn’t guarantee it being worth starting.
Quoting S
Agreed. People who are alive have an interest in continuing living. That doesn’t guarantee the experience is worth starting as I’ve said.
Quoting S
Arguing from popularity is a fallacy first of all. So I’m going to ask YOU this: do you think every experience worth living through is worth starting? If so gouging people’s eyes out would be acceptable behavior. You don’t agree with that so I’m going to assume you don’t think every experience worth continuing is worth starting. Now the burden of proof is on you to show that life is worth starting. Because it being worth living doesn’t logically guarantee that
Quoting S
No. It would be to suggest those lives are not worth starting. Those are very different things. You keep conflating them.
Let me ask an alternative question then: is genetically modifying children to blind them ethical? And if not why not when you’ve said that having blind children is ethical
It's not a perpetual roller coaster, it's a perpetual roller coaster ride if you never reach a point where it isn't worth continuing. Personally, I'd get off at some point.
Quoting khaled
No, you're just putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about guarantees. Like I said, for lots of people, life is worth living, and worth living on the basis that it's enjoyable, and you can't enjoy anything if you aren't alive.
Quoting khaled
And I responded that no one said anything about guarantees, and that guarantees are irrelevant. Don't send us around in circles.
Quoting khaled
Guarantees are irrelevant, as I've said, and as you're making me repeat.
Quoting khaled
Yes, it is a fallacy. Well done. It is a fallacy I haven't committed.
Quoting khaled
Doesn't matter.
Quoting khaled
Guarantees are irrelevant. I'll keep pointing that out if you keep bringing it up. I don't have a burden to show that life is worth starting, because I've already fulfilled it. Life is worth starting because life is worth living for lots of people. The odds are favourable, and you have the option of leaving the table.
Quoting khaled
Yes.
Quoting khaled
That's literally nonsense, as they've already started.
Quoting khaled
The question is irrelevant.
Quoting khaled
Nothing I've said commits me to the view that modifying children to blind them is ethical, so I don't need to answer for that.
I did say that it can be ethical to have blind children, and I stand by that.
I haven't said that it's wrong. I said I don't know.
Quoting khaled
So, essentially utilitarianism? The problem I see with this argument is that it relies on there being two alternatives, and one leads to less suffering/more utility [I]for the people involved[/I]. But when we are making the decision to create those people in the first place, there are no such alternatives. There is one timeline without people and one timeline with people, and you cannot compare the relative utility of these timelines because for one timeline it's an empty set.
If you're arguing that consequences, i.e. outcomes by themselves somehow have absolute ethical value, I'd have to hear an argument about how that works.
Quoting khaled
No, I do believe in moral philosophy as a rational discipline. I don't agree with utilitarian systems though.
When I asked you what a right is, I was ribbing you a bit because what you said here is a little like the old "dormitive virtue" tautology:
dormitive virtue
I suspect that your belief that people are entitled to have children isn't well-examined. And I'd suspect that while you accuse others of not understanding what an entitlement is, you don't really understand it yourself.
This is a philosophy forum. And in philosophy, we often examine what most people believe without examination. Here, we have an opportunity to do some philosophy. The feeling people have that they have a right to have kids is a perfect place to question a commonly believed but rarely examined idea.
But this is a bit off-topic. I'll start another thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6564/are-we-entitled-to-have-children
At what point did entitlement, rights, obligations, lack of any of these arise in the evolution of animals that ended up being humans?
If we are to begin with the assumption that there are certain rights that every person has just by virtue of their existence, then I would argue that the right to reproduce is one of them within certain limits, of course, as we can always concoct a scenario where the exercise of any right would lead to societal destruction.
When we talk about rights, at least in the American context, there is the claim that they are endowed by our Creator, which is a religious reference. Atheists also believe we have all sorts of rights, but I think it's harder for them to establish a basis for them.
Unless you enforce that, this will turn into a anti-natalism thread. They always do. Anti-natalists are .... persistent.
You're welcome to attack the very idea of rights. That's part of the point of the thread.
However, forbidding people from reproducing is just a horribly impractical thing, and enforcing such regulations would almost inevitably end with some draconian methods.
What I think is that sometimes people try to rationalise the asking of stupid questions by suggesting that it is the mark of a profound philosophical investigation.
A killer whale undoubtedly believes that grey whales have every right to have children, because that is what they count on for their lunch: grey whale baby calves.
Nowadays, there is unfortunately no species counting on snatching human babies from their mothers, and who can vouch for the dire need to produce them in as large quantities as possible.
Therefore, what we lack, is the Devil's advocate, i.e. some biological, baby-snatching predator who declares that he sees a real need for our sexual reproduction work. We may solve the problem by letting some lions loose?
I just looked it up in the dictionary. Basically it says that entitlements are rights. And if I look up rights, basically it says they are entitlements. Each is even listed as a synonym of the other. Not very helpful!
Okay, so... what? You expect me to believe that you haven't a clue what a right is, what it entails, and that you can't think up any examples, despite racking your brains?
Why should I humour you in this charade? What would I get out of that?
This thread isn't about the question of whether or not people should have children. It is about the idea that we are entitled to have them.
Quoting Tzeentch
Sure. Still, do have the right to have kids? Is this idea well-justified? We might find that it isn't, that we aren't justified in believing that we do. The question of whether reproduction should be outlawed is then another question.
I already made clear my reason for asking you what rights are. I don't think you can justify your claim that we are entitled to have children. You accused someone else of not understanding entitlement. I suspect that you don't understand what you're accusing that person of not understanding.
Just a flat assertion that we have a right to X and then a "defense" of that claim by just accusing people of not understanding rights is not going to fly in philosophy circles.
The question of whether we should or shouldn't have children is being done to death in a thousand other threads. I want to zoom in on this one particular claim that we are entitled to have children. I am zooming in on that idea of entitlement or rights here. Make sense? There's plenty here to chew on philosophically.
I'm really confused. There are two almost identical threads going at the same time. They are discussing the same issues. The same people are participating in them. Hows about they be combined. There's also a separate anti-natalism thread still running.
Are there any other current threads specifically about the entitlement to have children? I tried to direct interest in this question over here from the other thread since it isn't quite on-topic there. I created this thread and linked here. I want to focus here on the claim of entitlement, even the question of what entitlements are. The other thread is about what really motivates antinatalism, whether it is reasoning or one's personality. This thread has a different focus.
Can we talk about entitlements without getting bogged down defending the purpose of the thread?
If your view is wildly different then perhaps give us your thoughts on the matter first.
If you are interested in defending your claim about entitlements, please do it in this thread I created just for the purpose of focusing on the question of the entitlement to have kids:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6564/are-we-entitled-to-have-children
You made a point about a circular definition without addressing my criticism that you know the answer to your question without my assistance, and that you are in fact merely feigning ignorance because apparently you think that that's what philosophy is all about.
Quoting petrichor
And that's just speculation or opinion which I see little reason to care a great deal about.
Quoting petrichor
Yes, and understandably so, because he seemed to be conflating it with freedom.
Quoting petrichor
I don't care about your uncharitable suspicions. You can keep them to yourself.
Quoting petrichor
That clearly wasn't intended as a defence of the claim that people are entitled to start a family. You're just trying to make me look bad, and you're coming across as elitist.
Different question. Related, sure, but different. I want to focus on why people think they are entitled to have children. Are they justified in believing they have this entitlement?
It could be that we are entitled to do as we wish with our bodies, for example, in using meth, but the question of whether we really should is another question. I am interested here specifically in whether we are entitled. And I welcome broader discussion on the matter of rights or entitlements generally. What is a right? Is belief in rights justified?
Forget it. I thought there was an opportunity to do some actually philosophy here. But it seems you aren't interested in that.
Haven't you ever read Plato? I was trying to draw you into something a bit like a Socratic dialogue, my role being that of gadfly. You clearly don't want to examine your beliefs. And that's fine. I'll go play elsewhere.
On the contrary, it's because I'm interested in actual philosophy that I'm so critical of lines of inquiry which are a waste of time because we already know the answer. The question of what rights are is not controversial enough for me to have much of an interest in.
Quoting petrichor
I was well aware of what you were trying to do in playing Socrates, but that's an approach to philosophy which I am critical of, hence why I reacted in the way that I did. I say stop the pretence, let's start with what we know, and then we might have a chance of getting somewhere productive. That's what I consider doing actual philosophy. It does help to have common sense and intelltual honesty.
But I'm quite happy to forget it.
What of it? I'm not a realist on rights, and I'm the one who made the claim. There's no contradiction there because obviously as an ethical anti-realist, I abide by an interpretation of rights consistent with that stance.
Lacking any justified objections, we can have children if we so desire. The only objections that I've seen (and I've seen [I]a lot[/I] of them over the years) are riddled with faults, such as exaggeration and cherry picking. In the other discussion, an argument was made which commited a fallacy of relevance by referring to necessity or a guarantee, which simply aren't required as part of the justification which I accept.
It definitely isn't, because those whose arguable justification depends on the existence of a Creator have the infinitely harder task of first establishing the existence of a Creator.
Atheists can easily appeal to the moral sentiment common to us all.
I'm confused that the thread got merged, especially when the other thread specified that he didn't want to get into the typical antinatalist stuff.
Anyway, I can't find what would have been the initial post of the other thread that I responded to . . . it seems like maybe petrichor changed it when it got merged into this thread. I asked him about rights realism because he was framing his discussion in terms of rights.
<----definitely not what I'd be doing, but I'm not a rah-rah conformist like you. :-p
There isn't a universal cross-cultural moral sentiment. The Saudi Arabian government, for example, does not acknowledge their immorality, but it instead believes it to be enforcing what is just.
Regardless, if you leave to the democracy what rights one should have, then you're not talking about rights in the inalienable sense, but you're just talking only about current public sentiment. The idea behind rights (as I see it at least) is that there are certain things every person should have regardless of the opinions of others. If I have the right to free speech, that means that no government can take it from me. I own it, even if all the population thinks I'm undeserving. It's the distinction between relative and absolute, and you can't have an absolute if it rests in something that is dependent upon the culture, the time, or the idiosyncrasies of the current population pool.
On the other hand, if the right is rooted in something immutable, then the universe must revolve around it, and not vice versa. But to your point, there is no proving God's existence, so if one cannot hold to such a belief, one cannot hold to a belief in rights.
Quoting S
Interesting. Can you explain the "interpretation of rights consistent with that stance"? It would seem to me that claiming you have rights when you say you don't believe rights are real surely involves a contradiction.
I agree that this discussion merger didn't pay close attention to what the OP was asking. I took this more recent discussion as asking what the bases of rights were, with the question of whether one should have the right to have children just an example of what might be a fundamental right.
Right. The typical anti-natalist stuff always involves responses where people explain why they think that people are entitled to have children, whereas his discussion involves responses where people explain why they think that people are entitled to have children.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Since rights aren't exclusive to ethical realism, that makes no sense.
I think that's an overly literal interpretation of the OP. Where you say "have children," I'd substitute it with X, where the question is why anyone is entitled to anything.
No, you're a loony, out there, outspoken, fringe view kind of guy.
I agree, but then there doesn't need to be. It doesn't have to be universal. There are enough of us where I'm from for it to be the norm.
Quoting Hanover
What do you mean, "regardless of the opinion of others"? I'm fine with rejecting the opinion of others, and with suggesting that they should adopt mine. I do that all the time. It's all opinion, basically. That's where rights can be traced to, though they can be traced even further back than that, as we have opinions on moral matters because of our moral sentiments. In any case, that's a much more defensible explanation than that they come from a Creator!
Quoting Hanover
I am fine with the part in your example about the government not being able to take it away from you in an ethical sense, and even if you hypothetically extend that to the rest of the world. But that by no means makes it absolute. It makes it minimally relative to you, or rather your moral sentiments behind the right. Moral absolutism is a nonsense. It's always necessarily relative to something or someone as a minimum requirement.
Quoting Hanover
That's a really big if. What would that be? And please don't say a Creator. Credible suggestions only.
Quoting Hanover
That's simply not true. At all. The vast majority of atheists believe in rights.
Hanover, your comments are genuinely helpful in moving toward the actual material I'd like to get us thinking about. Thank you.
So far we seem to have God and common moral sentiment as possible justifications for claims of rights.
Someone basing their claim to rights on their "God-givenness", even if we assume God is real, still has a lot of work to do, it seems to me. Just saying that I have a right to X because God gave it to me is a lot of flat assertion. How do I know what rights God gave me? What does that even mean for God to "give me a right"? Does it merely mean that God allows me to do certain things, that they are, in a sense, simply legal?
It seems to me that the claim that I have rights is different from the claim that some higher authority allows me to do certain things.
As for moral sentiment, is this saying basically that I feel I have a right, and therefore I do? Isn't this problematic?
What does that even mean, that I "have a right"? It isn't quite the same as saying that I am unconstrained, physically or otherwise. It isn't quite the same as saying that something is legal. What is it exactly? I honestly find it puzzling. I wonder if we know what we are talking about when we speak of rights.
It seems to me that it is primarily rooted in a feeling, maybe something like what a small child feels when screaming, "MINE!" Is it more than this? Is that feeling justified? Is it some kind of instinct?
It would seem that the sense that we have "a right to do as we please" is rooted ultimately in a sense of self-ownership. I'm mine. My body is mine. Not yours. We should be able to do with what is ours as we please. Nobody else's business. Something like that?
But if I look into that feeling in myself, I find that it's basically a sense of frustration at my will being obstructed. This then takes the form in my mind of the idea that my will ought not be obstructed. Is this leap justified?
Something like property rights gives us the basic sort of right. No?
It would seem that we are dealing with the basic idea of libertarianism, which is that the only justifiable role of the state is to protect liberty, and that my freedom ends where the other person's nose begins. Yes?
But isn't this basic sense of mineness itself open to question? And isn't that what entitlement is really reducible to? Basically a feeling of mineness?
He was framing it in terms of whether it's true or false, whether it's the case, that we have such and such right, where he clearly wasn't talking about what present laws are in a given locale.
And?
Er, I guess to an uber-conformist that's a bad thing?
Too bad everyone wasn't jumping off a bridge in your neighborhood.
It's not that simple, and it's not as absurd as it sounds. I'm not so much saying that they're not real, as that they're not objective. They're as real as all the other subjective stuff.
Probably the only precise definition of right is in legal terms. Outside of legal terms, it's probably sufficient to ask what we should do.
Quoting petrichor
We could perhaps say that rights are rooted in interests. I.e. I have an interest to keep some things at the exclusion of others, and therefore I'd like property rights.
Quoting petrichor
I think that, again, it's in our interest to do what we please. That is almost tautological.
Quoting petrichor
What kind of question would be subject that basic sense to?
I felt like discussions questioning whether it's right to have children etc. were proliferating in a way that Donald Trump discussions used to be and would be best kept together even if they differed in emphasis. If you want to try to unbreak the egg though, feel free. I have no idea how to unmerge.
It's probably too much of a mess now. Petrichor would need to start another thread. Maybe it would help to make it more general than just the context of antinatalism.
It seems to be a trend lately, by the way, that people will start a bunch of threads that are just slight variations on the same thing, sparked by a discussion in some other thread.
So, for example, we recently had a bunch of different free will threads.
Unmerging is always messy. Always.
The discussions were cross-fertilizing anyway, and if Petrichor's slant is the most interesting, that may be the focus from here on in.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, which according to the guidelines shouldn't be done because they tend to cross-fertilize and cannibalize each other.
Well, apologies for any inconvenience all. Just trying to keep the place tidy.
I decided to start another thread because I wanted to zero in on the entitlement or rights claim being made and the OP in that thread made his intention clear that his thread was about what motivates antinatalists. He was claiming it isn't reason, but rather personality. I was trying to be polite in not going off-topic there. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess. Someone probably would have felt I was out of line turning that thread into a rights discussion.
Now you're going to spark another ethics thread, about cross-fertilization and cannibalism.
Why? Because people disagree? People disagree regardless, and always will.
Quoting petrichor
No, it's neither of those things. It's not the former because that's simply not what it means, and it's not the latter because that's a different sense. We're talking about the ethical sense, not the legal sense.
Quoting petrichor
I don't see why it's so puzzling. It's just a specific way of conveying typical moral sentiments, such as that you ought to do this or that you ought not to do that. It's like rules. If I have the right to remain silent, then you can't force me to speak. If I have the right to an attorney, then you can't refuse me one. Even if you literally can, the idea is that you can't do so without doing something immoral.
Quoting petrichor
Yeah, that's it. A feeling. Perhaps instinctual in some cases.
Quoting petrichor
Yeah, something like that. See? It's not so puzzling.
Quoting petrichor
It's justified in a sense. I wouldn't say in an objective sense.
Quoting petrichor
Yeah, I suppose so, at least on a minimal level. So, for example, I wouldn't go as far as those further to the right of me on the political spectrum with regards to home ownership and private property.
Quoting petrichor
No, not quite. I'm of the opposite stance in significant respects, in that I'm in favour of a big state in relation to important issues, like tax and various regulations, just not on a range of social matters which I consider to be none of the states business.
Quoting petrichor
It's ultimately individualist, yes.
If we have rights in an ethical and subjective sense, then why wouldn't it be true or the case that we have rights (in accordance with the aforementioned interpretation)? Your query or objection or whatever your point is still doesn't make sense to me.
Quoting Terrapin Station
An uber-conformist. :lol:
Only when it's sensible or obvious. I'm much less of a conformist when it's more of an open matter. Some matters are simply closed. Like, I wouldn't jump off a bridge, unless I was really suicidal, because that's dumb, even if everyone else was jumping off. You've got it backwards. Lot's of people agree on the sensible and obvious stuff, because they themselves are sensible and find those things obvious.
When a person claims that people have a right to X, they are making a universal claim. And they are saying that I should respect their right. But if the claim to the right is justified only by a feeling the person has, and different people have different such feelings, isn't there a conflict here between the universality of the rights claim and the non-universality of the moral sentiment it is supposedly justified by?
Having rights in a subjective sense simply amounts to an individual feeling strongly enough about a moral stance that he/she feels it should be inviolable in principle no matter what.
Different people can feel that way about different stances.
He wasn't asking there are individuals that feel that way about each side of antinatalism--obviously there are.
It would seem that the claim that I have a right to X is often understood as being something like a claim that my doing X isn't illegal under the present government. I'm allowed to do X, in other words. But really, when people speak of their rights, they seem to be trying to express something more than that. And it seems they often want to change laws to make them more consistent with the rights they feel people have. So the rights would seem to be thought prior to legality.
Quoting Echarmion
But to say that I have an interest in something or another seems different from saying that my interests ought not be obstructed. And the rights claim seems to be along the lines of the latter rather than the former.
A rapist could say that he has an interest in satisfying his sexual needs. But most wouldn't agree that he therefore has a right to satisfy them.
No, why would there be? I suppose that you could say that there's a conflict more broadly, in that a consequence of the variation of feelings means that naturally people won't always agree over the matter, and might get into arguments about it. But that would have no bearing on anything, as far as I can discern.
This reply of yours seems to basically make the quite common error in ethics of thinking that universal morality implies uniformity in feelings or belief, when to me it quite clearly doesn't. It's a non sequitur.
The claim that people have a right to reproduce wouldn't seem to be an example of this though. If our government were to pass laws against having children without a license, people would argue against such laws and base their objection on their claim of rights.
This is true, but I think this can be rephrased as thinking that you should have certain rights. I.e. it's a question of what the laws should look like, and therefore ultimately about what people should do.
Quoting petrichor
I am not saying interests are the same as rights. I just think that interests are what causes people to conceive of rights. You have interests, you want them fulfilled. You realize other people also have interests. You therefore come up with the idea of rights, which give special protection to some of these interests.
What if you claim to have right X, and you base it on a feeling that you alone have, this feeling being shared by nobody else at all?
I think the answer's obvious either way. It's obvious that there are ethical rights in the subjective sense, and it's obvious that there's no basis for ethical rights in the objective sense. Rights stem from us, are a product of us, and are dependent on us. There's no objective means of acsertaining ethical rights: that's a delusion.
Right, ethical rights can coincide with legal rights. They're not mutually exclusive. And it's no coincidence that they often coincide like that.
Quoting petrichor
There's no such law disallowing it or requiring a licence. And?
What of it? I already agreed with Hanover on basically the same point. In practical terms, obviously that would be a problem. Would it mean I'm wrong? No, not necessarily. Wrong relative to their feelings on the matter? Sure.
There isn't an objective right or wrong when it comes to ethics/rights.
How we decide is that we intuit how we feel about it (not just a shallow or "surface" or off-the-cuff feeling, but intuiting how one feels about it "deep down," or "in one's core.")
We decide how we usually do, by consulting our respective conscience. I say it's wrong.
If you disagree with the men who believe they have a right to kill their wives, is it nothing more than your feeling against theirs? When you say they are wrong, aren't you making an objective claim about what is right or wrong for everyone?
You are welcome to cease reading and participating.
Do you know how many discussions, and how much time I've spent, reading and participating against my own best interest? I only have so much self-control. I'm an impulsive hedonist at heart. I do what I want at the time.
Whether it's a good or poor justification is also subjective. If you are prone to believe that this stuff is or can be objective, then you're more likely to think that subjectivity is not a good base for it.
If you realize that this sort of stuff can only be subjective, then you'd realize that it's foolish to expect anything else.
People have to live so that they're interacting with each other--social interaction is necessary. We're obviously going to prefer that people act in some ways rather than others. And there's obviously a need to not just have anarchy, because someone would take control by force anyway, and then no more anarchy. So obviously we'd rather people behave in ways that we prefer. That's what a preference is, after all.
Quoting petrichor
No, since I realize there are no such things as objective ethical judgments. Ethical judgments are something that we do as individuals.
This isn't about the question of whether S has been proven wrong. I am interested in examining this concept of rights, since most seem to just assert their rights claims without even really knowing what they are saying. This is commonly what practitioners of philosophy do. We will examine things often assumed, just the sorts of things people usually take as so self-evident and universally known that it is silly to question them. The people who think it is silly to stop and interrogate our basic beliefs are not philosophical.
I really want to know. Why do people feel entitled to reproduce? And is their feeling of entitlement justified?
But it's the only possible justification. What's the supposed alternative? There is only subjective morality, irrespective of what you think moral statements seem to imply. And if you think any differently, then you have a burden of proof.
That about sum it up? Would anyone disagree with that?
If being philosophical means drawing no lines with regards to sensible enquiries, then I'm happy to be unphilosophical. But of course, it doesn't mean that at all. That's just how you're characterising it. You're trying in vein to commandeer the term, and you've done it a number of times now. Yours is a characterisation which I find not only naive, but counterproductive.
I wouldn't disagree, because it's obvious. Isn't philosophy just great? You get to spend ages enquiring into things that you already know, and then, remarkably, you finally reach a conclusion that you already knew to begin with.
Do you know what's even better than philosophy? Making sarcastic comments to people online. It's a favourite pastime of mine.
Oh, c'mon. I'd respond as you'd expect me to.
I don't agree with it, really. Some rights are about that, obviously, and that may be rather common, but not all rights are about that (whether we're talking about legal rights or "broader" moral rights).
Well, close enough as a rough picture of how rights tend to work, and as a rough picture it's pretty obvious. But there are most probably deviants from the norm who would insist that they have rights that hardly anyone else would acknowledge, on the same sort of basis as others insist that they have rights, whether they're conscious of that basis or not, namely on the basis of their strong feelings. We both agree that there's no objective right or wrong here. There doesn't really, for all conceivable cases, "have to be a kind of social agreement to respect certain feelings that are more or less universal in the culture". That only really works as a conditional, like if one were to add, "if you want to fit in" or something.
Ah I see. But then again, you’re not looking at the whole experience. Say you get off after 1 hour. Then if I asked you: would you like to get on a roller coaster for 1 hour 1 minute, you would say no. Not worth starting and not worth continuing. The point is, you wouldn’t start something you don’t think is worth continuing for the whole duration
Quoting S
I’m really not. Ok all I’m claiming is that experiences worth starting are a subset of experiences worth continuing, do you agree?
Quoting S
So then, do you think not having children is a bad thing? Because you’d be “denying” someone enjoyment? If not then what’s the relevance of this fact?
Quoting S
How doesn’t it matter? And even if it didn’t can’t you just answer the question? You already answered it later here
Quoting S
Which I think is a totally stupid claim. “Blindness is worth starting because blindness is worth living through for lots of people” do you agree with that claim? If not what makes it different from the one you just made?
Quoting S
Their children’s lives haven’t though.... what do you mean?? Their lives have started and are worth living through, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are worth starting for other people. Other examples: if someone had their eyes gouged out their blindness has started and is worth living through, that doesn’t mean it is worth gouging other people’s eyes out
Quoting S
Even if it was can you answer?
Quoting S
Why are you treating two acts with the same intent and consequence differently?
You don’t know whether or not genetically modifying children to suffer is right or wrong?
Quoting Echarmion
No, not necessarily. All I said was that childbirth risks harming someone in the future without their consent. Actions that harm others in the future without their consent are wrong in almost every ethical system. Name one such action that is right. Quoting Echarmion
I’m not. Where did you get that.
My argument is basically this:
Quoting Bartricks
Your whole notion of rights is so handwaving and full of assertion, I don't know where to begin. You don't even present a foundation. You mask your lack of foundation in simply trying to denigrate everyone.
Do you feel better after that little vent? I clearly presented a foundation in moral sentiment. And those longer-term members who are familiar with my views should already know that. Haven't you been following the discussion?
I appreciate your difference with those that seemingly come from a misanthropic worldview. It repels me as well.
But I also reflect on where I've been and some of the mistakes I've made. As an adolescent I had a real antipathy towards Nietzsche, such that I couldn't get past it to try to make contact with the argument. I have since looked back and realized that it was emotion that blocked intellectual development. I've managed to develop an admiration for the manner in which he attacks the subject matter. I've never had that sort of reaction against Marx, but I've seen it expressed that he was an evil man for no other reason than his writings. At the time the argument was made it baffled me. In reflecting on this person and his reaction to Marx (and comparing it with my reaction to Nietzsche), it helped me unwind some of the less useful mechanisms that I was prone to.
It's not as if that stopped while I was young. When I read about Peter Singer, I was incensed. Since, though, I've been able to mute the reaction to understand the argument. I still refuse to agree, but in as much as it is at no threat of becoming law, emotion strikes me as a limiter to understanding. Understanding not just of the other side, but of my own thought processes.
I don't find the arguments made here (in this thread) to manage weight or credibility. My expectations of those who would persuade would be not only to stake their claim but also to consider the counters and the consequences and to speak to these. When I called the arguments here sophomoric it is due to this seeming obliviousness to the stark results that would arise from universal acceptance of the claims.
The best sorts of philosophical discussions I've been party to have been where the opposing sides helped each other with their arguments, filling in gaps, helping perfect the syllogisms. When we're too married to the result, rather than to the philosophy of the matter, it approaches rhetoric, or worse.
Since being introduced to the website, I've witnessed some interesting, thought provoking threads. I've also read threads like these which seem to be little more than philosophy-cum-politics, where signal-to-noise is depressingly low.
Yeah and it is ridiculous. You are mostly just "venting" on others.. spewing the bile, so to speak. Human rights started as a concept arguably from the Greeks, a little more fully in the Middle Ages, actually made into its proto-modern form in John Locke/Enlightenment political thinkers, and essentially goes from there. All of them have some sort of appeal to Natural Law..which is a kind of law that is assumed to be of an ethereal/cosmic/godly kind that is above any time and place. It is a historically-rooted concept that ironically formed in certain times and places. It is a human invention that goes along with Enlightenment notions of universality (think Kant's Categorical Imperative). Moral sense is not so sophisticated that all cultures think of this. The specific idea of human rights, is very much a culmination of Western ideals that came to its more-or-less modern form in the 1700s.
So, you claim that it's ridiculous, and then you respond by referencing [I]way[/I] more ridiculous notions like natural law?
Okay. Excuse me for looking for a more realistic source to explain ethical rights. And thanks for the uninvited history lecture, I guess.
No, I am telling you where our culture even got this notion of human rights in the first place, as it evolved over time and place- that is to say, historically. It was more-or-less based on cosmic/natural law up until very recently. You are putting the cart before the horse by not recognizing this. "Rights" was a concept defined in a certain way. We now take that certain idea as a given and post-facto try to shoehorn our own basis for this very useful concept.
At the end of the day, it is a useful concept for getting certain social arrangements and outcomes accomplished. So yes it is, "If you want this, then you should do this" in a roundabout way.
I followed the link. Pretty terrible. I can face the things he has to say. I've talked with people who believe things that I find very distasteful without difficulty. I felt it was important to hear them respectfully and try to understand how they feel, but when it comes time for me to respond, if my anger and bitter disagreement aren't there, it's a lie and a passive capitulation. I try hard to be respectful, by which I mean to aim my passion at the argument rather than the person. I owe them that. Sometimes I fail. I don't see why dispassion is required for legitimate philosophy. I don't have to give up my humanity and decency in order to play by the rules.
Quoting JosephS
I share that ideal also and I think I even practice what I preach a reasonable percentage of the time. I have had my mind changed here on the forum many times.
Quoting JosephS
I don't share your disdain for rhetoric. I have toyed with a definition of truth as what you can convince people of. I can make a good argument for that at another time.
I could actually, because I could change my mind part way through. But this was a digression anyway, wasn't it? It doesn't even seem to matter.
Quoting khaled
Not a subset, no. But a prerequisite. Anyway, relevance?
Quoting khaled
It can be a bad thing, but not on that basis, since there'd be no one there to deny of anything. And the relevance of the fact that you can't enjoy anything if you aren't alive should be obvious. It's good to enjoy things (within reason, so I'm not talking about murdering babies, for example). Being alive is evidently a prerequisite to enjoy things, and enjoying things (within reason) is good. The logic is easy to follow.
Quoting khaled
Why would it matter whether or not I think that every experience worth living through is worth starting? We're not talking about that. That's not the topic. What bearing does it supposedly have on the discussion topic? No, whether you like it or not, I am going to remain firm in my refusal to answer any questions which I do not see as relevant, and instead question you in return about the supposed relevance. And especially if I think that you're trying to catch me out or something like that. Just cut the crap and be straight with me.
Quoting khaled
Well I think that it's totally stupid how anti-natalists almost always try to manipulate language to their advantage and think that it will escape everyone's notice. You keep using the phrase "live through", which carries a negative connotation, as though it's a real challenge or a turmoil even. I said that, for lots of people, life is worth living, not that it's worth living [I]through[/I], like, say, one might say that chemotherapy is worth living through.
Life isn't like blindness. Once again, your comparison is inappropriate. Blindness isn't worth starting because, unlike life, it is totally negative, it is a defect, and anyone in their right mind would rather live without it if they had a choice. You're comparing life to a defect, which is ridiculous and artificially skews the set up to favour your own stance.
Quoting khaled
I've already been over this stupid and inappropriate analogy of yours. I'm not going to keep repeating myself.
Quoting khaled
I have no intention of answering irrelevant questions.
Quoting khaled
Your question contains a false assumption. They don't have the same intent and consequence.
Perhaps there's just no good justification for claims of rights at all. Maybe it's just something we pulled out of our collective asses. So far, I haven't seen any convincing arguments for entitlements. Even if we assume the existence of God, assertions of "God-given" rights make me wonder where people get the idea that such things as God-given rights are self-evident.
It seems to me that claims of rights, especially those having to do with freedom, are rooted in this sense of "mine", of self-possession and rightful possession of other things belonging to that self. And where something is thought to belong to someone else, we have no rights. I don't have a right, for example, to eat your dinner, control your thoughts, use your body for my ends, pollute your drinking water, invade your privacy, silence your ideas, do experiments on you, and so on. Any disagreement?
Suppose we don't challenge this basic sense of mineness and we grant that your body is yours and nobody else's and is therefore yours alone to decide what to do with. You have rights with respect to your body, for example to decide whether or not you'll receive a medical treatment.
What's wrong with saying that I have a right to own my slaves and to do with them as I wish? What's wrong with saying that I have a right to kill my children? Isn't it that there are interests here other than my own? Isn't it that my assertion of rights has crossed into the territory of what properly belongs to someone else? The exercise of my freedom has crossed beyond the boundary of another's nose, no? Some in the past defended such claims by saying that slaves, children, and women do not have rights because in some sense, they aren't properly self-possessed, conscious, soul-endowed, rational beings. Like animals, they are just things and so can rightly be considered property.
But we now recognize that people of dark skin, of the female sex, and of young age, are all real people with their own interests, just like us, and so we recognize their claim to certain rights.
But notice that in the case of a claim that we are entitled to have children, we seem to have an echo of the old view of children and family in general. My kids are mine! None of your business! But we consider it to be the business of the community to intervene to protect the rights of children in the case of child sexual abuse. This is because we see that there is another party here with their own interests. It isn't just the interests of the person claiming to have the right in question. We don't object to someone doing perverse things with sex dolls, but we do object to someone doing such things to unwilling, conscious subjects. And that is the essential difference that makes the moral difference, that my actions cross into the domain of the interests of another sentient being. Right?
If the children I cause to exist are not actually mine in the sense that I rightfully possess them and can therefore decide what happens to them, how can we consistently claim to have the right to reproduce? Don't the interests of the other party, namely, the children, need to be considered? What if the person is totally ill-equipped to raise the child? What if the person is likely a danger to that child? What if the person has a serious, heritable malady that is likely to cause the child a lifetime of suffering? Does a person really have a right to impose that on another human being?
Sure, the state can take away a child being abused. But now the person who reproduced has subjected another human being to orphanage, to the nightmare that being a foster child often amounts to. And the larger community now has to bear the burden of caring for this child. Did that person really have a right to do all that?
I had an unfortunate encounter just the other day with a relative who recently had a child and who provides a perfect example, in my opinion, of someone who should not have children. That poor baby! It almost makes me ill thinking about what it would be like to be him and to have to go through the experience of being helpless and under her power!
Put aside for the moment the objection that enforcing any limitation on reproduction would be problematic. It is fallacious to claim that because it would be hard to enforce restrictions on reproduction, that it follows that people therefore have a right to reproduce.
I question the entitlement to "have" children. They aren't yours. They aren't dolls. They aren't pets. They are people. They don't exist to serve your interests. They have interests of their own.
No, I don't.
Quoting khaled
There are plenty of examples where actions that harm others are right. Self defense is the most obvious one.
I disagree with your claim that harming future people is wrong in "almost every ethical system". Can you provide some examples (of said ethical systems)?
Quoting khaled
We can argue about how accurate premise 1 is, but the crucial element here is premise 2. Premise 2 is not coherent and therefore false.
You cannot impose life on another person. In order to impose on someone, they need to exist. But if they exist we can't impose life on them, since they're already alive (unless we are talking about assister suicide). They also don't exist as a "future potential person" since that would imply we have already decided to create them and are therefore no longer imposing.
The idea of "imposing life" is also incoherent on another layer, because life is not a condition within life. You could impose poverty or sickness, but you cannot impose life in it's entirety, since there'd be no reference point to compare the imposition with.
There might be justifications for either of these actions. And arguably, if you are justified in doing it then you have a right to do it.
Quoting petrichor
I think this is a false equivalence. Creating something is not the same as owning something. The act of creation cannot violate the rights of whatever you are creating, since only things that exist can have rights.
The God claims are laughable tosh. But I don't get why the justification which I presented isn't good enough for you. It is good enough for plenty of others, myself included of course. Have you considered the possibility that you're just setting the bar unreasonably high? Rights just wouldn't make sense without the strong emotions connected to them. Imagine a world in which we were all completely indifferent to any claimed rights. Isn't it true that no one would then have any reason to care about them, to respect them, to empathise, to feel a sense of entitlement, to feel guilt or remorse or horror or that it is simply wrong to break them? Would you not expect to see, in practice, a world without any rights at all?
Quoting S
Let's start with this one then:
1- Imposing something that risks significant harm on someone without their consent is wrong
2- Childbirth is imposing something that risks significant harm on someone without their consent
3- Childbirth is wrong
Quoting Echarmion
In the case of self defense it's they get harmed or you do. So you wouldn't be wrong in preferring your own safety. In the case of having children no one is harmed if you don't do it but someone might be harmed if you do
Quoting Echarmion
Rather, name an ethical system under which genetically modifying children to suffer is acceptable
Quoting Echarmion
I don't think there is a point in continuing this then. Because we'll never see eye to eye. You refuse the claim that it doesn't matter whether or not someone existed at the time the harmful action took place and yet do not take the opposite side claiming that it does either. Probably because it is ridiculous to claim that genetically modifying children to suffer is acceptable.
Quoting Echarmion
I think this was called the non identity problem or something. Just replace "life" with "genetic modification" and your entire paragraph can more or less be used to argue that genetically modifying children to suffer is acceptable. If you really think that there is no argument that can convince you. Although that choice would commit you to a lot of stances I find ridiculous. Such as, for example, thinking that implanting a bomb in a fetus and setting it to blow up at 18 is ok but bombing an 18 year old isn't.
That's more like it. But there's a noticeable problem with your very first premise, and this is a problem that has been raised countless times before, here on the forum, by myself and others. The issue of consent is totally inapplicable here, because it is an impossibility. There is obviously no one to obtain or deny consent.
So, back to the drawing board. Or better yet, just give up this futile endeavour.
Why does this stop it from being applicable? If it is impossible to give consent, consent is not given. If consent is not given it can't be assumed. It doesn't matter if it was possible to ask for consent or not.
That seems like an irrelevant aside.
Quoting khaled
Now come on. I didn't make such a claim. You did. Can you defend your claims or not?
Quoting khaled
I am not allowed to reserve judgement until I hear a convincing argument? Isn't the rational thing to say that you don't know until you have heard a convincing argument either way?
Quoting khaled
Possibly, but why is it up to me to prove that it's not acceptable? Because you find that conclusion not appealing emotionally?
Quoting khaled
Why? Because I don't agree with your first argument I am therefore irrational and impossible to convince?
Quoting khaled
A reductio ad absurdum only works if we can agree beforehand that the conclusion would be absurd. But I don't think it's absurd to ask what moral weight future people have.
Of course it matters. You don't think that it matters whether or not you're making any sense, or whether you're committing a fallacious category error?
You wouldn't take seriously an argument based on the premise that bananas don't consent to being eaten, so we shouldn't take seriously your premise that nonexistent offspring don't consent to being born. It's all a load of nonsense. You can have a lot of fun with this sort of nonsense, but it doesn't constitute a valid argument.
How about lampposts which don't dance the fandango? Bedside tables which never listen to you?
I would if it can be shown bananas experience pain to an extent close to us
Quoting S
You think there is no difference between a banana and a fetus? You think that there shouldn't be any change in how we treat them based on the fact that one will grow to be a human?
But nonexistent offspring can't be shown to experience pain.
Quoting khaled
Oh boy. If that's what you've got from my reply, then Houston, we have a problem.
Quoting khaled
Nonexistent offspring don't grow. Only real, living offspring grow.
I think you misread. I didn't claim there is any ethical system that allows genetically modifying children to suffer. When you asked for ethical systems that claim the modification should be wrong I was having trouble thinking of any that find it acceptable. So I asked you to name one that finds it acceptable instead
Quoting Echarmion
When did I say you weren't allowed?
Quoting Echarmion
It isn't. I just thought you'd think genetically modifying children to suffer is wrong because it's simply sadistic. But if you don't think pure sadism is wrong and still need more convincing I can't do that.
Quoting Echarmion
I didn't say anything about irrational.
Quoting Echarmion
I thought we did. But if we don't then not much I can do.
Quoting S
You know what I meant cut the crap. One of them becomes a sentient being and the other doesn’t. Do you think there should be any change in how we treat them based on that fact?
You claimed that "almost every" ethical system concludes that doing so is wrong. So name some of those. Why do you need counter examples? I already pointed out how Utilitarianism would have a problem with that conclusion. Kantian deontology also doesn't seem to me to offer a neat solution. So, again, where are these many ethical systems that solve this problem so clearly?
Quoting khaled
This wordplay is getting tiresome. You clearly want me to support my position, even though my position is agnostic.
Quoting khaled
Sadism is a motivation, not a consequence. One that you are bringing up for the first time now. Is doing something solely for sadistic purposes wrong? I'd say yes, but that doesn't have anything to do with babies or genetic modification. It's purely the moral standing of sadism as a motivation.
No, nonexistent offspring don't become anything, and it doesn't matter at all how we treat them, because none of it is real. These are your peculiar beliefs, implied by what you've said, which you have a burden to justify, and we can't move forward until you tackle this problem. I understand that you're eager to forget about my objection and to rush ahead with your crappy argument, but that's not how this is going to work.
Would you like to reconsider what your argument is about? Is it about real people or imaginary, nonexistent people?
Fetuses become humans. I was talking about fetuses in the last reply my bad for not making that clear.
Quoting S
It is indeed about real people.
I was just about to say utilitarianism. When did you do this? Because I can’t find it. I would have thought causing someone to experience more suffering via genetic modification would’ve definitely been bad per utilitarianism.
Okay, so it's both true and irrelevant that a foetus can't consent to being born. It's irrelevant because they can't possibly consent. Consent is only relevant where it's a possibility.
But, even though that in itself is a refutation, I'm curious about where you would take this next. At this point, there is already a living foetus, and we don't have a time machine, so what are you saying? It should be killed?
Here is the relevant quote:
Quoting Echarmion
As long as it’s nervous system hasn’t been developed, yes.
Quoting S
Ad absurdium arguments only make sense if we agree killing said fetus is absurd.
Quoting S
How about: waking people up. The only way you can ask for consent is by doing the act in question. Does that mean you can go around waking up anyone who happens to be asleep?
Only if the children would have been born regardless. In that case Utilitarianism would work, but that's not helpful for the anti-natalist argument.
I didn’t say it was. I was going to go from there and expand the principle but then you insisted i give examples of an ethical system where genetically modifying children is bad. Now I ask you to find me one where it is considered good.
But then again I can’t do that if you’re agnostic about how to treat genetic modification.
I assumed you meant creating children specifically for this "experiment". But assuming is always dangerous. So perhaps you could make this thought experiment a bit more concrete? What exactly is being done, and with what motivation?
I think that the bigger problem is people who think like you, but fortunately your thinking is only representative of a tiny minority, and I can't see that ever changing.
Quoting khaled
You've misunderstood. I was referring to my refutation of your argument on the basis that consent is inapplicable and irrelevant.
Quoting khaled
That's not about consent, that's about the consequences of waking someone up. For it to be about consent, there must be an option to obtain consent. If it was wrong on the basis of not obtaining consent, then you must be able to say to me that I should have obtained his consent first. But we both know that that's not possible.
What's this referring to. What problem?
Quoting S
Oh. I thought it said "Even though, in itself a refutation,....." My bad
Quoting S
Quoting S
Alright then. What do you suppose we do in cases such as these where consent isn't available? I say, go with the least risky option, aka the one least likely to harm. If I claimed that having children is not wrong on the basis of consent but on the basis of consequences what would be the refutation to that?
1- Having children risks disasterous consequences for the child
2- Actions that risk disasterous consequences for others are wrong when a less risky alternative is possible in cases where consent is unavailable
3- Having children is wrong because a less risky alternative is possible (not having children) and consent isn't available (due to lack of time machine)
The bigger problem than the "problem" you were referring to, which was the "problem" of there existing a foetus without a developed nervous system, is the problem of people who think that it should be killed because of faulty anti-natalist reasoning.
Quoting khaled
Your second premise isn't necessarily true, so the argument falls apart. The greater risk can be worth it. It isn't even difficult to think of examples where that's the case. I'm a living example, for starters. I am glad to have been born. So it paid off. And there are billions of other people in the same boat. So your argument has no chance.
And moreover, if life isn't worth living anymore, then guess what? You don't [I]have [/I] to live. There's a way out through suicide. Not that I'm encouraging that, because for most people who are suicidal, it's a mental health issue, not an indication that their life really isn't worth living.
Nonexistence is not a "less risky" alternative for the child though. Non-existance is not more or less pleasant than existence. That's a category error.
The point is one alternative means no one experiences harm and no one is deprived of good (because there is no actual person who exists). As I've seen on here before, there are no "ghost babies" wailing for existence. The other alternative is someone is born and guaranteed will experience some harm.
Non-existence- no one is harmed/no one is deprived = win/win. The idea that someone could have had more good experiences or whatnot if born matters not, in this procreational scenario. The risk khaled is talking about is mitigated and no actual person is alive prior to birth, losing out on anything.
True, but not having a child avoids the risk of having a child who lives a life that isn't worth living. Although that risk is vastly outweighed, so, in the vast majority of cases, this risk doesn't matter as much as he suggests.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Which is an indifference. Neutral. Neither good nor bad.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, that's not an accurate description of the alternative, as you well know. Why aren't you being intellectually honest? Is that a price worth paying in order to push your stance?
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, that's not a win. That's a nothing. Whereas a something which includes billions of people enjoying life is better than a nothing. Of course, you don't share that opinion, but that doesn't matter in the bigger picture.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's just your rationalisation which [I]hardly anyone[/I] finds convincing.
Quoting Echarmion
It has nothing to do with pleasantness. Is it or is it not true that existence has a greater risk of harm than non existence? It is true. That is the definition of risky. Also if you’re really concerned about it being a category error replace it with “living” vs “not living”. You know by now I use them interchangeably on accident
But this argument cuts both ways. If the "good" is of no consequence because a non-existant person looses nothing, then the harm is also of no consequence, because the non-existant person gains nothing either. Put another way, you don't loose out on non-existance if you live a life full of harm.
Quoting S
I'd agree that the parents avoid that risk. Not the child though, because there isn't any child that has avoided the risk.
Quoting khaled
No, it is false, because it commits the same category error. Existence is not a risk compared to non-existance. There is no grounds for any comparison.
First off, you haven’t shown it to be faulty yet. Secondly, if antinatalist reasoning is actually followed there would be no fetus to kill or not kill.
Quoting S
Me too. However that is completely irrelevant. Whether or not you are glad to have been born doesn’t determine whether giving birth is right or wrong. You and me are lucky enough that the risk paid off, that doesn’t mean it was ok to take the risk in the first place. In the same way that if person A stabbed person B and person B turned out to be a masochist and enjoyed it, that doesn’t make stabbing in general okay.
The fact is, in real life the least risky option is always preferred when consent is not available. Name a situation where this isn’t the case.
Quoting S
Please come up with one not birth related where there someone is said to be justified to do something that risks severely harming someone else when consent is not available and where a less risky alternative is available. Because giving a birth related example and using your own personal experience doesn’t work as I’ve shown.
Quoting S
As I’ve pointed out before, this line can be used to justify literally any atrocity. The fact that someone can commit suicide to get out of a situation they hate doesn’t justify putting them in that situation the first place or risking putting them there. Name one other act X where people find “We’ll do X to him and if he/she doesn’t like it they can just kill themselves” an acceptable argument for justifying X
:up:
Quoting khaled
I have, but obviously you disagree.
Quoting khaled
That's an irrelevant point.
Quoting khaled
This is just a really poor response. My point in full was not just about you and I, but billions of people, and it's clearly not irrelevant for any reasonable analysis. And none of your analogies are ever close enough to be appropriate. Stabbing someone isn't close enough to giving birth. They're almost nothing alike. The comparison is a joke. There's nothing inconsistent in objecting to stabbing people, but not objecting to people having a baby. Your arguments suffer from the same structural failings. This failure of an argument is just like your earlier failure of an argument where you mistakenly believed that I had a burden to justify causing blindness, which is just ridiculous. Any argument which relies on a false analogy is worthless.
Quoting khaled
No it isn't, I already have, and the burden is on you, so don't try to fallaciously shift it to me.
Quoting khaled
That's moving the goalposts, and the initial burden lies with you, not me. Nevertheless, I will make an exception and I will give you a single example, even though you haven't met your burden. But if you reject it, then you will still have to justify your unsupported assertion that the least risky option is always preferred when consent is not available.
The counterexample refuting your assertion is that of a person who has had an accident leaving them unconscious and requiring urgent surgery in order to stay alive, with the alternative of doing nothing almost certainly resulting in death, and the decision being in the hands of the person's next of kin. Now, according to your warped way of thinking, death would be the least risky option, because that would avoid all of the risks accompanied with continued living, whereas the surgery would be considerably more risky, because then, if successful, they'd run the risk of stubbing their toe, or breaking up with their girlfriend, or whatever. You know, all of the things that you think can make life not worth living.
The next of kin should decide for them to have the surgery, because their life [I]is[/I] worth living, and because if that turns out to be wrong, then they can opt-out, whereas if they're left to die, then there's no opting back in.
So now it's your turn, and you have your work cut out for you. Not only do you have the burden of supporting your premise in it's own right, but you have a counterexample to contend with.
Quoting khaled
That's not an implication of my point, it's just what you've read into it. Arguing against that is just to waste time arguing against yourself.
I don't really see how this changes the argument. If you aren't alive, you don't exist.
Let me put this another way: if you want to say it's "less risk" you need to be able to quantify the risk. So at least in theory you have to able to say "X imposes risk of magnitude 50, while Y imposes risk of magnitude 30, so Y is less risky than X". The problem is that you cannot make such a comparison. If a person isn't alive, their risk of harm isn't 0, it's [ ], an empty set. There is nothing to compare with.
Wow, you completely miss the point of separating STARTING a life and CONTINUING a life. Continuing the life already born, is different scenario. Someone can have interests of staying alive once born- that is reasonable and does not justify starting a life, because humans naturally gravitate to interests (like accomplishing goals, keep on living). This situation in no way refutes khaled's argument.
I'm not missing it. It's a point which doesn't hold any water.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The reasoning for not starting a life is based on a number of bad experiences you get in life. Continuing life is open to that same reasoning. You can't consistently close it off from that just because it's convenient for your stance. That's the fallacy of special pleading.
Either these bad experiences count against life or they don't. Make your mind up, because you can't have it both ways.
Anyway, if the person who had the accident would lose all their memory, then it would be starting a life. So there you have it. Objection overcome on your own terms.
So once born, humans naturally gravitate to goals and interests they don't want to lose. Prior to birth, no one has interests to lose in the first place. One can still have a life not worth starting (and have no interests), but still have a life worth continuing once born (and have some interests). It is a default position, once born. Suicide is not like making a regular ole decision- "gee, should I go to the bar today or kill myself?". Once born, we are almost defaulted into interests, so that would indeed be a category error to compare the case of not being born at all.
Moreover, if you're suggesting that once conceived, life is worth living, then what's the problem? There's no such thing as a life prior to conception. There's just life, which is the defining quality of the living. If life is worth living, it's worth starting.
If you mean, are there bad experiences which count against life to the extent of not starting a life, then yes.
That seems possibly tautological. Justification and entitlement. Are they separate? If so, does one depend on the other? And if one is prior to the other, does the one always entail the other? I am not sure.
If a person normally is considered to have a right to privacy, I suppose you could argue that violating someone's privacy is justified if that person is seriously violating the rights of others, as for example in the case of a child pornographer. But here it is the rights of the other party that justify the violation or reduction of this person's rights. But to say that others are justified in invading this person's privacy might just be another way of saying that they have a right in this case to invade.
Quoting Echarmion
I agree that creating something is not the same as owning. But that doesn't quite capture what I was saying.
Rights exist where something is thought to be properly owned. I suggest that the reason people feel that they have a right to have children is that they have a sense that their children are theirs, that they belong to them and not to the larger community, and so it is theirs to decide the fate of these children. But, this is in conflict with the idea that the child is another agent with interests, one with rights, that the children in some sense belong to themselves. Children are not things. This isn't a matter of property rights.
I'd say that the old idea that children are property is in conflict with the new idea that children have full status as people. In the old way of thinking, there was no real concept of child abuse. This has changed. "Your" children are not yours to do with as you please. The community will intervene and we mostly all agree that this is sometimes justified.
Quoting Echarmion
I see this argument made often and I find it questionable. The children you create do end up existing. And once they exist, they have rights and interests. Take a step back and look at it more objectively in spacetime. There is simply a relation here between two existing beings, regardless of the fact that they are temporally separated. What makes that temporal separation such that it eliminates responsibility and consideration of rights?
Something you do has a causal relationship to their condition and impacts on their interests. Sure, the child doesn't exist at the time of your conceiving them, but your action does ultimately have an impact on an existing being. Once the child exists, it can easily be said that you are responsible for their existence. When you release the string on a bow, aren't you responsible for the eventual arrival of the arrow at its target? You are responsible for the child's eventual existence even at the time of the conceiving act.
After all, aren't all consequences separated in time from their causes? If you deny that a cause is responsible for its effect because the effect doesn't yet exist, you end up denying all forms of responsibility.
We could get into all sorts of interesting territory here by arguing that I am not the same person now that I was in the past and that my responsibility to my future self involves a relation to a person with rights who does not yet exist. All future states of any sentient being could be said to involve consideration of someone not yet existing.
This idea that not-yet-existing beings have no rights would seem to prevent us from considering the state of the planet as we are leaving it for future generations. Are we wrong to give their interests some consideration by not ruining everything for them?
I wish people kept this understanding you present here in mind when trying to argue some sort of non-identity objection to antinatalism. It is ridiculous to the point of absurdity when people argue, "the child doesn't exist yet, so nothing is done "to anyone" by procreating."
So you've decided not to address my objection.
If life is worth living, because of interests and committments and whatnot, then it is worth starting.
If life isn't worth living, then why does no one agree with you? (Rhetorical question). And the relatively tiny number who do agree have an opt-out, so they should just shut up. Or rather, seek professional help. The opt-out is a privilege, by the way. There's no opt-in. Once we're extinct, that's it.
It's a question of how you conceptualize exceptions to a rule. You could treat them as extensions of the rule, in which case the rule ends up very long and complex. Or you could treat them as individual rules, which has the advantage of keeping the original rule clear. Logically, I don't think there is a difference.
Quoting petrichor
This seems a bit too constructed to me. I think the simpler explanation is that people feel that their biological ability to have children is theirs to command, and that life with children is so fundamentally different from life without children that no-one should decide for them whether to do one or the other.
Quoting petrichor
Right, but notably the intervention is for the benefit of the child. Anti-natalism cannot go that route because it wants to eliminate children, not improve the lives of children.
Quoting petrichor
Temporal separation is special because when we engage in moral considerations, we have to treat the universe as non-deterministic with regard to our actions. There is no other way to make decisions. So, in moral terms, the future is not determined, but consists of an arbitrary number of parallel timelines. A single causal chain exists only for past events. That's also the reason that responsibility only travels backwards.
Quoting petrichor
Obviously, I am responsible for the current existence of my children due to my past act of conceiving them. But, crucially, at the time when I was making the deicision, two possible timelines existed: One with children of mine and one without. I am only responsible for the existance of the child once it does actually exist, since before that there was no causal chain linking me and the child.
Quoting petrichor
Responsibility is only ever ascertained after the fact though. There is no need to establish responsibility for effects that don't yet exist because they might ultimately not come to pass. If you attempt to kill someone, but your victim is still alive at the time of the trial, no matter how tenously, you will not be tried for murder, but attempted murder.
Quoting petrichor
Arguably, but the difference is that for these beings, there is no future timeline where they never existed in the first place. So moral consideration do at least need to take note of their current existance and the fact that it will continue, however briefly, into the future.
Quoting petrichor
This is an interesting question, and one which makes me dislike the implications of my own position. But, for the record, I find it difficult to establish, without doubt, that we have a responsibility towards future generations living on this planet. I would like to have an ironclad argument to that extent, but I am not currently able to think of one.
Compared to the anti-natalist position, the advantage here is that we are not dealing with a personal decision to have children, but the likelihood that future generations will exist in some form, regardless of our own decisions. That at least eliminates the problem of having a timeline without moral subjects at all.
No, then this is ignoring my argument, which was that interests and commitments are the default of being born- we cannot avoid them as they are what we naturally incline towards. That doesn't prove that it was then good to start a life, simply because someone will have interests and people have an option for suicide (which are hard to follow through on for mainly natural reasons as well). Preventing harm for another person, and preventing other people with "dealing with" life in the first place are the reasons not to start a life. Once born, sure people will have interests.
That once again doesn't address the point. None of that tells me whether you think that life is worth living.
So your question is, once born, is life worth living for some people? I would say yes. Then I would say, that this is different than whether someone should have been born at all in the first place, as these are different thresholds. One can prevent all harm with no collateral damage of deprivation to the individual. The other is a situation where someone is already born. There is no post-facto takebacks of this event and thus, interests, goals, and maximization of goods would be expected and encouraged for individuals, when possible.
Except that "some" really doesn't convey that we're talking about most people on the planet, several billions of people. But good. If that is so, then life is worth starting. It wouldn't be worth starting if it wasn't worth living. But it is. So there you have it.
So I had a post once about if a it was good to put a slave in slavery if they identified with the very slavery that was enslaving them. People can be self-deceived or enculturated to identify with the condition/game that is causing them harm in the first place. Providing someone a "dealing with" situation, harmful contingent circumstances (that can change any time from point A to Z which overrides a simple self report at point X), providing someone the conditions of surviving itself, and the burdens of the human condition (deprivation), I would say that it is not worth starting for someone else, self-report or not. Being that no one actually gets deprived of any goods either, this is again, a win/win. Post-facto creating people who more-or-less have no choice but to identify with the game and develop interests, doesn't provide any evidence to the contrary, though I can see how it may seem that way.
I don't see how deep differences in the life of the parent in one case versus the other justifies dismissing all concern about the interests of the child. Your life would be fundamentally different if you were to choose to do any number of things, say become a serial killer. That isn't what gives you a right.
Quoting Echarmion
I take your point. This highlights an important difference I think. Let's be careful though. To phrase it as "eliminate children" sounds as if we are destroying an already existing child, when we are simply talking about not having one. Let's instead call it "preventing human experience." So we'd be preventing human experience rather than improving it. And let's not forget that by not reproducing, we aren't concerned only with a child, but a human at all stages of life, cradle to grave, as well as all the impacts they'll have on others.
One might respond to your point though by saying that we might indeed be improving the overall experience of the universe as a whole, as we might be reducing its overall suffering. If we don't reproduce, there isn't a person whose experience can be said to be better by virtue of their non-existence. But I'd argue that a human experience is just part of the overall experiential condition of the world at large. One could say that there is less suffering in the world, so we are improving the experiential condition of the world by reducing the total suffering that happens in it.
Quoting Echarmion
Interesting. Do we really need to treat it as non-deterministic? Or do we just need to treat it as probabilistic from a merely epistemic standpoint, where we are simply dealing with our knowledge uncertainty? I am not sure this would make a difference though.
Quoting Echarmion
But you'll still be held responsible for trying to kill the person, for intending their death, even if the death doesn't come to pass. It isn't as if there is no responsibility. It isn't purely consequentialist. It is a bit of both. Consider the case of a person who pours what they think is sugar into someone's coffee, and that person ends up dead, the "sugar" having actually been poison. Do we hold them responsible? We don't because we know they didn't have any malicious intent. We treat it as a pure accident. If, on the other hand, we can prove that someone put something in someone's coffee that they expected to kill them, when it was just sugar after all, we'll charge them with attempted murder. If there is a case where there was some uncertainty as to contents, and someone poured it into the coffee anyway, risking poisoning them, we'd hold them accountable for that too.
Are you saying that pointing a gun at a person and pulling the trigger in itself is not wrong until harm has actually resulted? There is no responsibility in the very moment of deciding to kill someone? There is no wrong in the intent?
What if someone regularly just risks serious harm to everyone around by just going outside and shooting in random directions, without specifically intending to shooting particular people. Even if they haven't yet hurt anyone, wouldn't we agree that such a person should be locked up and prevented from accessing firearms, simply because of the risks they are taking of harm to others?
Quoting Echarmion
I applaud you! It is so rare for anyone in discussions like these to make such acknowledgements! Refreshing! We should all take it as an example to emulate. I believe, as Socrates suggested, that we should see dialogue as a way for us to both move closer to truth, not as a contest with a winner and loser. If both parties grow in understanding, we both win. If you help me see a fault in my thinking, I should thank you. You haven't injured me. Quite the reverse!
Yeah, that'd be a great analogy, if slavery and the average life were even remotely alike.
The rest of your post is just more of the usual deliberately one-sided spin which invalidates itself through the absence any semblance of impartiality.
It is the same type of relation, except the conditions are that of human existence instead of the slave owner. There are conditions which cannot be overcome for any life.
Maybe go outside, observe the natural world and relax.
Things could be so much worse.
I am not saying that it justifies dismissing other concerns. Rights are rarely absolute. What I am saying is that having children is, initially, only about two people and what they do with their bodies. In order to justify limitation on that, you'd need to have good reasons. I don't think these reasons have been established yet.
Quoting petrichor
I'll admit the choice of words was not entirely unbiased. ;)
Quoting petrichor
This seems like a very weird argument to me. The world, or the universe, are not human beings. To talk about the "overall suffering of the world/universe" sounds like nonsense to me. We only know about human suffering. We can make guesses about other animals, but those are fraught with problems. Whether or not the world at large has any "experiential condition" is unknown to us and therefore so is whether or not we will "Improve" it by going away. Whatever "improve" might even mean in this context.
When I imagine a universe without humans, all I see is a dead universe. The only things that matter in the universe are the things that matter to humans (and human-like intelligences).
Quoting petrichor
Uncertainity would only matter within one of the parallel timelines. When we make a decision, we treat this decision as actually altering the fate of the universe. There is no other way to evaluate options during decision making. Since morality is supposed to provide the rules for that decision making, it must therefore treat the different decisions as free, which means they'll start totally new and independent causal chains.
Quoting petrichor
I think you're mixing two things here, responsibility and intent. What I mean by responsibility is responsibility for events, for states of affairs. Responsibility is the connection between a subject and an objective state. This requires the objective state to exist.
Intent is something that matters for judging an action, not an outcome. Often, for exmaple in criminal law, both of these elements are required to establish guilt - your responsibility for the outcome nd your intent to bring it about. Intent itself is not usually sufficient - praying for someone to die will not make you responsible for their plane crashing, and you won't be guilty for it.
How exactly moral considerations work depends on what system of moral philosophy you ascribe to. I personally think only action and intent matter, not the outcome. Utilitarianists would differ.
Quoting petrichor
Attempted murder is still morally wrong, and also still a crime. So no, I am not saying that.
Quoting petrichor
Thanks. I think that, quite apart form anti-natalism, the question of what moral weight to give to future persons is an important topic that doesn't seem to have been given much thought in the past.
For example, it is impossible to agree to be coerced (for if you agree to be coerced, you are not being coerced). So, if I want to coerce someone, then it is impossible for me to get their prior consent. Now, does that mean it is morally permissible to coerce people?
No, obviously not. It is default seriously wrong to coerce another person. Lots of exceptions of course, but 'other things being equal' it is wrong.
And why is it wrong to coerce people? Well, because they don't agree to it.
So, contrary to what you've claimed it IS wrong, other things being equal, to impose something significant on someone else without their prior consent (and especially wrong when it involves risks of significant harms).
And no, just in case anyone is thinking it, that's not analogous to having a child, except the part about it being impossible to get consent from the child, and that consent in that sense is irrelevant.
It's impossible to conceive a child without their consent, because there's nothing that's (normally) able to grant or withhold consent prior to conception.
That doesn't make it okay to conceive a child against its consent.
It makes it literally impossible to conceive a child against its consent.
It was claimed that it cannot be wrong to impose life here on someone without their prior consent due to the impossibility of getting it.
I was pointing out that there are lots of acts of where the nature of the act in qustion is such as to make consent impossible. Such acts are still clearly default wrong and default wrong due to the fact the other person dor not consent.
Thus the idea that the impossibility of getting consent somehow makes it okay to go ahead is patently false.
Right. But the point is actually that it cannot be wrong because it can't even be done. You can't impose life on someone without their consent. The very idea of that is a category error.
If you want to say that conception is morally problematic, the argument needs to be something other than "because it's doing something to someone against their consent."
You weren't "pointing that out", because it isn't true. I explained why consent is irrelevant, including in the example you gave which you thought supported your assertion, but actually doesn't.
Quoting Bartricks
No, that wasn't the argument. That it's okay is based on other reasons. I was just refuting the argument about lack of consent on the basis that consent is irrelevant.
So you are basing your argument on the axiom that an act is wrong if it cannot be consented to? Is that right?
It clearly IS a moral negative most of the time. For instance whenever we have - for other moral reasons - to impose something on someone without their prior consent it is almost invariably regrettable. That is, it would have been better if somehow, per impossible, we could have got it.
Take procreation acts themselves - would it notake be better if they could be consented to?
No, because consent isn't an issue with procreation. Consent is only an issue when we're talking about things that are normally capable of granting or withholding consent.
Otherwise it's like talking about whether a rock consents to something you do to it.
A small child is incapable of giving consent, but it is still wrong to do things to that child that will affect it for the rest of its life, and wrong in no small part BECASUE it has not consented to them.
If it's question-begging in your view we have much bigger problems. So you're thinking that we might exist somehow prior to conception? Or are you thinking that nonexistent things might somehow be normally capable of granting or withholding consent?
Correct. If we're going to claim that children are not normally capable of granting or withholding consent to x, then we can't claim that x was done to them nonconsensually (or consensually). Saying that it was consensual/nonconsensual would be a category error if we're saying that they're not normally capable of granting or withholding consent to x. (I'm stating it with a variable because it would go for anything we're talking about.)
No. It isn't plausible at all because it doesn't make any sense, as I've explained. Just as it doesn't make any sense to talk about consent in relation to bananas. It's a simple category error. A fallacy.
Impossible hypotheticals won't help you. It's impossible. And it therefore makes no sense. Consent is a legitimate concern in legitimate cases, but not in illegitimate cases where consent is a category error.
Yes, because of the consequences of the action.
Quoting Bartricks
No, because they can't consent, because consent is inapplicable. It's a category error.
All @Bartricks is saying is that you CAN'T give consent prior to birth. Birth causes unknown suffering. Ergo, DON'T give birth since consent is impossible. He is saying the default decision in this case should be no birth.
I can read. The conclusion doesn't follow, consent is an irrelevant category error, and repeating things in all caps doesn't help.
Being a category error is irrelevant. The logic follows if you use the term "impossible".
If it is impossible to get consent and a future action leads to unknown suffering that affects an actual person, then do not procreate that person who will be affected by being born and who will experience unknown suffering.
Okay, but I'm simply pointing out that you can't nonconsensually conceive a child, either. Consent is a category error here.
Lol, no it isn't. It means the argument fails.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If you think that conclusion follows, then you need to restudy logic.
If it is impossible to predict whether a tortoise will fall on your head and the impact will kill you, then do not leave your home, lest fortune claims your life.
But where conception is a good possibility, it just never is only about two people and what they want to do with their bodies. Many people do fail to think about the possible consequences. But there's no excuse. Unlike lower animals, people know how babies are made. Too many unthinking people have this attitude, they just want to fuck and to hell with the consequences! Such people are acting like animals.
Quoting Echarmion
Ah, but humans beings are part of the world. We are the very self-experiencing of the universe. What else experiences being humans? Something outside the universe? What are we, at bottom? There is ultimately just one experiencing subject, and it is that which is everything. There are no truly distinct things. Many, from Spinoza to Schopenhauer to Schrodinger to the mystics from various religious traditions have come to this conclusion. This thread isn't the place to argue it, but I have strongly come to this conclusion.
You may not buy it, but for the moment, just humor me and entertain the possibility that there is but one universal subject experiencing all perspectives simultaneously, one that is the whole universe at once. Would that change how you see this matter we are discussing now? Does it matter what position we take on the question of personal identity and consciousness? It seems that it might change the way we see these arguments about people not yet existing. Only if people are seen to have truly existing and truly discrete selves, something not unlike a soul created at the moment the person begins to exist, does it make sense to say that they don't yet exist. Otherwise we are really just talking about changing the form of something already existing.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't think the two can be entirely separated. In order for you to be held morally responsible for something, the intent to reach that outcome must be there, or at least the knowledge that such an outcome was a good possibility. If you truly and completely accidentally cause an event to happen, you might be said to be in some sense responsible, but not morally. It would be absurd to hold you morally responsible for something you never intended or knew could happen, such as if you poured poison into someone's coffee thinking it was sugar.
Quoting Echarmion
But consideration of outcome is always part of intent. I'm not talking necessarily about the actual eventual outcome, but about perceived possibility of outcome at the time of the action. To say you intend to kill someone means you anticipate a certain possible outcome, and you do the action knowing that this outcome is possible or likely. In the case of unprotected heterosexual sex between fertile adults, there is a known possibility of a new child being the result, one who must now face all the problems of life and must deal with the circumstances you give to it.
Let's put aside for the moment the question of whether or not iife is worth living, and of whether or not we should ever have kids at all. Personally, I am unsure on these two questions anyway. If we put these questions aside and look at more specific conditions, would you ever think it correct for people having sex with the possibility of conception to give consideration to potential children? Suppose the two people have no means of providing the child health care and maybe no reliable means of feeding it. Suppose they are in an active and intense war zone. What then? Should they consider the conditions that the potential child might encounter? Suppose they have contraceptives and they are deciding whether or not to use them. Should the likely future experience of the child influence their decision? Or should they only consider the here and now and their bodies and what they themselves want?
It isn't if you phrase it correctly. Personally, I focus on the affect/effect and not so much on the consent argument, but it can be phrased in a way that is meaningful and makes sense.
A) There is a situation A where a person will be affected if X happens, but it would be impossible to get consent from the person who will be affected if X happens.
B) In situations like A where a person will be affected if X happens and it is impossible to get consent, do not do X.
That is the main claim here.
I don't see how it doesn't.
So it is impossible to distinguish degree of harm? One cannot weigh the difference between the probability of a tortoise falling on one's head vs. driving a car vs. 100% something affecting another person?
Then, like I said, you need to restudy logic. You can't validly derive the conclusion that you shouldn't give birth from the premise that it's impossible to get consent and the premise that birthing a child causes unknown suffering. There are missing premises. And even if you can manage to put together a valid argument, it will still remain unsound. But at least that way we can pinpoint any false premises.
Yeah I'm not putting the other premises in there. I think you can fill those in..and if you can..you know where the argument was going in the first place and this objection is an exercise in objecting.
Sounds like you're coming around to the idea that these discussions you keep creating are pointless, as it has been done to death. You already know that the full argument contains objectionable premises, yet you continue to peddle it.
That's not true at all. But yes, arguing with you is objectionable at times. The point is that if you are affecting someone so profoundly as in the case of literally birthing them, and that action leads to profound negative consequences- all of life's harms that happen as a result of being born... Well you know where that is going. That can have several things attached to the conclusion. Some people focus on consent. I don't do that usually. I focus on negative outcomes prevented with no cost of being deprived of good to an actual person.
You're right, despite how it may have sounded, we all know you're too obsessed to let the matter go.
And yes, you really, really, really, really don't need to repeat your exaggerated failure of an argument. I've definitely heard it all before. Multiple times. And funnily enough, believe it or not, it continues to suffer from the same faults.
Of course. They are extremes intended to show a general principle.
Quoting S
They don't "rely" on analogies. Analogies just make them easier to understand, extreme as the ones I chose were
Quoting S
Would you like to demonstrate?
Quoting S
I never thought someone would ask for evidence for this but sure. Here is one: You are never allowed to buy something with other people's money even if you think it's good for them as long as you can't ask them first.
Quoting S
Death is the least risky option? Really? There is absolutely no chance that unconscious person wouldn't have wished to die? There is very little risk in killing them? Are you listening to yourself?
Death has a massively negative value for those living. Remaining non existant doesn't have a negative value for those who don't exist (if it even makes sense to say that, the point is no one is harmed by not existing but people are harmed by dying). That's why your analogy doesn't work.
Quoting S
Doesn't matter, in the case of a subconsious person, they had the ability to express a desire to live. Knowing that most people express a desire to live means you don't have a right to kill them even if you think it would be better for them. You'd need their consent to do that (because they view the cessation of their life as a negative). That is the difference between a subconscious person and a non existent one. One has goals and desires that they temporarily are unaware of, the other never had those to begin with.
Quoting S
The implication is: As long as someone can kill themselves to leave an unpleasant situation, that justifies putting them there. I don't think either of us agree with that.
I think you can say the risk of harm is 0 in that situation. It is trivially true that if a certain person doesn't exist that person is not risked any harm (Because he doesn't exist). Again, I don't see a reason to treat an action that WILL risk harming someone any differently based on the fact that they don't exist at the time said action took place. Examples: I think it's wrong to genetically modify children to suffer even though that doesn't actually harm anyone, I think it's wrong to have children if one is severely in debt and there is a chance they will have to take on that debt, etc
You don't seem to think so but you don't take the opposite stance of saying that that fact matters in a significant way. If you're agnostic about this general principle there is nothing I can do to convince you. It is the principle the entire argument rests upon.
But then again that should mean you're agnostic about whether or not having children is right.
They don't, because the situations are too dissimilar, like in all of your attempts throughout this discussion.
Quoting khaled
They do. You make the false analogy, and then you direct questions at me intended to challenge my position which only work if the analogy is true. But the analogies aren't true, so the intended challenge fails, and I don't even have to answer the question, because the answer would be irrelevant.
Quoting khaled
Funny. Even if I were to grant that, a single example in no way demonstrates that the least risky option is [I]always[/I] preferred when consent is not available. If that were true, then it would be so in every single case that one could possibly imagine. Good luck trying to demonstrate that!
Quoting khaled
Yes, death would be the least risky option according to your own warped logic. Why react in a dumbfounded way to your own logic? Are you listening to [I]yourself[/I]?
And no, in the thought experiment, the person didn't wish to die, and the next of kin knows that.
Quoting khaled
Your reasoning is inconsistent. Nonexistence is the ideal according to you, so death would be a positive. Just as you suggest that it's horrible to conceive a human, by that same logic, one could suggest that it's horrible to keep them in that situation.
Quoting khaled
Then you should be consistent and let everyone decide for themselves. You don't have a right to stop people from conceiving, and then giving birth, and then letting that baby decide for itself when it's old enough. Nothing to do with you.
Quoting khaled
I repeat, that's not an implication of my point. That's your misunderstanding. I don't have any burden to defend your misunderstanding of my point. Do you understand that? This has been a problem throughout this discussion, and it continues to be so.
I don't think that statement is trivially true. I think it's false due to a category error. Just repeating our respective claims here doesn't get us anywhere.
I understand you think a deterministic universe kinda makes people exist "in the future", but this kind of thinking doesn't work when we assume we have a choice whether or not to have children.
Quoting khaled
But there is a difference when said action created the other person in the first place. Because we cannot assume the other person already exists while also assuming we are choosing whether or not they exist.
Quoting khaled
I am not sure what general principle you refer to here. When I say I am agnostic, what I mean is that none of the arguments brought up so far convince me, but I have not actually fully explored the question on my own terms.
No you misunderstand khaled big-time. It's sad that you project onto me and him what you yourself are doing :grimace: .
Quoting S
It is not nonexistence tout court, but the asymmetry that occurs prior to existence. I can't believe you still haven't gotten this by now :roll: (taking a page from your shitty arguing style).
As an aside, you realize, you don't win arguments by showing the most disdain, right? Dispense with the theatrics of snobbery and condescension and actually debate instead of inflate your own ego. See, I feel bad even calling you out on this shit..but that's the difference between me and you.. You don't feel bad.. Again, something odd there. If it is a debate tactic to be patronizing, it sucks. If it is your personality, I'd do some soul searching. If it is just you trying to get a rise out of people, knock it off and just focus on the arguments.
Quoting S
You realize you just contradicted yourself. No one CAN decide for themselves prior to birth. Someone ALWAYS decides for them. Also, no one is "stopping people from conceiving". Khaled is suggesting through argument (not force) that people not procreate. There is a huge difference and to say otherwise is to construct a big fat straw man.
I wonder
why you ask?
a blunder
what a task?
an innocent child
is born
in nature's jungles wild
by hungry claws torn
if not that then
it must feed
not if, only when
parasitic weed
so refrain
for your child's sake
it must always rain
no delicious cake
only hidden hunters
hide in the shadow
not enough the wonders
with men so shallow
it could be
that I am wrong
if it would be
I'll sing a song
:rofl: :lol:
Yes, your imagined "asymmetry". That's what I'm arguing against.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You realise you just highlighted a section of what I said, treated it as out of context, and then proceeded to misinterpret it? Don't be daft. Obviously I meant that they should decide for themselves subsequent to birth, when they're old enough to do so, like I went on to say. There was no contradiction. You just failed to understand my point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Good. It's not wrong enough to stop people. People can carry on doing what they're doing, and you find that acceptable. It is morally acceptable for people to give birth. Otherwise you'd stop them.
But you weren't- you were equating the situation before birth (the asymmetry) with the situation of suicide or death (no asymmetry).
Quoting S
But I bring up that point as it is an important one. The child cannot decide for themselves to be put in a situation where one has to keep playing the game or drastically alter their existential status (suicide). That is a point I am making that is important here. Khaled made an analogy of saying, "Hey I like this game, now I am going to force another person into playing it. That's okay though, that person will probably like it too and if they don't, they can decide to exit by doing one of the scariest and harmful and anguishing things ever, kill themselves.. But don't worry, most people won't chose that, so they will just keep on playing the game." I don't think that is right to do to someone else.
Quoting S
I liken antinatalism to a cause like veganism. As long as enough people in society have values so far afield from the particular ethic, it would not be right to impose such a thing. In the field of ideas, it is simple argumentation and convincing that is called for. In fact, even if a majority of people were antinatalist, I don't know if it would be right to "force" people into anything of that magnitude. Of course, now we are getting into politics.
But I don't accept your "asymmetry" baloney to begin with. It's highly controversial. You're acting as though you've already proved the point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Okay. Well thank you for sharing your opinion for the millionth time.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But you find it acceptable, so life can't be that bad. That's all I was drawing attention to.
The point can be proven many times and someone like yourself can still keep disagreeing. Some people can't be convinced. I accept that. The absence of harm is good , even if no one is around to experience this good. The absence of good is only bad if there is someone around who is actually deprived of that good. Thus, not experiencing good, in the case of someone who does not actually exist, is not bad. It is win/win to not reproduce under any circumstance. That is the initial "logical" asymmetry.
Quoting S
So this brings up another argument besides the asymmetry which not only does well on its own, but acts as a bolster for the other arguments. This other argument is forcing others into a challenge/game/adventure (perhaps one that you like yourself, or you think is good) is not right to do to someone else. Now, the only "decision" a person can make at this point is suicide, but suicide is not something that people do willy nilly, even if they don't like the game. It is scary, painful, brings anxiety, etc. Also, people develop interests once born. Ones that didn't need to exist in the first place, but occur post-facto. People generally cling to these- even the depressed, pessimistic, and others. If Benatar is right about the psychological studies, even "well-adjusted" people have a distorted view when self-reporting, as they often diminish painful experience and highlight the better ones when determining what to remember when reporting. Also, as I said, people can identify with something harmful, as they may not see any other choice but to do so. That is the point though. There can never be another choice (excepting suicide or perhaps being a pessimist).
Of course, my own points border on more abstract and existential terms. Why does anyone need to go through the "growth-through-adversity" game in the first place? Seems to be that people think they have some sort of right to impose this on others, as if the universe cares that more humans play this game. "Ah yes" they might say "we need to create people to be challenged so they can be strengthened through it, and hopefully find the joy in it". Of course, you know I'm going to say that is circular reasoning.
Like you. You're a prime example. Antinatalism has become a fundamental part of your identity. Almost every single discussion of yours is dedicated to the topic. You've learnt all of the crappy arguments. Adopted the language. You even named yourself after Schopenhauer. You're far too committed. Not a chance. We're all just wasting our breath talking to you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why would anyone trust him to be impartial? Would you trust William Lane Craig to be impartial?
Sounds like fundamentalism to me. What about the farmer who needs working hands on the farm? Surely it's a selfish reason but a reason nonetheless...
If instead it is claimed that it is wrong to do something to someone against their will, a non-existent being doesn't have a will. By the time the being has a will, they can decide on their own whether to keep living or die.
Doesn't everyone deep down want to live? I believe people kill themselves when they don't see another way out of their suffering, when they don't see how to stop their suffering while staying alive, and their will to stop that suffering becomes greater than their will to stay alive.
So if everyone deep down wants to live, then the issue doesn't lie in life itself, it doesn't lie in the act of procreation, the issue is suffering itself, not life. And then the solution is to find the reasons why people suffer and to help them ease or stop their suffering, rather than convincing people to stop having children so that humanity goes extinct. If life is most often worth living even with the suffering, then stopping life to stop the suffering is quite the overkill.
I said it before but I'll say it again, in my view antinatalists are people who suffer a lot, and subscribing to antinatalism and attempting to spread it is one way for them to cope with their suffering. Instead of focusing on the precise reasons why they personally suffer, instead of attempting to address them or asking for help, they avoid the problem by saying that the problem wouldn't be there in the first place if they hadn't been born, in other words in their view if they suffer it has nothing to do with them but everything to do with the world, the world is responsible, other people are responsible, not themselves, they don't want to feel responsible for how they are. They want to live, but they don't want to solve their own problems, so they stay there in limbo, whining that they wouldn't have problems if they hadn't been born, instead of looking at the root causes of their suffering, instead of asking for help.
I don't focus on consent. Rather, I focus on forcing others to play a game that (you think at a point in time X) that you like yourself. This is wrong. Look at the argument I made above (instead of just ignoring almost this whole thread which has gone through almost every anti antinatalist case you brought up, especially by poster khaled). Here is the argument in case you can't be bothered to scroll and read the arguments:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting leo
Again, I addressed this above. I also stated: Quoting schopenhauer1
So, again, no one needs to go through a life of growth through adversity- the model you bring up here. Also pay attention to why suicide is not the opposite of never being born and why that is a terrible example for why it is okay to then procreate.
Quoting leo
For this whole line of bad reasoning, I made a thread dedicated to countering it. See it here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6434/the-mild-torture-of-do-something-about-it-assumptions/p1
You: These analogies are terrible
Me: I agree, they are extremes intended to show a general principle
You: These analogies are terrible
Quoting S
Find me an example where it isn't true then.
Quoting S
Incorrect. You aren't understanding.
For someone who doesn't exist non existence is ideal
For someone who exists non existence is absolutely terrible
Capisce?
Quoting S
Dude... It was a rhetorical question....
Quoting S
No. Because to a non existent person, existence is a risky imposition while remaining non existent doesn't harm them in any way. Once their born however, going back to non existence is terrible, as can be determined easily by asking around if people wanna die.
Quoting S
Would "You don't have right to stop people from murdering" sound like a reasonable statement to you? One can try to stop people form imposing on others, even though one can only do that by imposing, as can be seen in how we try to stop murderers from murdering.
Quoting S
It is... Your point is: It's ok to put someone through life because they have the option of leaving. You haven't actually shown that this isn't an implication of that.
Wow.
No, terrible in terms of how inappropriate they are as analogies, given the significant dissimilarities. They utterly fail to show any general principle, because the situations aren't similar enough for it to apply to both.
Not terrible as in, "Oh my god! Stabbing and blinding people is terrible!".
Duh.
I can't be bothered to deal with the rest.
What you're doing doesn't get us anywhere either. Refusing this statement but not providing an alternative. I can't convince you of this premise. It's a premise for a reason. If you don't share it then at least you wouldn't be a hypocrite for having children.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm pretty sure one can say that consciously deciding to get pregnant and have a baby is "determining" the existence of the baby. And I'm saying we shouldn't do that. Also I don't get what determinism has to do with this.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't see a reason why that would be the case. Can you think of any othere scenarios when this "special case" comes into play? Or are you just treating birth differently?
Quoting Echarmion
That if an action results in harming someone in the future, it doesn't matter whether or not that person existed at the time the action took place. Example: Implanting a bomb in a fetus and setting it to blow up when the baby reaches 18 is just as bad as bombing an 18 year old (the age is besides the point here).
I can't "convince you" of this. There is no logical argument for it. It's a starting premise. Although if you don't believe in it you'd have to say that implanting a bomb in a fetus and killing someone that way is ok or at least less wrong than just killing someone, which I find to be ridiculous
Obviously that's what I meant. I was pointing out that you clearly think they're inadequate but I don't. And that repeating your opinion doesn't get us anywhere.
Quoting S
Then don't reply if you're going to pick on the fist line of a post in such a ridiculous way and then proceed not to actually discuss anything.
Shut up about it then. You are repeatedly mentioning your failed analogies, so I'm repeatedly replying that they're useless failures.
Do you want more examples?
It's wrong to put drugs in people's drinks even if the drugs will likely result in a happier time for them (because it risks harming them or making them addicts)
It's wrong to force anyone to work a certain job even if they come to love it (because it risks them hating it)
The easiest way to refute a claim that "X is always the case" is to try to find a situation where X isn't the case. But you failed miserably at doing so with the "unconscious sibling" example
Anyway, what the...? So you agree with me that they're terrible analogies. Ha.
Quoting khaled
That's the purpose of analogies: to show a general principle. But you just agreed with me that they're terrible analogies, suggesting that you think that they completely fail in that regard.
No. You need to look back at what I actually said. I told you in response to your example that a single example by no means supports your claim. Have you ever studied logic? If I told you that a queue always consists of three people, and then offered you an example of three people in a queue in Tesco's, would that support my claim? No, obviously not.
I plan to continue to refuse to [I]even consider[/I] giving you another counterexample until you learn enough about the burden of proof to know that it rests with you, not me, and act accordingly.
But he did. It is you who are not living up to your end of the debate. This is a debate and he has every right to see you defend your side. Again, snide rhetoric (like "learn enough about..") is a cheap theatrical tactic when no arguments are left. You cannot give a counterexample, so you resort to this. Put downs are not a stand in for reasoned argument.
Now, from that, it is crystal clear that (a) he has a burden of proof, and (b) a single example does not meet the burden of proof, as I already made clear by way of analogy. If you disagree with that second point, then explain to me how an example of three people in a queue demonstrates that queues always consist of three people.
I will give you this.. you actually quoted something and did not pepper it with snide remarks. This is something I can work with. So what would be a burden of proof for you? He claimed these things and then he asked you to provide any evidence that it is otherwise. He is saying that he cannot find any, but can you? If you cannot, he is probably going to say that proves his point.
Exactly, and that's an example of the fallacy known as an argument from ignorance, also known as shifting the burden.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Except that that's a known fallacy.
The way I read it, he is saying there is absolutely no case he can find where someone should put another in a situation where they are more at risk than a less risky alternative when there is no consent to be had (I would have said maybe "impossible" to have). You don't have to answer the question, but that is his claim. I guess the challenge is more like, "Hey, I'll entertain your exception if you have one, but this is the case".
Absolutely?
So an argument from incredulity. Even if I decide not to contemplate possible exceptions, his premise would remain unwarranted. This isn't even something that I am burdened with. I'm holding all the cards here, and to be honest, I can't be bothered to think about it anymore than I have to right now. Maybe I'll come back to it, maybe not. Either way, thus far, his argument is unsuccessful, because one of the premises in it lacks justification.
Well, he is claiming this is a hard and fast rule it seems. Don't put people in riskier situations if there is an alternative when you have no consent. That seems reasonable. If you think not, then explain why. If not, then you can't think of anything at the moment. However, your admonition that he is being unreasonable by allowing you to retort with a counterargument or an exception or what have you, is to me, unfounded. It seems perfectly reasonable in any debate for the other person to say something like, "Do you disagree? If so, let me know how." That is what I see going on here. Nothing more.
Because under consequentialism that's irrelevant. If the riskier situation is the better option consequentially, then that's the one you should go for. It's easy to refute in theory. And it's easy to refute in practice too, come to think of it. There are lots of things that children can't consent to, and which carry risks, some of which are severe, like with almost any medication or surgery. It can be open to argument which course of action is the bigger risk in these situations, but anyway, the legal guardian should make that call, and that's not simply right or wrong just because of the risk involved or because they can't obtain consent (which is irrelevant, anyway!). There are important considerations entirely missing from that analysis. It hasn't been thought through properly, and it hasn't come from a place of impartiality, it's skewed in an attempt to support an anti-natalist argument.
Perhaps it is not consequential, but even if it is.. I'll look at the rest of the argument here..
Quoting S
I am not sure khaled's view on this so I'll let him answer if this counts for what he was talking about. I would say there has to be a distinction between the notion of "risky", like a "risky surgery" versus "more risky situation". Clearly, if the parent wants to do what's best for their child, they are actually not doing the riskier option. The riskier option, it would seem in this case, would be to not do the surgery. It may be a risky surgery, but the alternative would be even more catastrophic. Of course, an antinatalist aside to all of this, is any of this harmful situation could have been prevented..but of course that is off tangent from this exact argument.
Again, I will let khaled answer this because it is his argument. However, again, the riskier option as presented to the parents is obviously letting the disease slowly eat away at the child. However, this is really a debate about consent. The child is already born. This changes things, as I see it. Prior to birth, it was impossible to get consent and no one is alive to be harmed. Now that the child is born, there is actually a person's life at stake. It is too late. Unfortunately, we cannot go into the future and ask an adult version of the person, thus guardianship is given to the parents. Thus in this situation, the guardians now have to make a decision of the least risky outcome. Usually this means weighing the statistical options outlined by the doctor.
No, that's an oversimplification, it's worded in an emotionally charged way, and it's neither obviously the riskier option, nor obviously the worse course of action to take. People opt against chemotherapy and major surgery for a reason. It can be worse than the alternative for some, not that that's always clear at the time, which is kind of the point.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No it's not, though! Because consent is irrelevant. How many times...
I would imagine that is the caveat that makes this still valid.
Quoting S
Even if it is, that is not khaled's argument. His argument is that one should not put someone in a riskier situation if they cannot consent. That is why I bring up guardianship in this case and the asymmetry of no one being born and someone being born and having their life at stake.
The alternative I am offering is, essentially, that future people have no moral weight at all. I don't like the implications of that, but I'd like to know if anyone can offer a convinving argument that they do.
Quoting khaled
But this is, as I pointed out before, self-contradictory. If we can decide to get pregnant, it follows that the existance of future humans is not determined. Which is to say, they don't exist, not even in the future. At most, their (future) existance starts the exact second the decision to have children is made. That means that while we are still deciding, we have to treat the future child as non-existant in the present and future.
Quoting khaled
The special case is creating new moral subjects in the first place. We could apply the same logic to the question of whether or not it is moral to create human-level-intelligence AIs for menial tasks (essentially as slaves).
Quoting khaled
Even if I concede that point for the purposes of this argument, this still leaves the question of how future people can exist while we are still deciding whether we are going to create them.
Quoting khaled
I cannot say what is right or wrong without some information on the motivations. I don't ascribe to consequentialist morals.
How can you say that that's not his argument, and then go on to mention consent in your description of his argument? That's a contradiction. Clearly if it's in his argument, then he thinks that it's of relevance. I'm saying that it's not, because obtaining consent isn't even a possibility.
And his assertion about putting someone in a riskier situation not only lacks justification, but has been refuted by counterexample.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Your inconsistency, you mean. If life were that bad, then there would be nothing at stake.
But life is pretty bad, actually. Especially if youre poor and sick.
There are many, many people who are extremely impoverished in the world. It may get better, but its still pretty bad.
What do we actually mean when we say life is "good" or "bad"? Are we comparing? Is there some sort of objective standard?
Yes, but not anywhere near as many who aren't. You can't win this one in terms of the numbers.
Yes, suffering is always bad, obvously.
Actually, there are more poor people than rich people. And everyone can become potentially poor, and disabled, or sick.
Don't move the goalposts. You didn't say poor, and you certainly didn't say potentially poor. You said extremely impoverished. My counterpoint stands.
No, everyone will suffer in life. Some people suffer more, others less. But suffering is invetiable, and certainly not a choice.
You dont understand, antinatalists are against existence because existence means suffering. You cant deny that.
No one is going to dispute that. But that's not enough by any reasonable assessment to make life not worth living.
How stupid. Of course I won't deny that. But unfortunately for you, your conclusion doesn't follow. And stop trying to mislead all of the time. It's not just suffering, is it? It's joy, happiness, bliss, ecstasy... but you don't mention that. That's dishonest.
Not for everyone maybe, but for many it actually does.
You're being dishonest by cherry picking. The many you refer to do not outnumber or outweigh the much larger number of people for whom life is worth living. In proper context, the "many" you refer to are not many at all. They're few.
I simply think it is immoral to knowingly create more life, therefore more suffering.
Suffering is a choice. Many choose to sulk and complain, yet there are others who are grateful and appreciative.
And grateful for what exactly?
And your opinion does matter then? If no opinion matters, there would be no such thing as philosophy.
Exactly, im not grateful for that, because if i would not be alive, i would not suffer.
Appreciate the time you spend complaining, as you could have been burning alive this very moment - like someone else probably is.
Don't be so impatient to make claims when there's so little you've seen and done.
Burning alive? You dont survive that or long.
Sensible opinions matter. Yours is not sensible.
There's no objective standard, but that doesn't mean that anything goes or that we can't asses the matter sensibly. The anti-natalists are notorious for their exaggeration and cherry picking and one-sided rhetoric. They're seemingly incapable of assessing the matter impartially.
You've pointed out here an off-shoot of this area of ethical inquiry that bears further investigation. The mainline argument, that human procreation is, as a general practice, unethical has been treated fairly here (and with more consideration than I would give it) and found wanting.
The question of artificial consciousness and what concern is due with respect to its creation (and destruction) is one which may well have relevance in the 21st century. The side benefit is that the question of consent will again be played out. In as much as dollars are in the mix here, we can expect that the question will be answered (or not answered) in a way which maximizes profit, so the quandary might find itself pushed out again.
Another tangential concern is that of embryonic genetic manipulation. If we assume that the resolution of things that are almost uniformly considered deleterious (e.g. sickle cell) meets no serious objection, we arrive at body enhancements. Under what conditions is it acceptable to 'enhance' a child, in utero, without their consent? Personally, I think a third thumb could be quite useful. Are there situations where the impossibility of getting consent would be treated as tacit permission for the enhancements?
Dealing with these two, foreseeable concerns may result in progress on the question that undergirds the premise of the antinatalist position.
How irrational. You say that, yet you choose to continue to live, which suggests that for you, living is better than not living. So in the bigger picture it doesn't matter that you suffer, because that doesn't effect the overall value you see in life.
This is obvious insofar as it's a tautology - bad things are bad. But that doesn't tell us anything about what "bad" means.
Quoting S
I am just asking what we are assessing. Is life "bad" if I feel sad, or hungry, or frustrated right now? Do we add up all the times we fell this way? The antinatalist argument that life is "bad" seems to lack any metrics for which to establish this.
Well there's no objective standard, so the criteria can vary massively. But if you're enquiring about my criteria, then it would have to take a lot more than a fleeting feeling.
Presumably, the most profitable option will be to give no concern to AIs, at least initially. The question of what is morally permissible to create is a thorny one quite apart from that though.
Quoting JosephS
Consent seems more or less like a red herring to me. The problem is more basic than that: can we even make an argument about what kind of moral subjects should exist?
Im alive because suicide isnt that easy.
Sure it is. Jump off a bridge, a tall building. Easy. If you are talking about the difficulty of going through with it then I submit your desire to not be alive is an illusion, brought upon by mental problems or a weak and whiny disposition. Have you considered that possibility?
Life can't be that bad for you, then. Otherwise you would've overcome the difficulty. And you're lying to yourself. You know that you're alive because of comedy and good food and entertainment and all the rest of it. You should have the honesty to admit it. No one suffers when they're laughing their head off or enjoying a really nice meal.
Not anymore, i have decided that it is enough for me.
You're in need of professional help, then.
You dont think adult should have the right to die if they want?
No, not simply if they want to. But I do support the legality of assisted suicide under the right circumstances, as per the laws in certain countries.
You probably don't qualify and should seek professional help.
No, read it correctly, I am saying it is his argument. It is the main point of his argument. And the very fact that it is impossible to obtain consent, he seems to be saying, is why you should pick the least riskiest option (not born at all).
Again, the point khaled was making earlier was that at the time of procreation, when there is an asymmetry, when all harm can be prevented, and no actual person is deprived, THAT is different than when someone is ALREADY born and there IS someone who is deprived, there is a personality now that is existent, there is someone with interests. This matters now because as a fully alive human we have emotions like fear and feelings like pain. This is a DIFFERENT circumstance than prior to birth. Being afraid of death, and having interests do not mean that this life was worth starting. It means that once born, life is worth continuing for this person being that it is now someone with emotions, interests, etc. The threshold for starting a life is different for continuing a life. But they are different standards because one uniquely prevents all harm while not depriving, while one is depriving and death will harm someone (the act itself and the lead up). So they are very different situations.
Are you pulling my leg?
I made a simple point that the issue of consent is irrelevant, inapplicable, inappropriate, the wrong category.
You then say that that's not his argument.
I point out to you that the issue of consent is clearly part of his argument. And that he clearly thinks that it's of relevance. Meaning that you were wrong to dismiss my point like that.
And now you say that not only is it part of his argument, but it's the main point of it. Meaning, after having contradicted yourself, we're back to square one.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Can't you read? We've just been over this. My response to him bringing up consent is that it's irrelevant. It's a category error. And, I repeat, he never provided justification for his follow up assertion, and it has been refuted by counterexample.
"Least risky" is also irrelevant in itself, because the consequences are what matter, and the probable good consequences of having a child beat holding back with irrational and excessive "concern". It's irrational and excessive because the analysis is hopelessly biased, and the conclusion extreme. Real concern works with and for the living, not for wiping them out.
Case closed. We're done here. Unless you want to repeat yourself some more and go back over it again. But I'm not exactly eager to humour you in that regard. You'd have to actually argue the point instead of merely repeating what I've already addressed as though I don't understand it. There's little-to-nothing from either you or Khaled that hasn't already been addressed a million times over, anyway.
Why? What gives anyone the right to decide for someone else whether or not they are allowed to kill themselves? I understand about mental illness that might lead to suicide and how we would want to “save” that person, but if they don’t want help and just want to die...you want someone other than them to make that decision? A person cannot even die if they want to die? We gotta take that from them too?
Yes, of course I want someone other than them to make that decision, namely a medical professional. I've been suicidal myself. Thank goodness I got through it instead of being left to my own devices, or worse, being persuaded that I should do so if I want to, otherwise I wouldn't be here right now. But if someone is absolutely determined to kill themselves, then whether or not they have a "right" to do so is irrelevant. That's not something that can be taken away from them, anyway.
Is it not legitimate to judge, and in some cases prohibit, the creation of certain living things?
Is there no legitimate application of principle regarding those who might take a human/non-human chimera through gestation to raise it (I'm contemplating something more human than non-human)? Take the example of those who raise fainting goats for the purpose of novelty and amusement. It seems rather cruel to me. Potential for suffering seems a legitimate concern here and one which me might leverage to inhibit (if not prohibit) the conception of these animals. And even if fainting goats are fine, human imagination maintains hitherto untapped veins of horror.
The question of consent arises because there are cases where we allow adults (but not children or those acting for children) to weigh risk and potential for suffering. There is a boundary to be considered around risk and benefit for those who cannot consent.
The negative of self-extinction, for me, is a sufficient counter to the categorical case. I raised the embryonic genetic selection/modification case as a class of actions where some instances could be considered unethical to proceed on.
I understand your practical view here, but im interested in the principal. So I agree that we want t to persuade our loved ones, whomever that may include, not to kill themselves and try to work it out or whatever, but you mentioned legality. Thats much different, thats a state enforced law that forces someone against their will to live a life they dont want to live. That seems horribly authoritarian to me.
So aside from the obvious practical things you stated, what in principal are you operating with? Why do you think its ok to use force to prevent someone from checking out?
Well I dont think we should rashly submit to what someone says, that's a straw-man. This “rash” business is all you, not me. I don’t think anything about deciding to kill oneself should be rash. (But I still wouldn't want it to be illegal to make rash decisions about your well being).
Anyway, I used the term “force” in the sense of enforcing the law. Its pointless to have a law that you cant enforce. Calling it a “law” is just postering at that point.
So what Im asking about is how you view the principal of...if you don’t like “forcing” we can use “lawfully coerce” or something, doesnt matter...the principal of lawfully coercing someone to live when theyd rather die. That is an authority (the law, or a medical professional you said as well) deciding something for someone against their will. Thats authoritarian. Now Im not saying all such authoritarianism is horrible, but rather in the particular case of deciding to kill oneself it seems horrible to me.
No it's not, it stems back to the original proposition, which is that an adult should have the right to die if they want to, which would mean rashly submitting without proper examination. Obviously the part about it being rash isn't explicit, but it's implied.
And I was only ever using the law as a point of reference in answer to the question I was asked. It doesn't matter whether or not it can be enforced. I'm making the point that it's right to act in line with what the relevant laws say on the matter. Clearly more thought has gone into the laws I've referenced in this discussion than some of the simplistic opinions expressed by participants in this discussion.
You'll have to come up with a better objection than, "It seems horrible to me". And you don't even seem to know what you're talking about when you say that. What seems horrible to you? No one is stopping anyone from killing themselves if they are intent on doing so. So what's horrible? A medical professional doing their job? What planet are you living on? That would fall under the the Hippocratic Oath.
Lol, no...YOU dont know what Im talking about when I say it seems horrible to me. Im happy to clarify if you just ask.
So you keep focusing on framing and semantics for some reason, but not really addressing the actual question. Maybe Im coming off as adversarial? Im sincerely asking about your view here, not even trying to object to your view per say. My questions aren’t meant to lead you anywhere or entrap you or any of that typical internet shit.
Anyway, what seems horrible to me is the authoritarian nature of such a law, in the sense that an authority presumes to decide for someone else something that I consider a fundamental liberty. I know you may not agree, but that's what I mean.
Okay...
Well, I preferred you when you thought more like me, and less like Terrapin Station. But it's not even a liberty issue. People are at liberty to kill themselves. That's simply a fact, regardless of our views on the matter. I can go and jump off of a bridge or hang myself. It's just not something that I would say is acceptable simply because the person wants to do so. Have you even thought through the logical consequences of that? You realise of course that death is permanent, irreversible. And you also realise that feelings can be rash, impulsive, fleeting, or stemming from a disorder?
Lol, well I have a range of views and sometimes they line up with other peoples. *shrug* (not that the free speech stuff is something I agree with Terra on, Im not a free speech absolutist.)
Ive thought of the logical consequences yes, we probably mostly agree there. My issue is with the law part...when you make something a law it becomes a liberty issue. You are not at liberty to do certain things under the law, which is distinct from being at liberty to do them at all. (You are at liberty to kill someone if you can manage it, but not at liberty under the law to do so. Maybe thats not a distinction you make?)
So Im curious about why you think its important that it be the law that people can’t kill themselves...keeping in mind that I understand that some people might need help or are not thinking clearly...We should help them or get them thinking clearly but ultimately it should be up to them, not some authority. But you disagree with that so, why exactly? (In principal )
Why would you simply leave it up to the person, with no safeguards whatsoever? You say that we should try to get them help and so on, but ultimately they could completely disregard that against their own best interest.
Why do they know best? Are you saying that people (aside from your stated exceptions) who want to commit suicide are always mentally ill?
I guess what Im wondering now is whether or not you think someone can decide to commit suicide rationally, and why dying of cancer or whatever legal exceptions you accept are different than someone elses equally strong desire to die if you dont believe in “rational suicide”.
Yes, someone can decide to commit suicide rationally. But that's not most people, who think that they're being rational, but are just being emotional or not thinking clearly. Can you think of a better system that will somehow distinguish the rational from the irrational, when the latter can be subtle or convincing? It's complicated, but once again, it's a cost-benefit analysis. It's better to have safeguards than to risk all those people slipping through the net and wrongfully sanctioning suicide. It's not like they can't take matters into their own hands anyway. That's why the most prominent cases of assisted suicide are about those for whom it is physically very difficult, if not impossible, through disability.
Alright, I understand. It seems pretty strange to me to call for a law to be in place and follow that up with how meaningless the law is (“its not like they cant take matters into their own hands anyway”) but I understand how your looking at it.
It would be so much easier for you to come up with a counterexample to disprove it wouldn't it?
Where did you get that I was appealing to consequentialism?
Yes. And for all of those cases where putting a child through surgery is considered to be ok is when the risk of not going through surgery Trumps the risk of going through surgery. You wouldn't consider it moral for parents to force their children to go through a surgery that replaces their hands with hooves for example would you? Because there is no way that's needed. The only situation where people find it ok to put children through surgery is when the surgery is the least risky option.
No one can. That's a moral premise. You can't "convince" someone of a premise logically. For example: no one can prove that if A=B and B=C that A=C and yet we all believe it. If someone said he doesn't believe that statement to be true there would be not argument to convince them. If you don't like the implications of it maybe use a different premise?
Quoting Echarmion
We don't "have to". That's the premise you decide to use which we don't share. Even through you recognize that it has ridiculous implications. Such as for example: it's perfectly ok to genetically engineer children to suffer.
Quoting Echarmion
I just said I don't believe this is a special case and in response you re assert that it is. This doesn't help anyone
Quoting Echarmion
No? I never claimed future people can "exist" in the same way people do but that we should not act in a way that harms someone in the future regardless of whether or not they existed then and that's the argument you just conceded. That is enough to make the case for antinatalism. I don't need to claim the existence of magical ghost babies if you concede that:
Quoting khaled
Does procreation harm someone in the future? Yes. Did they exist at the time it took place? No and that doesn't matter. So don't procreate. No magical ghost babies needed.
I didn't. You've misunderstood. That was just a counterargument.
Quoting khaled
False.
Quoting khaled
Another false analogy. You're really bad at analogies.
Quoting khaled
Basically a repetition of the same false assertion.
Give an example of it being false.
Quoting S
The same correct assertion.
Quoting S
This was an example of a very stupid unnecessary surgery. At being that it did its job. Why is this one a false analogy do you mind explaining?
Also you haven't answered this, which is the most important question I had for you
Quoting khaled
Give one yourself. All you have to do is think of a situation where the parents make a decision based on what they consider to be best for the child where that doesn't necessarily match up with the least risky option. I don't see why I should keep having to put the effort in to refute your overblown claims when the burden lies with the person who makes those claims in the first place.
Quoting khaled
Yes, I do mind explaining, because your analogies are half-arsed.
A fish is just like a dog! Explain to me why that's a poor comparison. And then when you're done with that, I've got another one. And another one after that.
I can't think of one. That's the thing.
Quoting S
That IS the least risky option though. Just so we're on the same page: The least risky option is the one that risks the least harm. Parents always try to do the thing they believe will risk harming their child the least.
Quoting S
That's not what my analogies are like though. The things being compared share common features, it's just that one is extreme. Fish and dogs don't share any common features.
No, it isn't. That suggests that the parent or legal guardian is infallible when they make those difficult judgement calls, which is simply absurd.
Quoting khaled
The irony. :lol:
Well, at least you have a rough understanding of the problem with bad analogies. But I can't be bothered to keep going into the details every time you put one to me. It's just another fish-dog each time, and it gets tiring.
I never quite get why this is a problem for people. The person that would be born if someone were to get pregnant and bring it to term. It is applying a future state to something that does not exist in the present. However, the conditions to bring about the future state can be in the present or near present. So why is this so hard to fathom?
You're the one reducing life to a "growth-through-adversity" game, I understand that's how you see life, but understand that that's not how many people see life.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You want to live, right? And you want to enjoy your life but you don't enjoy it much, right? So indeed, why don't you do something about it, instead of spending so much time complaining that you have to do something about it? If you don't want to do something about it then why do you keep living? I suppose you don't want to do something about that either? You just want to stay in limbo complaining about life?
What is your dream world? One where the whole of humanity shakes your hand and say "yes schopenhauer1 we agree, we all agree with you, let's all stop having children and let's watch humanity go extinct"? Will that make you content?
Homeschooling seems right off the bat better. If the schools require being driven to (a major risk) or other transportation - we are dealing with all sorts of risk. Keeping them in a controlled safe environment seems automatically better and should be the default position unless studies show counterevidence.
No children should be driven anywhere. One of the most dangerous activities. Especially if the child is in the womb and cannot even give a child's limited consent to the trip.
One might question whether trying to give a child a happy childhood might increase the chances the child will procreate or will have more kids.
And one should be working on or encouraging research into a device that would kill all human life, all life that can suffer. Yes, this would be killing without consent, but it very likely could be painless and if everyone died, then there could not be the likely coming thousands or more generations of potential babies having their suffering risked. Killing everyone minimizes this risk. It is a consent violation, but one that people will not experience the pain of. When it happens, they will be gone.
Because one cannot weigh the positives of life against the risk of violating the consent of non-existent beings. We must share the priorities of the anti-natalists.
Even if they, as fallible humans, might be confused about some part of their beliefs, but not realize it, and this is a risk they take with everyone as they proselytize, ultimately, for the end of all human life. Should they be successful they will have, without the consent of those who would have wanted to live, wherever they are, risked their loss of things they would ahve valued differently, if they hadn't been all nipped in the bud.
It's purely hypothetical speculation. That's what it is.
Yep, that's the standard one-sided rhetoric you'll get from them.
And it's also kind of weird that people say anti-natalism is a projection onto a future child while also claiming that all non-pregnant women are potential mothers without having been fertilized in the first place..?
:brow: I'm not even much into this subject, because I find it a sticky one for me personally, but I don't think the natalist arguments are pretty shitty.
That's an odd way to phrase that. Anyways, I don't know who said "all non-pregnant women are potential mothers".. but that is not quite true. Antinatalism is essentially about not having children to prevent a future person from either contingent or structural suffering. That is it. Whatever other odd choice of phrasing you want to add for a straw man or red herring, doesn't really matter to this argument. If someone doesn't have children, they are preventing a future person, who will inevitably suffer. That is it.
And everything else, which you don't mention, which is misleading. It literally can't be about just that, as we all know, because life is so much more than that, and obviously not having children wouldn't just prevent suffering, it would prevent every single emotion. So really, a more accurate description of antinatalism would be that it's about not having children to prevent a future person from experiencing anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, surprise, aggression, apathy, anxiety, boredom, contempt, depression, doubt, empathy, envy, embarrassment, euphoria, frustration, gratitude, grief, guilt, hatred, hope, horror, hostility, hunger, hysteria, loneliness, love, paranoia, pity, pleasure, pride, rage, regret, remorse, shame, shock, suffering, sympathy. And all of that in spite of the fact that the average person wouldn't trade all of that for having never existed.
If you want to stop describing the position in a misleading way, you can copy and paste the above.
So it is good to bring about negative conditions for others because of the host of emotions you list? So the ability to experience these emotions is the main reason to then procreate, despite being exposed to negative experiences? Then, why would these emotions need to be experienced by another person in the first place? Why would that be important? Think hard on that, because appealing to "common sense" or a "common sensibility' or some such shit is not an argument.
Again, the threshold to kill yourself vs. the threshold to procreate another person are different heuristics. Prior to birth the asymmetry (no one actually exists to be deprived, but all suffering prevented). After birth, someone with fears, personality, interests exists and may be worth continuing.
Um, I did. Pay attention.
Give me the reason as to why you are living right now. A straight answer.
If you cannot put the logic together, I can't help you.
I asked you, why do you continue living?
Will you or won't you and can you or can't you answer why?
Things are good because of the overall value taking into account all factors, not bad because you deliberately select just a single factor whilst wilfully ignoring all of the others.
Please, show some intellectual honesty.
What makes the emotions you list more important than causing the conditions for suffering for another though?
Like I just said, a reasonable analysis must take into account all relevant factors. So by asking me only about suffering, you're effectively asking me to be unreasonable. This isn't controversial. It's a fallacy known as a hasty generalisation. And another fallacy you frequently commit is the fallacy of cherry picking. All emotions are obviously relevant because life consists of all emotions.
This means nothing to me. Using "reasonable" or "common sensibility" I just won't accept as an argument. Argue something. Don't just use the ambiguousness of the word "reasonable" or the like make it for you. Explain.
Quoting S
Not if I admit that indeed, not causing all forms of suffering to another person, while not actually depriving that person of any of the emotions (or any other perceived good) is indeed the best decision and outcome.
Fallacious reasoning can't be reasonable, because it is by definition unreasonable. And you've committed a fallacy by drawing a conclusion based on just a single factor whilst wilfully ignoring all of the other relevant factors. I just explained that to you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Are you abandoning antinatalism as you previously described it or not? Because you previously described it as a position essentially about not having children to prevent a future person from suffering, and my criticism still applies to that description. Again, the description is misleading and it's unreasonable to reach that conclusion from insufficient factors, and suffering alone is insufficient, because obviously life is a lot more than suffering. You would have to change your premise about the prevention of suffering, or add additional premises which actually take into account all of the other factors. Otherwise the argument will never be sound, because it's invalid.
I meant that people who argue against anti-natalism make similar arguments to those the pro-lifers make, which are extremely incoherent. They basically argue that non-fertilized eggs have potential to be children (or already are), which doesn't make any sense. In other words, they are basically saying women with unfertilized eggs are all potential mothers as if the gestation process has begun in the first place.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, since nothing in my post is stating what I think anti-natalism is or about, and it's evident I am not making any type of argument, I don't know what you're even talking about at this point.
It's not "odd" phrasing just because you can't readily understand what is being said. Re-read it in the context of the thread and what I quoted.
Ah I see how you are using that now. You didn't need "I just explained that to you", it's unnecessary (but based on your past posts "reasonable" to expect :)).
Quoting S
No buddy, it's not. What I'm trying to say, is that upfront, that at the procreational decision (ONLY), prevention of suffering is above and beyond all else, because no actual person is alive to be deprived of the all else you described. Only AFTER they are created do they then have something to lose. And certainly valuing the prevention of suffering would have to come into play here as a premise.
You aren't addressing the problem. The problem is that life consists of a lot more than suffering. And given that life consists of a lot more than suffering, you aren't warranted to talk only about the prevention of suffering. Suffering is a part of life just like all of the other emotions are a part of life. You haven't justified talking about the prevention of suffering alone. Do you understand that or not? If so, please produce a valid response in your next reply.
Structural suffering? What is that?
From previous discussions, the answer to that seemed to be a stance that prevention of suffering was all that mattered.
This is from a previous post I wrote:
However, what is not usually recognized is the structural suffering inherent in existence- built into the human affair. Structural means that it is not based on contingent circumstances like genetics, place of birth, circumstances in time/place, or fortune. Structural suffering can be seen in things like the inherent "lack" that pervades the animal/human psyche. We are lacking at almost all times. The need for food and shelter, the need for mates, the need for friends, the need for interesting projects, the need for flow states, the need for comfortable environments. These "goods" represents things WE DO NOT HAVE (aka lack). We are constantly STRIVING for what is hoped to be fulfilling, but at the end, only temporarily fills the lack state, and for short duration. Structural suffering can also be seen in the psychological state of boredom. I don't see boredom as just another state, I see it as an almost baseline- state. It is a "proof" of existence's own unfulfilled state. This leads again, striving for what we lack. There is a certain burden of being- the burdens of making do- of getting by, of surviving, of filling the lack, of dealing with existence. That we have to deal in the first place is suspect. That not everyone is committing suicide is not a "pro" for the "post facto, people being born is justified" stance. Rather, suicide and being born in the first place are incommensurable.
Then of course, there is the contingent suffering (what is commonly what is thought of as suffering). This is the circumstantial suffering of physical/psychological pains that pervade an individual's life. This may be any form of physical or more emotional pain that befalls a person.
The parents' perspective are that the goods of life, the encultration into society for which these goods are to be had, is something to be experienced and carried forward. Structural suffering is not even seen in the picture. You only go with the information you have at hand, and you deem most important. Structural suffering is not a concept most parents think about, even if it is the main governing principle of animal/human existence. As far as contingent suffering, it has been well-documented the optimism bias that we have in underestimating the harms for past and future events.
Why is anything more important than the new person's suffering? What about the other stuff makes the threshold to procreate that much more? Because people are not killing themselves left and right?
Which is ludicrous.
That sounds like you're saying the following for example:
Joe has a desire for food, so Joe has to get food however he gets it (maybe as a baby it's opening his mouth for a nipple, and then maybe later in his life it's getting off the couch and opening the refrigerator, and so on), and even though Joe doesn't have a problem with any of this, it's something that needs to be avoided on moral grounds.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding it (partially because it's difficult to believe that the above is something you'd be arguing)
Well, it's certainly not something I agree with . . . and it's difficult for me to imagine why or how anyone would feel that way. But I can buy that maybe some people do. I've known plenty of weirdos, as you can imagine. ;-)
It is the "dealing with" we discussed earlier. That there is an unfulfillment that needs addressing. Dissatisfaction. The First Noble Truth. That sort of thing. That is the baseline structural suffering that is the background for all the other stuff that takes place, including contingent forms of suffering, which are circumstantial physical/psychological pain. Why create the need for needs in the first place?
Personally, I think all sorts of things are more weighty than suffering, and I don't seem to be alone in that. Not that agreement matters, but I guess you're saying that you don't consider anything more important in your life than your suffering?
But you're positing dissatisfaction as a state that's not necessarily negative for Joe, right (that is, in terms of how he feels about it)?
Right you are psychological there- I see what you're doing. No, dissatisfaction is precisely negative, in that there is a near constant lack.
I'm not sure I understand that response. Are you saying that it's impossible for Joe to feel that it's not negative that he has to get off the couch and open the refrigerator, say?
Here is a quote from Schopenhauer to help you decipher the meaning:
[quote=Schopenhauer]I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence. It follows, therefore, that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering — from positive evil. If this is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a little more closely.
However varied the forms that human happiness and misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily pleasure or bodily pain. This basis is very restricted: it is simply health, food, protection from wet and cold, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the absence of these things. Consequently, as far as real physical pleasure is concerned, the man is not better off than the brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind of pain. But then compared with the brute, how much stronger are the passions aroused in him! what an immeasurable difference there is in the depth and vehemence of his emotions! — and yet, in the one case, as in the other, all to produce the same result in the end: namely, health, food, clothing, and so on.[/quote]
You don't seem to be listening.
The overall value of life is what primarily matters here, over and above any one particular factor of life taken in isolation. You can't reasonably assess the overall value of life by only taking into consideration a single factor such as suffering. It's easy to come up with examples of this methodology failing in other contexts as well as this one. So your method is doomed to failure from the start. It doesn't even get off the ground.
And when people do take all of the relevant factors into reasonable consideration, funnily enough, they reach a different conclusion to you. Coincidence? I think not.
Okay, but I'm saying that there are people who don't feel anything like pain or feel that it's "positive evil" to have to get off of the couch and open the refrigerator, for example (in order to get food because they're hungry).
Are you disagreeing that there are people who don't see this as pain/evil/something experientially negative?
I disagree with your assessment. You are going to a secondary level when I am not. The primary level- there is an initial dissatisfaction. Why is the person getting off the couch?
What I'm getting at is that there's a difference between "I want food," which you seem to be categorically calling a "dissatisfaction," and having a negative experience in conjunction with wanting food.
In other words, someone can just want food without having an attendant value assessment of that experience, where they assign a negative or "bad" value to it. It can just be an experience without a valuation.
Suffering, at this level, is the most important thing to take into consideration. Anything else is having an agenda for another person. So not only are you not taking proper account of suffering in comparison to other stuff, you are putting the other stuff as something that "needs" to be experienced- forcing others into this game so that they "need" to experience this stuff. Putting an agenda above the interest of suffering. This is essentially the axiom. There is no further here we can go. I've said that before. You can disagree with the premise, but at the end, emotional levels of interest in the premise are going to decide if you follow it.
Then you are not taking into account how I (and Schopenhuaer) are using "negative in nature" here.
Well, the utility of me asking questions and you giving answers is that you can explain it to me better.
Yeah, again, this is not the definition I'm using here. Maybe this other Schopenhauer quote will help in defining negative here:
I can understand that Schopenhauer felt that way, but why would you think that it's necessarily universal? You're not familiar with people who never feel bored, for example?
That's just your opinion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, that criticism is invalid. It's invalid because it can't apply to what I'm saying without also applying to what you're saying. You are committing the fallacy of special pleading. You say that the prevention of suffering matters. I say that the prevention of joy matters. You say to me that that's having an agenda for another person. I can then say to you that that's having an agenda for another person.
That's logic for you.
Oh yeah, that's why ascetics and meditation and such..things Schopenhauer liked.. but that was to reduce the Will in general.
But to for those note meditating and eating a bowl of rice 24/7, I don't believe it. People don't get bored because they are filling the time with stuff that overcomes the baseline boredom they would feel otherwise- TPF, shopping, reading, working, etc.
My opinion leads to NO suffering for a future person. Yours doesn't. I win. No one is actually alive be deprived. I win.
Quoting S
Ah no. Prevention of joy is not bad, if there is NO ONE alive to be deprived of it. Prevention of suffering is always, good whether someone for whom this is a benefit or not. That's the asymmetry.
Well, maybe they don't get bored because they're doing whatever, but the point I'm still trying to get at is that we can have someone who doesn't have a negative valuation of phenomenal states such as "I'm hungry." But it seems like you're saying that's irrelevant to it being a moral problem.
Yes it's the initial desire, not the assessment of it.
Sure. But the problem is that that doesn't make any sense to me at all. You're categorizing desire as morally problematic regardless of anyone's opinion of it.
Do you understand why that's a misleading statement? Yes or no?
Do you understand why no reasonable conclusion can follow from it? Yes or no?
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's evading the point. Please don't do that. We can't move on until you address my point properly. Prevention of suffering is having an agenda for another person. You suggested that having an agenda for another person is bad in response to me, yet you yourself have an agenda for another person.
Correct.
It is always good to prevent suffering so no whether someone exists to know this or not.
Quoting S
No, the other person does not exist yet. No agenda is going to be had by them.
Why didn't you answer my questions? I will ask them again.
Do you understand why that's a misleading statement? Yes or no?
Do you understand why no reasonable conclusion can follow from it? Yes or no?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Then that's my response also, regarding the prevention of joy. And the prevention of anger, the prevention of surprise, the prevention of sympathy, the prevention of guilt, the prevention of...
You don't seem to get the logic here. If you did, you would realise that you can't have it both ways.
I did answer. I said no, and no. I explained why.
Quoting S
Agendas are had by actual people. No people, no agenda for that person to be had.
Okay, given that you said "no" to my question of whether you understand why that's a misleading statement, why don't you understand that the reason why it's misleading is because what you're talking about doesn't just prevent suffering? Even a little child would understand why it's misleading to say, for example, that being burnt alive tonight prevents you from doing the chores tomorrow. So why don't you understand it when a little child can? Do you mean to suggest that a little child is more intelligent than you are?
Quoting schopenhauer1
So you retract your comment to me about having an agenda for another person? Or you apply the above to the both of us? It's hard to tell from all of your evasion. You aren't giving a straight answer again.
So as I said, that makes no sense to me at all. What makes something morally problematic regardless of anyone's opinion about the thing in question?
But don't think about that part in the brackets. You won't have to do any chores! That's good, right? Not misleading at all.
Something that is so structural, it is not reflected on, but runs our lives.
@schopenhauer1, what is your understanding of what Schopenhauer thought that we are ultimately? What am I really? And I mean from my own perspective. And how does what I am at my foundation relate to what you are at your foundation?
And are you now ready to properly address my criticism about your comment to me in response to my mention about the prevention of joy that "that's having an agenda for another person"? Are you now ready to clarify what your position is? Do you accept that, as an antinatalist according to your own description of antinatalism, you have an agenda for another person? Or are you going to be inconsistent and apply a double standard? Or are you just going to keep evading the point?
Wouldn't, say, physics fit that description--something structural, it's not reflected upon, but it runs our lives. So would you say that physics is morally problematic?
haha, yeah, that too.
Does it matter if the person is conceived, gestated, born, aware, self-aware? At whatever stage you pick the formation of a "person" all the antinatalist arguments apply from that moment forward. It was just that the previous steps needed to take place for that to occur.
Quoting petrichor
That's an interesting question. Metaphysically, Schopenhauer thought everything, including you and I, are manifestations of the principle of Will, which is like a force that has no end goal but strives forward. All beings are manifestation of Will and create this world of appearances and plays out the Will's striving in various forms. However, due to the fact that Will is an endless force, this brings suffering for animal manifestations because of the endless, striving nature of our pursuits, goals, and survival. The illusion is satisfaction will be attained by any pursuit. But they aren't.
Why do you keep thinking insulting people is a good debate tactic. It just shows more of who you really are. It still doesn't matter if you are going to use the excuse that this is an anonymous forum, so it's okay to be this rude. I have not done the same to you. Why would you treat others, even people you are debating in such a demeaning fashion? It isn't effective in getting your point across. It honestly just makes you look like an asshole. You know, a whole philosophy book was written about assholes. There's some real philosophical questions about assholes- are people themselves assholes or do they just act like assholes? Can there be both? Are you just an asshole, or do you just act like one on internet forums?
Honestly, I shouldn't debate you any further until you cleanup your asshole act. I don't think you argue in good faith. You have to see the other position's side before you move on. Right now you are just showing you like going on ego-trips. It is in a perverse way, fun to prove you wrong, but it is at the expense of allowing you to act like a total asshole, so I don't know how I feel by keeping indulging this.
How about another example? Would, or wouldn't, a little child understand what's misleading about saying that they can go to Disneyland, without mentioning that they would have to get there by being dragged along the ground by a horse?
If the answer is that they would, then it's fair to ask why you say that you don't understand what's misleading about saying that antinatalism is essentially about the prevention of suffering, or that your opinion leads to no suffering for a future person.
If that isn't to do with intelligence, then explain what it it's to do with. Self-deception?
And how is that not a case of the pot calling the kettle black? What do you think I have to do for just about every post you make which usually has some insulting personal attack in there somewhere. Oh, I found another one, right here! Quoting S
Quoting S
Ok, this is what I perceive to be your main issue right now in this argument, no?
A person has to exist for there to be an agenda. By not having a new person, there is no person, and ergo no agenda that this person is to be following. My agenda is to prevent someone else from being forced into an agenda, and by not having a new person who actually will be forced into an agenda, my agenda has not made an agenda for someone else.
Where? I just see a question. A question you still haven't answered. A question you haven't answered, even though it is highly relevant. It has to do with how you describe your own position and how you word your key claims. It could hardly be any more relevant.
This is what needs addressing properly instead of being blinded by the language used, seeing it as an insult, and making irrelevant complaints. I mean, if in context, your position makes you look stupid, that's hardly my fault for bringing you to that embarrassing realisation. It's your position, not mine. You should be thanking me. It's never too late to abandon a faulty position.
[I]How about another example? Would, or wouldn't, a little child understand what's misleading about saying that they can go to Disneyland, without mentioning that they would have to get there by being dragged along the ground by a horse?
If the answer is that they would, then it's fair to ask why you say that you don't understand what's misleading about saying that antinatalism is essentially about the prevention of suffering, or that your opinion leads to no suffering for a future person.
If that isn't to do with intelligence, then explain what it it's to do with. Self-deception?[/I]
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's [I]one[/I] of the issues I've raised with your argument. I'm not going to say that it's the main one.
And unfortunately, you still aren't resolving the problem for whatever reason. I won't speculate why that is, but it is what it is. Now, once again, the problem has to do with your original claim that I keep going back to, which you aren't going back to. So have you retracted it or what? That's what I'm waiting for from you.
Your original claim to me was that the prevention of suffering matters, and that anything else would be having an agenda for another person. Logically, included in that "anything else" would be the prevention of joy. That also matters. If prevention of joy is having an agenda for another person, then prevention of suffering is having an agenda for another person. And if prevention of suffering isn't having an agenda for another person because there is no person, then prevention of joy isn't having an agenda for another person because there is no person.
It isn't clear to me whether or not you understand this problem because you haven't been addressing it directly, which means that the problem will continue to persist unresolved.
Whether you realise it or not, you have been forced into a dilemma and must choose from limited options. Not included in those options is having your cake and eating it. Your current tactic seems to be to appear as though you're addressing what I'm saying without actually doing so.
Oh you're so clever :roll:.
Quoting S
I just see your "problem" as almost nonsensical, so unresolved would not even apply. It doesn't matter that the parent has an agenda per se, it is the fact that someone else will be LIVING OUT the parent's (society's?) agenda(s).
Thank you.
Wait, is that an insult?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Another red herring.
No it directly addresses your error. The logic you are presenting has mischaracterized the argument.
Prevention of suffering (and anything else, including joy) = No person who is alive to be deprived of joy, and no actual person who is living out another person's agenda..even if that agenda included included for them to experience "joy". But again, that only matters if the person was alive. If the person is not born, no actual person is forced into an agenda.
It's just as misleading as the other examples that I've given which you're ignoring just because you find them insulting. Hey kids, do want to go to Disneyland? You like Disneyland, don't you? That's effectively what you're doing, and we both know that that's wrong. You're guilty of mis-selling a product.
I was thinking more along the lines of this:
I know you got sidetracked, but I was interested in your response to this:
"Wouldn't, say, physics fit that description--something structural, it's not reflected upon, but it runs our lives. So would you say that physics is morally problematic? "
I am not misleading anyone. Creating the conditions for suffering for another being "ok" because you have an agenda for them (that includes things like "joy") is morally problematic. That is the position. The agenda to "prevent suffering" does not deprive any actual person of anything, including joy. By being born, that person is living a lifetime's worth of another's agenda for them.
The problem is they aren't commensurable per se. One is about the scientific laws of the universe, one is about human nature. You never answered, why is someone going to the fridge from the couch? I know funny question.
Clever..but you forgot the one where the guy gets stoned to death (and not the drug kind).
I'm more like this (but not bald):
Well, one is about human nature, too, unless you think we're somehow "outside of physics."
But if you want to stick to human nature, we can use our autonomic nervous systems, as S suggested.
Re going to the fridge, I already said because they're hungry, but I pointed out that they might not have any negative phenomenal assessment of that at all, and you pointed out that you weren't talking about that anyway--you're saying something that's independent of any individual's assessment of their states.
Fortunately you're not, because we're more intelligent than that. But your descriptions and claims are nevertheless misleading, and you're in denial about the fact that that's so. You're mis-selling a product.
How many examples is it going to take?
Do you agree that the Disneyland example is an example of a misleading proposition? Why is it misleading? Obviously because the part about dragging children along the ground by horse for miles and miles is deliberately not mentioned, right?
So then, why don't you agree that your antinatalism proposition is misleading because you deliberately don't mention all of the other things that it would prevent which matter so much to people?
It's a clear-cut case. You are mis-selling a product. It's wrong. And you should stop. If this were retail, you would be fined.
And you should be honest enough to admit that this is what you're doing.
Right, so talking about string theory to get my car fixed would also be appropriate? I did say "per se" because I knew you were going to bring up that red herring.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Right, hunger.. Let's start there. In the Schopenhauer view, the "negative" state is that which is not at some sort of satiation- to be deprived.
I know you're saying this. So you do not need to repeat it.
What I'm saying is that it makes no sense to me that you'd be saying that something is morally problematic even though an individual has no issues about it. They don't at all mind any of the states in question, etc.
You explained that it's because it's "Something that is so structural, it is not reflected on, but runs our lives." Well, that's true of things like physics, our autonomic nervous systems, etc., too. So why wouldn't those be morally problematic on your view? That's not a commentary about conventional linguistic frameworks. So conventional linguistic frameworks that we'd use have nothing to do with the issue.
The fact that we are in a deprived state = suffering. It matters not what people evaluate about this or that actual experience. In this model, it is acknowledged that we are always in a sense becoming and never fully being. Becoming has a quality of not fully satisfied.
Again, why does the guy grab something from the fridge? Why isn't he satisfied without doing so? Is it something related to a deficiency in hunger, thirst, comfort, entertainment?
Right, I understand that that's the view. What I'm asking is WHY that's the view. What would be the motivation for having that view?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Why do we have to keep going over this when I've said maybe six or seven times that the person is hungry. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm saying that one can be hungry without assigning any sort of "unpleasant" assessment to it at all. And according to what you're saying above, that's fine, because the view doesn't hinge on an individual assigning an "unpleasant" assessment to the experience.
So we don't have to keep going over this.
Let's just get to WHY one would have a view that something is morally problematic even though someone doesn't have a problem with it.
This is all stemming from schopenhauer saying that the view hinges on "systematic suffering," where that doesn't need to take into account any contingent assessments of the states in question.
I agree with you otherwise, but if it turns out that he's simply wanting to argue that hunger is necessarily a negative experience to an individual, in phenomenal/assessment terms, then he's not actually arguing for anything "systematic" where the individual's assessment is irrelevant. And then it would just turn into me trying to figure out why he'd be insisting that everyone feels a way that they clearly do not on my view (and in my personal experience, including my own).
Yeah, that's pretty insane.
Oh yeah, that's also pretty insane. Nietzsche was right on this point and Schopenhauer was wrong. Ironically, a life without everything that Schopenhauer would call suffering wouldn't be worth living. But in reality, life with suffering is worth living in the majority of cases.
Oh good, thank you.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting S
So all of this is wrong about Schopenhauer's view. Schopenhauer's ideal would probably be something like Nirvana- a complete lack of lack. I've said this before about Schop- his world would be one with absolutely nothing or absolutely everything. There would be no deprived states. All being or all nothing. There is no becoming or flux. Thus, a world "worth living" in a Nietzschean "suffering makes things worth it" isn't even in the radar of this kind of holistic metaphysics. That's intra-worldly affairs, and Schop's metaphysics is the "world" itself.
That's just as insane if not more so. That's not an ideal, that's an inconceivable nothing. A nonsense. No one in their right mind would trade their life for that, unless perhaps they were one of the few exceptions where life is really, really, really bad.
And that matches my description anyway. That would be a life without everything that Schopenhauer would call suffering, and it wouldn't be worth living. It is true that in reality, life with suffering is worth living in the majority of cases. You might not want that to be true, but it is.
I find it ironic that you use this example, as I think this is more something that natalists would use... "Oh life is justifiable because it has Disneyland moments".. misleading the fact that much of life isn't.. And I do believe many people misjudge this, and to do so for other people, is morally problematic. I've discussed the fallacy of simple "self-reports" on life being "good" or "wanting to live". I"ve also explained in detail how starting a life and continuing a life are two different things.
But more to my point. The logic is that preventing "goods" do not matter unless an ACTUAL person exists to be deprived. Preventing "harm" is ALWAYS good, even if there is no actual person to be benefited from this prevention. Procreating, despite this fact is putting an agenda to be lived out by another person above the prevention of suffering. Forcing someone to live out an agenda is morally problematic. Analogies were used of games you like that you think others MUST play by forcing them into playing it, etc. It doesn't matter if people eventually identify with the game or not. That is wrong to force them into the game in the first place. No one is forced into anything, nor deprived of anything in the antinatalist outcome.
Okay, but presumably you agree with him. So WHY do you feel it's wrong? (If why you feel it's wrong is identical to why Schopenhauer feels it's wrong for some reason, you can just report that, but in that case, why does Schopenhauer feel it's wrong?)
I'm presuming that you're not just parroting Schopenhauer's views without critically thinking about them very much.
I don't necessarily think there is an all-pervading Will, though I think there are some interesting ideas that could be useful from it. I do think the ideas on deprivation ring true and do believe it to be the background of life.
Please see this thread for more elaborate ideas on it:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5981/schopenhauers-deprivationalism
Nothing in that explains why, when an individual has no issues with those things, they're still a moral problem nevertheless.
I keep asking that, and I'm not sure you know how to answer it, because you keep deferring to things that don't really address the question.
Imagine if someone said, "I know you don't mind when you gain or lose a pound, but nevertheless, it's morally bad for you to gain or lose a pound, so I'm going to fix things so that can not happen."
The person would want to know why you think it's morally bad for them to gain or lose a pound and why you're meddling in their affairs "on their behalf" when they don't have a problem with gaining or losing just a pound and they didn't ask you to meddle on their behalf.
When they ask you why you feel it's morally bad regardless of how they feel about it, it wouldn't do any good to keep explaining that you feel it's morally bad, that you characterize it as something negative, etc. They want to know your motivation for the characterization.
It's looking at the big picture and seeing a uniform principle. Not everyone will see that. Gravity affects you, but you do not have to understand how it works, for example.
Sure. And on the big picture, the uniform principle has it that lacking or desiring things is bad regardless of how anyone feels about it because?
Insatiable and unfulfilled desires are painful by their very nature. That we are lacking something at almost all times, and the fact that fulfilling some of these lacks is only temporarily satisfying is a negative in and of itself.
Okay, but then you're denying that people can be hungry, for example, without having an "unpleasant" phenomenal assessment of it. Is that right?
So desiring is like a wound that is never clotted by simply fulfilling a desire. Physiological pain (pain being by its nature unpleasant) attend many of these lacks. But it will persist again even after temporary satiation. Can one revel in the unpleasantness of starving? Sure. Perhaps certain masochistic types. So, if the masochists don't get what they desire?
That doesn't outweigh the overall value of the lives of many people. Given that the nonsense ideal of living without that is not a possible alternative, the only other alternative is lifelessness, which is not better than the lives that the people themselves value. They would not opt to never have lived if given the option, and it is immoral to dismiss their own conclusion as you are doing.
None of that would matter prior to birth. No forcing, no deprivation. You can't force someone to play a game you think they will like at some point (and maybe not at others) and then say "See, aren't you glad I forced this on you?!". What is the harm of not being born to the person not being born? NOTHING.
What are you talking about? It matters now. Now is prior to the birth of possible future generations, which is what I was talking about. It matters already, right now, whether or not our planet will be full of human life fifty years from now, one hundred years from now, two hundred years from now, and so on. And if most people now wouldn't opt to never have lived if possible, then it's reasonable to infer that a new generation of people would also not opt to have never been born if possible, so it's not wrong, it's actually good. Good is better than both neutral and bad, as I've told you before. And a planet devoid of life is neutral at best.
And you keep switching up your justifications in a logically inconsistent manner. If there's no person prior to conception, then there's no one to be forced. You yourself just said "no forcing", but then you illogically try to challenge me as though there's a person prior to conception that would somehow be forced into existence.
It only matters to prevent suffering. Having good only matters to those already born. All the people alive who report that they experience something "good" doesn't take away the logic of the asymmetry prior to birth. The one time all harm is prevented is all the matters. Anything else is forcing an agenda so another lives it out. It is no wonder society crams so many types of thinking from high on down.. To perpetuate itself, have compliant workers, you need Nietzschean mentality.
Quoting S
No, you are mischaracterizing the argument. What I mean is once born, that person is forced. Prior to this, no one is forced.
It doesn't matter how many times you repeat your opinion, you know. I already know that that's your opinion, and it won't become any closer to being true or justified the more that you repeat it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The asymmetry between the good of there being lots of people living worthwhile lives on the one hand, and the neutrality or badness of a planet devoid of life on the other. Got it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, to someone insanely removed from reality, that's all that matters. To everyone else, lots of other things matter. So much so that what you're saying will sound outrageous to them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We've been over this and you failed to produce a valid response. You're guilty of what you accuse others of doing. You're guilty of forcing your agenda by only considering the prevention of suffering, rather than the prevention of joy and everything else. So it doesn't work. It's the fallacy of special pleading, also known as applying a double standard.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What are you talking about then? You've lost me. Forced to do what? No one is forced to do anything once born. Are you forgetting that life isn't a "game" that people are forced to "play"? People stop "playing" all the time, and no, that isn't a cue for you to go off on one about suicide. I'm only raising it as a refutation of your point about being forced, I'm not suggesting anything beyond that, and I don't want to hear all about your vaguely related thoughts on the matter yet again.
[quote=The Power of Schopenhauer from www.medium.com]Beyond the world as we know it
Schopenhauer’s philosophical system was built on the work of Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher of the Enlightenment. Like Kant, Schopenhauer believed our world had two contrasting aspects to it: total reality can be separated into what we can and can’t experience of it.
Firstly there is the “phenomenal” world (phenomenal meaning “what is experienced”). This is the world as ordered by our sense and as we experience it in space and time and according to the law of cause and effect. In short, the phenomenal world is everything we can feel, hear, perceive etc.
But what if we somehow had access to the world as it really is? What is outside our perception of the world, outside our senses and even outside of space and time and cause and effect? Schopenhauer calls it the “noumenal” aspect of the world (noumenal meaning “what is outside of experience”).
In short there is the universe in-itself and the universe for human beings. This is why Schopenhauer’s named his book The World as Will and Representation.
Schopenhauer believed that since our intellect imposes difference on the universe, the universe outside of our intellect must be an undifferentiated oneness.
The “phenomenal” world is things in space and time: trees, dust, people, sky, water. If we could ever step outside of ourselves (which we of course can’t), the “noumenal” world would be pure undifferentiated energy. All those trees, dust, people, sky and water and so on as a state of pure being.
The Will
This “energy” is what Schopenhauer called the “Will”. The philosopher reasoned that stuff happens, and as such something must be making it happen. By using a process of intuition, he deduced that we are nothing in essence but a set of desires and drives. Drives being as simple as our heartbeat, or the need to reproduce, and desires being our desire to stay alive or have sex.
You can extrapolate this out to animals and plants, and ultimately to inert matter. Everything in the universe is changing. Everything has tendencies, from the inertia of a comet in deep space, to the libido of a rock star.
Since it is outside of time, the Will is eternal, and if it is eternal it is purposeless.
The Will manifests itself in us as desire: desire to live on, desire to eat, drink, have sex and buy the latest iPhone. In the context of living beings Schopenhauer called it the “Will to Life”.
In a world bereft of meaning only desire drives human beings onwards, to procreate, to consume, to conquer and to accumulate. The blind, senseless force of the Will that drives the universe and is also driving through us, it allows us no respite from desire.
We may get a momentary release from dissatisfaction when we acquire something, but soon another desire will get back in the driving seat of our consciousness. As the great writer put it:
“Life therefore oscillates like a pendulum from right to left, suffering from boredom”
We are never truly fulfilled, according to Schopenhauer. “Suffering is the substance of all life” (to a greater or lesser extent, I would add), only death is a true escape.
Besides death, Schopenhauer thought that renouncing earthly things — in effect to renounce desire as much as possible — was the best way to ease the suffering of our unquenchable cravings.
Compassion
An important aspect of renunciation is compassion. Care for people and animals was important to Schopenhauer since there is no ultimate distinction between things. Everything and everybody is part of the noumenal “oneness” of the being. The philosopher agreed with the Buddhist idea that to harm other creatures is to ultimately harm ourselves.
The ethical ideas of Schopenhauer and Buddhism have a lot in common. (Photo by dorota dylka on Unsplash)
The similarities between the ethical ideas that Schopenhauer arrived at independently and Buddhist beliefs are clear. Asceticism is a common virtue among religions, but particularly Buddhism. The philosopher wrote:
“If I wished to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I should have to concede to Buddhism pre-eminence over the others. In any case, it must be a pleasure to me to see my doctrine in such close agreement with a religion that the majority of men on earth hold as their own.”
The person who acts with kindness is the person who knows the truth deep down: that in the grand scheme of things the distinction between living creatures is an illusion. If we act with compassion, we feel less separate and isolated, we feel connected in a way that dissolves our ego. That’s why we describe kind acts as “selfless”.
Schopenhauer was also outspoken for animal rights, a very rare attitude in the nineteenth century:
“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
Beauty and the Arts
Another temporary escape from desire, is the way that we find enjoyment in the arts and beauty. Pleasure in art, for Schopenhauer, engrossed us in the world as representation, while momentarily being oblivious to the world as Will. Art can also give us an intuitive and therefore deeper connection to the world than science or reason could.
Music was the highest form of art for Schopenhauer. Because it’s not “mimetic”, or a copy of anything else as, say, painting is, music depicts the will itself. As such, music is pure expression, a “true universal language” understood everywhere. Listening to music we may appreciate the Will without feeling the pain (desire or boredom) of its workings. The philosopher wrote:
“The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom, in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand.”[/quote]
And having kids isn't a messiah complex? Oh, the "mission" to bring happy people into the world following the agendas of this or that. Procreation is force recruiting. At least antinatalists just try to convince.
As I said earlier, I commend your doggedness; but, it really comes off as some version of fundamentalism or as per your other topic, profound neuroticism. But... I know (or think I know) that this is philosophy and everything else is a trifle.
Here is where you are off the mark. Neutrality (no badness here) of a devoid life matters not to no one. No eternal being is crying, no ghost babies are lamenting. Only you projecting.
Quoting S
Yes, and this is about right ideas on the matter. Other things matter = agendas for people to follow. I don't doubt people who don't reflect much on it, just accept, identify, and cope with the agendas that are the given.
Quoting S
But we also went over how if no one is actually alive, preventing joy is neither good nor bad.
Quoting S
Forced to do all the things life entails when one is a functioning human in an enculturated setting. And yes, you know I will say that forcing someone to play and then saying that your only way out is violently ending your physical being is not right. I would also mention the starting and continuing comparison.
Convince through the deliberate deception involved in mis-selling a product. Yes, your agenda is much more noble and praiseworthy.
And there isn't deception and agendas being crammed down people to procreate and then get people through life to procreate some more.. No pain, no gain, strength-through-adversity, life is not worth living unless you suffer a little.. all part of what now? Not an agenda? Not propaganda to not rebel against that which keeps one suffering? Please.
No, here is where [I]you[/I] are way off the mark. A world devoid of life matters to lots and lots of people. Just ask them. And no, I know exactly what you're thinking, but by then it would already be too late, so that obviously doesn't count. But anyway, we don't need to argue over that because it's neutral at best, which still isn't better than good.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm glad you agree.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, it's just a fact that other things matter. Ask people if you don't believe me. And that fact can be used as a justification in terms of probability for the moral permissibility of having a child. They don't have to follow any agenda if they don't want to.
Quoting schopenhauer1
We've been over this all a million times, and I stand by my criticism regarding your double standard. In that case, preventing suffering would also be neither good nor bad. And no, that's not an acknowledgment of your asymmetry point, it's a charge that you're committing a fallacy. But sure, if you're going with neutral, I'll just point to the good which beats it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No one is forced to play. Full stop.
Get the point yet, or should I keep going?
Artists would just be people making it seem like life is better, less painful, part of the natalist propaganda. And in truth, to antinatalists, it would be better if no art had ever been made, and if no one had existed. Life includes its own consent, People think of consent like how you would answer to the offer to sign a contract. But it's not like that, life wants to live. From the moment it is there. We humans identify, sometimes, with the thinky little verbal thing, one portion of the organism, and it seems like this little piece of the organism didn't sign any contracts and it can get mad it was not offered a choice. But the whole organism chooses life with great passion all the time. And if it doesn't then it stops living. Like elderly people whose mated die and they die a couple of day later.
What I am thinking about here is that most people operate from the assumption that individual humans are discrete selves, sort of disconnected from everything else, that begin to exist at some point after their conception. It is also assumed that each person remains the same person throughout all the changes of their life. This is what some, including Daniel Kolak, call "closed individualism". This is our culturally-received default view, one rarely questioned, and one that probably has a lot to do with a history of belief in a soul. But I, and quite a few others, don't share that view. I am convinced that there is just one universal self that finds itself occupying all perspectives, one that simply is that which is everything. We just don't tend to be aware of this because of the way information integration works and is limited. So I, for one, don't believe that I, the real deepest self, the ground of my being, began to exist in the 1970s. This personal identity with a body, a name, and so on, is just one of many windows on the world for the one universal Self.
I subscribe to something approximately like the view of Daniel Kolak, with his open individualism, or monopsychism
The reason I ask about Schopenhauer's view is that I am reading him now, both his Fourfold Root and World as Will and Idea, along with a secondary source, and I have gotten the distinct impression that he held a view similar to mine on this matter.
I think this is relevant, because with regard to the question of future births, we then wouldn't be asking about the future well-being of nonexistent persons (no such thing as persons in this sense), but rather the experience of the always-already-existing universal Self. It then isn't much different in principle from considering your own personal future experience.
Supposing I am on the right track, how would this change how we consider arguments like Benatar's? It seems it would mean that it does make sense to say that we are possibly talking about the prevention of future joy for someone now living.
There are other positions on the question of personal identity that would also cause problems for arguments about non-existing or existing persons, empty individualism being one. This is one that Derek Parfit subscribes to, if I am not mistaken.
Ah, well as long as you know what's "best" for everyone, and being born and generally going along with it, I guess we can all agree, because clearly people stop to reflect about this issue enough to give any consideration to it. No sarcasm at all here.
It can be argued that Schopenhauer himself wasn't an antinatalist in the Benatar fashion. Rather, his was more of a lament than an ethical guideline. Being that existence is all Will, and is ceaseless, it can never be squelched in physiological terms, for similar reasons you bring up. There is a sort of panpsychism or monopsychism. Everything would be manifestations of Will. But at the same time, he did have a notion of individual salvation. If the Appearance was the manifestation of Will in its Fourfold Rooted objectification, all it would take is an Enlightened individual to extinguish this Appearance for some sort of calming of the Will. So there seems to be a bit of both in there.
As far as my own take, I can only postulate that individual selves exist along with animal beingness. Thus "coming into being" is a process of conception, gestation, awareness, and self-awareness- all aided through biological and social mechanisms and cues. Preventing a selfhood is preventing the "coming into being", which of course is preventing suffering.
At the least, antinatalism is providing a template to understand why we are continuing existence. Just stop to think about it. WHY are we perpetuating more people? I am not talking the dull, brute way nature fools us into it (sex feels good and this leads to procreation), but in a philosophically-informed way. What are we trying to do here perpetuating more people? People just don't consider this at all. It is even more existentially relevant than why continue living. It is rooted in the very questioning of ANY human existence, not just your own and thus implies much more about life itself.
@Coben @S @Wallows @Banno
Good, because I can't stand sarcasm.
Is there a moderate version of antinatalism that can be applied here?
Well, a "moderate" form might be something like not having children because of overpopulation- it is only contingent on global conditions. Another form might be the idea that only certain people should procreate and not others. However, most sensible antinatalists aren't on a rampage against parents or anything; they are trying to convey a reasoning for why it is moral to prevent suffering and not force others at the procreational decision level.
But if you also mean that antinatalism is a sort of tip of the iceberg for existential thought in general, then yes. What do we want others to get out of life? You can answer that any which way, but what is it about that, that a life time should be created for that? If it is just because.. existence is just good in and of itself. Well, that has to be justified for why someone else needs to experience existence. Many people go to work on Monday, go home, find some hobby, active (and much passive) pastime, and repeat. What is it about that cycle? Technology building? Learning? We have to seek hard why this is worth it for someone else to be born into other than lifestyle decisions for the procreators, another past time, cultural expectations, some sort of ultimate set of goods.. or even worse, just an abstract "the human experience" which then swaths over any actual reasoning for a vague concept. Struggling to find self-actualized fulfillment seems to be just an odd reason too.
What's more revealing is any reason to bring more people into the world is AT THE LEAST just as suspect as an antinatalist's reasons to NOT bring someone into the world. So perhaps a moderate version is someone on the fence. But of course an actual antinatalist would convey reasonings for why the scale is tipped for not bringing someone into the world.
I'm more concerned about the circumstances that would allow one to procreate without adherence to eugenics or such rubbish?
I'm not sure what that means. Antinatalism is not about eugenics. It's an equal opportunity no birth movement :lol: .
Well, I was concerned with the circumstances that would allow procreation? A communist utopia? No predetermined defects?
Ah.. If the world was a guaranteed paradise and paradise meant that you can tune it into as much pain as you wanted at any given time to "grow from it", but then can stop whenever you wanted, and you can sleep for any amount of time and wake up any given time and had no needs or wants other than what you wanted to need or want at any given time? You can choose to live in a universe like ours with slogans like "growth-through-adversity" but then stop it at a whim when you find that it is relatively sucky, or then go back to it if you find it fascinating? Sure..But that is pure fantasy, as is the notion of a paradise.
Well, you leave no room for adversity, and this flies against any commonsensical notion of what life is.
More fundamentalism, eh? :roll:
You can assert fundamentalism..but besides being contrary to popular opinion, there is not much force behind what you're labeling it. Also, I did say paradise can be choosing as much adversity as you want..testing it out and leaving it when be :). Besides the obvious argument that we really don't know what the child will encounter or be like (for contingent harms) prior to birth, one can say it is still fundamentalism to think that prevention of suffering, and not having someone else live out an agenda is also a form of fundamentalism. Clearly "something" about birth "needs" to take place in the "right circumstances".
Well, that's just silly. If one were to have the capacity to tolerate adversity, and yet choose to live a life full of comfort, then I don't see how anyone would willingly choose to tolerate adversity. Are you trying to have your cake and eat it too?
You said paradise..
Adversity means unpleasant or difficult. I guess I wouldn't choose to have anything that was simply unpleasant - but I certainly want difficult. Not all the time. But I don't want to lounge on a perfect sofa being taken care of all the time. I want challenges, and frankly, even some drama.
In some more abstract versions of a "paradise" everything would be a completeness or a nothingness such that you would not have any needs or wants whatsoever.. thus even the need for need for need wouldn't matter.
Why would anyone with any sense see any merit in that sort of abstract, unrealistic, nonsensical speculation?
Hah, coming from a philosophy forum, I don't see any merit to this.
In what I said or in what he said? If the former, then can you explain it? Because it seems to me to be the opposite of good philosophy. It seems to me to be the epitome of bad philosophy. You know, like the sort of unrestrained stoner speculation kind of stuff. Like, hey man, can you imagine if there was an ocean that wasn't blue or watery or full of liquid? If I've got my sensible hat on, I would be like, why? That's just stupid. But if I just wanted a bit of senseless entertainment...
Well, I am addressing your concern wrt. my sentiment or question as to what kind of conditions are permissible to have children to an antinatalist. Which, then evolved into imagining a possible state of affairs (utopias, paradise, etc.) where an antinatalist would feel comfortable in having children...
I'm none the wiser after that reply. You don't see any merit in my reply to what he said, or you don't see any merit in what he said?
Well, I think it is elucidating in what set of circumstances an antinatalist would warrant procreation, even if that means imagining perfect worlds or such...
What is it with people in this discussion and avoiding direct questions? Are you in training to become a politician?
So you were referring to my reply to what he said, rather than what he said, but you don't want to come out and directly say so. Fine, whatever, there's loads of merit in talk of completeness nothingness lack of lack of lack of non-watery non-liquid oceans.
I’ve been following this thread for some time now and I am curious as to your response is philosophical period.... it seems as though it is meant to illicit an emotional repose rather than a substantive response.
The original poster asked a question to which it was responded to clearly.
You’ve just proved my point.
Tone does matter because if your looking to illicit a “fight” then your response is achieving your goal. Substantive responses will illicit a more in-depth argument. As it seems this is a petty response from you.
Wallow asked a question. Shcopenhaur1 responded with an answer. He admitted his answer is a fantasy I the question... what is paradise? What kind of response would you expect?
Sir... if what I have done- referring to an ad hominem attack against you... then certainly that is what you are also guilty of.
Clearly, you are too busy gas lighting my responses rather than actually putting forth a substantial argument against shcopenhaur1/wallows question and response... I mean other than your own personal definition of what a philosophical debate should consist of.
Granted that the notion of non-hyperbolical paradise is fantasy, I'm still curious - this since many people of diverse backgrounds do hold onto some such notion of paradise which to them is not fantasy:
How would a never-ending obtainment of wants as they are wanted not eventually lead to an excruciating boredom with existence - and, hence, to an extreme psychological pain?
It seems to me that the overcoming of strife is part and parcel of what makes life pleasurable. This includes everything from states of fun to the obtainment of a personal dignity that is of intrinsic value (iow, rather than the winning of popularity contests, type of thing, whose value to me is extrinsic). And strife devoid of some form and degree of suffering - at minimum, an uncertainty about suffering's future occurrence - is not something I find possible.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Isn't this deviating from Schopenhauer and entering into Eastern belief structures? Specifically, those of actualizing Nirvana or Moksha. But I take it that you do interpret this too to be fantasy. I'm primarily asking because in a forced choice between actualizing Nirvana and actualizing an absence of all suffering via the noneixstence of all future life, I so far view the first to be less fantastical.
Ok, so your talking about intentions here I suppose?
My main point with the notion of a paradise where an antinatalist would actually allow one to procreate is an abstraction of the highest sort. If you fail to see any merit in discussing a perfect world where an antinatalist would actually allow procreation on their part is a failing on your part I assume.
Well, here I chime in and to the defence of schopenhauer1 (which has been extremely dogged in his asymmetric and symmetric notions of suffering) would say that suffering is a choice. If one were allowed to choose between a life with suffering (which can be called even a brute fact of existence), then I again suppose that most people would coffer a choice of no suffering. See the idealism here with respect to an existence in the "real" and "paradise" world?
If it was paradise, then people would not get bored. Actually, if Schopenhauer was right, the fundamental existence of boredom is proof of (this non-paradise) life's inability to just "be". Hence he always states, "We are always becoming but never being). Pure just "being" would satisfy itself. Hence no desire for desire would even matter. Does this sound far-fetched? Because it is. Hence a fantasy.
Quoting javra
So I call this idea of "growth-through-adversity" a Nietzschean one. It is almost the "Standard Model" for what many people want out of life, or want for their progeny. They want them to struggle to grow. My stock response to this is that it is a circular reasoning. Prior to birth, no one needed harm, yet somehow, the parent deems that a child must be procreated into the world and post-facto deal with suffering in order to get the pleasure of overcoming it. I don't buy this Standard Model. I think it is rather cruel actually to create the conditions for someone else to suffer so they can overcome it because the progenitors of that person deem this is necessary to create into the universe. In other words, a universe devoid of people growing-through-adversity, in this view is deemed as a worse off world, when in fact, I see it as creating suffering to overcoming it (for someone else) as indeed the worse off world.
Quoting javra
I am not sure what you mean by being less fantastical, but the idea of Nirvana is not deviating from Schopenhauer. In fact, it aligns well with him since he very much agreed with Hindu ideas of Moksha and Buddhist Nirvana as salvations of sorts for the Will to diminish its constant state of desire. So quite the opposite actually.
I would go one step further.. One can choose to have suffering but then turn it off at a whim. But people think that life is about growing through various experiences, even suffering. My argument against this is that to CREATE suffering for another, just so they can "feel good" about overcoming it, is more than odd, but perhaps not even moral. It certainly smacks of propaganda if we compare it to social pressures to do things you do not want to do.. If people keep saying to themselves, "No pain, no gain" and it comes from one's one's self even.. then little else needs to be done to ensure people can justify and even promote more suffering in order to overcome it and keep the whole thing going. Society has found its own slogans and patterns of thought for its own self-perpetuation, suffering and all. Thus, is it even the individual thinking this, or cues from a bigger institutional push to ensure people not only not avoid suffering, but enshrine it as an existential need.
I know Schopenhauer borrowed ideas from the East, but didn't catch him entertaining the notions of Nirvana or Moksha.
My point was that stopping all humans from reproducing seems impossible, but if it were possible, how would one stop all greater apes from reproducing? If not, they will experience their own suffering and will eventually evolve into sapience akin to our own. This same reasoning can be taken all the way to bacteria reproducing. If all life on all planets is not completely abolished by prohibiting all reproduction everywhere, suffering will yet be. And life has a way of evolving into sapience. Succeeding in this endeavor, then, is to me unrealistic. Btw, I know some Buddhists maintain such general perspectives on prohibition of reproduction, but I do disagree with them in this.
Anyway, wanted to better express my point of view.
My contention here seems to be of the sort, in what kind of world would it be justified to have children. For the matter, I don't plan to have children *Wallows proceeds to feel as though he has taken a big burden off his shoulders*...
I also don't think it is sane to procreate with defects that could be passed on to one's offspring (hence my eugenics quip).
But, life is fundamentally rife with disappointment and struggle, and if we assume that this is true regardless of fantastical or wishful thinking, then I suppose there is no other way to put it than state that the antinatalist simply demands too much from themselves or others in order to procreate.
Now all you have to do is actually explain why you think that. Do you also think that there is merit in discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Because it elucidates under what conditions an antinatalist would allow one to procreate or not? Surely, you can see some merit to assessing that, rather than arguing over how much this world sucks...
Why don't you do create a poll on the forum? My money would be that most people on the forum would choose a life with suffering, because a life without it would be much worse. It would be horrible. And I think most people on this forum, perhaps unlike the general population, would be intelligent enough to realise that.
If you're sincere, then go ahead and start one, just to asses the reasonableness of our lot, hereabouts.
Only insofar as one might think that that could have some bearing on a meaningful discussion back in reality. If not, then I think that it would be a waste of time to delve into fantasy land.
I overlooked that you responded to me here.
First, we weren't talking about starvation, but simple hunger. I've never in my life been in a state of starvation, and no one I know ever has either. That's not to say there are no people who have suffered from extreme hunger anywhere in the world, but that's not most people by a long shot. (And it's not going to be anyone for long, because either you find food or you die.)
For most people, being hungry is not unpleasant, and it's nothing like a pain state. It's still unclear whether you're denying that, or whether you're saying that regardless, it's still a moral problem--in which case I'm still trying to figure out why it would be a moral problem when the people you're trying to white-knight aren't complaining/don't seem themselves as victims of any sort of moral transgression due to being hungry so that they eventually get off the couch and go to the refrigerator.
You're not interested enough to do so yourself, then? Even though you were the one who seemed to be offering up that speculation about how most people would respond as some sort of support behind the notion that a life without suffering is preferable.
I am satisfied with this thread. If you aren't, then go ahead and start the poll.
For the matter, I should also point out that it's a near impossibility to asses such a sentiment. Ask me why...
It wasn't about this thread, it was about your comment that most people would opt for a life without suffering. If you're satisfied enough not to question that comment, then so be it. You haven't made clear your thinking about what I said: whether you agree with my prediction, disagree with it, aren't sure one way or the other...
I can only speak for myself here I suppose, so I would amend my comment to the sort of statement of fact, that I would prefer to live a life without suffering. But, we then digress into wishful thinking, and the near-incomprehensible notion of what such a life would look like(?)
Well, given your awareness of all of those accompanying problems, why would you conclude that you'd prefer it over what you do know?! You'd risk a nightmarish existence, like in one of those "be careful what you wish for" horror films?
Maybe people don't demand enough when it comes to thinking about putting more people into the world.
That's an understatement.
But, would a life with suffering be worse-off than the idealistic notion of a life without suffering (Nirvana)?*
*Conversely also...
Isn't that put simply a gross overgeneralization?
Again, as I've stated, Schopenhauer equates need with suffering as in one definition of it. Needing is not completion, and not being complete in this metaphysics is a state of suffering. This is structural in that it pervades all animal life. Not sure why you're not getting that part and keep going back to how one feels about it when it is definitional to suffering. However, it can be argued that attendant feelings of loss, pain, angst, frustration, and the like is very true when you DON'T fulfill certain needs and wants (hence why so many Eastern gurus emphasize being detached from achieving any particular desire or outcome). So there are two things going on related but not the same. However, you don't need the attendant feelings to have suffering be equated with an incomplete state of becoming. That is my take anyways.
No. It is a gross generalization to assume that the Standard Model of growth-through-adversity is what is necessary to be experienced by anyone, period.
I assume there was a typo there, and the first "without" should be a "with". No, I don't think that it would be worse off. I think that it's just a common misperception to think otherwise, not too disimilar from people who jump to the conclusion that real life would be so much better without physical pain, even though they probably very much wouldn't want to live with a congenital insensitivity to pain.
What some posters don't see on here is that if it was a paradise, there wouldn't even be the harm of being bored "not suffering" :rofl:.
But, the difference here lays in stating a fact that life is inherently full of suffering and adversity, rather than pointing out that life without suffering would be preferable. Even the Buddhists would seemingly agree here to some extent. (Although, I've always treated the notion of pure bliss that is the cathartic state of being that is Nirvana as a sort of jump discontinuity in being itself)... A sort of metaphysical solipsism.
Sure life without suffering is preferable but not actually the case, thus antinatalism. I disagree with those who want to promote "growth-through-adversity" (The Standard Model of Natalism) as good or necessary for another person to experience, when it is clear an alternative exists which is non-existence which has no harm and no one to be deprived of any good aspects.
I see that you keep going back to nonsense as if it were sense, without seeming to realise that that's a disadvantage, not an advantage. It's like those people who talk of a God in nonsensical ways, like being outside of time and yet created the world, and they then expect to be taken seriously, as though they're talking sense. It would still be nightmarish, even without suffering, just like the pleasure machine would be nightmarish. I would absolutely hate to be plugged into a pleasure machine and become like a vegetable.
Is there any other way to state it (life, suffering, existence, etc.)? I tend to think it's a brute fact of existence, no?
What some posters also don't get is that a paradise is still a paradise, even if it is unobtainable. The question wasn't "Is paradise attainable', but "What is paradise?".
No one here doesn't get that a paradise is a paradise. That's an irrelevant truism. Rather, the issue is that some of us here dispute that your [I]so-called paradise[/I] would be a paradise proper. And also, no, the objection is not simply that your so-called paradise is unobtainable, it's that it's an inconceivable nonsense. A rough sketch of what I see as a paradise would be a life without having to work full-time in retail, in a sunny climate, with lots of money, and so on. It's still a paradise to me, even if, realistically, it's unobtainable for me. But unlike what you're saying, that makes sense.
I get it. What's not being stated is why it's morally problematic. In other words why is suffering under this definition morally problematic?
Causing someone to need something when they don't have to is morally problematic, even if the person is gracious or indifferent to the need they are being forced to need.
But, it has to be in some sense 'attainable' for anyone to even entertain it as being realistic?
It annoys me that you see things through such a narrow perspective, and cling to that way of seeing things like fundamentalist, but I should probably not allow myself to get annoyed by that and just accept that you probably won't change.
Others recognise that having needs is just part of a much bigger picture, and that the evaluation should be based on that much bigger picture.
Yes! If your "paradise" is like a wholly black, wholly red, square circle, dry watery ground sky, then it doesn't even count. We can't even have an intelligible discussion about it.
A conceivable paradise of a life without having to work full-time, having millions of pounds, a nice house near a beach, an expensive sports car, and so on, at least makes sense and is in some sense attainable. I could win the lottery.
So that's a statement. And I understand that you're making that statement. What I'm asking is the why. Why is that morally problematic?
You never asked, is paradise unattainable. And no it isn't. Precisely the problem.
It shouldn't be a surprise when I restate what I have stated before- ethics starts with axioms and sometimes you cannot go further back than that. Suffering is bad. Lacking is bad. Prevent and avoid suffering. Prevent and avoid lack. Preventing and avoiding suffering/lacking for a whole future life with no collateral damage to an actual person is good.
Okay. That's fine. It just seems very counterintuitive to me when we're talking about something that tons of people don't even have a problem with.
This is actually why a lot of my posts are not straight-up arguments, but rather thought-pieces that invoke or conveys a certain understanding or feeling around the axioms at hand.. What we may be overlooking or not considering, etc.
Please expand.
It's exactly like a child that loses once in a game and refuses to continue playing the rigged game, so as to not embarass itself.
Yes. They're lying to themselves. They'll come up with elaborate answers to avoid having to admit that life ain't that bad. It's all misdirection: smoke and mirrors. For example, he'll bring up that it's not easy to commit suicide. True, but then according to World Health Organisation statistics, approximately one million people commit suicide each year worldwide, which is about one death every 40 seconds or 3,000 per day. So lots of people can and do kill themselves. Every day. So even that is kind of misleading, given what he's arguing for. It would be alright to say that in an ordinary context, but not really when you're saying that life is so much worse than non-life.
Where does the confusion lay about here?
So, I wonder how you came about the notion that they do not succumb to either ailment?
No, I don't think you can lump them all together like that and jump to that conclusion. Like I said, in some cases, they're largely lying to themselves. You know, like an armchair philosopher who does this as a sort of hobby, content enough with life. The sort where it has just become the norm to come out with this kind of rhetoric. Note also that the real Schopenhauer himself was a massive hypocrite.
It's the childish lust after victory, over the enjoyment of life, that puts them in this situation. They don't want to lose and thus refuse to play i.e procreate.
And you know this.
That's my line. Please don't use it without my permission.
Quoting Shamshir
So they're all depressed because they're not all depressed, because some of them are content enough with life and are just lying to themselves? No, that makes no sense.
Alternatively, you weren't actually referring to anything I said, and so you shouldn't have worded your response that way.
May we not delve into such a line of reasoning, that would assert something of the sort:
It's the indulgence of fear that's off-putting, the paranoia.
If you put an antinatalist alone on an island with his or her crush, do you think he or she would be as prone to paranoic bouts of suffering?
Kind of an immoral way of trying to prove your point. I can see you standing there, waiting for the antinatalist to slit his wrists in front of you.. Then, turn to the crowd and say, "well that proves nothing really..just a blip of a statistic". Get the hell outta here.
One does not have to see a desire as a "deprived state", that's your own personal interpretation. One can desire something and not see what is desired as something that is lacked. One can feel content about life and desire new experiences and not feel in a deprived state. Why would your own feeling that that person is in a deprived state trump that person's feeling that they aren't in a deprived state?
You brought up Buddhism that supposedly says that desire is suffering, but that's not what it says, what it actually says is that attachment to desire is suffering. Buddhists decidedly do not agree with you in saying that desire is suffering.
And obviously if you see desire as suffering then it's no wonder life reduces to suffering to you, considering that desire drives our whole lives. But again, in my view you seeing desire as suffering is simply a symptom of your depression, which has causes that you do not want to look at or address. And the cause of your depression is not that "desire is suffering", you seeing life that way is a consequence of your depression.
So why are you interested in this subject. You comment on here about my supposed depression.. What draws you to this subject? Is there something specifically about this that appeals to you to make sure that I make sure that I'm wrong?
Anyways, at the least, I think antinatalism brings up the broader idea of why we have children. I think that in itself is a benefit, whether you agree or not, there is something to be said to actually question what we are trying to do as humans, bringing new people into existence. What do we want them to accomplish? What is it that is so necessary to the universe about humans living out their lives?
What can we agree on? Can we agree that life is not a paradise? Can we agree that harm exists on varying levels for individuals? Can we agree that bringing people into the world is often not reflected upon very much as to what they are hoping the progeny gets out of existence?
Are children brought into being from this paradise? Do we return to this paradise at death?
It seems incoherent to me that our lives and ourselves just burst from 'timeless non-condition' because our parents had sex. We are not brought into existence from somewhere/something that's not the world. As in, this abstract paradise ("unmanifested") is unnattainable because we are not distinct from the way in which the world is manifesting. There is no substantial self or being, separate from the world that has or lives a life, that will be annihilated at death - returning to paradise. It is through projecting nothingness prior to ones birth (and after), that these thoughts arise. There's nothing and nowhere and no time that's not worldly/manifested.
I agree that that would be immoral. But that's an emotionally charged mischaracterisation, so it doesn't count. You're welcome to reply to what I actually said, though.
To say it even simpler - overindulgence is harmful.
The Middle Path is no different from Goldilocks' just right.
Yes, I know very little about Buddhism, but even I know that. There's the story of how the Buddha went through both extremes. And it doesn't fit with the picture that anti-natalists paint.
I want you to see that you're wrong not because I want to boost my ego or win an argument, but for your own good, because I care about you. I care about people in general, but on this forum you stand out to me as someone who suffers a lot, so I try to help you. My comments to you aren't meant to attack you or belittle you, they are meant to provoke you to help you open your eyes. Specifically I try to help you see that your bleak vision of the world is not objective, it is a subjective view that stems from your own suffering, which is why I try to draw your attention to the actual reasons why you suffer so much, and away from the imagined reasons (such as that all desire is suffering and supposedly that's why you suffer the way you do).
When I talk of depression I don't mean to say that the root cause of how you feel about the world is a chemical imbalance in your brain and the solution is antidepressants, indeed we can agree that life is not a paradise for everyone, that individuals suffer on different levels, and that if you suffer it's not all your fault. You suffer because of experiences you've had, because of the beliefs you've formed, and while you are not entirely responsible for the experiences you've had, you can still change how you look at them and you can still change your beliefs. I have hope that you can get better, and I care about you, and if you want we can talk in private about your life so that I can help you more effectively.
Regarding the topic of why we have children, I would say for most people it's a drive that they feel, like people who feel thirsty are driven to water. Is there much point in discussing why we drink water, what's so necessary about drinking water? We do it because we feel the need to, the feeling is what moves us, the feeling could be seen as the life force itself. Sure we can temporarily ponder why we follow our feelings instead of just staying still and slowly die, and then at some point your feelings come back and you realize that you simply don't want to die, and you don't need to formulate a reason why you don't want to die, when you experience the feeling you see clearly the reason why, and the essence of the feeling cannot be put into words, we can talk about feelings but we're not conveying what it's like to experience them, their essence.
Depending on how you feel a given sentence can make sense to you or not, depending on how you feel you can see the same series of words as meaningful or meaningless. Feelings are fundamental to existence in a profound way, how you see the world depends on how you feel, and you won't understand why people have children if you abstract out the essence of feelings, the essence of life itself, by focusing solely on words and reason. Some people pretend that they focus only on reason and logic and don't let feelings get in the way when presenting an argument or reaching a conclusion, yet their most fundamental premises stem from how they feel and not from reason or logic.
Reminds me of an old folktale, where a boy refuses to wash 'cause he'll just get dirty again, so his folks stop feeding him 'cause he'll just get hungry again.
That's a good one, I'd not heard it before. And it fits well here. I think that perhaps the best way to convey the glaring fault with antinatalism is with the idiom that it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Yep.
Quoting Malhararos92
Won't argue with you there. Your typical objection would be "But what about the average life that is more balanced perhaps than the ones with famine and hunger?
The other objection would be "But what of the possibility of alleviation of pain through technology and things like positive psychology?
I would say suffering takes two forms- contingent and necessary. Contingent is about circumstances. Necessary is innate. It is innately part of the human experience to strive for survival, comfort, and entertainment. This striving represents an underlying dissatisfaction at almost all times (with moments of brief repose). On top of that is contingent suffering that you describe. There are pains and harms of all stripes in the form of physical disease, disaster, discomforts and mental disorders, anguish, frustrations, and just about any negative experience.
The main counter-attack of the antinatalist is that life need not be at all. We need not be missionizers of the human experience by procreating new people into the world. Rather, no one existing means NOTHING to that no-body that exists. So no one is "missing out" on good experiences. But certainly the alternative of being born means experiencing bad ones. This could have been avoided. In other words, all necessary and contingent suffering could be avoided for a potential person by simply not actualizing them into existence. There is no downside to them not existing in terms of the non-existent person in question.
Are you aware that schopenhauer was an antinatalist?
Yes I am.
lmao
I had the same reaction :lol:
Are you against assisted suicide in all cases as well? Or would you allow such thing if the pain is simply too much to bear for someone and there is no possible improvement or even cure?
Assisted suicide should be a valid and legal option. However, suicide in general is a different topic than not procreating. One can recommend not procreating for all, but not necessarily suicide. That is because there is a distinction between "a life worth starting" and "a life worth continuing". Once alive, though it would have been better never having been, one still has attachments, goals, fears of death/pain, that make exiting life early less of an imperative. Being anti-natal is not being pro-mortal. One does not entail the other.
Generally, the root of much normative ethics, if we are to give dignity and respect for the individual, would be around suffering. Thus agency in regards to how to handle one's own suffering would also very much be at the individual level. It's when one is creating choices for other lives that it becomes problematic. That is what procreation does. There's of course many other things involved, such as missionizing others into an ideology (that life is worth living and should be lived, not just for oneself who is already alive but for some other person, who should somehow also go through the motions and experiences of life).
Interestingly, Schopenhauer thought the basis of morality was metaphysically based. If we are all Will, compassion is thus breaking the barriers of seeing oneself as an individual Will and understanding the reality of unified monism. The act of seeing yourself in the other, is this understanding of the origin of our collective metaphysical origins (outside time and space and thus even the Principle of Sufficient Reason). I'm not sure I buy his basis, but it is an interesting and seemingly consistent one.
I also find it interesting that Schopenhauer himself was not a compassionate or ascetic person really (outside preferring to not be around other humans who he generally looked down on). But I see this is more legitimacy for his ideas as, he wasn't just creating a philosophy based on his own personality. His personality clearly would have preferred a self-interested and possibly hateful ideal of ethics.
What? Understatement? :lol: