What justifies a positive ethics (as opposed to a negative one)?
With ethical theories, you can have positive ethics and negative ethics. Roughly speaking, negative ethics would be about preventing or mitigating suffering while a positive ethics would focus more on creating well-being and happiness. You can have a mixture of the two, but I am proposing that it is only negative ethics that matters. Well-being presupposes that we are on some "journey" and thus "people" should "get on board with it". In the real world what this amounts to is that suffering is often at the behest of well-being. "True well-being requires suffering". "Being born has its suffering aspects, but it is well worth the rewards". Thus the "mixed bag" approach to ethics leads to an inevitable violation of negative ethics in favor of positive.
However, I do not see why this assumption must be true that negative ethics must give way to positive or that the positive necessarily needs to override the negative. Why would the prevention of suffering take a back seat to the promotion of "well-being"? Of course, the biggest place we find this coming to loggerheads is the issue of procreation. People want children DESPITE the inevitable suffering, because they want to create well-being (de novo) which will require them to experience and even overcome suffering.
However, I do not see why this assumption must be true that negative ethics must give way to positive or that the positive necessarily needs to override the negative. Why would the prevention of suffering take a back seat to the promotion of "well-being"? Of course, the biggest place we find this coming to loggerheads is the issue of procreation. People want children DESPITE the inevitable suffering, because they want to create well-being (de novo) which will require them to experience and even overcome suffering.
Comments (334)
Why does live=good? Why does the principle of preventing harm when you are able (even by simply refraining from procreation, as birth is the source of experiences of suffering) have to give way to positive ethics? What justifies positive ethics over and above a negative one? Simply asserting life=good doesn't seem like much of an argument at this point, though I can see you perhaps starting one with a certain premise that life just "is" necessary. However, this still needs some reasoning and substantiation behind it.
Matters to whom and by what measure?
Quoting schopenhauer1
What would constitue an answer to this question?
Humans. Ethical first principles.
Quoting Isaac
One where you would justify prevention of harm being less important than X positive ethic.
Suffering, the real gut-wrenching kind, inhabits the world of basic necessities. Granted the definition of basic necessities require modification but let's stick to food, shelter and clothes. As you already know the privation of the severest kind consists in these bare necessitiesof life being unfulfilled.
Sure, negative ethics which I'll read as alleviation/mitigation of suffering is vital to any viable ethical theory. However, considering that the bare necessities of life is now achieved (at least in the developed world) we can turn to the other pressing concern viz. achieving true wellbeing - the Socratic eudaimonia - which I think is another word for what you call positive ethics.
I'm ignoring the true complexity of the issue here. The definition of bare necessities changes and as we acquire the items in the lower rung of Maslow's hierarchy of needs they fade away and a new set of bare necessities take their place. I believe this is how it works.
So, what you see as a fault is just what is expected. Perhaps disparities in wellbeing in our world reinforces this belief.
How are you determining that the primacy of positive ethics isn't itself an ethical first principle? Do ethical first principles have labels attached identifying them as such?
Quoting schopenhauer1
You've just changed the words. What would constitue my having 'justified' it?
That is precisely what I'm asking everyone.
Quoting Isaac
I don't know, tell me how it is. That's what I'm wondering. A person only has to label it such and explain why more important than other ethical theories (in this case negative ethics). Which is what I'd be asking here about positive ethics.
Quoting TheMadFool
Right, suffering is more than bare necessities. It encompasses any negative feeling. Undue suffering is surely its own category but need not be the only one. If we define it like that, why does self-actualizing or any other higher levels in Maslow's hierarchy HAVE to be the goal over and above mitigating negative experiences? This ties into the idea that we are on a mission to self-actualize. Why is this mission to self-actualize, or to accomplish things, or to connect with people have to take place above and beyond prevention of bad experiences? Also, being that in reality self-actualization and positive psychology, etc. vascilates with negative ones, it should really be rephrased as to why does the pursuit of the positive experiences become more important than simply preventing negative ones or suffering.
To re-frame this in antinatalist terms. Why does the chance to pursue higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy matter more than preventing all negative experiences? Why experience over non-experience? Do we get a spiritual dog biscuit when we go through the experiences? Is it because we are on a mission to make more people who must self-actualize?
It sounded like you were asking why people thought positive rather than negative ethics should have primacy, as if you already knew what kind of statement might constitue an answer.
If I said, in answer to your question "positive ethics should have primacy over negative ethics because I prefer positive ethics" would that be an acceptable answer for you? If not, what would be wrong with it?
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, if it's an ethical first principle there is no further underlying principle upon which to make any such measure of importance. Importance to whom and to what end?
It would be essentially a tautology. That it is an obvious preference for many is recognized. Why is it preferred though? To what end are we getting out of people born for X positive ethics, for example? TheMadFool gave an example of people pursuing higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy. This is somehow preferable than no experience, but why? I jokingly answered, "in order to get a spiritual dog biscuit at the end of the run for Maslow's self-actualization"? To bask in the glow of self-actualizationhood?
Quoting Isaac
To humans, and I'm asking for what end.
This is the crux of the problem. Nothing at the level of rhetoric, where we now are, is important 'to humans'. Some things are important to some humans, other things are important to other humans, and there's no external judge to determine who's right and who's wrong about that.
And isn't 'persuing what I prefer' an end... the only end, in fact?
At some point in asking why people prefer the things they do, you have to defer to either their final say on the matter (usually "I don't know, I just do"), or you look to empirical evidence you see as correlating with unconscious desires (say sociology or human biology). Asking people is never going to get you further back than their own first principles, which could be almost anything.
But in the realm of procreation, we certainly are making those decisions for others and then letting them "decide" with suicide :chin: . That is suspect, so there is something to be said as to what should be important for all humans, being that we are all born for "some" reason (i.e. positive ethics).
Quoting Isaac
You tell me. Is pursuing X more important than preventing negative experience? This really comes to a head in the realm of procreation. Why are we making more people in the first place?
Quoting Isaac
Granted. Again, this is more about creating new people. But certainly, they have SOME answer (not usually a good one) as to why X, Y, Z has to happen by bringing a new person into the world. They MUST accomplish X, Y, Z.. And being that you and I and everyone is a product of this kind of thinking, it is extremely relevant to existential matters of why anything.
But on what could we possibly base such an investigation? Having just established that what is important for humans is a mixed bag, and you having previously answered twice that any judgements can only be rendered on the basis of what is important to humans, how can we possibly make any progress determining what should be important to humans?
If we don't accept what actually is important to all humans as authoritative, then how can we possibly judge what should be important to all humans, when the only metric we have to make that judgement is what actually is important to all humans?
Again, just imagine an answer "what should be important to all humans is the opportunity to find happiness". What's wrong with that answer?
If it means physically bringing another human into existence, it would violate non-aggression principle (don't force things for any reason, including "finding the opportunity to pursue happiness"). It assumes people pursuing happiness is more important than not bringing about conditions of negative experiences upon another person (which does happen in the "mixed bag"). Why the violation of non-aggression and why the violation of creating conditions of negative experiences in the first place for another person must be followed, does not seem to compute.
Rather, if no one is born, no one suffers. No one is forced into anything. No one is around to be deprived of happiness. Those are my reasons, but I see no good ones on the other side. I suggested one jokingly, that we all get a spiritual dog biscuit because we "pursued our happiness". That is to say, there is no real good excuse to do this in regards to making other people.
Look at the accepted history of humanity. Started off as hunter-gatherers who could manage a few grunts in form of communication, finally settled down on the banks of a large river, and then built what we call "civilization". Superimpose on that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Do you observe any changes? Food --> House --> self-actualization. While not completely true, negative ethics is a thing of the past for a good number of modern humans. They're now in the self-actualization business. Much like you are and others who pursue the arts and sciences. At a very minimum the world now has the environment for positive ethics. Of course, even taking only a wild guess, the vast majority live in conditions that validate your claim for emphasis on negative ethics. Yet, the dark ominous cloud does have that thin silver lining where some are lucky to reside.
A principle not everyone agrees with, without exceptions.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, an assumtion many are happy to make.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Of course you don't, because the 'goodness' of a reason is subjective. You think other people's reasons are not 'good', they think they are 'good'. Unless you have a definition of 'good' on which you both agree, no further progress can possibly be made can it... And yet you persist.
I see a lot of assumptions that suffering is only about third world problems. I see it much deeper than that. You yourself were trying to explain how as you go higher in the hierarchy (if we are to buy into the model), more refined forms of negative experience await you. You don't automatically become the happiest person ever, the situations which bring about negative experiences, the milieu changes. One can argue it is even worse than before if we don't look at negative experiences as pure crass survival or lifespan, etc. Think of the hedonic treadmill, etc.
We have only so many options. We didn't have the option for no options. Why not? What is it about these options that we need to live out?
I agree it is all about agreeing about first principles. I will keep trying to convince on this front. At the very least, by NOT having children, my first principles brings about no collateral damage, no suffering onto a new person. I am not forcing an agenda to live out the options of our reality. I do not have to prove much. I harmed no one, and forced no one. I see the onus on the otherside as to why bringing about conditions of harm, and forcing these conditions with collateral damage is necessary. That is the difference here in our current deadlock.
Apart from the unnecessary word -"violation", which has negative connations and can just be replaced by something like "trade off"-, this is exactly what people who claim that positive things have intrinsic value say. I'm not sure what your point is.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, i would say that it comes from the fact that pleasure/happiness and pain/suffering come hand in hand-suffering is there so that we are discouraged from doing that thing in order to avoid suffering (for example, we do not come too near to a fire because of the pain that we would experience if we did so) while pleasure is there so that we are encouraged to do another thing in order to achieve pleasure (for example, a little child may do his homework because the mother will give him a chocolate if he finishes it) These two things make is so that we are inclined to do the best thing for our species and the species may actually function properly as a result.
This is probably oversimplified, so there are most likely some errors. Howewer, the point is, there is no reason to treat them very seperately-they exist for the same thing (the betterment of society), they just work differently.
Look at it this way then. Yes, suffering scales with your situation on the hierarchy of needs. You called it, quite aptly I must say, "refined suffering". However, realize that suffering gains a place in ethics only insofar as it prevents self-actualization or flourishing. Of course immediate relief of real and abject suffering is vital. Absence of such privation must be a priority but then it's meaning is only in relation to fulfillment, the real goal
Imagine a bucket with a hole. Yes the hole (suffering) must be adequately sealed (negative ethics) but the goal actually is to fill the bucket (positive ethics).
You keep getting almost there but then fall back on the same absolutism at the end.
What possible reasons could anyone give you in answer to the question 'why?' here. Both what makes something 'necessary' and what constitutes a satisfactory reason why, are subjective. People have given you reasons why they think such conditions are necessary to bring about. They have given you such reason in droves. You have simplyffound they do not match what you consider necessary, or that their reason isn't sufficient for you. This is inevitable because you are clearly fairly well versed in the opposing arguments and yet remain of an anti-natalist perspective.
So I'm baffled (and I think you're confused too) about what you're asking for here.
If people give their reasons for having children according to their own ethical principles, you say "I don't share those ethical principles". Well, that much is obvious.
If you ask people to give their reasons for having children according to your ethical principles, they obviously can't because your ethical principles lead to the conclusion that one shouldn't have children.
I don't understand what you think you're going to get out of keeping on hammering this.
I did not consent to have life, neither did I consent for life to one day end.
Then as with all ethical principles; we have to justify to ourselves whether or not a demanding principle will ever be universally applicable. If Antinatalism is ethical, why not genocide or mass sterilisation? Come to think of it, in order to really eliminate pain and suffering, (important distinctions which I'll get to in a moment) doesn't the problem demand a universe ending solution? Is that not a little too demanding of a principle for our small little species to have?
Finally on the difference between pain and suffering. We have very little control over whether we feel pain. Pain is a cold hard objective truth about the human experience. Suffering however, that is letting the abstract self via esteem or ego be harmed is entirely within ones own control. You can just not put your sense of self value on such shaky pedestals that bodily pain has any bearing on them. You dont have control of your body, it's out of your control. Bacteria doesn't ask our permission to make us sick its just trying to live itself. You can make choices which contribute towards positive outcomes but the outcomes themselves are mostly out of your control. You can be healthy as a horse and still fall and break your leg.
If we want to go into the deep why of why we believe or do anything then maybe I'll claim to be a complete fatal asteroidist and claim that absolutely everything is pointless because tomorrow might be Asteroid impact day. Or as the Gauls would say, "The sky will fall on our heads tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes."
The key thing to remember is that humans are getting better at reducing pain inducing environments.
Can I ask you something which I feel is very important? How teachable is Antinatalism to a child? How would a child feel if they were told that having children is the worst thing a person could do? Pretty sure the reaction would not be a good one.
You seem to know a lot about your ethical principles, but what about your metaethical ones?
I think the assumption of a “negative ethics” is the problem to begin with, because “not bringing about negative experiences” seems to me to be the same as doing nothing. One cannot show ethical conduct towards beings that do not exist, so it turns out negative ethics is more an exercise in self-serving than an ethical stance.
I'm saying why should this trade off be considered justifiable on behalf of someone else? What makes the trade off more important than the original state of non-being (and non-suffering) to begin with?
Quoting HereToDisscuss
So the species work properly and betterment of society are the two positive ethics I see here (an example of X that I proposed for whatever positive ethics one proposes). Why do we need people born to better society and the species to work properly? I guess, a) Why prima facie does this matter? b) Why would forcing existence on someone who will definitely suffer be justified for this? In other words, why would the two negative ethical principles of non-aggression (non-forcing) and non-harming be violated on behalf of this grand agenda of species and society?
If we both agree that more refined suffering exists at higher levels (along with the "fulfillment"), why would the fulfillment matter in the face of at least some negative experience? In other words, what about "fulfillment" overrides the two principles of non-aggression and non-harm? Why should this grand agenda be enough justification to override the negative ethics? Certainly no one needs fulfillment prior to birth. You must violate the principles of non-harm, non-aggression to another person, in order to create these chances for fulfillment. Why does thinking something is good for someone else count as being a reason to violate these negative ethical principles?
So discourse on ethical principles to me is like discourse on politics. In politics, there are people with very inbuilt beliefs that are hard to dislodge with even the best of arguments. However, it does not mean we must give up trying to maintain the dialogue. Same goes for this discourse on ethics and antinatalism. It is a discourse that despite the seeming intractable nature of differences, can still find some understanding and at least get something from hearing the other side, even if there is no compromise. Perhaps my arguments give someone just a bit of pause when thinking about they "why". Perhaps my arguments get more perspectives to consider, even just to strengthen it in the end.
Nah, I couple the prevent harm principle almost always with non-aggression principle. You should not force anyone into your perspective. In fact that is one of the main reasons for antinatalism in the first place.
Quoting Mark Dennis
I'm getting mixed messages here.. You acknowledge collateral damage- the undue suffering (you refer to as pain) of individuals from being born. You also think that there are things in our control like making pain worse than it is or whatnot. In other threads I talk about how forcing someone into a game, EVEN if it is "character-building" (in this case, overcoming the temptation to fester on pain), is forcing a game on someone, period. Having a life, means people have to deal with overcoming negative challenges (like succumbing to suffering, if your theory is correct that one succumbs and never just "is" suffering).
Quoting Mark Dennis
As I've said previously, the higher we go up Maslow's hierarchy, the more the pain just gets "refined", it never actually goes away. Even thinking it can be eliminated would still be using the current non-eliminated beings as a way to get to a generation without suffering (which may not exist at all). To say that suffering is good for people because they can overcome it, still turns suffering into a good thing (like Nietzsche's beyond Good and Evil), and tries to subvert the idea that suffering is negative in order to justify inflicting it on others (in the first place) just so they can feel better by overcoming it.
Quoting Mark Dennis
I probably wouldn't introduce it so starkly to a child like that.
Quoting Mark Dennis
They can be construed as partly deontological (don't use people for agendas, don't violate certain principles of force and harm) and partly based on consequences of suffering. They rely a lot on axioms of asymmetry of non-existence and its relation to pain. They are also simply existential.. Suffering is not just brute and utilitarian. There is an aspect of desire and will itself which has aspects of suffering due to being deprived, etc. This is a deprivationalist view similar to Schopenhauer.
As long as you think that someone who could have suffered does not suffer is a good thing, it would indeed be ethical. The absolute is that it is good not to suffer. The relative is that not having positive/good experiences only matters if there is some actual person to be deprived of that positive/good.
Negative ethics is prior to the world, i.e. whether or not one should live.
Once a person exists, they have interests which include having positive experiences.
Before a person exists, they have no interest in having positive experiences.
Metaphor: once noodles are boiled, the noodles cannot become rigid again. They also taste better with spice.
Good points. Your implication is that prior to birth, negative ethics always takes precedence. That is create no harm, force no harm. However, I would argue, even after existence we have negative principles such as non-aggression and non-harm. It is the fact that it is unavoidable to completely bypass these in the mirky intra-wordly affairs that is the point. For example, in almost all realms, non-aggression and non-harm are at least seen as ideals towards others. By aggression, I don't mean like the aggression of playing a game or sports (though that does bring actual harm sometimes), but aggression as in physically forcing someone into a viewpoint that the aggressor decides is good for them. It cannot be avoided but it is usual a typical standard, that ironically does not get applied to procreation, the exact time when all harm and force can be prevented.
Not really, as my only two claims were that 1) Suffering and happiness work for those things and 2) Because the nature of these are similar, there is no real reason to treat them very differently like you suggest. I could've followed up what i said with that (since our thoughts about morality came from that and are still based on the very idea, i would say it is reasonable to suggest morality is basically that and also that the "oughts" we suppose come from that too, not really leaving any other candidate for the basis for normative claims) but i did not so that i could hear your justification for treating them that way.
Also, i do not agree with your assumption that these principles should be upheld at all costs, so...
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, should that principle really be upheld if billions of people, not to mention any other living beings capable of experiencing pain, suffer everyday and will continue to suffer untill they eventually die? I can not see a reason not to violate it. The idea that we should uphold some principle that only exists to avoid suffering (If it does not, why even have it? It can not be a morally good principle then.) when all it does is allowing for more suffering sounds counter-intuitive to me.
Once born, the principle of forcing the end of others to prevent suffering, does not hold up for reasons @darthbarracuda was getting at. That is to say, once born, the rules of the intra-worldly affairs hold sway. That is, there are people with their own wills and goals. Prior to birth, there was an asymmetry of preventing pain (which is absolutely good even if no one to realize no suffering), and relative good (preventing good only matters if an actual person is around). Now, preventing someone's desires, wills, and negating that DOES come into play once born. Thus not only the prevention of harm, but the principle of respecting that a person exists with desires, etc. comes into play. Notice it is STILL a negative ethic.. Prevent suffering when you can, but prevent aggression as well. Prior to birth, no force at all takes place upon someone else (unlike the procreation scenario), AND no suffering will be caused (unlike the procreation scenario). Indeed, preventing suffering is always good. Once existing, ending lives, even to prevent harm to them later on, is like making humans who will suffer so they can benefit from it later on.. The non-aggression principle is being violated in both scenarios, and it is using people as an agenda in both scenarios.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yet since "the hole" can never be filled once and for all (without discarding (i.e. euthanizing, suiciding) "the bucket"), the infinite task (à la Sisyphus' stone) of re/filling "the hole" becomes "the goal".
Quoting schopenhauer1
False dichotomy. "Positive and negative" entail each other. Like coin faces. Like mass-gravity. Like yin-yang. Etc ...
Besides, double negation yields positivity: 'negation of suffering' is caring for 'well-being' of a sufferer. So I reject the premise of the OP. To wit: claiming, or assuming, that there are two types of ethics, practiced separately or "mixed", begs for Occam's Razor; rather, in effect, ethics has (at least) two aspects (i.e. foci): indirect self-care (1. positive - 'actualizes' (i.e. optimizes) self - which is also a sufferer - as a moral agent) via direct care of sufferers (2. negative - helps eliminate hindrances to well being).
Perhaps this 'dual-aspect' concept is more apparent with
agent-based systems (e.g. here's mine (sketched)) than with (mere) rule-based, act-based or preference-base systems.
"In his book A Critique of Affirmative Morality (A reflection on Death, Birth and the Value of Life),[4] Julio Cabrera presents his theory about the value of human existence. Human life, for Cabrera, is "structurally negative" insofar as there are negative components of life that are inevitable, constitutive and adverse: as prominent among them Cabrera cites loss, scarcity, pain, conflicts, fragility, illness, aging, discouragement and death. According to Cabrera they form the basic structure to human life, which he analyzes through what he calls naturalistic phenomenology, drawing freely from thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Cabrera has called his work an attempt to put together Schopenhauer and Heidegger, introducing a determinant judgement of the value of being into the analysis of Dasein, and putting morality above life, against Nietzsche.
Cabrera develops an ethical theory, negative ethics, that is informed by this phenomenological analysis. He argues that there has been an unwarranted prejudice in ethics against non-being, a view he calls "affirmativity". Because affirmative views take being as good, they always view things that threaten this hegemony as bad; particularly things like abstention from procreation or suicide. Cabrera criticizes affirmative ethics for asking how people should live without asking the radical question of whether people should live tout court. He argues that, because of the structural negativity of being, there is a fundamental "moral disqualification" of human beings due to the impossibility of nonharming and nonmanipulating others. Nonharming and nonmanipulating others is called by him the "Minimal Ethical Articulation" ("MEA"; previously translated into English as "Fundamental Ethical Articulation" and "FEA"). The MEA is violated by our structural "moral impediment", by the worldly discomforts – notably pain and discouragement – imposed on us that prevent us from acting ethically. Cabrera argues that an affirmative morality is a self-contradiction because it accepts the MEA and conceives a human existence that precludes the possibility of not-harming or not-manipulating others. Thus he believes that affirmative societies, through their politics, require the common suspension of the MEA to even function.
Cabrera's negative ethics is supposed to be a response to the negative structure of being, acutely aware of the morally disqualifying nature of being. Cabrera believes children are usually considered as mere aesthetic objects, are not created for their own sake but for the sake of their parents, and are thrown into a structurally negative life by the act of procreation. Procreation is, as Cabrera argues, a supreme act of manipulation, a harm and a violation of autonomy. He argues that the consistent application of normal moral concepts – like duty, virtue or respect – present in most affirmative moralities entails antinatalism. Cabrera also believes that a human being adopting negative ethics should not only abstain from procreation, but also should have a complete willingness for an ethical death, by immediate suspension of all personal projects in benefit of a political fight[5] or an altruistic suicide, when it becomes the least immoral course of action.
Cabrera's Critique is one of his most systematic defenses of negative ethics, but he has also explored the same ideas in other works, such as Projeto de Ética Negativa,[6] Ética Negativa: problemas e discussões,[7] Porque te amo, não nascerás! Nascituri te salutant[8] and Discomfort and Moral Impediment: The Human Situation, Radical Bioethics and Procreation."
Fantastic point but I don't think this is a complete and accurate description of the human condition. It all depends on what you think is the hole in the bucket of life. If you consider sickness and death, obvious inevitabilities, as constituting the problem then true, the task is a pointless Sisyphean task. I question this attitude, at least insofar as death is concerned. Why? Simply because, in a weird way, complaining about what can't be avoided, like death, is equally, if not more, absurd. It appears therefore that we're left with two choices - Sisyphus or a sad Sisyphus. Where this ties in with what I have to say is that we may need to rethink what the hole in the bucket of life is. Also, if scientists are to be believed there's a lot of research going on in disease and longevity. Perfect health and immortality may eventually banish the antinatalist into quaint mythology.
In the spirit of pragmatism and wisdom it behooves us to tackle any problem, yours/this included, in the best way possible. For that we must give some weightage to positive ethics. After all we're, hopefully, not in hell, tormented in such manner that makes the desire for pain relief so urgent that it makes positive ethics moot. I don't mean to make light of the real and horrible suffering some have undergone but to consider this as a problem for all is a hasty generalization.
I think we are actually somewhat near the same page on this. There is an aspect of being used in procreation. People are born for an X reason (that is third-party that is not the agent that is actually being affected by the decision). Preventing birth is respecting the dignity of preventing any future suffering and not forcing a situation onto someone. At the procreational decision, we uniquely have the ability to not force agendas and to prevent all suffering. Once born, agendas and suffering ensue. We can cope for sure with whatever flavor you want, buy into whatever rhetoric, but the basic agenda of life, and the more refined agenda of society, and the agenda of pursuing this or that ensues along with unknown quantities of undue harm and collateral damage. Why, we don't ask, we just assume and foist, assume and foist. What's good for the goose (me) is good for the gander (other people), right? Blah, that's not respecting shit for anybody. It's the ultimate hubris of "I know what's best for everyone". Yet, I get accused of it most. The gumption :).
I refer you to my last post as it is basically the response to this notion that positive ethics is required as default for other people to follow.
Well, is preventing desires and wills really a bad thing compared to letting suffering go on? The problem is, these desires and wills lead to more suffering (almost every single one of them, i would say) and, more importantly, they also lead to new individuals that will definitely suffer being born. If you end the human race, you will also prevent the suffering of these new people who will be "forced into existence" and it is justified as a result-and i am ignoring the fact other living beings, aside from humans, can experience pain and suffer too. I would argue that this means that if you have the power to destroy all life on planet Earth and you choose to not do it, you are indirectly responsible for the suffering of those individuals and other living beings who will be born. In that case, is not preventing desires and wills of living individuals really better when not doing that means more people (and other living beings who will experience pain) will suffer? That does not seem to be the case for me, especially when one considers how many animals also get forced into existence in a more cruel way-it is countless. (especially the ones we use as food, like chickens)
Also, that was supposed to be a side comment-i am curious as to why you only quoted and replied to that and nothing else. Isn't the main topic something else-that is whetever intrinsic positives exist or not?
So, if you pay attention to my arguments, I put a lot of weight on non-aggression. Once born, people have their own autonomous identity as individuals and should be respected. Thus the principle of non-harm is contradicted here with the principle of non-aggression. Thus, this ethic would not be one of some Lex Luther villain, purely contemplating calculations of loss and harm. People as individuals are taken into account. Thus, as I have always advocated, the only means by which an antinatalist can further their cause is through argumentation and convincing of the individual. That is it.
Well, i was just trying to show that this has unwanted results (both negative ethics and the non-aggression principle). It just leads to more suffering. So, why exactly should we accept this principle by default? Just because?
Also, how can principles contradict each other? I do not think that is deontological ethics anymore, so i am curious to see your explanation.
Last of all, when confronted with two contradictory principles when assessing whetever one ought to make a certain decision or not, on what basis should one pick one over the other?
I don't know whether I'm agreeing/disagreeing with you here. "Basic necessities" seems self-explanatory right? Perhaps people will argue over what counts as basic but the words "basic necessities" has a ring of compelling urgency right?
So again, you are ignoring the autonomous human part. Autonomous individuals have to be accounted for. If you are paying attention, these ethical theories are grounded in individuals NOT third-party agendas (like some amorphous utilitarian calculation of harm that you proposed in your life-ending scenario). In fact, one of the main reasons for not having people is that it is not using people in order for them to follow third-party agendas, however starry-eyed the reasons (like pursuing happiness, character-building games, finding their way in the current society, making society better, tending the farm, advancing the tribe, following religious principles, etc. etc.). Individuals are where ethics resides because individuals bear the brunt of existence. Society and outside entities may help form individuals, but it is at the individual level that life is experienced, decisions are made, suffering occurs etc. Thus, third-party reasons that affect individuals who can otherwise have a say, would be using those individuals.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
Why wouldn't they at times? Non-harm is important, but the principle cannot be forced on others. Non-harm is perfectly legitimate a consideration prior to birth. Harm will be prevented from preventing birth. By having someone, you are causing conditions for harm. Not only that, you are forcing someone to deal with this. By preventing birth, both principles are followed- non-harm and non-aggression. Once born, the intra-wordly rules apply because now there is or will be an autonomous individual, where considerations of non-aggression must be had. It isn't that hard to fathom that both principles can be in effect at the same time, one mitigating the other. Thus it is not purely consequential nor deontological, etc.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
I think I explained at the beginning as to how the decisions prior to birth would be different than after birth. Prior to birth, all instances of harm can be prevented without any force whatsoever. After birth, considerations of force and non-aggression must be employed as well. If people are not to be used in agendas (as is the case of birth), then to be consistent here, people once born, cannot be used in agendas (like ceasing all harm and suffering). However, there is an instance where all suffering can be prevented without using individuals as agendas, and that is birth.
I don't follow. Is this a new idea or something pertaining to a previous post?
I mean basic necessities kinda screams out at you that it should be a priority doesn't it?
Well, what about the will-be automomous individuals that won't be born yet? Are those "autonomous individuals" so important that the suffering that they cause are okay? Or, in other words, if the individual brings about a huge amount of suffering, aren't we entitled to prevent their desires and wills so that they do not do it anymore? Isn't this the reasoning we use for punishing criminals?
You do not account those other individuals.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I have showed why it was not merely an agenda though. You just choose to ignore it and are now pretending nobody has tried to justify it-at least in this thread.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And "using individuals", in some cases, is okay, right? For example, we punish criminals. We punish children. We sometimes make decisions on behalf of people who are not informed enough to make a good decision even if they do not want it.
I am not going to quote the other paragraph as it is essentially the same point. I am just going to ask a question:
Quoting schopenhauer1
What do you mean by an "agenda" then? How can it be an agenda when it is the only thing that actually matters when making moral decisions?
Please define that word.
But in what context?
You'd have to explain this a bit more. I'm not quite getting the scenario. If we prevent birth, and that person who was prevented from birth might have caused suffering to others in large quantities.. is it that sort of thing? I'm not quite getting it.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
Shown WHAT was merely not an agenda?
Quoting HereToDisscuss
As I've said elsewhere: Except for cases which I acknowledged- children needing guidance from parents, self-defense, or the threat-of-force, there are no excuses other than people have an agenda, and they want someone else to follow that agenda and that agenda is more important than the non-aggression principle. Why should it be in this case and not others? Because the will of the parent is strong? Because social pressures can bypass principles of non-aggression?
As for the child needing guidance, I said that this "force" is only temporary time/place, the birth decision reaches all the way into autonomous adulthood. If you need a reminder for the reasoning there.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
What is the only thing that actually matters? I said non-aggression and non-harm both matter. At the birth decision, we can prevent complete harm onto someone else, and we completely not force a decision onto someone- both principles are perfectly followed. Once you have violated the non-aggression principle and procreated another person- forcing a view, so to say LITERALLY onto another (for a whole lifetime nonetheless!), then the intra-wordly affairs of mitigating non-harm and non-aggression RECOGNIZING the autonomy of the individual who has choices, decisions, wills, desires, ensues. As for punishing criminals, if the justice system is "just", it is probably revolving around the idea of non-aggression, exactly the principle I explained. That is, the person violated this principle to some extent (theft of property, physical violence, threats of violence, threats to property, etc. etc.). Now there may be unjust or unnecessary laws, or misapplied laws, but that's a totally different issue and not necessarily in the realm of ethics proper though tangential.
In the context which requires us not to ignore negative ethics.
It may be, but can you make a few sentences or paragraph actually framing what you are saying about basic necessities and negative ethics.
This reasoning discounts the suffering that would result from frustrating primordial biological drives to procreate - whether self-abstemious or state prohibitionary it's the same deprivation - which trades-off increased suffering of current childless persons for the price of "preventing" "future suffering" of offspring while indifferent to the fact that being regretfully / involuntarily childless persons increases the suffering of their future selves.
Misery breeds company. As you point out, schopenhauer 1, at the "the procreational decision" it's always already (2.5 million years!) too late for the "already born" to excise, or en masse talk themselves out of, our species-hardwired, libidinally-facile, procreative drives ... Ethics more profitably focuses on how sufferers Can/Must avoid minimize or relieve increasing suffering (I prefer harm) to sufferers - ourselves and others - rather than, in effect, assuming counterfactually that in some possible world sufferers do not exist, suffering does not exist, and that we ought to strive to actualize, so to speak, that (utopian? extinction?) possibility. 'Destroy the village in order to save the village' - irrational ad absurdum as well as immoral.
I am antinatalist in the same sense I am pro-suicide, pro-euthanasia, & pro-abortion: philosophically, that is, as a hypothetical prospect, or option, - pro or con - for each thinking person to choose for him or herself without coercion by any manifest authority or violence (i.e. non-aggression principle). The reasoning is clear: sufferers ought not increase their own or any other sufferer's suffering, because this abject condition - existence - cannot be prevented ex post facto. The reductio (above) exposes an interpretation of antinatalism that (by neglect) increases suffering (of the "already born") more than it speculatively prevents.
If you don't mind I'd like to continue with my bucket with a hole analogy of life. The hole represents the basic necessities and, by any rationale they need to be tackled first. Otherwise, as @180 Proof said we're going to be in an Sisyphean situation. The word "basic" and "necessities" emphasize this point as they have a sense of urgency in them.
Then there's the issue of what constitutes the hole in the bucket. Do we include in it things that are clearly unavoidable like some forms of suffering like sickness and death?
To some the answer would be a resounding "yes"but if you consider the inevitability of death and sickness it looks like making them part of the problem would be like Sispyhus exchanging his already heavy stone for another heavier one. In other words we would be compounding our own problems. This suggests that for the sake of practicality, we exclude the insurmountable from the list of our problems.
On the other hand ignoring sickness, death, etc which are real sources of misery and focusing on the "easy" problems like, e.g., adequate recreational time, would be like trying to correct the grammatical errors in the speech of someone waving a gun in your face - misprioritization with fatal consequences. What bears mentioning here is that people are interested in solving the problem of sickness and death. Many leading minds have predicted that immortality and perfect health could be achieved in the next 30 years (an optimistic estimate). This means that a lot of the problems which form the basis of an antinatalist outlook are being or will be solved.
As you mentioned, every stage of this ascent into higher planes of existence, each being better than what preceded it, will have its own set of problems. These will then be classified as basic necessities and will require solutions if we are to enter the next stage. I guess the phrase basic necessities is like a slider along the journey to eudaimonia, the ultimate goal. The concept of basic necessities exists only as an urgent reminder of problems that need to be solved (holes that need to be fixed) before we enter the next stage on our path to personal fulfillment.
Another way of tackling the problems that make life so undesirable from an antinatalist point of view would be to increase the flow of joy into the bucket of life. Considering that the real problems of sickness and death are as yet unsolved we can, as many people are wont to say, make the best of what life has to offer. I've heard people tell others to fill every moment with joy or carpe diem, etc. This attitude comes from acceptance that life isn't a bed of roses. There will be problems but that would mean that we should enjoy the smooth trouble-free stretches of the journey.
But the "harm" to the parent for not procreating doesn't measure up to the harm done to the future child, especially because it is creating conditions of suffering on behalf of someone else and thus "forcing" their hand. It would be like someone who would really like to force another into X game, and is sad not to force them. Should we allow it, simply because they are sad they can't force someone's hand in something? A more extreme example is someone who gets glee from doing something that would cause harm to others, but thinks what they are doing is good, and is "harmed" by not being allowed to do it.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not sure how it is "immoral" to not have any more children. However, the libidinal part can be easily remedied if sex is "necessary" or "common" with modern contraceptives.
Quoting 180 Proof
And of course I am not for coercion either. Thus I only think antinatalism is appropriate to argue and convince others of but never force.
Edit: I added a couple things here @180 Proof. As for not ignoring the post-facto reality of the "once born", I am also in the ballpark of what you are advocating, as a hypothetical option pro or con. However, the overall consequence and utopianism you present I believe to be a bit uncharitable interpretation of antinatalism. It isn't about the end goal, simply about preventing at the margins. Also, I think in an odd way, the pessimism of understanding our situation can somehow be therapeutic for the post-facto reality of the "already born". It can teach patience, compassion, understanding, tolerance, and the idea of not taking things too seriously (when possible and one is not in some physical or mental harm that doesn't even allow this mental trick).
I think @180 Proof had in mind more than mere worries about mortality and sickness, though these are certainly problems. By the way, if we include all the mental health problems and even everyday anxieties in the "sickness", then what encompasses sickness would be much larger a category and perhaps even more harmful than what you at first might be thinking. For those who have severe types of mental illness, it can probably never be completely conveyed their perspective to those who don't understand and never experienced it. And sickness itself has too many factors to be done with in 30 years. That is indeed a way too optimistic estimate. There are also misfortunes, accidents, and such contingencies that you may also not be adding to that list of physical harms.
Anyways, what 180 Proof was most likely getting at was a Schopenhaurean form of suffering. This is similar to the Buddhist one. I now label it as "deprivationalism". It is the constant state of needing and wanting. We are deprived of something, whether it be entertainment, survival, or comfort related. This never ends. We can never be said to be completely satisfied. This is the background for which our contingent, utilitarian lives are always operating. As @Inyenzi put it to describe this (what I call) "structural suffering" of human existence:
[quote=Inyenzi]On my view, there is no higher state of 'happiness' anyway, than the way in which the antinatalist conceives of the unborn. To be unbound from all causes and conditions, where "exists", and "does not exist" doesn't even apply. How could any temporary experience of happiness or pleasure in this world even compare to this? All positive experiences in this world are filtered through the lens of our temporal embodiment as a deprivational human animal - subject to stress, pain, need. suffering, aging and inevitable death. If impregnating a woman somehow thrusts conditions on what was previously unbound by causes and conditions, then it is the ultimate crime. Compared to the timeless peace of the unborn/unconditioned - the experiences of this world are nothing but stress and suffering.[/quote]
Why would it be the other way? I think this is purely up to subjective judgement, though it is a common fact that most people are much more loss averse than gain seeking and I'm one of them
[quote=Karl Popper]I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure. Both the greatest happiness principle of the Utilitarians and Kant's principle, "Promote other people's happiness...", seem to me (at least in their formulations) fundamentally wrong in this point, which is, however, not one for rational argument....In my opinion...human suffering makes a direct moral appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway.[/quote]
Besides, while what makes people happy varies from person to person and from day to day for each of us, what makes people miserable, or suffer, is the same for everyone (i.e. not "subjective" in the least): deprivation, physical dysfunction (i.e. illness), harm of any kind, helplessness (i.e. trapped, confined, fear-terror), betrayal, bereavement, etc - in effect, involuntary decrease or loss of agency. It's self-evident what is harmful to our kind (and living things like, or nearly like, us such as mammals) and what we need when harmed; thus, we (can) know what to do or not to do to and for other persons and living creatures vulnerable to being harmed or in need of help when they're suffering; therefore, we (can) reasonably judge whether or not, by action or inaction, conduct decreases (i e. avoids mitigates or relieves) someone's - some creature's - suffering. Hardly a (merely) "subjective" consideration.
Uhhhhh No?
Quoting 180 Proof
There is a group of people called masochists so that ends that.
Quoting 180 Proof
When did I say we couldn’t? I never said we couldn’t REASONABLY (key word) judge how our conduct affects the suffering of others, what I said was that even if we are in agreement that an act will increase said suffering, some will find it ok as long as it creates a certain level of happiness (positive ethics) and some won’t (negative ethics)
I think it comes into play most when it comes to procreation. There are several first principles that must be agreed upon-
a) it is not good to cause harm to others when absolutely unnecessary, (unnecessary meaning someone who is already born and can obviously feel lesser and greater pains might die or get seriously ill if you don't do some minor harm).
b) it is not good to force other people into anything, including agendas you think are good for them (with some exceptions (guidance/care for non-adults, dementia for elderly, or unconscious yet alive people), , there seems to be no way around causing, de novo, pain for others, so that they can pursue some happiness/positive goal. Is there "obligation" to make happy people? Is there an "obligation" to not cause suffering? The second one makes more sense in the realm of ethics. Notice I said "obligation". My argument is that, to cause pain because it allows for happiness, or to overlook pain in the hopes of happiness for someone else is wrong as it is forcing harm and violating non-aggression by forcing harm for a particular agenda.
In the case of birth, why should the non-harm/non-aggression principles take a backseat to "but this will be good for that person to be born"? I mentioned jokingly, does the person once born get a spiritual doggy biscuit for "self-actualizing"? You I believe once gave the argument for not forcing others into a game because YOU believe it will be good for them. This is pretty much saying the same thing.
Yes. Good way to put it.
Love is that thing that when you don't feel it it's just a word, it's like it doesn't exist. It's only when you feel it that you see how important it is and that you see the point.
You're constantly conflating love and happiness with well-being and pleasure, they aren't the same. You can be well off and experience lots of pleasures while having a life devoid of love and happiness. You're constantly missing the most important part of the picture.
While you're on a mission to spread antinatalism, I'm on a mission to tell you that if you had received more love you wouldn't see things that way.
You would have preferred not to have been born, so you want everyone to feel that way because you think you have it all figured out, but most people don't feel that way and don't want to feel that way, because they still feel or believe in that thing that you've stopped feeling and believing in.
I'd honestly want to meet you, to help you see what you've forgotten to see, because I can't show it to you using words on a screen, and it pains me to imagine you following that path for the rest of your life. Reading your threads it feels like your life has become completely devoid of joy, and all that's keeping you here is that mission to destroy life, because you think you're doing a good thing, but all the people you're ever going to convince are those who focus on the suffering like you.
Broadly, all humans have values that are important to them, and morality is roughly the process of promoting/protecting those values in rules/judgments/decisions that encode or enshrine them...
But because there are so many options before us (a seemingly infinitely expanding decision tree), it winds up being rather difficult to select just one rule or judgment or decision or plan or course of action that can be ranked above all others as valuable. Specifically, trying to argue that one decision or judgment is morally obligatory must be based on a proof that demonstrates all other possible courses of action are inferior.
But if instead of making a positive action morally obligatory, we argue that a positive action should not be carried out, all we must do to prove it is is show that there is some other action (or the absence of that action) which is more valuable.
Here's an analogy: It's computationally unfathomable to look at a chess board and determine the absolute best move to make (even thought it might exist), but it is extremely easy to look at a chess board and determine which actions should not be taken.
Positive ethics become functionally relevant when there are limited options to choose from (such that relative value is an explorable proof), but even then it should still be couched in the understanding that there's almost certainly a better, more morally valuable, course of action out there; if only we could find it. As such, positive ethics are more about agreement than justification.
But this idea works regarding any positive ethics. That is to say, put any X positive ethics (happiness, love, self-actualization, pleasure) and the point still remains. That is to say, by procreating, even so that one can love the child, or the child can experience love, one is bypassing the non-harm principle. That is to never unnecessarily put someone in conditions of harm. This even includes don't put someone in harms way for a good cause. Further, it is also bypassing the non-aggression principle. That is never unnecessarily force something onto someone. Birth is literally forcing a situation onto someone for life. Further, this non-aggression would include not forcing someone for one's own agenda. Thus if the parent wants the child to experience X or live a life of X, Y, and Z, the child is forced/harmed due to wanting to press someone into an agenda. Further, collateral harm will inevitably ensue. That is to say, whatever positive ethics X one wants for the child will always be accompanied by unintended undue harm, nonetheless, that cannot be predicted.
Quoting leo
Well, thank you for trying to show me positiveness in life. You seem like a kind-hearted spirit based on your post. In a way I agree with your "mission". That is to say, I see compassion and helping others as a great way to cope with life. I see antinatalism and philosophical pessimism as actually therapeutic, but starting from a different place. Once life is seen in this way, we can be more tolerant, more compassionate, etc. We can see ourselves as in this together, rebelling against it, and communally seeing the problem. So antinatalism can bring people together in a way through the rebellion :D.
I agree with this so far.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Yes, that makes sense. But from what I see in your post, you are not disagreeing that indeed, negative ethics is easier to justify. Essentially the OP is suggesting that to bypass the negative ethics or rather to VIOLATE the negative ethics in favor of your own personal idea of positive ethics, is unjustifiable if one wants to be consistent in applying those negative ethics. It seems more obligatory to not force or press others into something or cause harm onto people, or use them for any agenda (positive-intended or otherwise), then it does to be obligated to force positive X onto someone (especially if it it means violating the normally followed negative ethics).
The topic was about whetever negative ethics on it's own entails we ought to kill all life or not. So, my scenario was obviously about that-i do not know why you thought my scenario was about procreation.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Since there can be exceptions to this principle, can you tell us how we can know when we can violate this thing and why we can violate it at these times-that is, why they are exceptions to the rule?
I believe this approach may work better instead of us just repeating our points.
Ok I think I see. You are saying, shouldn't we prevent people who will cause pain to others. My response would still be that once born, considerations of other people's autonomy come into play. This autonomy is based on the fact that it is individuals who are the center of ethical considerations, not amorphous principle calculations (like the greatest good or something like that). Thus, the amorphous utilitarian calculation of destroying people who cause harm, would not be moral, even with good intentions. There is preventing harm and there is non-aggression. Both have to be followed. In the case of birth, both happen to point towards non-procreation. You aren't forcing, you aren't harming by abstaining from procreation.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
Yes, in the instance of procreation one would perfectly be following the principles of non-harm and non-aggression by abstaining from procreation. AFTER someone is born, they are an autonomous person, an individual, someone who has an identity to point at in the world. Once born, circumstances of time and place are immediately something to consider. There is the fact that people need time to develop into autonomous individuals, and there is the fact that sometimes, at the end of life, or in unconscious situations, individuals can lose their autonomy as individuals. If ethics is at the level of individual, we have to define individual. People become more autonomous over time. The time of being an adult would be one's most autonomous. However, prior to this, the parent/guardian can have some say in the upbringing of the individual because the assumption is that the person is not developed enough to be autonomous yet. Thus, it would be immoral to leave a baby/small child to defend for itself when this leads to obvious harm for that person. The non-harm principle would take place here as there is less autonomy of the child. Once that person is an adult, the full non-aggression principle, comes into effect, and thus "forcing" something (even if you think it is good for them) would be violating this principle. We can debate "when" that transition comes to be, but that would take us down a rabbit hole that is probably beyond the scope of what we are trying to get at. It is not about the impreciseness of that transition, but that a transition does take place.
As for elderly/dementia, the same would apply. They were once autonomous adults, however, they cannot make decisions for themselves and thus, it would be harmful to neglect caring for them. The non-aggression principle would not apply here if one were to take control of certain aspects of their lives. The same can be said of those who are alive but are unconscious or in a coma. The non-harm principle would take precedent here due to lack of autonomy. Again, I would like to not move the parameters of the debate to "when" this transition takes place, just noting that it does. The important thing to remember is that this revolves around autonomous people, once someone is already born.
As far as threat to violence, this is about the other person being the aggressor, someone who is about to or is already violating the principle of non-aggression. One should be allowed to defend oneself from another's aggression if the non-aggression principle is being violated and this violation is directed towards that particular person.
I have to agree that this is where your argument breaks down, @schopenhauer1. A principle should be able to stand without exception, otherwise it is neither a foundation, nor is it fundamental as such. It’s like the Ten Commandments...followed immediately by hundreds of qualifying regulations and exceptions...
As a suggestion of positive ethics, I offer the following ethical principle: increase awareness, connection and collaboration. There being no positive without a corresponding negative, one should also strive to reduce ignorance, isolation and exclusion - but that’s pretty much the same thing. I think you’ll find that this principle stands without exception (although it requires more courage than most of us can summon on our own).
In following this ethical principle, procreation often appears to be a good thing, but it’s ultimately an act of ignorance - one that also encourages parents to isolate and exclude in a number of ways. So to reduce procreation, we should be increasing awareness of more far-reaching and less exclusive ways to connect and collaborate in the world.
Negative ethics seems more effective, even when it’s flawed, only because it allows you to perceive yourself as ‘good’ simply by opposing certain behaviour in others. But negative ethics is for evaluating our own behaviour, not the behaviour of others. It isn’t meant to be prescriptive, and employed as such, it can only limit our actions, not encourage them.
Positive ethics gives us a path to follow, a way to go. Negative ethics only tells us which is the wrong way.
I mean, obviously I have lots more reasons but challenge is a good one. What else is there to do? I mean, religion likes to call all this testing but really I think its challenging and I'd be very open to hearing your thoughts on the value of The Challenges of Life.
However obviously that is not to say negative ethics aren't without challenge as you yourself can attest but it would be interesting to hear what you feel is more challenging; negative or positive ethics? Or are they both different challenges that aren't worth comparing in that way?
So here is where I sort of agree with you.. The principle is the standard, and it indeed DOES break down after birth. This is the intra-worldly affairs @darthbarracuda mentioned, versus the interwordly affairs. Simply speaking, the standard would be PERFECTLY followed before birth, but indeed, the messiness of time/space makes this perfection a broken reality.. like the suffering of existing itself. Similar to Plato's ideals and the shadows. Prior to birth, the perfect state could have been obtained (not existing). After birth, messiness and then justifications for the messiness.
Anyways, I explained the reason for the messiness. That is to say that ethics, in the intra-worldly affairs of being born is about what is happening to the autonomous individual. Ethics is nothing without this. Thus, a third-party principle like, "people must live in order to collaborate" would be incoherent in an ethics that is about the individual, as this is now about some third-party principle being played out by those individuals.
Quoting Possibility
No, the violation at birth of non-aggression and non-harm in order to follow your "collaboration" agenda just doesn't fly. You are making people HAVE to follow your agenda of collaboration. Why does this matter more than things like not causing conditions of harm upon another? You think it sounds good, so someone else MUST live this collaboration scheme out? Not a good excuse.
Quoting Possibility
I can agree with that part.
Quoting Possibility
Not sure what you mean. It can encourage to not do something you might otherwise do. One of the best examples of this is by not procreating thus not forcing and not causing the condition of harm on others.
Quoting Possibility
I think we can use a test of obligation. Is it more obligatory to not harm and force? Is it more obligatory to follow X path? It does not seem obligatory to create X positive ethics. I am not saying we shouldn't follow a positive ethic, but I am saying that to negate the principle of non-harm/non-force in the service of a positive ethic would be the wrong approach, as now is being willed into someone else's agenda at the cost of being harmed and forced to play out X agenda.
So how would you respond to the notion that their may be ways to edit our very experience of suffering into something not only tolerable but useful? I mean if your children could be like Claire from heroes or wolverine from X-men with a regeneration factor and had access to a mental switch to turn off pain sensation at will and is immune to most diseases and can freely choose to opt out of life due to fatigue or the human lifespan remains largely untouched how would you feel then?
Y'know assuming we can survive climate change and travel and colonise the rest of our solar system. To be honest to that end I feel gene editing might become vital to surviving different environments. I'm sure future Astronaughts could do with the ability to maintain muscle mass in zero g for starters..
Well I am not against giving oneself a positive ethics. Rather, what I am saying is it would be wrong to pursue a positive agenda by violating negative ethics. Thus, if your positive ethics is such that you think by doing X act (which harms someone and forces something on them) will be more beneficial for that person later on because that is what your ethic says is good, that would be wrong.
I guess the test would be, when creating this super-human stuff, are you creating harm for various generations leading up to this (even just by procreating them into a non-super-human world prior to the actual advent of such technology)? If so, then this would be an example of following a positive agenda that is violating the negative ethics.
Have you watched or read Altered Carbon at all? It goes into this deeply I feel and it is something I feel I need to address in my application of positive ethics.
It's probably going to have to be discussed on geopolitical and economic factors. Whether the argument is something like Antinatalism or something like the reverence for life if we are looking at polar opposites.
Yeah, this dystopian world you present sounds like exactly the case of following X "positive agenda" (become super-human) at the behest of negative ethics.
You. will. love. it.
It will blow your mind really and I haven't even gotten into many of tje other aspects. This list is almost non exhaustive to be honest in terms of how long I have to spend on it but I cannot sing its praises enough nomatter how you identify in your beliefs or philosophy.
In regard to the above and mainly to address the belief that non-existence is better primarily because of the suffering one has to undergo from birth to death, we might consider a case which gets my point across very well - the case of a patient who consults a doctor.
Not even a quack, let alone a qualified doctor, would prescribe beheading as a cure for a headache. The aim is to treat the malady - suffering - AND make life enjoyable or at least livable. I guess I'm saying, in a very important way, antinatalists are unable to distinguish the patient (life) from the disease (suffering) and this leads them to the mistaken conclusion that life (patient) = disease (suffering).
Of course the antinatalist will now mention inevitable irremediable suffering to revive their now dead argument but for such situations people generally agree that people so unfortunate be given the choice to end their lives. However, this in no way gives any support to the antinatalist position that all life, everywhere, always = suffering.
The principle is not the standard - it’s the foundation. If it breaks down in spacetime, or once life begins, then it’s nothing more than imagination - an unrealistic ideal.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I’m not making anyone do anything. The collaboration that leads to birth is not always consciously determined. When it is, as I mentioned, it’s an act of ignorance. All this ethical principle does is recognise the fundamental impetus of the unfolding universe itself, and ‘go with the flow’ as it were. The majority of what we call ‘undue suffering’ is a result of choosing to resist this flow, which is easy enough to do. SHOULD is not the same as MUST - ethics cannot compel behaviour, as much as we may like it to.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Encouraging someone to NOT do something is DIScouraging them to act, without offering any alternative. By your negative ethics, how do I know whether any other action will be seen as aggressive or will cause harm? Don’t cause harm; don’t use aggression; don’t procreate - this cannot be encouraging anyone to act. You’re trying to convince everyone that it’s better to NOT exist than to exist, better NOT to act than to act in the wrong way, and yet you yourself continue to exist and to act by choice. So by what principle would you be making those choices?
To the extent that I am ignorant of, isolated from or excluding the effect my actions may have on others, those actions are more likely to be perceived as forceful or harmful to someone. By instead acting to increase awareness, and choosing to connect and collaborate in some way with every interaction, I minimise harm and aggression without the need for negative ethics, and continue to exist and to act without fear.
Positive and negative ethics that cannot work in harmony must be flawed in some way. You seem to be having trouble finding a positive ethics to go with your negative one. It should be your first clue that your negative ethics breaks down once life begins.
Bull's-eye! :up:
I don't believe it would be moral to create people such that, their best option is "live out your life you don't want or go kill yourself". Suicide is not the same as not being born.
Quoting TheMadFool
Well, philosophical pessimists (which I would argue is slightly different than the antinatalism), would argue that indeed life/human nature entails structural suffering (at least as it is now), such as deprivation, so there's that. But also, in your scenario, the analogy would only be the same if the doctor first caused conditions known to make the patient suffer, and then tried to fix it. Otherwise the analogy is not apt to the antinatalism argument whereby the parent is creating a life that will suffer, de novo, in the hopes that it won't be that bad or they will find some coping techniques such that the good will outweigh the bad. Either way, this is all bypassing my main argument which is that the negative ethics of not causing conditions of harm and the non-aggression rule was violated in order to follow a positive ethics.
Quoting TheMadFool
I don't think the argument ever died ha. But, again, suicide would not be the same as not being born.
I can make any number of choices based on preferences that are not constrained by the negative ethics.
Quoting Possibility
In the intra-wordly mess of the real world, someone will ALWAYS be harmed by your decisions, and you by there's. This is one of the important points that he brings up. It doesn't negate negative ethics though. It just means that unfortunately, once born, negative ethics will always in some way be violated. In a way, another reason for antinatalism. See here his points:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julio_Cabrera_(philosopher).
But, assuming that you have the power to "prevent" people, by not doing it, you let the 15 billion people come into the world and have their consent violated. Are those individuals not the center of your ethical considerations because they are not born or..? The problem is-in the scenario i presented, it is not only the living people that will be autonomous but rather also the people that are not born yet.
Maybe you should say why you think those are not individuals that matter.Quoting schopenhauer1
That is good and all (and i did not quote the later part because it would have been too long and did not have to do with what i was going to say ), but you are presenting examples:I was asking for the rule. Anyways, judging from what you have written, i think i got the rule:
"Non-agression principle applies in all cases in which it is not broken first and the person in question is fully autonomous."
Does that apply for cases in which someone will violate the principle themselves? For example, i do not think this applies for a police officer who has just caught a murder plan in the making-it was not violated,but it will be violated. So, i would say that we ought to change the rule to:
"Non-agression principle applies only in cases in which it is not broken first/will be broken if we follow the principle and the person in question is autonomous."
But i do not think that is your rule, since we know that people will make babies left, and thus, humanity will break this principle if we continue to follow this principle. Therefore, the principle would not apply to the above scenario.
What exactly is the rule that applies universally?
So this would go back to my aversion to ethics based on an amorphous collective or society (like the greatest good principle). Ethics is directed at the individual level, thus at the margins in this case. Also, by destroying already existing people, clearly we are violating non-aggression, that does not need to be stated. Thus destroying current people to prevent the billions of unborn would be violating the non-aggression principle (already a non-starter in this ethical system) and using individuals for an amorphous collective (not individuals). On the flip side, by not having a specific child coming from YOU, you are specifically going prevent an actual individual from being born (and it does not matter at this point which genetic identity it will be). The parent is not violating non-aggression.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
I'm not understanding how the principle would not apply in this case because "humanity will break this principle".
Premise A: For every situtation, the principle applies to that situtation if and only if the person affected is fully autonomous (or is autonomous enough) and following that principle will not result in the principle being broken by someone else.
Premise B: Following the non-agression principle in this particular case will result in the principle being broken by humanity. (Because humanity will procreate and thus violate it many times, not to mention will force animals to procreate too)
Therefore, the principle does not apply to this particular case.
If you have a problem with Premise A, then give me your own rule like i said just before the thing you quoted so that we can discuss it.
Also, i did not reply to your first comment because my contention is that this is not a violation of it or the violation is justified and i would have just said that. The problem is whetever this actually applies or not.
A lot, because you keep advocating for a greater good principle and I'm saying this is overlooking individuals for third-parties.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
I'm still a bit lost here but, here would be my formulation:
For every situation, the principle applies to that situation if and only if the person affected is fully autonomous (or is autonomous enough) and one is not forced into a situation of defending against another's violation of the principle. I disagree with the "broken by someone else" part in your formulation. I am not sure where that was construed from my arguments.
Thus if someone was to steal my stuff or punch me, I can defend myself without actually violating the non-aggression principle. Of course, if I did more than defend and used too much force unnecessarily, or retribution that would be in violation.
Normal conditions:
Non-aggression followed | Non-aggression violated
Following = good | Following = bad
Non-harm followed | Non-harm violated
Following = good | Following = bad
In the case of one's non-harm principle being violated from someone else:
Non-aggression followed | Non-aggression violated
Following = good | Following = not bad as one is preventing harm from the
violation of non-aggression
With these two sets of conditions for the rule, it is clear that procreation follows under the first rule. That is it is bad because it is violating the non-aggression and non-harm principles. There would be no conditions whereby procreation is justified as, making the move to justify it for positive ethics (e.g. you want them to live out an X agenda of some kind) would in violation of the negative ethical principles and it would be using the individuals (harming them/forcing them) for an agenda (even if for good intentions).
"The conditions of harm" are not the harm itself. And there is no "aggression" against an embryo that gestates through foetal and prenatal stages to live birth. Harm and aggression only apply to a sentient human being which a human foetus only becomes once her thalamocortical system is fully connected (enabling pain circuitry and sensorimotor coordination (i.e. functional sentience)) in CNS around 26th week, that is, the last trimester of pregnancy, and then thereafter. Prenatal sentients are always indistinguishably "already born" persons (e.g. premature births); therefore, negating any increase in harm simultaneously reduces hindrances to positive growth and well-being.
Of course, abstinence, contraception or sterilization only prevent conditions of fertilization and pregnancy but do actual harm to the "already born", who desire to procreate, by depriving them - whether by State Coercion (e.g. Nuremberg Race Laws, Margaret Sanger's "Negro Project" (& other U.S. eugenics sterilization policies)) or Ideological Conformity (e.g. millenarian, malthusian, eco-catastrophist, antinatalist, etc) - of procreating. Is this 'desire to procreate' morally wrong? No. That would be accusing them of "thought crime", which like "blasphemy", harms the integrity of persons. There simply aren't any grounds to judge any desires "morally wrong" absent harmful conduct or without aggravating factors in attempts to exercise or fulfil them.
Your 'metaethical' argument, schop 1, just doesn't hold up under scrutiny which exposes again that it's a false dichotomy; 'negative ethics & positive ethics' entail each other in practice; the choice isn't ever 'either dystopia or utopia' (i.e. mammon or Eden, hell or heaven), but rather to struggle - alone and collectively - with the choice: to do or not to do to anyone what you find hateful, or harmful. The more reasonable interpretation is, I think, (mine) to avoid mitigate or relieve NET harm rather than (yours) to, much less reasonably, (attempt to) prevent / eliminate ALL harm.
:death: :flower:
Already born on the battlefield, there ain't no living pacificists in foxholes, schop 1 - so just triage the casualities; watch your comrade's back while another watches yours; follow orders when you can and give no fucks when you can't; sleep on the run, and fight humping mother dirt, and shit yourself proudly when the shooting lets-up enough for you to reload or bug-out or catch a rat for breakfast; remember: the only enemy is HQ and the happy dead - slaughtered while soldiering scared or in shitholes where they slept - that mock you; and, grunt, out of pure spite, you stay the fuck alive ... long enough to breed more grunts to replace those you've murdered.
:scream: :razz: :cry:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't think so. This just means that (your? Cabrera's?) conception of ethics is (too) ideologically, or rigidly, one-sided to be widely applicable in the "messy" real world. Thus I differ in my metaethical interpretation previously (above).
Quoting schopenhauer1
Only "no conditions" (i.e. no exceptions, no edge cases, no reflexivity) which your ruleset doesn't account for ... à la Kant's "CI" mistake redux. :roll:
Um, ok. So all of this gestation comes from nowhere. Nothing caused this? You can do better than that. Creating instances of harm so that people can grow from them is like forcing someone into a game and saying that it is character-building and thus is necessary. Forcing anything, and creating harm for other people so that they can "grow" from it is still wrong. It is wrong in almost every aspect of adult life (if you were to do this to another adult), and thus is wrong for the new person born. Let's be consistent in the non-aggression and non-harm principles. If you were paying attention to my other points, there are exceptions where full autonomy is not yet established so that shouldn't even come up as an objection (children, elderly, unconscious, etc.).
Quoting 180 Proof
So none of this applies to antinatalism being that it does not advocate forcing people to comply to this. Thus, this is a huge straw man. The desire might not ultimately be wrong, but the exercise of fulfilling them are. Thus, desire away at procreation.. It is actually having children that creates the conditions for harm.
Quoting 180 Proof
But this your "net harm" which you deem as much more altruistic is actually using people for some third-party's agenda (the "greater good" principle) and thus discounts individuals for some broad principle. Shall we put any principle now as "THE" principle? What would that look like? Surely, something authoritarian at best. But the point is that causing harm to individuals is now justified because there is something that "NEEDS" to take place for that person. Why would anything have to take place for anyone, especially if this means harming the person to make them need that something in the first place?
Quoting 180 Proof
I don't think you disproved that once born, we INEVITABLY violate ethics to each other.
Quoting 180 Proof
So "who" loses by not being born?
Well, the discussion was not about that, but if you really want to criticize my position, please do it without assuming that ethics should be based on the individual and not society as that is just begging the question. Why is "overlooking individuals for 'third-parties'" bad?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Violating the principle by forcing everyone not to procreate is not bad as one is preventing harm from the violation of non-aggression by doing so.
I believe that just entails my conclusion above, which is what i was trying to say the whole time. It is a case of one's non-harm principle and non-aggression principle being violated from something else.
That's what I'm saying. They aren't agreed upon. Although I believe it is the case that most people DO agree with these principles and still have kids out of pure hypocrisy or just having never thought about it, I wouldn't be surprised if some people didn't agree with these principles at all.
And yet, you argue that...
Quoting schopenhauer1
That seems a contradiction.
Julio Cabrera has some interesting arguments, and I agree with many of them when considered from his point of view, as I do yours. Cabrera is reacting to what he calls ‘affirmative moralities’ - which is not the same as ‘positive ethics’, by the way. Affirmative moralities lack a negative perspective - they seem to be ignorant or in denial of the necessity of pain, loss, lack and humility, not just to experiencing life, but to existence. By ‘Affirmative morality’ Cabrera refers to a positive ethics that fails to acknowledge its own limitations. But Cabrera’s (and your) ‘objective’ and universal evaluation of these necessities as ‘harm’ is an equally limited perspective.
There is more to meaning than value, and an open approach to understanding the universe must at least attempt to get beyond any notion of value or significance that reduces meaning to its subjective experience. This is particularly important (and particularly difficult) for concepts such as ‘pain’, for example, where we often struggle to imagine a perspective or situation in which this experience is not ‘bad’. From the limited perspective of life, where ‘pain’ is both evaluated as ‘bad’ and recognised as necessary to existence, it’s understandable that existence or life is then seen as ‘bad’ in itself.
But a non-judgemental view of pain from all possible perspectives of existence (not just of life) shows it to be simply an awareness that energy, effort or attention is necessary to adjust to change. That we accept and even invite pain in our life as evidence of effort or resilience in an ever-changing world is not to suggest that pain is ‘good’ instead of ‘bad’, but that it is both - and ultimately neither. In a universe where change is ubiquitous, it’s understandable that pain is a fundamental experience, so it seems ridiculous in this light to call it ‘harm’ - as if existence without instances of pain were possible - or to include all possible instances of pain in a single moral perspective. The negativity of pain stems from its significance to our experience of life, not from its meaning. By understanding the meaning of pain as both positive and negative, we can make more effective use of it as an informative experience.
Cabrera is correct in arguing that most moralities reject the negative in favour of the positive, but even his own morality exists within a limited perspective of life. When we recognise the limitations of this perspective, we can then begin to understand that what is both ‘bad’ and necessary in this perspective could relate to the broader universe in a more meaningful way than we think.
Procreation, regardless of whether we consider it good or bad from whatever perspective, is objectively not necessary. I think that’s the important thing that everyone needs to understand. But the ignorant will continue to believe it is what they are supposed to do, for whatever reason. Most of those reasons are directly related to their value systems, their moral perspective. So you can argue from a moral perspective if you want to, but you’re spending all your time arguing for your moral perspective, which is far more difficult and complex. If that’s your agenda (and I suspect it is), then go for it, and I’ll leave you to it.
But if your agenda is antinatalism, then I would suggest that it’s certainly possible (and more flexible) to argue its merits from an amoral, objective position.
How is the person getting "beheaded" in the case of antinatalism? Who is getting harmed? Antinatalism isn't at all like prescribing beheadings to deal with a headache. It's more like not risking giving SOMEONE ELSE a headache in the first place just because YOU would take the risk.
Quoting 180 Proof
Firstly I don't deny that there is suffering in life. Countless millions have lived their lives in abject misery only to perish in horrible ways. However, we can't ignore what is in my opinion the other side of the coin - let's call these the happy ones. Just like antinatalists/pessimists ignore this significant chunk of people who are content and enjoying life there are people on the other side of the line ignoring the true and real suffering. In all fairness then, like good ol' China we need, in recognition of these facts, a ONE country TWO systems policy. In fact this is the existing policy in all the nations of the world. People are advised to plan their family - avoid teenage pregnancies, have small, ergo, manageable families, give adequate space between pregnancies, etc. All of these measures have the dual purpose of ensuring the health, ergo, happiness of the children who are alive and prevent large, unmanageable families that inevitabily fall to an entire array of exquisite varieties of suffering.
In short, neither antinatalists nor pessimists nor those who think having children is a good thing are right in terms of being applicable to the entire population on earth. Their positions, like so many of our other views on life, apply to certain segments of the population. There is no one size fits all here as the two opposing camps are claiming.
The antinatalist/pessimist position is as follows:
1. Life is suffering or suffering outweighs happiness
2. If life is suffering or suffering outweighs happiness then nonexistence is better than life
So,
3. Nonexistence is better than life
I can't deny premise 2 but what about premise 1? The negation of premise 1 is:
4. Life is full of joy
If proposition 4 is true then antinatalists/pessimists would lower their swords and admit there's nothing to fight for. Implicit in this - the willingness of the antinatalist/pessimist to change their minds if we could ensure happiness in life - is the position that existence is NOT the problem. Suffering is. As you can see the situation is analogous to a patient (life) that has to be cured (happiness provided) of a disease (suffering). As for the doctor giving the disease to the patient and then trying to treat, this is exactly the error in judgment antinatalists/pessimists make - thinking life = suffering.
You might be interested to know that I've heard people claim that birth rates are lower among the educated and higher among the uneducated. I don't know if this is due to economic considerations or because education leads to antinatalism.
What say you?
No. Antinatalism doesn't require this to be the case. It just requires that life includes SOME suffering or that it risks including suffering (I don't think either of these can be denied). Negative ethics just means that the rule is to avoid harm. There is some harm in coming into life. Therefore one should avoid bringing more people into life. That's it. Pleasure or joy never comes into the equation.
I think this is the mode of thinking most people employ when it comes to using others' resources. For example, even if I know you like chocolate, I wouldn't use your money to buy you chocolate without your consent. In the same way, even if I knew my future child would MOST LIKELY (notice how there is even less certainty in this case) enjoy life, I wouldn't have him just in case he finds it terrible. This harms no one whereas the alternative risks harming someone. It is true the alternative also risks bringing more joy than harm, but joy doesn't come into the equation when using negative ethics.
Quoting TheMadFool
Again, this is not antinatalism this is pro mortalism. If you believed this the next conclusion would be that murder is a good if done painlessly but I haven't seen anyone here advocating surprise euthanasia
That's what I mean. The antinatalist can't see the distinction between life and suffering. You say even "some" suffering is good enough to decide. Doesn't that mean no suffering or perhaps ecstatic joy would make the antinatalist decide otherwise. In short it's not life that's the issue, it's the suffering that, as of the moment, is so inevitable that it's difficult to see that life is not the same as suffering.
A simple question:
1. Life + joy
2. Life + suffering
3. Life = suffering
If 1 were true then antinatalists have no argument. Right?
The antinatalist/pessimist thinks 3 is the truth. I'm saying the situation is actually 2 and then the following basic arithmetic is possible.
4. Life + suffering - suffering = Life
5. Life + joy
Once 5 becomes a reality and I think that's possible, antinatalism/pessimism collapses.
Life/existence isn't the problem. Suffering is.
What in what I said made you think that? My life has been pretty joyful and I don't think life is suffering though you insist I do.
Quoting TheMadFool
Some wasn't the best word. "Any" is better.
Quoting TheMadFool
No it wouldn't because in negative ethics you don't care how much joy is created. If you are proposing a life with a guarantee of no suffering whatsoever, then by negative ethics that life is neither good nor evil to start.
Quoting TheMadFool
Sure.
Quoting TheMadFool
No they don't, at least not all of them.
Quoting TheMadFool
Agreed. In negative ethics you RECOGNIZE that joy exists, but you absolutely don't care about it when making moral decision. That's the definition of negative ethics
Quoting TheMadFool
Keyword: Possible. Not guaranteed. Why take the risk of harming someone else just becuase it's possible they can deal with it? Do you find that acceptable in any other situation? If it was guaranteed that's pretty much just situation 1.
It seems to me that there are conceivable scenarios in which the application of such a principle seems irrational.
For example, lets say two people are lost in the wilderness and in order to survive they must cross a river. Person A has a fear of water and will not cross the river, which means he will stay behind and surely starve. Is person B right in (physically) forcing person A to cross that river, when it is clearly in A's best interest to do so?
I personally think the answer is "yes", and I am wondering how you would defend this with the "non-aggression principle" in mind.
I'm not denying that there is suffering in the world. A good indication of this would be the concept of heaven. I could simply use heaven, the very existence of such a notion, to prove and be in agreement with antinatalism.
However, notice something important - Everyone wants to go to heaven and that means two things:
1. This life isn't satisfactory
2. A life of joy is desirable.
Now consider the opposing concept - hell. Nobody wants to go to hell. This means:
3. It is better to be nonexistent than to be in hell
Now imagine a person being given choices as follows:
1. Hell
2. Earth
3. Heaven
4. Nonexistence
Antinatalism at its best can make us choose nonexistence over hell or earth. Can antinatalism ever make us choose nonexistence over heaven?
The foundation under antinatalism is suffering. There is no suffering in heaven. So, no, antinatalism can never provide a good reason to opt for nonexistence over heaven.
Doesn't this mean that life/existence is NOT the problem here and that existence is sufficiently distinct from suffering? I know that, as of now, the two are inseparable - a head comes with headaches so to speak. Nevertheless, we can treat headaches and hopefully treatment can be extrapolated to suffering in general. In short I think it's possible to make earth a heaven. No suffering, no antinatalism.
It's simple. The main premise is: It is wrong to commit any act that may harm someone else unless the benefits of it massively outweigh the losses to said someone. Now lets look at procreation:
Can it harm someone? Definitely.
Do the benefits to me (having a family) outweigh the potential harm? Absolutely not because it just puts my child in the same scenario where HE considers whether or not to have a family and so on and so on. It's like stealing food from a starving person to alleviate my own starvation. People have kids because because they naturally want families, in other words procreation alleviates the pain and loneliness or living alone but does so at the price of transposing the problem wholesale onto someone else which is a ridiculous solution. Add to that all the suffering my child will have to endure over a lifetime and no, my suffering due to not having a family cannot hope to outweigh that realistically.
Quoting TheMadFool
important distinction to be made here I think. A life of joy is desirable TO THOSE WHO ALREADY LIVE. There are no magical ghost babies desiring joy or avoiding pain. In other words, NOT procreating doesn't mean you're "denying" someone something desirable (an argument I see often, not that you made it)
Quoting TheMadFool
Again. Imagaine a PERSON being given these choices. There is no such person. Antinatalism isn't about making the "best decision" for some non existent entity. It merely is avoiding risking harming someone. That is literally all there is to it.
Quoting TheMadFool
True that. In that case procreation would not risk harming someone.
Quoting TheMadFool
When did I imply otherwise? I never said life is inherently problematic, if I thought it was I would be a pro mortalist. The problem with bringing people into this life is that they will suffer whereas they wouldn't have to if they weren't here.
Quoting TheMadFool
If earth was a heaven I wouldn't be an antinatalist. Now what of all those who will suffer in order to make this heaven? Why go through so much suffering to achieve something just as good (per negative ethics) as non existence (Because a life of 0 suffering and non existence are equivalent to negative ethics)? Why should the present generation suffer for the unproven hope that a future generation won't have to?
Heck as antinatalists go I'm pretty lenient. I don't think procreation is wrong out of principle, I just think the risk of harm outweighs the benefit to the individual for the vast majority of cases. You can argue otherwise, but that would be saying "If I don't have kids I'd be suffering more from just that fact than my kids would suffer their entire lifetime" which I find HIGHLY unlikely.
This is all that I want to hear
:halo:
Although I wouldn't say compassion and helping others reduces to a way to cope with life, instead you could see it as "love makes life worth living despite the suffering". It's two different ways to look at the same thing, I had mentioned that a while ago, the same glass can be seen as half-full or half-empty, and in the same way you can view life as something you have to endure while finding ways to cope with it, or you can view it as something to enjoy in spite of the suffering that is in it. Deep down it's the same thing, yet the outlook changes how you live it, either as something you enjoy despite the constraints, or as constraints you endure and you cope with.
I can see how antinatalism can be therapeutic for those who see life as something they endure. But I believe that existence doesn't end with death in this universe, so in my view one way or the other at some point the antinatalist is going to have to start seeing the glass as half-full :yum:
I'm also of the view that we are all part of a single being (us and all life), that giving birth doesn't create a new being out of nothing but that it shows us another part of that being, so in that view we suffer because the whole being also suffers, and then it doesn't create new suffering to give birth, what creates new suffering is how we treat others and ourselves. In order for the whole being to get better we have to care for one another, if we simply all stop procreating then other forms of life will take our place, and if somehow all life in the universe disappears then the whole being would simply create another universe and start again. Maybe the way to reduce suffering is neither suicide nor antinatalism, but love. There are so many things we could do to make the world a much better place, so let's keep working in that direction, let's try everything before giving up, the way I see it we have barely begun.
If some people want to give up that's okay, and if they want to share their views on antinatalism that's okay too, but it would be a sad thing if somehow antinatalists came to rule the world and force everyone to stop procreating against their will no matter the suffering they cause. If existence doesn't end with death in this universe (which I firmly believe) then that would cause more suffering than it would prevent. But the way I see it you don't force your beliefs onto others, so if it's therapeutic for you that's good.
Indeed we're all in this together, but while you see the problem in life itself, I see the problem in what we do with life :flower:
I don't. It's my personal choice. I just looked at how I act when it comes to any other situation where one can choose to use another's resources in any way. Most people (including myself) are risk averse in those scenarios. For example if I saw a house I think you like going on sale, I wouldn't just steal your credit card and buy it without your consent simply because there is a chance you don't like it or don't want to spend the money right now. I doubt you would either. So I just extended that to procreation out of a desire for consistency.
@TheMadFool@Tzeentch@HereToDisscuss@Possibility
I'll try to answer you all one at a time, but this post is about as good a summary as it gets regarding what I am trying to say.. I will answer you, but this is essentially what it will boil down to anyways, just with additions in the particularities of the discussion points you raise.
Because "society" doesn't actually experience suffering or happiness or anything, individuals do. It can be many individuals, but once individuals get reified into an abstract concept "the greatest good" "pursuit of happiness", it goes out of the bounds of the locus of the experience.
Quoting HereToDisscuss
Ok, is this a debating point? You'd have to explain.
I'd probably agree here- positive ethics is not quite the same as affirmative ethics, as he uses the term, but there are parallels. One of these being that the negative is overlooked for the positive/affirmative, or rather one is violated for the other.
Quoting Possibility
I am not sure, but I believe we've had this conversation before. If so, I probably brought up that this is very close to Nietzsche's idea of "beyond good and evil". In other words, there is no good or evil, suffering isn't actually "bad". Rather, suffering provides meaning and we should bask in its radiant glow of significance-making. I think this is just subversion of pain in order to justify it. If the conundrum is that life has pain, if we make pain "good" then we can justify its existence. I just don't buy it being "good" or providing "significance". In a world without pain or suffering (if we want to split the concepts in whatever self-styled manner), even the pain of not having a bit of pain to make life more significant would be there. So I guess this goes down to the metaphysics of pain. But even if we were to say that reality MUST have pain for X reason, we can simply say that we don't need reality then. In other words, no one has to experience it in the first place. And precisely the antinatalist notion that NO ONE actually misses out by not experiencing anything in the first place. There really is not much of a counterargument to it except the notion that people must be born to experience X, Y, Z experiences (perhaps your collaboration, etc.). But that then begs the question why? And then we are back to square one. But I think we both agree. So what are we to do about it?
I think we can both make a compromise that the best option is to not procreate. The next best is to promote positivity when we can. That is not contested by me.
Quoting Possibility
This is a bit murky and pseudo-spiritual. You'd have to explain. My response to this particular sentiment is that you think the universe has some plan or perspective of its own outside of the human perspective. I'd need proof of that. Even if there was a "higher" perspective... how does it affect humans? Think of this idea.. What if a big giant god-like being was watching us and had a completely different view of morality.. to him, our suffering matters not.. How does that affect us, the sufferers? Of course, this is a terrible view to start.. I really don't want to bring religious hodgepodge into this.. It leads to all sorts of non-real/non-relevant rabbit-holes (in my opinion). We mine as well talk about what we know at hand- the human perspective and what we can agree to be the case.
Quoting Possibility
Ok, now I'm interested. What would the "objective position" entail?
Again, I applaud your positivity and good-spirit, but I would just have to say I disagree with this perspective-especially because of its conclusion (more people will be born and suffer that can be prevented). So in regards to other forms of life taking over, that may be so (who is to know how evolution goes and whether it creates self-reflective beings at our level.. probably not though), but the point is once self-reflection can obtain in the species, then they also have to make the same moral choices of whether to bring people into the world that has suffering or rephrasing it, that creates people bound to suffer.
As far as the love over antinatalism thing, I don't think it is a binary choice necessarily. One can abstain from procreation and promote love. I would get on board with it. Sadly, the everyday messiness of the world often demands that we demand stuff from each other, and "love" the mooshy good feeling can turn into other things. This especially goes when stuff is on the line (products and services need to get produced!!). So, there is some realities that are not amenable to "love".. Managers gotta do what managers gotta do.. People will feel they deserve more, are better, understand more.. are resentful of those who aren't living up to certain ideals, etc. etc. You can probably name a whole bunch of real life scenarios with even just a small group of people where "love" simply breaks down due to the conditions that are mitigating factors, personalities, education, background, beliefs, how people think.. The variations and factors that distort "loving relations" are mind-boggingly complex and multi-faceted. So in the end, though a great notion, I think it just falls flat in terms of how it plays out. However, I am all for people having more compassion and pleasant relations in all aspects of life.
Quoting leo
I will reiterate that I do not believe antinatalism should be forced onto anyone. Actually, that goes against the non-aggression rule which should be followed. No one should be forced into anything (one reason for antinatalism actually), no matter how much you think it is "good" to do what you are going to force onto that individual or individuals. So agree with you there.
As I mentioned, the distinction is that positive ethics doesn’t necessarily ignore the negative. A sound positive ethics would be in harmony with a sound negative ethics. If you have to overlook one for the other, then at least one of them is flawed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You seem to be struggling to get beyond good and evil, though. I’m not trying to justify pain, or to make it ‘good’ - we can’t get beyond value and significance by appealing to value and significance. Pain is real at every possible level, and for anyone or anything that exists it IS a fundamental part of that existence. We don’t have to exist, we don’t have to be aware, or connect or collaborate - nobody needs to be born, nobody needs to procreate. Everything that does exist has, at some level, chosen to do so: to be aware, to connect and to collaborate to a certain extent. There is no MUST to be considered here. You may not have chosen to exist as a conscious being, but this ‘you’ consists of aware, connected and collaborating matter that was determined to develop and achieve for its own benefit, in response to the awareness, connection and collaboration of those who may have consciously or unconsciously contributed to your existence.
There is no world without pain - no existence even in a remote or implausible possibility that does not require attention of some kind to adjust to change (not just temporal or physical change, but also change in value, significance, meaning or other correlation). You can refuse to be aware of any change, but to do so successfully and eradicate any instance of pain at any level of awareness, you would need to not exist at any level. That’s your prerogative. So, while I understand that pain reduced to significance is more bad than good from our limited perspective, I think we need to get beyond the value or significance of pain in order to grasp its objective reality. We don’t have to like it, but there’s no point in trying to create or imagine a world without it. And there’s no point thinking that we’re somehow reducing some potential person’s pain by preventing their physical existence, as if that’s an act of ‘love’ on our part. All we’re doing is shifting them into the ‘you matter’ column and then back to the ‘you don’t matter’ column. If you’re going to do that, it’s not love - it’s exclusion.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Because I used the word ‘meaningful’ without reducing it to something significant? I’m not suggesting some ‘higher plan’ or external being - I’m happy to avoid the religious hodgepodge, too. But the idea that we can only know the human perspective is a cop-out. We’ve structured the history of the universe well beyond the human perspective. We managed most of it by imagining a big giant god-like being watching us that had a completely different view of that universe. We know now that essential to our survival is understanding how the rest of the ecosystem evaluates their subjective experiences of our behaviour - to do this we must imagine a broader, critical view of our morality, where our suffering, our perspective of pain, matters no more than the suffering of a great white shark or a mosquito. So let’s not limit ourselves to the human perspective any more, and strive towards a consensus on a more universal or objective view.
The basic idea is what I’ve been describing here: to explore a view of reality beyond any human perspective of value and significance. To recognise that our morality pertains to an incomplete structure of what is real and how it all relates. Regardless of whether we believe procreation to be a good/bad action towards a potential life, or a good/bad action for parents, or even a good/bad action for society or our species, an objective view of procreation shows it to be completely unnecessary.
Humanity’s objective responsibility towards existence does not lie in our capacity for survival, domination or proliferation, but in our advanced capacity to increase awareness, connection and collaboration well beyond our species, our planet, and even the limits of our four- and five-dimensional existence. What constrains us are the individual and collective choices we make to ignore, isolate and exclude in a Sisyphean effort to survive, dominate or proliferate - with globally destructive results.
A reality can be seen as flawed when it begins to destroy itself. We need to recognise by the state of our planet that the way we have structured the position of humanity in our global and universal reality is flawed. Evolutionary theory is incomplete - natural selection is a limiting, not a motivating factor. We didn’t evolve TO survive - we evolved AND survived. That paints a different picture - one that positions procreation as profoundly irrelevant to anyone who wishes to make the most of their own existence.
When I’m not concerned with what is good for me, but looking objectively at my individual existence in the unfolding universe, procreation on my part has negligible benefit, and considerably greater costs.
As good a parent as I believe myself to be, anything I have the capacity to achieve with my existence can be done without bringing another life into the world.
All arguments in support of procreation are limited by the human perspective, and are therefore either selfish, anthropocentric or ignorant.
There is no objective argument to support procreation as necessary or beneficial in our current global or universal situation.
Quoting khaled
(Sorry for the abrupt departure from the conversation. I want to get back into the ring. I hope you don't mind.)
Ok. Basically by harm you mean the suffering birth into this world will entail. I agree that harm is inevitable with the proviso that:
1. If you look at how medicine and technology has changed our lives you must agree that suffering is decreasing compared with the past where disease and the simple act of living were much more difficult
2. From the above we see a downward trend to suffering in general which bolsters our hopes that in the not so far future, suffering, harm as you put it, will become zero
Quoting khaled
please relate the above to what you said below:
Quoting khaled
You say "I never said life is inherently problematic". This is the distinction that I want antinatalists to see and you see it. Life is NOT the problem. Suffering is. Within this framework lies the refutation to antinatalism viz. if suffering could be eliminated then life would be preferable to nonexistence..
Quoting khaled
The above statement encapsulates the problem with antinatalism that the "solution" to life's problems is nonexistence. Everyone wants to go to heaven because they want to live happily and not because they become nonexistent.
One thing I am really concerned about is what you said: Quoting khaled and Quoting khaled
I agree that no one is ever given, and I don't think it's even possible, a choice between life ( existence) and nonexistence. There is an issue of consent and it is problematic. In the most ideal situation existence (life) or nonexistence should be a free choice. In this context life appears foisted upon us and it's a forced participation in whatever that makes life life. However, if one looks at what you said: "I earth was a heaven I wouldn't be an antinatalist" and you are arguing for the antinatalist philosophy, it becomes evidently clear that no one, choice/not, would object to a life/existence in heaven. It's like an offer you can't refuse. Consent inhabits the world of uncertainty of decision. Will he like this? Will she hate this? I should ask first i.e. take consent. However when we're certain of what the choice will be, life in heaven in this case. we don't have to ask for consent do we?
Granted that the facts are that life on earth isn't even a shadow of what heaven could be. The problem is taking this condition of suffering in life to be a necessary fact, unavoidable. Yes, as of the moment it is unavoidable but given how much progress we've made over the ages in the happiness department you can surely see that suffering is not a necessary but a contingent truth about the world - alterable towards a more preferable state. Heaven is possible is all that I mean.
Both of these are debatable. What's not debatable is that PAIN has decreased. IE the actualy physical sensation that comes with disease for example. However there is surprisingly little evidence to suggest that SUFFERING (the subjective experience itself, or the mental part of pain) has changed much over time and much evidence to suggest that people experience similar amounts of suffering despite the pain. Good evidence would be the fact that poorer populations are generally happier (with exceptions at the extremes of course). That's an example of people enduring more pain, yet experiencing less suffering. I think if suffering was directly proportional to pain, we would have gone extinct loooooong ago.
But ok let's say suffering decreased
Quoting TheMadFool
I don't think it would. Again, no one "benefits" by coming into being. By benefit I mean strictly go from a worse state to a better state. That doesn't happen to anyone when they're born (beacuse they weren't in a state to bein with). To someone who doesn't exist (that's an oxymoron but you know what I mean) life is no more preferable as continuing non existence.
Quoting TheMadFool
I just want to confirm this doesn't mean "Life is so bad you should just kill yourself" because that's how I read it at first. Non existence is a solution but killing to get to non existence is not a very good solution.
Quoting TheMadFool
Agreed.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes because in this case it is guaranteed you're taking someone to a state they themselves would consider to be better so it's fine. For procreation: There is no one to take to a better state, you just put someone in a state they may or may not like for your own selfish reasons and now they have to deal with the consequences.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes but I don't think the suffering to get to said heaven is worth it. As I said, it is disputable that we have progressed in any dramatic way when it comes to reducing human suffering although we've made huge progress in reducing pain. Pain has never been the issue though suffering has.
Well, you could just phone me and say "There is a sale going on over a house you would definitely like and time is running out, i will send you the details and you could tell me whetever you wanr to but it or not." Stealing my credit card would not yield any more benefit to me compared to you just phoning me and is just ineffecient. So, that is not a really good example.
Also, i would say that it is more probable that the person will be in a state of "My life is good enough." rather than being depressed. There is always a risk, but it can be drastically reduced. (And i am myself a proponent of a "local antinatalism", for people who can not raise children).
Let's not just "say" things and let's not get ahead of ourselves. As a friend of mine used to say "step by step". With due respect to your concerns I'd like to say this is just a matter of priorities. Physical wellbeing takes precedence over mental wellbeing. I believe the history of medicine stands testimony to this - psychiatry is younger than surgery for example.
I appreciate that you brought up the difference between pain and suffering. It matters especially if we are to be genuine about the issue of causing harm by bringing clueless children into this imperfect world. A good portion of suffering is unseen (nonphysical) and the "evidence" I offered is a bit lopsided. These areas (medicine and technology) were chosen for their tangible, indubitable impact on our wellbeing. As for nonphysical suffering I'm sure it won't take too much of an effort to find people trying to do something about that. Psychological wellbeing is as dear as physical wellbeing to us.
And i will accept this conclusion that is prima facie counter-intuitive. What is wrong with it?
Quoting schopenhauer1
It was a weaker form of my view that negative ethics entails that we ought to destroy all human life-which was the main topic the whole time. The weakened version was that.
Do you agree with that at least version? If not, which part of my reasoning was wrong?
Yes it is more profound and complex than just saying "let's love one another", otherwise Jesus, Gandhi and Lennon wouldn't have been killed. The message is the goal, the problem to work on is how do we get there. Just because simply saying it doesn't solve the problem, that doesn't imply that the problem can't be solved, and thus that love doesn't work. Love works but it's not sufficient. Understanding the world, others and oneself is important too, otherwise how can we truly love that which we don't understand? If we don't understand then love isn't effective, because we don't provide what the other needs.
The idea that endless growth of production and exploitation of resources is what we need has to go, that idea is mistaken and leads to a lot of suffering. We have to question, rethink and change a lot of things, loving one another within this society won't be very effective, society has to change, and in order for society to change our beliefs have to change. Such as the belief that "it's impossible", "we can't do it". When we believe it's not possible we give up, when we believe it's possible we eventually make discoveries.
Stopping procreating is the overkill solution to prevent suffering (and it might not work depending on what there is after death). There are ways to ease and prevent suffering within this world, ways we have found and likely ways we have yet to find. When pain is accompanied with suffering we have found painkillers to prevent that suffering. When one suffers from being isolated, love eases that suffering. When one suffers from being harassed, help eases that suffering. As a general rule fear and hate lead to suffering, understand what people fear/hate and why and you can prevent a lot of suffering. Understand how everything is connected and you can see how we all need one another, the whole human species and even the whole of life is like one big organism that we have to take care of, if we hurt one part we're hurting the whole. One great source of suffering is the need to kill to live, I believe eventually we should be able to synthesize food from non-living matter and this will make an immense amount of suffering disappear. And that's just the beginning, there is so much more we can do.
So I really don't believe suffering is inevitable within this world, I believe and see that we have barely begun working in that direction. It's only beliefs that are hindering progress, but beliefs can change, and people can wake up, not all at once, but a few, and then more and more. And then maybe the antinatalists will be glad to be alive and will change their mind.
One actually encompasses and respects the individual, and not using them. The other is in a locus that is not where the ethical concerns lie. An principle does not feel pain, people do. Wanting people to be happy and doing something for the principle of happiness are two different things. But it really becomes egregious when the third-party entity is not just happiness (as this can be construed as trying to make the largest number of individuals happy and thus possibly bypassing this argument of third-party), but things like "humanity", "civilization", "technology". People need to be born to keep these kind of things going. That would be a very poor argument for putting conditions of harm on others.
But even the greatest good or principle of happiness (positive ethics) can be flawed because it is also using people as autonomous individuals for ends that violate this. Thus agreeing that you will put someone in conditions of harm (procreation) because they might experience happiness later on is still using people (by being forced into harm) in order for some greater good principle (some positive experiences) will be some hoped for outcome for that person. It is overlooking the person's autonomy represented by being someone who can be harmed and who can be forced for some hoped for positive outcome. Why did someone's harm and non-aggression (being forced) need to be violated to see some outcome (agenda) come about?
Quoting HereToDisscuss
No because you are violating those who are still here. Somehow your reasoning is stuck in this "greatest good" calculation which this ethical system would not endorse. At least that's how I am reading it. If you feel I've misinterpreted you somewhere, ,let me know.. From what you are saying, we can prevent all future violations by doing a little violation now. That would be exactly the thing I would be advocating against. That's why people often procreate.. by thinking that causing of conditions of harm don't matter as long as X, Y, Z comes from it.
Well, what does it mean for the "ethical concerns" to "lie with" individuals? Assuming you are not begging the question by saying our ethical concerns are only about individuals and not society (which is not really correct, see people who advocate such a concept), how does that entail your conclusion that the betterment of society is just some kind of abstract construct that is just really not in touch with this reality?
I would like to see your argument in a logical form, as i can not imagine such an argument which does not beg the question or has premises that i have no reasons to accept.
All logic starts with premises. You would just reject that, and it would be a waste of time.
Yes, it does. But the point of an argument, typically speaking, is to show that some intuitive premises lead to a position contrary to the defender's position or that the premises the defender adopts lead to a conclusion that is agreed upon to be wrong.
But your premises seem to be the type that would only be accepted by people who already adopt the conclusion that is entailed by it-so it is kind of useless in showing one thing to be at least somewhat unreasonable and does not actually mean anything regarding whetever that thing is reasonable or not.
But if I COULDN'T do that for whatever reason I shouldn't buy the thing right? Now can I phone my future kid and ask if he'd be fine with being born? No. So I shouldn't have a kid
Quoting HereToDisscuss
You're just being too literal, it is implied I can't get consent from you or else why wouldn't I? Though admittedly I'm bad with examples
Quoting HereToDisscuss
Would you be fine with me, say, signing you up to the hunger games (I'm bad with examples but bear with me) without your knowledge? After all, while the risk of painful agonizing death is there, there is also the chance you win and have a lifetime of luxury ahead. Also the risk of agonizing death can be reduced significantly with proper training. So it's cool if I sign you up suddenly right? And before you say something about how life isn't nearly like the hunger games and that it's a bad analogy I ask you: How bad must life be for you to consider having children immoral? And should YOU really be the one arbitrarily deciding this? How would you react if someone punched you in the face because they arbitrarily thought that amount of pain was "low enough" that it's fine to do so? Would you forgive them if they said "grow up you should be able to handle that one"
I'm not sure what you mean by "take precedence over". Sure physical well-being takes the highest priority but what I'm saying is after you treat physical ailments the person treated still suffers a similar amount although he is experiencing less physical pain.
Quoting TheMadFool
Do you mean well-being as in "less suffering" or "less pain". They have an indubitable impact on the latter not the former I think.
My point is that pain has very little to do with suffering and science and technology have thus far mostly treated pain. There are cancer patients that are perfectly content and millionaires struggling with depression. There is surprisingly little evidence to suggest that human suffering has declined over time though pain definitely has.
Good points...The human animal is hard to satisfy.. and even thinking of it in terms of "satisfaction" might be wrong if it is structural. Satisfaction means that there can be something that will always satisfy.
The ideal amount of suffering that a person should cause is zero – an absolute specific number. There is no ideal amount of well-being to be caused. We can only say “the more the better”. However high a number you make (for example the number of people you have made happy in any way) you can always make it higher, and you will never get closer to any perceived perfection.
Causing zero suffering can conceivably be a duty. You will fall short, but at least you will know when you have transgressed. It wouldn’t make sense to claim that we have a duty to cause as much well-being as possible. You would never come any closer to having fulfilled this duty.
Ethics by no means stops at negative ethics. A person who does absolutely nothing, is not a good person although he doesn’t cause any suffering. Also, when actively doing something to promote well-being, there will inevitably be missteps on the way that will cause suffering, but it is to be hoped that the suffering will be much less significant than the well-being.
Agreed
Quoting Congau
Good points.
Quoting Congau
Yep. Yep.
Quoting Congau
I would agree with this but with a caveat. That once born, we cannot help but making missteps. The procreational decision is the only one where we can perfectly prevent harm without any collateral damage. Someone might say here that if you are supposed to help alleviate suffering, and then cause suffering, then why not the same for procreation? That's why I mentioned that caveat.
Why not and why? I agree with you but not everyone does.
Well, I’d be one who disagrees with this. You CAN demand both, but the question is HOW would you ensure that your demand was successful?
You can demand that people pay taxes, for instance. And you can demand that people abstain from having sex. But how successful can we be with these demands?
This is really odd indeed. Are you saying that among the countless millions of our forefathers not one single person had the sense to say what you're saying, that suffering is more important than pain or is the more plausible alternative, that pain is the first of our problems, true?
That said I must agree that medicine has only managed to pluck the low hanging fruit, pain, but then to compare that with the failure to tackle suffering is like disgracing a runner for not winning before the race finishes.
I.... Just straight up don't understand this paragraph idk why
Quoting TheMadFool
The thing is though, the runner in this case had never even been attempting to win the race I'm talking about. Science and Medicine don't treat suffering, they treat pain. And what I'm saying is, no matter how well you treat pain you haven't treated suffering. I haven't said you CAN'T treat suffering or that we won't some day. It's my hope that we do because while I think the suffering involved in creating a Utopia isn't worth the Utopia, since I know procreation will never cease of people's own accord realistically speaking, I'd much prefer a Utopia than whatever we have right now.
The procreational decision would be much the same as any other well-meaning act that also may cause collateral damage, wouldn’t it? The only difference is that procreation is not in itself good or bad since the potential sufferer or happy person is not yet existing. If you think life in general is more well-being than suffering, at least procreation can’t be that bad.
Quoting khaled
A person has not chosen his birth therefore it would be very unfair to make demands just because he has been born. On the other hand, if you apply for a membership in a club, they can make demands on you as a condition for membership. Then you can choose if you accept it or not.
We can demand that a person involuntarily born abstains from doing since other people who also happen to have been born are present and from the plain fact of birth no one takes precedence. From that common starting point, we can’t allow that anyone takes up space at the expense of others. It can only be allowed later when more facts are added.
Quoting Possibility
No, you can’t demand that people pay taxes if they have never worked. If a person chooses to be a vegetable, you can’t demand anything from him.
Again, some people genuinely disagree with this. They believe that just being born is grounds for making demands of someone. Again, I agree with you but you can't say anything justifies either of our beliefs other than a shared sense of empathy (or whatever you wanna call it). There is no objective basis for this stuff.
Quoting Congau
Assuming this is true, What is wrong with genetically modifying a child to suffer by... Say giving them 2 extra eyes and 4 extra legs if anything? After all the sufferer doesn't exist yet. Also what is wrong with someone signing a contract promising to sell their future children to slavery, again, the sufferer doesn't exist yet. It's situations like these that make me think that the sufferer not existing at the time the action was caused is irrelevant, the end result is the same, someone got hurt
A government, king, authority, etc CAN still demand it. It’s how they justify it and how they enforce it that matters - how they align it with the value structures of those to whom it applies, and how they interact with those who don’t comply for whatever reason - NOT the demand itself.
A person who does absolutely nothing is not far off dead. In the meantime, their very existence - breathing in and out the way they do, consuming oxygen and energy, displacing air, etc - can be seen by some as inadvertently causing suffering, depending on your perspective. If you exist and do not make effective use of the suffering you will cause just in choosing to live, by finding something to do that will offset your unavoidably negative impact on the universe, then what are you still doing here, and why make more like you?
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t think we can or should enforce anything. We can increase awareness, connection and collaboration, or we can contribute to ignorance, isolation and exclusion - at various levels of interaction. That’s pretty much it.
Of course we can say there is something that justifies our beliefs. Whenever we make a philosophical argument attempting to be rational and logical, that’s our justification. Sure, another person would disagree and present logical arguments for his views, and since there is no third-party judge we can never settle once and for all who is ultimately right, but that doesn’t mean there’s no justification. If you think everything is just emotional bias, there’s no reason to do philosophy. (This goes beyond this thread, though, and would merit a separate thread.)
The reason some people think that we can demand something from everyone, that is, that everyone has duties, is probably because they observe that in real life everyone lives in some kind of society of which they have indirectly chosen to be a member. They unavoidably get involved with others and thereby it’s demanded that they somehow pay back. This starts happening shortly after birth, but not at birth, but since it happens so early it may look like the demands are given as a consequence of birth. Therefore, I maintain that a demand that is derived from birth is illogical. (It’s not just an emotional reaction on my part.)
That's all I'm trying to say. So asking "what justifies a positive ethics" is ultimately only answerable by "because it makes sense to me"
There’s never an independent third-party judge to settle anything, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make objectively reasonable arguments.
Imagine two scientists arguing whether the Earth is round or flat. No one can settle that discussion for them, but I for one believe, based on thoroughly convincing arguments, that the Earth is round. I arrive at conclusions about ethics in the same way, through convincing arguments. There’s no difference.
Quoting khaled
I was referring to procreation as such. You don’t know if the future child will predominantly suffer or be happy, so procreation as such is not bad.
Quoting Possibility
I meant of course “can” as in “having the moral right to”.
Quoting Possibility
“Negative impact on the universe” is really something so minuscule that it doesn’t count. Besides, you can only cause individuals to suffer not the universe in general.
If you avoided all interaction with other people, lived on a deserted island or isolated in house (say you had a fortune and paid a landlord and a delivery boy, making them happy), it would be possible to live without causing suffering, but it wouldn’t be a good and a moral life. We can’t demand (meaning we don’t have the moral right to demand) that that person does something specific. In positive ethics we can only make general recommendations, many things would be good to do, but none of them is necessary. For negative ethics we can (have the moral right to) make very specific demands: Don’t kill Peter! Don’t do A!
If there was a quick medical procedure that would end all suffering, would you have it done?
I never claimed that the universe suffers. Suffering is a perspective of harm from negative affect towards experiences of pain, loss, lack and humility. It all adds up when considered from the ‘perspective’ of the universe - which is the only way to approach an objective position.
Quoting Congau
No, you would still cause suffering - you’d just remain ignorant of what and how much suffering you cause to whom, which in itself cannot be a ‘good and moral life’. How you interact with the landlord and the delivery boy, with those who source, produce and supply or are otherwise impacted by your various needs and wants - that’s not doing nothing at all. Your existence and your impact on the universe is not just about ‘physical’ interaction. You’d have to be fully aware of how your interactions contribute to pain, loss, lack and humility from the perspective of each of these people, animals and ecosystems in order to be certain that you are not causing suffering. Which means that you would have to interact more.
What is a ‘moral right’ as such? How does a moral right pertain to negative ethics but not to positive ethics? I looked it up, and it was defined as the right of an author or creator to preserve the integrity of their work. So your ‘moral right’ is to make demands of me in any interactions with your limited construction of how the world is supposed to work, whether or not we agree on the details.
I know that it seems like declaring something to be ‘immoral’, ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ justifies our actions to do what we can to exclude instances of it in our experience of the universe, but this is not an objective position. You believe you have a ‘moral right’ to interact with others in a way that excludes, isolates or ignores the ‘moral rights’ of others because they’ve excluded, isolated or ignored the ‘moral rights’ of others - but most likely they’ve merely exercised their ‘moral right’ to do the same...this does nothing to reduce suffering.
Agreed. But every argument has to have premises. And at some stage you can no longer break the premises down into other arguments. At that point it is a matter of opinion. I'm saying that positive vs negative ethics is one of those irreducible presmises. Just keep asking "Why do you believe this" and eventually you'll have to answer "Just cuz"
Quoting Congau
So it's fine if I gamble with your money without consent? After all you COULD win. I think that if an action risks harming someone else and there is no good incentive to take said action then it is wrong. Even if there is a chance the person in question benefits
It just seems that this is close to saying that the grave is what we truly strive for (I think Schopenhauer would agree).
So in choosing the procedure that ends all pain, you would be choosing death. Does reflecting on that change your mind?
It is not a matter of 'choosing death', it is a matter of not desiring life at all cost.
In seeking death (of desire [to live]) I have found freedom from suffering.
Janis Joplin: Freedom just another word for nothing left to lose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTHRg_iSWzM
Having said that the utterly passive life is not a moral life, implies that it has a negative impact on the world. But you can’t pinpoint exactly what that person is doing wrong. He could for example have worked for the poor in the slum, painted his neighbor’s house, played music to cheer people up or an infinite number of other possibilities. Positive ethics doesn’t specify what is wrong. There are no specific demands.
The passive person doesn’t cause suffering directly and that’s why we can only reproach him through positive ethics (without making specific demands). He produces garbage, like everyone else, but no one in particular suffers because of that. Besides you and I produce garbage too, are we doing something immoral then? Yes and no, indirectly, but what exactly are we doing wrong. We could certainly reduce our consumption, but how much is it reasonable to expect from us. It is open-ended, non-specific and thus no absolute demands can be made.
Contributing to suffering is not the same as causing suffering. If you are one out of millions of people who hurt the environment with your garbage, in this respect no one suffers because of your existence. If you dump garbage in your neighbor’s back yard, your neighbor suffers because of you. In the first instance we can only encourage caution (positive ethics), in the second we demand that you stop (negative)
That depends on the positive ethics. I explained that the person you described, who did not consciously interact with life, was ignorant of what suffering they caused to whom. They may believe their passivity does not cause suffering, but their refusal to consciously interact precludes them from any awareness of the suffering they actually cause. This ignorance is what is ‘wrong’. The delivery boy could get beaten by suppliers every time he has to pick up the delivery - they won’t know that or be able to do anything to prevent it if they don’t interact. So they indirectly contribute to suffering by their ignorance. According to a positive ethics that calls us to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, they’re doing nothing commendable by their passivity.
Quoting Congau
This ignorant attitude is why the world is going to shit, while everyone arrogantly points the finger at governments and corporations. They may not appear to suffer from your existence, but they’re certainly suffering from your actions (yes, you are acting by producing garbage), and particularly by your ignorance.
Let me make something clear here: from the start, I have not argued that positive ethics should be employed without a negative ethics, but that both work in harmony. An effective positive ethics, in my view, has a corresponding negative ethics and vice versa - but neither gives us the right to make demands on people. We make demands anyway with negative ethics because we believe that here we can more effectively force compliance through fear. The demand is accompanied by imposed (rather than natural) negative consequences. In many situations, the demand is effective only because a fear of these imposed consequences render those who comply ignorant of, isolated or excluded from, their capacity to choose the immoral act. Where this is not the case, they make their choice based on the soundness of the ethics, not the demand itself.
The first premise of the argument is not a random belief. It’s something so obvious that everyone agrees on it. (And if they don’t you can go even further back until they agree.)
Let’s take my argument about positive ethics as an example. I’m saying that we can’t make concrete demands about what people must do, only that they abstain from doing. Why? Because everyone is born equal and therefore no one has an initial right to demand anything from any other.
Why do I say that people are born equal? Because either they were all nothing before they were born, or if they were something, if they had a previous life, we don’t know about it. Therefore no one has a head start on anyone and so no one has a right to make demands.
You see, I never said “just because”. The argument goes back to an obvious first premise (we don’t know about any previous life)
Of course everyone still wouldn’t agree with me, but that’s because they think they find a fault somewhere in the middle of the argument and not at the first premise.
Quoting khaled
If you have a positive view of life, you will think there’s a greater chance that the unborn child will be more benefited than harmed by life. Then you don’t consider it a great gamble.
I'm highly skeptical of the use of "everyone" there. First off how do you know it's everyone? Have you talked to every person who ever lived is alive or will live? Secondly, what's the "extremely obvious" argument in this case favoring either positive or negative ethics. I would have used "everyone you're talking to" instead of everyone. (nvm you adress secondly later but I don't wanna delete it)
Quoting Congau
"No one has a headstart on anyone else" does not logically translate to "no one has the right to make demands". You would need to first off define what a "head start" is and what could possibly give someone a "right to make demands" and then show that a "head start" is not one of those things. Those don't seem like they're where you can find a premise everyone agrees on.
Quoting Congau
Someone might claim they do. How do you prove them wrong?
Quoting Congau
Oh so at least we're considering it a gamble now. Good. This is honestly further than most people are willing to give for antinatalism.
Can I buy a house with your money without telling you? I don't consider that a great gamble so I can right? I'm just showing what happens when someone can arbitrarily decide what a "great gamble" is or isn't based on their own beliefs for someone else.
"From nowhere" like thoughts or moods ... The relationship of sex to pregnancy is statistical not deterministic - not a matter of volition. Not "nowhere" but somewhere other than the couple's (coupling's) choosing.
[quote=schopenhauer1]... actually using people for some third-party's agenda (the "greater good" principle) and thus discounts individuals for some broad principle.[/quote]
Strawman. The "already born" who procreate are not a "third party" ...
Your argument "discounts" prospective parents - procreators - as already suffering individuals ...
[quote=schopenhauer1]The desire might not ultimately be wrong, but the exercise of fulfilling them are. Thus, desire away at procreation.. It is actually having children that creates the conditions for harm.[/quote]
If frustrating / blocking the desire harms either father or mother or both by not having children, then antinatalism is self-harming. Again, "conditions of harm" are not harm itself ... just as (e.g.) an acorn isn't a tree or a caterpillar isn't a butterfly or breathing isn't singing.
[quote=schopenhauer1]So "who" loses by not being born?[/quote]
The "already born" parents, who you (antinatalists must(?)) ignore, discount, ... lose.
Quoting schopenhauer1
"The best option" is "best" IFF neither "already born" is harmed by not procreating nor the procreated is harmed by being born - both conditions met - otherwise, it violates the prohibition against doing any harm.
Quoting ovdtogt
Bingo! :100:
Quoting TheMadFool
:clap: And failing to make or accept this distinction leads to the "destroy the village in order to save the village" catch-22 absurdities with which many antinatalists indefensibly paint themselves into a vanishing corner.
With respect to my arguments, your objection is completely a non sequitur.
Quoting 180 Proof
Odd because me and TheMadFool agreed to make that distinction yet I fail to see how it impacts antinatalism in any way. Who here even claimed that life is inherently problematic? Suffering is the issue.
Quoting 180 Proof
No one here claimed that not having children is doing good. The claim is that having children is bad.
Quoting 180 Proof
Ok so? Are you saying that since someone is harmed either way it doesn't matter which you choose? Even though one choice (not having children) clearly leads to less overall harm in the overwhelming majority of scenarios? Ok then, say I feel like shooting my professor right now. By not shooting my professor I am slightly inconvenienced. Therefore I am allowed to shoot my professor. After all, someone suffers either way.
Quoting 180 Proof
Again, I don't see why this is relevant. The relationship between me pointing a gun at you and pulling the trigger and your death is also statistical as the gun might malfunction. That doesn't make it ok to point a gun at people and pull the trigger does it? Obviously I am using an extreme example.
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you claiming that a parent would suffer more by not having children than their children would suffer their entire lifetime? I'm not discounting the parents' suffering, but one would have to show me that this particular couple wants children SO BADLY, that by just not having children they will surpass all the suffering their children will likely experience in a lifetime, keeping in mind that their children will also face the same dillemma of wanting children and there is no good reason to believe will suffer any less by not having their own children than their parents. If you can show that sure, have kids. I don't think anyone can show that though or maybe a negligable number can. I don't "ban" procreation just because it's procreation that's dumb. I think it's wrong because it leads to more suffering than necessary or justified.
Also fun fact: There is a way to satisfy your urge to raise children AND not procreate, it's called adoption, and that does fit your description of "The best option"
If I dump my rubbish I am causing and contributing towards the pollution of the environment. Contributing merely means I am not alone in exhibiting this behaviour.
This still doesn't matter to the argument- a moot point. The parents can prevent the outcome of conditions of harm caused to another by not procreating. Period.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not referring to the "already born", but whatever principle or hopes that they want for the child to live out.. the reasoning (besides accidental) for having the child.. It MUST be good for the child because I prefer, ergo it must be good for the child sort of thinking.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'll defer to @khaled here as I would simply make the same argument.
Quoting 180 Proof
All harm comes from being born at all. Are we guaranteeing no harm now? No, we know where the causality link starts here. We don't need to know every causal link to determine which action prevents all harm for another person. To presume one CAN start harm for another person because one prefers it, to me would need to be justified beyond "I have high hopes and I'm good at statistical forecasting".
Quoting 180 Proof
So I believe in not violating the autonomy of the individual. The parent being sad that they can't produce an outcome that can negatively affect another person is not doing this. Again, I refer to @khaled's arguments as they are the same as mine here.
Of course they’re doing nothing commendable by their passivity. I have already said that such a passive life is not a virtuous and moral life. It only escapes the demands of negative ethics but not the recommendations of positive ethics.
Quoting Possibility
For all we know, we may be in the same situation. Although we are more aware than that vegetable-like person, a lot of things escape us, and we could always make an effort to be more aware. Who knows what you might have done to the delivery boy last time you ordered something.
Quoting Possibility
In negative ethics we have indeed the right to make demands. I have the right to demand that you don’t murder your next door neighbor, even though I don’t know you nor your neighbor. I don’t have the means to prevent you or punish you, but the abstract right to demand is not dependent on that. If I caught you when you were about to commit the murder, I would have the right to stop you, don’t you agree?
You couldn’t say: “I’m a free person so you have no right to stop me or demand that I refrain from murdering.”
However, since you are a free person, I can’t demand that you do what is recommended by positive ethics. I can’t demand that you give money to charity for example.
The irony is that the ultimate negative demands (don't procreate) would lower the need for positive actions (giving to charity). No people, means no need for charity. Positive demands seem to always be necessary when the real ethical basis of negative demands breaks down. You don't have to save anyone, if someone wasn't doing it in the first place. Of course, another thing to consider is that being born requires necessarily us to break negative ethics. We cannot always know, and we cannot always prevent doing things that will violate harm of someone else or aggression onto someone else. This is the collateral damage aspect.
The point was to show that I’m basing my argument on something more than just “this is something I just feel like” or “just because”. I start with a premise that seems so obvious to me that I think everyone would agree with it. If the person I’m talking to still doesn’t agree, I’m taking yet another step backwards until we find a common point of agreement.
Quoting khaled
I only roughly outlined my argument here. It’s in the middle of the reasoning process, and that’s exactly where you can attack me if you find my conclusion implausible, not at the first premise.
Quoting khaled
In that case he would disagree with my first premise and I’d have to take a step back. I’d say, ok, maybe you think you know that, but if the person had had a previous life, he would actually have been a different person in that life. If Peter used to be the prince of Persia in his previous life, that prince would have been something different from the current Peter. This Peter started when he was born. Do you agree? If he does, we have found a common basis, if he doesn’t, I have to make another effort. Again, it is not just an emotion that I have.
Quoting khaled
If life is almost always worth living, there isn’t much of a gamble. If the odds were a million to one to win a big prize, I think I’d be justified to gamble with your money (especially if you didn’t have much money anyway). What are the odds that the unborn life will not be completely miserable? It’s up to you to judge.
Key words: You think. Not everyone actually does.
Quoting Congau
I don't think you can do that forever. I think there will be premises you can't take back further. Example: A + B = B + A. Try to take that one back further
Quoting Congau
No that's where I DID attack you. I could have also attacked the first premise
Quoting Congau
This is all assuming some type of reincarnation. I didn't claim that was the case. What if someone claimed that he lived in heaven before he was born?
Quoting Congau
And who gets to decide that exactly? Say I'm a masochist and I think that getting tortured is absolutely awesome. Does that allow me to torture you without your consent? For me the odds of enjoying a torture session is a million to one so that justifies me torturing you now does it?
Quoting Congau
This is the central issue. What if I judge that it's ok for me torture you or rob you? Does that justify the act? I don't think any sort of imposing our arbitrary judgements on others makes a permissable moral system.
Agreed. It’s almost impossible to be aware if you don’t interact, though.
In negative ethics we have indeed the right to make demands. I have the right to demand that you don’t murder your next door neighbor, even though I don’t know you nor your neighbor. I don’t have the means to prevent you or punish you, but the abstract right to demand is not dependent on that. If I caught you when you were about to commit the murder, I would have the right to stop you, don’t you agree?
You couldn’t say: “I’m a free person so you have no right to stop me or demand that I refrain from murdering.”
However, since you are a free person, I can’t demand that you do what is recommended by positive ethics. I can’t demand that you give money to charity for example.[/quote]
Well, I could say that, actually. I wouldn’t be attempting murder if I didn’t believe I had some right to be undeterred in this particular situation.
I get that you believe you have a moral right to apply force in preventing me from murdering someone, and that most people would probably agree with you. But if negative ethics includes both ‘don’t harm others’ and ‘don’t use force’, then wouldn’t you need to allow one to be violated in order to uphold the other in this situation? So how do you decide which one is more important to uphold?
It is ok to prevent the harm of someone else if their negative ethics is being violated by a third-party. The autonomy of the person has already been violated. Violating non-aggression is not bad if one's autonomy is going to be or has already been violated from another's aggression.
I'd also like to distinguish between "de facto" forced and "physically forced". Most people have to find the most reasonable job, with the most reasonable pay, in the most reasonable circumstances, in the most reasonable market conditions, etc. Now, you are correct, no one has to do this. People can try to survive in nature, live on the streets, or become a monk. But these for most would be suboptimal given the choices. But the fact that one has to choose any of these is what is the "de facto" forced. At the end of the day, people pick the best of sub-optimal conditions many of the time.
So if I set up a scenario where I forced you to choose out of sub-optimal conditions, you may be justified to be resentful of this. Sure, you could choose in my game to lay down and die, but really, you are trying to choose the best of the choices. This is an important distinction as well, because people think once born, that people have an infinite amount of choices, or at least more choices than are really available. At the end of the day, mitigating circumstances leads to really a few choices and even those might not be desired in the first place. If you like those choices, why would you want to force others into it because you like them or at least find them acceptable.
Humans are 'de facto' forced to stay alive for fear of death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:
Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?
Correct, that would be a more general way of putting it.
Well yes, this is sort of the problem if by that you mean that the trolley conductor is forced to be in an unwanted situation whereby he has to choose from sub-optimal choices. It is slightly different, because unless the conductor is a sociopath, no one would want these choices. However, in the "game of life" situation, some people don't mind or think that they prefer these sub-optimal choices, so "why wouldn't someone else?". That is the main difference.
There's also a bit of trickery going on here, with the "if a tree falls in the woods" problem. These same people might say, "People need to be around to KNOW they don't like these sub-optimal choices", thus in order to even have any determination, a person needs to be around in the first place. This is the non-identity issue. I say this is a false dilemma as it can be argued that putting someone into the determination of sub-optimal conditions, is itself a violation. As long as we can agree on the premise that it is always good not to cause harm when unnecessary, this will apply to situations prior to birth regarding decisions of procreation.
I think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. The question is a moral one. Should you intervene or not? What are you responsibilities? The five were ordinary day laborers and the 1 was a famous doctor who can save many peoples lives. It wishes merely to illustrate that it is very difficult to make value judgments.
Yes, if this applies to the scenario of intervening to someone who is about to or already violating the non-aggression/non-harm principle, then it is tough to decipher. My first observation would be that once born, the intra-worldly events of the everyday are messy. The procreational decision is much easier as the messiness is not even in the equation (non-aggression and non-harm can be perfectly followed). Once born, negative ethics still takes precedence, but since the locus of ethics lies at the autonomous individual, it is this which should be taken into consideration when the negative ethics is violated. Is someone's autonomy about to be violated? Then one can intervene positively to prevent the harm/aggression.
I'd like to add that a possible justification for negative ethics is its association with autonomy. By violating a principle, autonomy is being violated. By forcing or harming someone, it not respecting their autonomy.
Not very sound principles then, are they? We’re back to square one. If following one principle causes another principle to be violated, then one or both principles are flawed.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And now you’ve added a third principle - or is this your underlying principle? Is autonomy for you a fundamental right? This would explain your stance a bit better: non-existence being the only way to respect ideal autonomy in every sense.
Not at all. The ideals are there. The world is messy. I never claimed it wasn't.
Quoting Possibility
Actually, yes! I think I had a hard time explaining that earlier with all the truth tables.
Perhaps this is the problem I have with ethics. There is a way to describe reality that not only explains what we should (or shouldn’t) be doing, but also explains why not everyone does (or refrains from doing) what they should (or shouldn’t). Ethics (or perhaps just traditional formulations) has a tendency to avoid this second part - it simply attempts to draw a line and then ignores, isolates or excludes the reality beyond that line. The fact that there is a reality beyond that line is ‘messy’, but you’re just sweeping dirt under the rug here.
It’s a delusion to say that ‘this is what reality is supposed to be but it sucks that it isn’t’. That’s not a workable philosophy. Don’t get me wrong - that used to be me, so I understand the appeal. But the world is only ‘messy’ because we have an inaccurate perspective of ‘neat’. When we can see the world through a more accurate conceptualisation - one that is inclusive of all actions and processes and motivations (even the ones we don’t agree with) - then it actually looks pretty tidy. I always thought that was the ultimate aim of philosophy.
There’s no reason to equate negative ethics with rule ethics. Whenever I judge that for whatever reason you would be doing something morally wrong if you did x, I claim that I have the right to demand that you abstain. “Demand” doesn’t always amount to much, though, I’m merely using the word to distinguish it from a mere recommendation. I by no means think I have the right to use force against you every time you transgress ever so little. I could say “don’t lie to your spouse about your whereabouts last night”. In a sense I can demand that you don’t, even though it’s not really my business and quite frankly I don’t care. In fact, I probably shouldn’t even tell you so to your face, but I would still call it a demand. My dictionary doesn’t mention anything about force in connection with “demand”. “Demand” can be used when it’s imperative that you do x (or don’t do) whereas “recommendation” is for cases where there are also other possibilities. In negative ethics the “don’t” indicates that there is no other possibility, doing it would be plain wrong. In positive ethics the “do” is not the only possibility. (It would be good to give your money to charity, but it would also be good to spend it on your child’s education.)
Of course there is a possibility - that is clearly demonstrated when someone acts contrary to your imperative. By defining the doing of the ‘don’t’ as ‘wrong’, given that it doesn’t prevent the doing, what do you hope to achieve?
If people agree that it is an ethical requirement to act in a certain way, the demand has achieved its purpose. All precepts of negative ethics are demands (not my demands but demands that the followers of a system subscribe to). Whenever there’s a “don’t” and the followers know it, they are not in doubt that they should abstain from doing it.
Positive ethics, on the other hand, often deals with recommendations instead of demands. Then the followers don’t necessarily have to act in a particular way.
Sometimes, however, also positive ethics uses demands that must be obeyed. (“Honor thy father” for example).
Quoting khaled
Everyone would agree with that, right? No, need to take it further back. (And if they don’t, well, I’d be wasting my time talking to them anyway.)
A+B = B+A is an example of a logical axiom. It’s definitely not just my emotions that make me believe in it.
Quoting khaled
I could come up with an answer to that too, which would be pretty much along the same lines as the previous answer, and I’m sure you could produce a strawman objection to that too, but what’s the point? I have never heard anyone claim something like that. For any realistic conversation I have now produced a first premise that people would agree with.
So am I to understand that your aim is to convince others to subscribe to a system of behaviour that is limited by such demands - but not because those demands correspond to any broader understanding of reality? The important thing for you is not to approach reality or truth, as such, but that the system of behaviour is adhered to - that one’s perspective of reality must be limited by what is ‘right’, and one must ignore, isolate or exclude what is ‘wrong’ according to these stated limitations.
Of course the demands must correspond to a broader understanding of reality. Any ethical system worthy of the name is based on a perceived truth. I would naturally try to convince people to subscribe to my understanding of reality since I believe it’s the truth (if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have that understanding) and follow the commands that I think belong to a sound ethical system. I’m quite sure you do the same and even people who never tell others directly what they shouldn’t do, have a perception of valid ethical demands.
What if I could do something that would cost me a negligible effort but be extremely beneficial for you, wouldn’t it be bad if I didn’t do it? Suppose I couldn’t ask you if you agreed, but I was pretty sure you would, do you really think I shouldn’t do it? If I have no one to ask but my own judgment, what else can I do than what I think is best for you?
This is the situation for someone who chooses to procreate. They think they are doing their unborn child a favor, and in most cases they probably are. Most people would have chosen to be born, or don’t you think so?
Well, I don’t believe any ethical demands are valid from an objective standpoint. Ethical demands fail to take into account the perspective of the person to whom you are making these demands. So at best, what you refer to as an ‘ethical demand’ is merely an expression of an ethical perspective. A sound ethical system in my book would enable you to understand why someone would choose to do what they shouldn’t, and to guide them towards doing what they should - without requiring you to do what you shouldn’t. Otherwise, how can it be the truth?
What you describe is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive ethics. Its simply a matter of that. Actions in real time are messier than ideals. If one respects autonomy of the individual, then you would not violate non-aggression and harm of another individual. However, in real life that is bound to happen. Sometimes the violation of harm of another, requires the aggression to prevent the harm. But that is because autonomy is being violated, so it still centers around autonomy and its violation. The closer we get to the ideal, the better. The most ideal is preventing the non-harm and non-aggression ideal from being violated (antinatalism). After that, less ideal options ensue.
What I want to reiterate is "de facto" force onto someone. For example, sure people can choose not to work. They can choose to starve themselves, they can choose to be homeless, the can choose to hack it out into the wilderness, suicide. But these often lead to sub-optimal options. The de facto reality is the least sub-optimal, which for most is simply the situation the majority of society offers. This is a de facto reality. But what if none of these sub-optimal options are wanted, even the ones offered by social majority?
Again, let me reiterate what I said earlier which you did not really address:
I'd also like to distinguish between "de facto" forced and "physically forced". Most people have to find the most reasonable job, with the most reasonable pay, in the most reasonable circumstances, in the most reasonable market conditions, etc. Now, you are correct, no one has to do this. People can try to survive in nature, live on the streets, or become a monk. But these for most would be suboptimal given the choices. But the fact that one has to choose any of these is what is the "de facto" forced. At the end of the day, people pick the best of sub-optimal conditions many of the time.
So if I set up a scenario where I forced you to choose out of sub-optimal conditions, you may be justified to be resentful of this. Sure, you could choose in my game to lay down and die, but really, you are trying to choose the best of the choices. This is an important distinction as well, because people think once born, that people have an infinite amount of choices, or at least more choices than are really available. At the end of the day, mitigating circumstances leads to really a few choices and even those might not be desired in the first place. If you like those choices, why would you want to force others into it because you like them or at least find them acceptable.
In the "game of life" situation, some people don't mind or think that they prefer these sub-optimal choices, so "why wouldn't someone else?". That is problematic.
Let's pretend I don't. What would you do.
Quoting Congau
Huh but I thought you claimed that people cannot possibly disagree with a first premise, but here you say if they do there is not much you can do about that.
Quoting Congau
I notice you keep saying emotions this emotions that but I never mentioned emotions or anything to that effect. "Just cuz" doesn't translate to emotions. You and I believe that A + B = B + A just cuz, there is not further explanation. That doesn't mean we believe it because we would like it to be the case emotionally
Quoting Congau
All I'm trying to point out is that you can't convince everyone of everything. You will reach a point where you two disagree on a very root premise and you won't be able to do anything to convince them.
Quoting Congau
No not in the least. That's what I believe. This is the kind of "root premise disagreement" I am referring to. You thought your premise was self evident but I just don't agree, at all. I think if someone could have blinked and saved the world from nuclear armageddon, but chose not to do so, he is completely not at fault (provided of course he didn't cause the armageddon)
Quoting Congau
If it included a risk to harm me, yes you shouldn't do it. If it didn't you can choose to do it or not do it. Makes no difference morally.
Quoting Congau
With the case of birth, can you point me to this individual called "you" you are so intent on helping?
Quoting Congau
Do you not see the logical fallacy there. How can you do a favor to NOTHING? Actually let's go with your premise for a bit, let's say that it is bad not to help others if it takes negligable effort from you AND that you can somehow harm nothing (unborn children). Shouldn't it then be REALLY bad to only have one or two children? Shouldn't we all have as many children as we can sustain? Heck, shouldn't it be a law? After all, if you only have 1 or 2 children when you can support 8-10 then you're doing something really bad to like 6 people at best. You are literally denying them a lifetime's worth of pleasure. Wow you monster.
Quoting Congau
That question makes no sense. If there are "people" then they've already been born, they can't choose to not have been born.
What happens to the autonomy of the person to whom you act aggressively to prevent the harm? Autonomy for all isn’t possible - even if absolutely everyone agreed to uphold it without exception. So how can this be an effective principle?
Actions in real time don’t have to be messier than ideals - IF those ideals are possible to achieve. Aggression and harm are entirely dependent on the perspective of the person towards whom the act is performed. You cannot predict what might be deemed aggression (force) or harm according to someone else (and your argument that procreation is an act of force is a case in point). So even if it were possible for everyone to take all possible precautions to prevent aggression or harm, there would still be instances of aggression and harm. This tells me not that the world sucks and we should all prefer non-existence, but that your principles are fundamentally flawed. Non-aggression, non-harm and universal autonomy is not an ideal perspective of the universe. It doesn’t even exist as a possibility.
When upholding ethical principles negates the possibility of existence, there’s definitely something wrong - but it’s not with existence.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There are always more choices available to us than we may be aware of, and more than we are willing to choose from. The ‘optimal choice’ according to your principles is non-existence - which renders every available choice ‘sub-optimal’ in your view. There’s no point in me addressing the difference between de facto and physical force. The error is not in your argument, but in your principles.
It’s like throwing a tantrum in the middle of a game of solitaire because you’ve been playing it the way you think it should be played, but you realise that you’ll never win this way. Despite others trying to explain to you that it’s not how you play solitaire, you’re arguing that we shouldn’t make others play solitaire at all because you can’t win playing it the way you think it should be played. And you think it’s problematic that we continue to encourage others to play solitaire...
Or perhaps it’s more like sitting down in a restaurant and getting upset that your parents ‘de facto forced’ you to come here because your favourite meal isn’t on the menu. You’re still sitting at the table and eating, but loudly trying to turn away customers because the restaurant is ‘de facto forcing’ you to choose something other than the meal you really want to eat.
I can't speak for schopenhauer1 but at least for me the situation is more like: A majority of players agreed on a set of rules that would forbit making other players play the game if applied strictly but refuse to recognize that those rules apply to the case of procreation
People are loss averse in all their dealings with others' stuff. Ex: If you found my credit card you wouldn't buy anything with it unless you had my consent. People are also loss averse when it comes to others' autonomy. Ex: You can't FORCE me to work a job. Even if I am completely broke. I see procreation as forcing someone you don't know to work a job because YOU like it, and making the cost of quitting extremely high as well. Not many would disagree with the job scenario being immoral but most disagree that the analogy fits procreation in a myriad of different ways. I'm curious to see why you think the analogy isn't apt.
My point is that the rules as ‘agreed’ cannot be applied strictly because this renders the game unplayable. If you believe there is a game to played, then you need to determine a different set of rules.
Quoting khaled
I find it strange to see you frame it with reference to loss aversion. I get that you shouldn’t take away money that I have in return for something you think will be beneficial to me. I get that you shouldn’t try and force me to give up time that I have in order to earn a living, even if it will give me autonomy in return. You shouldn’t take away...I mean, try and force me to give up...I’m sorry - how does procreation relate to these two examples? What is it that is lost in procreation?
Why would rendering the game unplayable be an issue? We already think it is moral to render the game unplayable in some cirucmstances, such as if a couple knows that their children are likely to have a terrible disease. In that case most say it is immoral to procreate
Quoting Possibility
I don't think any set of rules built specifically to maintain the game is respectable or acceptable. "The game" Doesn't have a will or subjective experience. It cannot get hurt. People can. So anything that prioritizes the game over an individual is just plain wrong to me. Unless preserving the game is done WITH THE GOAL of helping the individuals
Quoting Possibility
Ok so you're going to take that direction. My answer: I don't know. Now can you answer this: Is genetically engineering someone to suffer (say, by making them blind, deaf, and missing a leg) morally acceptable, and if not why?
‘The game’ is existence, not just procreation. So rendering the game of existence unplayable IS an issue.
Quoting khaled
Determining a different set of rules doesn’t maintain the game - the game is being played, whether you like it or not - you just don’t understand what the rules are. You’ve arrived at what you think are the rules, even though you’ve found that following them renders the game unplayable, and so you’ve decided that the game should not be attempted anymore. But you have no control over the game. Whether you choose to prioritise your individual claim to autonomy over existence is up to you, but it won’t change the brute fact of existence, even if you choose not to play. The game will be played - you can try to work out what the real rules are, or you can stick with the ones you have that don’t work. People only get hurt in games when the players don’t follow the rules - not their own rules.
Quoting khaled
Again, you’re removing something from someone whose potential is already recognised as a human being, with all that it entails. So what is it that is lost or removed in procreation? If you don’t know, then how is it similar to these analogies you’ve provided?
So there are two problematic things from this.
1) No one has perfect knowledge of the game. Sure, you can try to educate people as much as possible, but there is inevitably trial-and-error in existence. The nuances are never cut-and-dry. Also, rules for one person doesn't necessarily apply to another person or apply to a specific situation. Or people just make mistakes, etc. But what this amounts to is people are being used in a bunch of trial-and-error situations. Knowing this, what is the justification to put people into a big trial-and-error experiment like that? Rather, if the autonomy of the future individual is respected, there is an ideal state of no-harm and no-force. That is not being born for that person.
2) You are simply justifying a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are making it out like people MUST play the game. No, procreation is made at the individual level. Arguably, its one of the simplest things one can do. Simply do NOT procreate. Thus the whole game can be bypassed for a future person by not having them. My point was that people don't have the option to not play the game in the first place once born. It is pretty high-and-mighty of you or anyone else to assume that people should play the game in the first place, and then scold them for not following the rules that you thought are "good" for them. You know, because YOU deem it is "good" for them... Which, wait, didn't matter prior to their birth.. So here we are back at the fact that we are disrespecting people's autonomy to force them into an agenda (trial-and-error, and learn the rules).
Also, rooting ethics in autonomy is the only thing that actually respects a person as an individual and not just using them for someone else's agenda.
I know what "the game" stands for. This doesn't answer the question at all, it just says "it's an issue"
Quoting Possibility
Uh huh. This doesn't mean the game SHOULD be played though which is what this post is about (ethics). Your second paragraph just sounds to me like "people are gonna have kids no matter what so whatever you say here doesn't matter." I agree, but that doesn't make procreation moral
Quoting Possibility
And what other people think are the rules in the vast majority of cases but do not apply it to procreation out of hypocrisy
Quoting Possibility
Interesting you make this point. Tell me, who does an antinatalist hurt? No one. Even if antinatalism is logically flawed it wouldn't hurt anyone. On the other hand who does procreation hurt? Everyone. This "rule" that makes a special case for procreation as opposed to other cases of handling others' resources is the reason we have to make rules to reduce the suffering of individuals in the first place.
Quoting Possibility
"Potential" isn't a person. So you're not removing anything from anyone. So there are 2 choices here either:
1- You recognize that harm done is wrong even if the action that causes the harm is done before the person harmed exists
2- You find another way to explain why the genetic modification mentioned is wrong, because it's definitely not removing anything from anyone which you consider to be the definition for "harm." That was your critique of my scenarios right? That no individual is harmed? That's the case here too
Quoting schopenhauer1
I’m not denying that rooting ethics in autonomy is the only thing that ensures everyone acts with respect to autonomy. I’m arguing that autonomy is not a workable principle in a universal sense in the first place. Even if you got everyone to play by these rules of yours, the only ideal state is simply not to play the game. But what if your rules and your whole understanding of the game is wrong? What if the game is not played by individuals at all?
You assume that existence is individual - but that’s only a perception. The way I see it, all of existence is an interconnected, collaborative effort that isn’t yet fully aware of itself. So autonomy is a misunderstanding based on ignorance, isolation and exclusion. The ideal of an ‘autonomous’ anything (country, individual, etc) is a gross misconception: one that generates more harm and force than most of us are willing to acknowledge. It is your assumption that ‘autonomy’ is the aim of the game that renders the game unplayable - not the game itself.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, I’m not saying that an individual must play the game at all. Procreation is not made at an individual level - it is always a connected and collaborative effort, and happens with or without conscious individual input. Don’t get me wrong - a conscious decision to procreate is a self-absorbed act of ignorance and irresponsible resource management, but it is NOT an act of force or harm on an individual. There is no ‘individual future person’ to be harmed at this point: there is only a connected and collaborative effort that lacks awareness.
At the point that you are self-aware and see yourself as an individual, you can choose to ignore, isolate and exclude at your leisure. You can get roped into a game within the game, with its own rules, and be convinced that these rules are ‘good’ for you, that being an individual is THE most important part of the game, and come to the conclusion that the game simply cannot be played by an individual according to these ‘good’ rules. But you’ve lost sight of the real game - one where the individual is simply a step towards maximising awareness, connection and collaboration...
I don’t expect you to be convinced - my perspective of the ‘real’ game is a minority view that directly questions foundational assumptions of social reality. But it gives me a workable knowledge of the game, at least. That’s a start.
It doesn't have to be. There's not much here except accidental birth for "without conscious" individual input.
Quoting Possibility
This makes no sense. If you do action X, Y consequence is a future person, who will then be harmed. It is as if you lost the connection of cause and effect. A person does not have to exist for the the rule to be followed, because by not following the rule, someone will exist, and it will be violated. Also, look again at @khaled point about the genetic tinkering, etc. The action is clearly about something that will negatively affect a future person.
Quoting Possibility
Again, you are just repeating that there is some agenda beyond the autonomous individual. People create other people, not "awareness, connection, and collaboration" or any other outside force. In fact, it is self-justifying, saying that people cannot make choices when that isn't true.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, you never really provided a justification for your perspective of the "real" game. It seems like a idealization of evolutionary principles and emergence. Just because the universe has awareness, connection, and collaboration doesn't mean that is an agenda of the universe. That jump there is the part you are not providing evidence for as far as I see.
Existence cannot be nullified by what exists.
Quoting khaled
I agree that we should not procreate. I disagree with the ethical perspective that supports it here. Negative ethics that has no corresponding positive ethics is an incomplete ethical perspective that results in nullifying existence. Drawing the conclusion that no one should exist if they have the option is not a workable philosophy - it’s a sign that we’re misinformed about how the world works.
Quoting khaled
I get the frustration that those who say they live by the principles of autonomy, non-aggression and non-harm are ignorant of its application to procreation. My argument is that this is one of many reasons why these principles are flawed.
Quoting khaled
Again, I am not against antinatalism as such. I am against the ethical perspective from which it is argued. The primacy of autonomy and individualism is harmful in practise, and no amount of antinatalism can prevent that.
Quoting khaled
I disagree that these are the only two choices. Anyone can interact with a potential child in a number of ways that we understand to be beneficial or harmful to the existing potential - including genetic modification, drug use, contraception, mother’s nutrition, alcohol and smoking, physical activity, etc. But the only interaction they can have with a possible child is to determine the value or significance of that possibility in relation to the potential or actual universe. So the only ‘harm’ one can do to a possible child is to deny (ignore or exclude) its value or significance in relation to those who exist, either potentially or actually.
Uhhh yes it can? WATCH ME jumps off building
Quoting Possibility
A person (a "one") cannot choose not to have existed. The choice has already been made.
Quoting Possibility
Another baseless claim
Quoting Possibility
I don't think it's a valid argument then. You haven't shown why reaching the conclusion that we shouldn't exist automatically means that a premise is wrong
Quoting Possibility
I haven't referred to primacy of autonomy or individualism
Quoting Possibility
makes no sense. There is no such thing as "potential child"
Quoting Possibility
are examples of things you do which will affect someone later down the line but that someone doesn't exist yet.
Quoting Possibility
Neither is there a thing called "possible child"
Quoting Possibility
This doesn't actually harm anyone though as I'm sure you're aware since you put harm in quotation marks
Quoting Possibility
Why? I'm curious
Refer to my answer to khaled above.
Quoting schopenhauer1
How do you think we make choices, and how do we allow others to make choices for us? I’m not referring to an outside force, but to the underlying process of cause and effect. People can and should make conscious choices, but autonomy is an illusion - every choice we make is either aware, connected and collaborating with reality, or it is ignorant, isolated and excluding.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, there’s a lot to this perspective that requires a paradigm shift, so I’m only dealing with specific challenges as they come up. I’m open to anyone pointing out evidence to the contrary, of course. I’ve been discussing my perspective with Brett on the ‘what is truth?’ and ‘Simplicity-Complexity’ threads recently, but they’re getting derailed.
Sometimes the jump is necessary - a hypothesis to be tested, if you will. I’ve been refining the theory for some time now against a number of alternative perspectives, so I’m not precious about any of it.
Individually, yes - and I’ve already acknowledged that. But existence cannot be nullified in itself. Why do you continue to exist, when you believe that no one should exist, and that demonstrating the truth of it is as simple as jumping off a building?
Quoting khaled
No choice has been made. A person exists. You think they shouldn’t, and believe that someone is to blame for this. That’s it.
Quoting khaled
Yeah, I’m not good with logic arguments. I realise that this can be frustrating for you, if that’s what you’re used to. But my failure to structure an argument logically is a demonstration of my skill with the language of logic, not necessarily a demonstration of the validity of the argument. Feel free to structure it for me, and I’ll try to keep up.
The way I see it, you’re arguing for the negation of existence from a position which, in itself, disproves your premise.
Of course, I could agree with your premise that no individual should exist, and then argue that it doesn’t nullify existence, only individual existence. I could go with that.
Quoting khaled
So you don’t agree with this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
If not, then I’m curious how you’d explain your statement: “anything that prioritises [existence] over the individual is just plain wrong”?
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
The reason I put ‘harm’ in quotation marks is because the term refers to a subjective concept. ‘Harm’ is always relative to the perspective of the one being ‘harmed’. I’ve done this here because I see harm being done where you don’t.
What I’m referring to here is what happens when, as an antinatalist, you deny the value that a possible child would have for someone else. This is why people get upset with your framing of procreation as ‘immoral’. It argues that a possible individual (which is who you are arguing for) is valuable to its possible self, but cannot have value or significance in relation to anyone else - even though a possible individual can only have value in relation to what exists to even consider its possibility. You use the word ‘future’ as if that reifies the possible individual to the point where it is entitled to sufficient autonomy to evaluate its own possible existence. But instead you are assuming for someone else’s possible child - you’re anticipating its decision based on your own negative evaluation of their existence, which is flawed, and disregarding the value that possible child has for anyone else.
Quoting khaled
My basic argument is laid out here.
Again, this is an unjustified claim and is self-justifying. It is almost a naturalistic fallacy, if it were true. You assume reality is "collaborating". Even if this was the case (which you haven't really shown), why do humans have to choose to "collaborate" with it to continue life? They don't. The simple way to prove it is this: "I thus choose to not have a child". Look at that! I just went against the "collaboration" of the universe. Simple.
He means 'agree/conform' with reality. If your choices do not conform with reality they will not lead to the results you may desire.
I'm going to include @Possibility, in this being that I assume he/she agrees with your response..
How does interpretation of "collaboration" bypass my objection of it? What sort of "Logos" do you suppose is underlying the universe such that any decision can agree or disagree with it? Is this a re-hashed Daoism? There is a "Way" of the universe, and all our decisions are informed by it?
My problem with this, besides the major lack of real evidence of an underlying Way is that it can simply be manipulated into anything. So, if I make a decision that makes me suffer, you can say, "Ah, schopenhauer1 was not conforming with the Way!". Or alternatively, you can say, "Ah, don't worry schopenhauer1, in the end it is all a part of the Way!". As you see both versions of this can be used, and it would not matter whether there was a Way or not, just something someone uses as a justification for why your action was "wrong" or why it wasn't "wrong".
Also, back to my earlier problem with it, it is self-justifying, and very conservative. If you say, "Work might be tedious, but the struggle against work causes even more suffering", or something like that, then nothing changes. One just accepts everything as having to be that way. But it doesn't. We have choices and that is not an illusion. One choice we can make is preventing others from suffering. Thta is the choice of antinatalism. This is one amongst many ways of rebellion. To say, "Don't rebel at all" is to self-justify what is currently the way things are.
Sorry but I don't feel any affinity with the word Collaboration. Collaborate is what I do with my colleagues.
no, I don’t assume that reality is collaborating at all. In most situations, the rest of the universe is only capable of a very limited collaboration. And I think I’ve already said that humans don’t have to do anything. We have such an enormous and varied capacity for collaboration, and yet we’re not obliged to collaborate in any way. We certainly don’t have to procreate - but I think we’ve been over this ground.
I’m not suggesting there is a specific path we, or even you specifically, have to follow - if that’s what you mean by ‘the Way’. If you make a decision that makes you suffer, I might suggest that there is something about the situation you’re not aware of, or refusing to acknowledge. Suffering often refers to what is called ‘prediction error’. How we conceptualise the world allows us to make predictions about our interactions. When these conceptualisations don’t correspond to reality, we suffer from prediction error: pain, for instance, refers to an error in budgeting for required energy, attention or effort.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, everything changes, things don’t have to be a certain way and I agree that we have choices, so I’m not sure where these assumptions are coming from about my perspective. The first step to making a change is understanding our reality for what it IS, not just what it should be. This means accepting the pain or humiliation of our prediction error, and being aware of where our conceptualisation of the world may be mistaken. The next step is to be aware of potential for change, and have the courage and patience to connect and collaborate with that potential, effecting change without force or harm.
Evolution works on the principle of trial and error so I suppose that is the most 'intelligent' approach.
I can agree with that. The problem is being put in a situation where you are forced to change things in the first place. Yes, I accept that is the reality, but there is a way of not creating it for others- procreation. So I think we agree in some respects. If you like the game of change and finding a way to improve prediction errors fine, but don't force it on others. Like I said, forcing others into a trial-and-error scenario because you like it, or you feel like it, is wrong to do to someone. Certainly it is wrong to do someone in the name of collaboration, or civilization, or to experience X thing that YOU deem is important.
Not sure what context this was in based on what you quoted, but my point earlier is that if life is about trial-and-error, it is NOT good to put more people by way of procreation into a trial-and-error experiment. There's also many parts of life that are not trial-and-error. People's personalities are pretty fixed. Often there is collateral damage of many kinds that are hard to overcome in general, that even trial-and-error cannot fix. Also, just the mere fact that one must overcome challenges is something to examine. Is that something we should be forcing others into?
The original line was: WATCH ME *presses big red button*. Maybe I should've kept it that way. It is entirely possible though highly unlikely for humanity as a whole to end its own existence
Quoting Possibility
I don't believe this. What I believe is we shouldn't procreate. That's an entirely different belief. That no one will exist is a side effect not a goal
Quoting Possibility
Please point to the line where I said this. This makes it sound like I want to kill them. If a person exists already then they obviously should exist, because ending their life at that point is painful/harmful (most of the time (euthanasia)). But that doesn't justify bringing another person into existence because that is guaranteed to harm that person.
If you exist, the course of least harm is to continue to exist. If you don't exist, the course of least harm is to continue not existing.
Quoting Possibility
I can't do that. I can't hop into your mind and see what you're trying to say
Quoting Possibility
How so? Could you try laying out my premises and conclusions as you see them. Actually I'll do that
1- An action that will harm someone at some point is wrong unless it alleviates more harm than it causes (significantly more if it's alleviated from oneself)
2- Having a child harms someone at some point and doesn't alleviate enough pain from the parents to justify the act (even though the action happens before the person harmed exists, that doesn't matter)
3- Having a child is wrong
It's really that simple. Notice how no mention of "we shouldn't exist" has been made. I think just about everyone that talks about antinatalism on this site thinks it's a soft form of "I wanna kill everyone" but it really isn't
Quoting Possibility
I don't think any concept's "goals" are significant. America doesn't have goals. Humanity doesn't have goals. "Nature" doesn't have goals. All of these are concepts we made up, they don't have a subjective experience. That why anything that works to further the "goals of America" for example at the expense of the individuals is wrong for me. Say, Japan was struggling from a decreasing population (which it is). It would be very problematic if a politician suggests "state enforced reproduction" even though that definitely serves "the goals of Japan" which would include longevity.
Quoting Possibility
Ok
Quoting Possibility
By your own rule: Who's the "one" being harmed in this case whose perspective you're using. We're talking about "harm to unborn children" here. So where is this "person with a perspective" you're talking about? (If you meant by "one" the living person or people to whom the child would have been valuable then I get you now)
Quoting Possibility
Ah that's what you're talking about. I'm not denying that value, I just don't think it's significant in the least. First of all, there is always the chance that a possible child would be a harm of other people. Secondly: there is no actual harm done in not having a child in terms of the people he might have helped. Let me explain. If Beethoven hadn't been born, no one would have been harmed. No one would have sat around and said "Oh I feel so much anguish that I can't find good music. Curse everyone who don't have as many children as possible! I know one of those unborn children would have been a music genius" that's ridiculous.
Among all the possible children that could have been there is a genius who would find a new physics law that would allow us to have flying cars. Do you feel any suffering due to the fact that that genius hasn't been born? No (at least I hope so). Isn't it true that that genius would have had massive value for countless people? Yes. So the mere fact that a child would have had value for others doesn't mean that not having him is denying the value he would have had OR that not having him harms anyone. So it's ok to not have him. It's bad to have him because that harms him, even if it helps others. Helping others is not mandatory, not harming them is.
Quoting Possibility
I'm not arguing for "possible individuals" those don't exist
Quoting Possibility
I never said this first of all but also I just showed why even if they would have value for others that's not a good reason to have them
Quoting Possibility
I think most children would be happy. I also think one shouldn't have children.
The whole idea of ‘force’ is incongruous with increasing awareness, connection and collaboration. If you are upholding these as principles, then you cannot knowingly ‘force’ anything on anyone, and you cannot be knowingly ‘forced’ into a situation where you have no choices available. You might not like the choices available, or you might not be aware of them all yet, but the reality is that you always have choices, so nothing is ‘forced’. This doesn’t fit with the idea of individual autonomy, though - which you deem to be of utmost important. I can’t help that - you would need to recognise for yourself that individual autonomy is impossible to achieve in any situation, let alone without force or harm, and have the courage to then abandon it as a principle and adjust your conceptualisation. I certainly can’t ‘force’ anyone to do that.
It’s not that I deem collaboration to be important. It’s that I see increasing awareness, connection and collaboration to be the underlying impetus of existence. When we suffer, it is from ignorance, isolation or exclusion. The only way out of that suffering is to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. The feeling of freedom, independence and power that the illusion of ‘individual autonomy’ promises (but does not deliver) can only be achieved by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration. It’s not about what is right or wrong. This is reality, as I understand it. We can ignore it, sure - but I have found that we will inevitably suffer or increase suffering in others from that ignorance, every time.
It may be possible, but that doesn’t end existence as a whole.
Quoting khaled
And I agree with you that we shouldn’t procreate. What I don’t agree with is that the individual is more important than existence. That is what you walked into between myself and @“schopenhauer1”. I’m sorry if I assumed you supported his ethical perspective. That’s how it appeared.
Thank you for laying it out for me. My issue is with the ethical perspective, not with antinatalism, as such.
So I disagree with with your first premise, because there is no way of knowing for certain how much harm you may inadvertently cause with your action. So you could evaluate (by some subjective or arbitrary measure) that your harmful act to alleviate harm is less harmful than what you’re alleviating, but that just invites others who are harmed by your actions to commit harmful acts in an attempt to alleviate their own harm - which by your premise, they are entitled to do.
Your second premise makes no sense to me at all. The value you’re attributing to pain is a subjective measurement. You can’t say what is ‘enough pain’ for someone else, and you can’t declare objectively that the temporal aspect of an action ‘doesn’t matter’.
But this is not what I said. I said that you do not have the choice to have no choices. Again, from what I said earlier, and you keep overlooking this: Like I said, forcing others into a trial-and-error scenario because you like it, or you feel like it, is wrong to do to someone. Certainly it is wrong to do someone in the name of collaboration, or civilization, or to experience X thing that YOU deem is important.
Quoting Possibility
I don't know what you meant here.
Quoting Possibility
Self-justifying prophecy when applied to the issue we are discussing.
Quoting Possibility
But how are people put into this situation in the first place? You already recognized you are an antinatalist, so I am guessing this is something that takes place after the first option has already been not followed?
Quoting Possibility
And thus what I said earlier which you also overlooked in your response:
My problem with this, besides the major lack of real evidence of an underlying Way is that it can simply be manipulated into anything. So, if I make a decision that makes me suffer, you can say, "Ah, schopenhauer1 was not conforming with the Way!". Or alternatively, you can say, "Ah, don't worry schopenhauer1, in the end it is all a part of the Way!". As you see both versions of this can be used, and it would not matter whether there was a Way or not, just something someone uses as a justification for why your action was "wrong" or why it wasn't "wrong".
Ok. I'm still not sure how this is relevant. What does our ability to end existence have to do with whether or not it's morally fine to have children
Quoting Possibility
I agree with that. It's what I'm saying here:
Quoting khaled
"Existence" is just another concept that doesn't actually have goals or a will but to whom we like to ascribe those properties. Humans actually have a subjective experience, goals and a will though so we should focus on those first I think.
Quoting Possibility
Sure so act within your best knowledge. You can absolutely know for certain that:
some amount of suffering > no amount of suffering
And procreation takes you from the right hand side to the left
Quoting Possibility
Oh I agree there are countless problems with applying this premise in real life (as with any sort of intuitive morality) and that these measures are arbitrary and all that. But as I said:
You can absolutely know for certain that:
some amount of suffering > no amount of suffering
And procreation takes you from the right hand side to the left
Quoting Possibility
Sure I cannot. But I can surmise that the suffering of a given couple over not having children is less than the suffering the child will experience their entire life. I think that's an evaluation you would agree with no? If a specific couple truely wants children SO BADLY that their suffering due to not having children is likely to be more than all the suffering their children will experience in a lifetime (keeping in mind their children will also face the same suffering due to wanting children and there is no reason to believe it will be less for the children than their parents) then sure they can have children all they want. I think anyone who believes this is narcassistic and delusional though.
Quoting Possibility
None of this is objective. There is no objectivity in ethics. But we both agreed that genetic modification to an egg or sperm is still wrong even if the harmful action takes place before the harmed individual exists so I thought we agreed on this.
Doesn't exist as far as I define "responsibility" and "existence". First off you can't be "responsible" to a concept. I can't be responsible to the color blue to make sure to paint as many things blue as possible
Quoting Possibility
I don't understand the use of "reality" there. How does a "reality" destroy itself
You can argue about the existence of potential or possible persons, but this is what you’re referring to when you talk about a ‘future’ person (or the concept of a person regardless of time) - particularly in relation to ‘force’. A force cannot act against a future or past existence - only against their potential or possibility. That’s basic physics. A force acting in physics can only act on the values of what exists in time.
A force acting on an actual person existing in time can be against their physical existence or against their will. In the later case there must be a will (a faculty which determines and initiates action) operating in time that has some value for the force to act against.
A force acting on a potential person - someone who is not born yet, although there is currently awareness, connection and collaboration towards achieving that potential - is a moral issue of behaviour in time only against this potential: against the value of this awareness, connection and collaboration that goes into forming the concept of an actual person in the future.
But this is different again from a force acting on a possible person, which is where you are operating here. An act of force on a ‘possible person’ in time can only be against the possibility of a person existing in the future: this is the only existence in time here that has a value to be acted against. So those applying any ‘force’ against this ‘possible person’ would be you and @khaled.
So, yes - it could be deemed ‘wrong’ to use force, but if ‘force’ is an act against the value of what exists in time, then perhaps you’re the ones attempting to use force here.
It’s exactly because it’s valid from an object standpoint that it can be called a demand. It’s not my subjective understanding of what is happening to person about to make an ethical choice that makes up the demand. I may be wrong so I’m not making any demands, only the ethical system that I subscribe to is making demands. If I support a system that demands Thou shalt not lie (just an example), I’m only saying that if x is a lie, you shouldn’t tell x. I’m not making a judgment about whether x is actually a lie in a particular situation, so I’m not making a concrete demand on you.
A sound ethical system, in my opinion, should do exactly what you are saying, namely take into account the perspective of the actor. I don’t know what makes a person choose to act a certain way, so I have no right to judge or demand anything in a concrete case. All I can say is that IF x, y and z are the case, then the ethical system I subscribe to demands action A to be taken.
This thread is about the distinction between positive and negative ethics and my claim is that negative ethics (the system, not a mere person like myself) can make demands, whereas positive ethics is mostly restricted to make recommendations.
Just because I agree that procreation is not a good choice doesn’t mean I would refer to myself as an antinatalist. Antinatalism argues from a moral standpoint, but I don’t see it as a moral issue. The way I see it, how people got into a situation is only relevant to how they should act once there IF how they act has contributed to how they got there. If it’s not something you can change (ie. it happened in the past, before you were aware of its impact) then why waste effort on it that could be better spent collaborating to effect change where you can?
I never used the word "force" (or maybe I did but that would be just senseless emotional appeal) and I never used "possible person"
So are you saying that when an individual subscribes to an ethical system, they bind themselves to that system and are therefore no longer in a position to question the demands of that system? Does an ethical system exist in and of itself? What is an individual’s relationship to that ethical system?
The way I see it, the act of making a demand such as ‘thou shalt not lie’, writing it down and sharing it with others reduces the information of the much more complex ethical system that inspired the demand to a series of one dimensional marks on a page in history. So the act of trying to understand what that demand means regardless of when it was written, by whom and in what language suggests that there is a more objective standpoint than may be reliably conveyed by the demand. It’s like drawing three straight sides and wondering why no one else understands that it’s a table - the real information isn’t in the lines, but in the complex, multi-dimensional relational structures that inform those lines.
Plus, evidence of conflicting ethical systems suggests that there is a more objective standpoint than this particular ethical system may even be aware of. The perspective of a particular ethical or value system is not an objective standpoint, it only claims to be. That there is something ‘wrong’ with the world is an indication that an ethical system is subjective. As a relational system of subjective value structures, it’s limited - firstly by a certain amount of ignorance, isolation and exclusion in the structure itself, and secondly by the reductive process required to make demands.
My claim is that both positive and negative ethics should work in harmony to reach an objective ethical standpoint. Where they contradict or cancel each other out, the subscribed ethics are necessarily flawed. The idea of ethics is to eventually arrive at a conceptualisation of reality, particularly in relation to behaviour, that works in practice. I don’t see the ethical argument behind antinatalism as working towards this at all.
An individual is as much a concept as existence. That we only talk about humans as having a ‘will’ and then prioritise that will is a symptom of anthropocentrism in how we conceptualise our experience.
We have focused on our own subjective experience, goals and will for thousands of years, continuing to ignore, isolate and exclude the subjective experience, goals and will of others as it suits us. What our ‘suffering’ (from prediction error) and impending eco-crisis demonstrates is that the individual is NOT more important than existence - that we are an integral part of ‘something’ broader, which we are too self-absorbed to acknowledge because we might be humbled by it - and that might cause us to ‘suffer’ even more.
That ‘the individual is more important than existence’ is a gross misconception that causes more suffering than it can hope to remove by discouraging procreation on moral grounds. That the individual is more important to the individual is obvious. But the individual is just another concept drawn from how we perceive reality.
If we are certain of nothing else, we are certain that something exists. I’m thinking we should focus on that first.
There is nothing in this statement that can be absolutely known for certain. The symbol > refers to a logical value relation that is dependent on the value structure to which it refers. ‘Suffering’ is also a subjective concept of value, which is commonly negative in relation to the individual to whom it refers.
So anything you can KNOW from this statement is entirely dependent on the value attributed to each element by each individual. There are three main ways you can go from here: you can attempt to isolate each individual as the master of their own reality; you can attempt a majority consensus of value structures (an ethical system) as the most probable structure of reality; OR you can hypothesise a dimensional structure to reality that exists regardless of individual or ‘majority’ relational structures of value.
I’m working on the third option because I think it’s more scientifically sound, but I understand that the probability option appears more ‘logical’ to many people. The problem is that ‘logic’ is itself a limited value structure in relation to our experience of reality - it cannot fully account for how human beings relate to each other. This is because probability is structured to ignore, isolate or exclude anomalous information.
I'm sorry but this doesn't have much bearing here. When someone is born, THAT is the force. Preventing the "force" of the action (which is the time the child comes into existence). At that time X (when the child comes into existence) is when the force takes place. By preventing the "force" one is preventing that X time from happening. It is as simple as that.
Quoting Possibility
Same answer as above.
Quoting Possibility
This makes no sense based on your own objections. No one actually exists prior to their existence to be forced or harmed. Once born, the force has taken place. That is the asymmetry that has to be reckoned with.
It's not a waste to prevent others from being harmed when it can be prevented- from not letting negative ethics from being violated. We can collaborate regarding the original harm being done :D. All politics, and everything else starts from being born in the first place. This HAS to be addressed for anything else to matter.. By the way, this sentiment is separate from my more formal antinatalism argument. However, you brought up what to do after we, the already-born are here.
If we perceive something ‘wrong’ in our experience of reality, then there is something wrong with our perception of it - not with the experience or with reality. The thing about suffering is that we’ve been deluded into thinking that we should be avoiding it, not working through it. When we were children, we suffered from prediction error all the time: we conceptualised the world, experienced pain, loss and humiliation because we got it wrong, and then made adjustments to our concepts. As adults we think we’re past that - we have created a system outside of ourselves - so when our concepts clash with reality, we think the fault lies with reality. And so we continue to suffer from prediction error and complain that the world doesn’t match the predictions of our ‘foolproof’ system.
I’m certainly not suggesting that we passively accept the world as it IS. I’m suggesting that we strive for a better understanding of how the world WORKS BEST TOGETHER, in order to more effectively collaborate in achieving that. The ‘individual’ is irrelevant to an existence without ‘suffering’ - I think we can agree on that. So an individual without suffering cannot exist. You’ve chosen the individual - I’ve chosen existence because it’s the only certainty I have.
What exactly do you believe constitutes the ‘force’ of a child coming into existence? Is it labour? Is it the whole pregnancy? Is it conception? You seem to be describing this ‘force’ as an event which is in reality a collaboration of events, each with their own ‘force’ of collaborative action. You can’t just declare that ‘force’ means something different here. To prevent the ‘force’ of collaborative action that constitutes a child being born, you would need to address more than the morality of the parents at the time that child is born. By then it’s too late.
It actually doesn't matter. You can believe it's conception.. you can believe it's the time of identity formation. It has no bearing. A red herring.
Quoting Possibility
That can be said of any event. What prevents all parts of the event(s) leading to a full existence is not procreating in the first place from the very start.
Quoting Possibility
Sure. I don't care where you want to set up the prevention. I don't want to make this a debate about abortion. The point is to prevent birth. At which point this should count, is a separate debate.
I agree that our being born should not be declared evidence that ‘procreation is good/necessary’. In order for our being born to matter, our own existence must be deemed our BEST opportunity to effect change in the world - not simply a step towards ‘creating’ someone else with a maybe better chance of achieving. It’s a cop-out, a cowardly attempt to pass the buck, as well as ignorance and hubris to consider that the best possible use of my capacity for awareness, connection and collaboration is to simply continue my genetic existence...
But I disagree that it’s an act of force.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes - this is why you cannot declare the ‘force’ of an entire event concept to be ‘immoral’. It DOES matter what constitutes that ‘force’, because your evaluation of a collaborative force as immoral renders all participants culpable. If you want to attack the morality of a single participant, then you need to address their specific, conscious contribution to that ‘force’. Which means that you need to consider their interaction with the event well before it occurred in time.
Ok, I agree there.
Quoting Possibility
No, no, no. If someone murders someone else, it is not the universe's fault and thus no one is directly culpable. That itself is a cop-out.
Quoting Possibility
Don't create the new person, period. If it's live birth, it's parents. If it is a test tube baby, it's the components of that. It is not hard to point to what was a direct cause of birth of something.
Ok then existence is a concept made up by another concept. A concept squared. The point is "existence" doesn't have a subjective experience as far as we know. Do you think existence feels hurt when someone doesn't have a kid? If not then why should we prioritize existence's "goal" over our own?
Quoting Possibility
Existence isn't an "other". It's not a human
Quoting Possibility
Let me unpack this a bit. So you're saying our suffering due to not taking care of the environment shows that existence is more important than the individual? How exactly?
All it shows is that had we focused on "serving the goals of existence" more we wouldn't have messed up the planet as much and wouldn't have suffered as much. That's completely different from saying that we SHOULD "serve the goals of existence". You can't derive a should from an is. The statement you provide is an is (we would've been better off if we had focused on sustainable development more in line with "existence's goals") and we cannot conclude from it a should
Quoting Possibility
I understand that we are an integral part of a wider natural system. Why does that mean we should serve said system?
Quoting Possibility
Really? It ends up removing all of human suffering that would have occurred from now until our extinction if implemented correctly. I say that's a lot of suffering removed at the relatively small price of a single generation suffering
Quoting Possibility
Ok. Something exists. So we should reproduce?
Quoting Possibility
Well I'm the individual so why should I care about anything that is not as important to me as me?
Quoting Possibility
Incorrect. I define suffering as "any experience you value negatively and wish to avoid". In other words: whatever experience you value negatively. So it's not just "commonly negative" it's always negative. So I don't need to deal with this:
Quoting Possibility
Because the word "suffering" will mean different experiences for different individuals.
I’m aware of that. If someone murders someone else, you can trace it back to a single, conscious act of force against an actual existence, which renders them culpable. What you’re referring to here is not the same thing - I’m asking you to show me a single, conscious act of ‘force’ against an actual existence which would render the actor culpable, and you’re talking about the ‘immorality’ of a collaborative event.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again, you’re referring to collaborative efforts, not an act of ‘force’. I’m trying to point out that what you’re calling ‘immoral’ cannot be identified as such because there is no single, conscious act of ‘force’ by an agent in time that can be defined as procreation. It IS hard to point to what act was a direct cause of the birth of something. You can point to key contributors, sure. But you have yet to pinpoint the act of ‘force’ you seem to think exists here.
I’m wondering where you got the idea that I think existence has a goal. I’ve said that I believe existence has an underlying impetus, but that’s not the same thing at all. And I’m only saying we ‘should’ align our conscious actions with that impetus because I believe doing so will ALWAYS reduce suffering - it just might not be your suffering in particular at the time. I will say it again: no one HAS to do anything.
When I use the term ‘existence’, I’m referring to everything that exists, including you and me, your great-great grandfather’s dog, and a dwarf star in a distant solar system, for instance. Yes, it’s conceptual, but it’s an all-inclusive concept. I’m not saying that ‘existence’ wants us to procreate - in fact I would suggest the opposite, and I’ve already laid out my argument there, so I’m not sure why you keep assuming I’m arguing for procreation.
This thread was about a particular ethical perspective that supports the common antinatalist argument, which suggests that procreation is ‘forcing’ others into existence and suffering against their will, and therefore violates the negative ethics of ‘don’t use force/aggression’ and ‘don’t harm’ - which, it is argued, should overrule any positive ethics. I’ve argued that a sound ethical system would not contradict its own principles, and that positive ethics and negative ethics must work in harmony, otherwise it demonstrates that the principles themselves are flawed. I’ve also argued that these principles of force/aggression and harm will ALWAYS break down in application to reality - but everyone seems to just sweep that aside as if it’s insignificant. It’s like everyone’s forgotten that ethics is an area of philosophy, whose ultimate aim is a workable understanding of the universal reality of existence - not a prescription to ‘fix’ reality, to make it more suited to our needs.
IT DOESN'T MATTER. Whatever place you put the X time of the person being "born" is the time X of the force. That is a red herring!
In a murder, you can say it was also hard to define "when".. What makes it murder is a couple factors that have to come together- intent, planning, the actual act itself.. etc. Maybe the guy survived actually, but the doctor did something that actually caused the final demise of the person.
You are trying to find this wiggle room around "force". It doesn't have to be "crisp". It can be fuzzy. What you need to create another person is two parents. At which point you deem the "force" is another matter (conception, gestation, primary consciousness, secondary consciousness, birth, identity, etc.).
:lol:
Exactly - if the actual cause of death was proven to be a specific act committed by the doctor, then what was initially thought to be ‘murder’ could be downgraded to ‘manslaughter’. So it does have to be crisp. Incidentally, the manslaughter charge doesn’t necessarily shift culpability to the doctor, of course.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But you still haven’t shown that the parents committed a conscious act of ‘force’. You show the parents, and then you show the ‘suffering individual’ who didn’t HAVE to exist (and I agree with you there), and you expect us to ‘naturally’ conclude that there was an act of ‘force’ committed by the parents in creating that suffering individual? Nope.
I will agree that the parents contributed significantly, and are primarily responsible for that ‘individual’ from the point they become aware of its actual OR potential existence. But you have yet to convince me that they’ve acted with aggression or force against an individual.
So, I never claimed that most parents are thinking, "I am going to force someone into the world". That is the resultant action. Many people have "good intentions". If someone kidnapped you and brought you to this (what they perceived to be) amazing obstacle course and said you cannot get off it because it will be as good for you as it was for them, are they right in doing this to you because they thought it was good for you? No it isn't. So the force doesn't have to have malintent. I understand well the various reasonings for not thinking of birth as "forcing" someone into anything. But that is the point, to provide a perspective they weren't thinking of earlier. I don't know, slavery might have been thought of as justified at some point too based on conceptions that they didn't consider. (That is being real charitable of course).
Quoting Possibility
So, I don't think the force matters as to the intent of the force. Someone can force something on someone without knowing it. They may be blissfully ignorant that this is the case. In fact, that might be a reason to keep promoting antinatalism, so people won't be ignorant of it anymore! :).
You keep coming up with analogies that cannot be the same thing. If you chose instead NOT to bring me to this obstacle course, I would still exist, and still have a will that I can exercise independent of you. I could even choose to go on the obstacle course myself, if I thought it might be good. But there is no will to go against prior to existence, and no will that is ‘freed’ by preventing that existence. That’s not a reason to procreate, but it is a reason why you cannot accuse those who do procreate of ‘force’.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So you’re saying that ‘force’ is in the eye of the beholder? In that case, you can only know that you’ve caused someone to endure something once the action is in the past and one evaluates that action from their own perspective. That’s not force. I’ve already agreed that procreation is an act of ignorance - but it’s not ignorance of a will that doesn’t exist.
Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought your “just cuz” was supposed to indicate an emotional reaction.
Anyway, A+B=B+A is an axiom that’s not derived from a previous premise, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be explained and that all you can say is “just cuz”. Put an apple and an orange on a table, the apple to the left and the orange to the right. Now, reshuffle them and place the orange to the left instead. You will see that the same fruits are still on the table, the weight is the same and the colors haven’t changed. That’s an illustration of A+B=B+A. If the student still doesn’t agree or understand, I could do it even more slowly and elaborate until he gets it.
Quoting khaled
I’m really curious how you would justify that. If you knew that one blink of your eye would prevent an armageddon, but you refused to blink, that would be an extremely immoral behavior according to my understanding of morality. I could argue for it, but I want to hear your explanation first.
Quoting khaled
True, but I was just turning around your argument. The same applies to what you’re saying. How can you harm nothing?
Quoting khaled
Well, some people sometimes say: “I wish I had never been born”. If that’s possible, one could also say: “I’m glad I was born”. I think most people would choose the second sentence.
My basic premise is: if he/she didn't cause it, they cannot be punished for not stopping it. Simply because: it's not their fault. Why are you assuming I need to justify MY premise? You're the one proposing that people should be punished for not stopping actions they didn't cause. So if someone was robbing a store and I didn't intervene am I doing something wrong?
Quoting Congau
You're not harming nothing when you have a child. You're clearly harming the individual born. Sure the ACT of conception itself doesn't harm anyone at the time it is done but that doesn't mean it should be allowed. In the same way that hiding a bear trap in a public park doesn't harm anyone at the time it was set but still shouldn't be allowed (because in both cases the action WILL harm someone)
Quoting Congau
True. So what?
Quoting Congau
And if they still don't? You keep assuming you can convince anyone of anything. That as long as you explain it slowly enough everyone will agree. I don't think that's the case at all.
If the child comes into the universe and upon the millisecond of their arrival, the child was punched in the face, and it is well known that upon birth, one gets punched in the face, is that forcing the child to get punched in the face? Now extend that over the course of a lifetime, and instead of a punch it is all suffering. You don't need a will to go "prior against". You just need to cause something to happen to someone else (that extends into autonomous adulthood) that is not ascertained by the person this is affecting.
Quoting Possibility
No I am not saying that at all. I'll say it different. It matters not whether there was bad intent regarding procreation. The fact that someone was forced is what matters- good intentions or not. That's why the analogy of the obstacle course is in fact apt. Would it matter if prior to that person's existence, there was no actual person? What if I upped the stakes like Khaled has stated, and said that the child would immediately upon existence experience worse things (let's say the parent thought it was good, but the child didn't)? Is that right? It is not intent. It is the fact that it is the violation of non-aggression PLUS the fact that one is causing ALL conditions of harm on another person. Both big nos to do to someone else.
No, it isn’t forcing the child to get punched in the face. The punch in the face is a separate event in which one can identify an act of force. This act of force occurs in time against the actual, existing child. Using passive language doesn’t change the fact that someone does the punching (not necessarily those who contributed to the child coming into the universe), and associating the punch with the child’s arrival doesn’t make them the same event with the same agent.
What do you mean by ‘prior against’? That doesn’t make any sense.
Quoting schopenhauer1
But you haven’t shown that someone was forced. And again, you’re using passive language to conceal the agent of any force the child may experience immediately after existence, implying that this force (which appears to act against an existing will in time) is the result of bringing the child into existence in the first place. The child’s existence enables an act of force, sure - but it doesn’t cause the act.
I get that you’re looking for a way to prevent further suffering, and that you’ve logically determined the most effective way is to prevent individual existence in the first place. But in my view, it is that existence is individual which causes suffering, not that the individual exists.
C'mon Possibility. This is semantic tit-for-tat that I expect from other posters wanting to go down rabbit-holes. If you create the conditions for someone to have X thing happen (punched in the face), then you were the person who caused it, whether indirectly or not. The "force" is the X event of being born. What caused the conditions for that birth? The parent. "Who" created the conditions for the child to be born in the first place? The parent? If you want to say that "force" has to have someone prior to the X to force, I'll use another word- "BLORCE". The parents "BLORCED" the child. I don't care what the actual term used is, the meaning I am conveying is that the child itself had no decision in the matter. It was someone else who made that decision for the child and caused the X event (being born) to happen for the child. This is a violation of non-aggression because at the moment of birth, an effect/affect has happened to a person caused from someone else, that affects that person's whole life and did not involve the actual participant being affected (the child). I am avoiding the word "consent" because that's just another rabbit-hole that I don't think needs to be mined for red herring pate.
Quoting Possibility
You don't need the person to exist before the event who has a "will" to violate. All you need is for X event to happen that will affect someone that were caused by someone else and not that person that affects them their whole life. That would be what the parents are doing.. Like I said use "blorce" and not force. As long as you get my meaning.
Quoting Possibility
It doesn't matter! If I enabled you to be somewhere you had no choice in, that is that.
Quoting Possibility
You have not proved this. You simply assert collaboration, et al. It is pie in the sky and in fact is part of the problem. It is using people for an agenda, or overlooking people's autonomy. Actually, it is self-justifying. If there is no individual, there is no abuse happening, therefore, don't worry about it. Case closed. I don't think so.
Three criteria to establish a cause-effect relationship:
So, enable is not the same thing as cause. You can cause an effect, but scientifically you can’t conceptualise an event and treat it like a single effect with a single cause. When you arrange the conditions for an event to occur, you are enabling that event, not causing it. It’s a common misconception - a case of anthropocentrism, that we are the sole ‘cause’ of every event in which we are the only conscious contributor to the conditions. It’s a limitation of our legal and moral systems, for obvious reasons, but it isn’t reality. There are many more interactions that contributed to the conditions for that birth than the parents’ conscious actions - and some of those interactions continue to contribute to the existence of that child throughout their life, even if the parents don’t. That these are not conscious contributors should not exclude them as contributors - even though you’re specifically looking for ‘someone’ capable of consciously preventing the event.
I recognise that I appear to be splitting hairs here. But when you charge a parent with ‘violating a principle of non-aggression’ for contributing to a collaborative event, there is something amiss with the conceptualisation. I’m trying to show where the error occurs in relation to reality - not in relation to a moralistic system. So, while I recognise that the parents are considered the ‘moral agents’ within your ethical perspective, the fact that it doesn’t correspond to a broader experience of reality challenges the validity of the ethical perspective itself. When you’re looking at the situation from within that ethical perspective, it’s like trying to make the bed while you’re still under the covers - so I understand your frustration.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, the child had no conscious decision in the matter. But no, it was not ‘someone’ else who made a decision for the child. That’s an assumption based on a moralistic perspective of reality. You’re saying that a ‘moral agent’ MUST be held accountable for ‘causing’ an event instead of simply causing an effect that contributes to the event - and it can’t be a ‘god’ or any other collaboration of concepts that has no ‘actual’ individual existence, let alone moral agency. But in reality there is no individual agent who ‘caused’ the event of being born (existence) to happen for the child.
So no, this is NOT a violation of non-aggression because at the moment of birth/existence, an event has happened to a create a person that was a collaborative effort which DID include the pre-conscious action of several actual contributors that continue to constitute the person created, as well as the conscious or unconscious action of the parents and a number of other conditions of which no agent in relation to the birth/existence of that child may be consciously aware - not even the parents.
When viewed from within the moralistic system, the only way to make sense of this reality is to exclude the interaction of non-moral agents. But then it isn’t reality, is it? And what you deem to be ‘wrong’ with the interaction of the world is precisely where you have ignored, isolated and excluded what is real about the interaction of the world.
Okay, but then what does it have to with the principle of non-aggression? Enabling you to be somewhere, whether you thought you had a choice in being there or not, is not an act of aggression. If I fall asleep on the train and end up five stops past where I wanted to be - is that the train’s fault for enabling me to be there? Or the train driver’s fault?
I didn’t say they should be punished. I don’t care if they are punished or not. What’s important is to acknowledge that they are doing something morally wrong by not intervening. If you passed a child who was lying face down in a pool and you could save it from drowning just by turning it on the back, you would be a terrible person if you didn’t do it.
This is an instant were positive ethics becomes a command. Normally, it can only recommend good acts since the number of good deeds we could perform is infinite and cannot be specified. But when the possibility of acting comes very close to you and the amount of inconvenience it costs you is very small it becomes an absolute demand. In such cases you can’t say: if I do A, I can’t do B.
You could go to Africa and save a starving child hitherto unknown to you, but if you do that you won’t be able to perform good deeds closer to home. Therefore, it cannot be demanded that you do so. But when it’s a matter of easily saving that child in a pool or blinking to prevent an Armageddon, those simple acts don’t stop you from doing anything else. Your task is clearly defined by the circumstances and it must be considered a moral demand.
(Actually the law also sometimes identifies a duty to act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_(law) )
There is a difference between self-justification and collaborating with reality. Self-justification is when we deal with cognitive dissonance by ignoring, isolating and excluding information. I haven’t denied what is happening - I’m just not referring to it as ‘abuse’ or ‘force’. That’s not excluding information, it’s looking at ALL the information contributing to the event without evaluating it in relation to an ethical perspective first.
What you appear to be doing, on the other hand, is excluding any contributors to an event that are not ‘moral agents’ in order to justify your assertion that these moral agents are the ‘cause’ of that event.
Your entire ethical perspective is built on principles that even you admit cause cognitive dissonance when applied to reality. And yet you continue to justify those principles by ignoring, isolating and excluding information that contradicts them. ‘Aggression is wrong, UNLESS the intention behind that aggression is to prevent more aggression - then aggression is not wrong’ is an example of self-justification as a result of cognitive dissonance.
Your problem is with the amount of ‘suffering’ that appears to necessarily come with the existence of the individual. I believe this ‘suffering’ is a result of prediction error - as each ‘individual’ predicts, tests and then adjusts their mental concepts to better correspond with reality. The more we interact with reality, the more prediction error we experience. It’s in our best interests, then, to continually adjust our concepts to suit our interactions with reality, so that our predictions are more refined and accurate as a result. This is easier said than done, of course. Pain, loss, lack and humiliation are all signs of prediction error - avoiding these signs that we need to adjust our concepts is not the answer to reducing suffering - taking the steps to understand where the prediction error occurs and then adjust our concepts is.
There are some concepts that we are having immense difficulty adjusting, though, despite the prediction error we experience. The concept of the ‘individual’, an indivisible conceptualisation of ourselves as isolated from the rest of the universe, is understandably one of the most resistant. But there is nothing in my most objective understanding of reality (if I’m honest) that supports either the idea that I am actually isolated in any way from the reality of my experience, or that I am indivisible - except in how I subjectively, socially, politically, ideologically, logically or morally conceptualise that reality. I can’t prove that to you, unfortunately.
What this broader understanding of reality this leads me to (eventually) is that I don’t matter as an indivisible, isolated existence in the universe: I matter as an aware, connected and collaborating participant in the unfolding universe, in the whole of existence.
Parents conceive and birth children- check.
Quoting Possibility
When something is conceived and birthed, someone becomes born- check.
Quoting Possibility
Only conception and birth from the parents or intentional efforts by fertility clinic which still need the desire from at least one parent- check.
Quoting Possibility
At the end of the day, it is the will of the parent that allows the birth to take place. If birth was fully unpreventable, then you may have a point. But practically all birth is.
Quoting Possibility
Again, you have not explained your non-agent based system which apparently leaves morality of individual agents as irrelevant. This can be used to justify anything- the murder was the cause of the universe from unknown multiple causations. There is no need to do that. Without the agent, the violation would not have occurred. You want to have this holisitic perspective of reality, but even if that were true from a birdseye view (which we cannot prove), existence is felt and experienced at the individual level. There is no way of getting around it. The main reason this is dangerous, is people will then use it as an excuse to not have any responsibility or accountability to whether they cause harm to others.
Quoting Possibility
Without the parent doing certain things, there is no child. Thus, this is provably wrong.
Quoting Possibility
What other conditions besides the parents decisions each step of the way? Here's the thing, you are really over-emphasizing the idea that antinatalism is trying to "blame" parents. You are not quite getting where the emphasis is. Antinatalism is trying to inform the parents that be simply preventing birth, they can prevent harm. There isn't supposed to be a post-facto blame of what has already occurred. I see that as a big glitch here in your reasoning. You are not even putting the focus where antinatalism is putting the focus. It's not about blaming things on people or holding them in contempt, etc.
Quoting Possibility
This is all elusive. You have to provide examples. Sure, people have accidental births. What else are you trying to get at?
No, since you were an autonomous person who mistakenly slept on the train, that was in your side of the court. If, however, you had no choice and someone drugged you to sleep on the train and wake up later, yeah that would be force. Thus, if someone does something that affects someone else's life, and the person being affected could not make a choice, that would be force.
We agreed that it revolves around autonomy of the individual being violated. The negative ethics revolves around that.. Why not just have a child for X reason? Because we don't use individuals like that.
Quoting Possibility
I'm not saying that one must avoid reducing prediction error. Rather, I am saying that it is not your place to make a prediction error for someone else that affects them profoundly, because you decided you wanted to.
Quoting Possibility
How does this matter in regards to preventing suffering for others? It sounds like you are trying to say that the "Will of the Universe" is an excuse to cause suffering of others. This would indeed be a way to make it ok to positively do things to others (violating non-aggression and non-harm). This is problematic. In fact, what you postulate is that we are just test-cases so the universe can get things "better". If that is the case, then we are being used by the universe itself and thus nothing matters on the individual level of ethics. That is problematic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
You keep lumping conception and birth together as if it’s the same thing. I get that you’re trying to avoid the abortion debate, but it’s more than a little bit ridiculous to talk about cause and effect in such broad strokes here. There are so many instances of cause and effect between intention, conception and birth that impact on the existence of the child. When parents intend to conceive, they don’t necessarily succeed, and if they do conceive, a child is not necessarily born. The conscious intent of a parent to conceive is also not the only explanation for conception.
I’m not denying that the will of the parent allows or enables the birth to take place. I’m saying that the will of the parent isn’t necessary for conception to take place, and so the will of the parent is not the cause of conception. Between conception and birth is another story, so you do need to navigate the possible/potential/actual distinction of existence if you want to get from the intent of the parent to conception and birth as a complete moral action.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I get that the absence of a moral agent is a frightening thought, and I understand the need to have actions justified. The reality is that holding others morally or even legally responsible/accountable for the harm they contribute to is not as effective as we would like it to be in preventing harm. If someone specifically intended to do something they were capable of doing, then no amount of moral, legal or even physical obstacles could realistically prevent it. They would eventually find a way AND justify it from their perspective - such is human capacity. So you see, your perspective of their morality IS irrelevant in preventing harm. And you’ve even admitted that the moral perspective you’re advocating is impractical and contradictory in reality, so your ethics has nothing to stand on - which is why you’re arguing to prevent individual existence as the only way you can see to effectively prevent harm.
I’m not saying there is nothing we can do to prevent harm any more than you are. You’ve backed yourself into a corner, though. You can’t prevent existence - only individual existence. So your argument that the individual is more important or valuable than existence unravels at this point.
We punish people that we see as doing wrong things. By "shouldn't be punished" I mean "they didn't do something wrong"
Quoting Congau
How do you know those conditions have been met by someone? Maybe the guy COULDN'T turn the kid around and save him from drowning because of some disability
Quoting Congau
This is not an argument. The law also specifies that suicide is illegal. Also I skimmed through that Wikipedia page and it clearly says "In tort law, similarly, liability will be imposed for an omission only exceptionally, when it can be established that the defendant was under a duty to act." Where was the "duty to act" for the two cases we mentioned? "Duty to act" usually applies to people getting payed to act, for example, a police officer could be deemed guilty for not attempting to stop a robber or calling for reinforcement
That’s fair. I do get that your focus is prevention, but you’re talking about a ‘parent’ in relation to an existing child, not a possible one. You’re trying to argue that enabling the possibility of existence would constitute an act of ‘force’ or ‘harm’ by parents against a non-existent will, and that all subsequent acts against a subsequent will are therefore caused by the parents. There is something very misguided about this in relation to what constitutes any action against a non-existent will. You’re convinced that a will doesn’t have to exist for someone to act against it, but this just doesn’t make any sense, and there is no evidence for it. Genetic modifications are not interacting with a later will, but with an existing potential. And there is no potential for one to interact with prior to enabling the possibility of existence. So unless you can show how we interact with a possible existence other than enabling or preventing the possibility, then I can’t see how this is an accurate assessment of a moral act of the parent towards the possibility of a child.
The way I see it, you’re trying to convince parents to act against the possibility of a child - to do what they can to prevent the potential existence of another individual, because this is the only way you can see to effectively act against the possibility of harm. I’m okay with this, but it has nothing to do with any moral act of a parent against their actual child prior to the existence of that child.
It's all about the margins. You are not in charge of existence as a whole, just what you are able to do as an agent. You are able to prevent harm for another person by simply preventing birth. That is all the argument is for. You are overstepping what the argument is even advocating.
I am okay with that. Preventing harm to someone is all that matters. Anything else is rhetorical nonsense and is trying to find strawmen and red herrings for the sake of argument. We all know ALL harm can be prevented by simply not procreating. As you noticed, no actual person is "deprived" because there is no actual person who exists to be deprived. So what is your problem? There is none.
I certainly didn’t agree that autonomy of the individual was either achievable or important, and certainly not prior to existence. I thought we agreed that striving for individual autonomy is impractical or at least ‘messy’ in reality? The way I see it, ‘individual autonomy’ is an illusion - any perception that focuses on it as a goal is ignorant of reality, and guaranteed to suffer from prediction error in interacting with that reality.
People decide to have a child for all sorts of reasons - but most of them stem from the fearful realisation that individual autonomy is either not a priority or not possible. Anyone still striving for individual autonomy as a priority has no reason to procreate, sure - but that striving becomes a Sisyphean effort. Most people eventually recognise through prediction error that the world doesn’t work like that, and they adjust their conceptual system to better suit reality. Procreation is often a key coping mechanism at this point. But beyond our fear is the realisation that procreation is a feeble, half-assed effort to wrestle some form of relevance from our ‘individual’ participation in existence, and that we are capable of much more effective participation in far more collaborative achievements than simply creating another individual.
THIS is my problem. We don’t know this at all. Harm continues to occur regardless of procreation - I’m not even sure what gives you this idea. You’ll have to explain.
Okay, you seem to be yourself very conflicted. I don't know what to say to that. I agree with your sentiments that people can collaborate in other ways. Yet you somehow justify procreation through some odd "recognition of reality" that you seem to be railing against at the same time. Again, I don't know what you're trying to prove here other than people procreate and that somehow they are "justified" but for some obtuse reason of "existence" or some such thing.
ALL harm for any future progeny can be prevented. Unless you don't have a concept of a future or a person that CAN be born into that future, I don't see what explanation you need. Again, morality is at the margins- that is to say, what people as agents can actually do. Of course, being that morality is not a big utilitarian "greatest good" game, what you can acutally "do" is not about greatest good, but not using people for some outcome you want to see. That is to say, not using people for YOUR or some other entity's agenda.
Where’s the conflict? Just because I understand why people will procreate doesn’t mean I’m justifying procreation. I can evaluate their actions based on my own value system, but I’m not going to expect them to live by my ethical perspective just because I’m convinced it’s a more accurate reflection of reality. I can’t change their actions with my ethical perspective - all I can do is help them to see why their ethical perspective does not correspond to reality. So my concern here is with your ethical perspective, and the unrealistic expectations that you have for the world because of it.
What you’re talking about is only preventing harm to your own progeny - not preventing ALL harm. That’s hardly the same thing. In fact, it barely rates a mention in terms of preventing ALL harm. What are you hoping to achieve? An end to existence?
I’m aware of this. But you are not preventing harm for another person by denying their existence, because that ‘person’ does not exist. So you’re not doing any ‘good’ here. You are not doing anything, so how can you be an agent? You’re denying possibilities because you believe the cost is too high. That’s your prerogative, but rest assured the universe will continue to exist without your involvement. ‘Harm’ and ‘force’ will still be experienced, as a result of the inevitable interaction between ignorant and isolated, ‘individual’ will. We have the capacity to change that, but we have to recognise our capacity as an agent, and then do something with it.
Negative ethics on its own is about denying agency, which kind of defeats the purpose. You cannot do or be ‘good’ by refusing to do or be anything in relation to existence.
So you take my words out of context now. ALL harm onto another person that would be harmed otherwise. Period. The goal is not end of existence. The goal is not causing any harm to another person. This does not happen by not procreating.
Quoting Possibility
No, you are doing "good" because you are not causing harm. Not causing harm is always good. You can be doing good by NOT doing anything. I am not asking people to be salvation for existence itself. In fact, that is a category error. I agree that existence will exist. The ethic isn't about that though. It is about preventing harm when one can. Not procreating perfectly prevents all harm for another person who might otherwise be harmed.
Quoting Possibility
What's the difference? They sound the same to me
Quoting Possibility
You can't reduce suffering to below zero yes? Antinatalism proposes a method for reducing suffering to 0. You can't beat that
Quoting Possibility
That wasn't my argument
Quoting Possibility
This was
Quoting Possibility
Where do my arguments do that?
Quoting Possibility
How? They will contradict each other by definition
Quoting Possibility
I didn't, because I didn't use that principle. The only thing I swept aside was the idea that if an action takes place before the person to be harmed exists that it is allowed
Thank you for clarifying. But this ‘other person’ you’re talking about never existed, and never will exist. It’s like your very own personal strawman. So you’ve only reduced your own capacity to interact with existence.
You keep trying to refer only to antinatalism, but this thread is about the negative ethics that supports it, so when I extend your argument, I’m applying your principles to all your actions, not just this imaginary one that you pride yourself on. The only way to not cause harm to any other person is to not exist, or at least not interact with existence. Yet you exist and you interact. Whatever the reason, you remain as a walking contradiction to your own principles. And you expect others to believe that your principles reflect the truth? Nope.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That’s not ‘doing good’, that’s fearing your own existence. You’re imagining possibilities for action and then excluding them all because they might be seen as ‘wrong’ by some possible perspective at some point, and you think that makes you ‘good’. I’m not asking you to be ‘salvation’ for existence either, whatever that could be. I’m only expecting you to participate positively while you’re here, instead of focusing on trying to convince others to avoid opportunities to act, just in case someone might not like what you did.
I understand what it’s like to be afraid of putting a foot wrong - to be aware of so many possibilities that we’re paralysed by indecision, but then to be so conscious of how other people feel that the only thing we can be sure of is that someone will be ‘harmed’ by anything we decide to do. And then we ‘feel’ their pain as well as our own. I get that it seems like ‘doing good’ to try and limit our interactions by the principles of non-harm and non-aggression. But you’re allowing everyone else to dictate your life. For someone who values autonomy above all, I wonder how you justify this.
‘Harm’ and ‘force’ are subjective evaluations by those with whom we interact. So these principles are based purely on what everyone else might think about our actions. We’re not really living up to our potential like that - we’re only reflecting our environment, like a glass ball, or a reed in the wind. I’ve been there - it seems like the right thing to do, but it hurts to look out at the world and wonder why no one seems to really care who I am or what I want. For me, I was eventually given the space and opportunity to see who ‘I’ am when I’m not being what everyone else expects me to be. I think each ‘individual’ deserves that. I don’t see this as ‘autonomy’, though - mainly because we need to see it reflected back at us through the eyes of someone we trust. And it took me almost twenty years to even summon the courage to properly look. I think it’s about being aware of our unique journey through the world, and what we can offer freely to those with whom we interact, without obligation and without fear. We each have a unique combination of ability, talent and experience to offer those around us - they just don’t know it yet, and we’re often too busy doing what we think they want or need, to find out for ourselves.
I no longer think we should be so afraid of causing what other people think is ‘harm’ that we do nothing. That’s not living. Pain, for instance, isn’t ‘bad’ in itself. It’s prediction error: notification from the system that it requires more energy, attention or effort than was budgeted for. This doesn’t justify inflicting pain on others, but it does mean that sometimes what we initially evaluate as ‘harm’ is not necessarily as harmful as we think. Pain allows us to grow, change, improve and to understand the world better - not so we can just avoid pain or other prediction error, but in order to interact with the world and help others to predict more accurately. Prediction error is just evidence that we haven’t yet perfected this.
I think you and I are not so different. It seems that you genuinely want to only do what’s best for everyone, and this is your way of evaluating that. But I’ve learned that it’s better to act and be wrong than to not act at all. We should forgive ourselves and others for errors of ignorance, offer our energy, attention and effort to repair connections when we make mistakes, and recognise the pain, humiliation and loss of prediction error as a sign that we’re learning more about how to interact with the world. This is life. Otherwise we’re all just rocks floating in space.
When people act based on positive ethics, they sometimes make mistakes and they can’t control how the world responds. But if they base their actions on negative ethics, then they don’t act at all. That’s not living, it’s not ‘doing good’ and it’s not autonomy - it’s fear.
Benatar brings up the idea of starting an existence versus continuing an existence. Continuing existence has a different threshold than starting one. One example is one might be more reluctant of the idea of bringing a child with a major disability into the world than one would about advocating a person already born with a disability to end their life. That is just one example of the differences there.
Quoting Possibility
I am not opposed to if someone wants to cause pain to oneself, but I am opposed causing it for others if possible. That is the difference here. And to justify that because there is always some collateral damage, that therefore everything is contaminated, and thus any harm is permitted is nonsensical.
Quoting Possibility
Existence for the already-born is a tricky business. We are used creatures. Our self-reflective capacities are used by our own human instincts to shit, eat, get bored, find a more comfortable setting, and seek pleasure. We are used by social institutions because social institutions are designed to find a way to take those instincts and self-reflective capacities and manipulate them to produce and consume for the benefit of keeping society going (i.e. labor, consumption, trade, maintenance of personal and industrial commodities and goods, education, family, entertainment purveyors, etc.). We are often used by family and relatives. We are often used by our employers in various ways to get the most work- causing stress. We are de facto forced into these social institutions, knowing that as social creatures, such that being a hermit in the woods, a homeless person in the streets, or a monk in a commune are most likely not viable (are sub-optimal) choices, so the de facto social milieu of the socio-economic normative reality is set. We are used in all sorts of ways. We are complicit, as in turn, we tend to use others and these institutions as well for our needs and wants. Then, on top of this using, there is collateral damage. There are physical and mental illnesses, disasters, accidents, miscalculations, bad decision-making, and all sorts of things that make even the bad "regular" outcome of being used and manipulated into an even worse endeavor.
You can claim that this "using" is collaboration or "mutually beneficial relationships" but at the end of the day, they are de facto forced realities that we accept as necessary. Some (apparently you) go as far as giving some quasi-spiritual significance to these supposed "mutually beneficial relationships". I think this is simply turning a blind eye to what is really going on. The first (and most important) political decision was made for you, that was being born in the first place. Someone else thought you should go through life and be a part of this using process (not their perspective to use someone, but their unintended and unreflective action nonetheless). They had some reason (some X agenda) that this should be so if they weren't just outright negligent (accidental birth). Their decision majorly affecting another person, who must deal with it now.
Now that we are alive, "forced" into dealing with the situation thereof, what do we do? One can commit suicide. That is usually a sub-optimal choice for most. We can keep going through the motions- that is an inevitable choice (that is to say, survival through work, consumption, and trade through the normative socio-economic channels that the current situation provides). One could drink the Kool-Aid and accept the givens and then even "praise them" like so many self-help books try to promote. In this "acceptance" view (which I deem to be promoted most by social institutions), one accepts the reality of what the situation is more-or-less (minor political tweaks not withstanding on whatever minor political spectrum you are on), and then move forward as a happy warrior. Thus making friends, climbing the mountain of one's own self-actualization, and abiding the day in the normative socio-economic setting is the about as good as it gets. I say rebellion is the best stance though. Always realize that one was placed here originally. Always remember that one is being used and is using. Now, I agree that community is part of humanity, and thus communally, I think it can be cathartic to rebel together. So antinatalism is not JUST about preventing harm (negative ethics), but can be a "positive" ethics in rallying against our being used. No, we cannot prevent "existence" itself, but we can recognize what is going on as a community and perhaps with this "rebellious stance" and understanding, we can be kinder and more understanding of each other and our situations. Schopenhauer thought the best stance was recognizing each other as "fellow-sufferers". We are in the same boat- and it isn't a collaboration panacea of bliss. It is rather being used by all sorts of factors and enduring and dealing with life. We can communally understand this and rebel. We can recognize what is going on and prevent others from dealing with as well.
By an ethical system I simply mean whatever ethics a person supports. It can even be completely individual; that person being the only one in the world to follow a particular system. You bind yourself in the sense that if you act outside it, you are inconsistent.
Quoting khaled
Of course I assume in this example that he really can save the child, that’s a part of the premise. If you can do a great service to someone with a minimal effort on your part, then it’s deeply immoral not to do it. Make the service smaller and the effort bigger, and at some point it becomes debatable whether the act can be demanded of you. But in an extreme example like this, there can be no doubt that it would be very bad not to act. Or do you disagree?
Quoting khaled
To turn it around: The act of conception itself doesn't benefit anyone at the time it is done but that doesn't mean it should not be allowed. No one is either harmed or benefited at the time. There is a chance it will harm someone in the future, but there’s a greater chance it will benefit someone.
Quoting khaled
I couldn’t convince a monkey or a chicken or a retarded person, but why do you care about those who lack the intelligence to understand? The point is that an axiom like A+B=B+A can indeed be explained. You don’t just say it’s true “just because”.
Yes. As I said. I disagree. If someone could have blinked to save the world from nuclear Armageddon I wouldn't think it bad for that person not to blink (if the person didn't cause the Armageddon)
Quoting Congau
Agreed. No one said not having children benefits anyone. What is being said is that having children harms someone, so shouldn't be done. Note I'm not saying having children will always produce more net suffering than net pleasure. I'm simply saying that having children WILL produce SOME suffering
Quoting Congau
That is insignificant. That's what negative ethics means. Negative ethics doesn't care about the "chance it benefits someone" because benefiting someone is not taken into consideration when looking at the morality of an action. For negative ethics, it would be wrong to give someone 100000 dollars for a pinprick if they don't give you consent to prick them first.
Quoting Congau
Ok let's test that. Please explain why A+B = B+A
Quoting Congau
Who has the authority to dictate someone lacks the intelligence to understand? For that person it's you Who's lacking the intelligence to understand. To fools we seem like fools, there is no objective standard here.
The trick is understanding the difference between the pain that we cause to ourselves through our own ignorance, isolation or exclusion, and the pain that others inflict on us as a result of their ignorance, isolation or exclusion. It isn’t about finding someone to blame. Let me ask you: If the capacity to choose between paths was available, but we lacked the capacity to be aware of that choice (of either the capacity to choose, the range to choose from or the paths available), then who is responsible for the path taken in absence of awareness?
Quoting schopenhauer1
That’s not what I’m saying at all - your conclusion that ‘any harm is permitted’ is not the same one that I’m drawing here. It isn’t about whether harm or pain is permitted. It’s about understanding WHY it is painful or harmful from their perspective, and then considering what that subjective experience means from a broader perspective - ie. when you take into account everyone’s experience, including that of whoever appears to be responsible for the ‘harm’. Being aware of how actions that contribute to ‘harm’ are positioned in relation to everything else that’s going on from others’ POV reduces the chance of ignorantly contributing to ‘harm’ elsewhere when we respond. There are no isolated or autonomous individuals - every action we initiate is an interaction on many different levels, whether we’re aware of them all or not. It’s not an excuse to be ignorant, but a challenge to be more aware.
An underlying impetus is not goal-directed, but neither is it random. Like a Mandelbrot set (only six-dimensional), it has a simple pattern that leads to an ever-increasing complexity without a definite result. The diversity comes from the point at which each ‘section’ of the pattern resists the impetus.
Quoting khaled
The method of antinatalism only reduces possible suffering to zero for a non-existent possibility. You can’t do anything with that. It’s a strawman.
Quoting khaled
Here
Quoting khaled
While you exist, you cannot avoid contributing to what others would refer to as ‘harm’. I think we can agree on this. Your ethical system’s principle of ‘don’t harm’ (an ethical principle being the foundation of any action) is fundamentally impractical to anyone who exists if they decide to act in any capacity at all. The very nature of ‘harm’ - that it is a subjective evaluation of action, and not just by the one acted upon - makes it impossible to act in any real circumstance. You cannot be certain that someone will not be harmed by your action, thus there is no possible act that ensures ethical behaviour. And yet ethics is entirely about how to act.
Your ethical perspective is dependent upon being the ONLY ethical perspective.
Quoting khaled
No they won’t. Negative ethics is about what not to do. Positive ethics is about what to do instead. A positive ethics that doesn’t have a corresponding negative ethics permits everything. Conversely, a negative ethics without a corresponding positive ethics provides no incentive to act (which defeats the purpose of ethics).
As an example, ‘reduce ignorance, isolation and exclusion’ is a negative ethics, whose corresponding positive ethics - ‘increase awareness, connection and collaboration’ - works in harmony with it to enable actions that violate neither.
Quoting khaled
On what grounds? If an action takes place before the person exists, then it is not an action against that person, but against something else.
So would you say that ‘consistency’ is an ethical principle or something else?
People can lack awareness of something. I didn't doubt that. The point was to try to not cause harm. That is all. I am not denying that some people might lack awareness how or who they are harming.
Quoting Possibility
We will never have perfect awareness of every consequence of our action. Acting in good faith is part of the equation. We are trying not to harm, and gaining more awareness is probably as good as it will get without full knowledge. But if you agree, then again, not having full knowledge doesn't negate the principle itself nor the effort.
Also, I wrote a rather lengthy response to your request for a positive ethics, and was wondering if you had a response to that.
That doesn’t answer the question.
This is victim mentality, or at least a form of ‘learned helplessness’. You’re simply unaware of your capacity for action, and unwilling to explore it when it presents itself. We are not hapless victims of ‘instinct’, circumstance or ‘social institutions’. These are not ‘forces’ beyond our control. We are ‘complicit’ because these are social concepts that we have formed in our own minds, in the same way that people conceptualised ‘gods’ from interactions with their environment when they failed to detect control. Here’s an article about ‘learned helplessness’ theory you might find interesting.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is not what I have claimed - this is what YOU conclude from my perspective. I never claimed what you describe as ‘using’ to be conscious collaboration, or that ‘mutually beneficial relationships’ were the norm - only that they were possible to achieve in reality. The fact that YOU cannot see how they are possible does not preclude them from being achievable. And all of this comes back to the self-contradictory, impractical negative ethics that says contributing to ‘harm’ is not an option. It is ONLY this flawed ethical perspective that positions us as ‘used creatures’. This can be changed, so why do you cling to it? What are you afraid of?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I recognise that we cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we respond. That we DO respond is important - whether we refer to it as ‘rebellion’ or as ‘collaboration’ depends on our awareness of how everything interacts and relates. To do anything effectively, we should begin by maximising our awareness of the current situation and accept it as real - regardless of whether we want it that way. From there, we can be in the best position to effect real and lasting change, because every action is then perceived as an INTERaction, rather than a battle against the ‘forces’ of the universe or society. There is a world of difference between accepting a situation as how it IS and how it should STAY. For me, Rosa Parks’ historical stance on the bus is a perfect example of awareness, connection and collaboration.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What you’re describing here is victim mentality, not a ‘rebellious stance’. You’re not rebelling, you’re complaining - protesting, even. But protesting what? The necessity of existence, or the way we have constructed this existence?
I agree with Schopenhauer’s idea of recognising each other as ‘fellow-sufferers’, but I also think this is a first step in a much more productive interaction with the ‘boat’ as it were than simply preventing others from being born on that boat. Because there is more to ‘what is going on’ than the recognition that ‘we are in the same boat’. We have constructed this boat, and we are the captain and crew. The more we understand what we’ve built and how it sails, the more it can become a ‘collaboration panacea’.
So your ‘positive ethics’ has no principles for correct action in the real world. You think you’re doing something, but you’re achieving nothing in reality - everything you think you’re doing is happening only in your mind.
Thus says the person who forces the other person into the game...Blithely ignorant.
Quoting Possibility
These are forces out of our control. To believe otherwise is overdetermining how much capacity we have not only in the initial conditions of our life and circumstances, but the required effort to change even one thing.
Quoting Possibility
Nothing to do with fear. It has to do with circumstances. This is all Pollyanna braggadocio about our capacities to change things. Notice, it is always when we aren't "really" going through shit, or after the shit, or when forecasting the shit that we see life as okie dokie, easily malleable, or other such thing. Or similarly, it is YOU who requires ALL this EFFORT that YOU are not providing to change YOUR world. How dare you (says the person who created the inescapable game for the other person).
Quoting Possibility
I already anticipated this response when saying thus, and you just reiterated the error.
Yes, yes, acceptance acceptance..Rosa Parks was rebelling against institutional racism. Antinatalism isn't going to be so amenable a rebellion. It is rebellion against being used by life, social institutions, our own instincts, etc. That is way too abstract for a polite gesture of civil disobedience which had a ready-made audience who was on board to use that act to change society. Thus, this is a false equivalency and nowhere near the same matter.
Quoting Possibility
Pollyanna self-help stuff.
Quoting Possibility
Wrong assumption- that something "has" to be achieved. It is a circular argument. We must achieve collaboration, to collaborate, to collaborate. You can put anything there though.. civilization to civilization, technology to technology, learn to learn... It's all self-justifying.
Ignorant of what? Of how YOU think the world is? Ignorance is a blatant refusal to recognise that the ‘harm’ you perceive is prediction error: the world is NOT going to respond the way you expect it to - not because it’s trying to enforce anything on YOU, but because YOU don’t get to decide how it should go. There is no ‘game’ except the one you’ve created for yourself. I know that something exists, and something is aware of existence. How I fit into that is what we’re all trying to figure out by interacting with the world and learning from our mistakes. Except you’ve decided that it’s easier to cling ignorantly to a conceptual world in which you are the tragic central character of a cautionary tale: ‘Look what you made me do’. What you’re ignoring is that YOU are not the central character of reality.
So thus we get to place people in a game in non-optimal conditions for the individual. That is just proving my point about placing people in a game because YOU think that person should play it (i.e. play the collaboration game or whatever you want to call it).
Quoting Possibility
But intentionally placing people into the game to "figure it out" (real easy words for people who have harder circumstances, but that's a secondary point), and "interacting with the world" and "learning from our mistakes". Why should anyone be put in this game to go through it? Self-justifying circular answers ensue.
Quoting Possibility
I don't pretend to be reality, just myself and it is the individual who is affected, whatever the hell reality is.
Describe to me what ‘optimal conditions’ would be for an ‘individual’ to exist.
There are none currently. As you so elucidated.
I... Cannot see any similarities between life and a mandelbrot set
Quoting Possibility
????? Is a world without people a world without suffering? I'd say yes. So is a world where antinatalism is applied a world without suffering? I'd say yes. So if your goal is to reduce suffering to 0, one way to do so is antinatalism
Quoting Possibility
Yes. But I take into account my own harm as well. And I do not harm anyone else unless it relieves me of massive harm. You're not taking ME into the equation when you make that statement
My principle is: "harm as little as possible". Don't harm was a simplification
Quoting Possibility
So as I said act within your best knowledge
Quoting Possibility
Where did this come from?
Quoting Possibility
Not true. Ethics is just about how to act as how not to act
Quoting Possibility
On the grounds that we can agree that the alternative is ridiculous. So if I set a bear trap in a park 10 years ago, it's a crime if a 50 year old steps on it but not a crime if a 9 year old steps on it? Another example: is there nothing wrong with signing a contract selling your child to slavery as long as you signed it before you had the kid?
Also what does this objections have to do with anything. I said that one should try to harm others as little as possible, (keeping himself in the equation). No where did I make a mention of acts done "on" people or things or whatever. I'm only concerned with the final result not whether or not an action was done on someone or something else.
On what grounds do you think that a harmful action done before the person to be harmed is born is permissable. What does time have to do with it.
Quoting Possibility
How about: increase awareness by 50 but increase ignorance by 10 (I'm just using arbitrary numbers because I don't know what these mean). Is that allowed? By "increase awareness" it is allowed, by "reduce ignorance" it's not allowed. Contradiction see? So which should take priority. Life rarely has situations where an action produces ONLY good or ONLY bad.
There is no game: no activity that one engages in for fun or amusement; no form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules; no episode or period of play ending in a final result; no secret and clever plan or trick.
You keep trying to argue that existence is some kind of game we didn’t choose to play, but a ‘game’ is something we’ve made up. It isn’t real. No one came up with ‘existence’ as a game, and then forced other ‘individuals’ to play it. There is simply existence and whatever sense we make of it. If you’ve decided to make sense of it in terms of a ‘game’, then surely someone must have ‘created’ that game and decided on the rules. If you believe that’s not the case, then the analogy of a ‘game’ doesn’t fit, and there must be a more accurate way to make sense of existence. Or if you believe that it’s our social reality that came up with the game and the rules, then you would understand (if you made any attempt to understand instead of just protesting) that this ‘social reality’ is a subjective consensus of value structures and concepts to which we subscribe freely in our minds rather than any ‘force beyond our control’, and all of it is subject to critical examination and change.
You don’t have to try and figure it out, you don’t have to interact with the world, and you certainly don’t have to learn from your mistakes. I can’t make you do anything, and I can’t make you see the world the way I do. I’m only suggesting that you should give these a go, not because I think they’re ‘right’ or ‘good’, but because I believe it’s important for me to try and ease suffering where I can, and that I do it by at least attempting to increase awareness, connection and collaboration in each of my interactions with the world. That’s how I make sense of existence.
What do you understand ‘suffering’ to be?
It’s not possible to increase both awareness and ignorance with the same action. Awareness is acquiring information about the world; ignorance is rejecting available information.
Why do you say ‘currently’?
Ethics is only about how not to act in relation to the conducting of an activity. So negative ethics cannot stand alone.
An experience someone is trying to avoid
Quoting Possibility
Again, I don't know what these mean so I can't really say anything. It is however usual for an action to do both good and bad. Example: having children. That causes someone to experience a lot of suffering. Also causes them to experience a lot of pleasure. "You should not cause suffering" and "You should create pleasure" will judge the act differently
How does this
Quoting Possibility
Follow from this
Quoting Possibility
They seem like unrelated statements which I don't even understand
You said that but then you said this:
Quoting Possibility
There is the game then. Learning from mistakes is part of it. In other threads I've called it "growth-through-adversity" model. Parents think that life is some sort of game of "growing-through-adversity". Thus providing life to another person ensures they play the game of "growth-through-adversity". Or they hope they grow through their adversity and not flounder in adversity. Of course, why putting someone in this "reality" of growth-through-adversity in the first place is not explained.
Quoting Possibility
You asked if there are any optimal conditions. I said there were none currently. In pure theory, there could be a universe that has complete optimal conditions that is tailored for every individual's absolute paradise (and everything can be turned off to suit what one wants at any given time), but that is not this reality as you have noted. We only have this reality. And if you say, we have to "fit" this reality, then that is the game that you deny that it is. No, it's not made by humans, but the way you describe reality (interacting and collaboration.. do it or pay the consequences or whatever your negative consequence is of not following your model), it is indeed something one must try to get a "handle of". There is some technique, some WAY, some thing that has to be done and if one doesn't do it, one suffers from it.. This to me is game-like. One plays by the rules or one doesn't get to benefit from playing the game or winning it. Yes, I know you are going to object to "winning" or "rules" but that is essentially what you are laying out. Even if you deny this, and then repeat your "collaboration" chorus, it doesn't negate what it is amounting to. You can say it differently, but your model is as much a game as the normative models that are around which are about the same.. deal with reality.. here is how.. growth-through-adversity in some fashion or other be it collaboration or anything else.
It is in the process of consciously determining an action that a negative ethics is applied. But in order to consciously initiate an action, a positive ethics is required. In order to act, you must have some idea of what is a ‘good’ act (positive ethics), not just what is not a ‘good’ act (negative ethics). It appears to me that your positive ethics is to ‘do what benefits the individual’, which is often in direct conflict with ‘harm as little as possible’, so of course you’re still faced with a dilemma in determining every action (so long as you’re aware of the impact your action may have) - one that your particular brand of ethics cannot help you with (hence the OP question). Your intuition tells you that your negative ethics are more important than your positive ethics, as they stand - and I would agree with you here, in theory. But that doesn’t solve your problem - it only makes the antinatalist argument seem valid, and only because there is NO ACTION INITIATED. All it does is allow you to accuse those who do act, regardless of their reasons, of violating your negative ethics.
My point, however, is that the conflict between your positive and negative ethics is the main problem. If you always prioritise your negative ethics, then your only actions will be those in which your subjective evaluation of benefit to you outweighs your subjective evaluation of the extent of harm that those actions may cause others. But how do you evaluate ignoring information about possible or potential harm that could tip the scales on an action which would otherwise be deemed more beneficial to the individual than it is harmful to others? It does no harm to ignore this information, does it? You’re not initiating any action, just determining not to interact in a way that might inform you of something which has a negative benefit to you as an individual...
Which brings us back to the argument regarding procreation: you’re asking those who subscribe to your form of ethics to also rely on your subjective evaluation of possible future harm to someone who doesn’t exist, weighed against your evaluation of the action’s benefit to the parent as an individual. By your own ethics, however, YOU don’t get to decide that for them. The benefit/harm to the individual can ONLY be evaluated by the individual in question. So, by your ethics, the parent is well within their rights to evaluate procreation in relation to their own perspective of the harm/benefit scale. And there is nothing in your ethics that says they shouldn’t ignore information that it’s in their best interests to ignore.
The difference is that you seem to think we should have a different reality. Bear with me while I attempt to understand what you’re proposing here.
In your alternative reality, it seems that either only one individual exists as the universe, or each individual is completely unaware of others - like a multiverse of sorts. Once aware of anything other than itself, your own existence would necessarily be in relation to whatever else exists. For this to be an ‘absolute paradise’ (in which everything can be turned off to suit what one wants at any given time), an individual must have a complete working knowledge or ‘control’ of everything that exists. And the only way to achieve that is to imagine your own universe from scratch.
So this universe with optimal conditions could possibly exist, but only within the mind of an individual, and only in absence (or ignorance) of any other form of existence. You’re effectively yearning for oblivion - this is your ‘absolute paradise’.
But let’s say an individual wishes to manifest this ‘absolute paradise’ they have imagined in which to exist. The individual would need to manifest another existence (its absolute paradise) with which to interact. In order to know what to manifest, it must have some idea of what could possibly exist. But if nothing exists except itself, then it cannot know of any other possibility, and so can only manifest another instance of itself, with the potential it perceives within itself.
But how does this individual even know anything about itself, given that one approaches an understanding of oneself only through interaction with others? What you’re proposing is the universe of an omniscient, omnipotent creator: you. But you are a product of existence in this reality.
I get that you’d like reality to reflect your own value system - we all would, because that would mean we no longer have to experience prediction error, which we tend to evaluate as ‘bad’ experience. But you’re criticising a reality that you don’t know enough about to even begin to propose an effective alternative. It’s like what @Banno refers to here regarding critical thinking without context - like the patient trying to tell a neurosurgeon where he went wrong. It’s ignorance and hubris to think you know better than a reality you don’t even understand. It just smacks of a two year old tantrum, to me.
As for ‘the game’, you can exist without ever managing to get a ‘handle of’ reality. Most of existence operates in this way. But the rules that we’ve made up insist that ‘suffering is bad’, and so we’re imposing our own restrictions on how we exist. That’s your choice - you can’t blame reality for your own evaluation of it. There is no objective ‘good’ or ‘bad’, no ‘some thing that has to be done’ - there is simply existence and whatever sense we make of it. Your interpretations of how I describe reality will always look like a ‘game’ to you, it seems. But for me, there are no rules except those we make for ourselves or attempt to impose on others.
I’ve suggested a ‘way’ to minimise our contribution to ‘suffering’ as it exists in the world, but you reject it on the grounds that it attributes no priority to the individual, even though this particular subjective value conflicts with reality as it exists in the world, increasing ‘suffering’. You seem to think there ‘should’ be a way to prioritise both the individual and their freedom from ‘suffering’, but this world only exists in the mind of the ‘individual’, and can only be manifest as a result of that individual choosing to exist in relation to others.
First off, you're not freakn Yoda or Buddha, or some wise sage, so please stop pretending to be on a perch of wisdom about collaboration vs. my ignorance of reality and focus on the individual. So now that we got that out of the way...
Quoting Possibility
Well of course. AGAIN, you asked me, "Are there any optimal conditions". My answer is effectively, no there is not. I then off-handedly said I guess in theory there can be a universe of paradise. Then you took that off-handed comment to make a huge straw man and/or red herring to try to prove the falsehood of its ever going to be a reality. HENCE, I said "PURELY THEORETICAL". I would never believe it could even be a reality. It would only be a fantasy one can think of.. Like a square circle, etc. I can think of it, but the actual reality of it is itself a contradiction. So, let's not even dwell on it because it's a straw man you set up.
Quoting Possibility
You're putting ideas out there that I didn't say. All I am saying is that do not harm someone by procreating. I don't buy into this beyond good and evil BS, that life "must" be had by yet MORE people so that those individuals can experience "growth-through-adversity". Your collaboration mumbo jumbo is just another version of "growth-through-adversity" schemes to say justify why life should be lived out by yet more people. Next.
Quoting Possibility
I call bullshit. There are certainly rules that are imposed, forced or de facto (as I've stated). Humans are not in a vacuum. The problem with these self-help philosophies is they always try to sound wiser than what they are.. If you invert the problem so that it is with YOU the individual who has the problem, then it cannot be reality that is off, but YOUR interaction/view/interpretation that is. This thus allows the con game to keep going.. You see, the best people understand how to quietly accept "reality" and they change it by some life-affirming choice.. I don't know joining a Cult of Collaboration, hobby, friends, whatever not-so-novel idea you want to throw out there where the person "realizes" that they can "change" their view and become more at peace with reality.. Yeah, I've heard all this. There is only one way to prevent suffering for another person, that is not putting more people into the world..
What you are allowing (and you will keep denying this, I know), is for people to justify why it is ok to be born in the first place.. because you see in this philosophy of yours and similar ones, it is YOU (the individual who was born), that has a problem and you BETTER learn to adjust or be a miserable pessimist.. You see all problems stem from your ATTITUDE and you if you just CHANGE that so that you can accept the reality.. etc. etc. If someone says that it is the person who was born that was wronged by being brought into existence, that somehow can never be stated. No, that is fine. It is the person who was procreated who is wrong if they don't ACCEPT life's premises, according to these "it's YOUR attitude" philosophies.
Let's take a thought experiment.. let us say antinatalism caught on and a majority of the world thought like an antinatalist. What do you think that would look like?
Not what I’m saying at all. You have in your head a concept that you think is close to what I’m arguing here, and you’re running with that instead of reading what I’ve actually written. I have never said ‘growth-through-adversity’, and I have never said that life should or ‘must’ be lived by more people - because I don’t believe that it should. Talk about strawman. Take a moment to try and honestly understand what I’ve written before rejecting it based on your own assumptions of what I must be saying simply because I disagree with you on something.
Quoting schopenhauer1
If the majority of human beings decided not to procreate in an attempt to reduce ‘individual’ instances of suffering, then eventually you would achieve what amounts to a quantitative success. Yay, well done. But ‘suffering’ is not an event - it’s an evaluation in relation to all other experiences. So what would happen is that the negative value of each remaining instance of ‘suffering’ would gradually become more pronounced. In effect you would not achieve a reduction as such, but rather a concentration of that same negative value of ‘suffering’ across an awareness of much fewer instances.
So what you have would be fewer individuals, who would then evaluate any event prior to this more concentrated existence as less relevant than an event that happens to this existence. Their individual lives and experiences become infinitely more precious, because the relevance of their own existence is so much more finite. History becomes irrelevant. The small incidences of ‘harm’ they would have brushed off before are now considered much more serious. They’re more afraid: of those who would ‘harm’ them, of bringing ‘harm’ to others, of an unwanted end to their precious existence, of losing loved ones, etc - everything has so much more value, both positive and negative.
And with the loss of ever more individuals, each individual ‘suffering’ increases in severity for those who remain. How long do you think this antinatalism would last, once an individual recognises there are two options that would most certainly ease this intensity for themselves? Which option do you think would be more attractive?
So, while I admire the heartfelt motivation, as long as the priority is the individual you will never reduce the qualitative impact of ‘suffering’ in the world - not with antinatalism. And I maintain that it is the ethical perspective that lets you down, not the prescription of ‘don’t procreate’, which I would otherwise support.
I don't think this is correct. Ethics is about what you "should" or "shouldn't" do on some moral level but it doesn't actually have binding power. I don't need to think X is the right thing to do to do X. I can still do X even if I think it is wrong. So no you do not need positive ethics to consciously initiate an action. Do you appeal to a moral principle every time you go to have breakfast?
Quoting Possibility
No, and this is addressed above. I don't have a positive ethics. I don't think people "should" do anything. That doesn't mean I will do nothing.
Quoting Possibility
No, again, just because I actually do something doesn't mean there was a moral reason behind it.
Quoting Possibility
Correct.
Quoting Possibility
Correct.
Quoting Possibility
Correct. And anyone in their right minds would clearly see that there is no way they benefit more from having a child than their child suffers their entire lifetime. "Suffering due to not having a child" is a form of suffering. What they would be proposing is that that form alone outweights ALL forms of suffering their child will experience. There is just no way that's true.
As I said, I am not against procreation just cuz. I am against it because it causes more suffering than it alleviates. If there is a scenario where it would alleviate significantly more suffering than it causes, sure have kids. But I think such scenarios are negligable
Quoting Possibility
I don't get where this ignoring information thing came from. I'm not ignoring any information as far as I can see
I agree that ethics doesn’t have any binding power. I personally think people ‘should’ do certain things, and they ‘shouldn’t’ do other things - but I’m under no illusions that my demanding either will have any effect - these are simply the principles I find most effective across the board, and it’s against my own principles to keep this information to myself, whether anyone else agrees with them or not.
I also agree that someone doesn’t need to think X (procreation) is the right thing to do to do X (procreate) - and they can still procreate even if they think it is wrong, and even if YOU think it is wrong. So what are we arguing about?
There are many things that we do without consciously initiating an action, but we initiate an action that we are then conscious of, all the same. If someone asked you ‘why did you have breakfast?’ You might answer, ‘because I was hungry’ - to which they might then ask, ‘well, why did you have breakfast because you were hungry?’ The reasoning you give for initiating your action X, whether or not you employed that reasoning at the time, will eventually come back to a certain moral principle which reassures you that X was the right thing to do given the circumstances, even if you think it was wrong on some other level. Perhaps if we were more conscious of determining and initiating actions according to our moral principles, we might behave more responsibly - or at least be more aware of where our moral principles contradict each other and where we discard them in favour of ‘survival instinct’, for instance (which is another way of saying ‘do what benefits the individual’). Ignorance of what determines and initiates our actions doesn’t mean those actions aren’t guided by any ethics at all. Quite the opposite - these moral principles are those we deem ‘necessary’: not just a ‘should’ but a ‘must’. Recognising that there are options even to our ‘instincts’ would enable us to critically examine our ethical perspective at a deeper level than just our behaviour as human beings.
‘Anyone in their right minds’ is a subjective value structure. What you mean is ‘anyone in YOUR mind’. This is your perspective of their life and the life of their child, not theirs. Someone else’s evaluation of their own individual yearning to be a parent and the possible life of their own child is always going to be drastically different to your perspective. Suffering isn’t about quantity of instances, but about qualitative evaluation. As someone who places no value in the existence of either individual (only in the quantity of suffering they represent), your logical evaluation of their possible instances of ‘suffering’ means exactly squat to them. There is no way you can know what is true for either of them.
You can’t effectively alter a decision to procreate from the moral perspective of possible suffering to a possible child - anyone weighing this decision is way past possibilities - already considering the overwhelming potential a child can bring to the world, as well as their own potential as a parent, and is ready to collaborate with both. You can, however, approach the decision from the moral perspective of potential harm another child will bring to the environment and those already suffering in terms of diversion, consumption, energy and resource depletion, and point out the overwhelming potential those parents have to offer existing children who are actually suffering in the world. There is then possible, potential and existing suffering that can be alleviated here by not procreating, and instead finding alternative ways to collaborate.
Not you - I was referring to those you’re trying to convince not to procreate. Even if they followed your ethical guidelines, they can still ignore your claim that procreation would be ‘harming’ a possible child more than it relieves their own yearning, and there would be nothing morally ‘wrong’ about that, by your standards. So the success of your argument still relies on increasing awareness and reducing ignorance...
But it does amount to growth-through-adversity.. Another model of this. Think your model through and once you start explaining it, oh yeah, it does juts become another case of self-help version of this. You just don't want it characterized like that. And no, you don't have to write it out again in a long paragraph. Collaboration is shorthand for this because I am thinking what these means all the way through. It involves learning through trial-and-error, with other people involved. That amounts to growth-through-adversity. It is its own scheme/model/game however much you want it to not be characterized like that. By putting another person into the world, you are de facto saying, "I want this for the other person, and I am willing to foist it on them".
Quoting Possibility
So this was more about envisioning, the positive ethics that are involved in a large antinatalism community. In effect, there would be collaboration but it would be a collaboration of pessimism. Everyone would recognize the situation, see it for what it is, and concertedly work together to prevent others from dealing with life. The collaboration is in the form of not creating the situation for others and continuing the cycle.
Quoting Possibility
No, harvesting new people to reduce one's own harm would hopefully be understood by this crew as an illusion that self-perpetuates itself :).
Quoting Possibility
It would be the ethical prescription to encourage more harm to other people that would be letdown that isn't even considered by the current ideals. There's a blindspot there.
I haven't read through the entirety of the thread... it's 10 pages but I'll give some of my initial thoughts.
I feel like you're conceiving of this idea of positive versus negative ethics through a utilitarian lense. And yes, when you perceive of it that way there can definitely be internal contradictions. I'm not a utilitarian and I'm not interested in defending it. Personally, when I think of a negative ethic it's more like the biblical "thou shalt not" or a political rights-based approach which forbids you from clubbing someone over the head as you walk down the street (i.e. acknowledging their rights at the bare minimum.) It doesn't in itself make for a particularly good society, but it does accomplish the bare minimum.
If you want society to be at least half-decent - and I think most of us do- therein lies the impetus behind a positive ethic.
I don't conceive negative ethics to necessarily be utilitarian. The version I discuss isn't, in fact. If anything it can be characterized as denotological or "Kantian". That is to say, one should respect the autonomy of the individual, in the realm of ethics, such that one does not violate the principle of non-aggression and/or non-harm. Exceptions would only occur if someone's autonomy was being violated or about to be violated. Thus, self-defense is permissible, etc. In the applied ethical realm of procreation, strictly following negative ethics would lead to an antinatalist conclusion. That is to say, by creating a new human, you are violating the non-harm principle (do not create conditions of unnecessary harm for others) and arguably the non-aggression principle (do not force others into conditions, even if you think it is best for them). Again, there are nuances, but it all revolves around taking individual autonomy seriously. Thus, as discussed in this thread, unconscious coma patients, elderly with dementia, and children are states where the individual has limited or no autonomy. However, something like birth will affect someone for a lifetime and in terms of the need to cause harm, is unnecessary.
Ok, all I'm saying here is that negative ethics can be viewed through many different lenses. A negative ethic could be as mild as don't murder or steal from people because it violates their rights. I'm not going to come in and defend the non-aggression or try to reconcile it with birth because it's just not something I've ever really been able to make sense of. As far as I've heard negative ethics are just about getting people NOT to do certain things and we can conceive of that in many different ways.
Yes, I agree with this. In the context of this thread, the argument is that positive ethics should not unduly override negative ethics. That is to say, if I think happiness is about doing X, or some sort of program of habits and thoughts, I should not force someone into it, even if I think it would be good for them.
It's only Kantian or deontological in the sense that it is about a duty to a principle that considers the person qua person and not as utility to be maximized. Also, importantly (in my conception anyway), it is about not using people as a means. It is a strong version of this, as Kant's principle holds that you should not use people only as a means. However, I think this can be taken further, in that if you like the idea of a new person being born to do X and X (the parent's agenda for the child), yet this will inevitably cause harm to the child (as life has the possibilities for lots and lots of harm), then it is not permissible to force the parent's agenda on the child, as it is violating the non-harm principle (and the autonomous individual as someone who can be harmed and forced).
Whether or not it's wrong
Quoting Possibility
Really? I highly doubt this. What if I then asked you "why do you believe in this moral principle" you'll have to find some real world reason. This is an endless cycle. Eventually you'll have to answer "just cuz". If you asked me: ‘well, why did you have breakfast because you were hungry?’ I would answer "because hunger makes me have breakfast most of the time" or in other words "because that's how it is". I don't think I'm doing any good by having breakfast
Quoting Possibility
I'm confused. I thought you were making the case that all of our actions have some moral support behind them. But here you're talking about survival instinct
Quoting Possibility
I didn't eat because I "must" eat in a moral sense. If by must you mean: has an overwhelming urge to then yes I ate because I must. There is nothing moral about that however. Just like there is nothing moral about a serial killer killing people die to an overwhelming urge to kill. To tell the difference between moral and other "shoulds" and "musts" replace them in the sentence with "would have to" and again with "would be wrong not to" and see which makes more sense
Example:
I must eat goes to:
I would have to/have to eat
I would be wrong not to eat
The first sentence make more sense. I'm pretty sure you're not meaning to imply the latter when you say "you must eat"
Quoting Possibility
Let X be the suffering due to not having a child. The person in question here is saying
My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)
Is this really an acceptable evaluation for anyone. That's like someone justifying murder by saying "my minor inconvenience due to having to meet this guy twice a week is greater than all the grief I caused by killing him"
There is only very few instances where I would believe both of these are true. Again, I don't "ban" procreation, if someone can show me that the first scenario is the case for them, sure have kids. You'll have one child every 200 couples or so then maybe, and that's being generous
Quoting Possibility
How would there be nothing wrong by my standards. They can "forget to consider" it genuinely but if they actively ignore it of course that's wrong. A murderer can't "actively ignore" the suffering he causes and then claim to be doing nothing wrong.
My mention of ‘survival instinct’ was anticipating your response to the question of why you eat when you’re hungry. You do realise that you don’t have to eat, even when you’re hungry, don’t you? You think that hunger ‘makes’ you eat because you don’t believe you can choose NOT to eat once you get hungry. But you can. People do it all the time. Just as you can choose not to survive, not to have sex or to procreate, against what many still consider to be an ‘overwhelming’ biological urge. It’s a matter of changing how you evaluate the urge to act, and how you evaluate the ‘suffering’ you would experience from not acting.
Every ‘instinct’ we think we have is an unconsciously determined and initiated action - one that can be consciously determined and initiated if we choose to be aware of the process. But we choose ignorance, instead - because otherwise we would need to consider the ethical implications of our actions, even at this level. It’s part of our unwritten social contract to eat when we’re hungry, convinced that we’re harming no one (that matters) by doing so. But in some situations, people are starving because they’re unable to ‘eat when they’re hungry’ without violating someone else’s property rights, considered more important than hunger because we enforce it as law - because WE don’t have to think about the ethical implications of eating when we’re hungry.
So, by my book, a serial killer is ignoring their capacity to act against their urge to kill. They’ve given themselves permission to ‘kill when they want to’, convinced that they’re harming no one (that matters) by doing so. There is no ‘overwhelming biological urge’ that one cannot overcome by developing a conscious awareness of the process. So there are no human actions that are free of ethical implications due to something that ‘makes’ us do it.
Quoting khaled
But again, you’re making a logical evaluation based on your perspective and extrapolating that to be some objective ‘evaluation for anyone’. But there is only the individual and their subjective evaluation - they don’t have to show YOU that their evaluation of the harm/benefit scale favours them having a child. They don’t have to answer to you at all, or to logic, because the will of the individual is most important here (according to your ethical perspective).
As for justifying murder, it is your evaluation of his inconvenience as ‘minor’ and your awareness of ‘all the grief it would cause’ that makes it unacceptable for you. He obviously saw it differently at the time, otherwise he would not have committed the act. He might regret it later, as he becomes aware of the grief he causes, but it’s easy to ignore or devalue ‘possible future grief’ to unknown individuals in the face of overwhelming personal suffering. That doesn’t make it right, but it does allow those who subscribe to an ethics of ‘cause as little harm as possible - especially to oneself’ to justify either murder or procreation.
Quoting khaled
But they’re not ignoring actual suffering, only your subjective prediction of possible suffering. If they subscribe to ‘cause as little harm as possible’, they’re not expected to be aware of (and in agreement with) your evaluation of their future actions, only with their own. You’re not presenting objective facts, you’re giving your individual opinion. So what makes you think your value structure is more accurate than theirs? Because it appeals to logic?
I'm confused about one thing though
Quoting Possibility
I presume this implies the serial killer is wrong right? Because he CAN choose not to kill yet he chooses to do so. But then how can the parent be right in procreating? He/She also chooses to ignore the logical implications of his/her actions
Quoting Possibility
Everything here is correct. However I don't believe there are nearly as many individuals as you think that would honestly say
Let X be the suffering due to not having a child. The person in question here is saying
My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)
Their numbers would be similar to serial killers who honestly believe they aren't causing much suffering
Quoting Possibility
No way to tell that but ok
Quoting Possibility
Again. For like the 100th time. I don't "ban" procreation. I never said it can't be justified. Just that the number of people that would seriously think it justifiable is negligible
Quoting Possibility
YES. But an individual opinion the vast majority shares. Do you honestly think most people would believe in:
My X >>> All the suffering my child will experience (including his own X)
If they thought about it?
I’m going to stop you here, because I’m starting to see why we’re getting nowhere - you cannot rationally apply logical reasoning to moral intentions. I’m pretty sure this violates rationality. For brevity’s sake, I’ll quote from SEP:
Quoting Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer
Likewise, we cannot begin with ‘individual’, ‘suffering’ or ‘harm’ as abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical reasoning for the purpose of concluding our argumentation with assertions about the morality of intentions. So you CAN argue that it’s illogical for parents to both procreate and minimise ‘harm’ to a conceptual ‘individual’ (and I might even agree with you, conceptually speaking), but if you’re going to argue about the morality of intentions, then you cannot use logical reasoning to do so - you would need to construct an argument employing moral reasoning about psychologically motivating forces. You haven’t done that, because you’ve started with abstract concepts and logical reasoning.
I think that this is where we’re coming unstuck. You keep referring to abstract concepts of ‘suffering’, ‘harm’ and ‘individual’, while I keep referring to them as moral concepts. Either you’re arguing logically, or you’re arguing morally. You can’t begin with logical explanations in order to conclude a moral argument, and expect it to be rational.
I think if we're going to progress in this discussion we need clear definitions. Maybe I haven't fully understood your argument so I'll do my best to re-phrase what I think you're saying and feel free to tell me if anything I'm saying is wrong or a misrepresentation of your argument. All right, here goes:
You're asking why positive ethics should outweigh negative ethics (and you seem to take the side that negative ethics should outweigh positive ethics.) It's crucial to define these terms though, and in your original post you define positive ethics more along the lines of maximizing well-being (this phrase is strongly linked to utilitarianism/consequentialism) versus negative ethics which is more about prohibitions and rules like the non-aggression principle or non-harm principle as well as other deontological principles which limit action. You're asking which should take priority. Am I understanding you right?
More-or-less yes.
All right, well this is how I would approach it. Feel free to disagree, ask questions, clarification, etc.
Utilitarian "maximization of utility" and Kantian deontology or other deontological rules like the NAP are distinct philosophical systems. It really doesn't make sense to just pick and choose when you prefer one over the other because then it's really less about the logic of the systems and more ultimately up to your feelings or intuitions. I wouldn't "weigh" one against the other either; they're competing ideologies and if you believe in one then I think you should disregard the other. I've never heard of the two being reconciled.
In regard to making the case for one of them, Kant makes the case that his rules are derived from reason itself. It's very ambitious. Naturally, philosophers have a hard-on for this kind of thing so if you buy Kant's case then I figure that kind of settles it... you're a Kantian. Similarly, I remember I debated with someone over the non-aggression principle years ago and they also argued the principle was derived directly from reason.
The utilitarian case - and it's been some time since I looked into it - is definitely not based around such a strong claim. I think it's more of a mild common sense appeal and then we go from there. I'm not going to make the utilitarian case here - you can find it elsewhere - but ultimately you need to be comparing these two systems more as competing ideologies and less of 'how do we find balance?'
It all follows from the idea of not violating autonomy. You don't assume others want to be harmed or forced. What follows is the NAP and the NHP (non-harm principle). Also, a correlation to this is that by respecting someone's autonomy you aren't using them for an ends. So this happens to fall in line with Kantian ideas, but isn't derived from them. So, there is a difference and in this case, it would not be arbitrarily cherry-picking from systems as you may be implying.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Well, what does "reason" mean though? It is a tricky word and hence I avoid it. It is a hypothetical imperative (I am not going to indulge the idea of a CI for the sake of this argument), and the hypothetical imperative is, "If you value an individual's autonomy, and believe that the basis of ethics is a person's individual autonomy, then the NAP and NHP fall naturally from this". So I am not going to use any ambiguous and weasel-words like "reason" which just stands for "my thinking is superior" rather than a real definition of anything meaningful.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I don't know where you got this notion at all from this thread, as I have nothing about competing utlitarian and deontological claims in here. My whole premise has been deontological (though I see that you have seen negative ethics as more associated with utilitarian). I don't agree with a utilitarian basis for ethics as I think it does not take into account individuals and their autonomy which is where I see the locus of actual ethics to lie. On the other hand, I can see the usefulness of utilitarian reasoning in other areas of human life, including government policy, but that would be something else and not necessarily ethics proper.
Why not exactly? I read the quote, nothing in it says this is problematic. Morality and suffering/harm are the same "class" of things. We can use logic to go from talking about one to the other. How else do you propose we begin to argue about morality? Having premises that don't involve suffering or individuals?
Quoting Possibility
What the heck is "moral reasoning"?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes. You can't just say "use both" because in many situations they give opposite answers. And while I did define positive ethics as essentially utilitarianism, that's just a bad habit of mine. Positive ethics is anything telling you "you should do X"/"It would be wrong not to do X" instead of "you shouldn't do X"
Methinks you confound positive and negative duties (or freedom) with the inchoate distinction between "positive and negative ethics." After all, the good life entails the avoidance of suffering.
You make two statements that don't seem to have much relation with each other. One is an insignificant but noted objection of my semantics (ethics vs.duties), and the other has to do with the good life entails avoiding suffering. Rather, this thread is more about not overriding negative ethics (duties) for a positive ethics (duties). Thus, if you kidnap someone and force them into a game (thus violating the non-aggression rule) because YOU think it is good for them, that would be wrong as you are using a positive ethics to justify violating a negative ethics.
Methinks you're entitled to the semantics of your choice; but know that philosophical tradition restricts negative/positive characterizations of actions to duties or freedom. Negative duties are duties of noninterference; positive duties are duties of assistance. The question you pose, in the parlance of the tradition, is whether paternalistic imposition of perceived goods on an unknowing or uncooperative other is ever morally justified.
Close, there are exceptions I admitted in this thread for reasons of either autonomy being limited or about to be violated (elderly, coma patients, children, self-defense, etc.). In terms of antinatalism, I'm claiming the time of the force and the time of the harm is done at X time birth. THAT is when the person was forced and harmed. But generally, this is correct. A paternalistic imposition of perceived goods on an unknowing or uncooperative other is almost never morally justified. Hence, a parent's agenda to see X thing happen for child should not justify violating the non-aggression and non-harm principle, both of which will be violated at birth.
Yes, thank you for the last definition. So much clearer.
This is Kant speaking, not me.
I feel like you're channeling Kant here, but Kant's idea of autonomy isn't a purely negative, libertarian idea of the subject. I don't think you can go from Kant's idea of autonomy directly to NAP (or at least I haven't seen it). It has been a while since I've picked up Kant, but I do remember that for Kant autonomy was intimately connected with rationality and to basically be bound by one's own laws. I believe he views rationality as a precondition for a free will.
I remember reading an article about a Korean guy in a gaming cafe who gamed for 72 hours and then dropped dead. Under the libertarian definition he had his freedom, but no way was this person driven by their rationality so I think Kant would say he was unfree. I'm happy to discuss this topic further.
Also any Kant experts here please let me know if I'm wrong.
Well, as I've said, I am not specifically channeling Kant. Rationality is used in many ways by many philosophers. I don't use it because I think it has a connotation to it. But anyways, if "rationality" means some sort of "free choice" and thus autonomy, then yes, that may play into what I am talking about here. One of the big things is here is not trying to do something to an individual that will violate non-harm principle,
Alright, so I'm someone who's also more libertarian in how I think and if you want to identity "autonomy" more with negative freedom that's fine with me. I also respect negative freedom and I think a lot of people recognize its importance.
What I can't do is jump from a general respect of negative freedom to embracing the non-aggression principle which categorically rejects any imposition of coercion. In other words, I can't jump from "I generally respect this principle" to "we need to abide by this principle in every possible circumstance."
Unless you are trying to straw man my argument, by mischaracterizing it, why wouldn't you abide by the non-aggression principle? I've already said how it wouldn't apply to self-defense, as one's own autonomy is being violated. I've already said how it wouldn't apply to dementia cases, children, coma patients, and others who would have no autonomy. It wouldn't apply to something like a game like a boxing match, where the parties involved autonomously agree to the terms of the aggression. So in what way would my version of the NAP not be applicable? Remember, I am talking ethics, not politics.
Lets take the case of an extremely contagious bio-chemical hazard or disease where we have the vaccination, but some people are refusing to be vaccinated for ideological reasons. It's a serious national security issue. And yes, we would be coercing these people if we made vaccination mandatory. If the choice is basically between mandatory vaccination or likely extinction which one do you choose?
There's no sharp distinction between the ethical and the political. Political decisions are made by people, by individuals. If I grab you and forcibly vaccinate you... I have coerced you and violated your autonomy even if I was acting as an agent of the state. I think national security is my biggest objection here.
First, I think you can make sharp distinctions between government and individual ethics. This is why I'd never call myself a "libertarian". Second, how is it NOT aggressive to allow a deadly disease proliferate?
Edit: OH Also, you COMPLETELY left out my other principle that of NON-HARM!!
Even if we were to allow the NAP to say that it is okay to not get vaccinated, the NHP would still be in force that we shouldn't allow for the conditions of others to be unnecessarily harmed if we can prevent it. That is my main point.
In the world of being already-born, we have to make a trade off sometimes, the NHP and NAP are at various times employed. It is never clear which should be, only personal judgement really. The only time when it is objectively clear that BOTH the NHP and NAP will NOT be violated would be the case of antinatalism which 100% guarantees both that a person won't be forced and will not be harmed (for a lifetime in fact).
Ok, so if my government pushes me to round up and execute Jews in ditches that's just a political thing and I have no moral culpability in that. Ok.
If you let a disease take its course that's not aggression. If I force you to do something like get a vaccination that would qualify as aggression. This distinction is important to liberal/libertarian thought.
...because we're focusing on the NAP? Honestly, I'm not here to beat you or destroy all of your arguments. Your tone suggests your getting defensive when the only reason I engaged you was to exchange ideas. I don't care who "wins" here. I don't care about winning internet arguments. For the record I find the non-harm principle much less problematic than NAP so.... one point for you?
The NAP regards coercion as inherently bad. This isn't an "even if we were to allow" case; this is the primary idea of the NAP.
You're not understanding the NHP either. The NHP is concerned with constricting the actions of individuals to ones which don't harm others. It seeks to demarcate the proper limits of government. If we just take it to mean preventing harm in general from any source it takes on a very, very different meaning.
I don't mean to be mean here. I don't care about winning. I'm just trying to clarify.
I take the Rawls Veil of Ignorance approach. Here is a summary of his argument:
[quote=Wikipedia article on Veil of Ignorance]is based upon the following thought experiment: people making political decisions imagine that they know nothing about the particular talents, abilities, tastes, social class, and positions they will have within a social order. When such parties are selecting the principles for distribution of rights, positions, and resources in the society in which they will live, this "veil of ignorance" prevents them from knowing who will receive a given distribution of rights, positions, and resources in that society. For example, for a proposed society in which 50% of the population is kept in slavery, it follows that on entering the new society there is a 50% likelihood that the participant would be a slave. The idea is that parties subject to the veil of ignorance will make choices based upon moral considerations, since they will not be able to act on their class interest.
As Rawls put it, "no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like".[3] The idea of the thought experiment is to render obsolete those personal considerations that are morally irrelevant to the justice or injustice of principles meant to allocate the benefits of social cooperation.][/quote]
Thus, just because I don't think that political theory is completely based on the same groundwork as personal ethics, does not mean that political decisions can just run roughshod over people's humanity and rights. What I mean by this is that while it is mainly the duty of government to ensure people's rights are not violated by others and the government (property, physical space, life, free choice, free speech, etc.), it can also include things by which personal ethics might not need to take into account. Where personal ethics is about recognizing people's humanity, government is at a macro-level (even if within a small community) government can into account communitarian ideas such that if one were born in a certain class/position/state of being, one might be able to access resources just the same as someone from another class/position/state of being.
I will say, when choosing to birth someone, you are making a political decision for someone else, that is to say, the parent is de facto saying, "the way of life of X society is what I want for this child" (even if that's not stated directly by the parent), and this is actually wrong. Prior to birth, there is a perfect point whereby someone can prevent a force and harm to a future individual. A political decision to enter X society is NOT made for that individual (by NOT birthing them). AFTER birth, the only way out is suicide. ANY social setup is thus contrived (libertarian type society or communitarian "liberal" type society, or anywhere in between). This social setup has to account for the fact that AFTER birth, people will have interests and goals and pains and sufferings and the like (barring suicide). AFTER birth, you can start thinking in terms of maximization of the ability to achieve goods on a communitarian level. To be fair, in the end, all of it is contrived and post-facto making up for the fact that the decision of being birthed into society was ALREADY made up for the individual person (by being birthed in the first place). ALSO, keep in mind, society is PRE-MADE (that is to say PRIOR to the birth of the child), and thus whether completely libertarian capitalist, mixed economy, or full-on socialist does not matter as historical circumstances (or as existential philosophy states, "situatedness") of the human is already there PRIOR to the person's birth. Thus no system ever conforms to a person's preference for how society SHOULD be, it only operates in a historical development mixed with institutions that are cemented to various degrees through tradition. Even violent revolutions in the end, bring about minor changes, usually to the scope of who gets to access institutions (that are still prior and separate from each individual's preferences of how a society should be set up in their own eyes). So after all this, if the situated institutions of a society then enforce something that is AGAINST one's own principles (the NAP and NHP), then one certainly has no obligation to override personal ethics for societal dictates. Thus, stating that ethics and political functioning work on different principles does not mean that the social overrides the personal, only stating that by mere functioning, they are different spheres of activity that don't have a 1:1 correspondence, necessarily. That is to say, personal ethics is always in play, no matter what is going on. Can a government promote education, science, and health care through "forcible" taxation? I think yes. If we look at the alternative, someone is ALREADY forced into existence, and thus if they do not have access to public education, health care, and perhaps certain scientific advancements only garnered through public collection, what then? What does that look like? Just a meaner version for those not equipped already to gain access to those things. But, can an individual force someone to promote education, science, and health care through forcible means like extortion? I think no.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I will give you that. Thus I said that the negative principles are about weighing harm vs. aggression. I also admitted in this thread that the perfect ethical decision that follows the NAP and NHP would be to NOT procreate. After birth, one has to judge what when to use what. My rule was to always apply NHP first. Is it likely my action will cause harm to others? If so, then don't do that action. So if by not vaccinating, everyone around me will get Ebola, then yeah, I'd say that action would cause significant harm. Is it known that Ebola has a high chance to kill many people? Will that violate those people's autonomy (thus violating the NAP?)? If so, then in self-defense, people can vaccinate that hold-out for violating other people's autonomy. In a way it IS self-defense as Ebola is known to be highly contagious and very fatal. If a car was hanging off a precipice and about to fall on someone's head below the cliff, and a guy pushes the unknowing victims out of the way, he is not violating the NAP, as he is preventing known harm to occur, thus recognizing that person's autonomy which is about to be squashed. If after preventing the clear and present harm to the individual, the hero then kidnapped the victim and made them played a game that he thinks is good for them, that person is unnecessarily violating the NAP. The victim's autonomy was not being violated (or was not about to be violated), this was purely because the person thought it was best for that victim to play this game. Thus someone who was perfectly autonomous and had choices and the ability to feel pain was forced into a situation whereby they did were not able to make a choice, and possibly was put in danger if the game itself was dangerous.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I'm not getting defensive, it is just that it looks like you haven't read all the posts in this thread so it is sort of re-arguing and perhaps you are not seeing the full argument as it has developed over the course of the thread I realize people don't have time for that or may just want to focus on the OP, so that is why I am taking time to answer your questions here rather than say, "read the thread!" or be dismissive. I don't like when people do that to me, so I'm trying not to do the same. But I will say, that both the NHP and NAP work in tandem and it revolves around autonomy. Is someone's autonomy about to be violated? Is a clear and present harm about to ensue by this course of action? It is not about NOT acting as much as minimizing harm and minimizing force.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes, I never meant for this to be about political actions. So, this is a straw man or red herring. You are the one bringing in ideas of government. You seem to use preconceived ideas of what concepts should mean that I have stated pretty clearly in how I am using them, and then saying that I am not conforming to your preconceived ideas that you have. That may be from not reading the thread fully. It may be to make an argument where there is none. However, I have defined the terms throughout the thread as far as I see. I certainly have tried to do so in answering you in this post, if that was not clear. What I think we should stop doing is saying that "X past person used this term this way. You are using this term that way. Why are you not following X past person's way of using the term? Thus your argument is somehow wrong." That would not be productive.
I'm not going to address your argument about anti-natalism because we haven't settled the more fundamental issue of you understanding NAP and NHP. These terms already have meanings and they are embedded within their own philosophical systems. These systems are important because they give us an idea of how to evaluate or critique an idea. I can't quite tell if you're just misunderstanding the ideas or if you're using your own private definitions. It's fine to use a personal definition with "autonomy" because that word can be a little vague and it's an easy semantical issue, but with NHP and NAP these terms have clear meanings which have already been established. If you don't agree with the idea just say you disagree with it and don't try to use the term in your own personal way and tell people that you agree with it because that would just be very confusing.
It would be like if I kept telling people that I believed in democracy and the democratic process but my own personal ideas of democracy were completely different than what the term is generally recognized as.
The guy would be violating NAP by pushing the person out of the way. NAP is a deontological principle so it does not care about consequences. You are not allowed under NAP to use direct physical force on someone without their consent. Agree with it or not, that is what the NAP states.
It comes down to the standards of philosophy and good writing. Trust me, I wasted four years of my life on this and a pretty penny. A decent proportion of any philosophy paper will be allocated to just explaining the original author's ideas just to ensure that you understand it and to avoid the issue of using your own personal understanding of it.
Anyway, lets say I accept your own personal definition of the NHP here when we were talking about forcible vaccination.
Your new understanding of the NHP has very authoritarian implications. If my fundamental principle is just preventing harm from befalling others then we're talking an extreme amount of paternalism and placing safety first and foremost. I don't want you to trip on the street maybe I should force you to wear kneepads and a helmut. I don't know what "unnecessary harm" is here and how it compares to "necessary harm" so I'm just trying to prevent harm.
Fine, I'm using it in my own way. I'll let you call it anything you want it helps you move past this god awful semantic argument.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Right right, cause it's that far off. Again, suggest any change to the name you want. I'll call it X and Y. I don't care.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Again, Non-harm principle or call it the Blurpet principle.. if you want still abides. And sometimes if you do see someone's autonomy will be destroyed you act on it. I also admit (and have repeatedly elsewhere), that the world is not perfect and that these laws will NEVER be able to be followed in the intra-worldly affairs of life. It's not that the ideals are bad.. Yeah, no one should ever force anyone. No one should ever harm anyone, it is that the world is inherently messy and we will ALWAYS be violating one of those principles at some point. It's even worse if we look at ethics subjectively, where each person is their own judge of what is right or wrong. In that case, we are always guaranteed to violate some ethical principle.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
That is a good question, but again, in the intra-wordly affairs NOTHING is black-or-white really. My definition of when it would be used in such a way that by inaction you are doing wrong, is a clear and present danger when it is clear by inaction the person will get harmed. Clearly you aren't respecting individual there, as you know that something will become injurious to that person. Is that unclear as to when to follow the NHP vs. NAP? Yep, so is the intra-wordly messy scenario of the daily life. The only perfect time to prevent all harm and all force is procreation. Period. Now, as far as preventative harm for individuals as you implied, that depends. If you OWNED a skatepark and knew people often get injured without kneepads. If it's your property and you put up a sign saying, no customers can skate without kneepads, nothing wrong with that. However, if you forced a fully autonomous adult into buying knee pads, that would be a clear violation. Or, because you thought going to X church was good for someone, you were going to kidnap them into attending. That would be bad. Or because you think that life is about doing, X, Y, Z you think everyone else should do X, Y, Z that would be bad. As you can see, in the argument about procreation, X, Y, Z agenda for a child does not override the fact that by procreating you're forcing and causing conditions of all future harms, for that child. That would be perfectly preventing it.
So I will always admit that in the intra-wordly affairs of already being born, we will NEVER be able to perfectly conform to the NAP and NHP (or whatever you want to call my version). However, we can try to approximate with our best judgements. I will claim that the only way to perfectly not violate these principles (and follow a negative ethics in general perfectly) is to prevent procreation. Now, if you want to "work" with me on this thread to come up with a nice heuristics on how to apply my versions of NAP and NHP, I'm all for it. But the major claim here is that indeed someone's paternalistic understanding of what is good for someone "happiness, religion, self-actualization, civilization, school", should never be foisted on people IF POSSIBLE. Even worse if the decision might cause some actual harm to the person, but you still think it is best they do X, Y, Z agenda you had for them. Now, you see how this is perfectly prevented in the case of birth. I also explained why even after birth (the imperfect scenario of always violating something for someone else at some point), that autonomy must be part of the equation (thus removing the possible objection of making decisions for children, elderly, coma patients, and other such scenarios). Thus, keep all this in mind.
Methinks antinatalism is simply a radical, and somewhat silly, variant of nihilism.
Methinks if perfect application of the NHP is purportedly impossible post-birth, then, since ought implies can, NHP is nonsensical. If perfect NHP is applied globally to eliminate procreation, then, at ieast within a couple of generations, it is a reductio of the principle. Silliness.
The basic gist of the Benatarian version of the antinatalist argument is thus: Not procreating prevents suffering which is good. Not procreating prevents good experiences which is only bad if there is an actual person to be deprived. My spin on it was that another added benefit is that by not procreating, one is preventing the state of affairs whereby harm and force would befall an individual (the NHP and NAP principles). That is to say, one is not using a positive agenda ("I want a kid for X agenda) to justify violating an negative ethical principle (not causing conditions of harm for another and not forcing an agenda or way of life on another). It is not a reductio, as it is only in effect in the procreational decision. I don't see much of an argument other than you don't like it, find it silly, and you apply the term "nihilism" to it. Again, not much in the way of argument.
Methinks I smell a rat here: preventing good is only bad if an actual person exists who could be benefited; yet preventing evil is good even in the absence of an actual person who could be harmed.
Correct, which is why it's considered an asymmetry. See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Benatar
Methinks the assumption of asymmetry is simply false. See https://www.academia.edu/38291449/How_to_Reject_Benatars_Asymmetry_Argument
You have to at least summarize the arguments. Even then, just looking on the internet for an anti- antinatalist paper is not really participating. Do you have your own thoughts besides these little quips? I wanted to provide you a background, not a provide a basis to send links to each other.
Methinks (along the lines of the paper I linked to, on the assumption more detail might interest you) that Benatar's antinatalism rests on a fallacious rejection of the commonsense symmetry I mentioned several posts ago: if the absence of pain is good, then the absence of pleasure is bad.
Benatar's asymmetry can also be considered based on "common sense". For example, if you knew that aliens on a distant planet were being enslaved and tortured (in a relatively human way of pain), you may feel some pity for them. However, if this distant planet (like most others) was barren of life, you probably wouldn't shed much of a tear or feel any angst or pity or remorse for there not being life on it due to the lack of happiness that is missed. Similarly, almost no one feels pain when people across the planet are not having children to feel happiness, but they certainly have some ounce of compassion for those born into some sort of harmful condition.
An ode to (odor of) common sense ... :wink: