The animal that can dislike every moment
Humans are the only animal that can really hate any and every moment. Other animals may feel pain in their own way, but they don't seem to despair of their situation, or not to the full understanding we do, with our linguistic, self-reflective brain. Yes, you can have depressed animals, but not ones that wish they were never born. Not ones that know they don't live in a utopian world. Not ones that can at any moment, hate what they have to do to get by.
So where does that leave humans? The existential animal that just keeps on going, knows we don't have to, but does it anyways.. is not driven by real instinct in decisions other than the limits of fear of pain and the unknown. A fish swims in its tank, and doesn't know or care why. A tiger chases a zebra and doesn't know and care why. Things are simpler. We are the animal that is constantly forced to confront radical freedom and bad faith. We certainly are driven by survival, comfort, and entertainment, but we know our own disutility in all these areas. We know it sucks to be very hungry, that we need to make various goals in a complex world to gain items to consume for our survival, comfort, and entertainment.
So where does that leave humans? The existential animal that just keeps on going, knows we don't have to, but does it anyways.. is not driven by real instinct in decisions other than the limits of fear of pain and the unknown. A fish swims in its tank, and doesn't know or care why. A tiger chases a zebra and doesn't know and care why. Things are simpler. We are the animal that is constantly forced to confront radical freedom and bad faith. We certainly are driven by survival, comfort, and entertainment, but we know our own disutility in all these areas. We know it sucks to be very hungry, that we need to make various goals in a complex world to gain items to consume for our survival, comfort, and entertainment.
Comments (138)
This I believe is the fallacy. The mother tiger offers zebra to the young. It is quite yummy.
Haha.. it does.. but does not know why. It is yummy and I am doing this because it is yummy are two different things.
https://www.cdc.gov/diseasesconditions/az/a.html
We are all painfully aware of all this.
Wow that's a pretty big list. Animals are prone to at least half those things.. of course they are but they do not know why. Is that much different to a person a few hundred years ago who got sick but didn't know why?
Some animals show a sense of self-consciousness at least. Example, I read if you have a dozen dogs in a cage and one by one they are taken out and killed in front of the others, the other dogs will "figure it out" and start to panic.
I think you're looking in the right direction when you bring up complexity. Your phrasing of the question is decidedly negative, however. Don't be so pessimistic.
We are more complex than the other animals, with more complex lives and more complex responses to more complex problems. Our struggles and disappointments may seem greater because of this complexity, but our joys are greater as well. Yes we are just engaged in glorified survival, but we have vastly more control over the terms of that survival and its opportunities for pleasure than any other animals do, by far.
Wow that is quite a list - brilliant!
I try to take the eastern approach and live in the moment as much as possible.
The moment, with no regrets of the past and no worries of the future, is always pleasant.
It seems that the moments that are not pleasant are the ones not lived in the moment.
Have you thought about this?
This seems a little oversimplified. I feel like it may apply to particular types of unpleasantness, like some anxieties or disappointments, but it would fail horribly in the face of, say, passing a kidney stone, which would force you very much into the moment, where you would experience much that was unpleasant.
I do agree within the limited case of not worrying about all that stuff on his list because it's not really useful to do so. We can, but we shouldn't, unless we are in a situation where we are affected by one of those items more directly.
Not why they are sick, but the know they are sick and can resent it (contra animals who get sick, feel it, but that's it.. anthropomorphism and odd anecdotes aside).
Quoting Outlander
Not sure that kind of association is really the same as what I'm talking about.
I do not mean to give the impression that I live every moment without thought - LOL!
But when its possible, I've learnt to enjoy the moment.
And that negates the other things? Pollyannaism.. screening out what one doesn't want to see when evaluating.
Thanks :smile:.
Quoting Pop
I don't think living in the moment applies when doing many things in life. Quite the opposite.
Ability to recognize, albeit primitively, base cause and effect, idea of time (past, present, and future), and how outside influences can and will affect oneself?
Quoting schopenhauer1
"Living in the moment" doesn't have to automatically exclude any and all notion of planning, preparation, and long term goals. Does it? For many I suppose. Why do you have long term goals and aspirations anyway? So either you or another can- one day- be more free to live in the moment and pursue what is desired. Is this not correct?
I totally agree, and think perhaps this is why the thoughtless but experienced moment is so pleasant.
Quoting Outlander
:up:
Yeah, I guess I can agree here, but it's not the same as I am talking about. If a dog can think "I resent this moment", and not just have fear, maybe we can talk. Even if we were to keep debating it, the implication of the second paragraph is where I'd like this discussion to go, not comparative animal cognition.
Quoting Outlander
Schopenhauer had a saying about not being able to just be, and if so, very temporary. That is part of his idea of suffering (what I call necessary suffering). What I don't get is, do you deny what I am explaining, or do you just point to very specific things to try to make the small large, and the large small?
Perhaps Schopenhauer would have benefited from an understanding of mindfulness? :smile:
All kidding aside , it is an interesting topic in that total awareness of the moment excludes awareness of other moments, and it is pleasant unless you are already in physical pain.
I imagine many animals would exist something like this.
I would agree that humans have a special brand of misery unique to ourselves. Seems like a combination of self-awareness and expectations. Animals aren't troubled by failing to meet the ideals that they never envisioned in the first place.
For example, if someone is born with one leg, they aren't stressed out by the difficulty of the situation; until they learn that most humans have two legs. Now they have something to be pissed about.
Knowledge is a double-edged sword. Are the advantages worth the drawbacks?
He thought that asceticism was the highest form of repose against Will's ceaseless impetus.
Quoting Pop
Yes, as a cardinal, I'd say so. But, we humans need to deal with... always dealing with. One thing, then the next, then the next. Repose things like mindfulness is just something to schedule in with the rest.
We are the animal that resents. Other animals might fear, maybe sad in some vague way. We can resent, and know exactly why. Every moment, there could have been something better. We know this.
Negates what? I don't understand what you are trying to say.
I acknowledge that there are undesirable things in human experience, but I was making the point that you seem to be enumerating them and emoting about them to exclusion of the desirable things. I suggest that your case as you've presented it is unbalanced on the side of pessimism.
I agreed with your identification of complexity as being integral to human experience, but I see complexity as a feature, and I think you're suggesting it's a bug.
Your question was "where does that leave humans?" I think it leaves us as powerful architects of our own outcomes, with much greater upsides (and correlating downsides) to be had than what mere animals can achieve.
Animals are beings of living (immortal) awareness - Dog is always Dog, Cat is always Cat - and like unrealized Man, are not aware of this truth. Only men and women on the cusp of awakening to the truth of their immortal Form suffer existential dread. The good news is that once spiritual awakening occurs, existential dread (along with resentment, anger, greed, pride and hate) starts singing its swan song. :smile:
This is interesting. If will provides impetus, then what provides impetus to will?
Quoting Pam Seeback
What I meant was that a mental state of intense concentration on the present moment, excludes thought of other moments. But you seem to be referring to something else that I do not quite understand. Perhaps you could elaborate a little? I'm not sure we are awareness, I would have said quite the opposite. :smile:
It makes me wonder then, given this our capacity to suffer more than non-humans, whether being human, despite the obvious perks of being one, is a curse rather than a boon? Perhaps the question, particularly the word "perks" in it, is a big clue in this mystery? Why do humans suffer or feel pain differently, more severely, relative to animals?
My theory is that the severity of pain in humans is modulated by psychological factors. For instance, if a person beats you up in public, the pain of the punches, kicks, weapon, is mangified by the sense of humiliation that comes with it. Non-humans don't "suffer" from such psychological pain and even if they do, it's not at the same level as humans.
Coming to the word "perks", humans, obvious even to the distracted, careless observer, have a clear advantage over non-humans. It's an old trope in biology that humans are smarter than non-humans - endowed with a brain capable of complex language, fine hand-eye coordination, logic, and creative imagination. These are the "perks" I refer to.
Enough said about the benefits of possessing such a powerful organ as the brain. A close examination of human brain power reveals its dark side. The psychological factors I mentioned before, those that amplify the pain humans feel, can all be traced back to human brain power. Depression isn't like the flu or cancer, illnesses have no direct links to the brain; depression is a reasoned position, arrived at after logical analysis of one's circumstances. Put simply, human brain power is a double-edged sword, a knife that cuts both ways - it gives us an edge over non-humans but the downside is we suffer more.
In an evolutionary context, brain power is our secret weapon against competition from non-humans even though we suffer greatly for it. I guess it's some kind of a trade-off: our highly evolved brains help us beat the competition but we must accept some losses in our ranks to "friendly fire".
We know our situation, the context for which this situation is situated in the broader picture. Other animals do not. We know that things can be better or different, or we can at least imagine so, yet know the reality of the situation is different than what can be. We know there is no utopia, yet we are born in non-ideal worlds.
Yet presented with this, people simply downplay it. They don't want to discuss it. Keep ignoring, sublimating, etc.
Quoting Pop
The Will is the ground in Schop's theory. Is is what it is.
Quoting Bird-Up
People only want you to think of the advantages, but much of the it is experienced through the negative of dealing with. Dealing with the complexities of survival, comfort, entertainment, and all the contingent suffering suffused throughout.
Haha, humans and that cat.
But what I think is funny is, because our situation arises out of a sort of interaction of our linguistic minds and the environment, the very human situatedness of our daily lives and its relation to suffering is downplayed, because of its virtual nature. It is not a straightforward instinctual interaction with the world. This leads people to believe that the type of suffering I am discussing (necessary suffering.. that is to say, that of being constantly dissatisfied in regards to our survival, comfort, and entertainment situations) is to also be downplayed. We are always dealing with. And somehow this awareness is also its greatest asset. A rock's greatest asset is it doesn't deal with.
Look, if I didn't know better I might've said that the game is rigged. We're intelligent for sure, we can learn, gain knowledge and skills, and use that to change the world - make alterations in it to suit our needs or, in a moral sense, we have the ability to, if committed enough, to transform Earth into the Garden of Eden. Surely, this ability to transform our world needs to go hand in hand with the ability to imagine a different world - the ability to create an Eden is pointless if we can't imagine one, right? The downside is if we can imagine Eden, we're going to be deeply disappointed by Earth despite all its wonders.
You make it seem like everyone's daily life is one of transforming earth into a possible paradise. No. Collective achievements are not daily life. Naming off things like indoor plumbing and air conditioning do not make life thus utopia. Pointing to some future time of things being utopia due to technological innovations would also miss the point of necessary suffering involved in the human animal. Contingent sufferings, as things that I've listed, are not going to end any time soon either.
There are humans that do this very thing. Instead of doing a sort of reductionism in comparing humans to fish, it's probably better to compare philosophers to non-philosophers. Scientists to non-scientists, thinkers to non-thinkers, etc.
Also, you state the former, but then go on to say:
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think most people genuinely think they have to; in some cases, people must. I think this is a leading cause of human stressors. It isn't so much that they know they don't have to, but instead they know there are other options to the "have to" .. like laying down to rot, death, or not showing up.
I'm curious, though. How would you explain a rodent being bitten by a venomous snake, "experiencing" pain slowly and agonizingly until it's death. Would you call that a 'dislike of every minute'? Does a rodent require a higher degree of consciousness to feel "dislike for every moment," .. Does any animal, then? How would you explain animal torture or distress from mistreatment?
I don't think anyone is exempt from knowing their situation and then having to keep going.
Quoting Cobra
Well yes, the alternatives of dying, death, rotting, etc. are big motivators there. Rather, we can know we dislike a situation, but know we have to do it. We have evolved this consciousness which in turn can resent any moment. We can know the situation we are in, and not like it, and keep having to do it out of fear of pain and unknown.
What about a garden of Eden built here on Earth is impossible? I agree that things like natural instincts, human and animal, technological hurdles, and the list goes on and on, are not on our side but these are, by my reckoning, temporary obstacles. Yes, overcoming them is not going to be easy but, the what matters is it's not an impossibility.
Coming to "necessary suffering" and "contingent suffering", I suppose, given the current body design and our technological backwardness, pain is absolutely necessary, serving as warning signs of potential life-threatening physical and mental perturbations. However, technology will, with some amount of luck and a whole lot of sweat and toil, make our pain sensory apparatus obsolete. Just as our vermiform appendix is a vestigial organ serving only to remind us of our herbivorous ancestry, our nociceptive system will become nothing more than a curiosity to our descendants.
You'd be surprised. There are many people that fit this description; narcissism is one of many.
But I suppose it's what you mean by "knowing their situation," .. What do you mean by this?
Even so, animals are capable of feeling distress, mistreatment, agony, and so forth. They are capable of "disliking every moment," like the human. Unless you mean something beyond this in a higher degree, which is why I posed there are humans that lapse out of these degrees and function at lower levels than others, or not at all. They would be "exempt".
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, now you are talking about resentment. Are we discussing resentment or simple dislike? Resentment is a complex emotion that was not mentioned in your OP.
But, you seem to be saying two different things here. What do you mean by "knowing"? Do you mean understanding? Animals do not need to "know" their situation (if you're using know how I think you are), nor do they need to know "why" - to express distress or prolonged dislike. Other primates and dogs are a notorious example, specifically the intelligent breeds like Shepards. We've also observed symptoms of clinical depression in many mammals.
Necessary suffering. People are not to be used as bridges for your idea of a possible future utopia. Utopia means nowhere. The point was that it doesn't exist anyways.
Quoting TheMadFool
Again, people aren't to be used for future schemes. But necessary suffering doesn't go away unless we are no longer self-conscious beings. We are beings that need to survive, get more comfortable, and entertain ourselves. In short, we are dissatisfied to some extent at almost every moment, and know of this disutility, by way of trying to change it. Necessary suffering doesn't just go away in your year 2300 scenario. Besides which, it seems like we seem to be going the opposite way than a utopia, even if we were to indulge your sci-fi tendencies. But that is a different topic for a different thread.. global warming, pandemics, pollution, overpopulation, etc. etc.
Knowing the situation is any time you dislike a situation you are in and know there can be a better one. It is knowing the present situation in its broader context of understanding more ideal circumstances. Generally, I would think you need a brain similar to ours, a linguistic one for this type of thing. Perhaps people don't think much about things, I would agree. They don't see the bigger picture, but they can certainly understand disutility of not being in a more optimal state. Other animals might feel pain, but they don't know to the extent of resent not being in a more optimal state.
I do agree though that many people don't consider that life is not optimal as a whole and that we should try to not procreate so as to not put more people in non-utopian circumstances. Something we can reflect on and other animals cannot, yet we keep doing despite our own possibility of this knowledge.
I'm not using people as bridges to my personal fantasia. I'm offering you a possible direction humanity, as a whole, might take in the coming centuries. I'm not 100% certain this will be our collective choice but the comforting truth is there's nothing impossible in this vision of humanity's future. I know my position on the issue is a far cry from being, what some might label as, realistic - practicality is a major issue - but what keeps my spirits up is there's nothing impossible, no insurmountable barrier that could prove to be the final resting place of the hopes of people like myself.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree, we're the kind who never are satisfied - contentment is a word that fails to describe any one in the entire history of humanity. However, this major issue shouldn't hold us back from fixing the minor problems, right? There's the phrase "to settle for..." and we should appreciate its underlying spirit.
Stuff has to get done. You have to do it or externalities will get you. Survival. You feel an itch, you feel cold, you feel bored, you feel dirty, you feel you need an extra item you are missing. Comfort. You are lonely, your mind needs something active. You need to be more "mindful", you need to exercise, you need to go on a vacation, you need to, you need to, you need to. Entertainment. It isn't going away.
I call of this "dealing with". Many people unthinkingly resent much of this but can't make the connection to being born itself. It's just too global. They have been enculturated to think just right near their noses. Hard-nosed realists, pragmatists, etc. But the problem is global. It is getting people to see that it is the problem with life itself. It is existential, not situational. Not circumstantial. It's whack-a-mole. You think you fix the problem, but it is unceasing. It is part of the structure. AND now add all the contingent suffering I mentioned.
I guess you might want to see this too.
Quoting TheMadFool
I would agree that humans will eventually escape the limits of their own suffering. As long as we strive to master our own bodies, sooner or later, we will flip the pain switch into the "off" position. It would be hard to imagine a scenario in which we could resist doing so. This would apply to both physical and psychological pain. Indeed, our caveman minds can hardly imagine what this painless generation would be like. Suffering has always been part of the definition of "human".
However, I would also agree that our current generation is not in, or near, achieving a utopia. So such pursuits would not be relevant to the discussion of today's suffering; even if the realization that suffering will someday cease, brings a sense of comfort with it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Ignorance is bliss, right? I think complete ignorance is the starting point for every human. As children, we all started out in paradise. To some extent, all humans have experienced that animal-like unconscious state. It may have been brief, and we couldn't fully appreciate it at the time, but we were there.
Kids are exempt from knowing their situation. Adults are the ones that tolerate the misery of survival. Some parents continue to exist solely to (vicariously) experience the joy of their children. We are addicted to the pursuit of knowledge, yet we admire the ignorant. I suppose we are conflicted, to say the least.
:lol: :rofl: . I'm laughing because of the irony. Almost all my discussions center around antinatalism or philosophical pessimism, so thought it was funny you brought it up as if I've never heard of it haha. Look at my discussion history :smile:.
Quoting Bird-Up
Interesting. We are always put in a position of "dealing with". Yet, we know we are dealing with. I think it's the same thing with pets like dogs. We sort of live vicariously through the notion that they are in the moment it seems, quite often.
We are never fully satisfied, and constantly in need and want. We can't stay long in boredom. We need to be entertained. We strive, struggle, deal with in complex social arrangements to maneuver. We can know every moment that we need to get something done, or something is not satisfying, or simply life itself is empty. We are the animal that knows our situation. Yet, we keep putting more people into it. We know when we experience contingent suffering- physical and emotional pain too. Both necessary suffering of striving, and contingent suffering of the external world impinging on us, we never seem to put the full picture together to realize it's life itself. It can be prevented for future generations. We can acknowledge this fact of our constant "dealings with" the world, and knowing we have to deal with it lest die, be uncomfortable, and bored/lonely. A sort of therapy is acknowledging the situation and going from there. There is nothing one can do about it, but at least the acknowledgement would a) not pretend that there is something going on that is not (some grand scheme like technology, happiness utility maximizing, or the like), and b) act as a sort of catharsis for the suffering where one can feel fine complaining about the situation and knowing others understand too.
“constantly in need and want” – a definition of life.
Do you remember one moment where you didn’t needed or wanted anything?
If so (and that’s a very big ‘If’) how long did it last?
And how long did and does the opposite state last, constant need and want?
Is being in a state constantly deprived of whatever things there are, a good state of being – or a bad one?
“Life is empty” is a great existential-nihilist statement, though from a perspective of pessimism I think one could even say it is worse than empty, because suffering isn’t nothing, it’s negative – to adapt the picture, one could say life isn’t just an empty room, it is a sewer.
I surely won’t, and I think we should be more exact on this.
There really is no single entity called ‘the human race’ but only a bunch of individuals and saying things like “humans rape, murder, birth” is this fuzzy, collectivist mindset, especially if you (semantically) identify with this collective ("we").
I don’t. And many others neither (and then there are many who do the right thing for completely wrong reasons or even accidentally).
I don’t even identify with all living humans as a group and for sure not with this concept of “the human race” as a whole.
Excuse my semantic rant, that was besides the point you made, that life is inherently a bad thing.
You do for sure, but for how long are you really aware, and how many others are similarly aware?
There are quite some inherent human biases that need to be overcome, like the appeal to nature-fallacy (“nature is great because it sometimes looks nice, even though it’s a torturous death-colosseum”) and this brutal naivity in children – getting rid of these two alone is a very painful process to go through, and this is only what comes down to putting some glasses on.
Wait until you hear of Efilism.
(Basically Antinatalism applied to all sentient life instead of humans only)
How could you possibly be so [s]delusional[/s]* optimistic about this?!
Are we talking about the same group of humans that has gone through unimaginable torture because power-hungry psychopaths in that group tortured countless of others in that same group (concentration camps, gulags, world wars, etc. etc.).
There is enormous evidence to the contrary, so what on earth would make you so sure about humans alleviating one another of all suffering? (If it were even possible in the first place, which is very unlikely.)
And from another angle - how were this state of being different from nonexistence (Antinatalism applied)? The solution is already here!
*sorry, not a nice thing to say but still true from my perspective
Temporary cessation from wanting, if at all. Constant need and want is the through-line of life itself. Practically a definition of, from the animal point of view.
As far as good or bad, that is a question some try pose to disagree with deprivation=suffering. Deprivation just is, they might say and thus does not/cannot be given a value one way or the other. I like to answer this in terms of dissatisfaction. If we do not have something now, there is a state of unfulfillment. This to me, generally seems "bad", as we are not "whole" so to say, in the moment. As you stated, the times we are "whole", seem temporary, if at all.
Quoting Zn0n
Yes, agreed. Good point!
Quoting Zn0n
No, I actually agree here as well. In fact, I think the locus of ethics is the individual and not some "third-party" cause like "the human race", "civilization", "group utility-maximizing", etc. For example, if we had a child because it supposedly benefits X third-party cause (e.g. the human race), we have negated the individual we are causing harm to. We are causing harm/suffering to an individual, but to enhance a conceptual/group entity outside this individual. I would say it would be unethical to treat people as means like this.
Quoting Zn0n
Completely agree.. Don't forget Pollyanna tendencies, and group-think. If people are ridiculed for stating these things enough, it will be "picked up" from the rest of the group to also denigrate those who have this awareness.
It's funny you bring up children. I have less empathy than others perhaps on this. Yes, there is naivete, and one can say closer to "animal like' in this but there is a dark side to the child experience. The child is also less aware of how sociopathic he/she can be, not having fully developed brains. So I am not predisposed to provide a rosy view on this period in human development.
Well the discussion was giving off a strong scent of Antinatalism, so I just had to throw the word in there. I'll try to get caught up on those 4,500 other posts when I have the time. Wow, you could have written a book by now! (Maybe you have?) Not bad for a Cardinal with a keyboard.
Quoting Zn0n
That was an inspiring read. So what, functionally speaking, differentiates an Antinatalist from an Efilist? Does the Efilist also assert that preexisting life should not be lived? That continued existence itself is a crime? It seems like Efilism demands suicide, murder, or possibly both. Anyone who truly subscribes to Efilism must already be gone.
Quoting Zn0n
What do you mean specifically? Are you saying humanity is more likely to become extinct before they reach that technological milestone?
Is that really true? Not the any moment claim, the every moment claim? Is it truly possible for any human to go through life hating every moment?
What is so special about humans, as an animal, that they and only they, have the potential to hate every moment?
I feel a lot of assumptions have been made in your OP, as to our knowledge of the inner emotional lives of animals.
This is my first comment since joining this forum. I ask these questions in the hopes you will have a strong answer.
One really important question, I have for you, I do; emotions we have, because we are human or because animals we be? (Question is asked in the style of Yoda... Because why the F*** not?)
Self-awareness, not just awareness. My guess is this comes about from linguistic brains.
Quoting MSC
Yep, I assume animals don't have self-awareness. I can't tell what an animal is feeling, but I know it is not the same type of awareness as human, which is generally able to have the ability to generate conceptually based, linguistic ideas, probably necessary to form the kind of assessment of a situation such as "resentment". This is not just sad, angry, and emotions like this, but the reflection about this, and its relation to things like "better", "worse", "I don't want this". All things that need linguistic formulations of some kind usually. And no, this isn't about having a sense of self like the mirror test or anything like that.
[Quote]Yep, I assume animals don't have self-awareness. I can't tell what an animal is feeling, but I know it is not the same type of awareness as human, [/quote]
How do you know this? What evidence do you have that proves this exactly? I think the mistake that has been made is thinking of awareness and self awareness by kind, instead of degree.
Comparatively, I'd say we know enough to claim that humans have a higher degree of self-awareness than other animals. This doesn't suggest all other animals have no self-awareness, just that the degree to which other animals are aware of themselves is lesser. A male silverback Gorilla is obviously aware that bodily, he is not his mate nor his offspring. A dog smelling out another dogs urine knows that it is not his urine, and proceeds to mark his own scent.
As for your use of the term "linguistic brains", this term is ultimately misleading, if used to suggest that only humans have language, syntax and grammar, when those things have been observed in species of birds, whales and dolphins. Even whale song has been found to have hierarchical structure in language, in which phrases are embedded in larger, recurring themes. At one point in time, it was thought that Hierarchical structure in language was unique to humans. This is not the case.
The linguistics of bird-song is also a place where we can find similarities to ourselves. Although both
birdsong and human language are hierarchically organized according to particular syntactic constraints, bird-song structure is best characterized as phonological
syntax, resembling aspects of human sound structure. Many species of birds share with humans a capacity for vocal learning, a crucial factor in speech acquisition.
There are shades of gray and not black-and-white differences between humans and other animals in cognitive abilities. While animals might not ponder life and death the way humans do, they still may have some sense of self.
Some people don't want to acknowledge the possibility of self-awareness in animals, because if they do, the borders between humans and other animals become blurred and their narrow, hierarchical, anthropocentric view of the world would be toppled.
My question for you now, even though you ignored a few of my questions in my previous comment; Why do you want to believe animals have no sense of self? Forget what you think you know, and focus on why you want to believe that. If you ignore this question I'll not bother to reply to your next response as I'll assume you aren't taking this seriously and just want to be right instead of wanting to have an open discussion.
Because you totally ignored or didn't understand what I was getting at, and this is huge tangent that I wasn't even trying to debate... I just don't care enough to pursue this.
Edit: Pointless, unless you can counter any of my counter arguments to your unbacked up claims. I think if you could do that, you would have by now. So what you meant to say instead of "I just don't care enough to pursue this" was actually "I am too arrogant to see the faults in my own argument and can't back up even one of my premises in order to keep my discussion open, so I'll say you're the problem, even though you were just being honest with me and trying to help but I make bad faith arguments based on assumptions that I'm not willing to address because I'm too insecure to ever admit that I might be wrong about anything while I try to ship antinatalist bs."
Humans are also the only ones that think they know everything. Could you please explain how you know all of this. It is kind of funny to think that this is almost the same reasoning that people used to justify slavery. But it turned out that it was the white man that was ignorant.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I am inclined to disagree, most animals know their abilities and inabilities. Even a hungry dog will not try to pull a floating carcass from a swollen river, they do know it could kill them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Are animals not aware of the need to acquire food and shelter? Or is it just an instinct that makes them do it.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, very good point, all these cushy biases (“what an opportunity to be alive :)”) are shielded by their own brutal, bias-like enforcer-mechanism: group-think and what strikes me as fascist tendencies (“purge the outsider, there is only the group, and the group is everything”), but “collectivism” describes this as well.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I changed my perspective on them over the years but am too generally rather low on empathy*, but still know they are victims.
Very true that they don’t even realize how cruel they can be, f.e. if they are ripping out the legs of some spider, without even realizing what they are doing to this spider.
(And it’s even kind of the same with spiders, I’m very, very low on empathy with creatures that hunt and chemically liquify other insects, but know they too are still victims).
And it’s very likely that every single human does unknowingly countless atrocities like this as part of their development.
* does that sentence even make sense for an antinatalist, because how low on empathy have you to be to trap them into this world
What I’m now struggling with regarding children is how often they scream and cry.
My neighbors created two, and one is a toddler now, and he screams and cries out pretty much every single day, often even several times. Some people may think once a day doesn’t even sound too much, but when was the last time you screamed and cried because you were in such agony.
It’s a torturous sound and I can’t help but project my own suffering that is caused by his screams onto him and think -STFU!-, but know at the same time he is in so much suffering that he screams out and cries because of it, and nobody takes it serious, for one because of how “normal” and “expected” it is that children constantly severly cry.
And I really wonder how people have more than one child. One child may be because of naivity or some the-human-race™-must-be-dragged-out-indoctrination that they fell for, but I hear their screams muffled through (relatively thin) walls, so for them it’s even worse.
And yes they get the “positive parts” of some helpless creature being completely dependent on them and can be bossed around as they see fit. But how does that balance.
And especially Infants’ experience is pretty much pure torture (that they can’t help but spread it onto their surroundings**), I think nobody can possibly deny this, because nearly everything of what they communicate all day every day is in how much agony they are , and it starts with a birth that severly hurts them physically (deformed head, lots of bruised joints and bodyparts, sometimes broken bones, etc.).
**I really wonder how very early, primitive societies without stone-walls(!) and diapers(!) even procreated at all. There had to be multiple people in every one of those societies that weren’t flooded by hormones but tortured by the constant screams of these ever-shitting infants and toddlers, and I wonder how these humans didn’t simply secretly threw the child into a lake in some burst of anger, especially if they could get away with it without anyone knowing it was them.
How can anyone decide “yeah great let’s have another one of those children that are screaming in agony every day for years(!) – that’s what we (and them!) really want”.
And the price for these children are even enormous in every other aspect as well.
It doesn’t make sense whatsoever, and I’m truly disgusted by anyone who dragged children into suffering, especially multiple.
And don’t get me started on those that want sympathy because the child they created with their sick genes is now crippled, and how hard this is for them..
Ignoring what a ridiculous statement that is in context to the comment you replied to, are you saying white (male) humans enslave? Because that's blatantly racist (and sexist).
Ironically it's infact racism and sexism that is one of the excuses that was and is used to enslave others.
The tendency to enslave others has nothing to do with skin color but level of psychopathy/sociopathy and/or how much they obey a cruel system.
I obviously already answered that in my post. But you stated it again as a starting point for some rather lame strawmen, namely:
Quoting Bird-Up
No he doesn't it's the natalist who thinks nonexistence needs to be pained because it could possibly miss out on (all the suffering of) life if it weren't.
Quoting Bird-Up
It definitely is, the creator of life, or more specifically suffering, is the criminal.
Quoting Bird-Up
It doesn't, Natalists are the ones who demand the continued existence of suicide and murder.
Efilists/Antinatalists want an end to all suffering, including those.
Quoting Bird-Up
"You haven't climbed out of the cage somehow, so that must mean you like to be imprisoned."
Quoting Bird-Up
I made all that extremely clear.
I don't think it's as bad or impossible-to-deal-with as you make it out to be. For you to be correct suffering, that which we don't like, even hate, should be a necessary aspect of life.
Is suffering really an unavoidable fact of life? In the past and in the present, certainly "yes". This within the context of present realities like the design of our bodies and the nature of our minds. The future needn't be the way things were and the way things are though. You, and others who think like you, are missing a crucial element of reality viz. the future.
To drive the point home imagine the situation is reversed from the way it is now - there was/is no suffering and the world was/is paradisaical. What, in your opinion, is the right way to deal with this? Should we say to ourselves that our past has been wonderful, so is our present, and therefore there's no reason to worry about the future - nothing's going to change, happiness is guaranteed - and then assume a complacent, self-satisfied attitude? Or is it advisable to develop a plan for the future to ensure that paradise remains a paradise?
Clearly, if you think we should do the latter - plan to keep paradise a happy place - then you recognize the importance of the future, specifically the fact that it's possible for the situation to be completely reversed. In this realization is the key that unlocks a refutation of antinatalism. Antinatalists are assuming, erroneously, the future will be no different from the present or the past. The Problem Of Induction
No Antinatalists know that nonexistant people don’t crave anything, not even paradise.
So even if your literally impossible claim were actually correct, it’s still completely irrelevant, because craving an impossible paradise is suffering in itself – and that befalls only the living, not empty void obviously.
Apart from that, what you are saying is also “induction isn’t perfect so it’s always wrong”, and base your completely made up claim, that the future will allegedly certainly be paradisical on absolutely nothing, not even induction, because induction very clearly proves the complete opposite.
And why do you think you have the right to throw others in suffering because you believe in something that allegedly will happen at some point.
How many victims is throwing down the meat-grinder to achieve something that is a) impossible and b) completely unnecessary justified? Is that number bigger than 0 for you? If so why?
And if so, is there any limit to this cruelty, any amount of numbers of torture victims that are thrown into this sewer that you think weren’t justified anymore? 10 people? 100? 1.000.000? 10 billion?
Is there any limit of victims for you, or is the alleged goal of ending suffering sometime in the future worth unlimited suffering for you?
Not dragging others needlessly into suffering is already the solution that you claim to want sometime in the future.
+
@schopenhauer1
=
Same person. Try covering your tracks better and don't be so transparent. The sheer level of stupidity and projection here is embarrassing to watch.
Ha.. Just a cardinal and a keyboard here :). Peck, peck peck...
Obvious diversion attempt, you have nothing left to say so you desperately try to construct nasty ad hominems.
What's ironic is MSC reminds me of an old poster, S/Sapentia who used to flame and troll all the time. Very hostile. Hard to have a respectable conversation. Being civil while disagreeing is hard for some people. I can imagine MSC being a sock puppet of him ha.
Did you not read here when I said: Quoting schopenhauer1
I thought that took care of the exact type of arguments you were trying to make. The argument is not about animal consciousness. It is about how humans are animal with the kind of thoughts and mental functional capacity to resent a situation they are in (any/many/every in theory). There isn't doing and being, but rather knowing that we are doing and being, evaluating it, comparing it and deeming it negative, and hence resenting it. You know what, if other animals can do that, all the more pessimism added to my claim. The claim was rather for pessimism not about animal cognition, is the key here.
Your words ring true, my friend, but only in the past and the present. I'd like to ask you why utopia - the secular version of paradise - is impossible? Is there an inconsistency lurking in the shadows that must, as of necessity, exist in every thought, idea, concept humans are capable of?
Quoting Zn0n
I can add little to what the experts have already said about the matter of induction, it's problem is a well known embarrassment to science.
Quoting Zn0n
Nobody is in control here. You speak as if there's someone who's behind all of this, someone who dispatches souls into the world to, among other things, suffer in unimaginable ways. The universe, for better or worse, like it or not, seems completely autonomous. That being the case, we need to come to terms with the fact that the knight in shining armor will not come. Godot will not arrive. We need to fix our own problems and I won't deny, in fact I can't deny, that suffering is, well, a big, big issue. However, suffering is just one side of the story, right? Could I, for example, travel to another universe and, by way of describing our universe to the denizens of this new universe only mention our suffering? Would I have given them an accurate picture of our universe?
To indulge this tangent- I still think there is a difference in the language-use/function in a human vs. animal. Generally we are using it to communicate to others AND self-talk ideas/concepts. Birds can maybe communicate about surroundings, mating, territory, etc. A lot of it is involuntary. Even primates, if forced in research situations, can communicate maybe a couple hundred words, but with no syntax, and again, not very natural. None of this adds up to the kind of language abilities humans have. I wouldn't even call what other animals have language proper, per se, but a communication system. But, I don't care about the exact definition as much as how it functions. Just on a cursory search, what I'm getting at is something like this:
[quote=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5525259/#:~:text=Human%20language%20is%20distinct%20from,past%2C%20present%20and%20future%20tenses.]Human language is distinct from all other known animal forms of communication in being compositional. Human language allows speakers to express thoughts in sentences comprising subjects, verbs and objects—such as ‘I kicked the ball’—and recognizing past, present and future tenses. Compositionality gives human language an endless capacity for generating new sentences as speakers combine and recombine sets of words into their subject, verb and object roles. For instance, with just 25 different words for each role, it is already possible to generate over 15,000 distinct sentences. Human language is also referential, meaning speakers use it to exchange specific information with each other about people or objects and their locations or actions.[/quote]
My conclusion for this type of mental difference with other animals, is that we also have the capacity for existential thought. To know of our situation of being in "less than desired circumstances", not JUST experiencing less than desired circumstances. There is a secondary reflection that can happen due to our linguistic/conceptual/social/psychologically mental capacity.
I need to go to the store, when I return, I'll give your response the attention it deserves.
Firstly, I'd like to point out that if your OP was a thesis which you were publicly defending, you'd be expected to be able to provide arguments that strengthen the initial premises and give good arguments as to why they aren't false. So I don't think it's a tangent, your initial claims must be scrutinised in order for us to really communicate. I could make an attempt to engage with what followed these initial premises by assuming them to be true for the sake of the argument, but then I'd be forced to be insincere and dishonest with you.
Secondly, I'd say that fundamentally human language is still just a communication system and there are arguments to be made about whether or not we are engaging in this voluntarily or involuntarily. Apes can also learn sign language. There is also something to be said about cognitive abilities to process language the way we do vs biological ability to speak. Some humans are born mute, most animals literally don't have the vocal chords to do what we do. Knowing whether or not thought processes are taking place in the minds of others is different to knowing whether or not an animal can physically talk.
Going back to whales, without knowing the meaning behind whale song, there isn't much we can be sure of when trying to answer the question, do whales have language? You may be right in that they are only communicating about basic biological functions, eating, mating etc, but for all we know, they are having deep philosophical communication about the nature of their individual and collective existence like we do.
The animal kingdom is full of different communication styles and some might not even be something we can perceive. Our ears might not be able to pick up certain frequencies, our noses can't tell the difference between individual rodents, our eyes can miss non-verbal communication and we to use non-verbal communication. (Which lets be honest is probably one of the reasons why so many misunderstandings arise between individuals when communicating purely in written formats.
So as I was saying with MSC, I recognize that there are capacities in other animals that make them well suited to surviving in their environment. They may even have communication systems. The kind of thought that says, "I hate having to eat my kibble..I hate having to play fetch with this guy.. I hate having to go for a walk all the time..." seems not in the repertoire of dog psychology (or other animals for that matter). That is more-or-less what I'm getting at. Humans, on the other hand, can resent what they are doing at any moment. We have, seemingly endless generation of ideas (conceptual thinking), some of which can be evaluative as to what we must do to survive, keep comfortable, and entertain ourselves.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, it is a group-think which reinforces sentiments to keep people in-line. "We all think this antinatalism business is ridiculous right??".. "Yes, we all think this is ridiculous". "Stop griping about life! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! It's all in your mind... You are choosing to suffer.. etc. etc. Any social pressure to not look negatively at the situation itself. Quoting Zn0n
Yep, we are in pain from the very beginning.. There is no self-regulation for babies. The unfulfilled needs are out for everyone to see, and it is clear there are a LOT of unfulfilled needs in the human animal from the very start.. But as you say, people keep having them for reasons such as you mention. It can never be for the sake of the future person itself though.
Maybe you should crack open a history book or two. Slavery was justified by lots of people simple by explaining that negros and other enslaved peoples were not human because the do not have human reasoning abilities. Even segregationists in the southern united states claimed that the constitution did not apply to black people because the were not human. All men are equal did not apply because the negros were lesser beings.
The whole idea came from the fact that white humans had no idea how to understand the black mind because they had not lived in the black societies. Animal have societies and culture but because we do not understand it some claim it does not exist.
Quoting Zn0n
What did I just say? They justified slaver as the use of a lower animal that cannot think like they do for financial gain. The fact that some slave owners were cruel had nothing to do with the reason the good owners kept slaves. To most of the owners, slaves were as big an investment as a modern farmer buying a tractor.
Try doing some reading about slavery, it might enlighten your mind.
Do you have pets? If you do you have noticed that some days they want to play around and are lovable with you, other days they are not in the mood to play. Why does that happen? Could that type of action be instinctual?
Quoting schopenhauer1
My dogs loved climbing over the fence and running around the neighborhood. For almost a week after I put barbed wire on top of the place they were climbing out 3 of them refused to be petted and would not even come near me. They, like most kids, got over the sulks and we are friends again. Is that more instinctual behaviour?
I think that the problem is not whether they can reason or not but are we smart enough to recognize reasoning when we see it.
Quoting Sir2u
Quoting Sir2u
Good luck next time!
If you want to take your own advice, you may wanna start here.
I guess I didn't mention you, but I said earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Also, I think your indignation is inappropriate here. I'm not sure why I'm a "speciest" because I recognize animals have different functional mental capacities than humans. There seems to be a lot of condemning here for what most other people do all the time. If I told you a dog can't do advanced calculus, or even recognize the very foundations that would make that possible, that is just pointing to differences in (other) animals and humans. If you then come back and say: "Some animals have a sense of numbers!!", okay, I can agree with that, but that wasn't my claim. That would be either a strawman or a red herring of the point (which was they cannot perform advanced calculus or cannot even begin to understand the foundations thereof). No one is denying animals have various kinds of intelligence, but to not recognize differences because you think this is a sort of bigotry, is getting on the ridiculous side and is possibly hampering your understanding of the actual argument at hand. You are throwing red herrings up on this, and you may not see it. Animals certainly have preferences. Perhaps they are even individual to the animal.. One dog likes fetch more, the other likes tug-of-war. One dog like kibble n' bits, the other likes Purina; yet another likes the fancy organic kind.
If we were to step back, can we admit that humans have certain capacities/mental functions that other animals almost certainly do not? If we cannot admit that, then we can't go much further. It's like asking, "Can we admit that humans don't have the functional capacity to fly without technology?" and you said.. that's being a bigot against humans.
:lol: :rofl:
Did you read the article you sent me too?
First of all it is not specific to the topic I was talking about. I talked about the negros and other that were counted as non humans and enslaved because of that. The wikipedia article is about white slavery! But it does mention that the muslims had white slaves, is that because they were also considered less than human by the owners?
Then I said that the reason most people had slaves was because of economical reasons not because of hate and cruelty as you said. And the article says basically the same thing, most slavery was about having work done without having to pay for it.
First of all there is no indignation in what I said, unless you think asking questions implies such emotions.
Animals obviously cannot do advanced calculus, but I have never stated that they can. The topic was about the ability of animals to reason, which I certainly do believe a lot of animals can do rather well.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I did not point this out earlier because I focused on the part about the moods "resentment" being specific to humans. But this statement of yours is clearly not true. Most people never have an original idea in their lives. Most people follow what others have been doing, sometimes for many generations.
Please tell me, how many people do you know that have actually made a contribution to the advancement of human kind? I cannot name one, including myself.
Why would a wolf want to invent a house? They already know how to make burrows to live in. Are we to ascertain from the fact that no wolf has ever built what we consider to be a proper house proof that they cannot reason.
Would you consider the fact that birds build their nests in power distribution towers to be a reasoned action, an instinctual action or a simple possibly stupid mistake?
Since we are talking about all animals, I'd like to add to your argument, by pointing out that police dogs receive no formal pay, feed, board and medical care which on the books will say "animal care", by your argument that would be "slave care" considering the dangerous nature of their work, be it suspect apprehension or Contraband searches. They also get trained for the job from a young age and have no knowledge of or choice of another life. They don't have the same sort of informed consent as police officers do and couldn't tell you what a gun or cocaine is. Discussion on that incoming because I think the topic deserves it's own place.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Let's address this more directly with the concept of Home.
Many animals seek out shelter.
Some bears like caves.
Bears make beds out of leaves.
Bears prepare winter dens during the summer and caves have been used by the same bear for up to six years as far as the longest human observed cave can make out. Some may have lived in them for longer and them spending summer prepping means they are just in and out of the cave most of the time.
The extinct Ursus Spelaeus or Cave bear may have permanently resided in caves
Bears play.
Bears have family's. Single mothers most of the time.
The fact that bears play suggests they are capable of feeling bored and entertained. Which means they also have some concept of fun.
This is why what I said earlier was really important, the mental differences between us and other animals are differences of degree, not type or kind.
I know it is incredibly boring, but we really really do have to address the concept of boredom, since you have decided to opt for evaluative conceptual ideas as to what animals must do in order to survive, be comfortable and entertained. By your argument I could suffer by being bored of every moment in life and I've got this phone that lets me stay entertained by having this conversation. The bears don't even have that! They are probably more bored than you or I.
Now, if you want you can contribute all of that behaviour to instinct, but only if you're willing to imply that all our behaviour is instinctual as well. Babies don't know words but you can tell they think in impressionistic terms at leas Animals are no different. At a safe distance, we might feel we are superior to other animals. You wouldn't feel so superior on their turf and come face to face with someone who gets the impression that your are lunch and you have nothing to defend yourself with. Hell, we aren't even the only animal that kills for fun. So it might even be the impression that you are a toy. A toy is just a form of tool. What else do some animals also do? Make tools. Orangutans have been known to join together in certain places and soap and lather their hands for no other reason than they seem to enjoy it, not all groups of them do it either, so instinct or culture emergence? Who knows, they might even believe if they do that, they'll live longer for appropriate superstition like impressions. Which isn't wrong in terms of hygiene tbh.
Rounding back to our instincts, babys come out crying, if they are healthy. If they are crying it means they aren't unconscious so it's the first good sign they have made it through the difficult part. Crying uses vocal chords, we all instinctively know how to cry out.
Birds migrate, plan migrations, birds have even been known to change the migration schedules due to how bad they think a hurricane season in the gulf of mexico might be. Which they seem to be able to predict with better accuracy than even we can and we can't even explain how they can do that. I can't quite remember the name but it's found in Delaware. Begins with a W I think.
I can communicate entire concepts to you in sign language, if I hypothetically knew any sign other than thank you, pretty much everything I've said here can be signed. I don't understand what deaf and/or mute people are saying in sign language but I know it's a language.
I know I have thrown quite a lot out there but everything I have said is verifiable.
My conclusion is this;
You can't speak another animals language, whether you're human or not, if the language is conveyed in sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. Then how in the hell would you or anyone else know whether or not animals pass complex or abstract concepts between each other? Do dogs not maybe learn how another dogs day was by sniffing each other out, or even how yours was? If I got 26 different perfumes could I not tell you a story, in Scent-English just by waving a series of silk clothes in front of your face, in the right order after teaching you which scent applies to which letter of the alphabet? I could even add punctuation Fragrances. It would be hard to learn at first but that's no different than learning how to write. It's just a matter of conditioning.
Good luck figuring out how to explain antinatalism to the Bear! ;)
Edit; Sorry if it kept changing while anyone might have been trying to read. Had to do a number of edits.
See, that's where I think you went off on the wrong track. The premise never stated anywhere a claim about the ability of animals to reason. I did say that we are the only animals that can resent almost any moment. That is a huge difference. Resentment to me, takes a sort of indignation which arises only in a certain kind of cognition (not saying if you don't have this, you can't "reason"). And just like using a computer, reading, using a car, wearing clothes, etc. takes a certain kind of culturally-based, linguistic-based, conceptually-based type of cognition (like a humans) so too resentment takes this kind of cognition. This does not negate other animal abilities to plan or reason at the level they are able to. Nor does it negate other animal abilities to have preferences of a sort.
Quoting Sir2u
So this to me is all a tangent. Wolves cannot build houses (though they can blow them down in fairy tales apparently.. only if pigs live in them :smile:). I have said nothing to indicate that because animals cannot do X activity/mental function that means they cannot reason. You have asserted thus, unnecessarily.
Woeful anthropomorphizing. Bears might get "bored", but to compare a bears' boredom to ours would be to not take into account what makes one species "bored" over another. You must take "bear phenomenology" into account and not over analogize. [As a side note, I wonder how many times the phrase "bear phenomenology" has ever been written?]
Quoting MSC
They have experiences of fun. It may be harder to claim they have a concept of fun. There are literally whole areas of study in philosophy, that concentrate on what concepts area and would take us years to unpack all the literature, but it can be argued that abstractions of a sort like "resentment" (NOT to be confused with anger, sadness, etc.) are only present in linguistic-type, semiotic thinking. There is a sort of "knowing of the situation" and a cultural context and mental representation which it is embedded within. It's like claiming, "that bear is being really haughty towards that other bear". I don't think that would apply in bear context. These are concepts and abstractions that are based on certain modes of living in the world. It's "What it's like to be a human" phenomenology.
Quoting MSC
This is just all forms of anthropomorphizing. Dogs do get information, but to then impute things like "how each other's day was" is to combine human-like conceptual thinking into an animal-behavior. Dogs do understand things about each other, but not in a conceptual way (and by conceptual I mean the linguistically generative way humans do). When does this just become absurd? If you want animals that act like humans, watch a cartoon.
Coming down on this one word, you only use it because you are assuming that human characteristics are not just animal characteristics in the first place. Since that is actually what we are now debating, I'd like to hear your effective counter argument as to why Anthropomorphizing is wrong. Otherwise your argument in this instance boils down to "Animals can't have human Characteristics, because only we have human Characteristics, because Anthropomorphizing is wrong." Circular logic again.
I don't think you're being very charitable with my arguments here at all.
Do you really not understand what is meant by "cognitive differences of degree, not type"? because it doesn't seem like you do at all. We at least know that animals are engaging with conceptual like thinking in impressionistic terms, the way babies do. They wouldn't be able to function otherwise.
Your entire argument is just woefully unjustified Anthropocentrism So justify it.
Quoting schopenhauer1 Did I not just mention Body language and the sort of information that can be imparted just by using sign language? I didn't realise you were a cryptographer who has spent all his time in the wild and has proven animals ciphers don't exist through peer reviewed journals. Would you like to link me to your work?
I have no issue with you making your arguments but I highly suggest you do some research in the field of epistemology because you clearly don't know that much about how to justify epistemic claims. By that I suggest you just stop claiming to know things publicly because you don't know enough to even claim to know anything about Animal Psychology, linguistics or Zoosemiotics and that is self evident.
I might not respond again today which I apologise for. This is a really good debate and discussion and I appreciate you starting it. I've got to deal with a covid emergency, family members just got positive tests back. :/
Again, this debate of animal communication is not really the debate I am having. Can a chimp discuss the details of Kant's view of metaphysics, or whether today's political climate is crazy? No. Resenting doing the very activities that keep us alive, make us more comfortable, and entertain us, in other words, existential matters, seems to be in the realm of humans. No I have not talked with a penguin to see if this is the case, nor have I dialoged with a koala to see their take on the matter.
But here's the thing MSC, even if you or sir2u is correct.. that would just strengthen the underlying claim.
If there existed a gorilla that in their own self-reflective way "said" to itself "I fuckn' hate stripping these leaves all day to eat", a chimp who said, "OH man, just another day of chasing this monkey to smash its skull in so I can eat it.. such a grind, why can't there be another way?" That just means more creatures in the same boat.
Only if whether or not a belief is moral, is grounded on moral theories that address pleasure and pain as the be all, end all to the nature of our existence, to justify our moral reasoning. If Antinatalism is immoral, then the point is moot. Or if acting on such a binary moral reasoning system as pain vs pleasure is overly simplistic and isn't being charitable to the evident complexity of the universe amd therefore a moral mistake, then your your underlying claim by acknowledging the possibility of the potential for animal self awareness,
Also, you don't have to agree to this being true now if you feel the argument isn't there, we both know you have your own personal determination to make, the argument can however extend to animal species that have not emerged and another million years might see linguistics Gorillas, operatically meaningful whales. This is just based on the idea that if it could happen for our ancestors, it could happen for their descendents.
Now, a Biocentrist Antinatalism could hypothetically be a possible normative prescription on earth, climate change might see to that, except for space bears. That doesn't mean life isn't suffering and feeling pleasure elsewhere in the cosmos. How do we apply antinatalism to these poor ignorant creatures who know not what they do by procreating? Without essentially just becoming Daleks that also have a plan for self suicide after our glorious purge/crusade is complete and the cosmos is lifeless?
This is why we should subscribe to theories of descriptive contextual relativism, Relativism is in the name but don't be fooled, this theory argues for the existence of objective moral truths and doesn't make claims that it as a theory is based on subjectivity and that there are no moral absolutes. Contextual Antinatalism is something I can get behind, since it can at least be a possible normative prescription and there are some humans and forms of life which by their nature can only bring suffering or can only make their offspring suffer.
Now, how do we reduce our contingent suffering foot print in a way that might actually succeed?
One thing I would appreciate you so much for is if you can justify one thing for me. Why do you think it is immoral for you personally to not have children? Is it just that you think everyone should not do it or is there more to it than that? What are the personal reasons in your eyes. I might not agree with them, just to warn you.
If you can tell me why a chimp would even be interested in Kant's views on metaphysics or even his ideas on morality then I might be able to explain why I would not discuss these things with him.
But there again. I could not get my neighbors to discuss him either so they must be chimps in disguise. As I mentioned earlier, negros were not considered humans for exactly the same reasons. And look how wrong the intellectuals were about that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Maybe yes, maybe no. But I still say that lack of understanding something is not proof that it does not happen.
As a final request I would like you to answer one question. Would a dog think of you as a lesser being because you do not stick your nose up its backside and bark along with him?
@schopenhauer1 Whatever you believe, I sincerely hope you laughed at what he said. Cracked me the fuck up when I got to chimps in disguise, had to show my wife and everything.
You are just throwing together many claims, some in which are inconsistent with others you've mentioned, without any form of source or evidence to support them. So I am not convinced simply by your words. I will also say animals do feel pain, not might - especially those have a fully functional nervous system. https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/wp-content/uploads/Animals-Chapter-4-The-Capacity-of-Animals-to-Experience-Pain-Distress-and-Suffering.pdf - as for the question of resentment that was still not stated in your OP, but you have since shifted the discussion from "dislike" to resentment - compelling evidence observed that some animals have a capacity to feel resentment and other complexities which refutes your claim otherwise. It seems that animals experience things with less persistence/duration, but still have the capacity and do experience complex emotion but lack the ability to ruminate or philosophize (at the highest current degree - humans) - which to my mind, is not a requirement to experience extreme dislike i.e., OP.
When you mention "optimal," state that alludes to morality and well-being. It has been observed that animals of higher degrees of consciousness (i.e., elephants, dolphins, chimps, maybe some dog breeds), have a capacity for morality, thus can comprehend a more "optimal" state of well-being, even if it is lesser than the optimal state of human standard. https://www.livescience.com/24802-animals-have-morals-book.html This would be a response ingrained in homeostasis - humans function the same way; as a response because they no choice otherwise, not different from other animals. So then I pose the question: Do animals need to "know of homeostasis" to thrive and recognize the opposite of it is sub-optimal and puts them in a prolonged state of distress? Like humans, I will say no. And the "why" (in the form of existentialism) is not needed.
We've actively observed in behavioral studies of animals that certain species can feel clinical depression - to some extent suicidal depression, anxiety (i.e., separation anxiety - a sense of worry and longing) and other complexities. To my mind, the "optimal" state would be alleviating these anxieties and depressions in animals. But these are in animals with more complex degrees of consciousness. A human degree of consciousness and understanding is not necessarily required to experience complex emotions and altered mood states - but not having the capacity required to ponder or rationalize on the meaning of ones feelings (i.e., logic). But I don't think this itself is necessary to feel a prolonged state of dislike and dread for living/life - as seen in animals that suffer depression after separation from mates or broken bonds.
To then, this brings me back to my second and third paragraph: how much "logic" or ability to "do logic" or do animals have to RUMINATE - in order to experience or "want" an optimal state of well-being (to be a moral agent/moral being)? Certain species seem to have passed this threshold, and to deny this would be more of a categorical mistake if not a human error to evaluate animals - or compare them - to the degree of the human, or else they are not moral agents. Instead it seems like most of the humans "dread for life," comes from their thinking capacity, but this is distinct from other animals at lower levels of consciousness. Because there are no "moral facts," to which are only accessible to higher-degree beings as there are no moral facts - we can conclude that also humans do not require knowledge of 'moral facts' in fact - and then rationalizing them or using logical deduction (of ones feelings) to be considered a moral agent - or execute "morality" and no such knowledge is required. This should be (if we are to have intellectual integrity) consistent with animals.
In some degree, I mentioned this earlier about "exempt" humans that go through periods of disassociation or lapses in reality, altered states of consciousness, neurological disorders/damage, etc -- yet they are still viewed as moral agents with a capacity for higher order thinking in your previous post. All in all, your posts seem quite anthrocentric. So why this inconsistency other than a bias of some sort toward animals perceived to be as "lesser" than the human?
It does vary from animal species to animal species (e.g., elephant/dolphin vs rat/mice). In less complex animals, they may be possibly reacting to the pleasure and pain balance. We see this in humans as well. You may find this interesting:
https://neurosciencenews.com/pleasure-pain-brain-15367/
It would be the same reason for anybody- not to unnecessarily create the conditions for necessary and contingent suffering which will inevitably befall a new person.
Quoting Cobra
Can animals have thoughts of an existential nature? That is the gist of the thoughts I am discussing.
It's a good question that deserves a good answer. I don't think either of us can be reasonably certain. That's not a good answer but it's what I am reasonably certain of at least. I know that I want to believe that animals can have thoughts of an existential nature. I'd maybe accept evidence of my dog trying to comfort me in a strange almost empathetic way when I myself am feeling Existential dread or anxiety. I could maybe accept as evidence, wild animals who save other animals from death. Including saving us.
Serious question; what you going to do if Re-incarnation is real and you come back as something non-human with existential angst?
I'm really tired. I'll probably need to take a break from this for a few days. It's been a pretty traumatic week. I've had lots to think about.
I dont think animals displaying empathy is the same as existential dread. Theres a lot of equivocating and I think there are whole areas of cognition, only humans have capacity for. No I'm not going to provide articles that prove animals dont ponder their existential situation :roll: anymore than i need a paper to prove humans cant breathe underwater or fly naturally.
This whole tangent isnt even about the topic which is the fact that we can resent every action we have to do in the course of every or any day. What does that tell us?
@Sir2u And this is not the same as preferring more optimal outcomes. I can outwardly show behavior that indicates that I don't like this food as much as another, let's say (eat it more slowly, unpleasant facial expression, etc.) and can then point to food I do prefer. That is not the same as literally resenting the fact that I have this need to eat, and this need bothers me in the first place. One is very contexted to situation, the other is an existential understanding of my position as
a being who has to need things. That is what I thought to be an obvious difference to something like a dog preferring a certain type of food versus a human being able to comprehend the situation of living itself.
Notice in the OP:
Quoting schopenhauer1
This one sentence is all you offer in response to my post? I addressed this - to me it is not so much can animals have "existential" thoughts, but whether animals have a capacity to ruminate in duration which requires degrees of consciousness that animals as of currently (to our knowledge) do not reach, because it is this that allows time for certain complexities to develop which then usually leads to 'thoughts of existential nature' as we see in humans, but it is not so much the lack of such thoughts in animals as demonstrated in my links, but maybe the persistence and duration in which they occur to be of interesting significance (vide Bekoff., Panksepp). Humans may have a desire to "not be born," but animals have a capacity to desire death. But I do find your post anthrocentric to a degree because it assumes human consciousness is the highest degree of consciousness that can be attained by animals, it is highly likely there exists non-human animals elsewhere with higher degrees of consciousness to where "existential thoughts," do not plague or exasperate them. I would say "existential thoughts," are quite primitive and come from neurotic lower degrees of consciousness, in fact, I'd even say it arises from being one of the most stupid, in comparison to a more advanced brain.
But this to me raising a further question, are non-human animals (chimps, elephants) and so forth, less stupid than us humans - not necessarily more intelligent? In some ways, I would say yes. To me then it is not so much a capacity of lack/having the capacity for existential thoughts regarding animals, but instead humans lacking the capacity to acquire the aptitude to ignore them. So what does this mean? Are intelligent moral animals, such as Elephants and Dolphins actually functioning at "lower capacity" or have they simply surpassed the need to ruminate on existential thoughts as humans in this regard? A more advanced animal would also be almost indistinguishable from the elephant in terms of existential dread.
This is mostly a biology question; which is why I gave you scientific answers and sources to your question, but in later posts you begin calling the moral framework of animals into question. You are all over the place. The other half of what you are saying is just a bunch of empty assertions with absent arguments that need to be addressed before moving any further.
So let's address these ideas.
First of all, "not wanting to have been born" is stupid. Is it the same as not wanting to continue living? No, one is an act of a desperate or sick person, the other is a whining, childish, poor little me, type of selfishness.
Why do humans wish that they had never been born? Usually because for some reason their life is miserable or beyond that. These reasons are often similar to the ones that make people want to kill themselves.
Why are they miserable? Usually because their lives do not live up to the expectations of what their life should be.
Why does their life not live up to their expectations? There could be many reasons, you found out you were adopted, hubby or wife beats the shit out of them everyday, they don't have the nice house or money that they think they should have, people bully them for wearing different clothes/ black/ yellow/ being short/ fat/ too tall/ red haired/ bald/ gay/ crippled/ liberal/ poor/ etc., they don't get enough likes on farcebook or twatter. You name it, it can be a reason for being miserable, even some of these stupid people that rise to fame and fortune and have everything they could possibly want can be miserable because money, fame, and likes are not everything in life.
Now, why would these people get miserable about these things? Not all but a lot of them are just plain social constructs, nothing at all to do with real life.
Do you think that many of the animals have these problems in their lives? Surely if they don't have the same reasons for not wanting to have been born, or for wanting to kill themselves then they would not think about it.
Why do humans think that they do not live in a utopian type of world? Usually for the same reasons they are miserable. Humans can also think that they live in a less than perfect world because it is no longer the way it was because of our behaviour. We have certainly managed to screw up the world in the last couple of hundred years, but how many people actually think about it?
Do animals have the same problems to think about? They are born, they grow up and learn from their parents, then they go out and live their own lives. Humans look for a nice house to live in and have a family, they build a nest, dig a hole, find a gave and start a family. for them it is utopia.
I doubt that any animal could hate what it has to do to get by, because everything that it does is for that reason. You on the other hand hate what you do because you picked the wrong job, the wrong wife, had too many kids, have a habit that is expensive and cannot afford to pay someone to cut the grass.
When I was a young man I worked for a small local council in the garbage collect department. I spent 3 years working there. The job sucked, there were none of the fancy wheelie bins and special collections like today. But I made a lot of money working there, and we were well respected for doing a very good job. I hated doing it, really hated it, but it served its purpose, paid for a part of my education and I had a lot of great clothes.
May be that is what is missing from the people that hate what they do, they cannot see the benefit of doing it. If there is no benefit, why are they doing it?
I wrote you a really long response which I've ended up putting into my book. Would you like to read an excerpt and also let me know how you would prefer to be addressed in the Acknowledgements section? My current plan for that is to thank firstly the forum by name and then individual users by name. Would this be acceptable to you as well as footnotes on the pages you are cited, pointing to your UN here?
Existential dread sure is inconvenient in a sense.
On the other hand, Sisyphus pushes the stone and Atlas carries the world. Purpose appears to be a force equal to our permanent tendency towards sorrow.
And I believe that having the opportunity to choose whether we die fighting or just die is beautiful.
What do you think?
I think that it is the sick kind of bullshit that society is guilty of constructing.
Why? What's the alternative?
No, this is an assumption you are making about my argument. I never said human consciousness is the highest degree..
Quoting Cobra
That is an assertion, ok.
Quoting Cobra
I hadn't done that anywhere.
Humans socially construct almost all cultural elements- which we use to survive.
Quoting Sir2u
That's assuming animals can have "reasons" in ways that humans do.
Quoting Sir2u
This goes beyond the job itself to the needs behind needing the job. Remember group-think. Are you going to put out defenses, like a squid its ink, that reinforce not resenting the situation because of X reason (Don't be a whiny bitch.. etc.)?
ok
It's just dealing with one damn thing after another. And then we are supposed to like the game because there's no choice.
That's valid. Actually, we don't have to like it. We don't have to anything, really, other than stuffing food into our and our loved ones' face and hope for the best.
Like this guy says, it's "always something":
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PPLgy0k0Cbw
Not having to fight to stay alive. How can having a choice of how you die be beautiful?
It might be attractive to fight to live, but "going out fighting" is just dumb.
A lot of them yes, but not all help us to live better.
Having a job is a social construct, designed to help us survive. But, as you say, lots of people hate what they do. Getting married is a social construct, designed to manage the properties and belongings of the people and to a certain degree stop bad genetic problems. But how many people hate being married?
Lots of these social constructs make your life suck. Taxes, social security, pension plans, mortgages, child support, alimony, credit cards, were all designed to make life, survival easier. But a lot of them don't do that, even if they are as some say "necessary evils"
Political parties(not politicians), armies, professional groups, social groups suck up peoples money and time and most people do not benefit in the least from them except as a pay check recipient or a most liked idiot on the site.
And not fitting in to, not agreeing with, not living up to the expectations, or not getting what you expected from these social constructs is what makes people hate things.
Why would anyone want to waste time and energy hating something, just because we can. Is it because we can reason?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I doubt that anyone would say that they reason like humans do, because they are not humans. But the question is do they reason in some other way?
As I said, they do not have the reasons not hate the social constructs of their society like humans do. They accept that their life is for living as best they can and get on with it.
Lots of animals live social lives that have rules, restrictions and hierarchy as well as benefits. In a pride of lions, the old alpha male rules. But the younger males watch and wait for a chance to take over. Is the knowledge of when to attack innate, instinctual. Are they born with the signs of debility programmed into their brains? If that is so, then just how much of what we do and know is innate as well?
Quoting schopenhauer1
The needs behind needing the job? And how does that work with group think?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Defense mechanisms help us to survive as well. And lots of people use them to stay same while they are doing the job they hate for the boss they hate even more. They go home and take out their frustration and resentment of the wife and kids because they cannot risk losing their socially constructed survival method. Why would a lion wait around for a chance to kill the king, could it be because of resentment and frustration at not being able to get laid? Or does instinct make them hang around?
What would you have instead? Uploading your conscience to a computer?
Excellent video! I like his quote at the end, "It wears on you over time- that's life".
So this is the real issue. Since we are an animal of social constructs (mediated through a highly plastic brain), we can deliberate and constantly struggle doing things we don't want to. Of course, we can try to follow culturally-instructed habits of mind to repress or sublimate these feelings, but we can have them none-the-less. Because so much of life is socially constructed- because so many things we do are acts of deliberate, conscious decisions, we decide at every moment whether we want to keep doing something. Usually, even if we don't like it (and are highly aware of this!), we might still do it anyways because of the needs for survival, comfort, entertainment in a socio-cultural-historical milieu. We know we have to do certain things, in other words, if we want other things to happen. We might resent doing these things, but there is little way around it because there are even worse alternatives if we don't. And yet, even if we follow the course, and do these things we don't want to do to get more optimal end outcomes, other unintended things pop up which create more harm, and we have to deal with, and then we must contend with those, so we can get back to doing the sub-optimal things to get to the more optimal outcome. And on and on the "dealing with" cycle goes. And again, all in our own full awareness of how we might not like these things. And then, inevitably, the self-help people will try to make the "dealing with" sound like it's your problem, because what alternative is there except being a pessimist? Yet, we are aware of all these sub-optimal circumstances as we do them. This is where we find ourselves.
Yep, that about sums it up.
We have more complicated decisions to make than a rabbit. Do we want a house or a mansion? But have you ever heard of a rabbit digging its burrow into a swamp? Do they have innate knowledge of where to build their house, or do they reason that it would be safer uphill from the wet ground?
Either way it puts human into a bit of a pickle. Is our reasoning ability based on innate knowledge or do we learn to reason?
Err, just being allowed to live would be OK with me.
But dying is always on the menu, isn't it? Have to spend that time in between somehow.
Quoting Sir2u
Why do you say this?
Where do you live? I live in Caracas and I'm of the lucky few that can say "live comfortably." Communism is a kick in the balls to your whole life. People just die and all your options fade away progressively.
When you say "being allowed to live" I can only agree with you if you live in a really shitty situation, where you are controlled to an important extent. Do you know about life in North Korea? Cuba? This is why I ask; not to mean ill.
Depends on the animal. A rabbit is probably closer to innate.
Quoting Sir2u
If you mean innate knowledge of what to do, no. The ability to deduct, inference, predict, may be different in us due to linguistic-minds that allow for higher degrees (or degrees at all) of constant deliberation and decision-making. This means I can have a thought about a whole variety of things that something like a rabbit cannot. "I want to put a green monkey on a blue house in the middle of winter". A rabbit doesn't generate ideas like that. However, with these greater degrees of freedom we have, we are still (mainly) driven by certain necessities (survival, comfort, entertainment). So here we are with this highly deliberative/deliberating brain that must contend with unmovable circumstances. Thus you have a gap in this particular human animal, not seen in the rest. Here is the existential gap.
I never said you did.
is to not suffer, see
And to be
is to suffer, me
Yet to suffer
is to death fear
To ask not to be
To be suffering free
Is to ask for water
and be given fire
Because I am sick of people insisting that they know the right way to live, that they know the purpose of life, that I should do things their way, that they know how I should die peacefully.
All I want to do is live MY life. And I do not want to fight everyday to do so. Why should I go down fighting instead of loving?
Quoting dussias
2,357.30 km (1,464.76 mi) west by north of you. If you cross the Caribbean you will come to my front door. I too live a reasonable life, though things are getting harder all the time.
Quoting dussias
It does not matter where you live, or in what situation you live as long as no one tries to control you. That is what I mean by being allowed to live.
I know lots of poor people and some that are beyond poor. But most of them do actually prefer not to work to hard to change things. The really sad cases are the ones that are stopped from doing something like getting an education because they have to work just to eat and there is not really a lot of work right now.
Quoting dussias
I have one ex-student studying in South Korea, they have told me about life up north. Several ex students have studied in Cuba, medicine in Cuba is exceptional.
So if a simple rabbit knows these things without learning them, why are humans so dumb? Surely we should have a lot more innate knowledge than them because we have much better minds.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So the poor rabbit has no idea about why he should not build his house in a certain place, just that he should not do it. It would seem more reasonable that he could know about the places to build house, then review the piece of ground to see if it fits the template. That would mean that he had to compare his ideas to the information about the ground and come to a conclusion, which is reasoning. Just because his ideas are not in a language that we can understand does not mean that he cannot make deductions.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The same as any other animal.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What are these unmovable circumstances that you talk about? Are any of them socially constructed by chance? I cannot think of anything in nature that humans alone have to face.
The YouTuber Inmendham (the creator of efilism) has argued once that he would murder a woman if he ended up getting her pregnant to prevent further suffering, and has also stated it’s a moral good to kill the outdoor cats that roam near his property. Not only that, but in the various debates he’s had on YouTube he never argues in good faith, and usually ends up leaving the debate in a fiery, screaming rage littered with abusive remarks. His actions are anything BUT ethical, and he makes antinatalists out to be a super villain death cult. Luckily Inmendham is very obscure and rarely gets attention these days, but I don’t think it’s a good thing for antinatalists to accept his conclusions
Based on what you said, agreed. Certainly Antinatalism is about alleviating suffering as much as possible. It should be a passive and (not sure if right term) "gentle" philosophy. I am totally against negative utilitarianism to its logical conclusion, such as the "Big Red Button" scenarios. If you are unfamiliar, that is something like, if you can end everything painlessly with one red button, would you do it? Of course no, because there is individual human agency. Ethics is nothing if it doesn't start at the level of individual agent for whom which it is their very suffering you are trying to prevent. It is not some monstrously anti-human/life credo. Thus, anyone that characterizes antinatalism as thus is doing it a deep disservice. However, that being said, I don't think @Zn0n was that way, he simply referenced an idea associated with the YouTuber you mentioned. To be fair, any philosophy can be twisted to make it on the villainous side- this is no different. Nationalism in regard to pride in country can be okay in small doses. Taken to the extreme, it leads to xenophobia and bigotry. It goes the same with anything.
Yeah seems that way to me as well and indeed crazies are everywhere.
I would like to say that I think a strong antinatalism takes into account the dignity of what could be the potential person, and not treating them as an mere means to an end. Thus, preventing future suffering is one way of honoring this. No ONE is deprived, yet the consideration of not creating unnecessary harm is perfectly kept. The child is not used for some vision of what the child should do or become. He is not living for a third-party reason. Often what is thought to be "for the sake of the child" is really just visions of what the child may or may not do in a social setting. This would be using the child as a "player" in a game. People think this is moral, but I think it should be questioned.
If I was to force something like work for you to deal with, and say "sure you can try to get out of it if you want" but by doing so you will surely die a slow death, that really isn't much of a choice. I foisted circumstances that are basically inescapable and thus have ignored any regards for you, the player of this game, just looking at you as someone who will "surely" want to play.
If I was to pretend I was an anti-natalist, this more deontological approach seems a lot more consistent to follow. The negative utilitarian one I mentioned completely disregards the preferences of existing beings in favour of reducing them to mere vessels of utility juice (not sure if that came out right, lol) which I don’t really like. I respect David Benatar himself for saying he wouldn’t press the universe exploder ether
Yep. I really don't like most utilitarian arguments in the realm of ethics that "aggregate" things and have no regard for the individual person. Thus, any "greatest good for greatest amount" or "Least harm for greatest amount" will lead to silly conclusions and as I said, discount the individual. This itself is unethical, as it uses people for a strict principle.
However, in the realm of government and politics, I don't have as much problem with utilitarianism, and I don't think there is a way around it when you are dealing with large populations.
Yes I've heard of him. Can you explain his actual NU argument though? As far as I know, he is mainly saying that we should strive for a transhuman end point where there is no suffering. However, to get to this point, it seems like he would allow more people to be born to do so. This again sounds like aggregate utilitarianism whereby people are used for a greater cause. Perhaps I am wrong, about allowing more people born for this cause. It does sound like science fiction either way, and doesn't justify creating more people, even if it is for the sake of reducing future suffering.
That's a good question, cause if that is accurate, its a very Lamarckian error in his understanding of inheritance.
That seems too blanketed. One can be a pessimist born of (more) optimist parents (obviously, optimistic enough to at least have children). But I can believe that part of the dispositions for being of pessimistic temperament is genetic.
I have been meaning to read up on gene editing, but it seems clear that this has better potential to eliminate suffering than promoting antinatalism.
Right, well that might not be true, first (sci fi) and meanwhile not creating new people who will then be used in this scheme is an imperative if you dont want to use people.